'Kill them!' Vollen shouted. 'All of them!' The first Vekken was now wrestling with another of his men, holding both wrists away, trying to bend the Wasp backwards. Vollen turned back to the Beetles.

The fat man moved. It was a ponderous lunge at the man next to him, but unexpected. The bottle smashed over the Wasp's head, and one thick hand closed about the man's sword-hilt and wrenched the blade from its sheath, hard enough to spin the Wasp half around. With a grunt of effort he drove it into the disarmed soldier as hard as he could. It punched into the man's armour, leaving a savage dent and knocking the man off his feet. The Wasp's sting flashed, more by instinct than intent, knocking the fat Beetle backwards.

The old man made a try for Vollen, but the Wasp punched him in the face as hard as he could, laying him out on the floor. The Khanaphir slaves were cowering away, keeping as low as they could. Vollen snarled and looked around for the woman with his hand already extended.

Something struck him hard, almost throwing him from his feet. He felt a blade sc.r.a.pe across his armour, and then the Fly-kinden, Trallo, was fighting with him, trying to wrench his arm aside. Vollen made a grab for him, but the little man was agile, tugging and pulling at him and escaping his clutching hands a nuisance with a small knife, but a nuisance that was taking all of Vollen's attention.

The Beetle woman lunged at him and broke a chair across his back, smashing the priceless Khanaphir craftsmanship to splinters. Vollen hit the ground hard, feeling his shoulder take the brunt of the attack. He turned onto his back, palms up. The woman grabbed one of his arms, trying to twist it flat. Trallo raised his dagger, his face a white mask of fear.

The flash of the soldier's sting warmed Vollen's face, and the little man was thrown halfway across the entrance hall by the impact of it. The woman screamed and leapt away, staring at the Fly's charred body.

Vollen whisked himself to his feet with a flick of his wings. 'Right,' he said, fully aware that he would receive no commendations for this. Then the front door burst open.

He turned to see a huge Beetle-kinden in Khanaphir armour, a sword in his hand and b.l.o.o.d.y murder on his face.

Emperor save us! he thought. he thought. It's the First Soldier It's the First Soldier.

Amnon made a wordless sound and charged. Vollen's sting spat its fire, melting a hand-sized section of scale mail but not slowing the giant in the least. Then Amnon's leaf-bladed sword was thrust, effortlessly to the hilt, into his chest.

Vollen fell to his knees, everything around him suddenly more than he could cope with. Amnon had his sword raised again, and the two Vekken were still spoiling for a fight. Two of his men fled out of the windows, the rest were already dead save for one man, who made a feint at Amnon and then plainly decided the big Khanaphir was too much to deal with. He tried to fly away, too, but the Vekken crossbowman picked him off even as he lifted into the s.p.a.ce of the entrance hall.

Feeling the world fall from him, Vollen toppled face-first onto the tiles of the Collegiate emba.s.sy.

Praeda crouched beside Berjek Gripshod, calling his name and shaking him roughly. At last his lips moved and his eyelids fluttered. Peering up at her from floor level, his gaze was unsteady. 'Uncalled for,' he murmured. 'Quite uncalled for.'

'They killed Trallo,' she got out. 'Oh Berjek, they killed Trallo.'

She looked up, and saw another fallen body. Her hands went to her mouth again, she was feeling ill. 'Oh, Berjek ...'

The old man levered himself up, and then saw what she had seen. He struggled to his feet, a hand to his head, and staggered over.

'Gorget! Get up! Manny ...'

Praeda saw him stop as he reached the great sprawling form, then drop painfully to his knees. She joined him there tentatively. There was no doubt at all from the outraged expression in those open eyes, or from the char-edged burn-hole in his chest. Mannerly Gorget was dead.

Praeda stared about her, as though, somehow, someone would be able to help. Do magic. Bring back the dead Do magic. Bring back the dead. She saw the two Vekken standing close beside each other, like some trick with mirrors. And we would all be dead, if not for them And we would all be dead, if not for them. Then her eyes found Amnon. His face, though expressionless, was watching her.

