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She had never believed in the magic that her mother and father had sworn by, but at that same midnight, suddenly and inexplicably provided with the means to end herself, she wondered if this was not the voice of the universe telling her that it had no further place for her.

With that thought, something of her old fire rekindled, and she took the blade in her hands, feeling blindly its old familiar weight and grace. Her father had won this blade to give to her mother, and then he himself had kept it for so many years, until their daughter was grown and had proved her skill against him. She chose to believe that he had sent it to her, from beyond the veil of death – from where Mantids went, when their time came.

She had looked up and seen him for an instant, for the first time: the ravaged hulk of her father standing at the window, and then he was gone. A trick of her mind, a holdover of the dream, but she had understood the warning.

I am losing my grip on the world, she realized. I have killed a friend once and I will kill again unless I do something to stop myself. The rapier, the agent of that murder, hung there in her hand, sleek and balanced. There must be work left to do that I can devote myself to, because, if I have nothing left to distract me, I shall go the last few steps and be mad indeed.

It only remained for her to invent what work that might be. By dawn she had decided the goal, but had no means to accomplish it. How could she get herself to the notoriously isolated Commonweal?

Jons Allanbridge had visited there, she knew. He had shipped Stenwold over there during the war, in a failed attempt to enlist Dragonfly aid against the Empire. Amongst all the bad news, word had come to Tynisa that Allanbridge had since made a return visit or two, joining the many merchants who had tried to strike up a trade with that sprawling nation’s insular inhabitants. Still, Allanbridge was more persistent than most and, anyway, the Commonweal was not what it had once been.

She had tracked the man down when he next arrived in Collegium. Now she had a goal, she could hold out in the face of her guilt and the accusing stares of others. She had sat down with Allanbridge over a jug of wine, and told him she wanted to go to the Commonweal.

‘I know that Spider-kinden live there,’ she had pointed out, for one of Stenwold’s companions, on his abortive mission there, had been such a man.

Allanbridge had shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said carelessly, as though her entire future did not depend on his answer. ‘What does old Sten Maker say?’

‘He doesn’t know. He must never know. I don’t want him coming after me.’ Her confession had come rushing out in a jumble of words.

She had known that he must surely refuse her. She had fumbled away her one best chance of accomplishing the end that she had set herself. Allanbridge was an old acquaintance of her foster-father’s, so he would hardly agree to such deception.

But Allanbridge had taken a long, deep breath, staring at her. ‘I hear your old man killed the Emperor, and paid for it,’ he had murmured at last. The truth was not entirely thus, but it was the story everyone was telling – even the Wasps themselves, it seemed – and Tynisa saw no reason to correct the historians. She had simply nodded, silently waiting out the long pauses the Beetle aviator had now fallen back on.

‘A shame,’ the man had grunted, ‘ only Mantis I ever got on with. But this is more than just him, right?’

Another small nod from her.

‘I remember Jerez,’ Allanbridge had said, unwillingly. ‘A lot of bad business there – lots of stuff I don’t even want to understand. But I hear the news, since. I know what’s happened to . . . to the Moth. So maybe I see level with you.’

She remembered that she had been holding her breath at this point.

‘Spit and sails, I don’t like dodging Sten Maker, but he wasn’t there,’ Allanbridge had continued sadly, a man finding an unwelcome duty at his door that he could not avoid. ‘I was there, though, so I can take you to the Commonweal and keep it quiet. That kind of shipping