The Book That Wouldn't Burn, page 57
Livira walked away, skirts swaying, looking up into the branches, and everywhere she looked birds alighted, and where she walked butterflies lifted. Their colours put to shame every other colour Evar had ever seen, so vibrant he could almost taste them, so vivid that they might at any moment ignite. Livira glanced back at him through a swirl of indigo wings. ‘Well, that’s the mystery of the Exchange, isn’t it? That’s probably why we’re not allowed to go there.’ She turned and carried on among the trees.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To break some more rules.’ Livira tossed her head. ‘Coming?’
Evar followed. He couldn’t not follow. In fact, even though she had been a child when they first met, and when grown remained both frail and unsuited to the hostile environments they’d found themselves in, and even though she was without the least command of weapon skills, despite all this Evar felt that Livira had been two steps ahead of him the whole time. As he caught up with her, she reached for his hand.
‘I wrote a lot of stories in my book.’ Her fingers laced his. ‘And if you want the honest truth, you weren’t in very many of them at all. They were about me. Or rather, about parts of me, woven into other ideas, stuck together with bits of dreams. The library’s a good place for that sort of stuff.’
‘I remember all kinds of adventures …’ Evar was sure he’d been in every story from the front cover to the back. ‘We sailed oceans, visited strange cities …’
‘A good book invites the reader in,’ Livira said. ‘The writer’s only half the equation. So of course you were with me. I just don’t want you thinking I sat around mooning about you, filling page after page with accurate devotions. I’m writing this book for me.’
‘Oh, no. I never—’
‘Good.’ She smiled up at him. ‘You’re my only reader so far, and I’m glad the stories were there to keep you company when you were lost.’
The forest thinned, giving way to fields before the shores of a lake so vast that the far side was little more than a suggestion. A lake on which the sun sparkled and sailing boats plied their trade. Not far off, a jetty reached out into the blue, stilted on weathered timbers, smaller boats moored along its length.
‘How’s your rowing?’ Livira grinned at him.
‘Uh … I’ve seen an illustration—’
‘Oarful then.’
‘Was that a joke?’
‘Hush. I’ll row.’
‘Didn’t you come from a place called the Dust? When did you learn to row boats?’
‘I expect I’ll manage.’ They were coming nearer to the jetty now and Evar could see that the half a dozen figures sitting along its edges with fishing rods in hand comprised both humans and canith.
Livira led the way along the far end of the rickety structure, the sun-bleached planks creaking beneath her bare feet. A small rowing boat was tied to the last support and bobbed minutely on waves that were more like ripples. Livira released his hand and clambered down into the boat, swaying dangerously for a moment before finding her seat. She looked expectantly up at Evar.
He hesitated. His hand felt too empty – wrong without hers within it. He glanced at the perfect sky, the glimmering beauty of the lake, the girl beneath him, suddenly achingly precious to him, and yet he forced his unwanted doubt into words. ‘I think there’s something else we should be doing …’
Livira frowned. ‘I don’t think I would have written that. I think I’d have you jump gallantly into the boat and row us out to the island with strong, sure strokes.’
‘What island?’ But Evar saw it now, a green jewel out in the midst of the lake, white limestone cliffs on one side, a ruined tower close to the edge, mobbed by trees, either trying to save it or push it to its doom. On the other side the island shelved down to a pristine beach. Evar got into the boat and, finding it larger than he imagined, he sat beside Livira on the bench with his back to the prow.
‘Can you swim?’ Livira asked as she untied the rope.
‘I can “not sink” – I guess you could call it swimming.’ Evar shivered. ‘The Assistant made sure of it.’ It might have been her first lesson.
‘Let’s not row.’ Already the boat had drifted from the jetty. Livira stretched out in the sunshine. It was warm, unlike the library which was only ever … sufficient.
‘Is this still the Exchange?’
‘Or the Mechanism,’ Livira said. ‘Or my mind. Or yours. Does it matter?’
‘I don’t even know what language we’re speaking.’ Evar tried to listen to his voice.
