Page 28

None of us truly know our limits. The point where we surrender hope and the point where we cease to fight may lie further apart than we imagine. Indeed, it’s often those you least suspect of endurance that will die with their teeth still locked in the enemy’s flesh.

Hockey for Girls , by Mrs. Elsa Primrose

Arpix

Clovis had done magnificently, turning the tide against eight canith and two human soldiers. Arpix’s heart had been in his mouth when she’d confronted the massive Corporal Janks, who was a head taller than her and at least half as heavy again, but she’d put him down almost too swiftly to see, and even now he was barely stirring.

It couldn’t last though. The canith were professional soldiers, with strength in numbers and with ’sticks at their disposal. No amount of personal skill could dodge a bullet. Technology spelled the end of the warrior’s way.

And now, a woman barely able to stand had command over Clovis, aiming the black eye of her weapon at her. The hope that had sprung up in Arpix’s breast on seeing Clovis there, kneeling before the gallows, now came crashing down so hard that it burrowed into new depths of despair. They would be hanged together. Or die here in battle. Perhaps that was better.

As fresh soldiers from the square converged on Clovis, Arpix looked around briefly for a weapon of his own. He considered drawing Hadd’s blade but stayed his hand. It wasn’t—as Livira would say—his style. He’d look pretty stupid waving it around in any case.

Instead, he raised his empty hands and stepped into the line joining the muzzle of the soldier’s ’stick to Clovis’s heart. He turned away from the soldier, preferring instead to be looking at Clovis when he died.

Contrary to Arpix’s expectations, he wasn’t greeted with a despairing gaze. Instead, Clovis gave a roar that might have emptied his bladder if he were just a little better hydrated. In the same moment Clovis grabbed the first soldier to reach her, lifted him like a shield before her, and charged, snatching up her blade as she went. The soldier with the levelled ’stick fired her shot and a red wound blossomed between the shoulder blades of the man Clovis carried before her.

Arpix blinked and missed seeing three of the soldiers receive the wounds that would kill them. Clovis pirouetted through four more, carving deep furrows through flesh and bone, leaving the ruins to fall behind her, pumping blood until their hearts failed. The big canith managed to reach his knees before his head fell to the side and bounced on the flagstones beside his decapitated corpse. Three more soldiers and a black-clad officer broke from the crowd, one managing to get off a shot that hammered the flagstones where Clovis had been standing an instant before. All of them fell within moments, one canith tumbling in a different direction to his sword arm.

Clovis shook some of the crimson from her blade and sped back to Arpix’s side. “We have to go.” She took his arm between shoulder and elbow and propelled him into a run.

“Where are we going?”

“Anywhere but here.” Clovis roared a challenge at the thinning crowd ahead of them and everyone started to run, humans and canith alike, some of them screaming. The entrance to a street beckoned, and Clovis took it, with Arpix running for all he was worth to keep up with her jog.

“We— Can—” Arpix struggled for breath. “Put the sword away!”

Clovis shot him a challenging look, then complied with a snarl, sheathing it.

They turned left at the next corner, down the hill. In this street fewer people looked alarmed. Confused maybe—why was an angry canith running from an exhausted beggar? But not scared. There was no bloody sword being brandished at them.

Clovis took a right turn, following the gradient. Arpix stumbled to an almost halt, limping along, trying to answer his lungs’ clamour for air. “Wait!”

“We need to run!” Clovis returned for him.

“I— I know cities,” Arpix panted. He straightened up. “These people don’t know us. They didn’t see what happened. They don’t care who we are or where we’re going, except if we’re running or looking guilty.”

Clovis looked around, ready to fight.

“They don’t care. Nobody’s chasing us. Not yet.” Arpix glanced back along the street, then looked her up and down. “We need to wash that blood off you…” There was a lot of blood, thankfully the stuff on her leathers wasn’t immediately obvious.

“Off you too.” Clovis reached over to wipe at his cheek.

Looking down, Arpix discovered that the remnants of his librarian’s robes were now decorated by arcs of blood spatter. If the robes were still as white as when they’d been awarded to him then all eyes would be turned his way, but five years in the wilds had left them a grimy grey on which the blood seemed almost black.

