Page 33 of The Book that Broke the World

Redmak explained that there were cylinders in which the gas was captured, compressed, compressed again, and held. Ganar worked great valves to bring one cylinder online when another became exhausted.

Although some of the ganar were inspecting the dials, and others operating lesser valves on the host of pipes snaking up the walls, it seemed that the bulk of them were simply socialising, talking in small groups. A distant bell sounded and a powerfully built ganar pushed a lever as tall as he was as they passed. Beneath their feet the faint hissing swelled to the roar of a thousand snakes.

“Cylinder change, on the hour, every third hour,” Redmak said. “At least in high season. That’s as fast as the cylinders recharge. The masters grumble and groan of course, and fight for the supply, but the ground gives us what the ground gives us, and if they keep breeding, their children will have to find another way to light up the night.” He tapped a large pipe as he passed. “This bounty won’t last forever.”

Redmak led Celcha through the throng and presented her to the first fat ganar Celcha had ever seen. “This one’s Celcha. Came with a human child in library blacks, and a canith guard in the livery of the athenaeum.”

“H’seen.” H’seen was nearly as tall as Hellet. All of the workers were—some of them even taller and wider. She glanced at Redmak. “This one doesn’t know what’s hit her. Look at her eyes.”

“It’s the air,” Celcha murmured. “The air’s different.”

“It’s closer to what we breathe at home, child.” H’seen put her arm around Celcha’s shoulders, pressing the curve of her belly against Celcha’s side, and steered her slowly around, letting her take in the scene. “The gas they burn in their houses comes up from the decay of older cities beneath our feet. They call it methalayne. It gathers in voids, and we suck it up, compress it, push it through into the present city so our masters can see where they’re going at night, cook their food, warm their rooms.

“There are always leaks, and humans don’t like methalayne in their lungs. It’s not a poison to them but it makes them cough and it takes the place of the air they need instead. They get weak, might even pass out. Canith are even worse with it. We ganar, however... Well, you’ve felt it yourself. We thrive. Because on Attamast methalayne’s in the air everywhere. We need it. Without it we’re half-asleep.

“So, rather than constantly fight to keep this place gas-free, they have us work here instead. And because they can’t come in without suits and breathing tubes, we have the place largely to ourselves. As long as the methalayne keeps flowing they leave us alone. Getting a job here is the highest reward. You might think you have it good in the library, or that the palace ganar live well on the scraps from the high table. But nobody here would swap. Once you’ve filled your lungs properly it’s not something you’re going to give up if you don’t have to.”

The huge ganar stopped steering Celcha and stepped back to study her more closely. “They’ve used you hard, Celcha. You’re nothing but muscle and scars. Not long in the library then. Why are you here?”

“To breathe.” Celcha drew in another lungful, wondering if she could bear to walk away from this place or if they’d have to carry her out and bolt the doors on her.

Redmak shook his head. “She didn’t know about the air.”

“My brother sent me,” Celcha said. “He wants to change the world.”

One fine day Truth met with Lies upon a mountainside with all of Hantalon spread beneath them: field, and town, and city stretching to the sparkle of the sea. With a disapproving frown, Truth asked of Lies how many she had slain. And true to her nature she answered with a lie. “More than you, brother.”

The Basics of Deductive Logic, by I. P. Franchise

CHAPTER 16

Arpix

Arpix coughed several times, rubbing at his throat where the red-maned canith had previously grabbed him. He wanted to spit but it was a nasty habit that he discouraged in others and he managed not to.

“You threatened torture,” Arpix growled—you had to growl to speak canith. “The irony...” Arpix had learned the language from a canith wanderer who had stayed at the camp for most of the second year. The canith’s vocabulary in human tongues wasn’t extensive and Arpix wasn’t convinced he was particularly articulate in his own language either, so working out less common and more abstract words like “ironic” had been a difficult task and even now Arpix wasn’t sure he had the right term. “The irony is that speaking your tongue is torture on my throat at the best of times, and after being half throttled...” He coughed again and this time couldn’t avoid spitting.

“I’m sorry,” Evar said from behind them. “My sister—”

“I can speak for myself,” Clovis snarled.

They were all walking towards the camp now, losing sight of the skeer runners behind the low stone wall and gentle undulation of the plateau. The camp sat at the centre of the invisible bubble that kept the insectoids from approaching. The protected area was a little over a quarter of a mile across, large enough for the crops that sustained them and to walk a dusty mile around their domain without coming too close to the edge for comfort.

“You’re bleeding!” Arpix said it in his birth tongue then gathered himself to growl it through an increasingly sore throat. “You’re bleeding.” A bright notch had been scored over one of the metal plates sewn onto the leathers across Clovis’s side and it continued past the edge, slicing into and through the tough hide. A couple of feet below the cut, blood was dripping slowly from the lower skirts of her armour.

“That’s my business,” Clovis snarled. “Where’s this device?”

Arpix led them through the bean fields where he had spent so many months pulling strands of questing livira from the ground. The weed was as irrepressible as its namesake. He took them past the well that had been ropeless when they found it and had taunted them with the scent of unobtainable water. He lifted a heavy bucket from beside the guard wall they’d built around the hole. It was more of a goatskin pouch than a bucket, and a third of the water had leaked out. Still, thirst doesn’t critique. Clovis had the skin out of his hands in a flash. She didn’t, however, thrust her face into it, instead taking it to her injured brother, Kerrol, who took a long slow drink.

As the canith passed the bucket around, Arpix took a moment to study them. Arpix had been tall from an early age and had continued to grow, upwards rather than outwards, after his classmates had stopped. He stood a good six feet five, like a weed hunting the light, Meelan said. Clovis, shorter than her brothers, overtopped him by more than a hand, and every inch of her lean, athletic form was packed with the kind of muscle that doesn’t show itself until its owner demonstrates some remarkable feat of strength. She had a fierce vitality about her, an energy that unnerved him but which at the same time he found himself unable to look away from.

“What?” Clovis caught him staring and snarled a challenge.

“My apologies, madam,” Arpix growled through his sore throat. “We get so few visitors.”

Clovis tossed aside the bucket and leaned over to stare down the well. She made a sharp yipping sound, trying to gauge the depth.

“It’s nearly two hundred yards to the water,” Arpix said. “Through the thickness of the plateau and into the aquifer below the plain.” “Aquifer” was another word he’d had to tease from their visitor at great length and, judging by the look Kerrol and Evar had just exchanged, he might have been taught something not only wrong but inappropriate. Flustered, he tried to rephrase. “The buried lake.”

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