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

Ecta fell at Hokiak’s feet. The slender shaft of a longbow arrow stood between his shoulder-blades like a standard. For a moment nobody moved, waiting, and then a tall, angular shadow moved amongst the stalls, and Soul Je stepped out, almost apologetically, nodding briefly to his allies.

Hokiak stared at them for a long while. He had barely moved throughout the whole skirmish, still leaning on his stick as though he was just an old veteran enjoying clement weather. Eventually, and in tones that were hard to analyse, he said, “You clowns.”

Mordrec exchanged looks with his allies, save for Dal Arche who was mopping gingerly at the red weal that his bowstring had left across his face.

“Oh you utter clowns,” the old man repeated, but there was a chuckle recognisable in his tone now. “All right lads, out you come.”

And out they came, more than a dozen of them: Mynan Beetle-kinden with levelled crossbows emerging from either side of the withered Scorpion, all of them staring at Mordrec and his fellows as though waiting for the order to shoot.

“You...” Mordrec started uncertainly. “But I though that...”

“I told you Scorpions don’t care about honour,” Ygor reminded him in a murmur.

“And there’s another two dozen ready to come in,” Hokiak said slowly. “I called in a lot of favours. What do you clowns want?”

“Out,” the Wasp replied promptly. “Safe travel out of the Empire. Papers, transport, whatever it takes to be out of the reach of the Rekef.” He glanced at Dal Arche. “The Commonweal’s nice, this time of year.”

For a moment Hokiak regarding him disdainfully. “I hear Lyker got himself dead.”

“That was... careless of him,” Mordrec managed.

The old Scorpion could hold his face still no longer. He shook his head to hide it, but there was a grin somewhere amongst the yellowing stumps of his hutting teeth. “Myna’s better off without you,” he spat, and then held a hand out swiftly in case any of his followers took this as an order. “You’re fools, all of you, to do this on credit, but I’m feeling generous all of a sudden. Come back to the Exchnge and I’ll see what I can do.”

He lent on his stick less, they saw, as he hobbled off back towards his den, and despite his years there was a decided new spring in his step.

Characterisation in Shadows is often a case of playing against the type I’ve given a particular kinden, and Hokiak is surely the most extreme example: the most important Scorpion character in the series is, at the same time, the least Scorpion of them all. Here we have conquered Myna shortly before the events of Empire, with the Twelve Year War consigned to history and Myna as just a stopover for the loot funnelling out of the Commonweal. Speaking of that, Dal, Soul, Ygor and Mordrec all have their day in court in Heirs of the Blade, which draws a lot of loose threads together. The only other major character from the novels whom this story touches is unnamed here, but it doesn’t take much to work out just what major blow the Mynan resistance has suffered, and just why Soul and Ygor are persona non grata with the locals.

Brass Mantis

Helleron, city of smoke and iron; a good city for bad times. Oh, perhaps the rich magnates there lived swaddled in wealth and luxury, but then it never seemed to be Helleron that they lived in. Their lives of palatial townhouses, of elegant waste and barbed entertainments, belonged to some other city that the rest of the populace could only observe as through grimy glass.

For the Apt, those whose birthright was machinery and the ability to understand it, Helleron exercised a powerful attraction. Its countless forges and workshops and factories were always hungry for bodies. There was a living to be had there, slotted into a tiny mould, performing one restrictive function over and over, making a lifelong profession of being a miniscule cog. Helleron was a vast machine that consumed lives and produced everything else. It was the industrial heart of the Insect-kinden’s world, beating oil and gear trains and the hissing strength of steam.

What, then, for the Inapt? For those to whom machines were a mystery that could never be parsed, choked by their mystic superstitions that the Apt laughed at in scorn, what could Helleron possibly offer? And yet they came, and the answer seemed to be nothing more than dissolution. There were Moth-kinden begging on the streets whose ancestors had been great magicians back in an age nobody could quite remember any more. There were Dragonflies starving in the gutters who had donned glittering armour to ride against the mechanized hosts of the Wasps, and lose. There were renegade Spider-kinden in the tavernas and the whorehouses, stalking death one sin at a time.

There was a Mantis-kinden Weaponsmaster that nobody could kill.

He was a lean, deadly man, Tisamon his name, and he had drifted about the eastern Lowlands, cutting wherever he touched, until he drew too close to the hungry pull of Helleron. People whispered about his past. Certainly he seemed to have little to live for. The only thing keeping him alive looked to be pride. They said his brooch, a sword crossing a circle, was the mark of an ancient, forgotten order of warrior mystics. They said he was seeking death, but it was not in him to bare steel with any intent save to win.

Tisamon fought two kinds of matches. Publicly, he was a prize-fighter. Such clashes were never overtly to the death. The pretence, at least, was of a clash of skill, two professionals meeting with respect and elegance to the delight of an informed crowd. Standing on that bloodied sand, listening to the drunken jeering, the bustle and babble, Tisamon felt the artistry of his trade corroding, as though the caustic air that hung about the factories could etch and eat at a man’s soul.

He preferred the other sort of match, staged