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

When he dreamt, he did not see Ellery but he heard as she worked invisibly about the craft that he could not imagine, as though she was tunnelling through the walls of his dream. Instead, what he saw was the machine stalking through the halls of his mind to challenge him. In her workshop he had faced it boldly, but in the dreams it was a thing of terror and he fled rather than see its face. He awoke ashamed, sweat-stained, feverish.

If Ellery had been a magician, he would have understood, but she was Apt, an artificer, as far from magic as a kinden could go. He had bewitched himself.

Then the call came, at last, and he went to her like a warrior to his last battle, but gladly.

She met him at the door of her workshop. There was a terrible excitement bubbling in her face.

“It’s finished,” she told him. “It’s ready for you. Nobody has ever built such a thing as I have. I took all you told me of yourself, and I have measured it and calculated and trapped it in metal. I am the greatest artificer in the world. Fight my champion, Tisamon. I challenge you. Like a Mantis, I challenge you.” Just as her machines were not life, but could feign, so she was not Inapt, and yet she had listened to him enough to know what words to say.

He stepped into the workshop with Ellery at his back. The machine was ready for him, gears wound, steam hissing softly from its joints as it waited. She had given it two legs, and it no longer hung from the ceiling tracks like a murderous marionette. The arms still had a joint too many, and its shape was hunchbacked and inhuman to accommodate the burgeoning intricacy of the workings, but it had a head now. His face, cast in brass, as perfect and devoid of expression as a death mask.

Tisamon fell into his stance, the blade of his claw unfolded to lie between them. When the machine smoothly adopted a mirror stance, he stared into that familiar face and felt the shock of contact that had never come before.

He could no more back down from this challenge than he could have refused the Spider-kinden. He would leave her workshop victorious or dead.

He stepped in, expecting to hold the initiative, but his movements triggered a sudden whirling rush by the machine. Its footing was still slightly slow and awkward, but its attacks were fast and not limited by the arcs of human joints, and abruptly Tisamon was on the defensive.

He could keep clear of its reach, but the workshop space – that had seemed huge when he first saw it – was abruptly constricting, with the machine constantly sidestepping to herd him towards the walls. Each time he backed up, the machine followed further, faster. That razor edge whirled in from unexpected directions as it tested out his guard.

He changed stance, trying to get closer, within its reach, but ducking past and through swiftly when he saw that its loose-hinged arms could just fold straight back on themselves. As he passed, he struck back, and felt a scraping impact of his blade on the thing’s armoured body. Then he was rolling below a counterattack as it stepped heavily after him.

He caught a glimpse of Ellery, of her face, mouth slightly open, eyes very wide, watching her champion defend her honour.

At the far end of the room, he paused and watched the machine slow as it ceased to hear him or detect his motion. He had thought that it would stop, then, blind as it was, but it began methodically stalking forwards, sweeping left and right, knowing to an inch the dimensions of the space around it.

With the greatest care, Tisamon bunched himself to spring, a foot against the back wall for more purchase, seeing the automaton grow closer; unhurried, assured of finding him.

He waited until it had committed to its next exploratory sweep before kicking off, catching that blade-arm in his off hand and slamming into the thing’s body before its shield came up. He felt the device begin to topple, but it took three clumsy steps backwards, adjusting to his weight, and the blade was pivoting on the end of the arm, slicing back towards his fingers.

He kicked away again, shifting his hand to dig into the edge of its armour, throwing his full weight against it, driving his blade in. A moment later he found himself tumbling across the floor, staggering a little as he found his feet.

The automaton had turned for him again, but his claw had struck true, finding the gap he had wrenched in its plating. There was a rupture of steam venting there, half-obscuring the thing’s impassive face.

He had left a smear of blood on the floor, he saw. It had cut him twice as he left, two long, shallow lines, outer thigh and back.

The automaton was coming for him again. He was breathing heavily, and he glanced at Ellery, to see an expression of fierce passion on her face. “Finish it!” she demanded, of him, of it, and in that moment she had truly understood the fight, as the Inapt knew it: the fight that is a gamble where neither player can limit the stake.

He threw himself at the machine. It lunged at him, slowed by its injuries, and he was able to take the blade and fend it off, grab the shield as it came in, and use the machine’s own strength to lift him above its guard. Driving down into that same gaping gash he had cut, he felt the delicate structures of its innards part, and the machine died.

Even then, it cut him, laying a line of blood down his forearm, and he staggered back from the steaming automaton as it slowly froze into statue-stillness, heart pounding but alive, so very alive.

He looked on his opponent now and it was nothing but a thing, but