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A burly Mynan Soldier Beetle hauled up into view someone who had been hidden up until now behind Salma’s warriors. It was a Wasp-kinden in a long coat, with his hands tied behind his back, palm-to-palm.
‘His name’s Gaved, he says. He caught Che as she fled the Wasp army, but we were in time to turn that around. We’ve questioned him and he claims he’s not in their army, just some kind of freelancer.’ Salma tailed off, looking past Stenwold’s shoulder to Balkus, who was pointing at the prisoner, jogging Stenwold’s elbow. ‘What is it, Ant-kinden?’
‘He was in that museum place,’ Balkus stated. ‘Doing the robbery.’
Stenwold stared at the captive, unable to decide whether he recognized him or not. ‘If that’s true, we have more to talk to him about than you might think,’ he advised Salma. ‘You’re happy to hand him over to us?’
‘One more mouth to feed is no good to us, and besides, he doesn’t seem to know much about the Wasp Seventh that’s camped north-east of here. He’s all yours.’
When they were ready to depart, Tynisa was the last to climb into the automotive. Even after Salma and his followers had returned to a camp already being packed up ready to move on, she stared after him, holding her face expresionless with all the craft and Art she had ever possessed.
‘Yes,’ said Achaeos, ‘it was here.’ He looked about the room, once the centre of a rich man’s pleasure, now dusty and untended with just empty cases and stands. The owner’s family had taken everything of value, so only the house itself remained. Collegium’s economy had not yet revived enough for buildings to be changing hands.
‘We caught them in the act, really,’ Aria
‘Here.’ The Moth had settled by a small, delicate, wooden table. ‘Right here.’ He leant heavily on his cane, and she saw strain on his grey face that could be due to his injuries or something else. ‘Souls preserve us, how long was it sitting here?’
‘What?’ Tisamon demanded, stepping into the museum room. ‘What was here?’
‘Don’t you feel it? Tisamon?’ Achaeos demanded. Aria
‘Yes,’ Achaeos said, ‘you feel something at least, as well you should. In the last of the Days of Lore, Tisamon, when the world was being turned upside-down, there was a ritual performed, a desperate, depraved spell of all spells, and when it went wrong, when it twisted from its makers’ grip, it caused such anguish to the world as you and I and any of us here ca
Tisamon’s jaw was now set, with a certain look in his eyes that Aria
‘The heart of the ritual. The very core of the Darakyon. And now it has been stolen,’ Achaeos confirmed.
‘And the Darakyon wishes it…?’
‘Unclaimed. The Darakyon was happiest when it lay here, unknown and unsuspected, unused, surrounded by indomitable walls of disbelief, but now it is out in the world again.’ He looked from the Mantis to Aria
‘Truly?’ Aria
‘The Days of Lore are gone,’ Achaeos agreed. ‘But to unleash the power contained within this – a box just so big, slightly too large to grip easily with one hand – would change the world. Your Beetles and the rest would not know it for magic, but it would touch and taint them: it would spread darkness in minds and hearts, breed madness, sour friendships and poison loves. And whoever made use of it would be, I’d wager, no more able to control it than its original creators.’
‘And some Spider-kinden now has it,’ Tisamon added, ‘who could be anywhere.’
‘Do you have so little faith in a seer’s powers?’ Achaeos asked him mildly. ‘I know who has it, because I have met with her before. I feel her echo here in this room.’
‘I saw a man,’ Aria
‘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,’ Aria
‘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?’ Aria
‘There is one coming soon who also knows,’ Achaeos said. His words silenced them.
‘How…?’ Aria
‘Stenwold has snared a rare catch,’ Achaeos explained. ‘Fate’s weave favours us.’
‘Achaeos.’ Tisamon’s tone was flat, but Aria