‘Maybe it’s mind to mind,’ Livira said, closing her eyes, head back. ‘And the words are just decoration. Maybe we can’t even lie!’ She opened her eyes briefly to give him a wicked look.
‘I think that would be dangerous,’ Evar said truthfully. He’d been thinking of their kiss for most of the walk from the forest. For most of the time since it had happened, in fact. Technically, for centuries. It didn’t seem real any more. The desire to repeat it felt ridiculously strong. As strong, perhaps, as the addictions that drugs could breed. The idea that Livira might see his need – how shallow he was – how dependent on her beauty, was not one he felt comfortable with. ‘Unwise at the very least.’
‘Why?’ Livira wrinkled her nose and answered her own question without giving him time to respond. ‘It would be inconvenient when it came to misbehaving. That’s certainly true. Lies are a necessary part of the diplomat’s toolkit – that’s what Meelan told me – his sister said it. You can’t negotiate if you’re too honest, she says.’
‘Starval says oversharing is the best cover for secrets. If people believe you could no more hold a secret than a hot stone, then they won’t pry.’ Evar had from his siblings the views of an assassin, a tactician, and a psychologist on lies: each viewed them as weapons or tools. Evar didn’t disagree, but his current fear was simply that a language without lies would leave him open to being hurt. ‘I wasn’t thinking about misbehaving when I said not being able to lie would be dangerous. I had a different reason.’ Evar felt mildly horrified that he’d admitted even that much.
‘You don’t think I have the same one?’ She answered as if he’d spoken his heart rather than just let the edge of its shadow fall upon her.
The shore had dwindled in the distance, the jetty a narrow line, though it seemed their drifting had been as languid as a leaf on a millpond. ‘We’re getting …’ He was going to say they were close to the island, but it seemed just as far away as when they started.
A cloud moved in front of the sun and the day dimmed. Livira looked up at him. ‘I worry that the Exchange tricked you into liking me.’ She raised a tanned arm, looked at it, let it fall. ‘I think that when you saw me truly your stomach turned. That I’m ugly to your eyes. I tell myself that if you were someone I should be interested in then you wouldn’t care what I looked like. You’d care who I am.’
Evar couldn’t help the laugh that barked from him. ‘You really are reading my mind!’ The wounded look in her dark eyes as she sat up suddenly, rocking the boat, made him scramble to explain. ‘No! I didn’t mean that I think those things! I meant those are my thoughts, my fears, mine.’ The words were out. He’d handed her a knife to gut him with. She hadn’t said any of it wasn’t true. Just that she thought the same of him.
Across the bow a storm cloud could be seen moving in their direction, small, black, trailing veils of rain across the surface of the lake. The island seemed no closer, the shore just as distant. Evar glanced back to find Livira watching him.
‘I don’t know how long we have.’ She held the side of the boat as a small wave rocked them, then stood up.
Evar hesitated, surfacing once more from the belief that the place had bred into him, like a dreamer understanding that they were dreaming. He stood up too, a cool breeze riffling through his mane. ‘Are we in your book, or am I in my memory of it? Have you even written this part yet? Are you even you, or just the story you’re telling about yourself?’
‘We’re all the story we tell about ourselves, silly.’ Another wave rocked them. ‘That’s all anyone ever is – the story they tell, and the stories told about them. Fiction captures more than facts do. That’s why the library keeps it. It’s the most important part of our memories.’
The boat jolted and water slopped over the oarlocks. Evar stumbled against her, unused to the instability of the planks beneath his feet. Livira caught hold of him, stronger than she looked. The closeness of her against him felt like something he’d needed all his life and never known he was without. A breath drawn after a life of suffocation.
The breeze grew colder but carried the taint of smoke.
‘The library’s burning.’ Livira looked up at him and he could almost see the flames reflected in her eyes. She lowered her head and rested her face against his chest.