Trembling, she put out a hand towards him. Without a moment's thought he swept her up in his arms, clasping her to his broad chest where the armour was still warm from the Wasp's stingshot. There she let herself go, sobbing into his embrace, shuddering over and over until at last she could manage the words.

'You came,' she said. 'You came for me.'

'It should have been sooner,' he said gently. 'But I had a dying friend I could not leave. This has been a night for death. First my Penthet, and now your companions. I am sorry, I should have come sooner.'

'You came,' she said.

Berjek gave a long, sad sigh. 'This is too much,' the old man's voice came to her. 'Too much to bear. War ... murder ... the time has come to cut our losses, Praeda. We should have left long before, while we all could.'

She felt Amnon's arms tighten slightly and she said to her colleague, 'Go. You must leave. The Khanaphir will find a ship for you, and lower the Estuarine Gate.' Around Amnon's shoulder she met his gaze. 'But I will stay.'

'I suppose I should not be so surprised at that,' he said sadly. 'And, as for Cheerwell, she will not leave, I am sure. Something in this city has its hooks in her.' He glanced up at the Ants. 'And you two?'

'We have a task unfinished here,' replied one of them. Berjek could not guess at the conversation that they were holding, in the s.p.a.ce between their heads. 'We may decide to leave with you, but it depends on other factors. Perhaps, if the amba.s.sador leaves with you, she could a.s.sist us on the journey back.'

Thirty-Two.

'I've done what I can for your arm,' Che said. It had involved more of her night's work than her earlier talk with Thalric. The wound was infected, and she had cleaned it out and applied whatever salves she had handy to keep it pure and deaden the pain. Osgan was conscious but pale, his forehead shiny with sweat even in the cool of the night.

'Thank you,' he croaked.

'If we were in Collegium ...' Che shrugged. 'I can't guarantee that you'll keep the arm, though. I'm sorry. It's not gone rotten yet, but ...' Her gesture took in the shabby little room that Thalric had found them, a cellar dug out beneath a drinking house and with one of the walls cluttered with barrels. The first dawn light glimmered through the two wide shafts cut into one wall, where the river-borne goods came in. They were also the way Thalric would escape, if the worst came to the worst.

Osgan nodded weakly.

'There isn't a proper doctor in this whole wretched city,' Thalric complained. 'They don't know the first thing about medicine.'

Che thought about that. 'I think you're right, actually.'

He barked a brief laugh. 'The legendary cosmopolitanism of Collegium is rubbing away, is it?'

'Apt medicine and Inapt medicine are very different,' Che reproached him. 'You and I have good cause to remember that.'

It took Thalric a moment to catch the reference, but she saw the understanding dawn in his face. Achaeos, in Collegium, asking to be taken back to his own people for all the good it did him Achaeos, in Collegium, asking to be taken back to his own people for all the good it did him.

'These Khanaphir are Apt,' Che went on, 'but they're ... they're trying to live like the Inapt, for some reason.'

Thalric made a derisive face. 'They're just backward, holed up at the east end of nowhere.'

'It's more than that,' Che argued, the pieces falling into place one by one. 'They trade with the Exalsee ports, and they're close enough to some of your Imperial cities, for that matter. So it's not geography, it's ...'

'Wilful ignorance,' Thalric suggested.

'It's something like that, yes. They are fighting tooth and nail to ignore the last five hundred years. It's like with the Moth-kinden, except ... except these people are Apt.'

'Imperial doctrine would say that this is why the Empire's intervention is so necessary,' Thalric said drily. 'In this case, I'm not sure I disagree.'

'They're Apt,' Che repeated, trying to catch the fugitive train of thought, 'but they once had masters who were Inapt ... whoever they were. And they still remember those masters so keenly, with such reverence, that they refrain from anything that might have offended them back in the Days of Lore. They hold themselves back simply out of respect.'

Thalric regarded her doubtfully. 'Well, now it's come back to sting them blind, frankly. The Scorpions will be all over this city in a tenday, at the most. Half the Khanaphir army's dead in just the first engagement. If it wasn't us us out there, I'd be advising the Ministers to seek Imperial protection right now. We'd make better masters than the Many of Nem.' out there, I'd be advising the Ministers to seek Imperial protection right now. We'd make better masters than the Many of Nem.'

