'We will speak with our masters,' Scelae told her. 'No more than that.'

Thirteen.

She was very nearly too quick for it, Tynisa turning as she heard the faint scuffle, but the arrow sliced across her shoulder nonetheless, making her yell with pain and shock. By the same token she was very nearly too slow. So thin was the difference between a clean escape and a fatal strike.

The archer was up on a rooftop and Tynisa was already moving towards the building's shadow to put her out of sight. There were men bursting out on them, though, eight or so of a varied and well-armed crew. The leader, a rangy halfbreed, had an axe already raised behind his head and hurled it even as Tynisa spotted him, the weapon spinning end over end towards Tisamon. The Mantis did not sway aside from it but caught it in his left hand, the force of its impact spinning him on his heel. Then the axe had left his hand, flying at an angle to embed itself in the chest of the archer.

Tynisa's rapier was now in her hand and she fell into line behind it. The ancient weapon, Mantis-crafted from before the revolution, took her straight at a barrel-chested Beetle-kinden in chainmail. He swung his great mace at her, flicking it through the air faster than she expected and then dragging it across her approach on the backswing, forcing her to keep her distance. He had a buckler shield in his off-hand and, when she drove towards him, he tried to take her point with it. She turned her wrist and snaked the rapier past the shield's edge, gashing his arm and then dropping back as the mace swept over once more.

There were two other men shifting to either side of the mace-wielder. One was a Spider-kinden spearman, his face painted with darts of white, and the other was the tall halfbreed axe-thrower who held a second axe now, a two-handed piece. She gave ground before them, watching their approach. She decided they were all skilled, but not used to working with each other. She could exploit that.

Tisamon pa.s.sed behind them, keeping ever on the move whilst a full half-dozen men tried to pin him down. He closed for a second, his claw cutting and dancing, making them scatter, and one of them went down, blood spurting from over his steel gorget.

Abruptly Tynisa went sideways, slipping under the thrust of the spear to lay open a line of blood across the Spider's ribs. The axeman tried for her but held his stroke as the mace-wielder stepped in its path. Grimacing with pain, the spearman was lunging for her, antic.i.p.ating she would continue her move further out.

She stayed close to him, still within the reach of his weapon, coming up almost within his extended arms to put an elbow across his nose. He reeled back and, while the mace-wielder tried to avoid hitting him, she drove her sword past the man's shield.

He twisted aside and the point struck his chainmail, but it clove through the metal rings with only a little more force and went deep into him, so that the mace fell from his hand. He tried to clutch the blade but it sheared across his fingers. Then she was darting away, the greataxe sweeping past where she had just been. She rounded on the two of them, seeing the spear coming in towards her. Instead of staying back she moved in and caught the spearhead with the guard of her rapier, driving it towards the ground, using her sword-hand as a pivot for her whole body, dancing over the spearhead and bringing a knee down on the shaft. It was too good a piece to snap, but it bent and then sprang back, and she leapt past the spearman's startled, painted face and, when she had pa.s.sed, her sword followed and slashed his throat.

Tisamon was still fighting, one against four now, so she turned to the axeman, who was staring at her and backing away. She fell into her duelling stance, began advancing step by step. To her surprise and gratification he turned and ran away.

She looked round for Tisamon, saw him trading blows still with three men. They were obviously the pick of the lot. There was another Spider whose rapier moved like light and shadow, the second a rogue Ant-kinden complete with shortsword and tall shield, and the final man was some kinden she did not recognize, white-haired and whirling some kind of bladed chain about his head.

As she moved to join Tisamon something cut across her back, just a brief slash of the blade. She whirled, ducking into a crouch, silently cursing herself that she had not heard the newcomer.

He stood there sneering, a rapier in his hand, a tall, angular figure that she recognized.

Piraeus the Mantis-kinden, and he had a lean and hungry smile on him.

'Enough play, Spider-girl,' he said. 'Let's try it for blood now. Then we'll see who's best.'

