She never remembered those dreams, save for one thing: they were dreams of Khanaphes.

'Let's move,' she said shakily, wanting to lose herself in a crowd that would only reject her.

With the Mynan authorities unwilling or unable to help them further, she and Thalric had fallen back on an old acquaintance. Hokiak's Exchange had not been changed much by the city's liberation. It still possessed the same shabby emporium at the front, a drinking den at the back, and no doubt the same constant flow of smugglers, criminals and fugitives looking to use the old man's services. Che was vaguely surprised that the new, iron-handed Mynan leadership had not decided to curb their old semi-ally's practices, but then, no doubt, the ancient Scorpion-kinden had gathered a lot of incriminating information over the years which would be awkward if made public. Whatever the reason, he was apparently still operating as freely as during the Imperial occupation.

The man himself had barely changed, either. Che and Thalric had both encountered a great deal of the Scorpion-kinden in the recent past, in all their hulking and brutal glory. Hokiak was what happened when that glory burned out and withered away. He was a hollow-chested, paunchy, stick-limbed old creature, his white skin wrinkled and baggy, with one thumb claw become nothing but a broken stump. He walked with the aid of a stick, had developed a rasping cough, yet still exercised a remarkable amount of underhand influence over a great many people.

That he remembered Che and Thalric was clear. He did not welcome them effusively, not quite, and indeed the circ.u.mstances of their last meeting had been ambivalent to say the least, but something lit up in his yellow eyes when they found their way into his back room after so long.

Perhaps things are quieter here, with the Wasps gone, Che wondered. Perhaps the old man's getting bored.

'Well now, who's this, eh? Maker's girl, and the Wasp a.s.sa.s.sin.' He leered at them through the stumps of his fangs. 'Trouble coming, is there? For certain there is.' He used his stick like a lever, prying his laborious way across the room before dropping down into a creaking chair. 'Come join me,' he invited. 'Tell me what trouble you've brought us.'

'No trouble, I hope,' Che replied, and Hokiak chuckled.

'They hanged two Beetle-kinden yesterday,' he remarked, without further explanation.

CheandThalricexchangedglances.'Whodid?'sheprompted.

'The militia. Said they were Rekef. For once I believe it. They were asking questions before they were caught, these two stretch-necked fellows. There's a certain stink off them, more even than normal Rekef, and that stink goes all the way to Capitas.'

'What questions?' Thalric asked.

Hokiak's rotting smile was hideous. 'You don't need to ask it, a.s.sa.s.sin.'

'I'm no a.s.sa.s.sin,' the Wasp said irritably.

'I know two governors of Myna who'd call you a liar,' the Scorpion pointed out. 'No wonder the Consensus is twitchy, if you're back in town.'

'What have you guessed?' Che asked, annoyed at all this obfuscation.

'Rekef from Capitas will be here looking for me or they soon might be,' Thalric explained. 'General Brugan might not have given up. Which makes our business with you that much more urgent, Hokiak.' He fixed the old man with a stern look. 'Unless you've decided I'm merely a commodity again.'

Hokiak scowled, less the villainous broker and more or so it seemed to Che the put-upon merchant. 'You flatter me, a.s.sa.s.sin. Those were the days, eh? Sell the resistance and the Empire to each other, and have both of them paying you for the privilege. Good times, good times. The current lot lost their sense of humour when they took over, I'll tell you that straight. Her up top, Kymene, who I personally kept out of Wasp hands, she came down here after they chose her to run the Consensus. No more deals with the Wasps, she told me. No deals with the Empire. Keep your smuggling, your racketeering, your private work but the moment anyone looking like a Wasp agent heaves into view, it's pa.s.s them over to her, and I can whistle for a profit.' The old man shook his head disgustedly. 'So, tempted as I am, I wouldn't be selling you to the Rekef, Master a.s.sa.s.sin, even if I could find one with his neck kept short.' The ruined smile returned. 'Though I thank you for giving an old man credit.' He looked from Che to Thalric, and back. 'A man could wonder, it's true, how come the two of you are still on the same road as each other, so long after, and whether there wasn't something in all those suspicions we all had about the pair of you last time. But me? I stay out of politics these days. Consensus wants to interfere with my business, then I'm d.a.m.ned if I'll go an inch out of my way for them.'

Che shivered, only now appreciating that narrow escape, for of course the Mynans had thought she and Thalric were Imperial agents last time, and Che herself had narrowly avoided being tortured or killed for it. And yet here the two of them were, together again, and it was bound to make Hokiak wonder.

