Onrey felt that he’d put up a good front with the delegates from Opal Hill and Underhill Towers.  Though the appearance of Handon Burge, the largest one, was alarming, Onrey’s father had taught him well, and he managed to speak to him as if there was nothing unusual whatsoever about taking tea with a creature ten times his size.  It seemed that Warbeck had tried to cause trouble in Underhill Towers, too, but Handon and the others had succeeded where Colwyn had failed and brought him to heel.

“In fact,” said Handon, “he seemed to think that you were our landlord.”

Pin Iridescence, separated from her siblings, let out a wild, screeching laugh.  “Heaven forbid!  He’d certainly like us to think he was our landlord.”  She smiled at Onrey and he dutifully smiled back, although, in truth, he wished she hadn’t interrupted.  He was keen to hear more of Handon’s story.

Unfortunately, at that point, one of Pin’s brothers started shouting about something or other, so Handon was put off once again.  Onrey’s attention drifted over to the top of the veranda, where he could see Kai fluttering about awkwardly.  It occurred to him that the moth had, so far, kept himself separate from the rest of the gathering.  It wasn’t such a surprise, Onrey supposed.  Somebody of his size could easily find himself lost in a crowd.

Luckily, Colwyn remembered that he was supposed to be speaking to Handon.  “Was this man quite tall?  Long brown hair and stubble?”

The girl Jeanette gasped, as if she truly hadn’t put the pieces together until just now.  “Dad?”

Onrey chuckled.  “Why am I not surprised?” he asked, more to see how she reacted than anything else.  She’d been so smugly convinced, this entire time, that she was on top of everything, that it would be interesting to see how she behaved when things didn’t go as she expected.

He never got to see.  Once again, he was distracted by Kai.  And this time, he saw what Kai was holding. 

There was more shouting from behind him, but Onrey barely heard it.  He moved to the side of the veranda to better see what the moth was doing.  His tiny black eyes were trained on one of the Iridescence brothers, and he was scraping a match across the roof tiles.

Onrey coughed, and Kai turned to look at him.

There was a moment in which neither was sure what to do next.  Onrey couldn’t step forward and demand to know what the moth thought he was doing.  There was enough shouting going on already.  It would all be lost in the bigger noise.

Is this because the Iridescences locked Ballantine in their attic?  Or is it something more?  Instead of asking, Onrey just put out a hand.  He wasn’t even sure why he did it, what he was expecting to happen, but it seemed to work.  The moth waited a few seconds, and then dropped the match into his hand.

Instead of closing his fingers around it, Onrey kept his hand held out.  Kai stared at him for a little while, and then fluttered down to sit on it.  Onrey nodded, and took him a little way around the side of the house so that they could talk in private.

Onrey wanted answers, but he didn’t know where to begin.  Had Kai planned to light the match and drop it on Bo Iridescence’s head?  Surely he could see that the match would have gone out as it fell, or, at the very best, singed the ends of his hair?  Surely he couldn’t have been planning, even in such a muddled way, to actually burn somebody to death?

A thought crossed Onrey’s mind- when the people of Opal Hill joined together, they turned into a strange, treelike being.  Onrey didn’t know if they were more flammable in that state, but (to the untrained eye, at least) they certainly looked as if they could be.  Had Kai been hoping that the Iridescence family would stay merged all evening?  Had he been envisioning wiping out all six of them in a seven-foot inferno?

It was difficult to reconcile these thoughts with the little creature who’d been so concerned about him as he recovered from what Warbeck had done.  Onrey had to remind himself that his job here was not to try and see into everybody’s souls; it was to attend to the task at hand, whatever it was.  “What was it you were trying to do?” he asked the moth, doing his best to keep his voice soft.

Kai shook his head.  “Doesn’t matter.”  He seemed to speak through gritted teeth.  “Wouldn’t have worked, anyway.”

Onrey was sure he felt the moth trembling on his hand.  He thought back through everything that had been said this evening, and wondered whether to voice a guess at Kai’s motive.  Revenge for the Iridescences’ mistreatment of Ballantine, perhaps?

Before he could say anything, however, Kai continued.  “They’re the reason that…”  He seemed to become short of breath.  “I wasn’t always a moth.  The Iridescences… they…”

Onrey barely repressed a gasp.  He should have known, of course, that a talking moth couldn’t have come from nowhere, but he just hadn’t had any occasion to think about it.  Has the poor moth once been a person like himself?  Had the Iridescences changed him and then locked him away like they had Ballantine?  If so, then no wonder Kai had reacted so badly to Onrey’s family imprisoning the Warbeck girls.

He found his voice.  “Do Ballantine and the rest know about that?”

“Colwyn does,” the moth said dully, “So do his nieces.  But the rest of them… no.”

“Then you need to tell them.”  Onrey turned in the direction of the hubbub at the front of the house.  “They’re deciding what’s to be done about the Iridescence family.  They need to hear what you have to say.”

Kai shook his head again.  “I can’t,” he whispered, “I can’t go near them.  Not after…  I just can’t.”

Onrey opened his mouth, sure that he was going to huff in frustration and tell Kai not to be such a coward, but instead, something different came out.  “Then I’ll go over there as your representative.  I’ll tell them what you said and insist on it being honoured.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”  Onrey held his head a little higher.  “You were the one who showed me how to contact Colwyn Ballantine, after all.  I wouldn’t want it said that Onrey Tavin refused to pay a debt.”

“I…  Well…  Thanks for that.  It really means a lot.”  Kai had stopped shaking.  All the tension seemed to have left his body.

“Think nothing of it.”  Onrey reached over to the wall beside them, and neatly placed Kai on it.  “Now, you wait there.  I’ll do whatever I can.”

(To be continued)