Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1) Read online

  Parrymill made every pretence of politeness, but as soon as he could he was out of the door and heading for Shallowacre as fast as was dignified.

  Then, as now, Shallowacre was not a wealthy part of the city, but a street of artisans at the bottom of their trade, whose customers were the working poor. There were three or four artificer’s workshops, but discrete questions by Parrymill’s servants showed that a Beetle of Lial’s description was indeed frequenting one such, although he did not appear to be the owner. Parrymill descended on the luckless place in great pomp, and recoiled when he came face to face with an Ant-kinden, a Sarnesh.

  Now in those days matters between Sarn and Collegium were far from settled. Indeed the statesman Jons Pathawl, whose words would soon after forge a lasting peace between the two cities, was then a great thorn in the side of the Assembly and would preach about Sarn in Collegium’s parks to whoever would listen. However, he had yet to turn his speeches into action and Sarn remained a militaristic northern neighbour that gave many a Collegiate citizen sleepless nights. A Sarnesh Ant was not a common sight, and here was one – no, three! – in the middle of the city. Rogues, therefore, Parrymill deduced: renegades from their city, come here for reasons of their own to set up some shabby business enterprise.

  They were looking at him suspiciously; the usual Ant-kinden paranoia when presented with someone whose mind they could not read. How they got any custom was beyond Parrymill, but he forced himself to sweep into their little shop, servants in tow.

  “I am looking for a friend of mine,” he informed them imperiously. “I’m told he visits here sometimes.” He looked about the cluttered room, three worktables crammed into a space devoid of elbow-room. Only Ant-kinden could work so, in each other’s’ hair and treading on each other’s’ feet. The pieces on the nearby tables seemed reasonable domestic, he noted: gas lanterns, well pumps, disarticulated pieces of cheap forge machinery. “What work do you do here?” he asked the Ants.

  “Machine repairs. Factory and forge, agricultural, automotive,” the nearest one rattled off, devoid of inflection. “You have work?”

  Not that I’d trust to such as you, Parrymill thought, and shook his head with a pleasant smile. “Just mending pots and kettles then, so to speak. Well, perhaps I was misinformed.” His eyes drifted to the furthest table. One of the Ants was standing there a little defensively, and Parrymill frowned, seeing unfolded plans, proper artificer’s work. Surely even Ants don’t need schematics to repair a steam pump.

  Some part of the design, so glimpsed, did look remarkably like a wing. Parrymill was about to lunge forwards for a better look, and he could see the Ant tense to fold the thing away, when a familiar voice caught him.

  “Well, Master Parrymill. It’s been some while.”

  He turned to see none other than Lial Morless, standing familiarly in the workshop doorway. From the way the Ants relaxed at his presence it was clear their association was not a new one.

  “Lial, I hope you’re not doing something foolish with these...” One beringed hand indicated the Ants, but Parrymill left the sentence unfinished.

  “They are doing something foolish for me,” Lial replied flatly, and then, to leave no doubt, “Clifftops next year, Master Parrymill. Not so very long now, I think. I’ll see you there, no doubt.”

  He stepped back pointedly, leaving room for Parrymill’s exit, and leaving no doubt that he had no more to say. Parrymill managed a polite smile and a nod of the head before stalking away.

  The workshop and the three Ants, had come to Lial by the same way as Gryssa and her silk-spider. He had finally got to the point where his plans were sufficiently advanced to need facilities, and Gryssa had accumulated sufficient silk to work with, and he had started doing the rounds, looking for somewhere that would lend him some space for the very little coin he had. His name was still familiar, though, to the artificers of Collegium. He had several offers that were withdrawn hastily when he tried to call on them, and he spent most of a month traipsing round the city, gradually lowering his expectations, trying to find anywhere that had the tools and the space for his work.

  He had complained to Tallway, seeing the hand of Parrymill in this. “The old maggot’s done his work well. After the silk business, nobody’ll deal with me,” he had explained, and the Grasshopper woman had frowned.

