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

Cordwick was reminded of certain war stories he had heard from Imperial soldiers. The Commonweal lost battles, on the whole: it lost them gloriously and with colossal waste of life, so that the Monarch would have been better served executing a significant percentage of the population in the conquered principalities, and then just signing over the devastated remains. The Commonweal lost battles, but the Empire lost officers. The stories were too circumstantial to be mere fiction. Commonweal mercers and assassins had walked into command tents, into colonel’s quarters, into the sanctums of the Empire’s finest, and left neat corpses to attest to their presence, followed shortly after by harsh discipline for the sentries and guards involved. And is this it? Did they breeze in, invisible as air, like this? Cordwick had no answers.

They paused at a crossroads, the Moth looking from one dark passageway to the other. The guttering oil lamps were their friends, for the Wasps clustered close to them, blind to the darkness. The intruders’ impossible progress had taken them deep into the heart of the castle’s underside.

“Which way?” murmured Darien, on a knife-edge of anticipation.

“I...” Cordwick could not make out the Moth’s expression but her voice trembled. “This way, I think...” One hand indicated a direction indistinctly. “Something is wrong. I am unsure.” All around them the clatter and chatter of three score of imperial soldiers was constant, putting Cordwick in mind of the hum of a hive that any moment might erupt in stinging wings.

“I smell something,” Tesse whispered, and the Beetle realised that he did, too, a familiar chemical scent of...

And then the lights came on. The automatic strikers wheeled sparks in the sconces, and a moment after there were tall flames leaping behind glass all throughout the cellars, banishing night with an artificial dawn.

Philomaea cried out, just a desperate denial of what had happened, but whatever veil she had carried with her was banished with the darkness and a dozen Wasps had already spotted the intruders, leaping up with exclamations of surprise and alarm.

Cordwick dropped, falling to his knees and dragging Tesse to him just as she was about to take wing. He saw a soldier’s palm flash fire and Philomaea was punched off her feet, a blackened circle smoking beneath her throat. Tesse was fighting him, kicking and struggling, but then Evandter and Darien were in motion and she stopped, just watching.

Golden stingshot danced about them, but they were neither of them hit, though the stone above Cordiwck’s head was scorched and charred. Then Darien had his swords into two of his enemy, and the Mantis was butchering the other way, taking and discarding the swords of his foes as he chose. For a few packed seconds there was no pattern to it, Cordwick’s eyes could not follow the swift exchange. Then both fighters were gone. Neither had taken the way that Philomaea had indicated, each letting the tide of the fight determine their most efficient path to more of the foe.

“Oh – oh –” Tesse crawled over two dead Wasps to get to Philomaea, but the Moth was quite dead.

“They knew,” Cordwick said quietly. “Whatever she was doing, they knew it. They let us get so far, and no further.”

“Shut up,” Tesse spat at him. “We’re going to rescue her.”

“What?”

“Nysse Ceann. She’s this way, Philo said. Darien will be coming for her, the Mantis too. We’ll go there.”

“We?”

“I need you for the locks!” she hissed. “And if you run now, and if Evandter doesn’t hunt you down, I swear, you craven lump, I’ll kill you myself!” Her teeth were bared, her eyes flaring. She was a quarter of his size and yet he thought she would leap on him and try for his throat with her teeth.

They seemed momentarily beneath the notice of the Empire. However many soldiers Borden had stowed down here, they were all engaged in trying to contain Darien and Evandter.

“Let’s go,” Cordwick agreed, and the two of the scuttled off, their path brightly lit by the sear of the gaslamps.

They came to another cellar almost immediately, cluttered with barrels that were patched with mildew, some old Commonweal stash that nobody had got round to dealing with. The gaslamps were fewer here, and Cordwick was grimly certain that they had been in the very epicentre of the modern lighting when the lamps had been struck up. Two further halls led off, and for a moment they dithered, unsure which way to go. Then from their left, Evandter stalked in.

He was red to the elbows with other peoples’ blood and grinning like a skull. He barely glanced at his two former comrades. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, and there was anticipation writ in every line of him. He’s going to get to her first, Cordiwck realised. He’s going to spirit her away and leave Darien to the Empire.

Then there were soldiers, a squad of eight or so dashing in behind him, and Evandter turned smoothly on his heel, dropping back into a fighting crouch with his spines levelled. In the centre of the newcomers was Colonel Borden himself.

There was a moment’s pause, the soldiers awaiting the order, the Mantis like a drawn bow, ready to loose at any instant.

“I know you,” Borden said. Distant, echoing, were the sounds of fighting, the cries of the injured, but here it was very quiet. “You are Evandter, the murderer, the brigand-king. I have seen your likeness.”

The Mantis sketched a slight bow without breaking his stance.

“They put me here to kill Lowre Darien, the hero,” Borden stated slowly. “Orders are orders, but I’d not want to be the man remembered for that deed. Ridding the world of you, however, is fit matter for a man of honour.” The colonel drew his sword, the one he had lent Tesse for her dance.

Something had soured in Evandter’s face with the Wasp’s words. Even as Borden’s sword cleared its scabbard he was in motion, leaping almost onto their blades’ points. He