Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Most of the fields still lay fallow from the war’s depredations, but there were plenty of bodies out there clearing them. Gaved knew the pattern: an organized mass of slaves with a scattering of overseers. The occasional whip-crack echoed to them even at this distance.

  “This is Ash Esher,” confirmed Aelta. “There’s a group of officers taken up here, the sort of old men who are grabbing as much of the Commonweal as possible now the war’s done. A nice little slice of retirement for them. They bring their families and servants and slaves over from Capitas, ready to make all this just another slice of Empire. I suppose you’re all for that.”

  “I took off the uniform for a reason,” Gaved murmured. He was pushed up close to her as they overlooked the village – closer than he needed to be, but she hadn’t shied away. “A lot of Wasps down there,” he noted. The field workers were Commonwealers, but there were plenty of pale-skinned menials around the houses themselves.

  “Like I say, they bring their whole households,” she agreed. “They don’t trust the locals with a lot of the work. Would you want to be shaved or bathed by someone whose country you’d just invaded?”

  “So where’s your gold stashed?”

  “See the big house there? That’s the property of one Colonel Haaked, formerly of the Quartermasters’ Corps and now living the dream. It’s buried at the back of his home. You see the shacks there? That’s where the house slaves sleep. That’s where I buried it.”

  “That’s not exactly the easiest place to go digging.”

  “How much time do you think I had?” She was all wide-eyed innocence. He knew even then that something was up, but that hook she had in him still tugged, in his loins and his head both.

  They let darkness creep over the land, watching the industry of the estate below slowly dismantle itself, the Commonwealers crammed into pens for the night, the Wasp slaves filing dejectedly into their shacks.

  “I’d never be a slave,” Gaved decided, staring at them. “How can you have a sting at your command and let a man own you?”

  Aelta’s gaze, when he met it, was franker than he wished. “Oh you’d be surprised,” she said quietly. “Live in a world that hates you, and will kill you if you try and change your place in it. Find out how much using your sting will help, if one show of defiance puts you alone and friendless against a society that must destroy you for your insolence. You think you’re the terribly bold rebel, Gaved, because you’re not a soldier. Try not being a man for a day, and then tell me how hard your road is.”

  He stared at her. There was a great weight of Wasp within him that told him he should scoff and say she didn’t know what she was talking about: you’re a woman, what do you know? But that was precisely why she knew. He was too honest with himself to lie.

  Seeing him without words, her look softened somewhat. “And when you were a soldier, the officers told you to fight, and you fought, yes? And some of you died, and sometimes the orders were stupid, I’ll bet. And you all had stings – and swords and crossbows as well! – and why not say no, right then and there? Consequences, Gaved. We all inherit the freedom to kill with our hands, men and women, soldiers and slaves, but just try using it freely. They tie our hands, Gaved. They tie our hands, and try to stop us using them. But some of us teach ourselves that there are more things these hands can do than they ever guess.”

  Her face was very close to his, her voice very low. He tried to make that the moment where he would just duck in a little, so that their lips met, but somehow she was never quite as close as that, and then she was up on her feet again.

  “That’s night enough,” she decided. “Let’s go.”

  There were lanterns lit about the estate, and a handful of guards on patrol, but they were mostly concerned with the penned Commonwealers, memories of the war still fresh in every mind. Gaved and Aelta could make their way to the back of Colonel Haaked’s big house with almost leisurely unconcern: a pair of Wasps out enjoying the moonlight.

  The ground before the dormitories was crossed and recrossed with tracks, with no sign of its precious hidden contents. Aelta had him keep watch while she hunted over it, skulking along the side of each hut in turn, murmuring to herself and crouching now and then to examine the earth. Every lost second seemed to weigh heavy on him, imagining a curious guard or two coming round the corner.

  “Come on,” he hissed. “Hurry up.” They had already raided a tool store and his hands clenched and re-clenched on the haft of the shovel, ready to set to work.

  She was kneeling beside a shack, head cocked as though listening to some voice only she could hear. Abruptly she stood, staring at him.

