Page 61 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Livira glanced around. The clutter that had seemed so mysterious, so alien that she’d had no words for it but “mess,” now resolved itself in the light of her learning. For two years she’d crammed her hungry mind with newness until even its vast appetite was sometimes sated. A globe stood with the continents outlined by seas and oceans. A telescope of brass and steel, resting on its stand; an astrolabe; pieces of clockwork in various states of assembly or disassembly, together with other instruments for which she still had no name.

“Livira.” Pink eyes regarded her as if she might be another of his mechanical puzzles. “So, have you met Wentworth’s equal yet?”

This was not one of the many questions she had anticipated on their eventual reunion. “No.” She had seen stealthy cats among the aisles stalking equally stealthy rats. But never a monster of Wentworth’s dimensions.

“And your studies are going well?”

Livira restrained herself to a nod.

“I hear you opened Chamber Seven with one of the old guides.”

Livira said nothing, fearing her own reaction if he laughed at her. None of the other librarians had believed her. She’d been called a liar to her face, and so she had ended her report at the door that they didn’t think she’d opened.

Yute nodded for her. “It’s the first time one of the forbidden chambers has been accessed.” He continued to watch her closely. “Did you know that the further out we go the larger the proportion of chambers that are forbidden becomes? At the extremes we follow corridors of chambers through seas of knowledge that are sealed from us. It’s a curious mixture of pride and ignorance that constrains us. And pride in our own ignorance. They don’t believe you because to do so would be to admit you were the first into such coveted territory.”

“But you believe me?”

Yute said nothing. He reached into his dark-grey robes and when he turned his open hand to her a feather lay across his palm, the blackness of it accentuating the whiteness of his skin. He held it towards her. She took it, finding it heavier than a feather should be.

“Careful,” Yute warned. “You can cut yourself on the edges.”

She offered it back to him. “Where did you find this?”

“Keep it.” Yute raised his palms to her. “I discovered it close to where you said you’d left your mechanical friend. I believe him to be one of the most ancient of the guides. Not part of the library but manufactured by someone with a far deeper understanding of it than ours. He is mentioned in certain books... I knew his name once, but I’ve forgotten it... along with many other things.”

Livira lifted the feather, marvelling at its blackness. Part of her wanted to tell Yute about the assistant and the Exchange—part of her still wanted it as a secret to keep to herself. She hesitated. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again... but Yute had more to say and filled the pause.

“In any event, you succeeded on your first venture, where generations of the wise failed. Even to concede that you might have stumbled upon the answer by accident hurts my colleagues’ pride.” He reached for a cup steaming gently on the table beside him, took a sip, and frowned as if the taste were not to his liking. “You should be careful on your venture into the city today, Livira. People can be good or bad one by one. Society is almost always awful. People with your origins are not well liked in Crath.” Yute set his cup aside and rose from his chair, dislodging Wentworth. “I have an assignment for you. I want you to see if you can deduce the nature of the library’s greatest curse.”

“Curse?” Livira frowned. The librarians spoke about the library as humanity’s greatest blessing. Everyone did, as far as she knew, though in the city it was the city’s blessing—the king’s blessing on the city—and humanity at large could keep their grubby fingers out of it.

“Curse.” Yute nodded. “One of several.”

Livira said nothing. The library had eaten Yute’s daughter. Livira knew the fear that being deep among the aisles could bring. It must have been a lonely death. Why wouldn’t he think it a curse after that?

“Let me plant a seed,” Yute said, “and when you come back, we’ll see what has grown. Consider, although you might not notice it after your brief acquaintance, the city you go down into is not the same as the one you climbed up from two years ago. They say that you can never go back—and that’s true. We change and so the places we return to will not seem the same. But here it’s the case that the city has grown as much as you have. Ask yourself in the face of the remarkable speed of progress: where did we come from, where are we going, and—most importantly—have we walked this path before?”

Livira didn’t know the answer, but she was certain, just by the shape of the question, that Yute had handed her something dangerous. “Why are you telling me this?”

Regret lined Yute’s smile. “You listen well for a child who asks so many questions. That’s one reason. Some might think it’s because you remind me of Yolanda, but that’s too shallow an assumption; my daughter was a very different person at your age. Another reason, though it shames me to admit it, is that some truths are hard to bear alone and dangerous to share. In you, Livira, I see a mind that is sharp enough to cut to the facts, and a truth that you have yourself exposed is harder to deny and easier to consider.

“In you I see a spark like no other, and when you’re grown, I hope it will become such a light that it will show us a way out.” He steepled his pale fingers, then interlaced them. “And make no mistake, child, we are trapped.”

Start a tale, just a little tale that should fade and die—take your eye off it for just a moment and when you turn back it’s grown big enough to grab you up in its teeth and shake you. That’s how it is. All our lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days, but those tales grow too and shake us just as fierce.

Prince of Fools, by Mark Lawrence

CHAPTER 28

Livira

Arpix had no complaints about being kept waiting in Salamonda’s kitchen, other than that he was now too full to move. He hefted up his share of the load and Livira gathered the rest. The books that needed to be delivered to the laboratory seemed to have grown heavier during their stay. Salamonda waved off Arpix’s thanks, telling them both they should stop by more often, as if it hadn’t been Arpix’s first visit and two years since the only time she’d seen Livira before.

“What did Deputy Yute want?” Arpix lasted two streets before succumbing to his curiosity.

“He was talking about fiction,” Livira said.

“Fiction?” Arpix’s pace had slowed since leaving Yute’s house.

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