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By Root 1662 0

bare stone walls draped with faded tapestries, and a single narrow window looking out over the gorge. They brought her gowns, then: objects of silk and layers, shimmering with colour. She found she could not wear them: they pinched in the wrong places, she could not walk properly without treading on the hems. Tynisa was used to Collegium robes, which were shorter and heavier, or else the breeches and arming jacket in which she had spent so long travelling. At the last she found a servant and prevailed upon her to fetch something more practical: a pale half-cloak over a long tunic of grey and gold that reached to her knees, with a belt that went three times round her waist.

The Lowlanders were never great arbiters of fashion, she knew, and Collegium’s usual style was muted, borrowing any flair it possessed from seasons-old and mostly misunderstood Spider custom. The Beetle-kinden amongst whom she had grown up were a solid, pragmatic people to whom elegance did not come easily. Tall and slender and fair, she had walked amongst them wherever she wished, dressed how she wished, secure in the knowledge that they would deny her nothing. The other races that she had walked among were hardly different: blinkered Wasps, the rustic simplicity of the Mantis-kinden, the downtrodden grime of the Empire’s slave races. She had never been obliged to try before. Certainly she had never strained to meet the standards of others.

Standing there in her borrowed garments, in this unfamiliar castle, she felt her self-confidence tarnishing by the moment. She did not know what to do, nor how to act, and a lifetime in Collegium had not prepared her for the web of intricate etiquette that bound these people together. Abruptly her simple room seemed close and crowded, and she heard Achaeos’s spiteful reminder: And you cannot even fly, which all these people take for granted. The Beetles have ruined you for polite company. Tynisa shook her head, determined now to prove him wrong.

A dance, Alain had said. Well, it had indeed been a while since she had last trod a measure, but she knew that game. She knew the Beetle-kinden dances, which involved a great deal of romping back and forth in lines, changing places, turning round and, in the case of older, fatter or drunker dancers, falling over. She had skipped her way through enough of those, and even been admired for it. Then, again, there were the Spider dances, where the musicians set the measure and the dancers paired off and let their inspiration guide them, making grace and elegance their only standards. She felt she was ready for these Commonwealers.

The feast was disappointing. There were long, low tables seating a clear grading of guests, and she was placed at the end furthest from all the important people, meaning Alain and his mother and the more favoured of their noble invitees. She sensed Lisan Dea’s hostile influence, but there was little she could do about it. Aside from herself, this gathering plainly represented Dragonfly aristocracy, resplendent in a rainbow of silks, cloth of gold, silvered leather and enamelled chitin. There was very little conversation between them, and none at all directed at Tynisa. If this gathering was to celebrate Alain’s victories, nobody said anything about them, and his mother made no speeches. It was as though everyone had been thoroughly briefed beforehand, with only Tynisa left out. She ate in silence, finding the food too sharply and unexpectedly flavoured, and the portions small.

Then the gathering all adjourned into a further room, a circular space with a vastly high ceiling painted in patterns of blue and white and gold, where a little troupe of Grasshopper-kinden stood ready with instruments: long-necked lutes and rebecs and deep-throated drums. The guests spread out along the room’s periphery, where Tynisa noticed several of them pairing off for the first dance. Her eyes sought out Alain, but he had already been secured by a coolly elegant Dragonfly lady, the two of them slotting together without preamble, as though the partnering had been arranged