‘I’d forgotten.’ The weight of loss was all around them. It had been there in the forest when he woke, but now he understood it. The library was burning. ‘I …’
‘I’ve lost too much,’ Livira finished for him. ‘And I don’t want …’
‘To lose you too,’ Evar said.
Livira raised her head again and this time she didn’t need to reach up to pull his mouth to hers.
I’ve fallen out of this book before.
The main comfort in maintaining a journal is not that those who come after you may read through the progress of your life. Nor is it that, however faded, flexible, and fallible your memory may become as the tide of years washes over it, you will have this record to look back upon. It lies primarily in the illusion that were you only to press on at the end of this Tuesday and write your way into Wednesday, you would become the master of your life, subject to no bounds save those of imagination.
The Journals of Samantha Peeps, by Samantha Peeps
CHAPTER 65
Livira
Livira stumbled, caught for a moment between the conviction that she was falling from a boat and the certainty that she’d been held in the warmth of Evar’s kiss for hours. Neither turned out to be true. Evar, who’d crashed into her, fell away, losing his grip on the book he’d been trying to pull from her hands. Livira felt the leather covers pulled from between her fingers, the book sliding from her grasp. It fell a couple of feet into the dust drift she’d been standing in. The loose pages almost came free, several of them half out of the covers. Another boom sounded and a muffled cracking rang out behind her – a projectile penetrating the dust and hitting the library floor. If she’d still been holding the book – still been solid and visible – there might be a hole through her now. A wave of snarling canith came forward in a rush and dust engulfed everything.
For a hellish moment Livira was back in the settlement on the day her life changed. Lost in a dust cloud. Sabbers on every side. Holding her aunt’s hand as if it were her chance to escape the madness – only to have it torn from her grasp.
This time her hand was empty from the start, and in the blindness someone’s fingers found hers. Before she could cry out, Livira was hauled skywards. A heartbeat later she emerged into the light again, flying with Evar just as they had centuries before above a city where canith and human lived in peace.
For a moment two Evars held her: one the stranger who so swiftly became a friend and then her love; the other a stranger still, a savage beast, kin to those beneath them, the same sabbers who had smashed her childhood apart and slaughtered her family.
‘Livira!’ Evar seemed frantic, patting her all over, turning her in the air. Below them the shouting and chaos continued as the canith fought to tell friend from foe amid the dust. ‘Are you hit? Are you hit?’
‘I don’t think so …’ Livira pushed him gently back as his concern bled the anger from her. She looked down at herself. ‘It would hurt, wouldn’t it?’
‘Sometimes not at first.’ Evar calmed. ‘That’s what Clovis says, anyway.’
Livira pressed her hands to her face. They’d been kissing. Again. She couldn’t tell if Evar had shared it with her, or whether it had all flowed from her imagination and hers alone. She felt she should be able to tell by looking at him, but she couldn’t.
‘It was the book,’ Livira said wonderingly. ‘It’s real here. It made me real too. A little bit when I had it next to me. A lot when I touched it. I sank into the dust when I held it. Look.’ The lower part of her robes was dusty. Nothing had touched them before, not solid objects, not dust, not smoke. ‘Yute said it was special. It’s got the future wrapped into it.’
‘It has?’ Evar looked confused. Did he look happy too? She couldn’t tell. He’d seemed happy. In the boat. In her arms. Or was that just what she was going to write?
‘You took it into the Mechanism.’ Livira met his eyes. ‘Maybe you’ve read stories I haven’t even written yet. Or stories we could write together …’ There! She saw it! Something in his eyes, the twitch of a smile. ‘You were there! I know you were. In the boat. Don’t lie!’
He gave a wolfish grin.
Livira turned away primly. ‘In any case, I know what you read on the first page isn’t there yet.’
Evar flew back into her line of view. He looked confused again. ‘But why would you write for me not to turn the page?’
Livira thought hard, then frowned, then grinned. ‘Well … you didn’t, did you? So, I had better write it to stop you … or none of this would make sense. And gods know what would happen then. It might be like tugging on a loose thread and having a whole tapestry unravel, only the tapestry would be time. That sounds like a bad idea.’
