‘But… it will fall into some hands.’

‘If the world is just, it will merely fall to some collector, like that man in Collegium, who will lock it away in some machine-haunted place where it may be lulled to sleep. Otherwise… at least, when the worst comes, it will not be of our doing again.’

She pointed to the doorway. ‘Leave me now, Achaeos. And leave Tharn as soon as you can. Do not return here unless you keep better company than your present. Perhaps it would be best if you did not return at all.’

The words left him feeling weak and sick inside. He had not realized how much strength Che had lent him, when they had last been here together. Through the malaise, something dark rose within him, something dark and barbed.

‘And if I keep the box?’

She fell still, and he thought he saw a glint of caution on her lean face.

‘You have assumed that I would pass it on to some other,’ he said, a little tremble in his voice. ‘What if I should open it myself?’

‘Silence, boy!’ she snapped at him. ‘You are rotted to the very heart. Best to slay you here and now, for who knows what doom you might call down upon your own people.’

‘I am at the bid of the Darakyon,’ he reminded her, ‘so slay the forest’s messenger and who knows what it may do? I would fear to sleep for what dreams might visit me, if I had done such a thing. Yes, even if I were a Skryre of Tharn.’

The Skryre bared her teeth. ‘You will be the end of us. May the Wasps destroy you and the wind scatter your dust! Go, Achaeos. Leave here, and if there is any kindness in fate then you will fail in your quest and be destroyed.’

He turned from her, shaking inwardly with loss and fear, but also with a new anger.

When I have the box, we shall see who commands whom, came the thought, and only later did he pause to wonder where it had come from, for it had not been his own.

Four

The ruddy-skinned Ant, who had seemed on the defensive for the last few passes, suddenly came out with an explosive punch through the guard of his opponent, hammering into the man’s jaw. The bone blade of his Art tore bloody gashes and his victim was spun to the ground, only to be up on his feet a moment later. The two of them, both Ant-kinden but of different cities, circled, and then closed again. As they both tired, more blows got through their defences, more blood was shed.

The crowd loved it. Not just any crowd, of course. This was an assembly of the great and the good: generals, high-placed mercantile officers from the Consortium, men of good family and great wealth. They stood and shook their fists and roared when the blood flew, howling and chanting and urging on the combatants, who needed no such encouragement.

There were only two islands of quiet in this bloodlust. Uctebri was one.

What a spectacle, he thought drily. What wasted blood. The scent of it was in the air, tweaking his senses in a way no other smell could. No Spider harlot’s perfume could touch him like this. To his mind, the odour drowned out the crowd itself.

He sat behind the man who now believed himself Uctebri’s master. They had taken Uctebri’s old dark robe from him and given him another that was quartered, black and gold. It was to show that he was a better degree of slave than he had previously been: a privileged slave. He was valued enough to be finally allowed out of his cell. Or perhaps the Emperor just wanted to keep him close.

The Emperor himself was staring coldly at the fighting Ants. This fight, the whole series of brutal matches the evening had in store, was being thrown in his honour by some favour-seeking family. All around him the lucky invitees were baying for carnage and here sat the Emperor, not missing a moment, not enjoying a move. He never did, Uctebri knew. It was not that the spectacle was lost on him. He had no conscience to stain with the blood of these pugilists, nor high ideals that soared above them. He was a man on whose word 100,000 soldiers would butcher towns and villages. He could have his household slaves gutted before his eyes, his armies raze cities, his Rekef assassins slay monarchs and, knowing he could do all this without effort, he took no pleasure from it. Such ambitions were too petty to hold his interest, and so it was with all his pleasures. He lay with his concubines and ate his fine meals, ordered his subjects and counted his wealth, and it jaded him, day by day, whilst the burdens and fears of his state only preyed ever more on his mind.

Burdens such as the succession, of which there was none clear. An Emperor must have a successor, as Alvdan knew, and yet he took no wife, legitimized no offspring. Any child of his would inevitably become a threat, a tool for the power-hungry. That threat was now contained in the form of his one surviving sibling, Seda, whose death warrant he daily considered. She lived only because, whilst she was under his control, so was that threat of overthrow. A son would change all that, of course. So it was that the Emperor of the Wasps, most powerful man in the world, lived in an agony of fear and suspicion, the food ashes in his mouth. Until, that is, a certain Mosquito-kinden was brought before him to make a remarkable, indeed impossible, offer. For if an Emperor were to live for ever, why should issue, so to speak, continue to be an issue?

Such dangerous games we play. Uctebri, within the shadows of his cowl, permitted himself the shadow of a smile. Was he merely the prisoner and slave of the Wasps, or were they doing his bidding? It was a question worthy of a magician, because magic dealt in the gaps between certainties, and the truth of his status would only be resolved into fact once he tried to change it. Until then, he and the Emperor held to their opposite opinions. His were a scarce kinden, never numerous but now rare indeed, surviving as little more than the folk-tales of peasants warning their children: Go to sleep or the Mosquito-kinden will come and drink your blood. Sometimes, in remote places, they did.

Emperor Alvdan II had never quite asked what Uctebri intended to gain for himself from his planned ritual, though. He was so used to people offering him things in return for his favour.

The fight was apparently over, although Uctebri had not been watching it and had not noted which Ant had won. As people turned to talk to their neighbours, of sport or business or both, the Emperor leaned back. ‘Well, monster?’ he asked. ‘Do you appreciate the honour we have bestowed on you?’

Uctebri sucked a deep breath in through his pointed nose, savouring the last of the shed blood. ‘Indeed, your Imperial Majesty.’

‘Displease us, creature, and we may yet see you too in the pits.’

‘I fear, your Imperial Majesty, that I would make a poor spectacle.’

Alvdan snorted at that, and then turned to his left to relay the Mosquito’s words to his neighbour. The man sitting there was the influential General Maxin, who thought he was using Uctebri to court the Emperor’s further favour, just as Uctebri thought he himself had used Maxin to secure access to the Emperor.

Doubt and shadows, the very drink of magicians. Uctebri settled back, hearing someone above him say that the next fight would pitch a predatory beetle against a half-dozen slaves, and would therefore be good sport and worth watching.

After the entertainment was done it was for Alvdan to rise first, which he did without even a glance at the night’s anxious sponsors. The Wasp hegemony amused Uctebri. They set their Emperor up as inviolable and so far above them. Everyone else, officers in the army, scions of rich families or factors of the Consortium, all of them were within merely a pace of each other, and thus they jostled and fought for place. After the Emperor and his immediate retinue had gone, Uctebri knew there would be all kinds of elbow-jogging over who should follow next.