The Book That Wouldn't Burn, page 23
‘My bird? Where is he? Could this place mend him?’
But the assistant was already walking away.
‘Hey!’ Livira gave chase on strengthening legs. ‘How do I get out of here?’
The assistant paused and pointed. ‘The east door will take you to a chamber with external access. Follow the wall to the right when you pass through, and it will bring you to the exit.’
‘Arpix said you assistants never helped.’
‘Perhaps this Arpix does not know what helping looks like?’ The assistant carried on his way, which wasn’t in the direction he’d pointed. ‘We have much to do.’
‘Wait!’ Livira called after him. ‘I saw an assistant who looked hurt. She was all grey and she wouldn’t move, and she had a hole, a dent, here.’ She touched her temple. ‘You should help her.’
The assistant turned, gazing at her with white eyes. ‘You asked if the library were here so that you could read. It was, as I said, a big question. Some would answer that the library is here in order that an old war can be fought again and again until the end of time. I thank you for your concern. I have much to do.’ And he walked away.
Livira continued to shout questions until the assistant was out of sight, and for a while after that. She could have followed him, but she needed to get back. She clutched Reflections on Solitude to her and began to run in the direction the assistant had indicated. Lord Algar couldn’t be allowed to take this away from her. She had too many questions that needed answers, and the thought of the quiet satisfaction he would take in her eviction ran like acid through her veins.
Keeping to the line the assistant had indicated proved difficult with the aisles running at whatever angle they chose. When she’d had no particular destination in mind it had been less annoying. She ran on, constantly diverted, increasingly sure she’d lost hold of the direction she’d been sent in. This belief was proven incorrect when, probably more by luck than judgement, she broke into the clearing in front of the corridor.
The metal man was where Livira had left him, standing eternal guard. Livira’s renewed energy was flagging again, and although seeing a familiar face cheered her up, the featherless skeleton of his wings reminded her that she’d left the Raven for dead without even a goodbye. After a moment to recover her breath, Livira went to stand in front of the frozen guide. She resisted hugging him and instead offered a dignified bow. ‘I found it!’ She held her book aloft and hurried past. When the white door behind him began to dissolve beneath her touch she almost cried with relief. Before it was properly gone, she was through into the final chamber where, still some miles off, the exit lay.
The closer Livira got to the exit the more she worried about the time. She could have been gone for three days, five, who knew? She certainly needed sleep and food, lots of both. To fail out in the far reaches of a distant chamber was one thing, but to fail with the book in hand, within shouting distance of the exit, would be too much to bear. The idea of handing victory to Lord Algar fed new energy into her legs.
Having reached the first chamber again, she had a path to follow, marked both in memory and on the floor with strategically placed books. With a grim determination Livira ran on.
From the next ladder she scaled she could see the wall looming ahead and make out the white dot that was the final door. Soon she could even pick out the line of the staircase that led up to it. Her legs were already leaden and the idea of climbing that flight of overly large steps made her groan.
Memory brought her stumbling and panting into the aisle that she’d leapt into from the shelf tops. ‘Arpix? Carlotte?’
Lacking a reply, she reversed course to find a route to the clear space around the base of the stairs. A short while later she broke from the aisles, casting wildly around for signs of the others. She hurried to the start of the index aisle. Nothing. No sign of the mess they’d made. Arpix would have tidied up conscientiously even knowing they’d failed.
Livira started up the stairs, pressing with both hands on her lead knee to try and lever herself up them when her thigh muscles began to fail. The others might be just ahead of her. They might be crossing the cavern as she heaved herself up the stairs with maddening slowness. A laugh burst from her: hysterical tiredness. She’d never imagined the professional librarian needed to be such an athlete.
Finally, she reached the top and collapsed against the door which immediately melted away, offering no support. The next she knew she was being helped to her feet by two library guards.
‘Did they come through yet? Have you seen them? My friends?’ Livira tried not to let exhaustion slur her words into an unintelligible mumble.
‘We came on duty an hour ago.’ The larger of the two men set Livira on her feet, hands to either side as if checking he’d balanced her correctly. ‘Haven’t seen anyone in or out.’
‘Hells.’ Livira started out across the cavern and found herself limping though she’d no memory of hurting her leg. ‘If they come out after me tell them I was here.’
‘If who comes out?’ the other man called at her back. But Livira was too tired to explain. They’d sort it out. Besides, they were ahead of her, she was sure of it. At least an hour ahead.
Livira descended the stairs to the main complex having no idea whether it was day or night. Tiredness washed such thoughts through her head as she limped along the mostly deserted corridors. Night then.
Master Logaris had given no instructions about the handing over of the book. Presumably he intended that they bring it to class. In any event, Livira had no idea where Logaris slept, which was probably a good thing given the temptation to sneak into his bedchamber and leave Reflections on Solitude on the pillow, beside his head. Instead, she went to the sleeping quarters, half drunk with tiredness. Wading through her exhaustion, she reached the rooms at the far end, leaned on a door, and lunged for the bed like a drowning man straining for solid ground. Consciousness abandoned her with a swiftness that seemed no less than when she had hit the floor after falling twenty yards.
