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Sunrise showed them sparsely wooded canal banks providing ideal ambush territory, and the local brigands were predictable enough to take advantage of it. The first arrow whipping from between the trees actually fell short, a remarkably poor shot for a Commonwealer, but soon there were plenty of other shafts in the air. Skelling’s crew and passengers crouched behind the pavises, waiting for a more personal introduction to their assailants. Che had the impression that these wooden shields were Skelling’s own innovation, rather than standard fittings aboard Commonweal barges.

– dark stone halls, and only a guttering lamp to guide her – Che blinked and shook her head uncertainly. The sun was bright in the east behind them, and the sporadic thud-thud-thud of arrows into wood had slowed as their assailants evidently realized they were simply wasting ammunition. Everyone around her was now drawing weapons: the Wasps with their cross-hilted shortswords and the Dragonflies with their punch-swords, whose blades jutted straight out from the knuckle-guard. She hesitantly laid a hand on her own weapon’s hilt.

‘Che?’ she heard Thalric address her, obviously noticing something in her face that worried him.

‘I’m . . .’ she began, but lacked the words to say just what she was. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, which turned out to be a gross exaggeration because—

– the slave Gjegevey leading the way, his own eyes proof against the darkness, and how she envied that now. In her dreams, these tombs had been visible by a curious grey half-light, devoid of colours, and she had wondered if that was how the Moth-kinden saw through their blank white eyes –

There was combat all around her. She heard a clatter of steel on steel, and the brief crack and sizzle of Wasp stingshot, the very sound of it striking fear into her stomach, but its wielder was standing right over her, defending her prone form.

‘Thalric?’ she called out.

‘Che, get up!’ he shouted down at her, as his hand spoke golden fire again. She heard a man scream, and a dying Dragonfly-kinden dropped to the deck before her eyes, a hole charred into his leather cuirass.

I’m with Wasps, fighting Dragonflies. The thought rattled through her mind. I was in Khanaphes . . .

No! I wasn’t in Khanaphes. That was the dream, but last night I didn’t catch any dreams. I let them go.

Thalric was crouching beside her, in a moment of stillness while the barge’s crew and Varmen continued fighting on every side.

‘Che, what’s wrong?’ the Wasp demanded.

‘Thalric . . . I don’t know. Help me.’

His face said eloquently that he had no possible way to do so.

‘The Empress . . .’ she started. And then—

The walls and floor of this place were slimy, so that each foot set down skidded slightly, then came up trailing threads of ooze. The lamp that Gjegevey had started for her set every surface glistening unhealthily.

They had been underground for long enough that Seda knew it would be dawn already above, but down here was a labyrinth of vast halls, lined with statues, every wall inscribed with the ancient glyphs of the Khanaphir. For hours they had walked, at first with the old Woodlouse choosing their path, and later with Seda herself taking the lead. By then she realized why they were finding nothing but empty chambers: the power here had been turning them aside.

‘Stop,’ she ordered the old Woodlouse.

‘We have been travelling for some, mm, considerable time,’ he admitted. ‘One might almost think that we were, ah, going round in circles.’

‘It is a test,’ she decided. ‘One I do not appreciate, but I shall pass it nonetheless.’

‘There is, hm, a great deal of, ah, latent power here,’ Gjegevey conjectured cautiously. ‘I would hesitate to . . .’

‘Yes, you would – and you would be wise to. I am of a different order, however. I am the Empress of the Wasps.’

‘I am not sure such titles will, ahm, mean a great deal to our hosts.’ The Woodlouse-kinden’s hollow eyes glittered in the lamplight.

‘Then I shall enlighten them,’ she replied pleasantly, and thrust a hand in the air as though