Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  But he pretended he hadn’t seen it, nonetheless, and just settled down, feeling the chill.

  “If we head south, if we start before dawn, there’s a Consortium clearing house there, it’s like a tent city around some Commonwealer town with a name no one can say. Loads of people, coming in, going out. We’ll head there.”

  Now at least she was looking at him, though rather suspiciously. “Best to avoid company altogether, no?”

  He shook his head. “Problem is you can’t, around here. This isn’t wildlands, this is the farming heartland of half the Commonweal, for what that’s worth. There are traders, herdsmen, farmers all over. Wherever we go, someone will be around to tell whoever’s chasing us. So we go where there’s people, lots of them. We go there, and we lose ourselves, and we spread plenty of stories about how we’re off to Shev Issa or Maynes or heading north to the Steppe, wherever you like. And then we creep out to...?”

  Her smile had come back, during his speech. “Well now, you appear to actually know what you’re talking about. That’s a nice bonus.”

  “I thought that was the point.”

  “You were just supposed to be a big chin to carry around and scare of any unsuitable suitors. But you’ll do, Gaved the not-a-deserter. You pass muster, soldier. So you’ll get paid.”

  He tried to read what she meant by that, but there was too much challenge in her face, and he knew that if he wanted to find an invitation there, his own mind would provide it. “So where are we headed, anyway?” seemed the safe response.

  She grinned brightly. “Treasure.”

  “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

  “You know Ash Esher?”

  “Place or person?”

  A place, as it turned out, and presumably one that had originally been known by some Dragonfly name too subtle for Wasp tongues. There were farms at Ash Esher, she said, and a handful of officers had settled there, the first wave of occupation, bringing their wives and servants, slaves and hangers-on, until there were enough boots and stinging hands to keep the populace properly subjugated. But what was also there was treasure.

  “I’d just pulled off my biggest haul,” she explained. “Some fat colonel’s new-built manor, stocked with all his war loot and all the money he’d creamed off the army pay chest.” Aelta’s voice was surprisingly bitter, as though it was a personal affront. “But they were right on my back and I had to stash it before they caught me. It’s still there. I never told them, and they’ll never find it.”

  “Surprised they gave you the option not to tell them,” Gaved pointed out.

  Her smile went thin. “They were waiting for an interrogator when we stepped out.”

  They reached the Consortium town two days later, pushing themselves as hard as they could, and without any sign of Javvi and his men. Gaved knew his trade, though. He had a definite sense of pursuit: every time he put down a footprint he imagined it being taken up and examined within the hour.

  The town was busier than he remembered, which was good. He could recall a few names: patrons and contacts, though no real friends. He made sure that he was seen there, confident that the trail would bring their pursuers to the place anyway. He spoke to people he knew had no loyalty to him, never quite disclosing any plans, but giving enough clues, in the questions he asked, to tell a sharp man where they were supposedly heading.

  At first, Aelta tried to join in, but he put her in her place quickly enough.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It’s called talking,” she told him.

  “Women don’t do that.”

  She stared at him. He saw her fingers twitch.

  “Listen,” Gaved went on, feeling himself very patient, “what do you think they see, when they see us two? You think they see a partnership? They see me, and my woman. Probably they think I bought you somewhere, given that most of ’em wouldn’t put money on me getting a girl of her own volition. And because I’m known, and I’m a Wasp, and I’ve had to slap down some folks around here before, they know you’re not for them, not their eyes nor their hands. But you start up with that cocky act of yours and they’ll get other ideas... What, why look at me like that? It’s how it is.”

  “With you. With people like you.”

  He wanted to argue with that, but the precise grounds escaped him. “All right, yes. And this town is filled with people like me.”

  “I managed fine on my own before.”

