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She was not alone, though. A Dragonfly-kinden man was speaking softly in her ear, and Che had the impression that Tynisa must have just completed some fencing passes on the floor. He seemed young to be a mentor, though, and stood too close, so for a moment Che hovered awkwardly in the doorway, realizing that she was intruding, hesitant to press on and yet even less willing to lose this opportunity.

Then Lisan Dea was stalking across the room, and the Dragonfly looked up and took a step away. The Grasshopper seneschal practically radiated an icy disapproval directed, in so far as Che could tell, solely at the man.

There was something curiously familiar about him, now that Che saw his face: some passing likeness that she felt she should recognize. Then the Grasshopper had drawn him aside and hissed something in his ear, and his crooked grin transformed into incredulity as he stared down the length of the room towards Che.

That was it, she suddenly realized: he looked a little like Salma, or at least more than most young Dragonfly men did. Given where they all were, he must be some manner of relative.

Then, without ceremony, Lisan Dea was shepherding him out of the room. Che could not see his expression as he gazed back briefly at Tynisa, but his parting look at the Beetle herself was nothing short of contemptuous, making plain his surprise that this woman could claim a sisterhood with that one.

Maure had hung back – no, Maure had ducked out of sight entirely and was now gone from her side. Unexpectedly, after the varied escorts Che had enjoyed since leaving Khanaphes, she was left alone with Tynisa.

She approached, skirting the edge of the fighting mat as if it was the ground of the Prowess Forum in Collegium. From her elevated position, Tynisa watched her closely, and there was nothing in her face or stance that recognized Che at all. Her expression was bleak as winter, and her hand hovered near her sword. Che was no great warrior, scarcely a warrior at all, but as she drew near she became acutely aware of an invisible circle about Tynisa dictated by the broad reach of her blade, and that to cross into it uninvited would be fatal.

In that stance, in that arch expression, it was Tisamon who stood before her, or part of him at least. That segment of the Mantis-kinden which had been so devoted to Che’s uncle Stenwold was repressed or excised, along with those few times he had smiled or laughed, or shown himself something like human. Instead this was a sharp-edged and brittle creature of skill and bloodlust that was poised to strike at her, the same despairing figure of tragedy that had dashed itself to death against its love for the Dragonfly Felise Mienn, as Mantis heroes were traditionally wont to do.

Then something flickered in the girl’s eyes that owed nothing to that thousand years of dark and bloody heritage, and she said, ‘Che?’

‘No other,’ the Beetle replied, edging closer and feeling that circle around Tynisa flex as she touched it, like a tripwire, and then vanish, the danger gone as if it had never been. Feeling as though she had been given permission, Che stepped forward and embraced her near-sister.

‘What are you doing here?’ Tynisa asked of her, not annoyed as Che had anticipated, only wondering.

‘Looking for you,’ she explained. ‘You disappeared, remember?’

‘Yes, yes, I did,’ Tynisa agreed. ‘And if you’d found me just a few months ago, I’d not have been grateful for it, I think. Still, things have changed since then. Life’s better than it was.’

Che regarded her cautiously. ‘Is that so?’

The smile that met her gaze was unfamiliar. The Spider-kinden girl Che had grown up with had possessed a grand stock of smiles, knowing, subtle, gleeful, suggestive, a veritable arsenal that had brought about the ruin of many a young man. Tisamon, in contrast, had smiled rarely: his killing grin when shedding blood, and a more human expression reserved for his conversations with Stenwold. This smile belonged neither to the dead