He was Kadro, Master Kadro of the Great College of the city of Collegium, which was half a world away and no help to him now. A little Fly-kinden man, long hair going grey and face unshaven, waiting for the pitchest dark before beginning his work. Oh, I have striven all my life against the way my race is seen. The perception of Fly-kinden as thieves, as rogues, as a feckless, rootless underclass in any city you cared to name. He had thought that he was beyond that, Master Kadro the antiquarian and historian, who had stood before a class of twenty avid scholars and propounded his learning. He had stood on a box, certainly, so as to be seen over the lectern, but he had stood there nonetheless.

And here he was, skulking like a villain as the evening drew on and the city below him grew quiet and still. The farmers would have come in from their fields by now. They would be lighting the beacons along the great wall. They would eventually be going to sleep. Those sentries that remained would be blind to the night hanging beyond their small fires. Kadro, who could see in the dark as the locals could not, would then strike. It was a poor way for a guest to treat his hosts, but he was beginning to believe that his hosts had not been entirely honest with him. We sighted the walls of Khanaphes today. After the wastelands it was a view to take the breath away. Golden stone raised higher than the walls of Collegium or of any Ant city-state – and with statues piled on that – architecturally bewildering but, given the people that live here, I suppose it's not surprising. Huge buildings and broad avenues; every major building constructed vastly out of scale. For a man of my stature it was daunting – even for the locals it must make them feel like midgets. Beyond the walls, the strip of green that is the river's attendant foliage runs north, a single channel of life in the desert.