the worst order. When she was still young, they had become nothing more than dust at last, caught in the jostling of two noble houses and milled like flour.
‘I’m surprised to catch you alone, my dear, for I hear you’re quite the social celebrant these days. Old Stenwold’s been a good step for you to climb.’
‘I doubt he’d like to be described that way,’ she replied defensively.
‘Come now.’ Teornis stepped forward, almost close enough to brush her shoulder as he stood beside her at the balcony rail. ‘Quite a sight, these Beetle cities. All that heavy stone, all those glorious artificial lamps. Such a contradictory people.’
She felt frozen by his closeness. It was not a matter of attraction although, had he wished, no doubt he could have drawn her to him. It was pure, rank fear, the fear that any low-birth Spider-kinden learned, if they survived. Do not tangle with the Aristoi. Obey them, respect them, but, most of all, avoid them. You are nothing to them. Her mother’s voice, her dead mother who should have listened better to her own advice.
‘But we were talking about the social advantages of bedding Stenwold Maker,’ he continued, still looking out at the city. His smile was patiently amused, as though watching a clever child perform some prodigal task. ‘You can’t be so very touchy about that, surely? Sentiment?’
‘You’d pretend we have no feelings, Lord Teornis?’ she asked, forcing the words. In that moment she wanted him to drop this pretence, to turn on her like a lord of the Aristoi and cast her aside like the ragged renegade she was. Instead he smiled at her, as genuine a smile as anyone ever practised in the mirror.
‘We alone are gifted, amongst all the kinden, are we not? We feel as much as they, we love, we hate, we take joy, and yet we never lose our minds or practicalities amid the sea of our emotions. Small wonder that, alone of all the rulers of the old times, we still possess our palaces and our slaves. Feel what you want for Stenwold Maker, my dear, but don’t let that cripple you.’
‘And I thought you liked Stenwold.’
He laughed at that, with unfeigned delight as far as she could tell. ‘Oh, I do, truly. He’s a remarkable man. He’s more than half Spider, inside his head. A loyal ally, a man of principle, a halfway decent intelligencer, and an inspiration to his underlings. The man’s a constant source of amusement. I don’t mock you, Arianna. If you were going to ride to prominence on the wings of a Beetle, you chose the right man.’
She folded her arms. It was impossible to believe he was not still making fun of her, despite the sincerity in his expression. ‘I’m glad you approve.’
‘One might ask where now, of course?’ He was gazing over the city again, lost in contemplation. ‘You must feel the sides of your cage here begin to chafe – being what you are.’
‘And what am I, Lord Teornis?’ she demanded, expecting him to name her low-born, fugitive, a whore even, waiting for him to put the blade in.
‘A Rekef spy.’
That left her speechless, and her expression made him grin boyishly.
‘Oh, not now, not any more. My dear girl, you look so horrified that I almost wonder if I’ve hit on something I’d not known. No, no, we all know you’ve put away the old black and gold since the war, but still, do you imagine anyone’s forgotten?’
All she could think was that he was going to discredit her somehow – some way of ruining Stenwold. ‘So what?’ she got out. ‘It’s no secret.’
‘Nor is it a criticism,’ he rebuked her gently. ‘A Rekef-trained agent with a working knowledge of the Wasp intelligence networks, Master Maker’s lucky to have you. Assuming, of course, that he’s putting all that fine training of yours to work.’
Again she was silent, though for different reasons. She had never noticed any of Teornis’s agents watching her, she had not felt anyone fingering the pages of her life. Of course, given who he was, she would not have done.
‘Owing to certain… developments within the Empire we’ve lost a fair few of our deep-cover people within the Rekef. Either dead or forced to flee. Bothersome, as I’m sure you can imagine, since Master Maker and I agree that the Empire won’t be mending its nest for ever.’
This time he waited until the prolonged silence forced some words out of her.
‘Are you making me an offer, Lord Teornis?’
He looked directly at her. ‘Girl, you’re clearly very resourceful. You escaped the Spiderlands. You survived the Empire. You maintained a cover here in Collegium, and you led one of this city’s cleverest sons about by the nose. You then dropped the black and gold and lived to tell about it, and you’re currently living the high life as a socialite and a war hero. Not a bad run, given the start the world gave you. So why be surprised if my family can see a use for your talents?’
‘You want me to leave Stenwold?’
He shook his head, his smile sardonic. ‘Oh, dear, no. Think before you speak, dear girl. You’d be so much less use to us if you did that.’ He held up a hand. ‘Before we witness any upsurge of sentiment, I’ll stress my hope that Maker would never find out. Under ideal conditions, he’d enjoy a long life and go to his grave without suspecting. We’re allies, after all, and, more than that, I like the man, but that doesn’t mean that my family wouldn’t relish having someone close to him who can, let’s say, make the occasional well-timed suggestion.’
‘Well, Lord Teornis, forgive me if I haven’t had your upbringing,’ Arianna replied. There was not much room at the balcony between Jodry’s foliage, but she put what distance she could between them. ‘I, however, must talk in more mercantile terms. How much did you imagine you could buy me from him for?’
‘Adoption,’ he said, and in the quiet that followed he beckoned over one of Jodry’s servants to light his pipe. It was a Beetle habit, and not even a sophisticated one, except when Teornis was involved. She imagined, numbly, that the practice would suddenly become fashionable now. The smoke from the brass bowl of his pipe was sweet, not the old burnt smell from Stenwold’s study.
‘Of course I’m serious,’ he continued at last. ‘It’s a fair price in exchange for what you’ve built here in Collegium. If I set the best of my agents on to it, they’d never quite reach the heights of influence you can now command, not if they slept with the entire Assembly, men and women of all kinden. And besides, aren’t you bored? To be servant of just one master: what Spider was ever happy with a life that uncomplicated? And I’d rather you wrote your reports for me, rather than sending them back to your former Rekef masters. At least Stenwold and I are on the same side.’
‘Adoption…’ she murmured. Nobody belonging to another kinden could quite understand the scale of it: he might as well have offered her the moon. It meant nobility. It meant that she would become Arianna of the Aldanrael. It meant filling all those gnawing absences that had plagued her childhood.
‘Think about it,’ Teornis urged her. ‘You don’t need to make a decision now. In fact, you might never have to choose between old Stenwold and me. Report to me, live with him, and let’s do our work as though we were partners in the same business. I’d hope the time might never come when you would have to discover where your true loyalties lie.’
He gave her a brief bow – more than a jumped-up commoner should ever have merited – and then he was off to greet some Assembler in warm tones.
Arianna clung to the balcony as though she were drowning.
Stenwold was not taking well to seaborne life. The motion of the boat kept him constantly off balance, and he had already almost pitched over the side more than once. He now sat miserably before the mast as the Fly- kinden crew flew and skittered across the woodwork all around him. Three days out now and, according to Tomasso, making good time towards this mythical Kanateris, there was nothing to see but sea.
That was what he found most disturbing: horizon to horizon there was only the sky and the waters. It felt like falling. My kinden must be more earth-bound than I thought. Give me a dozen seers and seven different clocks and compasses, and I’d still be hugging the coast, thank you very much. He couldn’t see that the Flies would fare any better than he would, if some catastrophe should suddenly strike the ship. He doubted that any human being alive would have the stamina to make it ashore from here.
‘’Ware weather!’ came the shrill call from the bows. Stenwold’s head jerked up. The little robed figure of Fernaea had its arms outstretched, facing along the ship with her face shadowed by her cowl, a Moth-kinden in miniature.
‘What course?’ Gude bellowed back.
‘Two points starboard and tie everything down!’ the Fly seer returned. Stenwold noticed Gude take a deep