“We need a place to hide.” Clovis scanned the street.

“We could try an inn.” Arpix nodded to a sign hanging above a large door further down the street.

Clovis raised an eyebrow. “Beg them to take pity on us? Why would they let us in?”

“Money?” Arpix suggested.

Clovis narrowed her eyes, nodding. “Yes, that’s how it’s done. Where would we find money?” She took hold of her chin, pulling down as if trying to draw the answers out. “Work! People work, don’t they? And money is exchanged?”

Arpix nodded, remembering that Clovis had never lived anywhere but the library. He reached inside his robe and rummaged in his coin pouch. “Luckily…” He drew out a handful of silvers. There were even a few gold crowns gleaming in the mix. A decade of trainee allowance and a year of librarian’s salary, minus what he’d given to his parents, to charity, and spent on rare almond honey cakes.

Clovis peered at the handful. “Is that enough? Will it work here?”

“Well, even if they have a currency without intrinsic value, as long as gold and silver hold a good value…yes to both.”

And with that, Arpix took the lead, walking briskly but unobtrusively down the road, pausing at the inn sign only long enough for both of them to clean the other as best they could with water from the horse trough.

Arpix wound his way towards the east, aiming downhill all the time. The mist had all but dissipated, revealing encircling mountains with very familiar peaks. “This is where Crath City stood. My city. It’s a different version, but close enough that mountains are the same even if the people might have changed. The gods rolled their dice here and came up with a different tally but at least they were the same dice.”

Clovis grunted, more interested in watching the street ahead for danger. The housing grew cheaper, less well maintained, the people’s clothing more drab, their language more colourful. The mountains hadn’t changed, nor had the distribution of poverty and palaces.

At last, not far from the city walls, Arpix picked an inn, the sort he would never have dared to enter in his old life, the sort he imagined to be full of bandits, adventurers, thieves, and vagabonds. In fact, he’d only been into a small handful of inns, three to be exact, all well-heeled establishments near the grand square. On all three occasions it had been at Livira’s insistence. She’d practically frogmarched him into the first one with one arm twisted behind his back.

The reality of the cheapest end of the hostelry trade was less exciting, sadder, and almost exactly as pungent as Arpix’s expectations. The clientele in the tavern front were labourers and tradesmen, their dull garb stained with evidence of a variety of professions. Most nursed a tankard that they leaned over protectively, showing little interest in anyone else, and evidencing no obvious threat. A few heads turned to track Clovis, striking, young, out of place. The only other canith in the room looked ancient, her mane in ratty grey braids, a foul-smelling pipe hanging from a withered mouth.

Arpix presented himself at the bar, self-consciously, banging his forehead painfully on a ceiling beam as he closed the last yard. Someone sniggered, stopping immediately when Clovis ducked in behind Arpix with a growl.

“We’re looking for a room.” Arpix addressed the barkeep, a beefy man with a face so red you’d assume he was furious but for the placidity of his expression. “I mean, we want to hire one. To stay in.” Arpix forced himself to stop talking.

The man had been rubbing the inside of an empty tankard with a grimy cloth. He stopped and ran a speculative eye up Arpix before looking over his shoulder at Clovis, who had turned away to watch the entrance. “Day use?”

“I beg your pardon?” Arpix frowned.

“Day use?” the barman enunciated.

“I’m sorry, I don’t under—”

A tired-faced labourer in muddy overalls looked up from his ale. “He means are you going up there to fuck, and then pissing off, or will you only need it come night-time?”

“I uh…We. I mean.” Arpix had wanted the room immediately, so they could regroup and rest without risking being spotted. Somehow it had already gone terribly wrong. “What I mean to say is—”

“Now. For fucking.” Clovis leaned around Arpix and set both hands to the bar, staring down the barkeep. “Give him the silver, Arpix.”

