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

halfbreed’s hand. “Look at them down there: renegade Sarnesh, rogue Spider-kinden. They’d all face exile if they so much as raised a hand to a watchman.”

“You have perhaps three days, and the nights that go with them,” Scop said. “Thanks to the polemic the city is watching, and I hope that may stay Parrymill’s hand long enough.”

“Long enough for what?” demanded Lial.

“Finish the machine,” Scop told him.

The city watch of Collegium was not comprised of redeployed army men, as in Ant cities, nor was it the foreign mercenaries and house guard of the Spiderlands or the partisan, privately hired militia of Helleron. Collegium’s watch was engaged by the Assembly on behalf of the city, and for the most part did its duty well enough. Human nature was a rock on which many good intentions had foundered, though, and so enter Maxel Rodder, fifty years of plodding watch officer, whose priorities were for the comfort of his anticipated retirement. If so much of a man as Goiter Parrymill assured him that the Workwell workshop was a nest of crime and double-dealing then he needed no further prompting, and so it was that he and a half-dozen watchmen marched through the streets of Collegium towards Shallowacre.

The influx of outlanders was a common topic of debate in those years, being brought before the Assembly at least once a month. In time, and especially after the settling of matters with Sarn, calmer heads would prevail, but at that moment there were many Beetles in Collegium who fretted about the number of other kinden on their streets, and what they might be up to. So it was that a watch officer like Rodder could feel justified in utilising a heavy hand against, say, a gang of rogue Sarnesh who had irked one of the great and good.

He was preceded into Shallowacre by a flurry of Fly-kinden children, scooting ahead of him at gutter-height, but that was a common-enough thing, Fly-kinden being forever curious for spectacle, and so he paid it no heed. Instead he spotted the Ant workshop ahead and slowed his pace, deciding that his years merited the ‘awful majesty of the law’ approach, rather than the more exerting ‘catch them at it’ rush that younger men might have tried.

Indeed, the Ant-kinden appeared to be waiting for him. At the back of his mind had been a worry that Ant-kinden were habitually violent and of poor judgment, and that this might actually turn ugly. His men had come weighed down with chainmail, helm and breastplate, and they had maces, crossbows and round shields. Greater than those was the partisan aegis of Collegium law, which would look extremely narrowly on any foreigner that raised a hand against its own. Still, that would be poor solace for the man who ended up with an Ant dagger in his eye.

However, the scene that met him was as peaceable as any in the city. The three near-identical Ants stood, as if on parade, before a workshop whose small dimensions were utterly crammed with worktables and pieces of disassembled artifice. Rodder had been briefed by Master Parrymill as to what he was looking for: plans, part-complete mechanisms of some kind of flying automotive, and of course the item itself, which he knew to be above on the roof. He had anticipated sweeping in, confiscating everything that looked pertinent, and sorting it out later. Seeing the true state of things, he realised that he should have brought a score more men just to carry everything out.

“Where are the plans for the flying machine?” he demanded of the Ants, optimistically. They stared at him without expression. Rodder was aware that a crowd was slowly accumulating, other residents and artisans of Shallowacre taking in a free piece of street theatre.

Rodder was no artificer, but he was a Collegium Beetle and had a good idea what he was looking for. Searching through the Workwell’s piled junk would be the work of a tenday, though, and Parrymill had stressed the urgency of the task. “The roof,” he snapped, and did his best to shoulder past the Ants to the stairs. The Ants themselves, the model of civic obedience, stepped meekly aside. The clutter of their workshop did not. There was not space for an armoured Beetle-kinden to make any headway at all, and for a moment Rodder was stalled by sheer logistics.

He ordered the Ants to clear a path to the stairs. They looked at him blankly, as if to say ‘whyever for?’ He told them to get the workbenches out of the way. They began painstakingly unloading the tables, piece by piece. Nothing of them indicated defiance. There was not the slightest rough edge that Rodder could use as a trigger for justifiable arrest or persecution. He was acutely aware of the several dozen spectators, a good half of whom, given Shallowacre’s low rents, were also foreigners.

But on the other hand, Parrymill would be waiting for his report. With a snarl of frustration Maxel Rodder took hold of the nearest workbench and upended it, spilling parts and tools, papers and piecework across the floor. “Clear that up, you Ant bastard,” he snapped, halfway hoping for some supporting murmur from the crowd. Instead the silence behind him was stony. Still, he was committed now, and forged ahead to the foot of the stairs, flinging everything out of his way.

He was just about to ascend, his men after him, when one of the Ants spoke up.

“Excuse me, but we do not use the stairs. Possibly they are unsafe,” one of the Workwells informed him.

“I know you work on the roof,” Rodder levelled at him. The man shrugged.

“We go up the outside wall if we need to. Our Art, you understand.”

“Likely,” snorted Rodder, and went up the stairs on the double.

The growing crowd of onlookers was treated to a brief but memorable duet for metal armour and cursing, and Rodder and most of his men reappeared at the bottom of the stairs. For a moment it