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

“Is that why the Wasps caught you, Beetle? Your big mouth?” she demanded. To his surprise her hard shell was cracked; she seemed almost on the verge of tears.

“Pretty much,” he said pointedly turning the conversational lamp onto himself. “I was dressed as a Consortium factor and talking my way into the big war loot depository in Shoal Acer, only I got carried away with my life story and someone saw the holes.”

She looked at him cautiously, gauging his willingness to let the previous subject sink out of sight, and even then she snatched a quick glance at Darien, sleeping just then with Philomaea watching over him. I see, Cordwick understood. Not good enough for him, is it? He’s a prince and you’re just a rover and a thief, but you’re doing your absolutely tiny best to be the prince’s right hand woman, capable and loyal and utterly professional. She was younger than he’d thought, too, perhaps no more than twenty. She would have been a mere child when the war started, not even on her ill-fated apprenticeship at the Consortium.

“So...” He glanced about, seeing a conspicuous absence, and ventured. “The prince and Evandter, then,” getting the stress on the Mantis’ awkward Commonwealer name wrong. “They go back a ways.”

“Oh they tried to kill one another a good ten times before ever the Wasps came,” she confirmed. “Darien was a great bringer of justice, a Mercer and a magistrate, and Evandter was the man he never quite caught. And he was a bad one, certainly. A confirmed killer, for sheer love of blood, and a brigand leader who abandoned his men to save his own skin. He was the greatest villain of three principalities, and Darien was always after him. There are songs, even, stories of when they clashed. They fought, oh, half a dozen times, they say.”

“This is because the prince stole his woman?”

Tesse goggled at him for a moment. “No! Idiot Beetle. Nysse was betrothed to Darien, and to get at Darien Evandter stole her away. Kidnapped her, holed up with some cutthroats in a cave somewhere, set an ambush. You’ve never heard this story?”

“I prefer making them up to hearing them,” he told her.

“Must be the strain of listening to someone else’s voice for so long,” she sniped at him. “Well, Darien turned up and killed the cutthroats, and Evandter turned up and met him at the cave mouth, and probably Darien thought that the Mantis had laid the girl open and cut her up, you know. But the story goes that Evandter just told him he was a lucky man, and fled, and Nysse was untouched.” She smiled, and for once it was an expression that fit with her age. “Didn’t believe a word of it, until Himself sent me to fetch the Mantis out of Maille. They say she charmed him, used magic, used her Art, but you know what? That doesn’t last, not like that. You saw how he was when I said her name.”

“And he’s good for his word, you think?” Cordwick pressed. “I mean Mantis oaths normally, yes, but even then only if they respect you, and this one...” but Tesse’s expression had changed, and Cordwick hurriedly changed the subject, understanding from her look that Evandter had rejoined them. Still, he thought, maybe Evandter respects the prince, and so maybe his word will hold. The thought carried on, though, to darker waters, because it was just as evident that Evandter hated Lowre Darien as no man had ever hated man, the gall-bitter, vitriolic hate that the envious have-nots reserve for those that have. When they had rescued Nysse Ceann there would be blood. The two old enemies would fight their last.

It would have been a little under a tenday’s clear run to Del Halle. There were Wasps about, but they were still consolidating their vast gains from the war, spread thin and lording it over the populace only because they had killed off every noble or leader that they could catch, leaving the dispirited peasantry to trudge back to ruined fields and broken villages. Avoiding Wasp scouts, messengers and soldiers on the march would have been child’s play to any of the travelers.

Then they came across the slavers: two great automotives grinding their way over the hilly landscape, the rear sections made into cages into which perhaps two hundred Commonwealers were crammed. The vehicles, overburdened, moved at a walking pace, and most of the twenty or so Slave Corps guards walked alongside, only their officers and artificer-drivers riding.

Lying along a hill crest, lost in the long grass, Lowre Darien watched.

“No,” cautioned Philomaea, when he returned to them. “This is not your quest.”

“We will free the slaves,” the prince announced to them all. “It will be simple.”

Evandter snorted derisively, a sound that was becoming far too familiar. “You mean we kill the Wasps and release the others. That is simple.”

“You’ve lost your taste for blood?” Darien asked him archly.

“I’d happily finish the slaves as well, for the crime of being stupid and weak enough to be caught,” Evandter said lazily. “Let’s be at it.”

“You make your entrance,” Darien instructed him. “Kill all the Wasp-kinden you wish. I will slay those who goad the machines.” He turned to Tesse and Philomaea. “Take up your bows and make a good accounting of yourselves.” Those amber eyes turned on Cordwick. “You are a thief, you say? Steal the slaves from those machines.”

This isn’t theft was Cordwick’s mantra as he made his way to the abruptly halted slave wagons. Theft, for him, was an exercise in being clever, in getting in, getting the goods and getting out without anybody being the wiser. Theft was also more definitely nothing to do with hurting people. Scosser Cordwick had a terror of hurting people that was born from a childhood understanding that people would hurt him back twice as hard if he did. This wretched circus, therefore, was not theft.

Darien kicked off the festivities by