run until, without warning, there were no trees around them and they were half a mile east of their original camp. They had then spent the scant time before dawn finding the automotive again.
‘It’s just a wood,’ he said, voice sounding hollow to his own ears. ‘In the dark, the imagination will always run riot. We were in no real danger, two armed men. It’s Achaeos I’m worried about.’
‘He might just have absconded,’ Totho said darkly. ‘This isn’t his fight.’
‘When he comes back. .’ Stenwold said, and paused. ‘When he comes back, because if he doesn’t we may have to make a different choice, we have to make a decision. We don’t know whether Che and Salma are being held at Asta, or whether Achaeos now is, if things have gone really badly, or whether they’ve already gone east, deeper into the Empire. If they’re being kept apart from other prisoners, well, that could prove good or bad.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Totho.
‘I mean that it probably suggests they’ve been set aside for questioning,’ said Stenwold. ‘I’m sorry. It could just mean they’re being given special treatment, held more securely, I don’t know, but. . Tisamon and I know how the Wasps work.’
‘Maybe. . I should go in tomorrow night,’ said Totho reluctantly. ‘I mean, I’m not so. . with the creeping around, but I’ve got the tools to force a lock.’
Stenwold grimaced. ‘It may even come to that.’
And a new voice asked, ‘Where or what is Myna?’
Achaeos had returned. He looked dead on his feet, his grey skin gone deathly pale, eyes narrowed down to white slits.
‘Where in the name of reason have you been all night?’ Stenwold demanded of him.
Achaeos regarded him coldly. ‘Myna,’ he said. ‘Does this name mean anything to you?’
‘It does.’ Tisamon stood, his metal claw unfolding from the line of his arm.
‘She is going to Myna,’ the Moth said. ‘They are not in the town down there.’
‘How did you find this out?’ Stenwold asked him.
‘Old ways.’ Achaeos shrugged. ‘Ways you wouldn’t understand.’
Tisamon and Stenwold exchanged looks in which their mutual memory of Myna was unearthed, and neither of them looked happy with it.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Totho said. ‘He
‘They are gone to Myna,’ Achaeos insisted stubbornly.
‘He could have. . crept into Asta,’ Tynisa said slowly, ‘and overheard. But you didn’t, did you?’
‘There are ways,’ said Tisamon. ‘Masters of the Grey,’ he added.
‘Servants of the Green,’ Achaeos completed, as if by rote. ‘Yes, there are ways.’
There was a very swift movement that Achaeos could not follow, and a moment later the thin, cold edge of Tisamon’s blade was pressing against his neck. He held very still, nearly swallowing his heart inside, but outside he managed to cling to his customary aloofness.
‘I am no fool, nor am I quick to trust,’ Tisamon told him. ‘There
‘I speak only what I have seen, Servant of the Green. If you know my kinden so well, you should know not to bandy threats against me,’ Achaeos said defiantly, but the blade twitched against his skin, the faintest prick of blood welling.
‘Don’t think that you can frighten me,’ warned Tisamon, although to Stenwold’s ear, who had known him so long, there was a slight uncertainty to his voice.
‘I was not an assassin the last time you drew on me,’ said Achaeos, ‘and I am not a spy now. I could tell you one thing more that should convince you, but it is for your ears alone.’
Without moving his blade from its resting place, Tisamon leant close suspiciously. As he heard the Moth’s whispered sentence, the others saw him flinch from it. At once the blade was clear of the Moth’s neck, folding back along its owner’s arm.
‘He’s telling the truth,’ the Mantis announced.
‘Just from a bit of mystic posturing?’ Totho demanded. ‘Listen, Che could be in one of those buildings right now. They could be about to actually torture her. And now we’re supposed to. . just go away to some whole other city, all because of some dream you had or something? Stenwold, you’re not going to listen to this rubbish, surely?’
To his alarm Stenwold was not looking dismissive, only troubled. ‘There is more in the world than we know,’ he said quietly. ‘I have been a long time trying to stave off that conclusion, but in the end I have had to admit there are things I have seen that I cannot account for. Tisamon, you truly believe this?’
A short nod was the Mantis’s only response.
‘Tynisa?’
She gave Tisamon a narrow look. ‘I’m with Totho on this. We should at least take another turn around Asta first.’
‘Well, in Collegium we abide by the vote, and it looks as though I get the deciding one,’ said Stenwold. ‘I’m out of my depth here, with this talk of arcana, but logic tells me that Asta is a staging post, a muster ground. If you had important prisoners, maybe you would indeed move them to the nearest proper city. Which is Myna — of unhappy memory. Tisamon. .’ Stenwold hesitated, biting his lip.
‘Speak,’ Tisamon said.
‘I. . find it difficult to hold to what I cannot understand.’
‘You always did.’
‘But I never had so much riding on a decision before. What did he say to you, the Moth? What did he say to convince you?’ He glanced at Achaeos, who was impassive as always.
‘I cannot think that it would help you to know.’
‘Please tell me,’ asked Stenwold, and the Mantis shrugged.
‘He said that those who told him they had gone to Myna also said that they stayed their hands from us because of the badge that I bear.’ He touched it for a moment, the gold circle-and-sword pin of the Weapons- masters. ‘And I earned this, Stenwold. I earned it in blood and fire.’
For a long time Stenwold stared at him, before transferring his gaze to the others. Totho still looked rebellious but something in Tynisa’s face, some recent experience, had changed her mind. He gave a great sigh. ‘We’ll go to Myna.’ He had never thought that he would see Myna again, nor had he wished to.
It was a jumbled vision they had of it, landing at an airfield overflown by yellow and black flags. The cumbersome heliopter shuddered and groaned at the last, settling too fast and creaking with the effort, despite the repairs that Aagen had grounded it for last night.
The savagery of daylight, after the dimness of their holding cell, left the two of them staggering and blinking. Salma could not shield his eyes and so Che put her hands over them for him, knowing how much more sensitive they were than hers. Grief in Chains did not flinch or blink but gazed straight at the sun with her all-white eyes and glowed with it, drinking it in. She had paled and pined in the last day, but now she shone as though she had a piece of the sun inside her, and for a second the Wasp soldiers stepped back, and every head on the airfield turned to stare.
Then Thalric was hustling them, ordering the soldiers to take them in hand. They were rough with her and with Salma, but Grief they escorted with something more uncertain. She was beautiful, Che had to admit; she was perfect. Colours flowed across her skin like silk.
Che received only a confused, blurring impression of Myna. First the airstrip, where most of the traffic was military; then onto narrow streets and being hauled, tripping, down runs of little steps; brief glimpses of the citizens, men and women of a bluish-grey cast of skin, not quite Beetle-kinden, not quite Ant — another new race for her — who went about their daily lot with heads downcast. There were plenty of Wasps, too: most were soldiers, and others not in armour were probably still soldiers, judging from what Thalric had said about his people. Other kinden wore the imperial colours: plenty of Fly-kinden running errands, or sometimes watching from a high vantage point, with a bow and quiver on their backs. There were more, too: lean, long men and women resembling the musician who had been a slave with them in Brutan’s convoy. These went barefoot but wore yellow shirts and black breeches, like some poor imitation of their Wasp masters, and they carried staves and odd, two-pronged
