Page 55 of The Book That Held Her Heart

Arpix had no memory of losing his grip on Clovis’s hand or on Evar’s but as he staggered out from the seething light of a library portal into a cold mist it seemed that neither of the canith were with him.

A spiky bush immediately interposed itself into his path and tried to trip him up. Given Arpix’s disorientation it proved an unequal contest. He would have hit the ground hard but for the presence of a wet shrub that cushioned his fall, engulfing him in glossy leaves whilst a hundred twigs tried to stab him through his tattered robes.

For some time Arpix lay on his side in the damp undergrowth. The diffuse light pervading the fog told him it was daytime. The wall just beyond suggested that he was in a garden. The fact that the glowing portal in that wall hadn’t attracted any attention made him pretty sure that there was nobody close by.

The mist muffled sound almost as effectively as it shuttered sight, but enough noise still penetrated for Arpix to believe himself somewhere populated. Had that been a distant cry? And that the slam of a door?

He levered himself up, shivering. Going back to the Exchange was tempting, but the others had come with him. They would not be in the Exchange, and visits to that place carried the danger that years would slide between him and the others. Years that couldn’t be undone, and that he would not want to have missed.

With a degree of rustling and snapping that would have hurt Starval’sassassin-soul, Arpix began to follow the wall, stumbling over well-manicured bushes, picking his way around flower beds.

The others must have emerged from their own portals. Arpix’s fingers trailed the damp stonework. Hopefully Clovis wasn’t on the far side of the town. Or in another town altogether. He reached a corner and found a window, gracefully curving ironwork defending large panes of glass. The curtains disclosed the faintest suggestion of a glow behind them, a lamp perhaps, lit in defiance of the dreary day outside.

A sound drew Arpix’s attention, a sniff piercing the grey veil, a rumbled growl.

“Clovis?” He whispered her name.

Someone approached, crunching along a gravelled path that Arpix had yet to discover. He resisted the urge to run. Even if it wasn’t Clovis he was hardly going to hide amongst the dripping vegetation indefinitely. A sudden fear seized him. What if the Exchange’s intrinsic desire to join loose ends had delivered him into Oanold’s hands? What if it were one of his soldiers approaching?

Too late to run. A figure loomed through the mist. Tall. Too tall for a human. “Clovis?”

A heavy hand reached out, grabbed his arm, jerked him forward, and the face of a canith looked down at him. A stranger.

“Wait!” Arpix tried to forestall violence.

Instead, the canith glanced back the way it came. “Got an intruder. A human.” The canith drew Arpix forward, pulling him onto the path. “A rather ragged one. Another beggar. ‘Lost’ in the mist, are we?”

Arpix opened his mouth to deny it but didn’t get as far as speaking before two new pieces of information commandeered his attention. Firstly, that the canith was wearing what seemed to be a military uniform. And secondly, that the uniform bore an unsettling resemblance to those worn by King Oanold’s soldiers. Not the ones that went out to patrol the Dust or that marched up and down on the city walls, but the more decorated variety that guarded his palaces.

Struggling was going to be pointless, and Arpix had neither magic nor weapons to aid him, not that he believed in violent solutions in any case. He considered shouting for help but pressed his lips together, unwilling toprovoke Clovis into premature action if she were close enough to hear his cries. Instead, he settled for doing what he had always done: gathering information. “Where are we going?”

“To the gate before the captain finds out about you. You don’t want that.” The canith sniffed again. “You don’t smell the same as the last vagrant we picked out of the bushes.”

“Thank you?”

“Don’t get me wrong. You stink, it’s just the wrong sort of stink. How long have you been in the city?”

“Ah. That depends which city this is, and how you measure these things.”

Another canith loomed in the mist. Behind him the fog revealed a building and a door. “Got another one.” The first guard shoved Arpix forward. “Talks like he’s drunk. Smells like he’s sober.”

“You know how it is. The streets take ’em ’cos they’re cracked. Or the streets crack ’em.” The new soldier ran a dark eye up and down Arpix’s length. “Skinny one. Still, can’t have ’em trespassing. Going to rob the stores, was you?”

“I assure you I didn’t—”

“Climbed the wall by accident, did we? Thought you lived here? Came to apply for the potentate’s army?” The first soldier laid a heavy hand on his shoulder from behind.

“Really…I…” Arpix looked around. The canith couldn’t be working for Oanold no matter what uniform they were wearing, or what tricks the currents of time had played in delivering the king to this place. Arpix had voluntarily jumped into the chasm in the library less than an hour after Oanold had fallen in with Livira’s book. The king couldn’t have fashioned himself a replacement empire already. Especially not with canith. “This isn’t Crath City? Is it?”

The second soldier shook his head. “He’s not all here, Hadd. You can see it by looking at him. Give him a smack and shove him out before the captain gets wind. You know what’ll happen otherwise. That business with the quartermaster this morning left her in a foul mood.”

The first soldier growled in his throat. “That’s what I was doing before you shoved your nose in. Come on then, twig. I’ll send you on your waywith a farewell tap. Might lose a tooth or two, but we can’t have you thinking you can just come and go.” He started to drag Arpix along a path that led directly away from the building, out through the garden.

They got perhaps three yards before the sound of the door opening behind them brought Hadd to a crunching halt. “Shit.” Muttered under his breath.

“What’ve you got there, Private Hadd?” Another couple of yards and the mist would have swallowed them.

Arpix looked back to see a stern-faced woman in the doorway, dwarfed by the soldier still standing there, but wearing the same uniform. Where the two canith had short swords at their hips and some design of ’stick slung across their backs, the captain had a proportionately longer blade, no ’stick, and three crimson stripes on her upper right arm.

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