'Is that the plan?' Che asked him. 'Avenging Empire sweeps in and puts the invaders to flight? Imperial governor gratefully received by the city? I don't think that would work so well, not here.'

'I lose track of the plan,' said Thalric. She saw his face sag, for just a moment showing her how tired he was. 'The plan seems to be to kill me first, the city second. I do not understand why they so badly want me dead.' Seeing her expression, he pressed on before she could speak. 'Oh, I have done things sufficient to warrant my death, but this makes no sense. This is the high Rekef's work, that much seems sure. This is ... this stems from someone standing beside the throne, if not the throne itself. It's personal personal.' He shook himself impatiently. 'Che, you have to go now. You know what you must do.'

'As your agent, yes.' She smiled sourly. 'After I've spoken with the others, I'll find Ethmet or some other senior Minister. I'll warn them that the Imperial force within the city will be looking to sabotage the defence, a.s.sa.s.sinate their leaders and the like.'

'It's what I'd do,' Thalric confirmed. And then: 'It's what I've done.'

Che went over to the shafts, paused there and looked back. 'Be safe, Thalric. I'll come back for you.'

'Send Trallo with messages, if you can,' Thalric said. 'Che ...'

His urgent tone turned her back, as she was about to call upon her wings. He stood regarding her with a calculating expression, as if making his tallies and finding that they did not add up. This was Thalric the spymaster, she realized, the old Thalric and somehow she was about his business.

'Why are you not just leaving, Che? I don't believe you think your intervention can save Khanaphes from the Scorpions, even if you cared to. What is this place, to you?'

The spectre of Achaeos rose in her mind, and all the frustrations of her Inapt.i.tude. 'Do you need to know?' she asked him. 'Really?'

After a thoughtful pause he shook his head, and she scrambled out of the hatch, heading above and into sight of the river.

She found the emba.s.sy unoccupied save for servants. In the moment she entered, the desolate scene fell on her in pieces: the feeling of abandonment, the eerie silence, the men and women industriously cleaning the floor of an unmistakable stain.

'What has happened here?' she demanded hoa.r.s.ely.

They pointed her towards the Scriptora, and there she found Berjek and Praeda, who had been hurriedly ensconced in guarded rooms. She found them sitting together, looking tense and fearful, whilst one of the Khanaphir ministers hovered nearby.

'b.l.o.o.d.y ink and seals!' Berjek swore, as he saw her. 'You're here! We weren't sure you were even alive.'

'What's going on?' Che asked, because the Khanaphir, in their private way, had not told her.

After Berjek had done with his halting narrative, when the borrowed room had been loaded with two absences, one large, one small, Che remained very quiet.

Too slow, Thalric, with your warnings. You must be losing your touch. 'Manny, Trallo and Petri. Was Petri their victim as well?'

'Unlikely.' Berjek shook his head. 'They mentioned her by name, as if expecting to find her at the emba.s.sy. Che, if it hadn't been for Amnon and the Vekken-'

'Where are the Vekken?' Che demanded, feeling an uncomfortable twitch at the thought. She was not so blind to the way they had been looking at her. She did not know what conclusions they had come to in their hermetic little asylum of a shared mind, but none of it boded well for her.

'They ... would not accept our hosts' hospitality,' Berjek said, with an embarra.s.sed glance at the Khanaphir Minister. 'Certainly not after what happened this morning on the river.' Seeing Che's frown, he hastened to explain. 'The Scorpions are here, Che. They arrived with the dawn, and they're setting up outside the walls.' The old Beetle sighed. 'I was determined to leave today. I came here looking for a ship out of here. That's how I met Tathbir, here. He's the Minister of the Oceans.'

The short, podgy Beetle genuflected briefly, bobbing his shaven head.

'But when the Khanaphir lowered the river gate this morning, the Scorpions were already waiting for them,' Berjek explained. 'They put a leadshot into a fishing boat, sank it with all hands. They see that the river could be used to land a flanking force, is my guess. It doesn't take a tactical genius to see the opening. They've got a pair of leadshotters waiting out there to hole any vessel that comes out. Meanwhile, n.o.body's going anywhere until that can be dealt with.'