  “What?” he demanded in a tense whisper. “Are we getting the goods or aren’t we?”

  “Yes, yes we are,” and she had crossed over to a patch of earth that seemed no different to any other. “Here. Dig here.”

  “Right here?” There was nothing about the place that seemed to distinguish it.

  “I remember it now. Straight down, right here. There’s a casket you’ll strike soon enough.”

  He grimaced, but set his spade to the earth. It was hard and wrenching labour, especially as he was forced to go slow and careful to avoid any noise. This is not my line of work, he decided. He was a hunter of men, not a thief, and certainly not a gravedigger.

  He was down the best part of two feet, striking nothing. Cursing, he began to jab the shovel about the sides of the hole, assuming that he had just missed the mark, that she had not been as exact in her remembering as she thought.

  That was where they found him. When they came in a flurry of lanterns, with Javvi at their head, he was still digging.

  Colonel Haaked was a red-faced old man, his hair gone silver, and gone entirely from most of his head. He received Gaved in a room that spoke eloquently of his success during the war, in a language of gold, silver and gems. He wore a robe of Spiderlands silk that strained somewhat over the paunch that retirement was giving him; his desk was ornately carved in miniature with scenes of Imperial martial prowess, some treasured piece lugged all the way west from the old family home. Behind him was a Dragonfly war banner that probably had more weight of gold in its thread than Gaved had ever held in his hands at one time. Flanking that, two suits of mail stood silent vigil, gleaming with hues of emerald and sapphire and mother of pearl. What damage they had sustained, in being parted from their noble Commonwealer owners, had been painstakingly repaired by newly-enslaved artisans. Atop the desk, as though forming the last line of defence between Haaked and any assassin, stood a rank of twelve statues, six inches high and golden, each showing a Dragonfly-kinden engaged in some elegant activity: dancing, flying, at guard with a sword. The delicacy of the work surpassed anything Gaved had ever seen.

  Of course, he had other priorities just then, beyond artistic appreciation.

  “Who is this vagrant?” Haaked was demanding of Javvi. “Where’s the girl?”

  “Fled again.” The Fly frowned, apparently taking Aelta’s unwillingness to stay in one place as a personal affront. “Why she came all the way back here only to flee, I can’t say.”

  Gaved cleared his throat, mostly to ensure that nobody hit him any more just for speaking. “The treasure,” he hazarded. “It wasn’t where she said to dig. She must have grabbed it while I... I could track her for you.”

  Haaked stared at him blankly; Javvi’s look was perhaps a little pitying. “Deserter, what is this treasure?” he asked.

  “That she stole,” Gaved explained earnestly. “She’s a thief.” Still no change to their expressions. “She came back here to get... Or why was she in prison?”

  Javvi looked almost embarrassed for him. “What else would I do with an escaped slave before I sent her back to her master?”

  “A slave,” Gaved echoed.

  “Of course a slave!” Haaked bellowed. “My slave! One of my wife’s body servants. And I want her back, you officious little man. And you’ve lost her.”

  “She’ll be reco
vered,” Javvi said, impervious to the insult. “And as for –” but then an old Wasp man had sidled in, head bowed, skulking over to Haaked to whisper something. Bad news apparently, for his master cuffed him savagely about the head and then turned bulging eyes on Javvi again. “She’s taken one of the others!” he got out. “She has stolen another of my slaves!”

  Javvi was the very picture of a bureaucrat whose work is never done. “Well they will be easier to track, then, two slaves with empty pockets and no friends. When I caught her, she was attempting to broker some kind of safe passage – perhaps for her and this companion. She will no doubt need to do the same again, and that is how she will be retaken. I will send the deserter back for punishment and then –”

  “You will not.” Haaked stared at Gaved with loathing. “He brought her here. You heard him; he came here with her intending to rob me. And I was robbed. Do you have any idea how expensive it is, to ship decent house-slaves out here?”

  “Colonel, be that as it may –” but Javvi was destined not to finish any sentences that night, it appeared.

