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‘Oh, it is,’ Thalric told him. ‘Believe me, it is.’

That night, when they were well past Solamen and after Che had gone to sleep, Varmen said, ‘I’ve got to ask. You and her, what’s going on?’

Thalric stared at him coldly. ‘None of your business, Sergeant.’ He had guessed the man’s rank within minutes of meeting with him in Myna.

Varmen held his closed hands up before him, a gesture of appeasement. ‘It’s just that, I reckoned you were in charge, and she was your woman, you know – or your slave, or maybe a scribe or something. But this is her journey, isn’t it? And you’re tagging along.’

‘Like I said, it’s not your business to worry about. Just get us to the Commonweal.’ Thalric was annoyed at how transparent the situation had become. Perhaps I should put a hand on the rudder of this little trip? As a Wasp-kinden man, he felt that he should be offended that a woman of a lesser kinden was expecting him to trail after her. If he worked at it, he could get up quite a head of self-righteousness, but he did have to work at it. To his surprise, he found that, left to his own devices, he wouldn’t care much.

Of course, I have no idea precisely where we’re going, or why, so a fine fool I’d look by demanding to take the lead and then having to ask the way. Che had decided that she had to save her foster-sister, Tynisa. Save her from what? Thalric had no fond memories of the half-Spider girl who had tried to kill him on two separate occasions. In his opinion, it was not saving that she needed, so much as putting out of her misery like a mad animal. She stabbed Achaeos, after all. Why doesn’t Che want her dead, after that?

Unless the girl’s playing her cards close, and that is what she does want after all . . .

His memories of that brief sequence of incomprehensible events was far clearer than he was comfortable with. They had all been in Jerez, and had just recovered that wretched piece of tat that Achaeos the Moth had called the ‘Shadow Box’. Why the nasty little relic was so important, the Moth-kinden was never able to explain to Thalric’s satisfaction, but then Thalric was in no position to make demands, being there on sufferance, nominally as their prisoner and still recovering from his wounds.

Anyway, they had got hold of the thing, and Achaeos had been fingering it avariciously and then, without warning, he and Tynisa – and even Tynisa’s murderous father Tisamon – had just dropped as though simultaneously struck on the head.

I should have taken the opportunity to kill the lot of them and take the box myself, Thalric thought, but it was almost by rote, old motivations grown stale since he had abandoned his role as a Rekef officer. What had actually happened was that he and Gaved, the other Wasp present, had just goggled at one another uselessly, tried and failed to rouse the sleepers, and then Tynisa had jumped up and put her rapier into Achaeos – very nearly a fatal wound there and then.

Thalric and Gaved had done their best to subdue her, but in the end only the intervention of one of Gaved’s local cronies had managed that. It was a wonder she didn’t kill the lot of us, Thalric admitted in the privacy of his own mind, where he could afford to be honest with himself.

And yet Che seems to want no kind of revenge, but instead seeks to save the bloody-handed halfbreed woman from some indistinct threat. Unwelcome memories stirred inside Thalric, and he fought them down. I have no idea what that threat is, he insisted to himself. He was not ready to face such thoughts, and he might never be.

He was, however, aware that Che did not seek revenge, because Che was not Wasp-kinden, or Mantis-kinden, or even Spider-kinden. Her people did not place such a premium on personal honour. Moreover, Che saw the world very differently even from the bulk of her own people, for she suffered under a peculiar curse that had fallen upon her at the end of the war.

When Achaeos died, Thalric reflected uncomfortably, trying to dismiss any possible connection between the two. Still, the thoughts hounded him: