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‘No, dreams. I am having dreams that I know are important, but they never stay with me. I know how important dreams are to seers and magicians, so there must be some techniques to help me recall them.’

The Grasshopper eyed her edgily. ‘You have money?’

‘Some.’

‘You are . . .’ The woman could not bring herself say it, but her fascination was that of someone observing some bizarre freak of nature.

‘Inapt, yes.’ Che could say the word with equanimity now. The admission no longer hurt as it once had. Spending time away from the eminently Apt city of Collegium had helped. No doubt Uie Se assumed she had been born different, a throwback amongst her own people, but of course most of Che’s life had been spent amongst the technical elite, trained in mechanics and artifice and dismissing all those old stories of magic as deluded Moth-kinden propaganda. Then Achaeos had entered her life and touched her with his very real magic, coming to find her when she was captured by her enemies, and then taking her to that ghastly, haunted Darakyon and forcing her to witness its hideous ghosts.

And when he had needed her, when his people had been trying to raise their ancient magic against the Wasps who had occupied their home, he had begged her for her strength, and she had somehow found the capacity within herself to give it. Their minds had touched, and she had funnelled her stoic Beetle endurance towards him, given him the extra reach so that he could cast his net further.

And his call had rung out from the mountain top above Tharn, where the ritual was being enacted, and the things of the Darakyon had heard and answered.

If some magician had offered Che the chance to forget the feel of those cold, ancient, twisted things inside her head, but taken as his price all her memories of Achaeos, she would have thought a long time about the proposal.

But the things had come when Achaeos called, charged him with strength, set the Moth-kinden ritual ablaze, terrorized the Wasps out of Tharn, driven them mad and set them against one another. And Achaeos, already badly wounded, dragged from his sickbed to join the Moth-kinden’s dark venture . . . Achaeos . . .

She had felt his life wink out amidst the cackling and rustling of the Darakyon things. She had felt him leave her.

‘Dreams,’ she repeated to the Grasshopper seer, and there was a tone to her voice, dead and angry at the same time, that made the woman shrink back.

‘Yes, yes.’ Uie Se scuttled into the further shadows of her room. ‘There are herbs. I have some. You shall know them by their smell. They have been used for ever as a net for dreams. There are talismans, and I shall ready one for you now, soon, soon, now. Only a moment, great lady. They shall be a spider’s web, yes, to catch your dreams, so that you may feast on them when you wake. You shall have your dreams.’

‘How much?’

‘No money, none,’ the wretched creature told her instantly. ‘No, no, no.’

‘How much?’ Che repeated. ‘Look, I will pay for your services. This is just . . . business.’ Something about her had so clearly rattled the Grasshopper, and she wondered if the rush of memories that had briefly overwhelmed her had bled out of her and into this woman’s head. From somewhere the words came: ‘I absolve and forgive, and will leave nothing behind me but footsteps.’

The seer paused, staring back over her shoulder, her hands stilled for a moment where they had been sifting through pots and jars by touch. ‘Thank you, great lady, thank you.’ The tension was abruptly gone from her.

What have I said, and why did it matter? Belatedly Che recalled from where she had pirated the words – a play, of all things: a Collegium play set back in the time before the revolution. Supposedly it had been adapted from an older Moth-kinden work, but updated for a modern audience.

But they must have kept some of the original, nonetheless. She would have to be careful with that kind of trick. She had the unwelcome feeling that certain words and phrases uttered by her, that would have been just wind before her change, carried a mystical weight