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

from his mysterious patron, but he had kept each of the little notes, the handwriting of the puppeteer who was guiding his hands. He should be glad, he knew. He would be nowhere if not for that unasked aid. If it had been in Lial’s nature to go with the prevailing winds, though, he would not currently be trying to put a heavier-than-air flier into the sky. His reliance on his unseen benefactor rankled and he was waiting for the scales to swing the other way, for the price to be demanded from him.

The message was waiting by his worktop, weighed down by a pouch. It read:

You’ve done Well. Celebrate. Invite Everybody.

There was money in the pouch, silver Standards of Helleron mint, all of which had seen a fair round of use since they came off the dies.

“Who brought this in?” Lial demanded, but the Ants just said that it had been a messenger, some Fly perhaps. They had a fine line in sullen Ant silences when he pressed them too far, and he was well aware that he was living very much on their good graces.

Celebrate. There was no reason he should. There were plenty of other places where the money was actually needed. He stared at the words, though. If they had a little get-together, here at the workshop, would his patron step from the shadows?

And it had been a long time since he had last thrown a party, his College days, in fact. It had been a good three tendays since his last drunken stint with Tallway, even.

“Me, the three of you,” he told the Workwell brothers. “Gryssa and Terant. Tallway. Lanzo’s family,” meaning their Fly-kinden watchers. “Can we fit all of that in here? All of that plus one more, maybe?”

And the Ant-kinden could fold everything away, of course. They were used to a military life, of travelling compactly and usually on foot. There would be a party.

He gave some of the money to Lanzo, to procure food, and more for Lanzo’s middle cousin, who could play the lyre quite well. He took Tallway’s recommendations regarding the pick of Collegium’s cheap-but-drinkable, although he made those purchases himself, as experience had taught him that Tallway could not be trusted to purchase alcohol without consuming the bulk of it before delivery.

Three nights later they all came: the Spiders, the Grasshopper exile, the swarm of Fly-kinden. It was a confused and awkward gathering at first, but Tallway took the edge of that, regaling them with the kind of rambling story that she made most of her livelihood by, where even the digressions had digressions of their own. After that, when she had most of them laughing, and had even drawn a smile from Gryssa’s butchered face, tensions eased, and the motley outcasts’ assembly got to work on the wine.

It was near to midnight when the knock came, at the door. Tallway was inexplicably succeeding in teaching the Workwell brothers some Commonwealer dance, and Lial had ended up sitting on the roof-edge with Terant, the big Spider-kinden, who said little but listened well. When Lial saw a diminutive figure approach the door, his words dried up and he felt his heart skip, but when one of the Ants opened up, the lamplight from inside illuminated only one of Lanzo’s brood, home late from whatever employment she had managed to scrounge. A moment later, though, Tallway had bounded up onto the roof, drink and her Art almost springing her over the edge before she could regain her balance. “Lial! Come see!” she exclaimed, grinning madly. Lial realised that the music had died down below, and the talk also. If Tallway hadn’t found whatever it was so hilarious, he would have been reaching for his knife.

There were mixed expressions downstairs. Lanzo’s family seemed to share Tallway’s point of view but Gryssa was looking haughtily offended, and the Ant-kinden were, for once, openly bewildered.

“What is it?” he asked the room at large. Tallway fished a pamphlet from a little stack that had presumably been brought in by the latecoming Fly-kinden.

It was what they called a ‘polemic’, merry little satires usually put about to lampoon and ridicule the great and good. Lial started at the crude illustration on the frontpiece, and read out the title. “Big Beetle Learns to Fly,” he murmured.

“It’s wonderful!” Tallway jostled him. “Look, I’m in it. I jump!”

Lial flicked through the pages. The feeling that came over him took him way back, to when he was a child at school, with some calculation or piece of logic gone awry and the other children laughing at him. Someone was laughing at him. Possibly the whole city was laughing at him. His work, his great work, the death of his mentor and his lofty ideals, had been laid bare for the derision of the masses.

What am I doing here? he wondered bitterly. I should have listened to Parrymill when I had the chance. He let the polemic’s few badly-printed pages flutter open, seeing little caricatures: a grasshopper, two spiders, some ants, and all through it the clumsy, foolish beetle who wanted to fly.

He frowned. “So who’s ‘Small Helpful Beetle?’ Do they mean Lanzo?” It seemed unlikely that the anonymous author did. At that moment there came another knock at the door.

Everyone turned, corpse-silent. Lial put down the polemic softly, as though even the sound of rustled paper would trigger some calamity, and lifted the latch.

His hopes died immediately. A short and grubby figure was thrusting forwards a folded paper. No great confrontation, then: just another note.

In a few days the Workshop will be Attacked. They will be Watchmen suborned by Parrymill. Be ready to Defend what you have Built.

Lial swore, and he sensed the others changing the way they stood, from at ease to readied. When did I become their leader?

He realised the messenger was still there and automatically fumbled in his pouch for a coin, but when he proffered the little ceramic bit, the Fly would not take it.

“Lial Morless,” he