Blood of the Mantis

Seven

On the waters of the Exalsee, Che watched a sleek boat with blue sails tacking between the islands. She had been on boats enough to recognize a Spider-kinden design, not so very different from the vessel that had carried her and Nero to Seldis.

It was a strange world out here: Spiders ruling a city of the Apt, Flies piloting warlike flying machines, barbarous Dragonfly pirates. It was beautiful, though, for the early-morning sun had turned the great inland sea to liquid gold that rippled out to the distant horizon, the islands in it cast now in black velvet. Below her were the stepped streets of Solarno, the bold red roofs, the blazing white walls. The city was just waking, and she could hear the very beginnings of the bustle that she had encountered as they docked. A city of a dozen kinden. A city of sudden violence and strange politics.

‘Early riser, aren’t we?’

Che turned to see Taki standing in the doorway. The Fly-kinden was now dressed in a simple, much-darned tunic and trousers, not white as the Solarnese preferred but a dark grey. There was a pair of folded leather gloves thrust through her belt.

‘Going to work on your machine?’ Che asked her, recognizing clothes that wouldn’t show the dirt or the oil.

‘Yes, as it happens.’ Taki was a little taken aback by the observation. ‘My poor Esca Volenti took a hit or two in the scrap and, even before, she didn’t feel quite in balance. I can’t leave her repairs to the Destiavel’s mechanics. They’ll never get it right.’

‘You have…’ Che made an apologetic face. ‘I don’t mean to sound patronizing or anything, but you employ more artifice here than I would have expected. I was expecting the Spiderlands, if you know what I mean.’

Taki smiled. ‘You’ve not seen the Spiderlands then, not properly. The Spiders love their gimmicks and gadgets too, even if they can’t use them personally. There are cities down south that are just factory states, I hear, and Diroveshni – that’s south-west of here on the Spiderlands edge of the Exalsee – makes the best parts for fliers and auto-motives. We get all ours from there. What you mean is that the Spider ladies and lords don’t want to see any of that sweaty, greasy stuff, and so they keep it far away from their nice houses. Now, how about breakfast?’

‘Please.’

Taki motioned for her to follow, and they tapped their way downstairs to find a long, low table in the Fly-kinden style already set out with bread, grape jelly, ripe tomatoes and thinly sliced meat. There were about half a dozen people there, mostly the local Soldier Beetle types plus a pair of Flies and a single Dragonfly-kinden who sat cross-legged and stripped to the waist, his arms and chest showing an arabesque of brands and scars. A second glance revealed to Che that Nero was one of the Flies, but he seemed to have become native overnight. He was now wearing the white tunic and loose trousers of a Solarnese, and there was a little box-like hat with a small peak covering his bald head. He looked up at her and grinned, and only then was she absolutely sure it was him.

‘Well look at you, Sieur Nero,’ Taki said. ‘You’re now looking almost civilized – for an old man.’

‘And you, Madam Taki, are looking positively barbarous. Did I overlook some local custom about wearing the worst of one’s wardrobe today?’

Letting that comment wash off her, Taki took her place at the table and signalled for Che to elbow herself a space. ‘If you wish to fit in here,’ she instructed, ‘you will have to learn a civilized city’s methods of addresses. None of your masters or madams. A man is “Sieur”, Sieur Nero, and a lady is “Bella” if she’s your equal, but “Domina” if she’s your better.’

‘What if a man’s your better?’ Nero asked.

‘How would I know? I’ve not met one yet,’ Taki said smugly, to snorts of amusement from her fellow Destiavel employees.

‘These words are very strange to me,’ Che said. Having made no attempt to look like a native she did not mind showing her ignorance. ‘And the place-names, too. You talked yesterday about… Princep somewhere.’

The Dragonfly looked at her sharply, while Taki nodded. ‘Princep Exilla, yes. Bane of our lives, most of the time.’

