Page 128 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

True to Livira’s expectations, there was something about a stolen baby that made people act without pause for thought. As one, the people outside Yute’s house gave chase, followed by those inside. While she panted up the incline, even strangers emerging from their homes joined the mob at her heels. She overtook Yute and kept going, breath labouring in her lungs, all her concentration focused on not tripping or losing hold of the howling bundle in her arms.

She stopped a few dozen yards short of the library entrance, surprised not to have been caught. Still gasping for breath, she set the raging baby down carefully and stepped away from it, though ready to protect it from the threat of trampling.

“It’s there! It’s there!” Livira pointed to the baby as the first young man came pounding up to them. Thankfully he seemed to know her and rather than grabbing hold of her he went to stand guard over the infant.

The rest of the pursuit began to arrive, Malar towards the front, looking more angry than exhausted.

“I’m too fucking old for running up mountains.” He spat and came to stand beside her in case anyone wanted to make an issue out of the abduction. “Fuck me.” The view held his attention.

By the time the distraught mother had snatched up her child and the angry father had advanced on Livira, so many people were staring down at the city that both of them turned that way too. They stood with the others, open-mouthed, their complaints forgotten. From this elevation an understanding could be gained that was absent in the view from Yute’s house.

An arc of burning buildings marked the battlefront within the city. More accurately, it marked the sabbers’ advance, resembling the spread of a water stain in cloth, or the way a glowing leading edge eats its way into a page where an ember has landed, advancing in all directions, leaving the paper black and brittle behind it, and in that blackness hot orange lines flare, advance, and die as the last fuel is consumed leaving only grey ash to fall away. Already a fifth of the city had fallen.

Livira turned away. In her mind’s eye, Yute’s house was already aflame, fire licking its way up the creaking staircase, Salamonda’s kitchen an inferno.

“Malar...” She stepped back and grabbed his shoulder.

“What?”

“They’re here already.” She pointed to where Jash Shuh lay in the shadows among the chunks of the wolf’s head entrance. There was no sign of his owl helm, and his grey hair was dark with blood.

“Well.” Yute came up between them, breathless from the climb. “That was to be expected, unfortunately. The library is, after all, the only reason they’re here.”

“Arpix! Meelan! Jella...” Livira started to run for the entrance.

Malar caught her arm a few strides into the main corridor. “And if they’re in trouble you’re going to save them, are you? You’re going to take down a sabber raiding party?”

“I—” That was exactly what Livira had been going to do, but saying it out loud would make it seem foolish. “I’m going to warn them!”

“Let’s do that together then,” Malar said. “Carefully.”

“Very carefully.” Yute came up beside them.

“Where’s Salamonda?” Livira peered past him. “And the others.” She realised that in running to the defence of her library friends she had left Neera, Katrin, and the rest out on the mountainside where more sabbers might be closing on them as they spoke.

“I’ve told her to keep the others together and to wait for me,” Yute said. “They’re to come in if the attack reaches the slopes beneath them.”

“When,” Malar corrected.

“When the attack reaches the slopes,” Yute agreed.

—

Livira led the way towards the refectory, aiming for the trainee chambers beyond, where Meelan had the foremost room now as the senior trainee. The corridors had been empty, so far. Outside Logaris’s abandoned classroom three books lay scattered, one fanning its pages, another separated from its cover. To Heeth Logaris it would be more shocking than spilled blood. Further on, when Livira turned right at the kitchens, Yute carried on.

“Where are you going?”

“To Yamala,” Yute said.

“She has the Library Guard!” Livira wasn’t worried about the head librarian, she was worried what might happen to Meelan, Arpix, and Jella. She paused, frowning. “Who is she to you, this Yamala?”

Yute blinked as if it was obvious. “She’s my wife.”

The fact that opposites attract is a scientific truth concerning charge and magnetism. One should not expect to extend the same principle to marital relationships with success. And yet...

Strange Bedfellows, by Alexander Cosy

CHAPTER 54

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