  “Why should he care? Sky’s full of insects and people,” They had been up on the low roof of a little shack overlooking the river, although not too close to the edge as Tallway had once pushed him off a similar ledge in an impromptu attempt to stimulate his Art. She had her arm around him companionably, and they had been sharing a bottle of something tooth-jarringly sharp made from, if she was to be believed, radishes.

  Lial had taken a moment to formulate his answer. “Insects get tired. People get tired. Machines work harder, faster, longer. That’s what artifice is about. It doesn’t matter how well you do things. There’s always a way to do it better, and it’s our duty to find that way. Men like Parrymill, though, they care more about money than progress. They’re onto a good thing and they don’t want anyone to come up with a better way to do it.”

  He had seen that the urgent and irrefutable logic of the Apt world had passed her by, and then she had replied, “So sell it to Parrymill. If ’ doing it ’is the thing. Sell your work to him, and then he’ll help you and not stop you.” She had smiled a little sadly at his instant outrage. “Or is the doing it not the point, after all?”

  He had opened his mouth to protest, and she had pushed him off the roof.

  Later that night he had limped home with a sprained ankle, which had been the only result of his abrupt descent, and found another note waiting for him.

  Shallowacre. New workshop. The Brothers Workwell. Don’t stare at them, Treat them like Citizens, and they’ll Suit you Well.

  The writing had been the same and, when he went to Shallowacre, there the place had been. The Sarnesh renegades gave him no believable names, probably for fear that word of them might reach their abandoned home. Instead they had scrabbled around for a good, decent Collegiate-sounding moniker, and come up with Workwell. All three used it, apparently interchangeably. They were not aware of Lial’s tainted reputation, and were more than happy to rent out a worktable and tools. Once they understood what he was working on they became very excited, and he learned that they had been military engineers back in Sarn, artillery-builders. His plans acquired a number of improvements based on their knowledge of stresses, tolerance and the recalcitrance of moving parts.

  A tenday or so later saw Goiter Parrymill hosting guests in his townhouse: not Beetle magnates but two Fly-kinden, the foremost of whom was a slight woman with greying hair and hard features who was well known in Collegium society. She had sat through his explanation and now she shrugged, lighting a small pipe with deft fingers.

  “So it’s your obsession,” she told him.

  “We had this conversation over Limner,” he reminded her.

  “So we did, and we looked at Limner, and we knew he’d fail. Why should the apprentice outdo the master? Let him hurl himself off as many cliffs as he wants.”

  “And if it flies?”

  “A dozen good artificer-magnates assure me a heavier-than-air flying machine that carries a man is quite impossible,” she said, but something in her tone lacked conviction.

  “And you trust that implicitly do you, Sulle?” Parrymill pressed.

  “Goiter, flying machines are your business. If this boy builds a better one, that would therefore be your problem.”

  Goiter stared out of the window, hands behind his back, like a tactician considering the disposition of his troops. “Your messengers enjoy riding on my airships, Sulle. They get good rates.”

  “And that’s why they ride on your airships, rather than your competitors’,” she told the small of his back, unmoved.

  “And if Lial Morless’s machine flies, covers the miles faster than my airships? And if your customers realise their pac
kages and notes and letters can get where they’re going that much faster? And how much will Morless charge you? And will he want to build a machine that will take him and your messenger, or will he calmly suggest you hand over your solemn trust to him, and he’ll drop it from the skies over the recipient’s house when he flaps over?”

  For a long moment Sulle regarded him. “So?” she said at last.

  “So we have to know,” Parrymill stated. “Like last time. Send your man in.” He jabbed a thick finger at the third occupant of his parlour, an ageing, stocky Fly-kinden who had been sitting, quiet and still, in one corner. He wore clothes of dark and slightly shabby canvas, and an artificer’s toolstrip was bandoliered across his chest.

  Sulle made the sort of face she always did at unavoidable expense. “Master Turlo,” she named him, “You understand what is required of you? Just like last time, yes?”

