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Still, had the city been left to its own devices, the old timeless cloak might have fallen across it once more. History is insistent, though, and now it had its hooks into Khanaphes. It was not long after the attack of the Many that the Empire had arrived.

Word had come to Collegium swiftly, following on the heels of the scholarly visitors who had become caught up in the fighting with the Nem. Scarcely had they returned home than some of them were embarking again, finding the first airship back east, bound for Solarno and the Exalsee and, from there, to Khanaphes.

Or not quite Khanaphes. Word had come that the Imperial hold on the city was tight, as always the case with a new addition to the Empire. The harbour was crawling with black and gold, and any ships that docked were subjected to a rigorous search. Still, there were plenty of convenient places to hide on a merchantman, and Praeda and Amnon might have risked it had they managed to find a ship’s captain willing to chance his cargo being confiscated by the Wasps’ Consortium.

Praeda Rakespear was a College scholar, an artificer and architect, young and keen-minded and mostly fed up with Collegium’s hidebound attitudes these days, whether it was towards foreign policy or the advancement of female academics. Back in Collegium, she had cultivated a reputation as possessing armour that was proof against any man’s advances. The presence of Amnon at her side was testimony to the only time that armour had been breached.

Amnon was Khanaphir, although he was now wearing Lowlander clothes. He was huge, massive-shouldered, tall and broad, and yet swift and precise with it, a true warrior’s warrior. In Khanaphes he had been their First Soldier, who led their armies and organized the city’s military forces. He had been exiled, too, which was just one of the topics that he and Praeda had not got around to discussing.

Their transport was a Solarnese ship, low and single-masted, that crept up the coast of the Sunroad sea until the desert had given way to the marshy delta of the Jamail. The vessel’s master, a lean woman, with grey hair shading to white and her sand-coloured face sun-weathered, had her two-man crew set a fire on an islet there, settling down to wait for the unnamed parties she was to meet. Praeda and Amnon knew little of her business, save that the protocols she was following had been put in place in case business went bad – and Imperial invasions certainly counted as that.

‘You did something like this when the Scorpions attacked?’ Praeda dared to ask.

The master nodded briefly. ‘He showed up then, sure enough, with bags all packed,’ was all she would say.

‘This friend of yours, he can help us into the city?’ Praeda pressed.

‘If he’s going back there.’ The ship’s master shrugged. ‘If he thinks it’s worth the candle.’

They waited a day before the marsh people came to investigate the fires, unconcerned by the crossbows the three mariners lifted against them. They were slight Mantis-kinden with grey-green skins, silent and staring, but the master offered them some token that looked just like a red stone to Praeda. They accepted it from her, in the manner of a contract concluded, and vanished into the thronging green again.

‘Now we’re running out of time,’ the master had declared. ‘Half a day more and we’ll have to catch the tide, so come along with us, or stay on your own.’

‘And your friend?’ Praeda asked her, but the woman shook her head, lips pressed together.

The friend never showed, and the master abandoned her hopes brusquely, as though it was nothing of any particular import. Nobody mentioned the Empire, even though it was the prime culprit in the man’s absence. Only as the little ship cast off, turning back for Porta Rabi, did Praeda see the Solarnese woman’s shoulders slump and her ramrod posture collapse. Their last view of the woman, as her vessel tacked swiftly away, might have been of her weeping.

‘Well,’ Praeda said soberly. ‘We’re on your ground,