Page 140 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“And you think this sabber girl of yours will be with us soon?” Despite his apparent coolness, Kerrol’s gaze did flicker to the surroundings every so often. Even he must have felt some echo of the awe the place had instilled in Evar on his first visit.

“I think that’s what this place does. It brings people together. It brings times and purposes together. There’s not really a ‘soon’ here, only ‘now’ or ‘never.’ ”

As if to prove him right, the portal to Livira’s time shimmered and Livira stumbled out as if pushed, falling to the ground. She looked up, wild-eyed, her white robe smeared with ash.

Evar opened his mouth to call to her but immediately others began to press through. More sabbers, and two white-skinned beings that were neither sabber nor people but seemed somehow familiar even so. More sabbers came, stumbling open-mouthed from the portal, males, females, young, old, some carrying weapons, some bloodied. All of them so stunned by their transition that their eyes slid over the scene without registering the three brothers some sixty yards back among the trees. Only Livira saw them. Her gaze locked with Evar’s.

And Evar now saw only Livira.

Truly saw her. Not the strangeness of a sabber’s body, but the totality of who she was to him, the way she was: sharp, kind, undisciplined, brilliant, mysterious, funny, passionate, questioning—always questions—changing from one encounter to the next, and he’d let her slip through his fingers too often, lost too many years...

“Group dynamics! Fascinating!” Kerrol was already halfway to the sabbers.

Livira had started to walk towards them, an older male at her side, shorter even than the friend Arpix.

Evar shook off whatever spell Livira had put him under. “Kerrol! Stay back!”

Kerrol waved his words away and closed the remaining distance even as Livira faltered. “They’re not here to fight. Look at them.”

In the next moment Kerrol was on his back. The male sabber had moved with commendable speed as Kerrol had glanced towards his brothers, taking him down with a well-placed kick to the back of the knee then driving him to the turf with a sword blade at his neck.

Evar hastened forward, hands raised, palms out. “He’s my brother—don’t hurt him.”

Livira already had hold of the male’s sword arm, shouting at him not to deliver the killing blow. Others among the growing crowd of sabbers were drawing blades. Two of them had iron-barrelled projectile weapons and were bringing them to bear on Evar. He glanced back but Starval was gone—he would be angling in through the trees even now, knives ready. Disaster lay heartbeats away. But violence might still be avoided. If only Evar and Livira could calm their respective—

“YOU!” Clovis burst from the pool in a shower of light, teeth scarlet with what must be her own blood, the largest of her blades glimmering in her clenched fist. She passed Evar, sending him sprawling, unable to stop her. A projectile weapon boomed. The male warrior abandoned Kerrol, flung himself at Clovis to stop her advance, and went down. In the next broken fragment of a second Clovis had her hand around Livira’s neck, lifting her one-armed from the ground.

“Stop.”

The voice came from everywhere, deep, resonant, larger than the wood.

“Put the girl down.”

The male of the white-skinned pair approached Clovis, who, much to Evar’s surprise, lowered Livira to the ground and released her neck. The female white had moved away from the sabber group but hung back from Clovis. Both of the creatures had a glow to them that hadn’t been there when they arrived. Their skin was no longer merely white but gleamed with whiteness. And suddenly Evar understood why they had seemed so familiar.

... very dear friend of mine. Elias, when not consumed with his scientific research, captained his own great vessel out on the Black Sea. He was often wont to speculate on any and all particulars relating to the nature of time. His insights wandered from commentary on the first accurate chronometers that permitted navigation of the oceans, to the vagaries of both arrivals and of meetings, which are, he always claimed, governed by an arithmetic more fundamental than that of particles, planets, or pulsars.

Great Sailing Ships of History: An Architectural Comparison, by A. E. Canulus

CHAPTER 58

Livira

Livira’s feet hit the ground and the rest of her followed, her legs too weak to bear her weight. She tried to breathe through what felt like the narrow straw her throat had become after throttling in Clovis’s iron grip. Malar lay nearby, unmoving, and she started to crawl to him as Yute addressed the sabber woman in a voice that had seemed to pulse from the very ground but now drew itself back into his narrow chest.

“Why should I listen to you?” Clovis swaggered. “I’ve just put one of your kind on his ass. And you’re not half of what he is. What are you anyway?” She came level with Yute, peering down at him. “You’re not the same at all. You’re...” She flicked out a hand quicker than thinking. A pearlescent line appeared across Yute’s cheekbone. Blood. “You’re... alive.”

Evar arrived, lifting Livira to her feet just as she reached Malar, and pulling her back out of range of Clovis’s too-fast hands. People were still pressing through the portal behind Yute. No sign of Arpix or Salamonda or Jella or Meelan, though the great majority were still to come.

“Did your brother tell you about the city he saw?” Yute asked, unmoved by his wound. “The city that existed nine hundred years before your time in the library?”

Clovis sneered. “Yes, he told me. A city of my people. Thousands upon thousands. Invaded by these sabbers”—she glanced at Livira with murder in her eyes—“sabbers who poisoned them in their homes. Men, women, and children choked to death beneath their own roofs.”

Evar reached down to help his brother—the one who Malar had felled—hauling him back to his feet. The dark-maned sabber got up with a wince, frowning down at Livira from his great height, even taller than Evar, well over eight feet.

Yute continued to address Clovis. “Did your brother tell you those homes were filled with both races?” There was passion in his voice. It struck Livira hard. She had never heard Yute anything but calm or mildly amused.

“He told me,” Clovis spat, “that the sabbers were too stupid to avoid the hell that they’d unleashed.”

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