Arpix found his hands shaking as he fumbled three silver coins onto the counter. He felt himself blushing furiously and imagined that he looked as red as the barkeep now. He slid the first coin forward, hoping for some sort of cue as to when he should stop. Clovis pushed a second one forward. “And tonight.”

The barkeep’s face took on a hitherto unseen animation as he claimed the coins. Arpix suspected they’d paid considerably over the odds. “And a meal,” he added. “Later.”

“Right you are, yer worship.” The man didn’t look up from his study of King Oanold’s head, stamped on the florins in his palm. He pursed his lips, frowning in puzzlement, then dropped them into his apron. “Room’s up the stairs. Third door.”

Arpix hesitated, still blushing and flustered. Finding the barkeep turning away, he ventured, “We’ll need a key?”

“No key. Encourages thieves to break the doors.”

“Ah.” And with nothing else to say, Arpix turned towards the rickety flight of stairs that headed up at the end of the bar. Clovis was already halfway up them.

Arpix followed, sure that every eye in the tavern was watching him follow his flame-haired companion towards the bedroom. Day use… He banged his head a second time negotiating the stairs, which were at an angle most often found on ships.

The corridor at the top of the stairs smelled of spilled ale. Clovis had already gone in through the third door.

For fucking. That’s what she told the barman. Arpix shook his head. It had been their cover story. Fucking. Even Livira didn’t use that word. At least, not often.

The room proved larger than he had anticipated, though with less furniture. He had expected some. In addition to floorboards, the room boasted a thin, grey, straw-filled mattress, a small, shuttered window, and…Clovis. She closed the door behind him and went to peer out at the street.

Arpix rubbed his head and looked around as if he might have missed something. “You saved my life.”

“You saved mine first.” Clovis turned from the window, the brightness outside turning her mane to fire.

“But it was so”—Arpix had been going to say violent —“random.” He shook his head. “I mean. You turning up there, just when I needed you. What were the odds?” The more he thought about it the more unlikely it seemed. “Me and Hadd got stuck waiting for a big column of soldiers to march past. A returning army. We almost didn’t. The vanguard arrived at the crossroads just as we did, and Hadd thought we could get past, started pulling me across. But someone shouted. Maybe an officer. And he stopped and we waited.”

Clovis had moved closer as he spoke and stood just in front of him now, watching his face. “Uh-huh.”

“But my point is that we could so easily have made it. And if we did, then we’d have got there well ahead of you. They might have hanged me before you got there.”

Clovis put a hand on his upper arm.

“Mayland showed us all those might have beens. This whole world is a might have been, just like ours is. And he said if Oanold landed badly he might have spread himself over a bunch of layers, each one a little bit different.”

Clovis put her other hand on Arpix’s hip. Close enough now that just inches stood between them, her chest nearly brushing his. “Uh-huh.”

“What if we landed badly? What if there were dozens of Arpixes all in nearly identical versions of this city, and dozens of Clovises, and in all of them but this one Hadd rushed over that crossing, and I got hanged before you ever knew I was in danger?”

“You think too much.” Clovis leaned closer, her face filling his vision, her eyes huge and grey, her mouth covering his next question. Her arms closed around him, drawing them tight together, her tongue invading as he tried to speak.

She pulled back after their first kiss.

“Oh,” Arpix said, realising that he’d been too tied up in his theory to see any of the signs. “That was…nice.” It had been more than nice. Strangely not at all like he had imagined kissing would be. More licky. But better. “We really should be making plans.”

“I have been,” Clovis said, glancing down at the mattress.

“They’ll be hunting us in the streets,” Arpix said, suddenly very conscious of every inch of Clovis. “Circulating our descriptions…” His mind might have missed all the cues, but his body seemed to know exactly what was going on, and although it hadn’t bothered to tell him, it had risen to the occasion. The mattress, grey and thin as it was, seemed far more inviting than it had a few moments earlier. “We really should find the others…”

“We will,” Clovis said in a low, throaty growl. “Afterwards. First, there’s the canith code to consider.”

“The what?”

“The canith code. Rule one.” She went to her knees, pulling him down with her.

“Rule one?”

“Never lie to barkeepers.”