  “You go do your job, you little maggot!” Haaked snapped at him. “This one, I’ll keep. This one I’ll make an example of, for the trouble he’s caused me. You’ve ever been whipped, deserter, when you were in the army?”

  Gaved faced up to those bloodshot little eyes. “Once or twice.”

  He thought Haaked would overturn the desk on him, statues and all, the man looked so angry. “Sir! You will address me as sir! And you have not had a whipping like the one I’ll give you tomorrow. I’ll put you before my house staff and show them what happens to those who dare to break the bonds between master and slave! I’ll have you flogged until the flesh comes off your bones!”

  “Colonel Haaked,” Javvi said calmly, “this man is mine to take for Imperial justice –”

  “I am justice here,” Haaked said, in a voice like death. “This isn’t Capitas, Captain, and you’re a long way from home with only two soldiers to your name. You are not a colonel and you are not a Wasp, and you will go and do your job like a good servant and not presume to dictate to your betters.”

  A muscle ticced in Javvi’s jaw, just the tiniest sign of anger. “May I remind you that I am –”

  “Little man, I have plenty of friends in the capital,” Haaked spoke over him. “Yes, and in the Rekef too. So take yourself out of my presence and bring back my slaves.”

  And Javvi, face meticulously devoid of expression, saluted, turned and left Gaved to his fate.

  Inexplicably, Haaked had not designed his retirement home with purpose-built cells, though Gaved would not have put it past him. Instead, he found himself consigned to a root cellar, his hands tied – again! – and the shutters above him solidly barred from the outside.

  It was, he had to admit, not one of his finest hours.

  Come morning, he had no doubt that the Colonel would carry out his threat. Whipping a man to death in order to remind the staff of their place was almost refreshingly Imperial, a real taste of home. It put him in mind of what Aelta had said before they came to the house, and before she had abandoned him. And she had been a slave, apparently, so she had known what she was talking about. A woman and a slave, twice forbidden to use the Art within her hands, and so she had trained them to other purposes, a conjurer’s miscellany of sleight of hand and escape artistry. Handy tricks for a slave, no doubt; even handier for someone trying to remain free.

  He had not been a very good soldier. Right now he felt that he had been an even worse civilian. He had been played. He had even known that she was playing him, but vanity and the optimistic dictates of his groin had kept him dancing along right up until the moment that she had left him to his fate.

  If I ever see her again, I’ll... He wasn’t sure what, to be honest. The great burning store of betrayed anger that was surely his well-earned pay for this venture was just another thing he had somehow failed to receive. Instead, he found himself hoping that annoyance with Haaked would make Javvi a less than diligent hunter, that the little man would go complain to his superiors first, and cast about for the fugitives’ trail second.

  There was a heavy scraping sound overhead. He had not thought dawn would come so quickly. And, indeed, when the hatch was levered open, the sky above was still a night’s showcase of stars.

  And her. There she was.

  “Can you fly?” came her faint whisper.

  “Probably not.” But he called the Art up anyway, despite the awkward position of his arms, and managed a lurching hop off the ground, just enough to spring him at the open hatch. Hands snagged him and managed to get him onto the ground outside after a brief struggle. A moment later there was a sawing at his wrists, and then his arms were free.

  He looked up into an open palm, a depressingly familiar sight these days. Not Aelta’s, but a stocky Wasp man Gaved didn’t know. He was dressed in ill-fitting but good-quality clothes – tailored for a man of around Haaked’s build as it happened.

  “You...” Gaved stared at him, then at Aelta. “You’re who she came back for, are you?”

  The man nodded. He had a sword at his belt but, unlike Aelta, there was still something of the slave in his stance.

  “Come on,” the woman hissed to them, and the three of them took wing, coasting until they were clear of the house, coming to rest in a nettle-strewn copse towards the edge of the estate.

  There were a lot of words Gaved wanted to say to her, after that. Some were accusations, many were not. None felt appropriate now it was not just the two of them. Instead he simply stared at her, and at last she looked away and shrugged.