'Aren't you going to ring a bell?' Stenwold said softly, holding them at his sword's point, trying to keep his eyes on both the men who were trying to reach for him.

'A bell?' Thalric asked, wrong-footed for a moment.

'Oh you know, sudden betrayal, with Tisamon about to kick the doors down to save my sorry hide. It just reminded me of poor Elias in h.e.l.leron. Never mind. If you want my sword you'll have to take it, and I'll make that point-first if I can.'

Thalric glanced at Scadran, who began to move forward on Stenwold, his two companions going left and right so that the Beetle was now in a circle of five. He kept turning and turning, sword first this way and then that, waiting for the moment when everything turned to chaos.

'Master Maker,' Thalric said, 'I would rather take you alive, but that's just personal sentiment.' Arianna had joined him there, alongside Lieutenant Graf, and he saw the way Stenwold's eyes followed her for a moment. 'You've been in the trade too long,' he said harshly, 'to lament over that that. Sentiment is folly, Master Maker.'

'Perhaps I just have higher expectations of people,' Stenwold spat. He lunged at Scadran abruptly, making the big man stumble away, then he dropped back into the centre of the circle.

With a pained look Thalric extended his hand towards Stenwold, fingers open. 'Scadran, take him now. If you can't, I'll shoot the man myself. Go!'

On the word 'Go' one of the grimy, high-up windows to his left exploded in shards of dirty gla.s.s and the man directly across from Scadran was punched from his feet, dead even before he hit the ground with a hole torn in his chest. In the echoes ensuing, like small thunder in the s.p.a.ce of the warehouse, Scadran fell back quickly. Only one of his band tried to rush Stenwold. The luckless man had got a hand on the Beetle's collar before he realized he was alone in his courage, and Stenwold rammed his sword up to the hilt in his stomach. Even as the dying man dropped away his sword was wrenched from its scabbard as Stenwold took it and ducked low. Thalric's sting scorched across his shoulder, charring his robes black, and then Stenwold was running for whatever shelter he could find. A stack of crates suggested itself, but the top one exploded into splinters even as he neared it. He glanced back wildly, and just then there was another hollow boom from above, and then two more. Another man of Scadran's pack was dashed to the ground, and the one next to him pierced through the leg by a finger-long missile that then buried itself entirely in the floor beyond.

Stenwold kept running. Thalric's shots smashed a jagged hole in the planks of the floor nearest the entrance and he veered away, knowing he was being drawn full circle. He put on more speed, as much as he could manage, and raised his sword high. If this was to be it, if there was no more than this, then he would make an account of himself that even Tisamon would respect.

Another sting blazed past his cheek and he suddenly changed his mind, diving to one side, bouncing awkwardly on the floor where he had intended merely to roll, but ending up crouching behind a solid-looking box. In a second he felt the shudder as Thalric's sting seared into it.

Piraeus dropped into his own favoured stance and saw Tynisa do the same. He had been waiting for this moment. She should realize his kind never forgot. She had blackened his reputation, slurred his previously untarnished name. When she now disappeared, no finger could accuse him, but everyone would know know.

And blood-fighting, that was his kinden's game. Let the Spiders dance and prance and win their false battles, he decided. He was a champion duellist in the Prowess Forum, but he was also Mantis-kinden. Revenge and murder were imbued in his very sinews.

He lunged forward, a simple move to start with, noting her style, her steps, as she backed away from him. Perhaps he should have killed her when he stood unnoticed behind her, but that would have given him scant satisfaction. He wanted her to know know. To know who and to know why.

He had never challenged her with a rapier, only the clumsy practice blade of the Prowess, but it was a weapon that both their kinden knew well. She was some Spider dilettante, though, while he had been fighting since his tenderest years. He was a warrior from the Days of Lore, when his kind were acknowledged as the iron fist of the old ways.

He pressed his advantage, driving her back, enjoying the frown of concentration on her face. Go on, try your tricks on me Go on, try your tricks on me, he sent his thought to her. He quickened his pace, his sword constantly testing hers, batting it from side to side, making his opening.

