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

going through the middle of it, her sword and the dregs of her drunkenness just drawing the shortest possible line between her and Eshe and then cutting along it. There was blood weighing down her robes, mostly other people’s. Her souvenirs were a thin line of red above one eyebrow and a ragged gash across the back of her left hand.

The Wasp woman regarded her coolly. “I’m not here for any reward,” she said. “I’m here for you.”

“Personal, is it?” Ineskae squinted. “I don’t know you.” She was tensed, ready to strike, sword and mind finding her a dozen solutions to the problem: kill the woman, not the boy. Eshe’s eyes were burning on her.

“I know you, Weaponsmaster,” the Wasp woman told her. “I have heard more stories of you than you probably know exist. I know everything of you, your history, your victories, your provenance.”

“And how?” Ineskae demanded scornfully.

“Aleth Rael.” The Wasp smiled tiredly, letting go of Eshe, abruptly nothing more than a shabby mercenary in ill-fitting armour. “Aleth Rael, old woman.”

Ineskae was very still. “How dare you speak his name?” she whispered.

“Because he was my teacher.”

“You? A Wasp?” Her fury was automatic, and also hollow. There was something new come into Terasta’s voice, an earnestness beyond her studied poise. Ineskae was practically spitting with insults, desperate to keep this confrontation as something simple: just another throat to cut. And yet no words came out. Her sword trembled in the air between them, fighting her, and her hand was stayed.

“I am Terasta of the Empire, and I was his student while he lived.”

“Impossible,” Ineskae got out. “Where’s your badge?”

“I never had the chance to earn it,” the Wasp said bitterly. “The war came. He went home to fight for his people, and against mine. And then he died.”

“Yes.” Something vital went out of Ineskae. Abruptly neither she nor her sword had the heart to continue their struggle.

“And I knew I should have been with him,” Terasta added, “even if it meant killing my own kinden. I failed him.”

“Yes,” Abruptly Ineskae tottered over to a flat stone and sat down. “Yes,” she said again. “But here you are.”

“He left me with one thing only,” the Wasp said. “He left me with his memories of you, the woman who gave him everything. He loved you.”

The old Mantis looked at her bleakly. “So why are you here? To give me his fondest best wishes?” Eshe had retreated to her, half hiding behind her, and she reached up to him. His hand in hers was like a lifeline in a world that was draining away.

“I have tracked you. I have followed your path from fight to pointless fight,” Terasta told her. “You are looking for death. A proper death. A Weaponmaster’s death, worthy of the sword and circle badge. And you can’t find it. Not here. Not any more.”

“Seems that way,” Ineskae grunted. “You’re going to give it to me, are you?”

“If I can. Because I understand the sword and circle, even if I never earned it for myself.”

The old Mantis stared at her. Wasp-kinden weren’t noted for any kind of honour that the fallen Commonweal might have recognized, but she saw it in Terasta: the stillness, the calmness; a woman whose life had been given over to the sword for its own sake, and not merely for what that sharp edge might win. Something rose in her at the thought: a proper fight, a final fight, a dignified exit from a world that no longer wanted her.

Her sword and her badge desired that. She had used them badly, since the war’s end. They wanted rid of her.

But she was damned if she was their plaything.

“No,” she said softly.

The Wasp started in surprise. “But... all this time, what have you sought, except this?”

“I know.” Ineskae closed her eyes, feeling out this new thing she had discovered within herself as though it was an arrowhead too barbed to draw out. So I have to push it on through. “I thought so too, until now.”

“Then what changed?” Terasta demanded, bizarrely infuriated that all her good work and planning had apparently been in vain.

“You took him.” Ineskae squeezed Eshe’s hand gently. “And I wanted him back. It was the first time I wanted anything that wasn’t a drink or a death since the war. It was meaning.” She managed a brittle smile. “And you did the right thing, by Aleth Rael, by me. You were right on all counts. And if you want to draw your sword and try your luck, I don’t reckon I can stop you. Only now I’m not ready to go. Now I’ve got other business to deal with.” It was absurd, she knew. She was too old, too worn down, and yet somehow she felt younger than she had in a long time. Somewhere in that flood of feeling was the ghost of the woman she had been back before Rael died, back when she had something to care about.

Terasta was looking completely lost. She had come a long way, engineered so much, and played by all the right rules, and now what did she have? “I don’t understand,” she complained. “What is the boy to you, really?”

“Who knows?” Ineskae stood, feeling her joints creak. “Maybe it’s time I took another student. Can’t let the old ways die out just yet, can we?” She weighed the thought in her mind, feeling a tentative and probationary approval from her sword, from her badge. “I could take two, maybe.” Her gaze was still red-rimmed and wild, but it was steadier than it had been in a long time.

For a long moment, Terasta stood frozen, hand partway to her sword hilt, world yanked out from under her. And Ineskae saw that the woman’s hunt – her relentless pursuit of her teacher’s teacher – was indistinguishable from Ineskae’s own quest for self-destruction: differing strategies to deal with an identical void.

“I will fight you, old woman,” the Wasp said flatly, and Ineskae sighed, waiting for the