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Tynisa shook her head, crouching by the edge of the grille to see him better. ‘Oh, that won’t carry weight, brigand. I’ve seen the Empire, and you can’t equate Imperial rule with the Commonweal.’

‘Lived there, have you? And lived a life here, to compare?’ Dal challenged her.

‘His people killed my father,’ she hissed, jabbing a finger at the Wasp, who flinched back, startled.

‘Don’t drag me into this. I quit,’ he muttered, but Dal was already shaking his head.

‘If you want to play that game, then one prince or another has killed pretty much everyone I ever knew,’ he said. ‘Oh, certainly it was the Wasps who held the sword, but it was my own kinden, my glorious betters, who threw the victims onto it. It’s been some prince or other who’s taxed my kin so that we could only live hand to mouth, and never build anything more on what we had. It’s been your darling prince and his mother here who knocked us down when we tried to set ourselves up like decent folk in Siriell’s Town.’

‘I saw Siriell’s Town,’ Tynisa snapped. ‘There was nothing “decent” there.’

‘Well, I’m sorry we didn’t all live in the castle,’ Dal Arche retorted, a little more fire in his voice now. ‘Perhaps then we’d have fitted your idea of how decent folk live? Tell me, who are you to judge us, living here without care as a guest of the Salmae?’

Tynisa leant closer, feeling obscurely gratified that she had made him angry at last. ‘I’ve seen more of the world than you, old man. I’ve seen the Empire and I know what they value there: tyranny and slavery. I’ve seen Helleron and I know half the Lowlands is just greed running riot, or places like Collegium where good intentions are never quite enough. But I know . . . I know the Commonweal. The Commonweal makes good people, who fight for the right things: heroes. I know what the Monarch believes in. I recognize truth and honour and honesty when I see it. A friend taught me about the Commonweal, by the example of everything he ever did. He was the best man I ever knew, and he knew what was right and what was wrong. That’s how I can judge you, thief and murderer that you are. You have rebelled against your rightful rulers, and for that you’ll die.’

She waited for an explosion of wrath, of counter-accusation, even of pleading, but it did not come.

Instead Dal Arche leant back against the wall of the pit. ‘Oh, that does sound grand. If you ever find this mythical place you’re talking about, let me know, I’d like to see it. Until then, I suppose I’ll have to live with the merely human nobility who got so many of us killed in the war. At least I won’t have to live with them very long.’

Something nagged at her briefly, some echo of Lowre Cean’s words before the battle, but she shrugged it away. ‘I can judge,’ she repeated. ‘And I can be the one to wield the blade, when your time comes. Better that than suffer the crossed pikes of the Empire, no?’

‘And in your Lowlands?’ he asked her.

‘They were always too soft in Collegium,’ she replied, getting up and turning to go. A thought struck her, and she gave voice to it: ‘You can hardly deny that you’ve earned this, having robbed and pillaged your way across half of the province?’

‘Oh, no, not at all,’ was his reply. ‘We took what we wanted and went wherever we would. But more joined us than fled from us, and for a while at least, we were free of princes. And I will maintain, to death and beyond, that those who condemn us are themselves murderers and thieves greater than we are, and no amount of law and heritage will change that.’

She opened her mouth for a scathing rebuke, but the words did not come to her. They are criminals going to their just punishment, she assured herself, but abruptly she had no stomach left for taunting them.

‘When the time comes, I’ll look for a sharp blade and a quick end,’ Dal Arche stated. ‘We’re owed that much, I think.’

She nodded, thrown off balance but not sure why. Inside her head, her mantra whirled: I love Alain. Alain is a prince. Alain is virtuous,