‘Only, I know it’s just a name, but it sounds as though it should mean something too. I wondered… in Collegium there are some ancient tablets that are inscribed with letters nobody can read. These words you use sound almost like a different language, or…’

‘It’s all the Dragonflies’ fault,’ Taki interrupted. ‘Isn’t it, Dalre?’

The scarred and branded man gave her a terrifying scowl that, Che realized later, was meant in humour.

‘Dalre’s people have been here a lot longer than we have – they came here way back in the bad old days to found their colony. They brought their own talk too, like a different kind of gabble to their everyday speech, so the words are close enough that you can almost understand them, but not quite. They use it only as a secret language now, but I think that way back it was kind of formal lingo for their bigwigs and wise men. It’s like one of those private clubs for the gentry, where if you don’t speak right you don’t get in. After the Spiders came to Solarno and heard it spoken, they tell me the titles and talk are all over the Spiderlands too. Poetic, you know, just how the great ladies like it.’

‘So Princep Exilla means…?’ Che asked.

‘The Exiled Princedom, or something like that,’ Taki replied. ‘And there are place-names like that all over. Even ordinary streets here in Solarno. Speaking of which, I need to go down to the machine shop to make sure the greasy-handed ones aren’t going to ruin my poor Esca. How about I take you and Sieur Nero to the Venodor, so you can get to watch how Solarno really operates.’

There was a slight edge to her glance as she said it, and Che, while nodding in agreement, thought, She wants to get us out of here. To keep us out of the way of her Spider mistress perhaps, but why?

‘Who are they?’ Che asked, raising her voice to talk over the rain. Taki leant out into the street from the covered forecourt of the taverna to see the group she had indicated, and sighed theatrically.

‘You foreigners certainly know how to pick the best of our lovely city. Those, Bella Cheerwell, are chaotics.’ She glared at the little knot of blue-hatted men and women, mostly Solarnese but with a couple of her own kinden, who were standing at a street-corner within the Venodor and glaring right back at Taki and everyone else. ‘You have those too, where you come from?’

The Venodor was Solarno’s chief market, Che now understood. It was not decently located in a single open space but in dozens of cluttered streets in which, it also seemed, ordinary people were attempting to reside. Nero explained that this followed a pattern found throughout much of the Spiderlands.

‘Agitators, you mean?’ Che probed and, when Taki nodded, she admitted, ‘We have a few ourselves, I suppose. Students in Collegium who want this or that changed within the city, or protesting about someone somewhere else doing something they don’t like. And in Helleron the protests can become quite violent, they say, but there’s usually an element of crime involved as well.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s what I hear, anyway.’

‘Near enough the truth,’ Nero confirmed. He had not even bothered to peer out at the chaotics, or else had already seen them as they arrived at the taverna. He just lounged on the wood-slatted bench at one corner of the low-walled forecourt, while above them the rain drummed on a waxed awning before sluicing off it in sheets.

‘Well this lot can become as violent as you like. They’re supporters of the Crystal Standard Party,’ Taki explained. ‘You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? I can’t understand how you get on in your Lowlands, without politics.’

‘We do have politics,’ Che said, feeling obscurely proud. ‘In Collegium our citizens cast lots to elect the greatest of us to the Assembly, so the city is governed by its people.’

‘That sounds quite mad,’ Taki told her. ‘I may have to go there, just to see this prodigy for myself. Stories of faraway places are always strange, it’s true, but usually when you meet a traveller from those parts you find out it’s all nonsense and they’re just like we are. Apparently you’re not.’

‘So what’s all this business with rival parties here?’ Nero asked.

‘Now concentrate, as this will get complicated, you poor innocent foreigners,’ Taki warned them with a grin. She sketched a broad circle on the ground with her foot. ‘Here is the Corta Lucidi, which includes representatives from all the major families of Solarno. Each family has, oh, four, six, up to a dozen representatives, depending on their wealth, their status, the trades they control. And also the number of their supporters,’ she added, flicking an idle glance in the direction of the chaotics, who were now shouting out something hostile at several hurried passersby. The group of agitators was only half out of the rain but did not seem to care.