  He tried to look her in the eye, at that, but her gaze slid off him, evasive enough that he was forced to wonder, Did you? How long were you the master thief before they took you up? Because if you knew how this worked, you’d not need me. He wanted to say more, to hammer the point home until something broke in her. Women were owned, that was the thing. They were daughters, wives, mothers, and they were owned by fathers, husbands, and then by their own sons, widows living off the goodwill of the male children they had brought into the world. Or else they were owned by pimps and procurers, or by masters who held their chains. And these women, these owned women, they didn’t talk to strangers and they didn’t throw around their personalities. They were meek and mild and very, very careful about showing their virtue and fidelity. And a woman who was neither meek nor mild was likely to be judged as not virtuous, either. A Wasp man might pause before pushing himself on someone’s unsullied daughter or loyal wife, but a woman once fallen was fair game for anyone

  In trying to find a way to explain this to Aelta, he found himself staring into the eye of the Imperial dream, the hierarchy that gave every man the right to be the tyrant emperor over the women in his life, and it reminded him of precisely why he had got out of the army.

  “Never mind,” he said at last. “Just... keep it down, all right? I’m sorry, but otherwise we’re going to end up fighting off every drunkard and bravo in town, because you are a very striking woman.”

  “That’s got to be the most cack-handedly clumsy compliment I ever heard,” she told him, but she met his eyes again, at least.

  For his part, Gaved was finding it difficult to know where he stood with her: sometimes she flirted, sometimes it was the cold shoulder, but always there was just enough to give him hope, the door never quite closed on him. Women, he thought gloomily. At least he had got her some new clothes, practical to travel in and not peppered with burned holes.

  They left past midnight, heading off almost at random with the intent of curving their course round until they reached Aelta’s hidden trove. Certainly some eyes would have marked them, but Gaved kept a punishing pace up cross country, and then put more distance in after sunrise. Aelta just stomped on behind him, trailing him but never falling far behind. Then they found the soldiers, or at least the soldiers found them.

  Not Javvi’s minions, thankfully, but a young lieutenant with a dozen of the Light Airborne at his back. They were tramping about the countryside with a roving remit to scare the innards out of any locals who might be harbouring doubts about the finality of the war’s outcome. They had a beetle-drawn wagon with them, loaded up with a motley of goods that they had acquired by way of freelance taxation, and they were not expecting trouble. Nor were they exepcting a somewhat shabby pair of Wasps on the road, neither of them in uniform.

  The lieutenant was one Sharmen, who complained that the war had ended too soon, so that he had missed all the glory. He looked all of eighteen, and was very keen to talk about his family connections back in Capitas. Judging from the way that his men helped themselves to the wagon’s contents, there were obviously worse officers to be under the command of, but Gaved found himself wondering how the youth would have fared had he actually seen a battle first hand.

  Gaved would rather have given the man a salute and parted ways as swiftly as possible, but they had been heading down the same road, and suspicious behaviour stuck in the mind. Instead he invented a handful of fugitives from Imperial justice and asked if Sharmen had seen any of them, which established his credentials nicely. He made no reference to A
elta, and hoped the woman would just stay meekly in his shadow until they could go their own way.

  They camped two nights with Sharmen’s merry band of licensed brigands, eating well and sharing the soldiers’ easy conversation. Theirs was exactly the sort of company Gaved preferred to avoid, not because it was harsh, but because they reminded him of the good times, and what he missed. He didn’t want any little worm of an idea telling him he should go back.

  And of course Aelta didn’t stay mute, but he supposed that was inevitable. Her looks had already drawn a few admiring stares, and Gaved had firmly turned down a couple of quite profitable offers for her presumed services. Seeing that, she had taken over the situation, as apparently she had a penchant for, and cosied up to Sharmen himself, putting herself beyond the ambitions of the common soldiery. She teased the lieutenant gently and laughed at his jokes, and Gaved felt a sour jealousy come over him whenever she did. Fool, he told himself, but there was a hook in him and he could not deny it. He found himself recalling their journey together so far. Had there been an opportunity he had missed? Was the fear of her sting the thing that stood between her and his rightful Wasp-kinden urges? The turmoil of thoughts made him feel ill, and they would not go away.

