‘Certain appointments have been, mmn, mentioned,’ the Woodlouse-kinden replied. ‘You know that I am, ah, fond of you. As a daughter, perhaps – or a great-granddaughter, might be, hmm, more appropriate. Yet I fear for you.’

‘The company I keep?’ she asked him.

‘Indeed. You have made, hrm, close association with a creature of more power and evil than you realize.’

‘You fear for my virtue?’ She gestured for him to sit beside her.

‘In a very real sense, your Highness.’ He poled himself across the room on his long legs, stilt-like with age, and lowered himself onto the couch.

‘Gjegevey,’ she continued. ‘I have been as good as dead for eight years. They might as well have buried me in my father’s coffin. But now I have a chance, and this man is my patron in that. If he possesses power, as you suggest, then at least he bends it to my advantage.’

‘And if he is evil?’ the Woodlouse enquired.

‘I am a princess of the Wasp Empire,’ she declared with pride. ‘My father made war on thousands and subjugated a dozen cities, and I am his daughter. What my brother has done, so would I, if I had seized the throne and not he. Let mystics plot and scheme, old man. Let it be the sacrificial knife or the sting of a common soldier, the victim makes no distinction.’

He remained silent for a long time, not looking at her, and any hint of his thoughts was lost in the eternal melancholy of his face.

‘Do you abandon me now?’ she asked gently. ‘Do you find yourself poised on the brink of a descent you had not meant to undertake? You have served the Empire since before I was born, and you cannot have been naive for so long.’

‘No, no,’ he admitted, his voice just a whisper. ‘Only that I had, mmn, thought perhaps that you… But you could not have lived in such innocence.’ He studied her closely then, watery eyes peering from a long, deeply lined face. ‘I came here to the Empire as a slave, but also as an agent for my, mmn, people, yes? I would thus act for my own people in guiding the Empire away from us… Not in these last twenty years have I so much as thought of that purpose. Whatever I might wish, I am as imperial now as any Wasp-kinden. No, I do not, hhm, abandon you. I shall serve you, if I can.’

‘Good. I am glad of that.’ And it was true. She liked Gjegevey, in a strange way. She did not think of him as a slave, barely even as a foreigner, for he had always been there. ‘I am to meet General Brugan shortly.’

Gjegevey nodded sagely. ‘A wise choice, if you can, hrm, win him over. He has never been one for allies, though. You will have to work carefully on him.’

With Uctebri’s help, I shall win him, even so, she thought, and shivered.

General Brugan had remarkable eyes. They were pale grey, so pale as to be almost colourless, like a clear sky reflected in steel. They were the only remarkable feature about an otherwise mundane-seeming man: his fair hair was cut short like a soldier’s above a heavy-jawed, brutal face, and his solid physique now running to fat about the waist. He strode in, clad in an edged tunic and leather arming jacket, and paused just inside the doorway, staring at her.

He did not look like a spymaster, but then she had met all three of the generals of the Rekef, and only Reiner did. She would soon need the Rekef, or at least some support within it. If the Rekef opposed her undividedly, then no amount of support from any other quarter would count. She could not woo General Maxin, and she had heard that General Reiner had gone to ground in the provinces, having lost out in the recent jostling for power. Her father had been careful to spread the weight of the Rekef across three separate pairs of shoulders but it was common enough knowledge that General Maxin, currently the Emperor’s favourite, was not the sharing sort.

And here was General Brugan. He had been a long time off in the East-Empire, long enough for people to forget about him as he went about his duties. Now he had come back, perhaps in response to Maxin’s powermongering, and here he was.

He is not so bad, maybe. She could not genuinely guess at his character but he was younger than Maxin, more athletic-looking than gaunt General Reiner.

‘My servant said you were asking for me,’ he said. His voice was wary and his eyes were suspicious, but they lingered on her. She felt her heartbeat pick up slightly, not at the close attention but the thrill of being able to wield influence at last, of whatever sort.

‘Your servant was correct,’ she replied. ‘It has been a long time since you were in Capitas, General, but I remember you. Will you not sit?’

‘You were but… a child then,’ he said, and she revelled in that slight catch in his voice. He approached cautiously, like a man suspecting a trap. ‘I have been away too long, it seems.’

‘Or perhaps you have returned just at the right time, General,’ she said. The words sounded awkward to her, but they stopped him, made him blink. He looked about the room swiftly.

‘We are not overheard, General, nor are we watched.’ A thin and whispery voice in her head made her start briefly, and then she repeated what it had told her: ‘save by your own followers.’

‘You are well informed,’ he noted.

‘You know where I grew into a woman, General, and under what restrictions. I am as well trained as any soldier in my own particular arts of survival.’

‘I’ll wager so,’ he agreed, and sat down on the couch across from her, watching her carefully.

‘You are worried I am merely bait for General Maxin?’ she said. She expected a harsh reaction to that name, but instead he smiled slightly, eyes still fixed on her.

‘I am not,’ he said. ‘I have always had my eyes here inside the palace, whatever he may have thought. I know you are no friend of his.’

‘Does that mean that you trust me, General?’

‘I would not be such a fool.’ But his voice was strangely hoarse.

‘General, my brother is always in Maxin’s company these days. Your eyes have witnessed that much, have they not?’

‘They have indeed.’

She leant towards him, wondering if Uctebri was working in his mind also. To think that she might be flirting at the same time with the cadaverous Mosquito-kinden was worse than unsettling, but she kept her mask up, moistening her lips, looking into those remarkable eyes of his and hoping not to discern a tint of red within them.

‘It is your duty to detect treason, is it not?’ she asked.

‘As a general of the Rekef Inlander, it is.’

‘But treason against what, General?’

‘Against the Empire, Princess Seda.’

Her heart was in her mouth, but for joy, only joy, at such a grand concession. It was not only the title he gave her, a Dragonfly honour she had no true right to, but that he had named the state, and not the man: the Empire not the Emperor. She knew that Uctebri must be within his mind even now, with his unsuspected magic, but the thoughts he was teasing out from General Brugan were only those already grown there, buried deep beneath the man’s sense of duty and honour. Uctebri was just bringing the hidden part of Brugan into the light, perhaps a Brugan hidden even from himself.

‘Treason against the Empire is a deadly foe for all of us,’ she said, leaning even closer, finding him leaning in too, until mere inches separated their faces. His heavy features did not seem so coarse now, not with those shimmering metallic eyes to illuminate them. ‘I imagine it can occur even at the highest levels.’

‘At the very highest,’ he confirmed, so entranced now that he seemed a decade younger, years of harsh duties, betrayals and caution falling away from him, and she knew, just as he said it, that he was now hers.

The acting governor of Helleron was beyond the social pale. He held no dinners or dances, for nobody would have attended save under duress. He went to no entertainments, lest he darken the mood by his very presence. He was like the Empire’s bastard son, the Emperor’s favourite half-caste artificer-king and, save for his few apprentices, he had no intimates. Except for the demands he made of Helleron’s manufacturing power, he had no involvement with the city’s running.