Page 68 of The Book That Held Her Heart

Starval, good as his word, supplied both old-timers with ale, and in return extracted far more information about the city than Evar couldhave discovered in a week of wandering the streets. After cleaning his plate and devouring the bread, Evar sat back with one of the newly arrived ribs.

He let Starval do the talking, interjecting only once to announce, “I’ve got a new favourite now. Spicy ribs.” The ale was rather foul stuff and he wondered at its appeal. Even so, he drank it down, and by the second flagon it didn’t seem as bad. He was gnawing on his seventh rib and quite content with the world. Taverns, Evar decided, were an excellent invention. To his great surprise, he found himself unable to manage even one more bite and discovered that his jaw was aching from overuse. Admitting defeat, he rocked his chair back against the wall and watched Starval work, admiring the way in which he got the answers to flow without ever seeming to ask a question.

New Kraff City was, it seemed, contrary to the good food and convivial atmosphere in the Stained Page tavern, between a rock and a hard place and under a heel. The potentate had come from humble beginnings, borne to power through the bloody end of the royal line of Hosten. Under the Hostens’ benevolent but largely ineffectual rule the empire had been reduced to a shadow of its former glory, nibbled at by insurrection, humbled by wars, rotted by corruption.

The potentate’s masterstroke had been to point out that the empire’s misfortune, at each and every level, both on the battlefield and off it, was the fault of the Amacar. These demons in human and canith flesh formed a small minority who still followed an older religion, one from which the current, state-approved, faith sprang centuries before the Hostens came to power.

“So, you all worship the same god?” Evar had managed between mouthfuls as his stomach began to protest.

Gothon who, although drunk, had seemed until that point a reasonable enough person, with both a sense of humour and of fair play, now spat on the floorboards. “The Amacar exiled the prophet. I don’t care what god they pretend to worship, they’re all in the grand demon’s pockets.”

“So, you’re a religious man?” Starval asked gently.

Abra spluttered out his beer, artfully recapturing most of it in histankard. “Gothon? He’s not been to temple since the priest sealed his name onto him. You’ll hear the Lord’s name in his mouth when he stubs his toe, or if a woman ever takes pity on him, that’s it.”

“Doesn’t change a thing.” Gothon’s own tankard muffled the rest of his muttering, but Evar caught snippets: “…damn thieving Amacars…giving babies to the…”

It seemed to Evar that these Amacars, less than one-twentieth of the population, must be working very hard to have managed all the evildoing laid at their feet. But whatever the truth of it, hate had proved to be sufficient glue to weld New Kraff and the wider population into a weapon of war for the potentate. Thus armed, he had set off variously reconquering territories the Hostens had lost or conquering new ones wherever a monarch looked unsteady on their throne.

For the best part of a decade everything had been going swimmingly, provided you liked swimming in blood. The Amacar were being rooted out of society and sent to camps on an island in Lake Cantoo or executed for their crimes. The borders of empire were being pushed outwards, welcoming “liberated” populations into the potentate’s care. New Kraff had never seen so much wealth or glory.

“Then they came.” Gothon shook his head. “Everyone says they’re in league with the Amacar.”

“I can’t see it.” Abra rubbed his forehead furiously, glancing around before continuing in a lower voice, “I mean, maybe the Amacar were sucking the blood out of us, maybe they did pull the Hostens’ strings. But the insects? They’ll turn an Amacar into blood and guts quick as they will anyone else.”

“Skeer?” Evar asked.

Gothon shot him a suspicious look. “Not an Iccrah are you?”

“Does he look like a fucking Iccrah?” Abra smacked his tankard down on the table. He continued in a hushed voice, “The Iccrahs are all that’s standing between us and the insects. ‘Skeer’ is what the Iccrah call them. Iccrah has better guns than we do. Famed for them. And forts. So many forts and castles.” He jabbed a finger here and there as if pointing them out. “Our armies never went there, no sir. But the insects are on their eastborder and the stories…well…if I hadn’t been a drinkin’ man to start with, the shit I’ve heard about what’s happening in Iccrah would have been enough to push me into the barrel.” He swilled his ale around, staring into his tankard. “I’m planning to drown in this stuff before the bugs get here. That’s my plan.”

No insurrection will ever succeed without angry people. Fortunately, nobody ever seizes power without angering anyone.

The Unicycle of Violence, by Maximus Macrinus

Chapter 30

Livira

“What was that?”

Before Livira could answer, it came again, a blow struck from beneath, as if some buried leviathan were testing its bonds. A blow that made the bedrock shudder, throwing Livira to the ground and setting every rooftile rattling.

“Earthquake?” suggested Carlotte, who had already reached for the support of the wall. Her answer was one that few who hadn’t trained at the library would think of. Their homeland had never evidenced such tremors. “Earthquake” wasn’t part of the local vocabulary.

A third shock, like the tolling of some great bell far beneath the sea, and then nothing.

“Well, that was odd.” Carlotte released the wall, somewhat self-consciously despite the enfolding mist.

Livira, frowning, picked herself off the ground. She seemed to have been treated more roughly than Carlotte, who in turn had been more shaken than the buildings. “It was familiar.”

“Tell me about it over lunch.” Carlotte moved on down the street. “Or dinner, or breakfast, whatever damned time of day it is. I—just—want—to—eat!”

Livira followed her. “I felt it in the library. That same sensation. When my book hit the floor and cracked it.”

That made Carlotte pause and turn. “Cracked it? The library floor? Your little book?”

“Yes.”

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