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‘So we’ll fight them again.’

‘No, we’ll lose them,’ Gaved decided. ‘We’ll keep riding as fast as the land permits and as long as the horse can keep the pace. We’ll head uphill, too. I know a good road for us to throw them off.’

‘There’s a forest?’ Tynisa asked, because tree cover was always the best way to hide from airborne spies.

‘Of sorts,’ Gaved confirmed, ‘but I doubt it’s what you’re expecting.’

They settled into a steady pace, with the Wasp refusing to be drawn on where he was guiding them. The land about them was already looking more promising, their trail winding between stands of gnarled trees which grew only denser ahead of them.

They kept up a pressing pace for hours, with Tynisa spotting the occasional dark shape high above that might have been a man or a hunting insect. Gaved was now angling them along the broad flank of a hill that was creased into a series of slopes and valleys still heavily hung with morning mist. The scrubby trees had given way now, left behind on the hill’s southern skirts. Here, down in the valleys, was a dense forest of another kind altogether. The mist contained a maze of tall, leafy canes, some as slender as a finger, some as thick as Tynisa’s thigh, as though a regiment of giant archers had loosed a thousand shafts at the hillside itself. This bristling cane forest seemed to preserve the mist even past midday, so that their progress deteriorated into a groping through a constantly shifting landscape of vertical shadows. Gaved led with apparent confidence, but Tynisa spotted him consulting a little aviator’s compass more than once. She was glad of that since, between the mist and the sameness of the landscape, she felt she would become lost almost instantly.

Some time later, Gaved let their weary mount plod to a halt, swinging from the saddle to feed and water it.

‘Won’t they catch us?’ Tynisa asked him, her eyes seeking their airborne pursuers. The mist about them was so heavy that even the sun was just a brighter smear.

‘They won’t come here,’ Gaved said. ‘We’ve lost them.’

‘Then what’s wrong?’ she pressed, because it was obvious that something was amiss.

‘Just imagine,’ Gaved said, ‘that you’re in the house of someone very polite, but very dangerous. Behave as a good guest and we’ll be fine.’

Tynisa glanced about, seeing only cane-striped mist. ‘What lives here?’

‘Oh, some fair-sized mantids, some spiders, centipedes,’ Gaved replied casually, ‘but people too, of a sort. I’ve come through here twice before, under similar circumstances, and I can’t say I’ve definitely seen any of them, but I’m told they’re here, and I believe it. The brigands don’t come raiding here and the nobles don’t hunt. This place is supposed to be Stick-kinden land.’

‘There are Stick-kinden?’ Tynisa demanded incredulously.

Gaved held up a hand to indicate that she should keep her voice down. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen one. But you don’t, apparently. I heard that a travelling noble decided to pass through here with his retainers, and killed the animals and had his people burn the cane back. He got a five-foot arrow in his chest, while he was taking his supper, and nobody ever saw the archer. I heard that one of Siriell’s predecessors tried to use this place for launching raids from, and he and those few that got out of here talked like the forest itself had come to kill them. So we won’t draw any weapons, and we won’t make too much noise, because they prefer the silence. And when we’re done camping I’m going to leave a few thank-yous about the place, just in case.’

He was as good as his word, though Tynisa never found out exactly what was in the pouch he left beside the ashes of their campfire. The rising sun made inroads into the mist, but never quite dispelled it, and it was easy to see the tall, thin shadows looming on every side as something more sinister. And probably there are no Stick-kinden, Tynisa told herself, for whoever heard of stick insects having a kinden? But she was far from home now, and many unthinkable things might turn out to be true.

Towards