‘Now this,’ Taki continued, now delineating a smaller circle with the toe of her sandal, ‘is the Corta Obscuri, which actually controls the city. This is made up of the lucky ones from the Lucidi that the chief party chooses which, needless to say, are its own supporters. At the moment it’s the Crystal Standard that runs the Corta Obscuri, and so all the current Obscuri members are from Standard families. With me so far?’

The two foreigners nodded dutifully.

‘Right, let’s see if I can lose you with this next bit,’ Taki went on. ‘Now the Lucidi can call for the Corta Obscuri to be reformed at any time. And, if they have enough voices in the Lucidi, another party can take over and appoint a new batch of Obscuri. I should mention now that, aside from their spokeswoman to the Lucidi, nobody knows who’s been picked for the Obscuri at any given time. Only those chosen know who’s really running the show, so all we lesser folks know is which party runs the city this tenday. It’s supposed,’ she added, with an ironic smile, ‘to prevent corruption.’

‘Why don’t your Lucidi call for a new hand on the tiller every day, then?’ Nero asked her.

‘Because, whoever does ask for that, if it doesn’t happen, that person is thrown out of the Lucidi and the ruling party can choose who fills their shoes,’ Taki told him. ‘So the important people’s supporters get out on the street to intimidate the lesser people, and perhaps a few houses change party, especially the smaller families, who basically have to whore themselves about the place to make ends meet. But a lot of it is down to the shouting, because a lot of people start to jump ship when it looks, out on the street, that someone is getting stronger than they used to be. So maybe our citizens do get to choose who runs them. Just like yours, in a way.’

‘In a way,’ Che agreed weakly. It still sounded a far cry from either Collegium’s polite power-jostling or the elegant, deadly games the Spiders played.

‘Anyway,’ Taki told them. ‘You two go ahead and take a walk about the Venodor, because I need to check on my Esca. Make sure you come back here, to Ahabi’s Three Pillars. If you get lost, everyone knows where this place is. Keep your purses tight and don’t get into fights. I’ll be back here before the next bell tolls.’

‘Taki,’ Che let the question out at last, ‘why are you so interested? Why are you helping us like this?’

‘I’m just a naturally friendly person,’ Taki replied cheerfully, but Che shook her head and the Fly girl grimaced. ‘It’s because of the Wasps. You obviously know a lot about the Wasps, and I want to know more because, some friends of mine and I, we’re getting just a little worried. Enough said for now?’

‘Quite enough,’ Che agreed, and the little Fly slipped away into the side-streets.

‘So, what do we know?’ Nero asked, after she had gone. ‘The Wasps are here and not everyone likes them,’ Che suggested.

‘And not everyone doesn’t like them,’ Nero finished for her. ‘That girl isn’t too sure about her own mistress – her Domina. Notice how she got us out of there before the Spider could start asking us questions. Believe me, it’s very hard not to come clean with them, when they’re putting their Art on you.’

‘So what do you think the Wasps’ agenda is?’ Che asked. ‘I don’t see any…’ She looked about her, and then looked again. ‘Actually there are a couple over there, just standing there, keeping an eye on things. It’s almost as though they’re a kind of…’ She looked at Nero worriedly.

‘Militia?’ he mused. ‘So maybe one of the parties has started hiring them. Maybe imperial soldiers are moving into this city as mercenaries. Good ploy, that – I wonder how many they’ve got in Solarno so far. But it would take a lot of soldiers to put the clamps on a place as mad as this one. Our next move then – what do you think?’

‘Gather more information.’

‘Right,’ Nero confirmed. ‘And I hate to say it, but I’m better placed than you, for that game. I thought you’d be a good bet, but I’ve not seen another Beetle-kinden on the streets save for the pale-skin local kind, and you’re not going to pass for one of them.’

