‘But fighting alongside Seladoris?’ Stenwold said. ‘Alongside Spider-kinden?’

Paldron glanced back at his team. There was indeed a pointed distance between Piraeus and the Spider youth, and neither acknowledged the other. Theirs was a racehatred with roots lost in the mists of time. It was remarkable that mere money had now built over it.

‘Not such a problem,’ Paldron told him. ‘Who knows, he might even end up contesting against your… ward.’ He said the word with a sneer barely disguised within the walls of polite conversation. Stenwold bore it stolidly, for it was hardly the first time. He glanced back at his team to see how they were taking the news. To his relief, rather than seeing them dispirited or alarmed, they were gathered in a close huddle, talking tactics.

‘I could take him,’ Tynisa was murmuring. ‘You know how good I am.’

‘We do,’ Che acknowledged. ‘And you’re not that good. We saw him fight last year. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘There’s more to fighting than jabbing a sword about, little Che,’ Tynisa said, casting another glance at the opposition. She had been pointedly staring on and off at Seladoris, and he was already looking ill at ease. In the cities of the Spider-kinden it was the women who pulled the strings and made the laws, and also the women who held the deadliest name in private duel, and he knew it. ‘Let me have a chance to work on Master Mantis over there, and I’ll have him,’ she added.

‘I don’t think so,’ Che said stubbornly. ‘Look at him. Look how he looks at you.’

Tynisa had indeed gained Piraeus’s attention, but he did not look at her in the way the spectators did. Instead there was a cold, bleak hatred there, dispassionate and ageless.