'We need a guide westwards,' Thalric announced. 'You must know someone. We have a little wherewithal.'

'West?' Hokiak grimaced. 'West ain't so easy these days, with troops on both sides of the border.' Seeing their downcast expressions, he held up one hand. 'But, yes, I do business with types whose work takes them that way. Easy enough to find one who's willing to take a couple of friends over. There are a few kicking their heels in the city even now, waiting for a commission to take them back across the border. I'll send word out, and you can just wait here. That's it then, is it?'

'Nothing more troublesome than that,' Thalric started, but Che took a deep breath and added, 'One more thing.'

Thalric plainly had not expected this from the look he gave her, but she pressed on valiantly. 'I would like to speak to a . . .' She could not form the word magician before the old Scorpion's pragmatic stare. Thalric might just understand, after all they had been through together in Khanaphes, but Hokiak? 'Somewhere in Myna there must be someone . . . a fortune teller, or a mystic, perhaps . . .'

But Hokiak's expression was not encouraging. 'Plenty of those where you're headed, maybe, but in Myna?'

'Do you have anyone Inapt working for you?' Che pressed, ignoring Thalric's doubting expression.

Hokiak made an exasperated face, a feat in itself. He had one of his people run off, to return a moment later with a cadaverous old Spider-kinden in tow. Che recognized the man as Hokiak's business partner.

'Gryllis,' the Scorpion said, sounding embarra.s.sed to even be asking this, 'you know any fortune tellers or quacksalvers or anything like that in this city?' A thought obviously struck him. 'Wasn't there that deserter . . . what was her name, Wheezer?'

'Uie Se,' Gryllis p.r.o.nounced it carefully, and Che reflected that there would be plenty more names like that to be found in the Commonweal. 'She's clinging on.'

Hokiak gave him a sidelong look. 'You don't ever go have your fortune told, do you?'

'Old Claw, when you get to our age, money spent on a seer would be money wasted,' Gryllis replied drily. 'Who wants to know about Uie Se, then?'

'I do.' Che interrupted. 'Thalric, can you wait here for the guide? I won't be long.'

'So long as you know what you're doing,' Thalric cautioned her. 'And so long as this guide of yours,' he added to Hokiak, 'won't run a mile if they see a Wasp.'

'Oh, I don't reckon there's a chance of that,' the Scorpion replied, obviously finding the idea amusing.

Hokiak's opinion of seers and magicians was sufficiently low that even he threw in this Mynan fortune teller's whereabouts for free. Che learned also that the mystic had been one of the Auxillian troops the Empire had used to keep the peace in Myna during the occupation, that the woman had aided the resistance and then deserted once the Wasps were driven out.

It was an indictment of the current Mynan paranoia that all the risks Uie Se had taken on behalf of the locals had resulted in bare tolerance of her presence, rather than any true acceptance. She lived in a single room, in a house that had plainly belonged to a well-off family some time before the occupation, but was now falling to pieces a day at a time. The room itself was grimy, and the part.i.tioning of the house's interior had left the seer with a bare sliver of window, so that inside it was so dark that only by Art or magic could one see anything at all.

Che, whose understanding of magic was in its infancy, fell back on her Art, exchanging the darkness for a palette of greys. Uie Se, she saw, was a tall, lean and angular woman, a Gra.s.shopper-kinden as all the other Mynan Auxillians had been. Her hair was kept long and tied back, and she wore a simple and much-darned smock reaching down to her bony knees.

The seer was staring at her bleakly. 'You've come to the wrong room, Beetle,' she said, her voice dry and hollow, and tried to close the door again. 'Don't bother me.'

'Wait,' Che said hurriedly. 'I need your help.'

'There's nothing I can do for such as you.' Abandoning her attempt to close the door, Uie Se turned and shambled back to sit down on a filthy straw mattress.

'I have money.' Meaning yet more of Thalric's, and she suspected he would not approve, but her need was great.

'Oh, then come in,' said the Gra.s.shopper, with a loose-jointed gesture, and Che realized that the woman was drunk. 'Buy me a chair, so you can sit on it. What do you want, Beetle? Are you a scholar come to record stories of a vanished age? I will talk. I will talk all you want.'

Maybe this was a waste of time. 'I want to talk about dreams.'

Uie Se was abruptly more still. 'You have aspirations for the future, rich lady?'

