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

She was short and slight of build, a Spider-kinden of more conventional aspect. Her robes were also silk, pale in the dimness. “A lantern for our guest, Terant,” she said, her voice soft. “You forget, he does not have our eyes, for the dark.” There was something cradled in her arms and he took it for a child, and then for a lumpy bag of valuables.

Terant took out an ancient-looking oil lamp and then started fumbling with flint and steel. Automatically, Lial said, “Let me,” and came forward with his steel lighter, producing a flame on the third turn of the wheel and setting up a subdued glow from the lamp. He looked at his hostess, and froze, trying desperately to fix his face in a polite smile.

She wore a half-mask and it was a beautiful thing, a lattice of gold filigree and black lacquer about a many-faceted ruby that sat neatly over her left eyesocket. For material and craftsmanship that mask could have bought Lial Morless many times, and would have put a dent in even Goiter Parrymill’s accounts. What froze him in place was how the mask had been made: not what it concealed, but what it revealed. It was open-lattice and sat like a spider’s web over half her face, and hid not at all the fact that someone had done a great deal of work, over a considerable period of time, to ruin her. The scar-lines filled in the detail of the mask’s web, so that between them, artifice and injury, she was complete.

He swallowed any retort and managed to straighten up from the lamp and hold himself still.

“Terant, our hospitality,” the woman said, and her – what? Servant, slave, friend? – fished a jug and some clay goblets from a table. The wine was brackish and cheap. Tallway would have turned her nose up at it. While the big man served, the Spider-kinden woman hugged her bundle to her, an uneven, sagging thing of knots and loose ends.

Lial racked his mind for all he knew of Spiders and their cohorts. “He is of your cadre?” he asked her, nodded towards Terant.

“He is almost all the cadre I have left,” the woman replied. A cadre was the close personal retinue of a Spider lady or lord, the most trusted, most capable and most valued of her staff. Lial was looking at someone who had lost out in the politics of the Spider dance, fallen far and hard.

“My name is Lial Morless, artificer,” he told her.

“And you may call me Gryssa.” The way she said it made it clear that it was a name of convenience. “You want silk, and nobody will sell to you. That’s what Terant tells me.”

“He’s right,” Lial admitted.

“I want to invest, but nobody will trade with me. Any reputable merchant of this city knows me as someone who has enemies. They consider me a bad risk. I, on the other hand, have access to a small supply of silk.” She was watching him carefully. “Not enough to make an airship of, but I’m told that is not your intent.”

Told by whom? But at the same time Lial had no other offers. “I need silk, yes. I’ll gladly deal with you, if I can meet your price. But I don’t understand. If nobody will trade with you, how are you bringing the goods into the city?”

She just looked at him, pale living eye and rich ruby in tandem, and a moment later he realised she had shifted her bundle, trying to proffer it for his inspection. It clung to her, though, like a child, clung to her with its thin, sharp-elbowed legs. The lantern-light caught a glitter across the scatter of its eyes.

“I have one other in my cadre, save Terant,” she told him, but she was looking down at her burden now, doting, and the spider in her arms looked back, linked to her by some communion of her Art. Lial shuddered uncontrollably, for although any venomous beasts of such size were long driven far from Collegium’s walls, there were still houses where the nursery windows were barred to keep them out, and you still heard stories...

But he had no options, and they needed each other, and despite the thing in her arms, or because of it, they reached an agreement.

“Now do you remember old Cutmold Limner,” grated out the iron magnate, Torqwell Glassey, as a servant topped up his wine.

Goiter Parrymill nodded almost fondly. “Oh yes. The heavier-than-air flying machine. Well, we saw where that went, sure enough.”

“Down,” another wit suggested, to general amusement. Parrymill was dining with some of his peers, a very comfortable affair. He had not thought of old Limner in months.

“Why drag him out?” he asked. “The old fellow was a good artificer in his day. You’ll not be disrespectful, I hope.”

“One of my people ran into a chap that used to be his apprentice,” Glassey explained. “Reminded me, is all.”

“Reader’s rights! That boy?” Parrymill shook his head. “And would you believe I offered him a perfectly decent place working on the airships, and he wouldn’t take it. So what’s he up to now?”

“Same business as the old man, from what my fellow could gather. Buying up all sorts of odds and ends in the machine parts way of things,” Glassey explained.

Parrymill had gone very still. “You’re surely mistaken,” he said softly. “I made clear to the young man months ago that Limner’s line of speculation was leading nowhere. Besides, last I heard, nobody would deal with him. He was trying to elbow into the silk trade.” And, the unspoken thought, I made cursed sure that he’d not get the first foothold there, to build his flying machine. It’s been so long. I assumed he’d left the city or something. Has he just been planning all this time?

“Putting together something for Clifftops in his bedroom, is he?” he asked carefully.

“Fellow’s got a workshop,” Glassey said, all apparent innocence, but there was a part of him watching Parrymill