  The Fly man nodded. Collegium bred an odd crop of experts, and Turlo was a particular specialist. Most accredited artificers from the College found roles in the daylight business of designing, building and mending machines. Turlo had turned his tools and his hands to less legitimate ends. With wings and lockpicks and an impeccable sense of order, there was barely a house in Collegium he could not enter, search through, and leave without the owner ever knowing he had been there. For all that, he disdained theft, despite the reputation his kinden had for it. He was an artificer, a professional. His front business was in thief-proofing but his meat and drink was professional rivalry within the trade, and many a jealous engineer had paid his considerable fees to know just what a competitor was working on.

  He nodded politely to his two patrons, and went about his business.

  Only two days later he returned a detailed report concluding that the machine that Lial Morless was attempting to build at the Workwell workshop could not work, with itemised reasons why.

  And, a few tendays after that, the entire report, scrupulously copied, was left in the Workwell workshop, together with a simple note, in handwriting now more than familiar to Lial Morless: Read this. If you’re going to do this then get it Right.

  Lial sat down with the Workwell brothers and they went through Turlo’s points one by one. Each was valid, each was something Lial had not considered. A master artificer had crept into the workshop, undetected and unheralded, and concluded that Lial’s flying machine would never get off the ground, and had been sufficiently proud of his knowledge, or conscientious about the services he was providing, to go into explicit detail. Months, perhaps years of frustration had just been taken from Lial’s back by someone who very plainly did not have his best interests at heart.

  “Someone working for Parrymill, or one of his friends,” he concluded to Tallway, later. He still got drunk with her, when she wasn’t trying to push him off things. Sometimes she tried to scare him, too, leaping out on him from around corners, wearing grotesque masks. None of it had got him off the ground.

  “Your contest thing is a long way off,” she said dubiously. If he wants to stop you before then, he’ll get plenty of chances. Set the workshop on fire, I would.”

  “Three Ant-kinden in a strange city don’t all sleep at the same time. There’s always one of them around the workshop. That’s the problem. Whoever is dropping these letters off knows them, but they’ll not tell me anything. Someone’s stringing me along like a puppet.”

  But by that time Tallway had located another bottle, and was far more interested in its contents than Lial’s fears.

  Some tendays went by and the airship trade picked up, and Goiter Parrymill was more concerned with his own business than with Lial’s. Clifftops was still a year off, and Lial was keeping his head down. Still, he and the Ant brothers had got past the theoretical, and had begun making parts and pieces, just one at a time at first, and then a few together, hinges and gear trains. The Ants made a clockwork motor of their own design, that was as light and compact as they could get it, and then tested the motor until they destroyed it, and then started again, experimenting with how much they could punch and cut from the gears, and precisely where, without sacrificing the all-important strength. Lial remembered all too well the way the gears on Limner’s Mayfly had gone. His flier would be lighter, half the weight or even less, but he would be in it, and he only had the one life to risk. Clifftops was still over a year away and he had no intention of angling for a spectacular public death the way that Limner had. A test flight, which meant that of course he had to build the wretched machine, and where could that be accomplished within the cramped confines of the Workwell place? In the end it was the Ants themselves who had the solution. They were used to a city that neither liked them nor trusted them. When they had a problem they solved it themselves rather than going to others for help. When there was no space left inside they took everything up to the roof. Like most buildings in Collegium, their workshop had a flat top, where Lial and Tallway had already spent a few hazy evenings watching the sunset and talking philosophy. Now the roof became an extension of the workshop, cluttered with pieces, with the frame of the machine beginning to sketch itself out in disjointed rods and spars. The numerous children of a neighbouring Fly-kinden baker were paid a meagre stipend to keep watch over the whole and warn of thieves or vandals.

