Page 18 of The Book That Held Her Heart

Yolanda covered her eyes with a white hand.

“I remembered the basics of making black powder. Gods know I was never very interested in alchemy lessons, but that recipe stuck for some reason. It was rather gruesome after all. You know you need to fill a big barrel halfway with wee and then fill the rest with dung and ferment—”

“What else?” Yolanda demanded. “What else did you tell him?”

“Uh…how to make steel. Just the basics. It was enough to get him very rich. After that I did a lot of spying for him. Secrets turn out to be worth far more than new inventions. You can cash them in quickly too.”

“So, you…married…him?” Livira enquired, frowning deeply. “How does that work? I mean, they must call him the mad king? And the otherstuff…” Her eyes strayed to the wall that now separated them from the bedroom.

Carlotte slumped. “Well, to answer the child’s question about how much interaction the king and I have had: not nearly as much as either of us would like. Imagine being able to see everything and touch nothing! So frustrating. So yes, both of us have itches the other can’t scratch. And the rest of them do laugh at Chertal behind their hands. But whenever I catch any of them at it, they get posted to some border town, which always makes everyone mind their tongue for a bit.” She brightened up suddenly and grabbed Livira’s arm in both hands. “I can touch you! You can’t imagine how that feels. Just put me in front of Arpix and I’ll show him a whole new area of study. The boy won’t know what’s hit him. I’ll—”

“He’s got a sweetheart now,” Livira said. “Kind of. At least I think—”

“Nooo!” Carlotte released Livira and spun around, looking for a target for her ire. Her gaze settled on Leetar. “I bet she’s pretty, and well read, and tall. Very tall. I hate her already.”

“Taller than he is…” It pained Livira to talk about Arpix given what he’d said to her less than an hour ago. But she had been both amazed and glad and slightly jealous to see how he and Clovis had moved around each other, and she had been desperate to share it with someone, Carlotte most of all since Carlotte lived for such gossip and all its attendant drama. “Anyway, you’re married. To a king.”

“I’d rather be married to a peasant if I could touch them. Even a fat one that didn’t bathe.” Carlotte frowned, belatedly registering what Livira had said. “Taller than him?”

Yolanda interrupted. “This is very bad. Very dangerous. It might be as bad as what the canith brothers did with the ganar siblings. Not as bad as what Livira and Evar did with the book, of course.”

“Who’s Evar?” Carlotte looked pointedly at Livira. “You never mentioned any Evar before!”

Leetar, seeming to decide that the catching-up had gone on long enough, lifted her red-eyed gaze from the ground and answered for Livira. “Evar is Livira’s sabber lover.” She delivered the blunt truth of the matter without giving Livira a chance to wrestle it into something Carlotte might find easier to swallow. “And I think this Arpix of yours is the target for thesabber’s sister. And”—Leetar’s voice dried up and she forced the next words out wrapped around a painful sob—“Meelan is dead.”

It should have been the first news Livira delivered. She flinched beneath it as if slapped. That was what it felt like each time the fact of it was given space in her mind: a blow.

Carlotte closed her open mouth with a snapping sound. A stricken look took possession of her face, and she staggered back as if injured. Yolanda used the moment of hurt silence as an opportunity to seize control of the conversation again.

“We need to leave here, now. Then I need to find a way to get us back to when we should be. We can only hope that the wound you’ve opened in reality’s fabric is still of a size that can heal itself!” She turned to Livira. “You bring your friend. I’ll take Leetar.” And with that, she reached out for Leetar’s wrist then shot skyward, dragging her aristocratic cargo with her. The vaulted ceiling swallowed the pair from sight as they passed through it.

Carlotte, overwhelmed by a series of what Livira had to admit were pretty huge revelations, could only stare as the pair left. She didn’t even manage to protest about the flying part.

Livira held her hand out towards Carlotte, a question in her eyes.

“I can’t leave Chertal,” Carlotte said, a tear for Meelan running down her cheek. “Not just like that. He’s been my only friend all this time, and this citadel is on the edge. I mean, there’s cliffs on every side, but the entire kingdom is poised to fall. He needs me.”

Livira hadn’t forgotten the village in the forest or the ballistae on every roof of the citadel. Yolanda was right though, they had to go. “He needs you to watch him die?” Livira regretted the words immediately but what could a ghost do?

“If that’s what has to happen, yes.” Carlotte looked grim. “I owe him that much.”

Livira sighed and tried to put herself in Carlotte’s place. “Who’s attacking?”

“The ganar.” Carlotte shuddered.

Livira frowned, puzzled. She’d been chased by a giant mechanical killing machine created by one ganar’s misguided hatred. But her reading had led her to believe that the ganar were a non-violent species barely half theheight of men. A species that had been enslaved both by humans and by canith many times across millennia of recorded history. “Are they sending their engines against you?”

“Worse,” Carlotte said. “They’ve managed to breed a slave-species up on the moon. A monstrous variant on some native Attamast creature. And now they’ve come down in their night-ships to multiply their soldiers and take the world for their own.” She shuddered again. “Our armies can’t stand against these creatures, Livira. They’re some kind of insect. We call them the skeer.”

When in danger of being dispensed with, the trick is to make yourself indispensable. Those with foresight will have mastered some small but vital skill. In order to maintain this edge one should habitually refuse to share information.

The Danger of Education, by P. Floyd

Chapter 10

Arpix

Arpix had been there, speaking with Livira! It had all been so real, even the bits that should have been wholly unreal—like wearing the white child’s body. He hadn’t managed to hold on to it, though. Like a fever dream the whole city had fallen apart around him. And with a sudden start, Arpix had found himself back in the library amid the foulness that King Oanold had made of it. Livira’s book—the work of magic that had somehow transported him to her, inside a story that was true—fell from fingers numb with shock.

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