Page 32

Good sex, like good comedy, is primarily a matter of timing and chemistry. The similarities end when considering the ideal size of the audience.

The Ping Pong Ball , by Ansell Dam

Arpix

Arpix lay comfortably trapped between Clovis and the mattress, with enough of the canith draped across him to make escape a difficult business. His body felt wrung out, a wet cloth that had been twisted to squeeze out the last drop. A strange combination of sated and bruised. Clovis, now fast asleep and growling softly, had shown both the energy and strength of her species. And of course, her warrior training had accentuated both. She had also been unexpectedly tender though, and Arpix’s fears that human anatomy would be incompatible with her needs or inadequate to meet them, appeared to have been unwarranted, at least to judge by her reaction at the time and her current state.

Quite how long his body would stand up to the punishment, he wasn’t sure. He thought he’d probably need a week to recover. On the other hand, the message didn’t seem to have reached all quarters, and certain parts of him seemed to be eager for round two.

Arpix relaxed, wishing only that the mattress was thicker and the boards beneath less hard. The sun had risen, and its light strained through the shutters. It had sounded like a wild night down in the tavern room below them, but they’d both had other things on their minds, and little short of actual fire would have diverted them from it—mere smoke would not have qualified.

“We’ve come a long way from the library.” Arpix murmured the words to himself. He tried to imagine what the people from his past would have made of his present. It would have seemed as unbelievable to them as it did to him. And yet here he was, with a gently snoring, slightly furry canith, puffing stray strands of her crimson mane away from his mouth.

Of all of it: the growing excitement, the ecstasy of union, the satisfaction of consummation, it was this part, or more accurately the part before Clovis had fallen asleep, that he found himself loving the most. The gentle communion of lying together, wrapped in each other, each feeling the other’s breathing, a whispered conversation of inconsequential words and vital emotion.

The sounds of the street reached in, wagons creaking by, the rattle of carts, voices raised in conversation. It felt much busier outside now than when they’d arrived. A man shouted a greeting. Someone dropped something, possibly an empty barrel.

Clovis stretched, yawning mightily to show an array of teeth that still surprised Arpix. She lifted up over him on all fours. The six breasts had been a surprise too, though with each pair considerably smaller than the one above it the lowest pair at the bottom of her ribcage were hardly there at all. “I’ll never get used to this night-and-day stuff.”

“It takes a while. I lived in the library long enough to forget darkness existed.” Arpix wriggled clear and reached for his robes before the canith got any ideas. “We need to find Evar. And the others.” Evar would be enough for Arpix. And then the book, and then Livira. Mayland and his plans could stay lost.

“Or we could go find this king who took the book. This Oanold .” She spoke his name like a curse. “The others will be looking for him too, and I’ll bet he’s easier to find than they are. Kings live in castles, yes?”

“Palaces normally, at least when they’re in their capitals. But Oanold fell here like we did. He’s not going to be king.”

Clovis stood, still naked, still stretching. “Mayland said he would fall into himself. Into whoever he was here.” She looked around for the leathers she’d scattered the evening before. “And I’m ready to bet he’s this shitty potentate whose guards were trying to have you hanged.”

“He might not even exist here. I mean we don’t. Or at least…do we?”

Clovis shrugged. “If there’s another me, the bitch can’t have you.”

Arpix couldn’t help but snort with laughter at that. He tied the cord around his waist. Clovis somehow made him a different person. Normal-Arpix wasn’t a snorter. “We came here because we followed Oanold. But something brought Oanold here, it means something to him. Maybe because there was a version of him living out a life in this place. In a palace.”

“We’ll go after this potentate,” Clovis said. “Even if I’m wrong, it sounds like I’d be doing everyone a favour if I twisted his head off. And I bet I’m not wrong. This Oanold, this human king, he had his soldiers kill my people without cause or mercy. That sort of evil doesn’t change. That hunger doesn’t go away. He’ll claw his way to the top. And that’s how I’ll find him.”

Arpix held his tongue. Nobody had said the potentate wasn’t a canith. He let it slide. Oanold’s deeds had inflicted wounds that ran through the whole of Clovis’s life. She couldn’t be argued out of them. And besides, Oanold was a monster, a devil wrapped in human skin. The terror Arpix had felt beneath the man’s indifferent cruelty would return to him every day of his life.

He kept his counsel until Clovis had finished dressing. “He’ll have soldiers. Hundreds of them. A literal army. I mean—I saw a whole army march past me yesterday. We can’t just stroll into his palace and challenge him.”

“Of course not.” Clovis tightened her belt.

Arpix relaxed.

“We scout first. Then attack.” She aimed for the door. “Come on. Let’s see if there’s a back way out of here.”

They left the inn via a dirty yard at the rear where carts came to unload casks of ale into the cellar and drive off with empties. A patch of mud allowed Clovis to tone down the distinctive red of her mane with a handful of grime. At her suggestion Arpix led the way and she trailed him at a discreet distance. The authorities would be looking for the pair of them, and whilst humans and canith kept close quarters in the city, Arpix had yet to see any holding hands.

