Page 129 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Livira

You’re married to the head librarian?” Livira stared at Yute. His mysterious influence made more sense now. He had swayed Yamala to appoint her as a librarian in the face of King Oanold’s wrath.

“I am. I should go to her.”

Livira still didn’t want him wandering the complex alone. Nobody stood much chance against a sabber, but Yute had always given her the impression that a stubborn six-year-old could wrestle him to submission. “She’ll have the Guard around her. And there’s Volente!” The books described him as “red in tooth and claw.”

“Volente?” Yute shook his head. “He’s a big softy.” He turned away. “I’ll meet you at the library door. Stay safe.”

Livira told herself he would be all right. This was his plan, after all. And he knew things. Things she didn’t. Even so, she watched him go with a heavy heart, fearing they might not meet again.

—

Minutes later Livira crashed through Meelan’s door and stared around his trainee cell. “He’s gone!”

“Let’s find the others.” Malar had his sword in hand now, eyes on the corridor. In the distance a faint crashing could be heard, as if the kitchen staff were banging their pans together with unusual vigour.

Livira led the way into the service sector. The crashes grew louder with each yard. A body lay at the junction close to the binding halls. The blue robe of a trainee or support staff, black with blood where the back had been shredded. A trainee to judge by their size. Livira glimpsed the victim’s face as Malar hustled her past. It was the small woman who had nearly run her book trolley into Yute on the day Livira first arrived. Despite her indelible memory, and the fact she should know it, Livira simply couldn’t summon the woman’s name to mind. That made it somehow so much worse. Livira hurried on, covering her mouth with one hand.

The crashing grew deafening as Livira approached the final corner. Malar pulled her back and peered round in her place. He held up his left hand, one finger raised.

“One? One sabber?” Livira cried, her question lost in the din.

Without hesitation, Malar slipped into the corridor beyond. Livira replaced him at the corner in time to see that he’d covered most of the distance between him and the second of the binding halls. The door of the first had been staved in and a huge black-maned sabber was hewing at the second door with a sword two yards long that resembled a cleaver. Splinters and shards of wood littered the floor. At least three cracks offered a view into the room beyond, and a whole plank looked ready to come loose with the next blow or two.

Malar should have been able to take it by surprise but somehow the thing was turning before he got there, its oversized weapon hissing in a horizontal arc that would cut the soldier into two roughly equal pieces.

Livira had never understood or been able to follow Malar’s quickness. His sword intervened, taking the force of the blow on the flat of the blade, braced at the hilt and with his other hand just below the point. The impact slammed Malar to the side, into the wall, pinning him there behind his weapon. Immediately, Malar slid under the sabber’s cleaver, abandoning his sword in the effort. Anyone with the slightest sense would have tried to run at that point, but Malar spun across the floor, drawing a knife and in an exchange too quick to see... ended pinned to the floor. The shoulder of Malar’s knife-holding arm was trapped under the sabber’s foot, on the sabber’s leg a shallow cut.

“No!” Livira broke from the corner.

The sabber raised its cleaver. Livira had no time, she was too far away, too slow.

Something jabbed out through one of the cracks in the door, into the sabber’s back. It howled, springing away. Malar took the opportunity for a scrambling retreat, grabbing his sword. He gained his feet unsteadily and backed towards Livira.

The sabber, meanwhile, readied itself to finish Malar off, but staggered as it took its first step towards him. Livira and the beast looked down together. Blood was flooding down from a second cut higher than the first, looking no deeper but jetting crimson with every beat of the sabber’s heart. In his escape Malar had sliced the creature again, finding the artery his first cut had been seeking.

“Got you that time,” Malar growled and drew his second, shorter sword.

The sabber snarled and came on, swinging. Malar leapt forward, throwing himself into the path of his enemy’s blade. Livira wasn’t sure how the early interception helped but using both swords Malar managed to deflect the sabber’s blow into the wall and throw himself back. Livira retreated to give him space.

The sabber came on again, teeth bared, a growl reverberating through it that put Malar’s to shame. It looked unsteady, almost slipping in its own blood once, a thick crimson trail behind it. It tried an overhead swing but, perhaps unused to fighting in confined human-sized spaces or losing coordination from blood loss, it struck the ceiling in a shower of rock fragments and sparks.

Malar spun in, slashing at the sabber’s face and driving the shorter of his swords up into its chest. The creature collapsed onto him, jaws snapping at his neck. He heaved it to the side. And it lay there, trying to draw breath, the light fading from its eyes.

“Jella!” Livira screamed.

The shattered door jolted, jolted again, and opened with a terrible squeal, large pieces falling away. Jella peered out into the corridor, red-faced and wide-eyed, in her fists a broom handle to which three six-inch needles had been bound, all of them scarlet from when she’d jabbed them into the sabber’s back.

“Livira!” Jella threw her broom handle away as if suddenly disgusted by it and rushed to join her friend, half a dozen fellow bookbinders edging out behind her. “They killed Mastri—”

“Mastri, that’s her name!” Livira clamped her mouth shut guiltily. In the face of everything that was happening her emotions didn’t know what to do, or her mouth what to say. Had she really run up the mountain with a stolen baby?

“There’s more dead in the refectory. What’s happening?” Jella glanced nervously at the sabber as if noticing it for the first time, though she had just stepped over its legs to reach Livira.

“The sabbers are taking the city. A band of them are here too. I don’t know how many. We’re meeting the head librarian at the library door.”

“The head librarian?” Somehow of all the things Livira had just said this one seemed to impress Jella most. Perhaps, whilst enormous, it still fitted into the parameters of her existence. “I’ve never even seen her!”

---