They had not been kind to her, but neither had they been as cruel as they might. Her face was badly bruised down one side, and her left eye was swollen shut. Stenwold did not care, though, for she was alive! He shambled forwards towards her, till the guard jumped on him, bearing him to the floor.

Something snapped inside him, and Stenwold twisted round and smashed the man across the face with his elbow, and with all of his might, spinning the Ant off him. He scrambled to his feet with a roar, but the Ant woman’s soldier escorts had descended on him, and they held him firmly between them, and though he threw his weight on them, struggling with all his might, he could not shift their grip. The guard he had just struck put one hand on his shoulder, and immediately a searing pain burnt into him, accompanied by the smell of burning cloth and flesh. Stenwold screamed, dropping to his knees, and then suddenly, at the woman’s unheard order, he was let go. The Beetle collapsed forwards, feeling the raw, acid-burnt handprint where the Ant’s Art had blistered his skin.

Then Arianna was kneeling by him, clasping him in her own bruised arms, hugging him close, and if everything was not suddenly all right again, it was better, so much better.

He forced himself to look up at the Ant woman. ‘What now?’ he rasped.

‘Now? Now nothing,’ she said. ‘We have ascertained the truth. You and your confederate will not need to be questioned after all.’

‘The truth? Then -?’

But he was interrupted by the door opening again. Another Ant soldier came in, bearing a small figure in his arms. Stenwold gaped at them, feeling Arianna’s grip about him tighten.

The newcomer laid the figure down beside him, and Stenwold felt his stomach lurch.

She was twisted. There was no better term. It was an old, reliable mechanical torture, that had done this to her. They had racked her joints to make her talk and, as Fly-kinden had delicate joints and little tolerance for pain, he guessed they had gone on doing it until they were certain that what she said – what she must have screamed out over and over – was the truth. Stenwold felt his gorge rise, felt weak from sick horror at the thought. Arianna clung to him, even closer.

‘Sperra…’

The Fly opened one eye and slowly turned her face towards him. She was alive, at least, but there were bandages about her head and limbs, and she trembled uncontrollably, reaching out a hand for Stenwold to hold. As her lips moved, and he saw tears leak from her eyes.

‘Get me out of here, Sten,’ Sperra whispered. ‘Please.’

‘What have you done to her?’ Stenwold demanded, feeling anger, futile and self-destructive, rising within him.

‘We have questioned her. Thoroughly,’ said the Sarnesh woman. ‘We have also questioned Lyrus, who was attending on the Queen. We are satisfied that we know the full truth of the matter now. Lyrus had been suborned by the Wasp Empire. You and your associates were not involved in the attack.’

Stenwold exploded, ‘You tortured her! You…’ He wanted to say, animals, savages, but, no, this was the handiwork of the civilized, the darkness of a mechanistic people. ‘All she was trying to do was save your Queen! And what about your Queen? Could she herself not have told you what happened? Why this, curse you all!’

‘Sten,’ Arianna said warningly, and he saw all of the Sarnesh grow tense.

‘The Queen of Sarn is dead, Master Maker,’ the Ant woman said.

Stenwold found Sperra’s hand at last and closed his own, so much larger, gently around it. The world had caught up with him again, as it always did. If the Ants had revealed any sorrow, any raging grief, at the loss of their leader, then perhaps he could have better understood. Their faces were as bland as those of statues, their loss shared only in the space between their minds – and just then he hated them for it.

I want to go home.

Stenwold leant on his staff because, although his punctured leg did not hurt as much as earlier, it was stiff. He stared about the table.

I want to go home.

But he had this one last piece of duty left to accomplish. Then he would go. If Sarn did not finally agree then it could fight its own cursed war. In the foreign quarter, waiting for him, was Arianna. She had wanted to be here too, but he had been firm. If there was trouble now, it must fall on his head alone. He would not risk another’s safety.

Not after what had happened to Sperra – poor Sperra whose Fly-kinden Art had sprung her to the aid of the Ant Queen, and who had then paid for it at the hand of that Queen’s subjects, and all for nothing.

Stenwold Maker watched the other ambassadors arrive. The sickness he felt in his stomach, which had started when he saw Sperra, had not left him yet.

Undercut at every side. If the Wasps had corrupted a Sarnesh, then who else here could be in their pay? One obvious answer was Stenwold’s own agent. Plius was Ant-kinden from distant Tsen, and thus had no love for the Sarnesh. Plius also had secrets: Stenwold was spymaster enough to have seen that in his face. Plius evidently served two masters, two at least. The Empire had been in existence for only three generations but he had to admit it had learnt the trade very thoroughly.

Face to face, ranged about the table, these were not happy men and women. When the Queen had been killed they had all been hauled from their quarters and placed behind bars while the Sarnesh pieced together what had happened, extracted from the broken flesh of Sperra and the traitor Lyrus. Only the Spider Teornis had, by dint of Art and great persuasion, suffered merely a polite house arrest.

Stenwold glanced up to the head of the table, seeing there a middle-aged Ant-kinden woman, in full armour. The Sarnesh tacticians had since elected a King, but he had sent one of his council in his place. It seemed that trust was running thin in Sarn just now.

‘Masters, hope of the free world,’ he began, trusting that his voice sounded less sarcastic to them than it did to himself. They stared at him suspiciously, as though he was cheating them in some petty mercantile business. The naked hostility evident amongst so many of them made him want to scream.

‘You have known me, I think, as a patient man and the emissary from a city of patient and learned men. I hope therefore you have formed a good picture of my character. Our hosts, at least, have taken some pains to investigate it.’ Again that harsh edge to his tone. He forced himself back into a tenuous calm, and did not look at the Sarnesh tactician, although he was sure that she knew just what he meant, and that she did not care.

‘Master Maker,’ Teornis spoke up. Stenwold glanced at him in surprise. The Spider wore a crooked smile, and looked briefly at his fellows to his left and right before continuing. ‘During this recent period of emergency, Master Maker, we have had some cause to talk to one another. Your name has been on many lips, and news of your arrest caused alarm, to say the least. Allow me to cast off my inheritance and be candid for a moment. I promise such a lapse shall not happen again.’

There was a slight murmur of amusement from some of the others, and Stenwold marvelled at the man’s ability to influence their mood.

‘We are all enemies within this room,’ Teornis said. ‘We were never made to stand in one place and all look the same way. The commander from Kes hates our hosts. The lady from Etheryon hates me. Our hosts themselves, right now, are not enamoured of any of us.’ His smile broadened. ‘Not the most optimistic of situations, you will agree. But we are prepared to listen to Collegium, Master Maker. We will listen to you.’

Thank you. ‘Then listen carefully,’ said Stenwold. ‘We are at war, all of us. The Empire is currently a threat to every city in the Lowlands, and yet here we stand bickering about a mere weapon. Not a weapon that cracks open mountains or destroys cities, but a weapon that a man may hold to kill another man. A successor to the crossbow, in fact, that in itself is barely more than a thrown stick with a little cleverness attached. I have heard fellow artificers speak of the march of progress. This thing, this snapbow, is not progress. It is just another way of killing someone and, even if it is an inch more efficient, then that does not make it progress. Progress is made by the improvement of people, not the improvement of machines.’ He was surprised at the sympathetic response to his words from the Inapt – the Moth-kinden and the Mantids – until he realized that they must have embraced such a view for ever. He wondered whether, at this tapering end of the wedge, he had rediscovered some truth his own people had lost long ago.