It was true, Che reflected gloomily. Not only were the Solarnese women all sand-coloured, with dark or red-dyed hair worn twisted up at the back of the neck, but they were also mostly taller than she was, and leaner. ‘So you’re off to trawl the gutters, are you?’ she asked.

‘While you get to be polite with all the lords and ladies. Make sure you stay close to that Taki girl. She’s obviously flying in from the same quarter as we are where the Stripeys are concerned, even though she’s got a bit of a mouth on her. Are you even listening?’

Che had been staring past him, but now she nodded hurriedly. ‘Stay with Taki, yes. Sorry, it’s just… I had strange dreams last night.’

‘Bad ones?’

‘Anything but,’ she replied, and then found herself smiling.

The shouting from the street-corner mob had increased over the last minute or so, though they had been paying it little heed. Now, Che leapt to her feet even before she had quite realized what she had heard: the unmistakable sound of metal striking metal. Without intending it, her own sword was clear of its scabbard.

The arguing nearby had turned into a brawl, though nothing like the formal deadliness of the duel witnessed the previous day. Even as Che and Nero had been talking, another group had appeared from nowhere, most of them wearing the little red hat of yesterday’s successful duellist. Their jibes and accusations had suddenly sparked fire: there was one drawn blade and then they were all at it. Knives and daggers and the local curved swords appeared in every hand, and from then on an undisciplined and bloody skirmish was inevitable.

Che saw immediately that most of them, even those that had brought swords, were not fighters by habit, perhaps even less so than she herself was. Tradesmen and servants, she guessed, with maybe a few who had shed a little blood before. They were now packed close, jostling and shouting, and trading overextended blows wherever they could, so that the daggermen had the best of it, and the whole sorry mess was coming right in their direction.

Many of the other locals were trying to get out of the way, so that the narrow streets running down to the waterfront were abruptly packed with fleeing people crammed shoulder to shoulder. Others, however, were joining in with abandon and, only adding to the confusion, many of them wearing no hats at all. Across the street a band of the local militia had already arrived, but seemed content to stand back and watch rather than wade into the maelstrom.

‘Che,’ said Nero from somewhere above her. He had flicked aloft with his wings and was now perched precariously atop the awning, a foot resting on one of the poles. ‘Che, get out of the way.’

She looked around, and saw nowhere to go. She was too heavy, too clumsy, to follow Nero. She had insufficient stamina to fly more than a short hop, and that could just land her right in the middle of them. Instead she backed away towards the door of the taverna. Then the fighting mob had swept into the little courtyard, constantly eddying and turning, but never quite getting to the taverna’s doorway, leaving a blade’s length of clear ground in front of her as Che put her back against the stone wall. Beside her, in the doorway, a man who must be the proprietor had emerged with an axe-headed pike levelled, and was glowering ferociously at the knot of fighting men and women.

There were at least four bodies now lying further down the street, which the militia were picking over unhurriedly. Che looked around for the Wasp soldiers but they were nowhere to be seen. She tried to make sense of the scrimmaging throng, amazed that more people were not already bleeding to death on the muddy cobbles of the Venodor. A lot of the ‘chaotics’ wore leather cuirasses, and their style seemed to be for slashing strokes that left long, shallow cuts, rather than fatal stabbing. It was a style designed to prevail without demanding a death, and plenty of the combatants had already retreated to lick their wounds. It seemed pure madness to Che, but both sides seemed to have the same general purpose.

She never saw the assailant coming but instead she suddenly heard the sound of ripping fabric close at hand, and then swift motion beside her as Nero dropped through the awning and was abruptly perched on a man’s shoulders. The man, who had been within arm’s reach of Che a moment ago, was now staggering back as Nero clawed for his eyes with one hand, drawing his dagger with the other. The Solarnese tried jabbing his own long knife up at Nero, but the Fly kept shifting position, wings buzzing in and out of sight, and then Che herself lunged forwards and ran her potential assassin through the gut.

