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

said instead, and Lial blinked, looking again, seeing not a bulky Fly, but a man of mixed blood, Fly and Beetle both, wrapped in a threadbare long-coat, and with a woollen cap on his head, but no less familiar for all of that.

“Scop?” he said hoarsely. It had been a good year since Cutmold Limner’s forge-hand had walked out, and his path and Lial’s had never crossed since then. Or so Lial had believed.

“Lial,” Scop said, and walked in, looking from face to face, seeing offence and uncertainty and, in Tallway’s case, barely-contained giggling.

“We have preparations to make,” he told them all, and Lial felt his briefly assumed leadership evaporate in the face of the halfbreed’s utter certainty.

“You’ve done well,” Scop said. As if the Ant-kinden mindlink had briefly expanded to include everyone except him and Lial, all the others had returned to the wine and the food with a will, and given over the roof for more private matters. Lial watched with a mixture of bafflement and resentment as the halfbreed studied the lines of the half-completed flying machine.

“You know,” Scop added after a moment, “when I left Limner’s place, I didn’t think you meant what you said. I thought it was any apprentice’s mad dream, that it would be forgotten in a tenday, and you’d find another position and end up somewhere comfortable and unambitious, like most artificers in this city. When I heard you’d got as far as shopping for silk, I knew I was wrong. I’m glad of that. This is good work.”

He was not the man Lial remembered: Limner’s deferential, humble forge hand. Scop was filled with an iron purpose. “How did you find out?” Lial demanded of him. “What business is this of yours?”

Scop turned to him, and the lanterns cast his face without sympathy in it. “I found out because by then I’d got myself new work, Lial, a new master.”

“Who?”

“Goiter Parrymill.”

Lial stared at him. Each time he tried to assemble the pieces, the picture made less sense. “He hired you? Because you used to work for...?”

“He has no idea who I am. He’s never met me. His steward hired me, because Parrymill’s such a tight bastard that he can’t ever keep decent staff, respectable staff, not for the filthy jobs: only foreigners and debtors, and halfbreeds. I’m the man that shines the shoes of his better servants, Lial. I’m the man that cleans out his privy. And because I’m mixed-blood, the other servants take advantage of me. I do all sorts of other people’s’ jobs, when the steward’s not looking. I go everywhere in Parrymill’s townhouse. I read all his letters. I don’t think they realise I can.” The speech was delivered in flat, hard words that had a lot of pent-up anger beaten into them. “When Parrymill was warned not to deal with a fallen Spider Arista, I passed her onto you. When the other servants were taking Parrymill’s goods to be fixed by Ant-kinden, because the housekeeping monies were pitiful and the Ants were cheap, I passed them onto you too. And when Parrymill got worried enough about you to commission a report on your machine, well, you know the rest.”

Lial shook his head. There was no real affection for him in Scop’s eyes, only the pride of a smith who has made a sword that will slay emperors. “Is this just to get at Parrymill for the work he makes you do?” he tried. “Why are you doing all of this?”

“Why are you?” Scop turned on him.

“Because I was Cutmold Limner’s apprentice, and he had a dream!” Lial shouted at him. “And that means something!”

“Yes, it does,” Scop confirmed. “And I was his forge hand, Lial.” He used the personal name as if he were hammering in nails with it. “Think, for a moment, what I am now. Ten years around machines, and I know as much as most who have their College accredits, but I’m the man who cleans the privies because nobody wants a halfbreed artificer. Limner was different. He didn’t care about the blood. For that, I’ll make you fly.”

Lial had nothing to say to that. From below came the sounds of Tallway launching into another tangled tale. “The money for the party...” he managed weakly.

“Some of what I’d saved. I never did have much of a taste for indulging myself. The rest went on the polemics.”

A jolt of undirected rage went through Lial at the very mention. “You...? But why do all that, just to knock us all down...?”

Scop shook his head. “Lial, the polemics are all over the city by now. Collegium loves a good satire with a few funny drawings. Everyone knows, Lial. This isn’t some secret that Parrymill can do away with and throw a cloak over. Whether they’re laughing at you or not, people are waiting for you to try your wings.”

For a long while Lial looked at the little halfbreed. He searched his heart and realised that, in the last ten minutes, he had become afraid of Scop. He abruptly had no idea what the man might not be capable of.

“Which leads us to my most recent note. You’ve not forgotten, I trust?” Scop prompted.

In a few days the workshop will be attacked, Lial remembered. “They’re really going to come here...?”

“Parrymill’s terrified that you might reduce the value of his airship empire by three parts in a hundred,” Scop confirmed, “and for that he’s gone to a watch officer friend of his and told him about the dangerous treasons that you’re plotting with all manner of foreigners. You’ll get a couple of nights in the cells before they decide it was all a mistake, but in the meantime the machine will be destroyed, your charts and notes confiscated, everything wrecked..”

“Then what do we do?” Lial asked, and as he said it he realised that he had given in at last. He had accepted Scop’s authority over him, accepted that every success of the last year was a gift of the