It had been easy enough, in the end, to choose who he would send off to Teornis’ newly threatened land.

‘I’m grateful to you for doing this,’ he said. ‘I know you’re no agent, to be sent hither and thither as I choose.’

‘You know, I’m really rather looking forward to this,’ Nero told him. ‘I have been in every Lowlands city east of Collegium, and three or four in the Empire, too, but there’s always somewhere new. Solarno is somewhere I always meant to pay a visit.’ He grinned broadly. ‘The world just goes on and on, doesn’t it?’

‘Just be careful,’ Stenwold warned him.

It was true, though, that Nero was the best-travelled of any of them, and he had done his time in the Spiderlands too, been flavour of the month in Siennis one season, his daubs hung on everyone’s walls. Stenwold glanced back in time to see Che hugging Achaeos tight. She, too, was attired for travelling: an artificer’s leather coat and hard-wearing canvas breeches, and a big pack slung over her shoulder. She had insisted that she could not sit at home while Achaeos was off working for Collegium. Looking at her now, Stenwold still saw her as so very vulnerable, in a way that Salma and Tynisa were not. Was that just his wish to protect his own kin, or something truly powerless within her? Still, he forced himself to think. Look at what she has come through. Look at what she has accomplished. To deny her this chance and send some other simply because they were not blood-kin would be hypocrisy on his part.

‘You look after her well,’ he told Nero sternly.

‘Sten, you couldn’t have chosen a better unless you called up another Fly-kinden,’ Nero assured him, knowing that Sperra – Stenwold’s other Fly agent – had adamantly refused to go anywhere near the Spiderlands. ‘Look at it this way,’ the Fly continued. ‘Me and a Beetle-kinden, it’s perfect – you could go anywhere, two people like that. You could go into the Empire, even. I’d worry instead about the Moth-boy and his crew. They’ll stand out just about anywhere they go.’