He convulsed and fell forwards, leaving Nero abruptly hovering unsupported as the man jack-knifed to the ground, taking Che’s sword with him. She felt a jolt of horror – how much blood had she seen shed, how little of it her doing – and then Nero cursed and spun out of the air, a spatter of red suddenly staining the white of his clothes. He had twisted aside, by sheer Art and instinct, as the blade came in, so it had gashed across his arm rather than into his ribs. As her companion hit the ground, Che found herself facing a lean Dragonfly-kinden, deeply scarred on both cheeks. In his hands he wielded a long-hafted sword, as much hilt as blade. In her hands was nothing.

He took a moment to note her vulnerability, his expression set, and then he lunged for her. None of the local posturing for him, he was in for a quick kill. She retreated hurriedly, her calves striking the low wall of the courtyard, and then her world went toppling backwards. He turned his lunge into a charge, wings flaring for speed, and she saw that slender, lethal blade plunge straight towards her – and then jerk to one side.

It drove itself into the ground right beside her face, as its wielder ended up with one knee on her chest, his expression bewildered. She gaped at him and tried to work out why he was not moving. Only as he toppled sideways did she notice the pommel of the short, hiltless throwing blade almost buried in his neck.

Che leapt to her feet, scanning the crowd. The size of the brawl had shrunk to something the militia were now happy to deal with, and they began to wade in and club the remaining contenders apart. Behind them, the more opportunistic of the Fly-kinden were busy making hurried assays of the pockets of the fallen.

She noticed there was one man staring at her. He was not a local, nor of any kinden she recognized, perhaps some manner of half-breed. He was lean, russet-haired, neither tall nor short, dressed in a cuirass of bronzed scales and a shabby tan cloak. She could read absolutely nothing into his stare, as impersonal and distant as the stars, but he wore a bandolier of throwing blades and one of them – just one, mind you – was absent.

The thought made her stomach turn, but she went over to the dead Dragonfly and awkwardly withdrew the blade, a slippery and unexpectedly difficult task that had her hands slick with his blood. The stranger was still there, watching, when she straightened up. In the background Nero was swearing and wrapping cloth about his injured arm, demanding to know what she was doing.

She had expected the man to be gone, or to avoid her when she approached, but instead he stood his ground, and she saw that a couple of the militia had noticed him too, but were studiously pretending they had not. Someone who was known, then, and regarded with that particular brand of respect that had nothing to do with being liked.

Closer to, he was slighter of build than she had first thought: not much taller than Achaeos, though broader at the shoulder. His face was gaunt and weathered, impossible to put an age to, utterly unknowable.

She held the blood-washed blade out to him and asked merely, ‘Why?’

It was back in his hand in an instant, without her even seeing him reach for it. When he then smiled it was a window onto something truly alien to her – something ancient and sad and very dark. He reminded her, she found with a shock, of Tisamon. That same melancholy darkness was contained in both of them.

‘Why not, if it pleases me?’ His voice was nondescript, as undramatic as could ever have undone his air of mystery. Then he had turned, and was striding away without a backward glance.

Across the street, from one storey up, Captain Havel was watching the same chaos with Odyssa at his shoulder. He had started with a tight little smile, because if this came off he would be able to report a happy success to his masters, and not have to worry about the Rekef enquiring into his accounts. The streets of Solarno were deceptively dangerous places where brawls started all the time these days, what with control of the Corta Obscuri up for the taking. In such conditions a pair of witless foreigners might easily fall foul of all manner of local violence.

Seeing the fighting spill into the inn’s courtyard, he had become ecstatic, and careful to share such pleasure with his visitor, congratulating her on laying a good rumour trail.

The Spider woman’s hands had squeezed his shoulders, as she pressed in close behind him. ‘It’s easy enough to get these Solarnese to fight each other. Your agents are all in position?’