Livira found that for the second time in a row she’d woken somewhere unexpected. The room looked just like hers, but it belonged to someone else. She rolled from the bed and almost ended up sprawled across the sheepskin rug, so unwilling were her legs to support her weight. She felt as if she were eighty rather than just turned eleven. And she didn’t own a rug of any sort, certainly not one so thick and luxuriously white as the one beneath her feet. She noticed that she was still wearing the shoes from Yute’s house, having failed to undress to any degree before plunging into the bed. She wanted the shoes off so she could wriggle her bare toes in the rug’s softness.
She looked around the room, a huge yawn cracking her jaw. She still felt as if she could sleep another whole day, so why was she awake? Had there been a noise? She looked at the desk, far more orderly than hers and with the books stacked higher around it. Street clothes hung at the far end, not peasant rags but plain and patched. Not the clothes of someone who could afford so fine a rug. Crossing to the desk she picked up the topmost piece of paper. She couldn’t read the language, but the quill work spoke clearly enough.
‘Arpix.’ She’d spent the night in Arpix’s room. But where was he?
Suddenly she remembered the book. For a heart-stopping moment, as her fingers quested inside the emptiness of her inner pocket, she was convinced that she’d lost it. But a desperate search of the bed found Reflections on Solitude resting under the pillow. ‘I’ve got to go!’
Livira ran out into the corridor, finding it empty. She glanced into her own room and then hurried to the refectory hall, cursing her stiff and aching legs. By the time she got there only a few librarians and a scattering of support staff were still lingering over their breakfast. The bell hadn’t woken her but perhaps the commotion of students outside her door getting ready for lessons had finally dragged Livira from her pit of sleep. She turned on a heel and headed off towards class.
Livira couldn’t understand why Arpix hadn’t returned to his room. If they’d become lost among the aisles who knew what trouble they might be in? Her mind told her it wasn’t her fault if they were lost, but her heart had other opinions. She turned the corner to see the last of Master Logaris’s students going through the classroom doorway. The door had closed by the time she got there. Livira barged through into a room that seemed shockingly normal after the strangeness in which she’d spent the past days.
The oldest students, still standing around their desks unloading books, didn’t notice her arrival at all. The ones behind them, middle ranking in the hierarchy of Master Logaris’s class, pretended not to notice her. Only when the cluster of older children parted to allow her through did Livira find herself greeted by the astonished stares of her four companions on the lowest table.
Arpix and the others looked even worse than she felt. Black circles around their eyes spoke of days without sleep. All of them stood at her arrival, except Jella who slumped across the table as if some burden had been suddenly taken from her.
The door opened again, and Master Logaris filled the doorway.
‘Where in the hells were you?’ Arpix hissed, pitching his demand beneath the rapidly quieting chatter.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ Livira whispered, taking the chair next to him.
‘We spent half our time searching for you,’ Arpix muttered through clenched teeth. ‘It’s no wonder we didn’t find the book!’
‘I’m sorry.’ Livira was rarely properly sorry, but she regretted what the others had gone through.
‘What were you thinking?’ Arpix hissed. ‘If you’d stayed, we might—’
Master Logaris loomed over them, his blunt features gathered into an unhappy scowl. ‘Well, first-years. You’ve had two full days. Where’s my book?’
Jella sat up at that. Carlotte and Meelan studied the table. Arpix began to stutter. ‘W-we searched the philosophy section in the Rifflean Ordering and the corresponding sections by the west wall and in the Orthodoxy.’ Livira, waited, expecting him to lay the blame at her feet, as he was perfectly entitled to do. ‘We wasted a lot of time in the Binary Aisles,’ Arpix continued. ‘That was my fault. All of it was my fault really. The rest were following my lead.’ Livira blinked at him, amazed, still waiting for the hammer to fall. ‘Then we moved on—’
‘It was Arpix who finally thought it might be in the hidden index and got us to start pulling out the books to look behind them.’ Under the table Livira worked the book out from her robe pocket and thrust it into Arpix’s lap. ‘I’d given up ages before that.’
Arpix looked at her in amazement and then glanced down at his lap. He brought the book up to the table in trembling hands. ‘It’s here …’
Logaris’s laugh was the big and booming thing that Livira had imagined it might be though she had never thought to hear it. He took Reflections on Solitude from Arpix’s hand and studied it from several angles as if it were something he were considering making an offer on. ‘Well … well … well.’ He shook his head. ‘The Lost Seam? He sent children to retrieve something from the Lost Seam?’ He closed his mouth with a snap, seeming to remember where he was. ‘You must tell me all about it when you’re better rested.’ He walked to his desk at the front with all eyes on him and locked the book in a top drawer. ‘But well done. Very well done indeed. All of you’ – his eyes found Livira – ‘have a place in my class for as long as you continue to apply yourselves.’
Loss is often remembered in the hands. Fingers recall the feel of a baby’s hair. Touch explores the places where they have lain, still hoping to rediscover a child long after the mind and even the heart have surrendered.
