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

of spent candles and the charred ends of incense sticks. During the war, places like this had looked to their traditions when the Wasps came. They had placed their faith in all the comforting lies and rituals inherited from generations past. It hadn’t worked. Around her was the debris of a battleground where the present had slain the past.

How long she sat there in the morning chill, she could not say. Then she heard Eshe whispering her name, and a shadow fell across her. She reached for her sword, wherever she had left it, but her hands remained empty.

A boot nudged her knee none too gently. There was a stocky Dragonfly man standing before her, a cudgel in his hand. He was greying and leathery, and she guessed he must be the local Headman.

“What do you want?” she asked him.

“We want you to leave.”

“Give me a drink first.”

His face darkened. He could read the history of her descent in the stains of her robe. “Leave.”

“Fight me.” Abruptly she was on her feet, but the sword still refused to come. She had dropped it somewhere on the trail, but it would be in her hands the moment it knew she needed it. Apparently this was not one of those times.

“You want a fight?” the Headman spat, utterly disgusted. “Go to the garrison. They fight there. They fight and drink and turn our daughters into their whores. Go to the Wasps, woman. You’ll fit right in.”

“Sounds like paradise,” she croaked sourly. “Just point the way.”

“No, Weaponsmaster,” Eshe whispered with a tug at her sleeve. “Not the Wasps.”

“Well there’ll be hunters through here within the day, asking after me,” Ineskae snapped, slapping at the boy. “I wanted to fight them but you... wouldn’t let me.” It had been her sword and her badge, not the child, she recalled. Did the sword and badge object to her going to seek a blood match at the Wasp garrison? Apparently not. Fickle bastards, the pair of them.

The Headman was plainly glad to send her to the Empire, possibly because it would involve people he despised getting hurt either way. He said something to Eshe, too, and Ineskae thought it must have been an offer to find the boy a place.

Yes, say yes, she mouthed, but Eshe was proud. Eshe wanted to stay with her. She had no idea why. She should send him away.

With that thought, she felt a sudden cold emptiness within her, at not having the irritating child underfoot. He was no Aleth Rael, her golden protégé, but he was something. Why did she need something, in this ruin that history had made of her life? She could not say, and yet the need was there, insistent as her sword.

Where there were Imperial soldiers, there was fighting. Where there were soldiers there was drink. I should have thought of this a long time ago.

The garrison itself had been some noble’s castle, built in the ancient days as four high walls surrounding a central courtyard. The ancient ways had not weathered well, which was why the structure was now just three walls and a low bank of rubble that the Imperial war machines had pressed down.

She took in the scene at a glance, guessing that the off-duty soldiers gathered in that space at nights, with a half-dozen big fires bleeding their warmth out at the heedless sky. There was a raised stage made of piled stone carrion from that fallen wall. There were traders and vintners who were established enough to each have a patch of wall they made their own. When Ineskae appeared, she was immediately surrounded by a sour-looking mob in black and gold who thought she looked like a beggar. When she told them with exaggerated dignity that she was a Mantis come to fight, they let her through, no questions asked.

They had several matches lined up that night. It gave her plenty of time to get in the right state of mind. When Eshe would not fetch her a drink, she was not too proud to get it herself, and when she had found a Beetle-kinden selling the harsh, cheap spirits she was fond of, she saw no reason not to sit with him and give him money. In that way, the fights preceding hers passed in a blur: men against men, a man against a big tarantula, a gang of chained criminals against a Wasp soldier.

At her side Eshe huddled miserably, jostled by every passing Wasp. “We should go,” was all he would say.

“Why?” she demanded. “Look how we’re all getting on! You’d think there’d never been a war.”

“Weaponsmaster, if there are hunters, there’s a price. The Wasps love gold as much as any,” he insisted.

“Let them come,” she declared loudly, turning a lot of heads. The Beetle tapster was looking alarmed, holding off on giving her another filled bowl. She fixed him with a steel stare. “Try it, fat man. Just try and come between me and my love.” When the words were out, she did not know where they had come from. They seemed abruptly pathetic.

Then someone was tugging at her sleeve again and she rounded on Eshe to snap, “I’m not leaving!” only to find it was a Wasp out of uniform. “What?”

“You said you were here to fight,” he boomed over the crowd. “Your moment’s here.”

“About damn time.” She got up, lurched, ended up clinging to him, then stumbled off into the crowd at a tangent, trying to set a course for the stone mound of the stage. When she got there, she rebounded from it painfully, and then someone unwisely tried to help her up, so she punched him to the floor.

The soldiers around her, with the exception of her bewildered victim, found this hilarious, whooping and cheering for her as she clambered up, her robe rucking about her knees. When she stood there, swaying, someone yelled out, “Did you forget something, grandma?” and another, “Where’s your sword gone?”

“She drank it!” called some wit, and