  Late on, the day after that, Sharmen found a village that he had orders to bring the joys of the Empire to, and Gaved was not sorry to take his leave of the man. That morning he had been forced to endure a particularly awkward conversation with the lieutenant, one he should have been expecting.

  “This woman of yours, Gaved,” Sharmen had observed, “what’s the deal with her?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

  Sharmen had cocked a sceptical eyebrow. “Come on now, she’s no slave of yours, not the way she talks. And she’s not yours any other way, either. Even the densest of my men have worked out she’s not for sale. So, she’s good family, perhaps, and you’re a bodyguard? But why the nonsense about hunting runaways?” Apparently the boy lieutenant was rather sharper than Gaved had thought.

  “It’s not nonsense, sir,” and Gaved had contrived to suggest by omission that, yes, there was more to it, but that he had been ordered to keep his mouth shut. Orders were always a good excuse.

  Aelta had heard the lot, and afterwards she met Gaved’s accusing frown coolly, without a hint of remorse. Soon after, with Sharmen’s crew out of earshot, Gaved tried to interest her in an argument, but she just smiled at him in a way that suggested she knew full well what had got under his skin. They travelled the next half-mile in silence. That was when Javvi caught up to them.

  It was all executed with creditable efficiency. Gaved and Aelta had been trudging along a stretch of road cut into a sparsely-wooded hillside. Up ahead, cover was provided by the wreckage of an Imperial war-automotive, defeated by mud and weather rather than any effort of the locals, then left to rust by the army’s swift advance. Gaved’s excuse was that Aelta, her conduct and her charms and the sweep of her long legs as she strode ahead of him, was too much on his mind.

  There was a startled moment of blurred movement before he was bundled to the ground, a pair of soldiers dragging him down and one getting a hand to his head, warm with Wasp Art that was ready to sear.

  He had a lopsided glimpse of Aelta spinning, hands coming up, and then Javvi himself stepped between them. The Rekef man had a crossbow levelled at her, quite a big piece in his small hands, and strung with two sets of arms for extra power. Weapons like that didn’t care if the finger on their sensitive trigger was the child-size digit of a Fly-kinden.

  “Shackle him,” the Fly ordered, and the two soldiers wrestled Gaved into steel manacles, wrenching his arms behind his back.

  “No burning your way out of these, deserter,” one of them growled, and Gaved almost blurted out that it hadn’t been him, that Aelta...

  The woman was standing, as downcast and meek as he could ever have wished. Once Gaved was properly secured, one of the soldiers went over and did the same service for her: hands behind her back this time, but trussed with rope. He got a hand on her breast, as he did it, making her cry out. Gaved expected that to be the prelude to worse, but Javvi was apparently a stickler.

  “None of that,” the Fly snapped, and his diminutive word was law.

  “Sir, they’re trouble,” the other soldier said sourly. “Do we need to take them back?” He had an open hand directed at Gaved, the meaning clear enough.

  Javvi gave him a narrow look. “When we return them to custody I will review the evidence against them and apply the appropriate sentence, soldier. Justice will be done, exactly and to the letter. Law and justice, without which our society is nothing.” Had it not been for the little man’s heart-of-Empire accent, Gaved might have wondered if he had somehow wandered in from Collegium or somewhere.

  “Pitch camp, now,” Javvi ordered. “One of you on watch at all times. Get the deserter lashed to a tree so he doesn’t get any ideas.”

  “What about her, sir?” The soldier’s look at Aelta was full of possibilities.

  Javvi scowled, a man frustrated by his own tools. Aelta herself was still being the submissive Wasp woman, her pose eloquently suggesting how she had been dragged off by fierce, lustful Gaved. A victim, said her stance.

  “She can sleep at the front of my tent. Tie her hands to the poles and keep an eye on her,” the Fly decided.

  They were none too gentle with Gaved, forcing him to his knees and then twisting his arms so that they could loop a cord through his manacles and up over a tree branch. No sleep for Gaved tonight, it seemed.