'No, dreams. I am having dreams that I know are important, but they never stay with me. I know how important dreams are to seers and magicians, so there must be some techniques to help me recall them.'

The Gra.s.shopper eyed her edgily. 'You have money?'

'Some.'

'You are . . .' The woman could not bring herself say it, but her fascination was that of someone observing some bizarre freak of nature.

'Inapt, yes.' Che could say the word with equanimity now. The admission no longer hurt as it once had. Spending time away from the eminently Apt city of Collegium had helped. No doubt Uie Se a.s.sumed she had been born different, a throwback amongst her own people, but of course most of Che's life had been spent amongst the technical elite, trained in mechanics and artifice and dismissing all those old stories of magic as deluded Moth-kinden propaganda. Then Achaeos had entered her life and touched her with his very real magic, coming to find her when she was captured by her enemies, and then taking her to that ghastly, haunted Darakyon and forcing her to witness its hideous ghosts.

And when he had needed her, when his people had been trying to raise their ancient magic against the Wasps who had occupied their home, he had begged her for her strength, and she had somehow found the capacity within herself to give it. Their minds had touched, and she had funnelled her stoic Beetle endurance towards him, given him the extra reach so that he could cast his net further.

And his call had rung out from the mountain top above Tharn, where the ritual was being enacted, and the things of the Darakyon had heard and answered.

If some magician had offered Che the chance to forget the feel of those cold, ancient, twisted things inside her head, but taken as his price all her memories of Achaeos, she would have thought a long time about the proposal.

But the things had come when Achaeos called, charged him with strength, set the Moth-kinden ritual ablaze, terrorized the Wasps out of Tharn, driven them mad and set them against one another. And Achaeos, already badly wounded, dragged from his sickbed to join the Moth-kinden's dark venture . . . Achaeos . . .

She had felt his life wink out amidst the cackling and rustling of the Darakyon things. She had felt him leave her.

'Dreams,' she repeated to the Gra.s.shopper seer, and there was a tone to her voice, dead and angry at the same time, that made the woman shrink back.

'Yes, yes.' Uie Se scuttled into the further shadows of her room. 'There are herbs. I have some. You shall know them by their smell. They have been used for ever as a net for dreams. There are talismans, and I shall ready one for you now, soon, soon, now. Only a moment, great lady. They shall be a spider's web, yes, to catch your dreams, so that you may feast on them when you wake. You shall have your dreams.'

'How much?'

'No money, none,' the wretched creature told her instantly. 'No, no, no.'

'How much?' Che repeated. 'Look, I will pay for your services. This is just . . . business.' Something about her had so clearly rattled the Gra.s.shopper, and she wondered if the rush of memories that had briefly overwhelmed her had bled out of her and into this woman's head. From somewhere the words came: 'I absolve and forgive, and will leave nothing behind me but footsteps.'

The seer paused, staring back over her shoulder, her hands stilled for a moment where they had been sifting through pots and jars by touch. 'Thank you, great lady, thank you.' The tension was abruptly gone from her.

What have I said, and why did it matter? Belatedly Che recalled from where she had pirated the words a play, of all things: a Collegium play set back in the time before the revolution. Supposedly it had been adapted from an older Moth-kinden work, but updated for a modern audience.

But they must have kept some of the original, nonetheless. She would have to be careful with that kind of trick. She had the unwelcome feeling that certain words and phrases uttered by her, that would have been just wind before her change, carried a mystical weight now, whether she knew their import or not.

Uie Se had gathered together her herbs, and handed Che a pouch full of them. 'You should steep them in water, let the water boil as you sleep. Do you keep to any of the Apt?' she asked and, at Che's nod, made a sour face. 'They will complain, so ignore them. As for this,' she held up a ring of twisted copper wire, 'hang it near your bed anywhere there are spiders smaller than your fingernail. Let one spin its web within it, and your dreams shall not escape.'

When Che returned to Hokiak's Exchange, the guide had arrived and, to Che's surprise, turned out to be another Wasp-kinden. He was a big, broad-shouldered specimen, decidedly bulkier than Thalric, with a heavy jaw and hair trimmed close to his skull, looking every bit the thug. Thalric and he had been sharing a jug of wine, though and, given Thalric's history among his own kind, were clearly getting on remarkably well.

'Cheerwell,' he greeted her. 'This is Varmen. He'll be guiding us over the border.' A moment's pause before the name told her that he had been about to a.s.sign this man a military rank, before checking himself.

