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‘Not under threat any more? Or are the odds so bad that the armour wouldn’t help?’ Thalric needled him, needing something to take his mind off other things.

Varmen just shrugged. ‘I reckon your woman’s on her way – the ghost-talking one, I mean.’

Thalric nodded morosely. ‘If this doesn’t work . . .’

‘What, waving her arms around and talking to spirits and magic, not work? What are the odds on that?’ Varmen’s smile was weak. ‘Curse me, but I remember the last year of the war, you know? ’Wealer armies bunching up to defend Shon Fhor, and leaving all their civilians behind them, villages and towns full of them ripe for the Slave Corps . . . We were first in, a couple of times. You’d find them on their knees around some sage or seer or magic-maker, begging their spirits to do something, to protect them from us. You’d find tens of them, hundreds even, singing and dancing and chanting, and then we’d walk in, us heavy-armour lads, and they’d go quiet one by one, then all of ’em. If we could see who their wizard-type was, orders were to shoot ’em dead. The rest would cave in soon enough after that. You could see it in their faces, like you’d just come and tilted their world on its side. And now nothing worked like they thought it should, poor bastards.’

‘And now we seem to need to tilt it back again,’ Thalric said wryly, just as Coren came marching in with a couple of his glittering soldiers, and also a woman.

In that moment, it was clear to Thalric that nobody had explained to the necromancer what she was being brought to Suon Ren for, and that the seneschal had not only copied but actually intensified his prince’s dislike of the breed. The expression on the woman’s face was that of a prisoner on her way to an execution, and seeing a pair of Wasp-kinden there did not change it.

She was not what Thalric had expected: not a crone, nor even a Dragonfly-kinden. She was considerably younger than he was, and her skin was a curious shade: pale underlain with lead-grey highlights, so that she herself looked half a corpse already. Her face was narrow, and her eyes held no irises at all, just pinpoint pupils amidst a pale field. She was a slender creature, dressed in a robe that had seen much darning, her dark hair streaked messily with white and hanging raggedly about her shoulders. There was an empty scabbard attached to her belt, for a short-bladed sword, and she clutched a travelling pack.

Thalric guessed that some conjoining of Moth, Roach and Mantis inheritance had led to this particular miscegenation. How many flavours of mystic nonsense am I getting, combined in this one woman? He awaited the inevitable outpouring of curses, benedictions and portentous threats that all these quacksalvers seemed to come out with.

Instead, the seneschal gave the woman a shove towards where Che was laid out, and she rounded on him as soon as she was out of arm’s reach.

‘What do you want, you bastard lackey? Selling me to the Empire, is it?’

‘Make her well,’ the Dragonfly ordered her. ‘The prince demands it.’

The necromancer looked rebellious. ‘The prince didn’t want my skills a few days ago. How about I tell him he can go —’

Coren’s hand went for his sword, but Thalric stepped forward pointedly, making them both flinch. ‘I’ll take it from here,’ he announced. The Dragonfly seneschal stared at him, blankly hostile, then turned on his heel and left, his men following him.

The halfbreed woman hugged her satchel and eyed the Wasps doubtfully. ‘So, what?’ she asked, sneaking a glance at Che. ‘She’s not dead. What am I supposed to do with someone who’s not dead?’

Thalric forbore to ask what she might have done with a corpse, had one been offered. ‘Examine her,’ he instructed. ‘They said you could help.’

‘They say a lot of things.’ The woman was already retreating. ‘This isn’t anything to do with me. I’m not the woman for it.’

Bitterness rose inside Thalric and he advanced on her angrily. ‘Is that what the mystics of the Commonweal have come to? You’re not even going