Page 133 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

By way of answer the black one put her fists together then pulled them apart revealing a sword that had not been there before, a blade as lightless as the rest of her.

The guide stepped towards his opponent, reaching to seize her. The white one was faster, but the black one had the reach, bringing her blade down across the other’s face with an awful crack. The white assistant shrugged off the blow and closed his hands around the black one’s neck. The pair went down, locked together. Livira fell to her hands and knees to follow the action through the forest of legs before her.

For several moments the pair struggled, clattering loudly as they rolled across the floor, crashing into the shelves. And then... nothing. Both went still. Livira elbowed her way forward for a better view.

“It’s not possible,” Yamala said.

“What isn’t?” But Livira saw it now. The white assistant was turning grey, the pollution colouring his head where the black sword lay against him and tracking down his neck. The black assistant was changing too, paling. Neither of them moved from their position, still locked together on the floor.

In the space of a few more breaths both the assistants and the sword they clutched between them evened to the same uniform grey as Yute’s robe, almost indistinguishable from it as he went over to inspect the pair.

Livira shrugged off Malar’s hand and went to join Yute.

“Through that wound.” Yute pointed to the vertical groove cut down through the guide’s eyebrow and cheek. “That’s how the corruption got in. Where the sword damaged him.”

“The Escapes aren’t strong enough to control them both,” Livira said. She nudged her toe against the one that had made the sword. “That one was the same grey when I found her. It took another Escape to animate her.”

“We should go,” Yute said weakly. The head librarian seemed as stunned as her husband by the sight of the two stricken assistants on the ground.

Yamala allowed Yute to lead her away, and the other librarians, staff, and city folk pressed back against the shelves so the pair could pass. Livira fell in behind them. At the next junction the pair paused, neither appearing to have a destination in mind. Eventually Yute turned left, and everyone followed.

“Why did that rogue assistant come for us?” Livira asked. “Why now? Today? After all these years?” For an age after the assistant had first chased her from Chamber 7, Livira had watched the aisles, constantly in fear that a black hand would reach for her. Time had worn that fear down to a whisper.

“Only a pure assistant can open the doors.” Yamala spoke without looking back at her. “This one had been trapped in Chamber Seven since it turned.”

“The sabbers must have opened Chamber Seven—it was waiting to get out.” Livira shook her head, realizing how lucky she’d been on her last visit. “Where are they going?”

“Two Hundred and Thirty-Two,” Yute said.

“A side chamber.” Livira had never been to Chamber 232, but the numbering scheme meant it would be a side chamber, eleven along from the entrance. “Why?”

“It’s where the sabber entrance is,” Yute said. “Maybe they think there’s something in the outer caves that will help them clear a path back to the mountainside, or to show those outside where to start digging.”

“And where are we going?”

“Does she always ask so many questions?” Yamala sounded a lot like Yute too, her voice just a fraction higher, several fractions less patient.

“She does,” Yute said.

After several more paces Yamala answered. “Safety. We’re going to find a safe place and wait.”

Livira wanted to ask: Is that it? Go somewhere safe and wait? Instead, she made a suggestion. “We could go to the labyrinth. They’ll never find us in there and I know how to move through it faster than anyone.”

Arpix shook his head. “It’s a dead end.”

Livira wanted to argue but he had a good point. If they needed to leave the only way out was back to Chamber 1. Chambers 3 and 7 were forbidden.

“We’ll go to the labyrinth,” Yute said. “Doors aren’t going to be a problem.”

—

Livira brought them to one of the two hearts of the labyrinth that occupied almost a thousand acres of Chamber 2. All the librarians knew enough to navigate it, but most avoided the place, uninterested in the well-catalogued fiction dominating its shelves. None knew it as intimately as Livira did. She stood on the stained patch where the Raven, Edgarallen, had first revealed himself to her. A small part of her had been hoping he might be there today. He would have been a comfort and his talent for accessing forbidden chambers an asset.

The group couldn’t all fit within the clearing at once. There were forty-six of them in total, about half in the clearing, the remainder resting in the adjacent aisles. The city children had already started to complain of thirst and hunger before they even reached the labyrinth. Their parents had discovered with horror that what little food they’d snatched up during their hasty exodus from Crath had vanished. The assistant Yamala had summoned must have reduced it to dust the moment he arrived.

“How long are we staying here?”

“What are we going to do?”

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