Page 77 of The Book That Held Her Heart

The man obliged. He wouldn’t give his name, but he proved eager to talk about the Saviour, his zeal almost religious, although despite expectations, the Saviour turned out to be promising salvation from New Kraff’s current woes rather than for anyone’s immortal soul.

Livira dubbed her new friend “Scar,” admitting a lack of imagination as she did so. Scar might not have believed the level of Livira’s professed ignorance, but in charting the deeds and ambitions of his leader, he provided a quick tutorial in the state of play within the city and beyond its walls, so by the time the canith returned, Livira’s education in local matters had improved considerably. She knew the potentate to be an upstart rabble-rouser who had ridden to power on the back of a witch hunt against the Amacar, a religious minority found across the continent in many countries. The Saviour—whose true identity was a well-kept secret—was leading an insurrection. The movement, while mildly sympathetic to the Amacar and the terrors being heaped upon their dwindling numbers, had been founded on a very different source of malcontent. The Saviour and his followers objected to not just the potentate, but monarchy in general. Carlotte had raised an eyebrow at this revelation. The Saviour planned to put votes in the hands of all adults in the city and have them set a leader of their own choosing in the potentate’s place and allow them a chance to change their minds every five years. Democracy, they called it. Livira had read about the concept but knew of nowhere in her old life that put it into practice.

“Won’t this Saviour just take the throne for himself while the last occupant’s corpse is still cooling?” Carlotte asked.

“Or just get all the votes because it’s his idea and everyone knows him,” Livira said.

“No! Because nobody knows who he is. None of us have ever seen his face. He wears a mask. And when the potentate is cast down, the Saviour is going to vanish. He’ll be one of us, but we won’t know him. He might ask for votes, but never as the Saviour. Everyone will have the same chance.” Scar’s eyes almost glowed with belief. Behind him even his friend’s snort lacked its usual derision.

“And why does he need me?” Livira asked.

“Nar— Our friend said something about magic?” Scar shook his head. “I mean, I doubt it, but we could use a miracle. There’s not much time left now.”

“You’re losing?” Carlotte glanced towards the exit as if considering an escape bid. “I’m not surprised if this is how you recruit members for your little rebellion.”

“Because the bugs are coming.” The big man levelled his crossbow at Carlotte, and under the pointed stare of its steel eye, she swallowed her retort.

Scar explained, “The Saviour wants us to ally with Iccrah before it’s too late. They have the weapons and the defensible position. We have the numbers. But there’s not long left to do everything that needs doing. But the potentate just wants to conquer Iccrah. He’s not even taking the bug threat seriously. They’ve got some sort of games going on in Tower Square. Men and canith against bugs, to calm the public. What he’s not telling them though is there’s an ocean of the things, and the tide’s rising.”

Livira frowned. “Why would a king…potentate, whatever, ignore a threat like that? It’s his cities, his land, and in the end, his life, that are going to be lost.”

“He’s found advisors that tell him what he wants to hear. That the bugs will turn north before they reach us. Take a hundred experts and you’ll always find a handful to dissent on any subject. The potentate’s chosen to listen to those ones. Thinks the idea that the bugs won’t turn is put about by his enemies, by the Saviour, to force him into decisions he doesn’t want to make.”

The door behind them banged open. The canith came back into the room, followed by a large woman, perhaps the largest Livira had seen.

“You can call me Tremon.” She stood as tall as Arpix and twice as wide, packed solid, her face one that looked to have been punched a lot and to still be angry about it.

“Livira,” Livira said. “And that’s Carlotte.”

“Show me this magic.” She shot a sharp look in the canith’s direction.

“Why should I?” Livira asked.

Tremon sighed. “I could say, because there are two crossbows pointed your way. But I hear you’re after a particular book?”

“Do you have it?”

“Does it make holes in things?”

Livira thought of the cracks spreading across the library floor from where she’d dropped it that last time it left her possession. “Probably.”

“Then I know where it is.”

Gladiatorial combat has been a central pillar of many civilisations’ entertainment—the method by which their minds are diverted from the issues that truly impact their lives. The balance between emotional and physical suffering in such contests swings with the prevailing societal winds.

Big Brother: Season 8—A Companion Guide, by David Macaw

Chapter 34

Arpix

Blue Tower Square boasted five paved acres starting to bake beneath an increasingly hot sun. Bleachers offered seating along three of the four sides, tiered eight rows high, the timbers so fresh as to still be bleeding sap around the bolt heads securing one piece to the next.

A crowd of thousands had largely assembled itself and proved every bit as ready for entertainment as the smaller one that had gathered to watch Arpix hang the day before in a different square further down the slope. Hawkers moved up and down, calling out their wares to the packed stands. Beer, salted bread, sausages, flags, even highly inaccurate models of skeer fashioned from clay or wood.

Along the most distant side of the square, black cloths, large as sails, obscured what might be half a dozen large crates—the breeze exposed a glint of bars. The most important-looking members of the audience sat directly opposite these cages, high up, a splash of colour amid the more drably garbed populace. A line of orderlies to either side ensured that money didn’t have to rub elbows with aspiration. Arpix considered the possibility that the potentate himself might be sitting amidst the nobility and persons of influence arrayed between those two lines. He concluded that it was unlikely such a man would leave himself so exposed.

Front and centre below the dignitaries stood a double line of armoured soldiers, each with a gloved hand on the barrel of a long gun that restedwith its stock on the ground. And in front of the troopers, standing a little way out on the square itself, six or seven individuals, no one of them like the other. Arpix wasn’t sure if he should call them soldiers or mercenaries, champions perhaps. All of them appeared well equipped in both the weapons and armour departments. All of them looked very intimidating. He counted four canith and three humans, carrying a variety of guns, some longer than a man, some short but with a barrel almost as wide as a cannon’s, others with multiple barrels.

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