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

wear her student’s face, just as a favour for the woman she had once been.

And she knew it was all in her mind. She knew that she was fooling only herself. Tears drew their lines down her withered cheeks even as she fought. But while the fight went on she could pretend, and remember being happy.

And then there was a wrong note, and she fell from her killing reverie and opened her eyes.

The child: the annoying, unwanted, useless child who dogged her every footstep for no reason she could divine; the child was in trouble.

There was that Wasp woman, the hunter. She had Eshe struggling in her grip. She was taking the child. Why was she –?

The crowd had not noticed her distraction. Her sword had not stopped its dancing. Abruptly, though, she had somewhere else to be.

She changed her pattern and, to her joy, her opponent followed, his own sword leading him to her plan, enemy become accomplice. She went into the crowd, and he went with her.

She saw black and gold armour and heard a Wasp voice shout her name. They were arresting her. What did that mean? Arrest means to stop, she considered very calmly, as her sword lanced forwards. I can’t be doing with that.

The lead Wasp, the officer, took her blade through his open mouth. By then there were already half a dozen brawls as other Wasps objected to the interruption.

Ineskae plunged into the crowd, running on heads and shoulders, hacking at arms, weaving from stingshot. Behind her, her opponent stopped and fought, buying her time though he owed her nothing.

Ahead, the Wasp woman was already out of sight, and Eshe with her.

The Wasp woman had near two-score villains assembled here, in tents and around fires. This land, a good mile from the garrison where Ineskae had been fighting, was broken and rocky. The hunter-brigands were strewn about wherever offered shelter from the cold wind. A handful were notionally on watch, and a Dragonfly man went from one to the other, kicking them if he found them asleep.

“You think they’ll beat Ineskae,” Eshe divined.

Terasta snorted. “They’d barely slow her down.”

“Nobody can beat her. She’ll kill all of you.”

He expected her to slap him, or at least to sneer. Instead, her expression was thoughtful. “Could she?”

“You know the badge she wears!” Eshe snapped fiercely.

Terasta nodded. “Better than you’d believe. And I know that she has fought the desperate and the doomed in every pit across the Commonweal. And she was cut, back in Te Sora, and again in Mian Lae. Can you imagine? One of the Weaponsmasters, the ancient order, losing blood to some thug swordsman in the back of an army drinking den.” She did not sound mocking, anything but.

“I hope the reward makes all your deaths worthwhile,” Eshe hissed.

“Oh, my men want the reward, and we have fought off three other packs of hunters who sought it. Why else would I need scum like this? But that’s not it. Not for me ...”

Then there was a yell from one of the lookouts, and a moment later the gang of villains was scrabbling for weapons, leaping up as the spitting light of a chemical lantern heralded the Imperial army.

“Time for the scum to earn their keep one last time,” Terasta murmured.

The soldiers who marched up were perhaps half the strength of her hunters but their faces showed only contempt for their lessers. “Who commands here?” their officer said. Eshe guessed they were the same mob who had crashed the fight back at the garrison.

“How can I help you, Sergeant?” Terasta’s hand was abruptly off Eshe’s shoulder, abandoning him in the midst of her camp.

The lead Wasp raised an eyebrow at finding a woman in charge. “We want the Weaponsmaster.”

Terasta nodded. “You want her; we want her.”

The sergeant squared his shoulders. “We know she came this way. Don’t play games.”

“I never do,” the woman replied, unintimidated. “I have papers authorising me to hunt fugitives from Imperial justice.”

Eshe looked about him, finding that nobody seemed to be paying him all that much attention. He began a slow shuffle away from the camp’s centre, edging towards the dark beyond the fires.

“I piss on your papers, woman,” the Wasp sergeant snapped.

“Interesting,” Terasta remarked thoughtfully. The transition from her standing there and her sword clearing its scabbard to cleave between neck and shoulder, was swifter than Eshe could follow, and yet so natural that it seemed rehearsed. The Wasp let out a gurgling yelp and went down, and then the fighting started in earnest, and Eshe ran.

He got quite far, hopping and stumbling over the broken countryside, his Dragonfly eyes wringing as much light from the waning moon as he could manage. He thought he was clear of them, the sounds of battle receding until they became someone else’s problem.

Then he skidded down a scree slope, fetching up against a jutting rock hard enough to beat the breath from him, and Terasta stepped around it and took his arm again, as though she and he had been following the steps of the same dance.

Eshe struck at her with his free hand, but she twisted his arm above his head, driving him to his knees.

“I approve of your instincts, boy,” she said softly. “Any other time they’d have been right on the money. But this is where I wanted you. Right here.” She cocked her head, listening as the sounds of the fight were carried on the breeze.

“Your people are losing,” Eshe spat at her. It was anyone’s guess whether it was true.

“Probably. But they’re a pack of killers, thieves and deserters fighting a squad of equally greedy soldiers. Why should we spare any tears?” She shrugged. “My scum have served their purpose, in getting me this far and fending off the others who wanted Insekae’s head.”

A new voice growled out, low and dangerous, “And you think you’ll collect it, do you?”

Ineskae had intended to avoid the bloody skirmish between the Empire and her hunters, but somehow she had ended up