Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky (best young adult book series .txt) 📕

“Then I so swear, and may you and your master regret it all the days of your lives.”

“Good enough for me”, the Fly said, almost cheerily, and she dropped down to the cage. Evandter made no attempt to strike at her.

“What about me?” Cordwick asked. There was a moment of bewildered silence as Fly and Mantis regarded him.

“Who the spit are you?” the Fly asked eventually.

“Cordwick Scosser of Helleron, procurer,” he told her, mustering what dignity he could in a cage too low to stand up in.

“That mean pimp or thief where you come from?” she asked him.

“Procurer of goods,” he stressed, as if pressing a claim to the aristocracy.

“Well, thief, you’re not in my brief. You stay here.”

Cordwick, who a moment ago would have been happy enough to share the cage with nothing more threatening than a corpse, suddenly felt the yawning chasm of dark water below him. “Please, you can’t just leave me here.”

“Doing good deeds for the sake of it got put on hold after the Empire invaded,” the Fly told him, without sympathy.

“But I’ll be executed, or enslaved!” Cordwick insisted.

“You’ll be in good company. It’s very fashonable these days. Everbody’s doing it.” She stood as tall as she could and called out “All right, Sergeant!” in a voice that rolled and resounded across the cavern until the waters claimed it.

“No no,” Cordwick said hurriedly. “Look, I don’t know what your master’s about or who he is or if he’s the Rekef or what, but I’m useful, I’m a good thief. I can get in just about anywhere, talking or lock-breaking.”

“Yet you’re the one on the wrong side of the bars,” she pointed out. A Wasp with a lantern had appeared at the portal above.

“One mistake! Don’t let me rot here just because I slipped up once. Please, I’ll serve your master ‘til my dying day, please, please don’t leave me in here. Don’t leave me to the Wasps.” A sudden inspiration struck him. “You’re Inapt, or you’d have brought the keys yourself. The Mantis is Inapt. Your master, I bet he’s Inapt. Locks, machines, door-catches, incendiaries – you want them? I’m your man. Come on now, give me a chance.”

Her solemn eyes regarded him, a weight of doubt that seemed too great for her small shoulders to carry. “If I say kill him, will you kill him?” she asked, even as the guard above took wing to come down to them.

“I’ll kill him even if you don’t, like as not,” Evandter said lazily. “Better to tell me if you don’t want him dead.”

The Wasp’s wings brought him up on the cage’s very edge, as far from Evandter as he could manage. “You’re done?”

“I’ll take them both,” she confirmed and Cordwick felt like weeping in relief.

“Papers only said the Mantis,” the Wasp muttered stubbornly, but it was clear he believed her Rekef credentials because he was already fumbling for the keys. Cordwick had never tried to pass himself off as Rekef but he had met a few of the Outlander recently, as he set about his one-man mission to get rich from the Commonweal invasion, and he knew that the regular army held them in utter dread.

“You fly, Beetle?” the woman asked him, as he ended up crouched atop the cage, gripping the bars. She and the Mantis and their jailer were standing there quite happily, heedless of the drop and the water. Cordwick shook his head and saw a suffering expression come to her face, already regretting springing him. Still, if she changed her mind now it would look odd to the Wasps. Just get me out of the castle, Cordwick thought, and then you never need see me again.

“I’ll call for the winch,” said the jailer, clearly amused.

There was nothing in the world so lovely as the sun, Cordwick decided as he was led out into it. Even in the stockade that the Wasps had bound about one arm of Maille, where men and machines and beasts jostled for space, the air was cool and fresh, the freedom and space intoxicating. He took deep breaths, turning his face to the sky and squinting against the light.

When he next looked, the Fly was regarding him dubiously, seeing him in good light as a Beetle-kinden man in ragged clothes, just the right side of young, just the wrong side of thin – which still made him relatively slender for his kind – short, slope-shouldered, a mild, dark face and thinning hair. Beside him, Evandter looked like some Bad Old Days personification of death, his dark hair worn long and half-shrouding his lean, angular face, his pale skin laced with random scars. The jagged barbs flexed and jutted from his forearms as though possessed of their own bloodlust, entirely separate from their owner’s.

“Lieutenant.” A Wasp bustled up, followed by a Grasshopper slave who set down a little table with quill and ink. The Fly-kinden made her mark on a few pieces of paper and the Wasp nodded. “You’re sure you’re safe with him,” he asked, nodding at Evandter and ignoring Cordwick entirely. “I can detail you some guards if you want.” He seemed genuinely concerned, but perhaps it was just that he wanted to do right by the Rekef.

“Him?” she scoffed. “Have you heard how many nobles he gutted, the banditry, the raids? He’s done more harm to the Commonweal than half the fighting Seventh.” She didn’t quite claim that Evandter was a Rekef agent all along, but the implication hung in the air clear enough.

When they had trekked far enough for the slopes of the Commonweal countryside to put them out of sight of Maille, the Fly-kinden turned to Cordwick. “You really can’t fly?” she asked him.

“My people aren’t known for it,” he replied, in understatement.

“Then let your feet take you where they will, thief. I can’t see you’re much use,”

A wave of glad relief washed through Cordwick, only to crash against the intractable wall that was Evandter.

“No,” the Mantis said And when the Fly