He blinked suddenly, staring at her. She was abruptly much closer than she had been a moment ago and his sword . . . she was inside the reach of his sword, which must mean that he was inside the reach of hers.

He glanced down, but he saw no more of her sword than the hilt. His own, in the meantime, was no longer in his hand.

He frowned at her, at that expression of concentration that had seemed so ludicrous before.

'What?' he said and began to fall backwards.

She had been fighting for blood, he realized at last, and he had still been playing.

Tynisa drew her blade from Piraeus's body, already looking around. Tisamon was still making heavy work of the last two, the Spider and the man with the chain. The Ant-kinden lay nearby, having been gashed across the throat over the rim of his shield.

Tisamon glanced at her, and shouted, 'Go get Stenwold out of there!'

She turned instantly and kicked her way through the doors to the warehouse. There was a scene of utter confusion, several bodies on the floor already. She located Stenwold, though, or at least his back. He was crouching behind a great box, but he had his sword in his hand and looked ready to make an unwise move any moment. There was a scattering of men across the warehouse from him, busy taking what cover they could, but it was not the threat of Stenwold Maker that had sent them there, for a great roar erupted from a broken window high on one side, and she saw wood splinters spray from the floor three, no, four times, punching a line of shot towards them.

'Come on, Stenwold! We're going!'

Stenwold heard her, then threw himself to one side, his sword clattering away from him, as the box he hid behind cracked in half. The unseen bowman high above loosed another shuddering round of bolts at the Wasps, making them duck away, and Stenwold reversed his course yet again, running for her and the door.

Tisamon was done when they emerged, standing over the two last bodies, and waiting for them.

'They could have more men nearby,' he said, his breath ragged. 'We have to go.'

'Not quite yet,' Stenwold wheezed back, looking as though he could no more run than fly just then. A few moments later, Balkus came running for all he was worth round the corner of the warehouse, his nailbow in his hands.

'Now . . . now we go,' said Stenwold, as the Ant joined them. 'I hope it was worth waiting for,' he added, to Balkus's sudden grin.

Back in Graf's office they remained quiet for some time, watching their leader. Thalric stared into the fire, his hands clasped behind him, and it seemed that he was fighting to repress a great deal of anger that might spill out at any moment.

Lieutenant Graf stood to attention, his eye staring fixedly across the room. It was his hired men that had let them down, and it was obvious he expected the worst of the lash. The other three sat cowed and quiet. Scadran was attempting to staunch and then bandage the gash across his leg that a nailbow shot had made, grimacing as he struggled to tie the knots but not letting anyone else help him. Hofi and Arianna exchanged silent glances. Hofi, for his part, was strictly not a fighter and had not even been there, while Arianna felt she could claim that her task, at least, had been completed to specification.

Or had it? Stenwold's glance at her had suggested genuine betrayal, but they had been ready for the trap nonetheless, with one of their men waiting on high to ambush the ambushers. What had tipped them off?

Or had Stenwold just been more cautious than she expected? After all, he was an old campaigner in the intelligence trade. Perhaps that nailbowman had been hanging out of a window every time that Stenwold went to meet the students. In Stenwold's business it was not whether things would go wrong, but when.

And she knew, as Hofi knew, that this was all immaterial. If Thalric now decided to take it out on them, because of some dislike of them as individuals or lesser kinden, or simply to safeguard his own career, then reason need not enter into it. Graf would be only too glad to offload the blame onto them.

At last Thalric spoke. 'Playing your enemy in his own city is always a risk,' he declared. 'I had hoped that we could at least strip a few of his bodyguards away from him, but the Mantis and his girl seem to have survived this as well. So where are we now?'

He turned to them. Arianna noticed a muscle in Graf's jaw twitch.

