He stepped back as that encroaching red tide reached him, but it was rolling forth on all sides, and the things of the Darakyon were melting into it, still regarding him with an air of betrayal.

‘What?’ he called out to them, and it seemed that his Art-made wings opened without him willing them, so that he was lifted high into the stormy sky, seeing the Lowlands spread beneath him: the Lowlands and then the Empire and the Commonweal and beyond. The stain spread out from the Darakyon, the tide of blood heedless of boundaries and city walls: Helleron and Tharn were gone, Asta and Myna. Now, across the map that was so impossibly presented to him, fresh wounds appeared in the face of the world – Capitas, Collegium, Shon Fhor, Seldis – cities drowned in blood that arose in fountainheads from the depths of the earth, and in those wounds there were crawling things like maggots, long twining many-legged things that should never have been allowed back into the light.

The next morning Achaeos looked more pale and drawn than Che had ever seen him.

‘Still not sleeping?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Sleeping, but dreaming.’ He sat down heavily beside her. ‘The Darakyon. Something troubles it. It… wants something of me, but I cannot make it out. The voices are confused.’

Che regarded him, worried. ‘And if you could, would you do so?’

He stared dully about the taverna’s common room, which was now mostly empty. ‘I must, for I owe a debt – and the things of the Darakyon are creditors I cannot ignore. But I cannot hear them clearly, and so I cannot act.’

Scuto and Sperra were already breakfasting. Neither of them looked much better than Achaeos did. I should feel as bad, Che knew. It had not sunk in, though, what might be happening to her own home. She wondered if the Vekken had reached the walls. That seemed very likely.

Be safe, Uncle Sten, she willed silently, for he would always forget that he was no soldier. She had visions of him striding along the walls of Collegium and waving a defiant blade at the Ant horde.

There had been Sarnesh soldiers assembling for two days now, forming up their expedition, their automotives, their artillery and supply train. They would go by rail about half of the way, but closer to the siege the Vekken were likely to have undermined the tracks, and the army would proceed on foot. Nobody could march like the Ant-kinden, though. They were tireless on campaign and they would send the Vekken back home stinging.

An officer came into the taverna that very moment and marched over to them, his chainmail clinking. He looked about the table and said, ‘Which one of you is named Sperra?’ An unnecessary question, because it was a Fly-kinden name, and she was the only Fly there.

She raised her hand timidly, and the Ant looked at the rest of them. ‘You must come with me. Your associates also. If any of these here claim not to be your associates, then they will be taken into custody pending investigation.’

‘Now wait a minute,’ Scuto started, rising.

‘We are all her associates,’ Che said. ‘What is going on, officer?’

The Ant had been staring at Scuto, more in horrified curiosity than anything else. ‘You are summoned to the Royal Court immediately. You must come with me.’

‘Why?’ Scuto demanded.

‘You do not question the commands of the Queen,’ the Ant snapped. ‘I don’t know what kinden you are, creature, but I will have your spikes filed blunt if you speak out of turn again.’

Scuto bared his snaggled yellow teeth at him, but said nothing. The officer stepped back, and one by one they filed past him. There was a squad of a dozen soldiers waiting just outside to escort them.

‘What on earth is going on?’ Che demanded in a hoarse whisper.

‘Nothing good,’ Achaeos said, before the officer again shouted for silence.

The Queen herself met them without any of her tacticians or staff. The belligerent officer had virtually pushed Scuto and the rest into her presence: just a single Ant-kinden woman standing at the end of a long table. Until Sperra whispered it, they took her for just another Ant in armour.

There was only one other there, a Fly-kinden man of middle years, wearing on his arm the badge of his guild, a figure-of-eight endlessly looping within a circle, which signified: Anywhere within the world.

The Queen of Sarn regarded them coolly, her gaze dwelling long enough on Scuto that he began to shuffle

Eventually he spoke up: ‘Listen, Your Highness-’

‘Your Majesty,’ Sperra hissed.

‘Your Majesty,’ he corrected himself. ‘What it is, I’m a Thorn Bug. No, you don’t normally get my kinden around these parts. Yes, there are others. No, it doesn’t hurt. Is that about it, Your Majesty, with all respect?’

The others held their breaths, but what would have seen Scuto dead by now if spoken to a Spider lady or Wasp officer passed without reproach here, for the Ant-kinden knew little of standing on ceremony.

‘Save the matter of how you fell in with a Beetle named Stenwold Maker,’ she said.

Scuto shrugged. ‘He got me set up in Helleron when there was no one else to turn to. He picked me out as being good for something, Your Majesty, and since then we’ve done a lot for each other. Is there news of him, if I might ask?’

‘Some of the last reports to come in from Collegium give his name as one of their…’ there followed a pause, in which some unseen aide was obviously briefing her, ‘… War Masters, we believe the term is.’

‘Do you know if the fighting has started yet, Your Majesty?’ Che burst out.

‘It seems certain. You four are his agents, then, in my city. You are the delegation sent to win us over to join your fight against the Wasps?’

‘We are, Your Majesty,’ Che confirmed.

‘Then consider us won, but in no way that you will appreciate,’ the Queen declared with heavy irony. ‘You have heard that the Empire is already in possession of Helleron. We believe they are coming here next.’

‘Here, Your Majesty?’ Scuto goggled. ‘To Sarn?’

‘At the moment,’ she said, ‘there is a running conflict between my artificers and those of the Empire. Mine are destroying the tracks of the Iron Road while theirs are replacing them. There will inevitably be a battle. Our agents inform us the Empire’s armies are mustering for a march on my city even now.’

They stared at her. The whole room seemed unutterably still.

‘You must understand what this means,’ she continued.

But they did not. They could not understand. Too much was happening too fast.

‘I cannot therefore send my soldiers to Collegium,’ she said, almost gently. ‘I must defend my own city, my own people.’

Che gasped. ‘But – Collegium cannot stand against the Vekken. Our citizens aren’t proper warriors. Your Majesty, please-’

‘It pains me to make this decision,’ the Queen interrupted, in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘Collegium has been our ally, and it is an alliance we have profited by. If I could be sure that I could hold the Wasps with half my soldiers, I would send the other half to your city without delay. I would maintain that my forces are the best equipped and best trained in all the Lowlands, but now the Lowlands have changed. It is not just that Vek is at the gates of Collegium, or that Helleron is in the hands of the Empire. News comes from Tark, at last, and all word states that the city has fallen. An Ant-kinden city. A city-state like mine. I cannot afford to wait for the Empire to come right up to my walls, lest my city suffer the same fate as Tark. My soldiers are trained for open battle, battle on the field. We shall meet them in the open, and then see if we are still the soldiers to put the world in awe.’

‘But what about Collegium?’ Che cried. ‘What about Stenwold?’

‘Do you know what a Lorn detachment is?’ the Queen asked them. Surprisingly, it was Sperra who had the answer.