  He was waiting for Aelta to try something. Her cowering didn’t fool him for a moment. He watched the soldier who’d drawn the short straw take the first watch, stamping and pacing about, and huddling close to the fire. Gaved’s eyes skipped to the supine form of the woman from time to time, waiting for her move. Past midnight the watch changed, the second soldier yawning his way over to poke the embers and curse his predecessor for not cutting some wood. Around about then, Aelta must have gone, but Gaved missed it entirely as did the sentry. The man was so concerned with getting the fire going that he failed to notice his missing prisoner for the best part of an hour.

  There was a great deal finger-pointing and blame, after that. Javvi was tight-lippedly livid, the threat of the Rekef looming large enough to make up for any deficit in his stature. In the end, though, he was forced to accept a job half done.

  “We will track her down,” he swore. “Come tomorrow, we’ll pick up her trail. We’ll follow her all the way to the Monarch’s feet if we have to.” He was not raging, but his anger burned in him like a furnace. “For now, at least we have the main prize.”

  That struck Gaved as bitterly unfair, given that he was not even a deserter, and Aelta some kind of master criminal. Javvi saw his reaction and stalked over.

  “I suppose you thought we wouldn’t follow this far, through all your twisting and evasion?” he demanded. “Know this: I am for law. No fugitive or criminal is safe from me, no matter how small their misdeeds, and above all, those who flee from Imperial justice. You were a man who brought in fugitives for money. I despise the fact that the Empire ever needs to rely on such. The love of the law, that is the only true motivation for a hunter of men.”

  Gaved could only goggle at him.

  The next development came just before dawn. Gaved was snapped out of a fitful half-doze when a squad of soldiers descended on the camp with drawn blades and open hands and did to Javvi and his men what they had done unto others. Gaved watched, slack-jawed, as they secured the two soldiers and backed the indignant Fly against a tree at sting-point.

  “I am a captain of the Rekef !” the little man snapped at them. “Stand down! This is treason!”

  “Pipe down, maggot,” and it was Lieutenant Sharmen striding into camp, an unlikely rescuing hero. “We know all about you, don’t we, Captain?”

  And walking past him, wearing a uniform that was only slightly ill-fitting, came Aelta. Her entire manner spoke
of authority, and a particularly hard-edged kind of authority at that. She walked through the soldiers as though she owned them, and her nod to Sharmen was pure condescension.

  “Impersonating a Rekef officer is the true treason, short one,” she told Javvi, in a perfect balance of cruelty and amusement. “It’ll be crossed pikes for you, if they can find any small enough.”

  Javvi’s eyes bulged, and he fumbled for his rank badge, even as his gaze was drawn to the glinting object pinned to Aelta’s breast. And of course the Rekef did have women in its ranks – the spies and the agents who would take a man’s bedroom bragging and speak it back to him at his trial. A woman captain of the Rekef was at least as plausible as a Fly.

  “You want us to kill him now, sir?” Sharmen asked.

  For a moment Aelta regarded the defiant Javvi, and Gaved held his breath, wondering how it would go.

  “Hand him over when you report in,” she decided. “I am for law.”

  They found the key and freed Gaved, and then Sharmen and his pillagers trooped off, three prisoners in tow.

  “Should have killed them,” was Gaved’s comment, watching them recede.

  “That’s what you’d have done, is it?”

  “Maybe.” He shrugged, then sneaked a glance at her. “Are you...?”

  “Am I Rekef?” She laughed delightedly. “What do you think?”

  “I think Rekef people don’t laugh like that.” He was still staring. “I, ah, that’s a fine uniform.”

  “Got it from Sharmen’s smallest soldier.”

  “Didn’t look half as good on him.”

  Her good humour changed character subtly, but she still had a smile for him at the end. “We’re not far off now,” she told him. “You just hold that thought.”

  Another day’s travel saw her words come true, and they crouched in the evening overlooking a grand estate. This had been some Commonweal noble’s holding once, a fortified house and a village and field on field stretching out beyond them. Now the fortifications were scattered by war, and many of the houses just burned shells In their place stood a knot of squat two-tier buildings with flat roofs, a taste of home for the Imperials who lived there.