Page 19 of The Book That Held Her Heart

He was back in the library aisle. It was choked with resting soldiers. Behind him, the trio who had been beating him. In front of him, his unlikely saviour, Lord Algar, who had come bearing Livira’s book.

Lord Algar scrutinized Arpix and the recognition in his eye told Arpix that the man before him had also been transported by the text. Arpix bent to pick up the book without asking for permission—a librarian’s instinct. As he lifted the volume, Arpix saw, in the place where it had fallen, the faintest crazing of cracks. On any other surface he wouldn’t have noticed, but the walls and floor of the library never showed even the slightest defect. Scholars had alleged that even if the sun were to consume the world, the stuff of the library would somehow endure, being made of something sterner than mere matter.

Arpix offered the book to Lord Algar. Arpix had no schooling in such matters, but Livira was given to sharing on many subjects and had spentconsiderable time researching the topics of espionage, subterfuge, and—though few would believe it having talked to her—diplomacy: Algar’s own related area of expertise.

Arpix had picked up a few pointers, albeit unwillingly. Consequently, he now knew that if he tried to hold on to the book, it was unlikely he would ever hold it again. Offering it back to Algar improved his odds at a second chance with it. “It’s a powerful piece of work. Somehow, it’s become entangled with the library at a fundamental level.”

Algar spread his hands, declining to take the volume back. “And how might such a power be exercised?” He tilted his head in question. “Anyusefulideas, young Arpix?”

The slight stress on “useful” did not pass Arpix by unnoticed. If he ceased to be useful, the soldiers who had been beating him were ready and waiting, already warmed to their task. Livira had been trying to tell him something—in the story—something she’d known for sure? Or just a desperate guess? The Mechanism. She’d been saying something about the Mechanism.

“I might have an idea, but I should really take a closer look—”

Something was happening at the far end of the soldier-choked aisle. Men and women were scrambling to their feet and pressing themselves hard against the shelves.

A shortish, overweight figure in a purple robe was approaching, with guards crowding at his back. “The king…” Arpix based the claim on the robe and the grey wig balanced on the old man’s head. He looked nothing like the man on the currency. “The king’s coming.”

“We’ll speak of this later,” Algar snapped.

“My friends, Neera and Salamonda, the other prisoners. They can help with this,” Arpix lied, raising the book. “I need them both.” He hoped the stare with which he met the lord’s gaze was as meaningful as the one it was replying to. If the man wanted to hide this from his king, Arpix had his own demands, conveyed in a diplomacy of exchanged stares and slantwise allusions. Designed in Arpix’s case to wring concessions from the man with the upper hand without bruising his pride.

Algar gave the faintest of nods, then turned to greet King Oanold. “Sire! I’ve been interrogating the new prisoners.”

Arpix slipped the book into the pocket within his robe. The king waved aside Algar’s words with a flexing of his fingers and peered past him. “A librarian.” He sniffed. “They must use this one for reaching the top shelf.” He laughed, triggering a wave of false amusement. “Touch of canith in him, do you think?”

“I think, sire”—Algar inclined his head—“that in a library we should make best use of any librarian we find.”

The king scowled. His dull eyes, their colour dark and indeterminate, roamed over Arpix critically.

“He came out of the same door the sabbers did. Proof of collusion if any were needed!”

“They were chasing us, sire!” Arpix hated himself for the lie, for reinforcing the man’s prejudice, and for honouring him with a title. “We were running for our lives!”

The king sniffed, unconvinced. “We have the head librarian. Do we really need any others?”

The head librarian?Arpix nearly said the words out loud.

“Master Acconite’s insights are useful to us, sire.” Lord Algar inclined his head again. “But a youth with considerably more recent experience of exploring deep among the chambers would also be an asset.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” King Oanold narrowed his pouchy eyes once more and studied Arpix with an air of distaste. “Yute has clearly allied himself with the dogmen. I’m sure he was working against us in secret for years. Striking deals with the sabbers behind our backs, manoeuvring to place dusters in the librarians’ ranks. A plot of epic proportions. It’s how the sabbers took the walls. There’s no other way we could have lost to them. Cheating, treachery, subterfuge, all the tools of the sabber and the duster. How do we know this librarian isn’t one of Yute’s protégés, up to his overlong neck in treason?” Flecks of spittle caught the library light as they fled his lips. “Treachery and treason! Crath City was stolen from me. Everyone’s saying it.”

“You make fine points as always, sire.” Clearly not willing to tie his colours to any mast in imminent danger of sinking, Lord Algar merely gestured to Arpix. “Well? Answer His Majesty!”

“When the library caught fire, Master Yute left me to burn,” Arpix said.“I didn’t escape to the enchanted forest like the rest of you. I was saved along with a few others by an assistant. The library saved me, not any of the librarians. I’m a citizen of the empire, and I owe my allegiance to you, sire.” Arpix made an awkward bow. As he straightened, he could see that the king’s open hostility had mellowed to something less readable.

“The only librarian I have any time for is the one that leads us safely out,” Oanold said with surprising candour.

Arpix took it as a mark of the man’s desperation. When his soldiers ran out of prisoners their hunger would turn to anger and there’d be no ruling over them. The king was asking him if he knew the way out.

“Are you that man? The one who knows the way out?” Oanold cut to the chase. Power rarely bred patience.

“I…” What had Livira been trying to tell him? Something about the Mechanism. She wouldn’t want him to take the soldiers there unless all the others had already left the place. Arpix couldn’t lead the king out of the library without a canith to open doors, and he wasn’t about to suggest they needed one. The king would just try to capture Clovis or one of her brothers, and then torture what he wanted out of them. And it wouldn’t work. “I can do something almost as good,” Arpix said with a conviction he didn’t feel. “Or even better. But we need to go back to the place you found us in, the reading room off the next chamber.”

“The chamber with the sabbers, and the insects, and the mechanical giant that tears through steel bars with its bare hands? The place we just made a strategic retreat from?” King Oanold motioned two of his men towards Arpix. They came forward with expressions that promised nothing good.

“The door I was coming out of when you captured me leads to many worlds,” Arpix spoke fast, trying not to sound panicked.

“Lies!” barked the king. “Why did you come back out of it to this misery?”

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