‘I saw a man,’ Arianna said.

‘Yet she was a woman, nonetheless,’ Achaeos corrected, ‘the same that spied among us in Helleron, taking the face of that halfbreed artificer.’

‘But you killed her!’ Tisamon objected.

‘I thought I had,’ Achaeos said. The rush of magic, in this city of all places, seemed to shake him. Standing in the shadow of the missing box, it was as though all the artifice and craft of the Beetles had never been. ‘I see now I was wrong, for she was here, in whatever guise, and she left with the Shadow Box of the Darakyon.’

‘For where?’ Tisamon demanded. ‘For the Empire?’

‘I will know,’ Achaeos said. ‘Within a day, or perhaps two. I am pressing with all the power I possess and I think that, even at this distance, the things of the Darakyon lend me more strength. They are desperate that the box should not be used, for its possessor would then command them. Soon I will be able to look upon a map and see it there, as plain as writing. Tisamon, will you go with me?’

‘You’re not fit to go anywhere,’ Arianna pointed out. Tisamon gave her an angry glare and she spread her hands. ‘What? He’s injured. Stenwold would have a fit if he knew the Moth was even on his feet.’

‘Yet I must go,’ Achaeos insisted, ‘and I would have you with me, Tisamon – and your daughter too. A swift strike, wherever the box has gone to, to bring it back, safe from harm.’

‘For this I will go as far as the world can take me,’ Tisamon assured her. ‘Tynisa must make her own decisions, but I am with you.’

Achaeos’s blank eyes gave no clues. ‘Thank you, Servant of the Green,’ he said. ‘But we must arm ourselves in knowledge, first.’

‘What knowledge?’ Arianna asked him. ‘Who knows more, of this? Doctor Nicrephos did, but he’s dead. Surely he was the only one.’