A Study of Infant Mortality, by Tyler Dickerson
CHAPTER 26
Evar
The girl had vanished into the pool too fast to save, and when he tried to reach in after her the black waters resisted him so that he could barely wet his palm. Snarling with frustration, Evar got up and attempted to push a foot into the water but with similar results. He applied his whole weight and realized that the pool would let him walk across it before it admitted him. The blackness vanished as he was testing his weight, startling him back for a moment, but the change made no difference. He was locked out. Or in.
He circled the pool, staring at the fading ripples that, along with the mark she’d carved into the grass, were the only record he had of the child. Of Livira – that had been her name. He rediscovered the corner of parchment on his first circuit. It was written in a Crunian dialect and seemed to be an account of a battle in the poetic form favoured by Crunian scholars of the fifth Bronze Age. It bore the girl’s scent. With a shrug he pushed it into an inner pocket.
After ten more circuits of the pool Evar decided it was time to go. After another ten he said it out loud. After twenty more he finally walked away with muttered apologies. The child had had a certain fire to her, and he was unwilling to abandon the first stranger he’d ever met, even after so brief an acquaintance.
Evar finally spotted the dagger he’d left to mark the pool he arrived by. It had taken him quite a few circuits before he found it, and for a while he’d been working out various spiral search patterns he might have to employ in order to be sure of locating his pool. The degree of relief he experienced on finally registering the distant dot had surprised him. With so many choices did he really care if he couldn’t find his way back? Apparently, he did.
‘In any case, maybe I don’t have any choices at all.’ Livira’s pool had refused him. Maybe all the others would too. Maybe even his pool would reject him, and he’d be left to wander this middle ground until he starved, or some new child popped up out of one of the pools to guide him home.
Evar stopped at a pool no different from any other. He was most of the way back to his own now – only three to go. Standing there, he had no insight into the workings of his own mind. Why had his feet stopped moving at this pool and not the one before or the one after? Starval claimed nothing was truly random. So, had Evar chosen this particular pool? Had it called to him? He didn’t know.
First, he tested the water with a toe and then with his whole foot. No resistance. Evar knelt and reached in with his arm. Cold, clear water. He could see his hand and forearm beneath the surface, painted by rippled light. Find her at the bottom? How many would he have to try? As he thought about the nameless woman outlined on the cover of his book, he knew with more certainty than ever before that his years in the Mechanism had been years spent with her. It felt like a missing lifetime. He had loved her with a fierceness that he would never have imagined could be taken from him. He tried to speak her name and tasted it on his tongue. Tasted her.
‘I’ll try this one.’ Evar stood, shaking the water from his arm. He didn’t have the weight to drag him down, but he had the experience to hold on to – the knowledge that this was more than a pool, its water both more than and less than water. It could take him somewhere else. All that was required was an agreement between them. His conviction and the pool’s acceptance.
He looked down into the water, its surface still trembling with the memory of his intrusion, depths obscured. A whole new world beyond each pool? Another part of the same world? Would he end up beneath the same sky as Livira or his family? Were they both the same? Did Livira and the many friends she’d spoken of live their lives just beyond the char wall?
He jumped.
The darkness that had swallowed Evar released him back to his senses in the act of getting to his feet. Crops spread before him in a green arc. He knew the pool lay at his back. The library ceiling was his sky once more, the book stacks his forest. He was back where he’d come from and not even breathless from his plunge. Not even wet.
Evar’s profound sense of disappointment hadn’t even had time to settle before the next three things he noticed blew it away entirely. ‘We didn’t plant anything like this much!’ The melon field ran three, possibly four times further ahead of him than it should. ‘Where’s the wall?’ The book wall that Clovis had insisted they build had gone, leaving the stacks themselves as the only perimeter. ‘Who …’ And there was a figure moving between the book towers, coming his way. Dressed like him, as tall as Kerrol, but not Kerrol. Not Clovis. Not Starval.
‘Gods! There’s more of them.’ Evar stepped back and narrowly avoided falling into the pool.
The three figures approaching didn’t seem to have noticed the brief, undignified pinwheel of his arms as he’d fought to keep his balance. Evar no longer cared about the approaching trio. As he’d danced on the pool’s edge he’d turned and found that just yards away on the other side a woman was kneeling amidst the wheat rows, bent over some task, so intent upon it that she hadn’t even registered his performance. Immediately he tried to call to her, but his voice dried up, his throat contracting around the possibility that this was her, the woman he’d drowned himself to find. The author of his book.
Evar stood lost in wonder. There was something strange about the woman, who was dressed in the same kind of jerkin and trews as he was, sewn together from leather covers. It took him a long, silent moment to work out what was curious about the side view of her face: she was old. Grey in her hair, cheeks withered, deep lines around the corner of her eye.
The woman turned as he stared; she stood and raised her hand in greeting. Evar was so lost in the newness of strangers that for a long moment he made no response, then awkwardly, unsure of himself, he jerked his hand up as she had done.
‘You’re up early, Arka.’ The voice came from behind him and Evar spun around to see the three others working their way along a narrow path between the melons and the beans. The speaker was a man who looked almost as old as the woman, two younger women, girls not even Evar’s age, came behind him with leather-strap baskets. None of them so much as looked at him.
