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

Evandter sneered. “To the pits with swearing and oaths. Why should I?”

“Because your oath holds only to when we have freed her. If you will cross swords with me then, I will oblige you,” Darien told him.

The words transformed the Mantis, just for a moment. In that brief second his mocking expression, all the slouching despite of his stance, had vanished away, and Cordwick had a brief show of a younger man, a brighter one: some Evandter that might have been, had the world not been so very wicked and taught him so well. Then the old snarl was back but the Mantis was nodding. “Lead me, my prince,” he invited, with a curl of his lip.

“And who is this?” At last those amber eyes pinned Cordwick through, and the Beetle stammered out his name.

“He’s a thief. Cordwick Scosser. Evandter wants to kill him or keep him about. Send him away, I would,” Tesse explained, “or let the Mantis have him.”

“Cordwick Scosser.” Darien pronounced the Lowlander name carefully. “You understand what we’re about, here?”

“Off to rescue some noblewoman,” Cordwick replied guardedly.

“To rescue Nysse Ceann, because she and I are promised, because it is my duty, and because I love her,” Darien confirmed. “Did you swear yourself to me?”

Did I? Even as he wondered, Cordwick had opened his mouth for the instictive denial, but Evandter said “Yes” before he could say “No.”

The Mantis grinned coldly. “Oh he didn’t say it as an oath, but his kind never do. Your Fly let him out because he said he would help. ‘Serve you to his dying day,’ were the words, I think. Free him and I’ll kill him as an oathbreaker.”

“What is he to you?” Darien asked.

“He talks too much and I want to kill him,” Evandter replied. Cordwick looked between the two of them: relics from an age that industry and the Empire were scouring from the face of the world, and yet here he was caught between a prince’s duty and a Mantis’ bloodlust.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Cordwick said faintly, “I’ll help in the rescue, if that’s all right. How far to Del Halle?”

They moved across the face of the Commonweal like fugitives, far from any princely procession that Cordwick had imagined. Then he brought to mind the fact that this countryside, the ditches and the copses, the untilled fields and the hollow, abandoned villages, none of this was the Commonweal any more. The Empire had, after considerable choking and gnawing, swallowed it all. Prince Lowre Darien was dethroned and in the shadow of his enemy. These were the captured principalities, taken in blood, sealed in ink when the Monarch signed the Treaty of Pearl.

They moved more by night than by day, avoided any human contact. Darien hunted for them, his bow bringing down stoneflies or goats gone feral. He moved through the grown-wild land as though he had lived under the stars all his life. Evandter was seldom seen, ranging ahead or dragging behind or off murdering children for all Cordwick knew. Still, whenever they paused or rested or started a sheltered fire, there he was, the professional brigand emerging from the landscape.

The Moth woman was seldom absent from Darien’s side and he conferred with her often. Cordwick understood that she was some manner of advisor, and then that she was some manner of magician, who told Darien where to find game and had found for him the whereabouts of his lost love. Her name was Philomaea, he learned from Tesse, and she had been in Darien’s retinue since before the war. If she had dressed for it, she would have been beautiful, but it took Cordwick a while to realise this because she had that quiet, drab look that most Moth-kinden had, all in-looking and severe. He saw what she could be in the rare moments when her face truly came to life, and that was only when she looked directly at Lowre Darien, which was only when he was not looking at her. This was so guttingly tragic that Cordwick, who was used to having people to talk to, wanted to discuss it. As Darien scared him, Philomaea ignored him and Evandter actively wanted to kill him, he was left with Tesse, and he could not talk to Tesse about that because, when she stole glimpses of Lowre Darien, her expression was the same.

She was a tough and prickly little thing but she needed to talk too and, although she ventured the occasional lighthearted banter with Darien, there was too much bottled up within her to keep that going. Philomaea ignored her, too, and if Evandter hadn’t got as far as threatening her life, he was still not much of a conversationalist. So it was that, when they stopped to rest out the noon hours, under cover and hidden away, she spent her words on Cordwick. They were derisory words, mostly, but it was better than hostile silence. Mostly she mocked his credentials as a thief. How could a Beetle-kinden possibly survive on what those thick fingers could pilfer? This allowed him to ask about her own pedigree. She was Imperial Fly-kinden, as he’d guessed, and she told him she’d done five years as a Consortium clerk, in which time she learned to fake official documents with great precision. Then she’d left to pursue her chosen career, taking with her several hundred gold imperials originally slated as Slave Corps back pay. What was her chosen career? Cordwick asked her.

“Thea repa,” she replied mysteriously, on the basis that he would certainly never have heard of it. Cordwick was a people person, though, and fond of street entertainment, specifically as an opportunity for his thick fingers to do as much pilfering as humanly possible, and his face split into an incredulous smile.

“What? Little Miss Superior is a street-dancer? Ribbons and knives and that? And a thief, and who knows what else you’ve had to do, when prancing about in the air wouldn’t pay your way! Why we’re