‘Your soldier’s not back with my drink, Lieutenant. That seems lax discipline. You shouldn’t stand for it.’

‘No, sir. I’ll have words with him.’

‘When he gets back from the garrison with the others, of course.’

Brodan’s smile was not entirely devoid of regret. ‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t underestimate the speed with which bad news spreads, should I?’ Thalric was still slouching in his chair, quite obviously not the man for any sudden moves. The careless pose made them uncertain, and most of the soldiers obviously did not share Brodan’s up-to-date knowledge of recent Rekef reversals.

‘They made sure to get hold of anyone who used to know you, sir. They told us.’

‘I’m sure they did.’ Inside, he felt sick. So close! For just a minute he had been the man he used to be, and now… betrayal again. He seemed to be a magnet for it, either giving or receiving. He wondered what Brodan had actually been told.

Not that it mattered so much. Brodan was a good soldier and he would obey his orders. ‘They’ll probably make you captain for this, Lieutenant,’ Thalric remarked.

‘That would be nice, sir.’ Brodan’s face remained without expression. There was, Thalric understood, no second chance here for him. Brodan was not the kind of man to let old times get in the way of duty. Thalric could remember a certain Rekef major very close to him who had been just like that, too.

The whole front wall of the taverna was open, just a mess of straw propped up on poles. Without tensing, without any motion to warn them, Thalric kicked the table over, leaping back in his chair with his wings flashing about his shoulders to fling himself backwards, out from under the roof and into the rain-lashed air.

The sting seared from his hand, and one of Brodan’s men was knocked over flat even as he got to his feet. Then Thalric dived away, streaking through the rain a few feet above the muddy ground, and knowing for sure that they would come after him.

A sting-bolt hissed through the rain just to his left, and he flung himself sideways, casting himself down one of Jerez’s wretched, rotten alleys and putting the thin barrier of a few inches of mud and twigs between him and his pursuers. Immediately he turned right again, trusting to the rain to cover him. He heard another crackle as one of them loosed a shot at him, but he did not even see the flash.

His wound was starting to tell on him now, slowing him down. Even as he flagged, one of his pursuers came bowling into him, and the pair of them tumbled end over end before splashing down into the mud, Thalric on his back, and the soldier kneeling beside him, blinking in surprise for a moment, but already extending his hand.

Thalric found inner calm, even as he raised his own open palm, knowing that he did not have time. When he saw the flash, he assumed that he had been shot, almost imagined the burning pain he should feel.

It was the flash of wet steel, not of searing energy, and the soldier’s head was cut cleanly from his shoulders, his body toppling aside in the clenched moment before the blood started.

Thalric clambered to his feet, looking into the eyes of his rescuer, his tormentor.

‘Tisamon,’ he gasped.

The Mantis had no expression, merely cleaning his steel claw before walking off without waiting to see what Thalric would do. There was no telling what he might have seen or guessed.

‘Now what you got to understand,’ said Nivit, ‘is that there ain’t been no grand proclamation that anything big’s goin’ on around here. Right?’

Gaved nodded, recognizing where the Skater’s circumlocution was going.

‘And also there ain’t been no invitations come my way, tellin’ me that anything like an auction might be held any day soon. Most ’specially there ain’t been any sign that some real expensive, real exclusive thing – of about yea big to each side – is being flogged off some time soon, somewhere near where we’re standin’. If you thought I’d heard that, Gaved, you’d be dead wrong.’

The Wasp grinned despite himself. ‘And yet you’ve heard something.’

‘People are our business, Gaved,’ Nivit explained. His girl had meanwhile brought him out a little stack of tablets, and his long hands were sorting through them, apparently without his conscious involvement. ‘Now we always have odd fellas droppin’ in here lakeside, to buy, to sell, to hide, to seek, you know how it is.’

‘I do,’ Gaved agreed.

‘Only you can’t help noticing that in the last couple of tendays the calibre of them has gone up and up. All sorts of grandees from the Empire and elsewhere, all coming in quiet like and just waitin’. Now what happens is, a few days ago some factor comes knocking with a commission. You ever hear of a Founder Bellowern?’

‘I know the name Bellowern,’ Gaved confirmed.

‘Big Beetle dynasty, people all through the Consortium. Rich and powerful. Well, this Founder’s one of the elder sons, maybe the one who gets the whole pot eventually. So what’s he doing lakeside in Jerez? Keeping an eye open for the competition. His man gave me a list of names and faces to look out for and, what do you know – here they all are, if you look hard enough. A good twelve names, and each with a history. Some of them we’d seen here before but most of them, no. This has to be different. This is special. So, old friend, how about you do some talking now, and I can just shut up?’

‘Gladly.’ Gaved sank back carefully in the hammock-sling seat that Nivit’s girl had strung up for him. The very feeling made him curiously at home. Perhaps it was just that here, beside Lake Limnia, a Wasp could almost escape his birthright. ‘There is a box – some mumbo-jumbo thing from the olden days. My principal wants it.’

‘Him and the world, too. Rich fella, is he?’

‘Not especially.’

Nivit made a derisive noise. ‘Then don’t even bother showing. These names I’ve worn my feet out in trailing, they’re rich enough each one of them to buy Jerez outright and the lake as well, or else they’ve got stuff to trade that makes that just about true. Take a look.’ Without Gaved having to presume on their friendship by asking, he passed over a tablet containing a shortlist of names that mostly meant little – but brief noted descriptions that soon gave him pause for thought.

Here was the wife of a Wasp colonel, a man who Gaved had heard was now the Governor of Maynes; there were two Spider-kinden manipuli, as the Spiders called their arch-plotters and politicians; a Dragonfly noble who must surely be risking his life even to step inside the Empire; another Consortium baron, and yet another Wasp whose name had been mentioned in connection with the Imperial Court. There were others besides: Moth, Woodlouse, and a gang of factors acting for a buyer of unknown kinden.

Gaved shook his head. ‘Word gets around.’

‘It certainly does.’ Nivit shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘Your fella’s out of luck then, it seems.’

‘Assuming he’s interested in buying…’

‘Dangerous words.’ But Nivit was grinning. ‘You’re thinking about the old times now, ain’t you?’

Gaved was busy copying the tablet’s contents onto a scroll that was already looking damp at the edges. The marshes of Lake Limnia were unfortunately death to paper of all kinds. ‘Old times indeed, Nivit,’ he replied. ‘Back when we did more than just hunt down runaway slaves for the Empire.’

‘It ain’t all imperial work these days,’ Nivit argued defensively. ‘Mind, I know what you mean, and I wouldn’t have thought you’d be the man for it, any longer. Thought you’d put that kind of work behind you.’ Stealing property was in a decidedly inferior league to tracking fugitives, but it had been a long time since Gaved had been so desperate. It sent a strange thrill through him, though, the thought of one last heist. He had never considered himself as a thief, just a recoverer of goods, a returner of lost property. The rest of the world had not been so indulgent with the labels.