‘I see what you mean,’ said Odyssa at last, as Havel took a swallow of wine. ‘You’re right, and it is almost a Spider-kinden way of doing things. Almost. Naturally we’d add a few layers of complexity to it, whether it needed it or not.’

‘I try to be as simple as I can, so that I won’t forget anything,’ Havel said.

‘And if the colonel wants his war anyway?’

‘Then let him go invade somewhere else, because Solarno is mine,’ Havel told her. ‘Surely the Rekef should be able to whip one over-ambitious officer into line.’

‘It should.’

There was a reflective pause, both of them sipping at their wine. Eventually Odyssa continued, ‘I think you’re right.’

‘In what way?’

‘I think you could draw it back from the brink after all.’

Havel nodded emphatically. ‘You’re cursed right I can. Just give me a tenday without this colonel breathing down my neck, and I’ll be back in control.’

Odyssa considered him speculatively, noticing the sweat spring up on his forehead. ‘Yes, I think you could. You’re a clever man, for a Wasp-kinden.’

‘I’ll take that… for a compliment,’ he said, blinking at her.

‘There is one thing you’ve failed to consider, though, and I feel that I should warn you of it.’

‘What’s… what’s that?’

‘What if someone else wants the war?’

He goggled at her, mouth half open but no words forming.

‘Layers upon layers, you see, Captain, in interweaving strands. You really are quite good at this, for a Wasp, but I fear you’re no Spider-kinden.’

She saw his hand twitch reflexively, but no flash of energy came from it. A moment later he had toppled sideways onto the floor.

Odyssa stood up, brushing down her tunic, an old habit kept from after her first murder. She sometimes thought the Rekef had nothing to teach her that she had not been born with. She would now pay the Fly host of this eatery enough to forget who she was. She had two men close at hand of equally uncertain memory, ready to dump Havel’s body somewhere easily discoverable. Then she would put her Rekef hat back on, and run to the Wasp encampment at the oasis beyond Toek, and there tell the colonel, whom she had been steadily inflaming, that the Rekef officer in charge of Solarno had been murdered by the locals, and therefore the hour of his conquest and governorship was at hand.

Nineteen

It had been a tiring day. His new responsibilities were making demands on him he had not expected. Totho had never seen himself as a factory overseer.

But that was not quite true, if he was being honest with himself. Every artificer who rose to the top of his trade should be guiding lesser craftsmen, having them work to his designs, delegating the burdens of his trade. Of course he had wanted that, but seen no chance of ever achieving it.

He had not wanted this, though. Drephos, Colonel-Auxillian of the Wasp Empire, had taken him on eagerly as an apprentice, but the folk of Helleron were not so open-minded. It all seemed insane to him, but that was only because he had done his best to forget his childhood, even his studentship spent at the College. A halfbreed was never popular. A halfbreed was cursed by his mixed blood. Collegium was a cosmopolitan city and even there Totho had never been allowed to forget the stain of his birth that was so plain in his features.

Here in Helleron, blood mattered greatly, and the local Beetles were hard on halfbreeds. People like Totho got given the worst jobs, or worked in the criminal fiefs, or else starved and begged. Then Drephos had come along and been made governor of all Helleron, and set Totho up as master of whole factories, giving orders to foremen and artificers who spat at him behind his back, and stared at him mutinously when he faced them.

It had affected their work. They had dragged it out and dawdled, and even turned out shoddy pieces in the belief he was not artificer enough to know the difference. For a tenday he had agonized over it, trying to understand how he could make them see he was not a bad man: how could he win them over to his side?

Today he had awoken with his answer: he could not. He could be the most generous and even-handed overseer the city had ever seen, and to them he would still be just a halfbreed.

So today he had gone in with a squad of Wasp soldiers. The Wasps cared for halfbreeds even less, if possible, but Totho was Sergeant-Auxillian now and he simply gave them orders in a calm, clear voice that was obeyed. They all knew he had Drephos’s ear.

He had not waited for the first slight to emerge. He knew just how it would have worked back at the College: the workers here would have behaved, good as gold, until the soldiers left. He had singled out three people that he hoped were the ringleaders.

He had ordered the soldiers to drag them before him, and he had hoped even then that a few words of warning would be enough. Their expressions had remained mulish and sullen, however, promising further mutiny.

They had been mulish and stubborn, he assured himself, in retrospect. It was not just my imagination.

He had ordered them to be whipped. So the soldiers had whipped them, and gone on whipping them until he had spoken loud enough to stop them. From that he had gained a large degree of fearful obedience from the workers and a small amount of surprised respect from the soldiers.

For the actual flogging they had been tied to machines inside the factory, where everyone could see. Totho had stood on the overseer’s gantry with the leader of the soldiers, gripping the rail and waiting for that wince-inducing moment when the lash came down.

It never came: the lash rose and then fell, but the wince never manifested, and there had been something changing inside him, something born in him when the first cry came up. Not remorse and not regret, but something like satisfaction.

You bastards have kept me down all my life, he had thought. Now see how you like it.

Once the whip had stopped cracking, he had told the silent factory floor – silent save for the whimpering of his victims – that any future failings would be punished by death, and at the time he had meant it.

Now he looked back on that, all of it, and tried to see it as Che would, tried to feel appalled by what he had done, but that was harder and harder the longer he worked for Drephos. He no longer asked himself what he was becoming, for he knew now that he had already become.

Kaszaat came to him that night, as she often did, moving her smooth brown body over his in rhythms that were a language older than talking. He did not know it but she could read his mood and his history from his love-making: the more gloomy and the more grim his day, the tighter he clutched at her and the fiercer his passion, seeking in her body what he could not find in the shadow-world he had come to inhabit.

This time, though, he found something different in her: a desperation and a need. She wept when the climax came, her nails biting into him, thighs locked about him in a furious grapple.

He thought she would turn away to sleep then, but still she lay upon him, trembling slightly, and he closed his eyes and let the sensation of his own skin explore the pressure of hers upon him.

‘Totho,’ she murmured at last, almost too softly for him to hear.

He made a questioning noise.

‘After the battle, what happened between Drephos and you?’

Immediately he tensed, feeling his stomach lurch. How he would like to forget what had happened then, his betrayal, and his later confusion in trying to work out just who exactly he had betrayed.

‘It was the prisoner girl, no?’ Kaszaat asked. ‘That Beetle girl they brought in. As soon as you heard of it, you were different.’

He said nothing.

‘Totho, I’m not stupid. You’re no Spider-kinden. I read you. You knew her.’