Deserter, then, she guessed, rather than a lifelong mercenary. 'You're a smuggler, Master Varmen?' she asked doubtfully.

The big Wasp shook his head. 'Been back and forth a few times, riding escort mostly. Still, I know the best places.'

'I'd have thought getting into the Commonweal was hard enough with one Wasp, let alone two,' Che commented, sitting down and reaching for a wine-bowl.

Varmen grinned. 'Not so hard, at that, but we're talking about Princ.i.p.alities, anyway. Commonweal laws don't hold there, you'll see.'

Eleven.

The ring of twisted copper wire dangled above her, suspended from a thornbush branch. The walls of Myna were behind them now, and they had made good time heading north-west before nightfall had caught them. They rode, which Che found easier than she had expected easier even than the two Wasps seemed to, who had at least a little more experience than she did.

They had found a suitable hollow and had tethered their mounts, with Varmen using his sting to start a campfire, after a few explosive false starts. The man's pack-beetle had its leash still tied to the pommel of his horse's saddle, presumably so that they could get moving that much faster if need be. It was a ridiculously small creature, around the size of a Fly-kinden, and almost obscured under the heavy load of luggage that Varmen apparently felt compelled to travel with.

Varmen was not overly talkative, nor aloof either, for he responded readily when questioned. He and Thalric exchanged anecdotes intermittently, a well-travelled round of Imperial localities, favourite drinking dens, family names and public figures. Che hovered at the edges of their laconic conversations, feeling excluded by their shared race and past. Even she, though, could detect the huge gaps in their exchanges, the vast areas of personal history unvisited. Neither of them was keen to pin down any specifics of the respective military careers that each had abandoned.

The road that he was now guiding them along had provided the Empire's invasion route, all those years ago.

Now that they were camped, Thalric was taking first watch, while Che had taken to her bedroll and let sleep overcome her. She had left her herbs simmering over the fire as instructed, although the two Wasps wrinkled their noses at the smell of them.

Above her head, a small spider had already begun to build its trap within the ring of twisted wire.

Just the other side of sleep, the fierce sun of Khanaphes blazed down, fragments of day and night, times past and present, faces she had known. Her newfound heritage was clawing at her, seizing control of her head and forcing her eyes open to see . . .

The sun over Khanaphes was a bronze nail-head driven into a cloudless sky.

Ethmet, the First Minister, stood on the steps of the Scriptora and watched his world teetering on the brink of destruction. It was an unexpectedly peaceful sight, for the second sun above him was descending with gentle grace: a black and gold orb blazing back the light of the true sun, suspended impossibly over his city like nothing he had ever witnessed. He could hear a faint insect-like drone, but he could not tell whether it came from this floating giant or from the dozen smaller machines that buzzed in wide circles, keeping a vigilant perimeter.

The city of Khanaphes, which had stood changeless for countless centuries, was now becoming unrecognizable to the old Beetle-kinden minister. It seemed that he had been serving the unseen, unheard Masters for ever, just one link in the chain of First Ministers stretching back into the golden dawn of time. He had thought, in time, to pa.s.s on the mantle of responsibility to one of his like-minded colleagues, had thought to become another name carved on the lists adorning one wall of the Scriptora's hall of records. A legacy of honour, surely, but also a curiously anonymous one, in no way marked out from his predecessors or his successors. But that was not to be, for history had chosen him to be significant after all, and the thought made him weak.

Khanaphes could have recovered from last year's unpleasantness, he knew. For the Scorpions to come from the deep desert and conquer half the city, aided by agents of the Wasp Empire, that was a terrible thing. The Scorpions had gone, though the power of the Masters had put the rabble back in their place, the river Jamail overflowing its banks to wash Khanaphes clean of them. Ethmet should have rejoiced at this clear sign of favour, unprecedented in a thousand years, but even then he had fretted. He did not want to carry the burden of importance. Let me pa.s.s on and be gone, and let my name survive only in stone.

But then the Wasp-kinden had come, in force. They had come with amba.s.sadors who had explained to him that it was rogue elements fleeing the justice of their Empress who had been behind the Scorpion attack. Ethmet had recognized the lie, though even the men they had sent to him believed their words to be true. Nonetheless he thanked them on behalf of the city, and had a.s.sured them that the Dominion of Khanaphes bore them no ill-will.

