Page 100 of The Book that Broke the World

The orchard layout of the towers offered many long avenues of sight that narrowed into invisible distance, but the soldiers could not be seen down any of them. Instead, Evar had to rely on the training Starval had given him. In many places tracking the band’s progress was easy enough. Footprints in dust, spatters of blood, and dislodged books all told a tale. In other spots Evar’s decisions hinged on the smallest of clues. Sometimes instinct or an educated guess served.

Before long though he could smell them and follow the charnel reek around every twist and turn. He came close enough to hear the tramp of feet, and glimpse figures hurrying along ahead of them only to be lost among the towers as the angles changed.

Evar’s heart began to thunder both with anticipation and with dread. The dead man’s blood still coated his stolen blade. Evar hadn’t enjoyed killing him. He knew humans, ones that he liked and loved. Taking the lives of others—even the worst of them—was not something he wanted to become used to.

When Clovis’s hand closed on Evar’s shoulder, and brought him to an unexpected halt, the tension inside him almost swung his sword her way. “Sorry!”

Clovis snorted as if the idea he might have hurt her was comical. “We need to go up. Projectile weapons in straight aisles can defeat the best of us. It’s how the Soldier—their Malar—died. And he was a fine warrior, even as a human.”

“You nearly killed him back in the Exchange that time without even thinking about it,” Evar protested.

“Focus!” Clovis punched his chest. “We’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to do this.” She shook her head. “And I did have to think about it. It might not have looked like it but that little human almost got me that time.” Clovis tapped the side of her head. “Focus.” And in the next instant she was swarming up a shelf-tower.

Ten yards above the ground Clovis struck out after their prey. She ran, setting her feet to the tight-packed books first on one shelf then on a shelf at the same level but on a different tower further along. And in this manner, skipping along the narrow and unstable edges offered to her, Clovis danced through the air high above the soldiers’ heads.

Evar followed, able to match her agility though delayed when one set of books betrayed him, spilling to the ground and leaving him lunging for the opposite tower to keep from falling.

The crash of books brought soldiers and their ’sticks swivelling in Evar’s direction, yet still they didn’t see him, their aim focused at ground level and on the dislodged tomes.

Clovis dropped among the enemy where they stood thickest. She spun, sweeping an arc that became a circle and, where the white blade went, bodies fell apart in crimson floods. She felled two more soldiers and was away, leaping from shelf-tower to shelf-tower, gaining elevation as if climbing a staircase that only she had the wit to see.

Evar closed his open mouth, aware that in the time Clovis had killed eight of the foe, he had done exactly nothing. Shouts went up from the dozens of troops scattered among the towers. A book close to Evar’s head jerked into the air and plunged to the ground, leaving fragments of pages swirling in its wake. A bullet! It had been hit by a bullet!

Evar leapt for a different pillar, closing off the angle that the shot might have come from. Other projectiles buzzed through the air.

“There! Up there!” Another soldier spotted him, calling her comrades to her. Four of them charged towards the base of his tower, swords drawn.

If they weren’t fighting him, they could be coming at Clovis from behind while she fought others. He needed to play his part.

Evar leapt into their path. He landed as Starval had taught him, rolled beneath their blades, bowled three of them over, half decapitated the fourth. Then he was moving, dodging this way and that, coming swiftly upon new enemies and leaving them behind him, stunned, wounded, or dead.

Every stride placed Evar at the centre of another set of avenues radiating out along the compass points and the diagonals, a set of lines down which anyone with a ’stick might sight their weapon. He kept moving, jinking left, jinking right, relying on his speed to gain the initiative in every encounter.

A man slid from Evar’s blade. Another flew back as Evar shoulder-charged him, sending him crashing into the nearest shelves with a sickening crunch. From time to time Evar glimpsed his sister crossing the line of his vision. More often he found her victims, their bodies ruined by sword blows. Always he heard her roaring rage, her shattered howls ricocheting among the towers.

Ahead of him Evar saw a group of soldiers and the first of the humans not wearing a uniform. The man stood taller than the five around him, though he was less broad than the rest. For a mad moment Evar thought he’d found Arpix, but as the man’s head turned his way Evar saw that in place of Arpix’s rags he wore a fine cloak, and that he was older, with a crimson eyepatch.

Evar raised his sword in challenge, the edge blunted by the work already accomplished. He moved to close the distance and make his attack but found himself on both knees. The small red hole in his jerkin just below his pectoral muscle confused him, as did the fact that he was kneeling.

Two of the soldiers advanced cautiously on him, blades levelled, the one-eyed man just at their backs. Evar still had things to learn about human expressions but felt confident in saying that the man’s smile promised nothing good.

Footsteps approached from behind too, and Evar, understanding at last that he had been shot, struggled to get up. He only made it to one knee.

“It’s a shame it can’t understand me,” the man said. Evar thought he must be the Lord Algar that Livira had written of in her books. “Look at his eyes, though. He knows this is going to hurt.” Algar glanced around. “Haven’t they caught the others yet? I hope this isn’t the only one we take alive.”

One of the soldiers stepped forward, arm raised for the killing blow.

“Stop, you idiot!” Algar snapped. “Just tie it up. We’ll let the circle heal it, and then see what punishments the king has in mind.”

“Good eating on one of these,” a female grunted behind Evar. Some of the others laughed. Algar made no response, but his single eye burned with a hunger that was about more than food.

One of the soldiers behind grabbed Evar’s arm, and he found himself too weak to stop them. His struggles merely brought another man to the task.

“Put his eye out.”

The words were spoken quietly and took a moment to register with the soldiers.

“What?” the woman asked, though it seemed she must have heard.

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