‘It might be why the assistants don’t let us go to the Exchange.’ Worry replaced Evar’s confusion.
Below them the shouting had died down, and Malar’s voice emerged above the canith’s, calling for Livira.
‘We’re up here!’ she shouted back. ‘Let’s go to him.’ She swooped down towards the thinning dust cloud.
Malar tried to hide his relief behind a scowl as Livira landed beside him. ‘We’re birds now too? Can I fly as well, or is it a secret?’
Livira nodded. ‘You can fly. Just jump up and don’t fall back. It’s all about believing it.’
Malar sheathed his swords. ‘Well, I’ve never had much luck with faith. Or falling, come to that. Broke both ankles stealing apples from the Masefield estate when I was a sprat.’
Half the canith were in search mode now, the warriors moving out in a spiral pattern, slow enough not to obscure their own vision, thrusting at the deeper dust dunes with swords and spears in search of the young woman they’d seen. None of them looked Livira’s way, not even the priest who stood exactly where she’d been the whole time, gazing around with eyes like black stones. She’d slung her staff across her back, and in both hands, clasped tight to her chest, she held Livira’s book.
Something else bothered Livira, though. Malar tried to lead her away, but she shook her head, raising a hand to silence his objections. ‘When they all saw me …’
‘When you nearly fucking died, yes – what about it?’ Malar growled.
Evar landed beside them.
‘When they all saw me,’ Livira said, ‘you both shouted at me.’
‘We did.’ Evar nodded.
‘But you didn’t use my name.’ Livira closed her eyes, summoning the memory back.
‘If you say so,’ Evar said.
‘Someone did though …’ Livira walked towards the priest and the dozen or more canith who remained with her. Her old anger flared again, a bitter heat trying to own her mind. She pushed it down and set her jaw. She circled the enemy, trying to see within the group. ‘There!’ In amongst them, dwarfed by their height, was a figure wrapped in a grey blanket, hooded by it. At the bottom of the blanket, almost lost in the foot-deep book dust, Livira caught a glimpse of soiled blue fabric, the folds of an expensive dress. Quickly she wove a path between the wary canith until she could see—
‘Carlotte!’ She held herself back from throwing her arms around her friend. They would just pass through her. ‘Malar! It’s Carlotte!’
‘Who?’
Livira tried to position herself so that she was staring directly into Carlotte’s eyes, which were red with smoke and tears. The girl didn’t so much as twitch. ‘She can’t see me.’
Evar came to stand just outside the canith group. ‘This is why I didn’t want you to come back here.’ There was no triumph in his voice, only sadness. ‘We can’t do anything for her. Even if we weren’t ghosts, we couldn’t get her away from this war band. And even if we could, the portal’s in the fire now.’
‘I … I could set Volente on them!’
‘I don’t think he’d see them as the enemy. But if he did they’d fight him. In any case, is she better off alone? They could probably run from the fire faster carrying her than she could by herself. And they’ve got her to open doors they can’t. They won’t abandon her.’
That rang true. The sabbers had taken Livira long ago, intending to use her. It now seemed likely that this priest was the one who had understood that humans raised as slaves, treated as part of the tribe, would open the library doors for them. It had been a farsighted plan, long in the execution. They had fought to keep her, they would fight to keep Carlotte, and for at least as long as they navigated the library they would keep her safe.
‘She has to be willing in order to open doors,’ Livira said. ‘Properly willing. Of your own volition. You can’t torture someone into it. Yute said so.’
‘I think the fire will make her properly willing.’ Malar joined them, eyeing the canith warily since they were little more than a spear’s reach away. ‘That’s not something the sabbers are doing to her. It’s happening to them all.’
Livira nodded. Not bothering to point out that if the chamber was actually on fire then the doors would open for anyone.
Malar looked away. ‘We need to go, girl. There’s no use dwelling over this stuff. It’ll eat you up. I’ve lost friends, fast and slow. Every time it was slow, we all wished it was fast, me and them.’