Their first task was to buy some less distinctive clothes. Arpix sold his gold and silver coins to a blacksmith for a fraction of their worth. Using the local currency, silver marks and bronze pennies, he replaced his library robe with a set of second-hand clothes, trousers that ended well above his ankles, a homespun shirt that billowed around his spare frame, and worn leather shoes. Clovis opted for a hooded cape.

They made their purchases separately, but Arpix still had the strong impression that the shopkeeper suspected him. He’d heard two men on a corner talking about the massacre in the square as he passed. In hindsight he was surprised and relieved that none of the inn’s patrons had informed on them during the night. He could only guess that the enforcers of the potentate’s laws were not popular in some areas of the city. Or perhaps the locals were just waiting for a reward to be posted. No point giving the authorities something for free now that they would pay for later.

In his new—or at least newer—attire, Arpix turned towards the heights where the rich would live and set off up the slope. He scanned the street, watching for patrols, or anyone in authority, making sure to keep his distance. His main hope was that Evar or one of the others would spot them and suggest a better plan than Clovis’s. He’d suggest one himself if he had one, but all his years of study hadn’t been of much avail of late. For the years since escaping the blazing library he’d felt distinctly undereducated in all of the things that his life had suddenly come to depend upon.

Ever since Clovis’s arrival at the plateau, the life he’d been living, delicately balanced on the edge of survival, had become even less certain. He’d careened from one seemingly fatal scenario to the next, and the current one felt no less dangerous than when he’d been in Oanold and Algar’s clutches. It was, however, infinitely preferable to face those perils in Clovis’s company.

Arpix studied the city as they climbed through it. The similarities and differences to Crath City were both considerable. Mayland had called the place, the whole world, a maybe . A reality where the gods had rolled their dice and come up with a different result. The mountains held the same shapes as far as Arpix could tell, but the world around them was wetter, cooler, and greener. The mists had rolled in off a great lake in the distance. The waters lay in the place his people had called the Dust. The Arthran Plateau must be an island in that lake now.

The higher Arpix took them, the more patrols of soldiers there were, the more black-clad officers of the interior police. Arpix had to assume that the potentate enjoyed support from a sizeable proportion of the populace. The city looked prosperous, its people well-fed, but their leader clearly didn’t trust them further than he could spit them.

Arpix realised with a shock that he’d reached the market square where they’d been about to hang him the previous day. He stopped dead in the street, unwilling to go on. The scaffold had gone, and the bloodstains had been washed away, but it felt as though there were a noose about his throat even now, tightening with each passing moment. A shadow loomed behind him, and he knew with conviction that a hand was about to land on his shoulder, and an officer in execution black would demand his papers.

“Follow me.” Clovis swept past him.

Now it was Arpix’s turn to follow. Clovis set a fair pace for a canith, and Arpix began to sweat as they started up a steep street after crossing the square. Although he had spent most of their trip through the city fighting the desire to run, he had kept to an amble, not wanting to draw the gaze of those in authority. Hurrying was always an admission of guilt, even if the crime was only that of being late, or merely overeager. Hastening after Clovis, he felt even more exposed. The previous day’s mists had not returned, but Arpix would have welcomed them as he puffed his way after his self-appointed guide.

At last, having climbed nearly to where in Arpix’s city the Lesser Palace had stood, Clovis ducked into a largely deserted side street where, between rows of grand four-storey town houses, she beckoned him forward. Arpix came, trying not to look suspicious, and failing by glancing over his shoulder.

“I don’t want to jinx it, but I’m not even sure they’re looking for us.” Arpix wasn’t sure how that could be. “I mean, we walked across the square where it happened, and nobody looked twice at us.”

“A few of them looked twice at me,” Clovis said, “but I am rather fine.”

“We shouldn’t be together like this, not in public.”

“You’re ashamed of me?” Clovis raised an eyebrow, her smile playful. She lifted a finger as he opened his mouth to protest. “You’re forgetting the Exchange. Mayland said it would disguise us. Show people what they expected to see. Perhaps it’s still working. And the people in the square clearly expected to see something different from the ones in the inn, or the ones who’ve looked our way today.”

“Ah.” Arpix felt like an idiot. “But why put mud in your mane? Why the hood?”

“Because it will wear off at some point. And I may want to change my appearance quickly.” Her smile broadened. “I thought you were the clever one.”

“I didn’t get much sleep.” Arpix met her gaze.

Clovis laughed at that.

“Why are we here?”

“Because I was walking behind two men who were discussing something very interesting. There’s to be some kind of tourney in Blue Tower Square. A bug-fight, they called it. And from the number of people coming this way it looks as if there’s going to be quite an audience. Who knows, maybe even the potentate will come to see.”

“Bug-fight?” Arpix frowned.

“Could be skeer.”

“How do you catch skeer?” Arpix tried to imagine it. You’d need to get one on its own first. Even then you’d have to be pretty clever to avoid casualties.

Clovis shrugged. “Maybe they’ll tell us.”

“And how,” Arpix continued, “do you suddenly know where to find a particular square in a city you know nothing about?”

“You really do need your sleep.” Clovis took his shoulders and steered him back down the street.

“I don’t—”

She tilted his head until over the rooftops of the houses the tip of a tower came into view, its blue tiles glimmering in the early sun. “I can see I’ll have to do the thinking from now on, because I don’t plan to stop keeping you up at night any time soon.”