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

a Wasp’s male whore or servant. He looked like a beggar, a shabby creature in ragged, dark robes holding out a stick-thin hand for alms. And she thought, You’re out of luck because, of all kinden, one did not go to the Wasps for charity. And then she met his eyes, those protuberant red eyes that pressed out from his gaunt, ashen face, and the world stopped for a single heartbeat.

He was gone after that, and she shook herself and went on with the plan. It had been a long war and she had been put to find many inventive uses for her training. Perhaps she needed a rest from it: enough murder and treachery would start to wear on anybody.

She chose her face from the packed shelves within her mind. Her magic gave her a major’s rank badge, a uniform creased and stained from travel. She turned up at the gates on the very horse she had just led through them and nobody spotted it.

They took her to Thalric, of course, and she played her part perfectly, simultaneously the major looking down at the captain and the regular officer wary of the Rekef man. She told him she had a remit to look for some specific prisoners wanted for questioning. She had no papers but it was a routine request and she was good at her job. She talked him round and laughed at him silently all the while.

And of course she went down the ranks of prisoners, and Volante’s eyes were on her. She stopped by him and murmured, “How would you thank me if I freed you, little princeling?”

The rush of gratitude, of hope; these things she did not see.

“What has been done to you?” he asked her. “You are like a stunted tree.”

A shock of hurt fury went through her, so that for a moment she almost lost her false face and shape. How dare he, prisoner that he was? How dare he play the lord with her? And she was going to walk away then, and leave him to his fate; she was going to inform on him to Thalric and have him executed on the crossed pikes. But no: No, I’ll take him. I’ll break him. I’ll make him thank me. I’ll show him the way the world has turned.

And in her clipped major’s voice, with its heart-of-the-Empire accent, she ordered that he be released into her custody. Did she need an escort? She poured scorn on them. She was a strong soldier of the Empire and Volente was barely more than a child.

And she led him out of the Empire’s camp as easily as if she had bought him at auction, her golden boy.

She had already chosen her spot to let him down from the horse. They were still within sight of his father’s castle: let that symbol of defeat be right in the forefront of his mind. She had a whole itinerary planned for him, but this desolate stretch of road and rocks would serve for now.

He stood, thin and shivering, and made no attempt to flee. He had nowhere to go.

“What is to become of me?” he asked her.

She regarded him with a mocking smile fixed to a face she had chosen specially. She was a woman of the Spider-kinden once more, but with as much allure and grace as her skills could stitch together. Still, she was in his shadow, and all the work she had put into her features and her frame passed him by.

“Tell me, princeling,” she addressed him, “what would you do, if you had the freedom for it?”

His eyes met hers; again the sheer exotic wonder of them struck her, the perfection of his golden skin. “My father saw many futures,” he told her. “He said I would bring a new dawn. Let me bring that dawn. Let me fulfil my destiny.” Abruptly a passion entered his voice. “You – whatever you are, however you have fallen, you are a creature of magic as I am. You are not one of them,” and he thrust a hand towards the conquered castle.

“You have no idea what I am,” she told him derisively.

“I see through your faces. I have read of your order in the tales of my people. It was once a calling of honour and skill.” And his eyes searched the face she showed him, as though he really thought he would find some dormant spark of all that in her. There was such yearning in his expression, in that moment, that she shrank back from him. She knew that he could search there a year, dig through all the layers of her, and find no grain of what he sought. His disappointment cut her, because for a moment he had thought she was something more than she was. If she had been capable, she would have been that, for him.

Then she had him by the chin, yanking his head about, forcing the confrontation onto her terms. “Even in my homeland, my teachers were nothing more than pawns of the Aristoi, and our magic just the tool of princes. Servants and mercenaries, that is all we are. Your shining past was dead long before the Empire came. They’re just throwing its body onto the pyre.”

“I will not believe it,” he said calmly. “My father –”

“Is dead,” and she almost said, I killed him wearing your mother’s face, because she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to take his pride and self-possession and crumble them to pieces in her hands. She had seen herself through his eyes now – a stunted tree. It made her want him all the more but, if she was to have him, he must be broken. Only then would he give himself to what he had seen in her.

But all she said was, “Come with me,” and she got him back on the horse and then led the beast down the road towards lower ground.

Two days before, there had been a battle