Page 62 of The Book That Held Her Heart

Instead, he raised his empty hands and stepped into the line joining the muzzle of the soldier’s ’stick to Clovis’s heart. He turned away from the soldier, preferring instead to be looking at Clovis when he died.

Contrary to Arpix’s expectations, he wasn’t greeted with a despairing gaze. Instead, Clovis gave a roar that might have emptied his bladder if he were just a little better hydrated. In the same moment Clovis grabbed the first soldier to reach her, lifted him like a shield before her, and charged, snatching up her blade as she went. The soldier with the levelled ’stick fired her shot and a red wound blossomed between the shoulder blades of the man Clovis carried before her.

Arpix blinked and missed seeing three of the soldiers receive the wounds that would kill them. Clovis pirouetted through four more, carving deep furrows through flesh and bone, leaving the ruins to fall behind her, pumping blood until their hearts failed. The big canith managed to reach his knees before his head fell to the side and bounced on the flagstones beside his decapitated corpse. Three more soldiers and a black-clad officer broke from the crowd, one managing to get off a shot that hammered the flagstones where Clovis had been standing an instant before. All of them fell within moments, one canith tumbling in a different direction to his sword arm.

Clovis shook some of the crimson from her blade and sped back to Arpix’s side. “We have to go.” She took his arm between shoulder and elbow and propelled him into a run.

“Where are we going?”

“Anywhere but here.” Clovis roared a challenge at the thinning crowd ahead of them and everyone started to run, humans and canith alike, some of them screaming. The entrance to a street beckoned, and Clovis took it, with Arpix running for all he was worth to keep up with her jog.

“We— Can—” Arpixstruggled for breath. “Put the sword away!”

Clovis shot him a challenging look, then complied with a snarl, sheathing it.

They turned left at the next corner, down the hill. In this street fewer people looked alarmed. Confused maybe—why was an angry canith running from an exhausted beggar? But not scared. There was no bloody sword being brandished at them.

Clovis took a right turn, following the gradient. Arpix stumbled to an almost halt, limping along, trying to answer his lungs’ clamour for air. “Wait!”

“We need to run!” Clovis returned for him.

“I— I know cities,” Arpix panted. He straightened up. “These people don’t know us. They didn’t see what happened. They don’t care who we are or where we’re going, except if we’re running or looking guilty.”

Clovis looked around, ready to fight.

“They don’t care. Nobody’s chasing us. Not yet.” Arpix glanced back along the street, then looked her up and down. “We need to wash that blood off you…” There was a lot of blood, thankfully the stuff on her leathers wasn’t immediately obvious.

“Off you too.” Clovis reached over to wipe at his cheek.

Looking down, Arpix discovered that the remnants of his librarian’s robes were now decorated by arcs of blood spatter. If the robes were still as white as when they’d been awarded to him then all eyes would be turned his way, but five years in the wilds had left them a grimy grey on which the blood seemed almost black.

“We need a place to hide.” Clovis scanned the street.

“We could try an inn.” Arpix nodded to a sign hanging above a large door further down the street.

Clovis raised an eyebrow. “Beg them to take pity on us? Why would they let us in?”

“Money?” Arpix suggested.

Clovis narrowed her eyes, nodding. “Yes, that’s how it’s done. Where would we find money?” She took hold of her chin, pulling down as if trying to draw the answers out. “Work! People work, don’t they? And money is exchanged?”

Arpix nodded, remembering that Clovis had never lived anywhere but the library. He reached inside his robe and rummaged in his coin pouch. “Luckily…” He drew out a handful of silvers. There were even a few gold crowns gleaming in the mix. A decade of trainee allowance and a year of librarian’s salary, minus what he’d given to his parents, to charity, and spent on rare almond honey cakes.

Clovis peered at the handful. “Is that enough? Will it work here?”

“Well, even if they have a currency without intrinsic value, as long as gold and silver hold a good value…yes to both.”

And with that, Arpix took the lead, walking briskly but unobtrusively down the road, pausing at the inn sign only long enough for both of them to clean the other as best they could with water from the horse trough.

Arpix wound his way towards the east, aiming downhill all the time. The mist had all but dissipated, revealing encircling mountains with very familiar peaks. “This is where Crath City stood. My city. It’s a different version, but close enough that mountains are the same even if the people might have changed. The gods rolled their dice here and came up with a different tally but at least they were the same dice.”

Clovis grunted, more interested in watching the street ahead for danger. The housing grew cheaper, less well maintained, the people’s clothing more drab, their language more colourful. The mountains hadn’t changed, nor had the distribution of poverty and palaces.

At last, not far from the city walls, Arpix picked an inn, the sort he would never have dared to enter in his old life, the sort he imagined to be full of bandits, adventurers, thieves, and vagabonds. In fact, he’d only been into a small handful of inns, three to be exact, all well-heeled establishments near the grand square. On all three occasions it had been at Livira’s insistence. She’d practically frogmarched him into the first one with one arm twisted behind his back.

The reality of the cheapest end of the hostelry trade was less exciting, sadder, and almost exactly as pungent as Arpix’s expectations. The clientele in the tavern front were labourers and tradesmen, their dull garb stained with evidence of a variety of professions. Most nursed a tankard that they leaned over protectively, showing little interest in anyone else, and evidencing no obvious threat. A few heads turned to track Clovis, striking, young, out of place. The only other canith in the room looked ancient, her mane in ratty grey braids, a foul-smelling pipe hanging from a withered mouth.

Arpix presented himself at the bar, self-consciously, banging his forehead painfully on a ceiling beam as he closed the last yard. Someone sniggered, stopping immediately when Clovis ducked in behind Arpix with a growl.

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