She shivered because, although the thought was not new to her, it was still the worst treason to express it. ‘The Empire has no queens. No woman can inherit.’

‘So says a history all of merely three generations old.’ Uctebri’s lips twitched. ‘I am older than your Empire, and I know how these things can change. Maybe, if a certain bold young woman should begin to unfurl her wings… especially with her brother so distracted.’

‘Distracted by what? Tell me plainly, will you?’

‘The Queen of Szar killed herself last night.’ His protuberant red eyes glinted, bleakly pleased. ‘She had been oppressed by dark thoughts for night after night. It was inevitable, really.’

‘You are a monster,’ Seda chided him.

‘You disapprove, O Queen-in-waiting?’

She realized that, beneath it all, she did not. It meant so little to her, the fate of some woman she had never met. How like him I am, at heart. ‘Speak on.’

‘Naturally, the news is confined to the harem, and it is your brother’s intention that it should stay there.’

‘I understand the nature of the hold we have on Szar and the Bee-kinden.’ She forced herself to look into those bloody eyes, but his Art had started working on her now, so that they appeared almost benign – the malice in them dissolving before her gaze.

‘I rather think the sad news may become known in Szar sooner than might otherwise be expected,’ Uctebri said, delicately.

‘You can… But of course you can. But this will damage the Empire.’

‘Which is a merely a weapon in your brother’s hands at present. Time enough later to whip your subjects back into line,’ he told her. ‘For now, I think it best that your brother finds himself ever more deeply involved in matters both within the Empire and without. It is only to your benefit, Princess, because you will need all the space for manoeuvre that you can muster. You have a great deal of work to do, I believe.’

‘And should I start by granting the boon I see you about to request of me?’

Her remark left him absolutely silent, his red eyes gleaming as he examined her.

‘I read it in your face, monster,’ she said softly. ‘Have I not done well?’

He suddenly bared his teeth in a smile of true approbation. ‘Oh, well done, Princess. My kind are not so easily read, after all. Your skills are impressive, but then you have survived by them these last several years, have you not?’

‘Oh, I have, at that.’

‘You are perfect,’ he observed, with such utter sincerity. He was grotesque and hideous of spirit, and she was just a tool to him, but she was an implement that he valued and even had care for. It was a bitter truth that the Princess of the Empire had no other who showed her any greater regard than that, but it was a truth nonetheless.

‘We shall meet again tonight. I shall have them bring you to me. My invention is limitless when it comes to finding excuses to enjoy your company. So you shall come to me tonight, and we shall enact a little ritual all of our own. It is time you were tested.’

She dressed for him carefully. She wore a gown of red, in respect for his overriding obsession, that was worked with black in complex patterns at the hems. It was some Dragonfly war loot that had eventually found its way into her wardrobe, never worn before.

She sat before her mirror, with her body servants, and had them tend to her make-up as though she was to be flaunted before generals.

A test, she thought, and what if I fail? If she failed then, at least, when the worst came, she would look a true princess. In the Commonweal, where her dress came from, the women wore swords. She would have girded on a blade too, if custom had permitted. She still had her sting, of course, although she had never had cause to turn it on another human being. Knowing Uctebri’s passions, perhaps I shall have cause to turn it on myself.

I am so alone that I must find this repulsive monster my ally, putting my life in his thin hands.

She stood up, seeing in the mirror a reflected Seda of the might-have-been. For a moment she could not quite recognize herself in that image. There was pride there, and strength, and a cruelty that had graced the eyes of her father and now her brother. A moment later she was clutching at the shoulders of her servants, dizzy with it, for she thought she had seen, behind that silvered doppelganger, the flames of battle, countless airborne war-machines and a thousand soldiers marching against a reddened sky.

The guard had arrived to fetch her. She noticed him start slightly at the sight of her, trying to match this formidable image with the princess he had seen last.

The room she was brought to was lined with black stone as a result of the vanity of some courtier of her late father. She guessed that, over the last few days, the servants had been kept busy polishing, so that floor, walls and even ceiling all gleamed. In the centre stood Uctebri, surrounded by a ring of tall iron candelabra. Each candle-flame that he had lit was doubled and redoubled by the polished walls, until it seemed she and the Mosquito stood in a gloom pierced by a hundred guttering stars.

‘You are on edge, creature,’ Seda observed. ‘More than usual I think. What has caught you by the hair this time?’

Uctebri showed his teeth, either in grimace or grin. He had little enough hair, in truth, and his scalp gleamed in the candlelight.

‘Or have you decided to support my brother after all? It wouldn’t surprise me, given that he is Emperor already. What can I offer against that? Perhaps this has been his game to tempt me into treason.’

‘On his slightest word, you would die, Princess,’ Uctebri said. ‘Games, he might play, but he has no need to see any proof of your perfidy. It is not as though his fraternal love for you restrains him.’

‘That it does not,’ she agreed. ‘So what, magician? What has got into you?’

He said nothing for a moment, just went on lighting candles. Then: ‘You make a remarkable show tonight, Princess. I had not asked it of you.’

‘Should the spirits of fate not see me at my best? You have prodded and pried and measured me all this while, but now you say there are tests still to come.’

‘It is now time to make my real test,’ Uctebri said, as he lit the final flame. His expression, shifting and flickering with the light, looked doubting as he turned it on her. ‘All this time I have informed your brother of the tests I have conducted on you, some of it true, some false, but for me this is the real test – and you must pass.’

She felt a sinking in her heart. That was what was now different about the man: he was, for once, entirely serious. Gone were the coy insinuations, the mockery, even the grotesque flirtation he seemed to indulge in. Now he had become Uctebri the Sarcad, a magus of the legendary Mosquito-kinden, and he was about to determine her future.

‘And if I fail?’ she asked. She was used, through long experience, to appear calm in these times of trial. Her brother had put her through enough practice already.

‘Then you will be of no use to me. We will be of no use to each other. I shall instead make what I can out of your brother’s inferior clay.’ She thought she heard genuine regret in his tone. He would far rather it was me. Can I take comfort from that? She could not because, in her prolongedly precarious state, there was no comfort to be had from any source.

‘Make your test, then,’ she told him. ‘What must I do? Run? Jump? Do you wish me to sing to you, monster?’

‘My test has already begun. I simply require you to watch me and listen. I will know, after I am done, whether you are my suitable material or not.’

‘But all you’ve done so far is light candles…’ she observed.

‘Yes, so many candles.’ He moved about the room, seemingly aimless. The myriad darts of light confused her eyes. It was impossible to even tell where the walls were now, such was the multiplication of reflections. Surely he had stepped beyond this room somehow, she kept thinking, but then he would turn, and she had to take it on faith that there was a wall there that had turned him.