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“Hard to miss at this range.”

“Even so.” Malar gestured with his head, indicating the corpses behind him. “You’re remembering who I am, Jons. Palms starting to sweat. Aim wavering. It’s not so easy when—”

The ’stick boomed, a thunderous sound, much louder than Livira had imagined it might be. Malar jerked around and stumbled back against the shelves. Smoke bloomed about Jons and a ringing silence filled the emptiness behind the shot. For a moment it looked as if nothing but the books were holding Malar up—his graceless slide to the floor inevitable. In the next heartbeat he shrugged himself away from the shelves, leaving crimson-spattered spines behind him.

“That could have gone better,” Malar croaked, and began to shamble towards Jons. “You should run. You think you’ve got time to reload, but you don’t.”

Jons glanced behind him, considering escape, then with a curse he broke open his arrow-stick along an unseen hinge and began fumbling in the powders that would propel his next projectile.

Malar staggered on, making slow progress, a scarlet trail behind him. The bullet appeared to have gone through his chest and Livira couldn’t understand how he wasn’t dead. A terrifyingly slow race ensued, Malar consuming the space between him and Jons one agonised step at a time, Jons going through the many intricate stages required to fire his weapon again. It almost seemed that he had to perform his own little miracle of alchemy right there before them.

With barely six feet between them Jons began to raise his ’stick while the point of Malar’s blade trailed lazily behind him as he closed the last few steps.

It had taken Livira far longer than she’d hoped to find a suitable book. She knew, from experimentation that would appal any librarian, that books make terrible missiles. Aside from having aerodynamics only slightly less chaotic than that of a playing card, they opened in flight and after that any attempt to instil aim into the initial throw was lost. The book Livira required was bound shut, slim but not floppy, small but not too small.

Her throw arced in the air, slicing a curved path that at first would have had it strike Malar between his shoulders, but ended up skimming past his sword arm and following an ever-sharpening turn that brought it crashing into the side of Jons’s head.

The ’stick boomed again and another cloud of smoke billowed. Jons turned to run, somehow evading the rising swing of Malar’s sword, though the blow took the weapon from his hands and threw it against the shelves.

Livira, who had been sprinting after her thrown book, passed Malar and threw herself at the back of Jons’s legs, making no attempt at a grapple. The man came down with a clatter and an oath, joining Livira in a tangle on the floor.

Jons was rising before Livira could, one hand pulling an ugly knife from his belt. Livira, unable to twist free, screamed and tensed for the thrust. It never came. Jons’s arm stiffened and then went slack. He’d risen onto Malar’s blade and unlike when his bullet had passed through Malar’s chest, Malar’s sword found something immediately fatal on its journey through Jons.

As Livira disentangled herself, Malar sat down heavily, his back to the shelving. He coughed and bright red blood peppered the air. His voice came faint and wheezing. “One of those healing circles would be good about now.”

Livira came to kneel at his side. She felt calm. She knew she should be weeping, begging Malar to stay, telling him she loved him. But this was Malar. He wasn’t going to die, not here in the library shot by an idiot, not anywhere. “It’s going to be fine.” She believed it.

Malar put his head back, blood dribbling from his chin. He raised an eyebrow. “Fine?”

That look put a crack in Livira’s armour and a scared, tragic, empty feeling tried to leak in through it. “We can fix this.” She put both hands over the hole in Malar’s chest, as if hiding the problem was halfway to solving it. “Pressure on the wound!”

Malar coughed again and blood bubbled between Livira’s fingers. “Fuck...” He wasn’t looking at her. “You’d think this couldn’t... get worse.”

The smoke from Jons’s second shot wasn’t dissipating as it had after the first shot. If anything, it seemed to be getting thicker. Livira followed Malar’s gaze to where, some yards away, a thin column of smoke was rising amid the loose pages that Jons’s ’stick had fallen onto. Books that had been tumbled from the shelves scattered the whole area. As her eyes fixed upon the exact spot, an orange tongue of flame woke and licked upwards.

“No!”

For a moment Livira was trapped, unable to take her hands from Malar’s wound. Perhaps too far away to stop the flames spreading in any case.

White smoke swirled, hinting at a ghostly figure. “Not today.” A white foot came down to snuff the flame. And Yute’s pale child stood before them, her pink-eyed stare impossible to read.

Livira was never sure when it was that Malar died, only that her hands were on him and that he was not alone.

Bravery doesn’t enter into it. The reason you face your fears is to stop them jumping you from behind.

The Lives of Lestal Crow, by Lestal Erris Crow

CHAPTER 37

Evar

Escapes!” Evar sank into his fighting stance, knife in hand. At his side Clovis readied her sword.

A ripple of panic ran through the humans, and disturbing shapes appeared fleetingly in the black mist steaming from the crack.

Frowning, Yute walked slowly towards the shadows.

“Master!” Meelan hurried after the man, though whether to wrestle him back or just stand by his side Evar couldn’t tell. Either way it was brave if he didn’t understand the threat and foolhardy if he did.