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.