'There are plans and plans,' Thalric said. He no longer seemed angry, had clearly conquered that. 'I was sent here with two, but one has come to nothing. Stenwold will be speaking his piece at the a.s.sembly soon enough. Now, we have our own people on hand in the a.s.sembly, who have taken our gold, but the Empire has seen how those old men and women of Collegium cannot leave well alone. Look what they did to Sarn. They think they have all the answers, and yet the philosophy they peddle is an enemy to the Empire in its own right.'

He sat down at last, and only then did Graf allow himself to relax.

'I had hoped to take Stenwold tonight,' Thalric said. 'This next part would be so much the easier if we could pick over his brains. I still hope the a.s.sembly will refuse him. All that is now effectively irrelevant. We have a greater matter at hand.'

Arianna and Hofi glanced at one another again, because this meant something Thalric had not mentioned, and the comment surprised even Graf.

'I sent a messenger to Vek two days ago,' Thalric told them. There was a thoughtful pause at that, and he knew that he stood on a very narrow line, and must cross it soon enough. There was little expression on Graf's scarred face, compared with the wary looks of the other three, but it was Graf who spoke.

'The Ants of Vek, sir?' They all knew how difficult Ant city-states were to infiltrate in the spy trade, for it was nigh impossible to place agents within a city's power structure where everyone knew the inside of his neighbour's head. They had to kick about the edges like any other foreigner.

'Do we have agents in Vek, Major?' Hofi asked.

'Not spies as such,' Thalric said. 'An emba.s.sage, however. Official, formal, very respectable. They got there about a tenday before I arrived in Collegium. Nothing underhand, merely trade deals, talks of a possible compromise between their city and the Empire. After all, Vek is a long way from our borders and, like all the Ants, they are vain about their strength. Our envoys have been taking things leisurely but now I've sent them word, they're going to change pace. They're going to arrange for me to see that city's Royal Court, and I'm going to put a proposal to them that they won't turn down.'

'Dealing with the Vekken?' rumbled Scadran. 'They are not at all trusted, here.' He glanced sidelong to see Hofi nodding agreement.

'Nor should they be. They're an ambitious and grasping lot, always looking for a chance to extend their borders,' Thalric declared. He smiled at that, but kept the next thought unspoken. Just like the Empire in miniature, I suppose. Just like the Empire in miniature, I suppose. Still, with empires size was everything and, in the fullness of time, Vek was small enough to fit easily within the Empire's jaws. Still, with empires size was everything and, in the fullness of time, Vek was small enough to fit easily within the Empire's jaws.

'We're going to offer to split the Lowlands with them,' he explained, and let that drop into the room and silence them.

'Sir . . . ?' Graf began slowly, after a long moment.

'We can't trust them,' Arianna interupted. 'And they won't trust us either, I'm sure.'

'You're right. It's all nonsense of course, and they'll know it for that, but they won't believe that they can't beat us if they need to. Someone here please tell me Collegium and Vek's recent history.'

'Vek was at Collegium's gates in living memory, sir. Thirty years back, or so,' said Graf.

'n.o.body here's forgotten,' Hofi added.

'So what happened?' Thalric prompted.

'They wanted inside the walls quick,' Hofi said. 'But they got held off so long at the gates that a Sarnesh army came to attack them, and they had to retreat.'

'Right,' Thalric agreed, 'because Sarn and Collegium are close allies, these days. So our offer to Vek will be simply this: an army will be on the move towards Sarn, through h.e.l.leron, soon enough. With that keeping the Sarnesh on their toes, Vek can take Collegium at last, which they have been wanting to do for a very long time.'

'They'll sack the entire city,' said Arianna. 'Everyone here knows they haven't forgotten their defeat. When they were forced to withdraw from the walls they burned the crops in the fields and razed a dozen of the tributary villages. They're a vindictive lot in that city.'