‘Agents?’ Havel had snorted. ‘That’s too grand a term, but in Solarno there’s no shortage of hired killers, either local or visiting. Princep Exilla practically turns them out as a national industry. But they’ll do their job,’ he had assured her, both as the man currently impressing the Spider maid and as the officer about to impress her distant Rekef superiors. He had been so cocky, just then.

They had watched the killers dart in, the death of the Solarnese man followed by the swift strike by the Dragonfly. Havel had even leapt to his feet with a hiss of triumph as the Beetle girl fell backwards, the killer stooping on her.

Then the man himself had toppled, and a sudden spreading gap in the crowd had announced the newcomer.

From his window-ledge vantage point, Captain Havel twitched back as though from something venomous. ‘That changes everything,’ he muttered, staring at the one unutterably still figure amid all the confusion, the one whose aim had just felled the Dragonfly assassin.

‘You know that man?’ Odyssa asked him.

‘How good are your eyes? Did you see the throw he made?’

‘There was too much going on,’ she claimed, although she had seen well enough. Let him salve his newly hurt pride by educating her.

‘A target on the other side of a street, and across a scattered mob of chaotics,’ Havel said numbly. ‘Oh, I know of him, yes. Cesta, they call him. Cesta the assassin. Quite the local celebrity, he is, though he doesn’t often put in a public appearance like that.’

‘Spider-kinden? I didn’t think-’

‘No particular kinden, some mix of blood. He’s almost a folk hero in this mad city, not because he does anything for anyone except himself, but just because he’s so very, very good at his profession. All the street children growing up wanting to be like him, you know the type I mean.’ Havel’s tone betrayed contempt for a mere outlaw risen above his station. ‘And he’s neutral, I’m told. All the factions have tried to woo him. Word was he’s taken to killing their emissaries to make them stop trying. I wish I knew what put him in that spot with the idea of protecting some clueless foreigner. Damn the bloody Solarnese.’

She read it all in his face, the game suddenly gone beyond the board, his little scams and takes overshadowed without warning by this Lowlander intrusion: an intrusion that was suddenly not just two clumsy agents but had roots somewhere in the heart of Solarno’s dark side.

He turned abruptly, putting Odyssa at arm’s length. ‘You’re going to have to carry a message for me,’ he declared, obviously regretting the words. Imperial priorities overrode even Havel’s own profiteering, though, and he had to act fast now to prevent an even bigger mess that he might be judged by. ‘Take a message for me back to Araketka Camp. They’d better know as soon as possible that the stakes have just gone up.’

After she had saluted like a good Rekef officer, she slung her pack and left. She travelled north through sufficient streets to check that she was not being followed, then doubled back towards the water, after reversing her coat, raising the hood, even changing her walk. This was all done without really thinking about it, letting the natural deception in her training and her bloodline take the reins.

She reached the low waterfront dive where she would wait for her man. Not my man, she chided herself. Thinking like that will only get me killed.

She consequently made her approach very cautiously, because it was quite true what they said: Cesta had killed potential patrons before, if he believed that they were trying to buy his political allegiance, rather than simply commission him to kill an enemy. By the time Odyssa saw him arrive and sit down at his customary table there it was already dusk. After the earlier downpour, when the wind had driven curtains of rain sweeping across its surface, the Exalsee was now a veritable mirror, a looking-glass for the moon and stars.

He sat alone at a table that gave him a good view of anyone coming in, and offered a swift leap into the water if he needed to escape. That same table had been conspicuously empty before, whether by the landlord’s instructions or simply because other customers knew that the assassin favoured it. She made sure he would see her as she approached. His instincts were, she was sure, like a bow drawn back. No sense in loosing them.

‘You,’ he began, as she approached, ‘are playing a very complicated game.’ Despite her careful measures to evade the spies of Captain Havel, Cesta had recognized her at once.

