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

He had no wish to find out whether the little truth left in her was all that remained after sufficient drink.

And in the small hours she looked him straight in one eye or the other and said, “So, you can’t fly yet then.”

“Not even the slightest bit,” Lial confirmed, clinking the rim of his bowl to hers.

“Shows what a rotten teacher I am, though,” she told him, slurringly earnest. “Never believe anyone who tells you they know how the Art works. Nobody does, not my lot, not your lot, not a bit of it.”

“What do I pay you for, then?” Lial had been meditating under Tallway’s guidance for over a year.

“This stuff costs something rotten,” she explained, refilling their bowls messily. “So, you can’t fly, not even with this expensive liquor inside you.”

For a moment he thought, befuddled, that this was the secret, and he reached for the wings that were waiting for him in the ether, the unseen place that the Art came from, but there was nothing, and instead of leaping into the air he fell over sideways, which seemed hilarious to both of them.

“Not me,” he confirmed to the floorboards.

“And your man Limner, old Cutmold Limner, he couldn’t fly either,” she said sadly. He cocked an eye up at her.

“It should have worked. No reason, no reason for it not to’ve,” he told her. Long arms reached out and righted him, or tried to, and for a moment they were clinging to each other, getting tangled up with just which arm belonged to who, and she planted a nettle-flavoured kiss on his cheek. He leant into her bony armpit. “I heard the engine, though,” he explained, gesturing wildly. “It was working. The wings, oh the wings were going all over the place, but then... the gears sheared. We made them strong as we could, but I heard all the teeth go on one of them, ping, ping, ping! Big old gears, but not strong enough, not for those wings. Why not? Why not fly? All the calculations worked. Master Limner had me check ‘em myself.”

“Nothing that big can fly,” Tallway pronounced, hugging him to her one-armed, the other reaching for the bottle. “Sorry. I sorry. I sorry? Yes, I sorry, old Beetle old boy, but I say you before. Too big piece of metal belong earth, not sky, don’tcherknow?”

“I’ve seen bigger insects than that get off the ground,” Lial muttered stubbornly. “I saw a load-beetle twice that size get airborne. Landed on a roof and went straight through it.”

Tallway snickered. “No, but no, but your beetle, your beetle of whatever shape or size or what have you, you see, isn’t metal. Not wood. Not weighing, see? Not that I know how your gears and teeth or what have you, but metal... metal belong earth not sky. Us also.”

“Then I’ll build it out of...” Lial frowned and slurped the last drops out of his bowl, “something that belongs sky. What belongs sky?”

“Clouds,” she said, and “wind,” he countered, and they continued naming the lightest, airiest things they could think of until dawn (itself named two hours before) marched from the east like a harsh and unforgiving army.

Lial slept for most of the rest of the day, and retained only two things from the entire night’s work. One was a hangover of grandiose proportions, and the other was one of Tallway’s suggestions for something that belonged to the sky.

Staring at the ceiling of his lodgings, knowing that the workshop was lost, his master was lost, and the entire dream was on the very point of following them, he determined that he would give it a go. What could go wrong? Or at least, what else was left, that had not already gone as wrong as could be?

He let the workshop go. He would not need one until he had fixed a great many other things, and there was no point frittering his meagre savings on it. He sold every piece of machinery in it, kept the pick of the portable tools, and let the landlord reclaim the barren room. So much for that.

That done, he began to make enquiries into supply. The commodity that Tallway had dreamt up was neither readily available nor cheap. The local stuff was legendarily poor in quality and, while the Spiderlands shipped tons of it, they charged the earth, and demand was high enough to keep prices rising in all seasons. A little came south from the Moth-kinden of Dorax, but that was through Sarn, adding both tariffs and considerable personal danger for any trader willing to risk that route. Dealing with Ant-kinden was always a dubious business, with arbitrary confiscation, imprisonment or slavery always a possibility.

After a couple of months of asking questions and trying to arrange deals, Lial began to recognise that more than simple economics were against him. Merchants saw him coming, and closed their doors. Word of his intentions preceded him, with universally negative results. For a long time he could not account for it, but then Goiter Parrymill paid him another visit.

“I was sad to hear that you’d let old Limner’s workshop go,” the magnate rumbled. “You’re doing all right for yourself, of course?” He looked around the mould-stained walls of Lial’s wretched little room, where he had turned up unannounced.

“I live,” Lial told him flatly.

“And retain your ambitions, no doubt.” A sharp look came into Parrymill’s eye. “My friends tell me you’re enquiring into the silk trade. Buying. That rang a few warning bells.”

Lial sat on his sagging bed and waited, without comment.

“If you’re trying to mark out a space in the airship business, lad, it isn’t that easy,” Parrymill said, and his avuncular jolliness was gone. “I know, I know, everyone looks up and sees the gasbags, and thinks, that’s a decent line of work, licence to mint money, I want a piece of that. But it’s not that easy, lad, and for those of us who have put in all the hard work, we don’t appreciate