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‘Sammi?’ queried Tynisa weakly.

‘Well, it’s – what is it? – Tse Mae, or something very like it,’ the woman admitted, fighting with the man’s name. ‘But Sammi works for me, and so I get to call him that. Fordwright, by the way. Hardy Fordwright, Master of the College.’

Tynisa shook the proffered hand uncertainly. ‘Tynisa, student of the same. But, Mistress Fordwright, how long have you been here in the Commonweal?’

‘What is it . . . seven years now?’ Fordwright asked her companion.

‘Nine since we met, Harde,’ Tse Mae replied, mangling her name equally as much as she had mangled his.

‘On my life, is it really?’ Fordwright looked genuinely surprised.

‘But what are you doing here?’ Tynisa pressed.

‘Oh, old man Lowre’s our patron, don’t you know,’ the Beetle woman explained. By now their animal was being unhitched and watered, and Tse Mae was arranging for the wagon to be put under cover. Fordwright beamed at him, then explained, ‘You see, Sammi and me are here about a piece of research – You’ve heard of the Alchemical Theorem?’ – and she went on as if Tynisa had, regardless. ‘I was a chemical artificer back home, and Sammi here has spent his days cooking up elixirs and potions for the credulous. So I can put a bunch of ingredients together for a particular effect, and Sammi can do the same. The thing is that I can tell you why mine works, and he can tell you why his works, and neither of us agree why it works, but we both agree that it does.’

When Tynisa failed to react with immediate enthusiasm Fordwright pressed on impatiently. ‘But don’t you see? It’s a process and result that makes sense both to Apt and Inapt minds, even if my sense doesn’t work for him, and his doesn’t work for me. Give me another few years and I’ll stand before the College and tell them that I have found the exact field of study that Aptitude may have arisen from, and it’s still being practised here in the Commonweal.’

This last was thrown over her shoulder, as she was striding off towards Lowre Cean’s main hall, letting Tynisa and Tse Mae trail in her wake.

‘And Lowre Cean is an alchemist too, is he?’

Fordwright beamed back at Tynisa. ‘A little. He dabbles. Dabbles in just about everything, in fact. He’s a patron of just about every art you can name. Painters and poets, itinerant Roach-kinden balladeers, stargazers and hocus-pocus merchants, and people who’ll tell your future from your shadow. Lucky for Sammi and me that he’s up for supporting some serious inquiry, as well as all those quacksalvers. My guess?’ Even her colossal voice managed a crude sort of whisper. ‘The old boy is up for anything that’ll take his mind off the war.’

‘But he was a hero,’ Tynisa protested weakly.

Fordwright made a disrespectful sound that demonstrated precisely what she thought of war heroes. What she said made sense, Tynisa considered. Collegium’s great figures were noted for their intellect, their diplomacy, their discoveries and inventions, and they left the glorifying of war to other kinden. In Tynisa, though, the fighting urge was strong: that need to test herself and her blade. She found in herself an unchallengeable insistence that all true heroes were warriors living and dying by the sword.

Like Salma. Like my father. Thus conjured, they both hovered just out of sight.

The young man who had fetched her from Gaved’s home came to find her once again shortly afterwards. She had never even learned his name, about which he seemed to be unusually discreet. Her eventual conclusion was that the youth was some bastard by-blow of the old prince’s, and that the Commonwealers had quaint ideas about fidelity and paternity.

‘His Highness has ordered there to be a formal dinner tonight,’ the youth informed her. ‘Your presence would be welcomed.’

This would be the third such formal occasion since she had become Lowre Cean’s guest. The old man usually ate by himself, at odd times and wherever he happened to be pursuing his own interests, but sometimes the prince-major would surface in him, and suddenly all his servants and followers would be