Page 139 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Starval blinked. “You’re joking.”

Evar reached for the book. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. What if it’s worse this time?”

“So, I’d let you go instead?” Starval laughed and held the book away from Evar. “Get to the corridor. The timing on this is going to be hard enough as it is.”

Evar glanced back towards the chamber. Kerrol was delaying the Assistant but even he couldn’t distract her for long. Soon she’d open the pool and they needed the Escapes to make their appearance before she closed it. And all of it had to happen before Clovis returned from whatever wild goose chase Kerrol had set her on. Even so, the thought that had been niggling at him began to surface, to take shape like a body in the mist, a figure in a ball of wind-weed. “You know, the only time I’ve seen more Escapes than the day you took that book in with you I was in the Exchange.”

“And?” Starval was given to patience, but he sounded impatient now.

“You’re the one who taught me to look for connections. The key to any mystery is in the threads, however faint, that join its pieces. You said that.”

Starval took a breath. “I did.”

“Just before the Escapes came—before they started to pour from everywhere—the last name on my lips was Mayland’s. I had just said that I was going to use the pools to see what happened to him that last day—to watch where he went. And then they attacked.”

“Mayland?” Starval made a face. “I don’t think...”

The grey space of the Mechanism had grown darker, as if a distant sun had set behind the rain clouds that had hidden it, and only as it vanished could its absence be felt.

“We should run,” Evar said.

The Mechanism shuddered and the darkness within began to congeal into nightmare. Starval was already running.

By the time Evar reached the main chamber, Starval’s athletics around the maze of reading desks had opened a considerable lead. He stood waiting by the nearest book stacks, a wild grin on his face.

“How many?” Evar managed to gasp as he passed his brother. He didn’t dare a backwards glance at the Escapes squeezed from the Mechanism by the mere thought of finding Mayland.

“More than we needed!” Starval kept pace, despite lacking a foot in height on Evar.

The Escapes made a chilling rushing noise behind the pair as they wove through the stacks. A sound like a cold wind through bare branches. Evar stretched his legs, hauling in more air for the effort.

The brothers vaulted the book wall together. The Soldier, thigh-deep in the crop, was already advancing in their direction. The Assistant, by the pool, bucket in hand, turned from Kerrol’s remonstrations to see the cause of this new excitement.

“Escapes!” Evar managed.

“Lots!” Starval accelerated past him, trampling bean rows.

The Assistant strode forward, ready to put her body between the boys and the black tide that swept over the wall behind them. A deep pang of guilt tore at Evar but Kerrol simply stepped into the pool and dropped from sight without expression. Starval swerved past the Assistant with a whoop and dived headfirst into the water.

Evar halted at the pool’s edge, teetering. The first of a dozen and more Escapes had almost reached the Assistant. The Soldier was moving to join her. And Clovis—who should have been deep among the stacks—was barrelling towards Evar with murder in her eyes.

Evar couldn’t let her reach the Exchange. “Soldier! Help! Stop her!”

He didn’t expect his desperate cry to be noticed, let alone acted on, but perhaps that note of desperation was what turned the Soldier from his course. The white warrior managed to close the distance against all odds and, just yards from her target, Clovis was sent sprawling among the new cabbages.

With an apologetic look, Evar tipped backwards into the strange waters behind him.

—

The quiet and stillness of the wood made such a contrast with the scene Evar had just left that he pressed his hands to his ears, wondering if he had water in them, or had somehow gone deaf.

“Brother.”

Evar turned. Kerrol had been standing behind him. Starval was further off among the trees, gazing up in wonder at the branches and at the sky above them. He glanced back at the pool. The only one since he now saw all the others as portals. “Clovis found out somehow!”

“She’s coming?” Kerrol didn’t seem surprised.

“The Soldier stopped her.” The pool rippled, perhaps with an echo of the violence occurring on the other side of it.

---