  None of this escaped Goiter Parrymill’s attention for long. Once the skeletal frame of wood and hollowed metal started to monopolise the Workwell roof, people began to talk, and Parrymill had a man who went to look at the place every month, and whose usually barren reports were suddenly ignited by the spectral shape taking piecemeal life over the little businesses of Shallowacre.

  Sulle, when he called her, was decidedly put out.

  “Turlo said so. It won’t fly. On that basis, let him build a hundred of them.”

  But Parrymill was troubled. “I want Turlo to take another look.”

  Sulle had her miniscule hands on her hips, utterly out of patience. “Goiter, you’re a leading magnate of the city, and Morless is a fool apprentice, so how is it that you’re looking more and more the fool, and making him into some great and important threat to life and freedom? Turlo’s expensive –”

  “I’ll pay. I don’t care,” Parrymill growled, cutting her off. “If you can’t see the danger you’re in, then too bad. I was an artificer before I was a merchant, Sulle. I have a sense for these things.” He turned to glower at her, but her steel stare was a match for him.

  “Tell me,” she said flatly. “Give me the missing piece.”

  Parrymill’s face sagged. “When I was at the College, there was a band of us wanted to gain the skies. Airships. Airships won out, and every one of us is a rich man in his own right now, and not just a rich man’s hired tinker. But we looked at the problem all ways. We did our calculations. There is no reason why a heavy self-powered flyer shouldn’t work. And then we looked at the numbers and we wrote a great big paper saying how heavier-than-air flight just wasn’t feasible. We knew we could put an airship up right then, you see, and corner the market, own the sky. We couldn’t have put a heavy flier up. Ten years of development and research and we could have done so, but by then we’d be just one among many. The mechanics of it said one thing, but the money said another.”

  “You pulled the wool over on the whole College?” Sulle said, half-impressed and half-derisive.

  “Did we?” came Parrymill’s bitter response. “Then why Clifftops? Why Limner, and a half-dozen before him I could name that still tried their hand at it. Every year I’m having to bring my influence to bear to discourage someone else. Every year a new challenger!” His face, just then, was a man driven to guilty treason. “It can be done. It will be done. If not Morless then some other. But I’d go be a fisherman before I let Limner’s apprentice take my empire from me. Get me Turlo. Tell him to take another look.”

  Sulle sighed, but nodded.

  Two nights later Turlo found the Fly children keeping watch, and paid them somewhat more coin than their regular wage to render him invisible to the
ir eyes, on the proviso that he didn’t break anything or steal anything, for they had an odd remnant honesty about them. He pored over the half-built machine for over an hour, making notes and sketches. He was assisted by the advanced stage of the project, which had come on with almost prescient leaps and bounds since he had last viewed it. The winged construction he was examining seemed on the very point of metaphorphosis into a complete and finished form. In his artificier’s soul, which was as pure as any College master’s, he professed himself impressed.

  The report he left with Parrymill was exhaustive, but on the front page he had written three emphatic words. It will fly.

  When the next message arrived, Lial was half-expecting it. He had gone some months now without contact from his mysterious patron, but he had kept each of the little notes, the handwriting of the puppeteer who was guiding his hands. He should be glad, he knew. He would be nowhere if not for that unasked aid. If it had been in Lial’s nature to go with the prevailing winds, though, he would not currently be trying to put a heavier-than-air flier into the sky. His reliance on his unseen benefactor rankled and he was waiting for the scales to swing the other way, for the price to be demanded from him.

  The message was waiting by his worktop, weighed down by a pouch. It read:

  You’ve done Well. Celebrate. Invite Everybody.

  There was money in the pouch, silver Standards of Helleron mint, all of which had seen a fair round of use since they came off the dies.

  “Who brought this in?” Lial demanded, but the Ants just said that it had been a messenger, some Fly perhaps. They had a fine line in sullen Ant silences when he pressed them too far, and he was well aware that he was living very much on their good graces.

  Celebrate. There was no reason he should. There were plenty of other places where the money was actually needed. He stared at the words, though. If they had a little get-together, here at the workshop, would his patron step from the shadows?