'We have sent messengers to the Marsh people,' Tathbir added. 'They will take this matter into their own hands. Until it is done, though, we cannot lower the Estuarine Gate. We are sorry.'

'The a.s.sault on the city has yet to start,' Berjek put in. 'The Scorpions are displaying unusual patience for their kind, I understand. Some small groups have come within bowshot of the walls, to their regret, but the rest are setting their engines to loose upon the city's defences. I know my field enough to know that the walls of Khanaphes were not designed to resist leadshotters.'

It was the suddenly stiffened pose of Tathbir that heralded the new arrival, the frisson of indignation radiating from the man. A shadow fell through the door: a man in dark armour, one whose face Che used to know.

'Are you yet in the city?' the Minister demanded. 'I am sure the First Minister banished you.'

Totho's stare remained intense enough for the stout man to take a step back. With his snapbow slung under his arm, within easy reach, there was something of the pirate about Totho now, a man outside rules. 'I was called here,' he said flatly. 'The First Soldier wishes to consult with me, so how could I say no?' His eyes dismissed the Minister utterly. 'Che, I need to talk with you.'

'I suppose you do.' This was not a conversation she had been looking forward to but, at the same time, she had been expecting it. 'Elsewhere,' she decided. This was not for Berjek and Praeda, or for the Ministers.

She chose the pump room, eventually, out of some perverse need for the appropriate the secluded room with its primitive vacuum pump that she no longer understood.

'Are you going to start with pointing out how right you were?' she began. He had paused in the doorway as though there might be an ambush waiting. Now he stepped in and found himself a seat on the horizontal shaft of the pump.

'Would that help? Probably not,' he replied, his shoulder-plates sc.r.a.ping as he shrugged. 'The Empire never changes, as I should know well.'

'You were wrong about Thalric,' she told him, before she could stop herself.

'Was I?' There was no admission of it in his face. 'You think he hasn't betrayed you, just because you haven't found out about it yet.'

'The Empire wants him dead,' she said.

'The Empire has wanted him dead before. And then it calls, and he comes like a trained cricket. He's spent the last four months sleeping with the Empress.'

The thought cut her more deeply than she expected. She had known it, of course, but had steered her mind deftly away from it, every time. 'You've done your research.'

'He hurt you,' Totho said simply, 'so I found out what I could. We in the Glove have sources in the Empire. You'd have to walk a long mile before you found a man as untrustworthy as Thalric.'

She could feel a wave of anger rising in her, hearing the man attacked behind his back. Nothing but the truth, surely, and yet because it was a truth Thalric himself owned to, with his chequered past so openly admitted, she felt that she should be defending him.

'New topic, Totho?' she said. 'Unless all you wanted to do is come here and complain about Thalric.'

She saw his lips purse, but then he said, 'I can get you out of Khanaphes. You and your friends.'

She stared at him, waiting for the catch. He, however just waited for her response, looking down at his hands as they rested on his knees.

He got that from Uncle Sten, she thought, and asked, 'How? They say the Scorpions have engines watching the river.'

'My ship is the Fourth Iteration Fourth Iteration, and she's fast enough to dodge leadshots, tough enough to shrug a few off before suffering. She's a Solarnese corsair with a reinforced hull. She even has some smallshotters for the rails. She can leave as soon as the Khanaphir lower the gates, and for us they'll lower the gates because they want rid of us. Even with the Scorpions outside their walls.'

She stood up, with desperate hope. 'Take Berjek and Praeda,' she said. 'Please, take them away from here.'

'No,' he said.

'Totho ...'

'I will take you,' he said. 'I will take you, and with you, anyone you wish save for Thalric. I will not leave here without you.'

'Totho, the city's under siege now. What will you do here, if you don't leave? Don't be a fool.'

'I'll just have to make sure the Scorpions lose, then, won't I,' he said.

'You are are a fool,' she decided. 'You'd risk your life, your followers ...' a fool,' she decided. 'You'd risk your life, your followers ...'

'Yes, I'm a fool. One among many.'

'But why?'