It was not quite as easy as that, they then explained. The Wasp Empire felt dishonoured by the incident, cut to the bone by shame and guilt at the way its renegades had injured a neighbouring power. They had come to put matters right, to ensure that Khanaphes was properly defended whilst rebuilding its strength.

Ethmet had a.s.sured them that the Khanaphir trusted to the Masters, and therefore such kindness really was not necessary. By that time, messengers from upriver had been flocking to the city with further news.

You should not put yourself to any trouble, he had a.s.sured the Wasps, and they had told him that there would be no further trouble, and that was what the soldiers were here for the soldiers who had been marching south from the Imperial border, come to defend Khanaphes from . . . From just about everything, it seemed, including any aberrant belief amongst the city's leaders that it might not require defending.

So far there had been little trouble: Ethmet had ordered it so. The Khanaphir guardsmen and militia had stood by as the Empire entered their city, not raising sword or spear against the intruders. For tendays now there had been Wasp soldiers on every street, in every marketplace, on the city walls, watching the rebuilding. Ethmet had wrestled with his conscience, for there had once been a rod of iron to his spine, which countenanced no deviation from The Way Things Were Done as set down a millennium ago by the Masters themselves. Surely, having witnessed what must have represented the Masters' intervention on behalf of their favoured city, that rod should be even more inflexible now? Surely he should be exhorting his people to rise up and slay the Wasps, to defy their new-minted Empire?

And yet, when he reached out for that rod of iron, he found that it had rusted through. Something within his proud heart had shattered quietly when the Scorpion-kinden had sundered the walls of his city, and captured every street and building as far as to the western bank of the river. Now his former strength of purpose was gone, and he hid a terrible fear inside him: that if the Khanaphir fought against this new invader, the Masters might do nothing to save them. Ethmet did not think on the flood that had driven away the Scorpions, but only upon all those losses they had suffered before the flood had come. What more might be lost? Would the hand of the Masters serve only to sweep the Wasps from a barren ruin? It was blasphemous, such thinking, yet he could not rid himself of it. He could not give the order to go to war.

He had meanwhile called on the Masters, night after night, praying for guidance. There are foreigners profaning your city, great ones, he had told them. Shall we do nothing?

And an echo had come back, Nothing, only nothing so that he could not know if he had been answered or not. He had eaten the drug called Fir to open his mind to them, and reached for their guidance, but still that empty Nothing had returned to him. He felt as though the Masters themselves were waiting, and likewise holding their breath.

And worming in his gut was the knowledge that it had not been his prayers that had inspired the Masters to drive away the Scorpion-kinden of the Many of Nem. For all that he had entreated them, as their pre-eminent servant, they might as well have been no more than the statues they had left behind.

As yet the hand of these new conquerors had been felt only lightly. Some foreigners within the city had been exiled, others arrested and taken away. Traffic in and out now had to pa.s.s Wasp checkpoints. Ships were searched at the docks. There was a curfew, though enforced erratically. A few deaths, a few more beatings: the Wasp soldiers were being kept in check. A few who had killed or raped in a manner that, by some invisible yardstick, was unacceptable had been executed publicly on crossed spears thrust up through their living bodies. So far, the Wasps were being very considerate conquerors, but Ethmet had an unpleasant feeling that this must surely change.

And then, only this morning, the Imperial colonel serving as chief amba.s.sador had come to him with news which was plainly scarcely less new to the colonel himself.

The Empress is coming to Khanaphes.

In fact, the Empress had been on her way for several days, but the news had been carried only a half-day ahead of her, in case some enemy of the Empire might choose to take it as a challenge. The news the colonel had brought him was that the Empress would be arriving in Khanaphes by noon.

And now Ethmet looked up at this descending airship the world of the now descending to destroy thousands of years of carefully husbanded history and he felt like weeping.

There had been a Rekef mission to Khanaphes which had gone painfully awry, that much Seda knew. The few survivors who made it back to the Empire had not been Rekef people but Engineers, and so, instead of the secret service keeping its errors secret, matters became widely known in a variety of circles.

Seda knew that n.o.body had expected her to take much interest in this business. It had been meat and drink for General Brugan's enemies, ammunition for their broadsides at him, when her advisers met. She was their grand figurehead, the beautiful, whimsical Empress, and they knew she left the minutiae of government to them. She made a great show of acceding to their requests, validating their decisions, making herself the unchanged catalyst by which every other thing happened, but she left them to get on with their areas of expertise, which they appreciated.