She sat down, looking out across that beautiful dark expanse of water, seeing a lone galley struggle out from the shore, oars labouring in the utter lack of wind. ‘I thought it was assassin etiquette not to question one’s employers,’ she said.

‘I never learnt many manners.’

She studied him then. His features seemed young, then old, as he tilted his head, shifting readily as the light caught them. Cesta was over forty, from her sources, but whatever his kinden, they aged as gracefully as her own. ‘You were late,’ she pointed out.

‘On the contrary, I was in the nick of time. I always am.’

‘They nearly got killed,’ she said.

‘Yes. Nearly.’

‘Isn’t such drama counterproductive in your profession?’

He stared at her for a moment and Odyssa wondered if she had overstepped the mark.

‘Drama is all,’ he said softly. ‘Drama is the why of it. I would have thought a Spider-kinden would understand, you who live your lives just for show. I do not kill because I love killing. I do not kill because it makes me rich. I do not kill because I have some cause or ideology to propagate. I kill for the same reason an actor steps onto the stage, or a good athlete runs his race. Because, in the fleeting second of the execution, I am excellent. I am complete.’

She took her life in her hands with, ‘So why not become an actor, assassin?’

‘Because I am very bad at acting, and no other reason. I have only one talent in life. My heritage has left me just that, and no more.’

She dipped into her belt-pouch, seeing a minute buildup of tension in him that was instantly gone when all she came out with was a roll of coins.

‘You’re owed this, I believe, and I’m sure you’re a man who has few living debtors.’

‘Because of the insult,’ he said. ‘Not because of the money.’

‘Of course not.’ She slid the coins across the table top and without warning he pounced on her hand, pinning her to the wood with a pincer-like grip.

‘Do you think I live in a palace, Spider girl?’ he asked her. His voice was so soft she could barely hear it over the hammering of her own heart. ‘Do you think I eat off jewelled plates, or have a host of slaves to tend to me? Do you think that I, with who and what I am, could simply retire one day, to live like a Spider lord amid all the luxuries of the world?’

His grip was hurting her but she refused to show it, looking him directly in the eye.

‘I cannot risk sleeping in the same place two nights running,’ he said. ‘And, when I sleep, I keep one ear open for the footstep on the stair, the hand at the shutter. I eat when I can. I have no friends, nor any trust to spare for them. I have a thousand enemies who have good reason to want me dead, a thousand clients who would rather I was silenced. What I own, Spider girl, is what you see: the tools of my trade. I have no use for anything I cannot carry. I cannot be tied down, neither to people nor to property. I have these garments, these weapons, and my reputation. That, then, is the life of a great assassin.’

‘But you are a hero to the people,’ she got out.

‘To the people in general, perhaps, but I am an enemy to each individual one of them. Not one of them has so much as bought me a drink, and even if they did, I could not trust them far enough to drink it.’

‘But all that money – the amounts you ask?’

He smiled, and let go her hand, his fingers leaving stark white marks where they had gripped. ‘Perhaps I bury it. Perhaps I give it to beggars. Perhaps I invest in the spice trade. Perhaps I throw it into the Exalsee. When I am gone, no one will ever know.’ He regarded her doubtfully. ‘So much for me,’ he said, ‘but if I were an informed Solarnese, I would be more concerned about a Spider woman who is working with the Wasps, and yet attempting to preserve their enemies. What can be going on?’

‘Well that will have to be my secret,’ she told him, rising.

He made no move to stop her but, as she turned, he said, ‘I feel that Solarno may become a very crowded place in the near future. Why do I think that, I wonder?’

‘Perhaps you should take up travelling and spread that reputation of yours wider,’ she said.

‘Oh, I rather think that my skills will still be needed here,’ he said. His look at her, in that moment, was entirely predatory. ‘You are very elegant, Spider girl, very clever and complex. Do not slip in your web-making. I would not like to hear some other give me your name some day soon.’