Page 84 of The Book That Held Her Heart

The numbers increased as they closed on a square where at least a dozen pitch torches held among the already gathered crowd competed with the street lighting. A woman’s cries brought Livira’s gaze to the open doorway of one of the tall, terraced houses that bordered the square. The place seemed to be the focus of the onlookers’ attention. A black-clad canith emerged, military of some sort maybe, though his leathers didn’t look like armour. He dragged the wailing human out behind him.

Carlotte tugged Livira’s arm and nodded to where a man and two children stood in the custody of three human officers in the same ominous black uniforms.

The woman being dragged towards them, and the man, both looked too old to be the parents of such young children. Grandparents, Livira assumed.

“What’s going on?” Carlotte hissed.

Narbla shushed her, gave her a hard stare, and placed one large hand on the back of her neck.

Two officers held the sobbing woman upright while the canith who had dragged her out prowled the perimeter of the clearing at the crowd’s centre. Livira noticed with surprise that an untidy heap of books lay by the children’s feet, as if tossed roughly to the ground.

“Helma and Ivon Gradson!” The canith announced, pointing an accusing finger in the old couple’s direction. “Seemingly honest members of oursociety. They even have the potentate’s portrait hanging in their entrance hall…but…” He spread a hand towards the two pale-faced children. “…they had rats in their cellar! Amacar rats!”

The mob sucked in its breath as though this were a revelation. Those with torches pushed to the front, a ring of fire. The canith officer continued with his street theatre. “It doesn’t end there. It doesn’t end with sheltering the children of those who seek to undermine us. It doesn’t end with raising another generation bent on corruption, theft, and moral decay. Impure blood to pollute the lineages of our glorious city.” He shook his head and turned his accusing finger on the piled books. “Apparently, the Gradsons are ‘intellectuals.’ ” He put such scorn into the word that the crowd laughed. “Apparently, the library isn’t sufficient for them. They need their own collection. And behind the first row of the Gradsons’ books, what do we find? Subversive filth by Amacar authors. Pollution between two covers. Wrong thinking that the true library would never allow within its great halls.”

He drew a silver flask from inside his jacket and, removing the top, splashed the contents liberally over the books, not caring that the two children were also splattered.

“Light it.”

Without further invitation, the torches among the crowd were tossed in, and the pile of books burst into flame with a great whoomph of heat. The children screamed and struggled, allowed a measure of retreat only when the blaze became too hot for those holding them.

Livira stepped in close to Narbla. “How do they know the children are Amacar? You said it was a faith.”

“And a culture, shared among a particular race of humans and a particular race of canith,” Narbla replied in a low voice beneath the jeers of the crowd as chains were set around the old couple’s wrists. “You can tell by looking, if you look hard enough.” She turned away.

“What will happen to them?” Livira couldn’t look away. The people’s faces, lit by the burning books, had a demonic aspect to them, their hate now something visceral, unleashed by the fire.

Narbla turned back, her face grim. “The people who sheltered them will be put in prison, their property taken by the state. Or, if they don’t know anyone with any influence, they might just be hanged at the Alarg. Thechildren will probably be sent to Artha Island. It would be kinder to hang them too.” She paused, letting the fire speak below the cruel laughter and the insults of the crowd. Fragments of burning pages spiralled up with a smoke that stank of old memories. “Are you in?”

“Hell yes,” Carlotte answered without hesitation.

Livira watched the flames dance a moment longer. “I’m in.”

Sometimes the best means to secure an invitation is to eloquently express your disinterest. Other times you have to kill a whole bunch of people.

The Debutant’s Handbook, by Lady Jane Ashen

Chapter 37

Arpix

The dozen fliers were the end of it. Arpix had imagined that a storm of them might descend. He had been attacked on these same slopes by many hundreds of the things. He’d watched colleagues die there: the bookbinders Kleeson and Brigha with whom he’d spent five years on the Arthran Plateau.

But twelve were the limit of the message that the skeer had sent. Twelve to undo any lies that might be told by exhibiting their crippled brethren. Twelve to re-instil any fear that seeing the soldier skeer die beneath a hail of bullets had erased.

Clovis had swung the balance of that equation back towards the city. Her remarkable display of violence had established once more that the insectoids were beatable. It was a lie that might last as long as the skeer’s true numbers remained hidden from the potentate’s subjects.

For these reasons and more, Arpix wasn’t worried that the new waves of soldiers rushing into the square were there to arrest Clovis in connection with the killings from the previous day. The rapturous applause of the crowd might have soured very rapidly if the troops had turned their guns on the only warrior to have convincingly bested a skeer.

Arpix clambered down from his seat and was amazed to find himself not the first to enter the killing ground. He hurried forward amid people who, having seen what they just saw, now wanted to step through the gory remains of the fallen champions to laud the sole survivor. A ring of soldiersformed around Clovis, keeping back the more enthusiastic members of the public who seemed determined to touch her. If not for the shouting, Arpix might have tried to tell them how badly such an invasion of her personal space would end.

While Arpix stood outside the ring of bristling guns, several dignitaries descended from the stands to address Clovis in person. Two lords in plush robes that looked too warm for the day, burdened beneath gold chains, and a tall canith lady with a tumbling purple mane and diamonds around her neck, shattering the sunlight into dazzling pieces. Arpix watched as they addressed Clovis. Words were exchanged, primarily between the two canith, who at least saw eye to eye.

It didn’t take long for Clovis to scan the crowd and point Arpix out. More words were exchanged before a group of four soldiers came to secure Arpix’s passage within the cordon. The three aristocrats eyed him with varying degrees of disbelief.

“This is the expert?” one of the lords asked, an older man with a greying beard and deep-set eyes.

“He saved me from a cratalac the day after I met him,” Clovis said. “The thing was too much for me.”

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