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

being prisoners. Say only that you were turned off some distant village somewhere. You will be no worse, I hope, than you were before I came. If you are caught by any other than the Slave Corps then no doubt you will be better. The Wasps need men and women to labour in what are now their fields. You may simply be made their serfs, and not taken away as their slaves.” His voice was mild, clear and kind, and it loaned them confidence, enough to start out where before they might just have crouched in the ruin of their former slavery until new masters arrived.

Not one stayed behind. The little bands of Dragonfly-kinden and Grasshopper-kinden trekked off away from the fight, and soon they were lost to sight, each on its own private mission, each with the blessing of Prince Lowre Darien.

When the Prince’s retinue set off again, Cordwick put himself next to Tesse. She was looking at Darien’s back, and the only word for her expression was adoration. When she caught the Beetle looking at her she scowled, but then said, “Do you see?”

“I’m beginning to,” admitted Cordwick. What he actually felt was mild resentment. As a man in his chosen line of work he lived off his firm belief that he was simply cleverer than most people, and that most people were rogues who deserved to be robbed. Lowre Darien was a thorn in his ideology.

Del Halle was another of the old Commonweal castles that had been built in some previous age and which the Commonwealers themselves had scant use for before the invasion. When the Wasps had rolled in, however, the locals had rallied to their ancient fortifications to muster against the invader, and the leadshotters, the incendiaries, the rams and the trebuchets of the imperial armies had brought them down or cleaned them out, one after another. The old stones did more service to the Wasps themselves, who used them as seats for their new governors, re-edified and strengthened and fitted with artillery. Such was Del Halle. The town it overlooked was thoroughly occupied and while the townsfolk, whose exchange of serfdom for imperial slavery had not markedly altered their lot, went back to the fields to repair the damage that a dozen years of war will inflict on careful agriculture, there was a Consortium office set up in what was once the headman’s house, and drafted auxillian soldiers, Bee-kinden from some forsaken part of the east-Empire, patrolled the streets.

The castle itself was not the spanning marvel that was Maille, of unfond memory. The original structure had been a four-storey square tower, but the Wasps had been busy, installing a large ground floor and a smaller floor above, making the whole thing look like a makeshift cousin of the ziggurats they favoured back home. It stood on a rise, with a good view of many miles of newly imperialised coutryside, and must be the garrison commander’s pride and joy. Looking up at it, Cordwick’s professionalism was piqued. He saw at once that this had been a lynch-pin of the Imperial advance, every window narrowed down to a slit, every hatch reinforced, and the top of the tower roofed over with plenty of slots from which defenders could shoot flying attackers.

Prince Lowre Darien looked on the castle of Del Halle with nothing but determination. If he considered the defences, it was merely to acknowledge that the Wasps were taking the value of their prisoner seriously.

That evening found them on a bluff that overlooked the village but was still beneath the watch of the fortress. Darien and Evandter had both taken up posts where they could study the Wasps’ refortification of Del Halle, and Cordwick knew exactly the kind of entrance both were thinking about. Not a frontal assault, for not even Lowre Darien’s legend included taking castles single-handedly, but denied the chance to be forthright the old Inapt kinden always fell back on the same kind of skulking business. Stealth and creeping, prying a way in, stalking corridors, silent murder. He understood the Commonweal had boasted some limited success with this tactic, but of course the Wasps had been outside the castles in those days, not inside having had plenty of opportunity to update the place with locked shutters. Even Cordwick’s eyes, which were half-blind compared to Darien’s, could see that there were no conveniently open windows for a sneak to make his entrance. If I were here to rob the place, I wouldn’t risk it. Levering open shutters was a fool’s game in a place so obviously well-stocked with soldiers.

But it was plain that Lowre Darien’s legend also failed to include giving up and going away.

Time to let him hang himself? Looks like the Empire’s given him more than enough rope. And Cordwick laughed at the thought, because it reminded him of a joke he used to make. Everyone looked at him in annoyance. Darien was liaising with Philomaea now. Whatever counsel she was giving him, it was not what he wanted to hear.

“But you’re sure she’s there,” he insisted, breaking from his whispering.

“I...” The Moth woman’s face twisted. “Yes. I think. All the signs say yes.”

“Then I will go there and I will bring her back,” Darien said simply. “I defy prophecy.”

“My prince, please...” the Moth hissed desperately, and Cordwick saw she was almost in tears. “You will die.”

She was a seer, and Darien was one of those superstitious people who believed in that sort of thing. His face had a desolate, despairing caste then, perhaps for the first time in his life. “I cannot leave her.” The ‘cannot’ was said as though it referred to some absolutely insuperable physical barrier.

“Oi,” said Cordwick quietly, and prodded Tesse in the ribs. She scowled at him, her attention briefly wrested from Darien. “What?”

“You want him to live?”

“What sort of stupid question is that?”

“You want him to go to Del Halle?” he asked. “You’re sane enough that you know the best way for him to live is