Page 56 of The Book That Held Her Heart

“Intruder, Captain. Was going to eject him with a physical reprimand.”

“Intruder? I see a thief, caught in the act.” The woman stalked closer. She looked to be in her fifties, sturdy, grizzled, hair iron-grey and short, coiled across a blunt skull. The eyes she fixed on Arpix were the same colour as the mist and held about as much warmth. “Looks like an Amacar to me. You an Amacar, boy?”

“I don’t know what an Amacar is. I’m not—”

The words “from around here” were slapped out of Arpix’s mouth. The woman’s blow left his face a strange combination of numb but stinging and deafened his ear.

“Amacar for sure,” she said. “Lies like one. Stinks like one.”

Arpix, still developing the bruises from the beating he’d been given by a different military, kept his mouth closed. He tasted blood.

The captain sneered. “It’s hanging day down at the Alarg. He can be strung up with whatever else they have for the gallows when the fog breaks. Make sure everyone knows where he came from. We’ll see how many we have to drop before that wall starts doing its job.”

“Yes, Captain,” Hadd said without enthusiasm.

“Damn straight, yes, Captain!” the woman shouted. “And get your backside back here as soon as it’s done. I know how long it takes to walk to the Alarg and back.”

Arpix found himselfbeing frogmarched through an impressive set of gates and out into what he assumed was a square but felt limitless in the enfolding mist.

“You’re really going to hang me?” It didn’t feel real. And yet the first sliver of fear had worked its way close to his heart.

“Not me. But yes.” The guard pushed him to keep up the brisk pace. “What did you expect? Robbing the potentate’s barracks was always going to be a short trip to a long drop, no?”

“But I wasn’t…” Too late Arpix thought of taking them to the portal. It would have prompted a lot more questions, but execution would have been avoided or at least substantially delayed. He opened his mouth to say they should go back, then closed it. Hadd already thought he was mad. The guard wasn’t about to face his captain’s wrath on the strength of the least likely tale he’d ever heard:I didn’t climb the wall—I came out of it…

They reached a street between two sets of tall buildings. Arpix had never been anywhere other than Crath City, and, two hundred years later, to the barren plateau out on the edge of the Dust. The city around him could be the one in which he’d lived. Except for the mix of canith and humans cohabiting within its walls. They passed dozens, most just shapes in the mist, some canith tall, some human short.

Arpix wanted to know what an Amacar was. It had almost seemed that the idea he might be one was more of a crime than his trespassing. Livira would have found out already. She didn’t appear to have ever met a question she didn’t ask. Arpix wasn’t sure he’d like the answer though, especially if it was another blow.

The streets they followed had a general upward trend, and the altitude combined with a developing breeze began to extend the range of Arpix’s vision. He saw town houses, stables, a tavern. They arrived at a crossroads at the same time as the head of a column of troops, complete with limp banners and a drummer thudding out the beat for their slow march. Somewhere further down the line pipes wailed.

“I think we can make it…just.” Hadd hesitated, then decided. “Quick!” He dragged Arpix across, drawing a glare from the two officersjust behind the drummer and the banner bearers. The double row of soldiers behind them snaked away beyond sight.

Hadd slowed down once he’d got Arpix past them. “We could have been there forever. I swear some of those parades are a mile long.”

“I’d have been happy to wait.”

“I bet. But Captain Biggie will be handing out latrine duties, the mood she’s in. Damned if I’m giving her an excuse.”

Arpix resisted sarcasm and couldn’t muster any sympathy without it. “You’re really going to let them kill me?”

“I really am.” Hadd nodded, though without enthusiasm.

“You could let me go.”

“And spend a year in the box if the captain finds out. Or, if she’s still in a mood, get my neck stretched instead of yours.”

“She wouldn’t find out. I’d—”

“Get caught again within a week doing something else stupid. You’re three-quarters starved. A sniff of food and you’ll be climbing over the next wall you meet.”

“I’ll leave the city. I’ll—”

“Hadd? Is that Hadd?” An exceptionally broad canith at the head of a patrol of half a dozen soldiers came to a halt in their path.

“It is.” Hadd agreed in a weary voice. “Hello, Janks.”

“Corporal Janks.” The canith tapped the single stripe on an upper arm as thick around as Arpix’s chest. “And who’s your friend?” The canith, taller than Hadd, as tall as Kerrol maybe, and quite possibly as heavy as any two of Clovis’s brothers, stepped closer, well into Hadd’s personal space if Arpix was any judge.

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