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opportunities it gave but because it made sense of the world in a way that nothing else did. It assisted him as he constructed his own philosophy.
    ‘I still think it’d be easier if you just catch his eye, leave the rest to us. No need for it to be your hand on the knife,’ his underling said. He was a plain Beetle man, scarred about the face and missing an ear: competent enough, but with no desire to be anything more than a thug. He was exactly what Sands aspired to distance himself from, symbolically if not actually.
    ‘It must be me,’ Sands told him. ‘Do you think I’m not capable?’
    ‘No, chief, but—’
    ‘So no argument.’ A gesture from Sands sent the man off. He then carefully tucked the book away in the folds of his robe, after marking his page. It was difficult to exist as an intelligent man on Collegium’s underside. Collegium preached virtue, humanism, the duty of people to work for each other’s benefit, or so the College philosophers claimed. Only thus would the lot of people everywhere, of all kinden and social classes, be improved. Charity and consideration were the watchwords. Even the most grasping of Beetle magnates made a public show of open-handedness. How, in the face of that, could Sands justify himself: the robber and the killer, the agent of corruption?
    He had studied long and hard, with the assistance of Spiderland philosophers who had written on the same issues a century ago. They had all manner of glib answers for the conscientious Beetle: good deeds could only exist against a background of evil, the actions of predators promoted excellence in their prey, complacency was ever the enemy of progress. Sands was all the while constructing his own philosophy of the virtue of criminality. Day by day, book by book, he was justifying his own existence.
    And when I am an old man, I shall publish , he thought, but, for now, business intervenes.
    His Fly-kinden scout, Filipo, dropped down nearby. ‘Coming right now,’ he reported curtly. Somehow the Fly-kinden never seemed bothered about right and wrong; Sands envied them such freedom.
    ‘Keep watch,’ he directed, and then stepped out into the street.
    It was late. His sources had been keeping good track of his target, who was obliging enough to make appointments that continued past dusk. He was hurrying home now, and heading through a good enough area of town. Sands’s cronies were twitchy, out of place, while Sands himself was not. No watchman, seeing him there, would have cast a suspicious eye over him: a tall almost-Beetle in neatly folded robes, the very picture of a well-to-do middle merchant or scribe, or else the servant of some wealthy man.
    Sands saw his assignation hurrying towards him, a thin Beetle with an agitated step, wrapped up in his own worries, clutching a satchel to his chest. Sands stepped half into his path without attracting his attention, and had to resort to calling out the man’s name.
    ‘Master Failwright?’
    The shipping merchant stopped, snapped out of his own thoughts, peering at Sands. He saw a respectable, mild-featured Beetle, at least so far as the dusk revealed to him.
    ‘Do I know you?’ he asked, suspicious but not alarmed.
    ‘Master Failwright, I am sent from Master Mendawl.’
    ‘I know Master Mendawl,’ Failwright allowed.
    ‘Your words at the Assembly have disturbed him, Master Failwright. He was hoping to discuss them with you,’ Sands said, and saw how a spark of hope lit up in the man’s eyes.
    ‘Of course, of course,’ Failwright was saying. ‘I knew someone would take notice. Let Maker and Broiler and the others stew. He’ll see me tonight?’
    ‘He stays up for you in a hostelry near here,’ Sands confirmed. ‘I’m only glad I found you.’
    Failwright nodded, a man with a mission. ‘Take me to him,’ he directed, and Sands’s hand offered the side-street to him. Sands’s accomplices had made themselves shadows, and Failwright marched along happily under his