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Now she sheltered in the Windlass until Allanbridge sought her out again. In the hold he sat down with a sigh, frowning at her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and sorry she was, not for the words spoken but because she had jeopardized her tenuous hold on his good will.

‘Commonweal hasn’t been open to men like me since forever,’ he pointed out gruffly, ‘so don’t you judge. Just so happens there’re people there who’ll trade with the likes of me now, only all right, it’s not the princes. There are no official channels open to a Lowlander, see? And it’s not as simple as you think. Ma Leyd keeps me informed. I need her.’

Tynisa nodded. ‘And what does she ask in return?’

‘Those from the Hitch that want it, I carry free, when I head back south. Princep Salma’s an attractive second chance to some. Plus there’s some trade I do for Ma, but that’s the main thing. For years there’s only been pissant places like this for those that want out of the Commonweal but don’t know where else to go. Princep’s a little slice of the north in the middle of the Lowlands, and word of it’s spread.’

She must have looked doubting, because he shook his head, standing up to go back above. ‘Tomorrow morning I’ll put you down close enough to Suon Ren for a brisk walk to get you there, and then you go off and . . . well, from there you’re on your own. I’ve a feeling that you won’t find the Dragonflies quite what you’re expecting, girl, but that’s none of my business, and the best of luck to you.’

Two

Salma, Prince-Minor Salme Dien: the only Commonwealer student to attend at Collegium in living memory. He had been sent there because the Commonweal had lost its war with the Wasp-kinden, and Prince-Major Felipe Shah had foreseen that the Lowlanders might become allies against a common enemy. The boy had come to Collegium in his grand finery, with his exotic manners and his golden skin and his inimitably mocking smile.

That year at the College, he and Tynisa had danced around each other like two moths circling the same lantern, closer and closer and yet . . . always when she felt she could reach out and find his hand extended back towards her, he was away again. She wove her webs but never caught him. Always his dance took him away from her, until it was she who followed him, trying to match his steps.

But she would have had him eventually, she knew. Given time, shielded from distraction, he would have been hers. This was an article of faith with her.

But Salma had been distracted along the way by a Butterfly-kinden dancing girl who seemed to change her name every other day, but these days just called herself Grief, as though she had some kind of monopoly on that emotion. Tynisa had never believed in magic, but she found that she could readily concede that Salma had been enchanted by the glow-skinned Butterfly witch.

Even then, she had known in her deepest heart that it would not last. Salma was a fighter, a flier, a man who lived his life without chains. He would need more in the end. He would come back to Tynisa, who alone could match him in all things.

The Empire had not given him the chance, though. Salma, because of who he was and the society that had given birth to him, had become a rallying point for the dispossessed and the refugees. He had led his makeshift army against the Imperial advance, and there, crossing blades with a Wasp general, he had died. And thus the adamantine cord of their joint destiny, which she was sure had been on the very cusp of drawing them close again, had been parted for ever

She awoke with a start, baffled by the curving contours of the room about her, by the turbulent swaying of her surroundings. Most of all she awoke into the evaporating sense of Salma. Sometimes she dreamt of him rather than of the others, and those dreams were warm and bright. Waking from them cut as deep as any number of nightmares.

He was there as she woke. She did not see him, but his presence was unmistakable, sitting on the edge