Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1), Adrian Tchaikovsky [13 ebook reader .txt] 📗

in her outline. Then she was kneeling right by me, close enough that a couple of her spikes grated on my armour. “Got something for you to drink, sir. It’ll take the pain off a bit.”

Of course, as an officer you never drink anything a soldier offers you, whatever their kinden. Notwithstanding, I gulped it down and, true enough, everything seemed a great deal less urgent shortly thereafter. Lying there in the forest, surrounded by dead soldiers and with a nightmare vision as my ministering guardian, suddenly felt almost idyllic.

I muttered something to that effect, but Cari was busying herself about my let, and taking long enough that eventually I propped myself up on my elbows to have a look. The moon was up by then, and fighting its way through the trees with as much difficulty as we had done in the daytime. She had snapped the arrowhead off – because I could see it lying beside my leg – and as I watched she yanked the shaft free. No amount of numbing potion could quite cover that, and I yelped. Instantly she was still, her crossbow back to hand, waiting and watching. After a long pause she set to bandaging, and I stared at the spectacle, utterly absorbed by it. I had never seen anyone make such hard work of the task, nor had I seen Cari quite so awkward at anything. The simply act of wrapping a bandage three times about my leg and then tying it took her forever, as the cloth continually snagged and caught on her. I had a feeling that she must have left a fair few scratches on my hide, too, but it didn’t seem of pressing concern just then.

“Must make life awkward, all those spikes,” I told her, finding the words slightly hard to get out. “Must be all sorts of things you can’t do.”

She went still, but not in the same way as before. It was like a flinch, that stillness. Something retreated inside her, where all those sharp points could keep it safe.

“Mind you,” I went on, because the words, once started, seemed to have a life of their own, “you’ve got it worse, you’ve got that, whatever-it-is you’ve got. I’ve seen you. Some kind of disease of the spikies. All of them gone wrong, eh? Sorry, I’m sorry for that. You’re a good soldier. Shame, really.”

Slowly she started on the dressing again. “It’s not a disease,” she said.

“Well what is it?” I have no idea why I cared, but it seemed to matter a great deal at the time. “You people, Thorn Bug-people, you’re born all spickly anyway, but you were born even more spickly? Is that what is it?”

“We’re not born like this. The world is not quite as cruel to our mothers as all that. It’s an Art that develops early, though.” She was whispering, scanning the darkness yet again. “But this isn’t the way I was born, sir.”

“Oh no? So tell me, soldier. That’s an order.”

There was a long silence, long enough that I forgot whether I had actually said the words or not, but at last she spoke.

“When I was just a slave, and not an auxillian, sir... when I was just a slave, a man decided he wanted to know what it was like to lie with one of my kind. Obviously there were... challenges involved. We are not easily raped, sir.” She shifted position slightly. “I understand it was for a bet, or maybe some kind of game. It took the artificers hours to file me down to something vulnerable enough that he could have his fun. In truth, I don’t think he enjoyed it much. More than me, though.”

I had about a hundred rejoinders swimming about in my head, most of which would be standard army issue, concerning slaves, free men and lesser kinden. I didn’t say any of them.

“I got into the army soon after. Better Auxillian than civilian, right?” she went on, her voice quiet and brittle, but just reaching me. “Pioneers suit me. Don’t see many people, in Pioneer Corps. Can be your own officer, most of the time.”

“You’re very good at it.” I don’t know why, even in my state, I thought that weak praise was what the situation needed.

“I like blending in.”

I laughed, just a coughing chuckle. I couldn’t stop myself.

She shrugged, a soft rustle of greenery. “Sometimes it’s a blessing to look like something else, lose your outline, be overlooked. And besides, there’s no better way of getting close to your prey. You can’t deny me that.”

“I wouldn’t want to.” My leg was starting to throb as her draft began to wear off. There was still a fair amount of the night to go. I was considering whether it befit an officer of the imperial army to beg more potion from an Auxillian when there was a clack, and a choked gasp from between the trees. It took me a moment to realise that Cari had loosed her crossbow. A moment later she was gone from my side, though I couldn’t have told you where she went.

There were sounds in the dark. I hunched myself partway to sitting, a shaking hand directed out at the night. I saw nothing.

Then, just as I was about to collapse back down, someone jumped me. I got a knee to me chest punching the breath from me, and my hand was struck aside. I had a glimpse of a lean, angular Mantis woman with her dagger already drawn back, her face utterly expressionless. The only sound I made was a panicked inhalation.

Then she was thrown off me by an invisible hand, rolling over to lie still, all with barely a sound herself. In the moonlight the moth-scale fletchings of the crossbow bolt stood proud of her body.

Cari was back with me shortly after that. “Got them all, sir,” she reported. “Just three of them come to look over the bodies. Maybe take a few trophies, hey?”

I refrained from saying