  “Here.” And she had slung something at his feet: a lumpy bag. For a mad moment he thought she had packed him some food for the journey.

  But he recognized the contents, when he tugged open the drawstring. He had only got a brief look at those intricate statues, while Haaked and Javvi had fought over him, but they had found themselves a place in his memory. Here were four of the dozen and, even sold to thieves at thieves’ rates, they would keep him fed for a long time. So long as he sold them far away from here.

  “So you are a thief,” he said at last.

  “I’m what the Empire’s made me,” she said. “Goodbye, Gaved.”

  He looked at her companion, then, trying to find out what there was in the man that had drawn her all the way back here to rescue the man. Trying to see what made her prefer him. Some part of him – not a small part – still wanted her, and more than ever now he understood her and had seen what she could do.

  But: “You’re a lucky man,” he said gruffly, and managed a soldierly nod to Aelta, comrade to comrade. And so they parted, even though he carried her in his thoughts for many miles and days.

  As per the note for ‘Shadow Hunters’, Gaved is just particularly fun to write for, but the lot of women in the Empire is a theme the novels keep coming back to - most importantly of course with Seda herself. With that social background it made for a good story to turn the ‘rescued princess’ plot on its head and have her rescue him. Continuing the meta-story of the Empire and the Commonweal, men like Haaken show just how the occupation is going to go – not to men like Gaved or Varmen, but to the great and the good whose blood was not the red being spent in the getting. Javvi, of course (who was supposed to be in more stories and still may be) is nothing more than a Victor Hugo tribute act at heart.

  An Old Man in a Harsh Season

  Sometimes, when he woke, he forgot for a moment. Lying in his windowless room in the chill of pre-dawn, he felt the desert sky’s great arch over him. The hard mattress beneath (for a night on a soft one was agony to his back) became, briefly, the grittiness of sand, and he was young again.

  Like scavengers to a carcase, though, the aches and pains of age came back to him one by one: his teeth, his joints, his back, his weak leg, the phantom twinge of his broken thumb-claw. Hokiak awoke. It was winter in Myna and, though the nights lacked the desert’s predatory cold, the days never seem
ed to warm him, not even if he bowed to his years and sat dawn til dusk in the sun.

  Money to be made. Work to do. He rolled awkwardly from his bed, lowering his legs over the side, clutching for his cane. Dreaming of the old country again. More fool me. It was not even as though they had been good times. He was not such a fool as to paint all his memories with gold. Hard, violent times, the Scorpion-kinden’s endless round of raiding and stealing, killing and infighting, and if he had been the Man, when it came to pillage and savagery, where had it got him now?

  No, life was better here, playing the black market in the Empire’s shadow, if only he had not grown so old before he had worked that out.

  Around him he could hear Hokiak’s Exchange already bustling. Gryllis, the emaciated Spider he had taken on as a business partner, was an early riser, and the man made sure that his staff kept to the same clock. Even now their band of young wastrels would be cataloguing the most recent imports, or boxing the next round of goods to be smuggled out, and if they were not then Gryllis would be reminding them that Hokiak still held their papers, and juvenile slaves were hardly a rare commodity anywhere under Imperial rule.

  Hokiak grunted, dragging on a pair of loose breeches and an open fronted robe. He scratched at his sagging, wrinkled belly with the curved claws of one hand. And have these claws not torn the guts from a challenger, and let his blood soak into the sand? Nowadays the thought was dismal to him, if only because of the mess.

  A half-hour later found him in his back room, breaking his unenthusiastic fast on a bowl of porridge garnished with chopped dates. Some bastard somewhere was frying cricket meat with lemons, the scent leaching in from the outside, past the Exchange’s front door, sneaking by Gryllis and his underage labourers to creep into Hokiak’s slit-like nostrils and make his mouth water. And last time I gave in to that I lost a tooth, he reminded himself. He was wealthier as a merchant in Myna than he ever had been raiding up and down the Dryclaw, but the more money he had, the less there was left in the world that he could profitably spend it on. Hokiak gave his porridge a snaggle-toothed scowl.