Page 144 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Malar struggled to his feet, cursing and clutching his stomach. Evar moved to help him, but Livira’s raised hand stopped him. The circle could reknit Malar’s flesh—his pride would recover more slowly.

“We need to go back,” she told Evar. “Please take us to your pool.” She hoped she was getting the tenses right. Also, she had a suspicion she might have used the word for “latrine” instead of “pool.” Both were very similar to a human ear.

“Let’s make it fast,” Malar said, though he looked in no condition to go anywhere at much above medium.

“Actually, the pool tends to take you to the when you want or need to be at. So, there’s no need to hurry,” Livira said, wanting to spare him.

Malar gave her a narrow-eyed sideways look. “Was that supposed to make any sense at all?”

“Temporally, there’s some degree of agency. Even involuntary travel leads to synchronicity.” Livira felt that she might have some control over the matter; her desire might guide her in the same sort of way that Evar’s anger at Clovis had temporarily imprinted itself on the very fabric of the place. She guessed that the Exchange, intended to be populated only by the impassive assistants, had to work hard to accommodate the raw emotions of beings like humans and sabbers. Sabbers... She would have to find another word for them. Perhaps “canith,” the sabbertine word for “people.” Malar’s grunt and his puzzled look recaptured her attention. She tried again: “Time’s funny in the Exchange. We’ll get back when we need to or want to. That’s how it works.”

“You should have said that first.” Malar sank back down and settled on his side with a groan, holding his stomach. “I’m just going to lie here for a bit longer then...” He closed his eyes.

The sword-carrying assistant set off to patrol the perimeter of the centre circle, the book-free clearing being about thirty yards across.

Evar sat back and rested his elbows on raised knees, looking at Livira. “Well,” he said. “We’re both sabbers, then.”

“Yes.” Livira felt uncomfortable under the scrutiny of his large, amber eyes, not human but full of humanity. She saw intelligence there, compassion, things she already associated with Evar, and other far more complicated feelings too. His gaze made her self-conscious, but she didn’t want him to look away.

“I didn’t mean to trick you,” he rumbled.

“I didn’t mean it either.” Livira wondered how she must look to him. Small, frail, perhaps cold or bald, lacking as she did the small fine hairs that covered his limbs. “Will you tell her?”

“Who?” A frown.

“The woman in your book. When you find her.” Livira imagined the two of them laughing over Evar’s mistake. The time he kissed a human.

Evar gave her a curious look, as if waiting for her to confess something. After a moment’s silence he shrugged and reached into his leathers. “I’m thinking I should just read it.” He tugged the slim volume out. “I mean, she tells me not to. On the very first page. It’s basically all she says. But...” He ran a finger over the ends of the pages. Livira noticed for the first time since one had arrived at her settlement many years ago, that sabbers—canith—only had three fingers on each hand, a blunt black claw at the end of each. Clovis had nearly killed her with just one of her claws. “...but I think maybe I’m past being told what to do.”

“Wait.” The cover design caught Livira’s attention, faint lines endlessly coiling back on themselves within the bounds of a circle, a figure emerging as a trick of the light where the threads crossed each other most densely. It reminded her of Ella’s wind-weed sculpture. The one she’d given Livira on the day the sabbers came, half-finished, a boy hinted at in its depths. “Wait...”

Evar waited and Livira realised that she didn’t have a reason. She shrugged her satchel into her lap and unbuckled it. “I’ve been...” She pulled out the stolen cover into which she’d collected all her stolen pages. “...writing.”

Evar’s face went still, his eyes wide and brilliant. Slowly he held out his book. It had always looked small in his grip. But he was very big.

The backs of Livira’s arms tingled as she held her book out. Apart from the faint design on the cover of his... they were the same book. The same book in two very different hands. Very different but both trembling.

When the books touched there was no implosion, no shudder that passed out through the world rearranging every atom. It was more as if a god had turned the last page of a story they’d been reading since time started. Livira found her breath escaping and being replaced in short, aching pants, tears were falling from eyes that had cried too much already, and she couldn’t say why.

There was only one book, held in both their hands, fingers interlaced.

“What does it mean?” Livira managed in a faint voice. She knew what it meant but hearing him say it might make her understand it.

Evar shook his head wonderingly, surrendering the book to her keeping. “I remember it... I remember. It’s coming back...”

Livira held the book to her chest. She’d written her heart into it. She’d let her pen wander the pages through adventure after adventure, imagination unchained. And through it all Evar had walked beside her, run beside her, flown to the moons, dived to the darkest depths the seas contained. She had written it. He had lived it. With her.

Malar coughed and sat up. “Fucked if a man can sleep with all that growling and grunting. Let’s go.”

And Livira and Evar—without requiring translation but needing the space to absorb this revelation—agreed.

—

The four of them—the sword-bearing assistant, the sabber... canith, the librarian, and the soldier—made a much slower return. Livira studied the book columns, considering how annoying it must be if the book you wanted was at the bottom. She tried to place the chamber in the library map she carried in her mind. Evar said they had a Mechanism, and she knew of only one chamber with a reading room that boasted a Mechanism. This one bore no resemblance to that one—the other had had granite shelves and the closest that this chamber came to granite was a red grittiness to its dust—but a lot of things can change in a few centuries, even if they rarely did in the library.

“And you’ve been trapped here all your life?” Livira rumbled and snarled in the language of the canith.

“For generations.”

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