Thalric nodded. 'n.o.body much likes them, that's plain.' Privately he was not overjoyed with the plan, but his own wishes were entirely secondary. 'The Empire's path into the Lowlands is fraught with difficulty as it is,' he reminded them. 'The Ants and the Mantis-kinden will fight, and there will be a great many miles that will have to be bought with blood. However, the real danger is here. If these scholars and pedagogues all end up pointing in the same direction, they could conceivably forge the enemies of the Empire into a single blade. If that happens, not only will the conquest of the Lowlands become much more difficult, but if it fails the Empire will have that blade at its own throat, because they will not stop at simply defending their own lands. So, Collegium must fall and, if Vek is our agent in that, then what outrage the Lowlands can muster will fall on them, and away from us. That is why I sail for Vek tomorrow.'

'What about us, Major?' Scadran asked.

'Right now, go and prepare your fall-back positions. Find places to lie low when the fighting starts. I will have specific tasks to a.s.sign all of you, and we will meet again tomorrow before I leave for Vek. After the Vekken arrive here, you will all be on hand to disrupt the city's defence in any way that seems profitable. For tonight, though, you are dismissed.'

The Amphiophos had not seen such a rabble thronging its antechambers in living memory, Tynisa thought. The a.s.sembly's guards were having fits about the situation. With things as they were, though, it could be no other way. There could be a hidden knife here stalking the halls of power as easily as on the streets of the city.

So it was that Stenwold, Master Gownsman of the College, artificer, a.s.sembler, was waiting for his audience in the company of a Mantis-kinden Weaponsmaster, his halfbreed duellist daughter, and a hulking Ant renegade with a loaded nailbow. Tynisa could only guess how the sight of them evoked horror and dismay amongst Sten-wold's opponents within the a.s.sembly. They must think he had come here in a bid to take over the city.

'Now we are here, I am leaving Stenwold in your care,' Tisamon said to her, appearing abruptly at his daughter's shoulder. 'You and the Ant must watch over him as best you can.'

'Where are you going?' Tynisa asked.

'Hunting,' the Mantis said. 'I have played Stenwold's game long enough, all this polite spying of his. Now the Wasps have made their move, and I will play my own game. They are still in this city and I will hunt them down.' Here in the antechamber of the Amphiophos he looked wholly out of place, a savage shadow of the past.

They both turned as Stenwold approached, wearing his best Master's robes. He had obviously caught Tisamon's last words, for his broad face carried an unhappy expression.

'Tisamon . . . ?'

'Yes?' The Mantis gave him a challenging look. 'You disagree, Sten?'

'No, but . . .' Stenwold's face twisted. 'If possible, could you take a prisoner, at least. It would help, it really would help, to discover what they were up to.'

'A prisoner?' Tisamon considered. 'If it is possible, I shall do.' And as Stenwold seemed to relax he added, 'But as for her her, she dies.'

'Tisamon-'

'No, Sten. She betrayed you.'

'Yes, but-'

'And in betraying you she betrayed us all, including me. And she knew it, Sten. As soon as she saw me, she knew the risk she ran and she ran it willingly. They had their chance, and they failed, and now there is a price that must be paid. All kinden understand this, Sten. Except for yours.'

Stenwold grimaced, and Tisamon continued, 'If you have one real reason to prove me wrong, let me hear it.'

He waited, giving the Beetle plenty of time to reply, and then shook his head. 'I'm sorry, Sten, but some things just have to be.'

He then looked to Tynisa, who nodded, taking on the duty he had offered her. Then Tisamon turned on his heel and left the antechamber of the Amphiophos.

'I'm sorry too, Uncle Sten,' Tynisa said.

Stenwold tried to smile, felt it slipping on his face. 'I'm a foolish old man, Tynisa. I'm too old for this game, really I am.'

'It's not exactly the time for that thought, Master Maker,' said Balkus. He had his nailbow plainly displayed over one shoulder, so that the three Beetle-kinden guards in there with them were giving him nervous looks.

'You need to think now about what you have to do,' Tynisa agreed. 'And, for what it's worth, I think Tisamon is right. Maybe it's just my blood talking, but if he wasn't setting off now I think I would go do it myself.'

'Who am I to judge?' said Stenwold sadly. 'The world, I think, has more need of those like Tisamon and yourself than it does of me.'