the last of her line. Her aunt, her cousins, all left dead at her hands, as she strode through her own house in blind fury wielding her husband’s sword.
He was poised to act, knowing his clawed gauntlet was his to call on the moment she drew blade.
Instead, she said, ‘I don’t wish to kill you. I don’t understand you. What is it you feel?’
Her face was all confusion, and that touched him. ‘I had a love, Felise Mienn, as you have had, and just as yours was taken, the Wasps took mine from me. We are alike, then, and so I think I understand you, perhaps even better than your Spider does. If you seek a purpose, then the Empire still stands and we must fight it. I would be honoured to fight beside you.’
Her stance softened noticeably, and at last he allowed himself to relax.
It was good to find a time and place when messengers were not currently seeking him out, or at least if they were they were not finding him. Now it was just Stenwold and Arianna dodging the public acclaim that so many other Assemblers were soaking up whether they had earned it or not.
But Stenwold was not a politician by choice. He was a soldier, an agent, a spymaster, all in one, and he played his own games that had never needed any public approval.
The game was at a halt, for now, the pieces patiently waiting. The Wasp army had not assaulted Sarn, or not according to the last messenger’s report. The Fourth was in no position to assault anything, so Merro and Egel were spared Wasp occupation. Teornis had sent messengers back to his family and its allies, urging them to strengthen the border, and with word of the Collegium concessions too, just to sweeten the pot. He was a likeable man, professionally so, though Stenwold was not sure whether to like him or not.
Achaeos had awakened at last, though still very weak. He had been frantic about something, not Che’s fate but something else, something he would not quite explain to Stenwold. He had begun asking for Tisamon, instead, but the Mantis was off somewhere on his own inscrutable errands. Stenwold had his own plans for Tisamon. The Mantis and his daughter would go with Thalric, to see if they could track down Che. Stenwold had no genuine trust in Thalric of the Rekef, but Tisamon and Tynisa would keep him in check if anyone could.
For now there was a pause, a heartfelt pause, in all that business, and he had brought Arianna to one of the best-kept secrets of the Amphiophos. Behind the domed building itself there was a garden, walled so high that it was always in the shade, and yet the artificer’s art, with glass and lenses, had funnelled the sun there, so that plants from all across the Lowlands thrived in a wild tangle that the gardeners daily needed to cut back. Here little pumps made water run as though a natural stream passed through, and there were statues that had been old when the Moths fled the city, and stone seats and, by tradition, nobody raised their voices or quarrelled here.
The rain was spotting down through the broad gaps between the glass but there was shelter enough amid the trees, and Stenwold took Arianna to a lichen-dusted seat, where she looked about her in astonishment.
‘I’d never even heard of this place,’ she said.
‘The Assembly prefer not to talk about it overmuch. A little selfishness, I think, that can at least be understood. I always thought this was the only worthwhile reward of belonging to their ranks, though I never had the time to appreciate it. And I won’t have any time again, I’m sure. Tomorrow the war begins anew for me.’
‘For me as well then,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t ask it of you.’
‘And you wouldn’t have to. I’ll fight your war, Sten, even if all that means is being there for you when you need me.’
He looked at her and, out of habit, thought,
‘Stenwold,’ Arianna said, and when he turned to look at her, her eyes held a warning in them. ‘We’re being watched. I’m sure of it.’
He stood swiftly. ‘Some other Assembler, no doubt.’ But he did not believe that.
Then a voice came from amid the tangled undergrowth. ‘I could have put an arrow in your head, old man. Not that there’s much chance you’d notice.’
Stenwold reached for his sword and discovered that, yes, he still wore it at his waist, so familiar now that he donned it automatically. It slid easily from its scabbard. ‘How did you get in here?’
The sword was not all that was familiar. He knew the voice too, when it replied, ‘I got in here because I’m a Fly and your clumsy pack of kinden don’t even understand what ‘fly’ means.’
The speaker emerged: a bald-headed little man with his ugly face and knowing smile, and Stenwold said, ‘Nero?’ in tones of sheer disbelief.
‘It’s been a while, Sten. Who’s the lady?’
‘This is Arianna,’ and the awkward pause as he thought of how to introduce her obviously told Nero all he needed to know, for the mocking smile was even broader now. ‘And this is, Nero, the artist,’ Stenwold explained to her awkwardly.
Nero grinned at Stenwold. ‘You get bigger and fatter every time I see you.’
‘And you’re still ugly.’ Stenwold’s retort came without hesitation from twenty years away. ‘You’ve no idea how good it is to see you. Why are you here? Are you staying long?’
‘Just a messenger boy, me,’ Nero explained. ‘With a message from a friend of yours, though, and there’s a whole cartload of news, so you and your lady better sit back down and listen.’
In the darkness that she could now dismiss with a thought it had been remarkably easy to break away from the Wasp camp. With Totho watching, she had simply tiptoed past the occasional Wasp sentry, invisible in her uniform to men who saw Auxillians merely as slaves — ubiquitous and acceptable. When she had got in sight of the camp’s perimeter she had waited carefully until nobody was looking her way, then simply taken off, let her wings lift her high, over the ring of torches and sentries and out into the night.
Totho watched her leave and was torn, when she flew, between relief and guilt. His night’s work was not done, though. He turned and went back to the farmhouse, opened up the hatch and returned to the cellar with his shuttered lantern. He would replace the bars, close the tumblers of the locks.
He was just getting down to the task when a voice intervened: ‘Well now, what have we here?’
He turned, flicking the lantern shutters wider, but he already knew who he would see: the emotionless face of Colonel-Auxillian Dariandrephos, flashing pale and mottled from within the confines of his cowl.
‘A good artificer makes his plans carefully in advance,’ Drephos reproached him. ‘He does not need to come back and finish up, Totho.’
‘How.?’
‘I watched. Perhaps you forget that for me it is never dark. I watched and saw quite clearly. You came out with the girl, you let her loose. I watched because I thought it likely you might do so. Kaszaat warned me that you were acting strangely, and she was right. And so I came to see what else you might have been up to down here.’ He raised an enquiring eyebrow and moved closer. ‘So, what else have you done?’
‘Nothing,’ Totho stammered. Drephos was still advancing on him, but he knew he himself was the stronger, and the master artificer was not even armed.
‘She. she was my past, and I found I could not cut it loose so easily.’
Drephos laid his gauntleted hand on Totho’s shoulder. ‘And what else have you done? How else have you betrayed me?’ His voice was very soft, not angry, not even sad.
‘I swear-’
Drephos gripped him by the shoulder and Totho cried out in pain as the narrow fingers dug like pincers into his flesh. His entire arm was instantly locked, so he grasped Drephos’s wrist with his other hand and tried to pry it free. To his horror there was no movement at all, only an inexorable tightening of Drephos’s grasp.
‘What else, Totho?’ Drephos asked, as he still struggled and tugged. ‘Is there an explosive, perhaps? An incendiary planted? Or were you to kill me? Kill the general? Tell me, Totho. I won’t be angry, I promise.’
Totho was now whimpering, feeling the bones of his shoulder grind. Unable to shift those imprisoning fingers he slammed his hand up against Drephos’s elbow as hard as he could.
He struck metal, as hard and solid as any armour. With ragged breath he dragged at the sleeve of the man’s robe, until the shoulder seam gave way and he bared Drephos’s entire arm.
It was metal, all of it, not just armoured but an arm entirely of metal, and he could only guess at the delicacy
