Page 98 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

She had reached the end of the aisle when a hot prickle at the back of her neck turned her head in a slow dread-laden backwards look. There behind her stood something so black that it seemed to be a silhouette, only its motion revealing hints at structure. Immediately her mind returned to the Exchange and the black nightmares that had assaulted her and Evar. The rest of her body rotated with that same slow fear, facing her towards the creature. It was shorter than her, no taller than her chest, but long, stretching away, filling the aisle, a beast of some kind. Somehow it didn’t carry the threat that the Escapes had. No barbs, no talons, no smoking darkness. It was only when it drew in the air with a deep sniff that she suddenly understood what she was looking at.

“You’re a dog...”

A bigger dog than any she’d ever seen—not that she’d seen many—an enormous hound, impossibly black, drinking in the library’s endless light and returning nothing, all detail hidden. It inhaled again, draining her scent from the air.

“You’re the guide! The last guide... or the first...”

Livira was about to reach a hand towards the beast, aware that she could lose fingers or perhaps half her arm to its enormous jaws, when the door through which she’d entered banged open.

“Oh, fuck-me-sideways.” Livira claimed to have learned all her curse words from Malar but this outburst was original and born of the moment. She froze, listening intently for the sound of footsteps. She could leave the aisle easily to the left, to go right she would have to clamber over the dog. It seemed, though, that the head librarian had a light step, giving no warning about the direction of her approach. Livira was about to pick a side at random when the dog turned its head as if anticipating its mistress’s arrival from the left.

“Blood and hells.” If Yamala was coming down this side of the chamber Livira was lost. Trapped at the very end of the aisle, awaiting discovery. Trusting the dog’s hearing, she took her courage in both hands and, expecting its jaws to close on the back of her neck at any moment, she began to crawl as quietly as she could between its front legs. Even without violence the creature could thwart her by simply sitting down. Her career and possibly several others could end beneath the backside of a magical hound. Praying to all and any deities, Livira crawled on.

To her amazement she emerged unscathed and impeded by nothing save a tight squeeze and a swishing tail. Livira hurried to the far end, and on tiptoes peered out past the end of the shelves. The walkway that led to the front of the chamber lay empty.

She advanced shelf by shelf, peering around each then darting across the gap to the shelter of the next. With alarm she realised that the dog was padding after her despite having had no room to turn around. Its claws made no sound on the stone floor as it matched her pace. She tried to shoo it back but when she hurried across the next gap the creature advanced too, pointing at her like a black arrow, clearly visible from the other side. Livira hurried on, thankful that at least the beast wasn’t barking at her... or tearing her into small chunks.

Livira darted past the fourth row where the head librarian was bending to pull out a book. She kept going and reached the exit, sweating, praying that she wouldn’t have to pick the lock again. Thankfully there was a latch on the inside and she let herself out, closing the door gently on the face of the dog as it made to follow.

“Open that if you can, doggy.” Livira crossed the room, skirting the meeting table.

On reaching the door to the corridor some instinct turned her back towards the private library.

“Oh, gods damn it!” She watched in despair as the dog emerged from the secret library, simply pushing through the two-inch thickness of wood that Livira had secured in its way. The dog padded across to join Livira, leaving the door unscathed. The thing was a ghost, as Evar had said he was when he visited his sister’s childhood. Only a ghost you could see...

“And touch?” Livira hissed her surprise as her reaching hand found a mass of soft fur and, beneath that, hard-packed muscle. “Sorry.” She snatched her hand back when the dog’s head turned to sniff at it.

“Stay!” she instructed and opened the corridor door. The beast made to follow her as she left.

“Volente!” The faintest of calls from inside the private library.

The dog gave Livira one last sniff and turned obediently to go back. Livira took off running, her nerves too frayed for caution, not even remembering to take off the trainee blues until she was halfway to her own rooms.

—

Livira arrived at her quarters still trembling with nerves. She hurried through the front door, only then discovering that amid all her meticulous planning and watchfulness and scheduling she had forgotten the weekly get-together she’d organised long ago with her female friends. She walked into the middle of a conversation in her own reception room. It looked as if they’d been there awhile to judge by the mess.

“...care about any of that! What’s the gossip?” Carlotte lay sprawled on a couch holding a glass of cheap red wine in an alarmingly casual grasp just inches above the expensive blue satin of a dress that looked more suited to a ballroom than to Livira’s quarters. Carlotte’s visits to the librarians’ complex were nominally missions to get the particular books that her house—that of Sir Alad Masefield—had requested. His eldest son and heir had recently been killed in a sabber attack just miles from the city walls, and Sir Alad had been increasingly demanding books on the subject of the afterlife.

Most house readers visited the librarians several times a year. Carlotte seemed to return several times a month and spend the majority of her time chatting with old friends. She glanced across at Jella, seated on a straight-backed chair that appeared rather too delicate to support her ample form. “Well?”

“Gossip? Why are you looking at me?” Jella managed an offended tone. “I just mind my own business.”

Neera coughed at that. She coughed all the time but this one was intentional. Whatever the Dust had put into her lungs had stayed with her for the decade since they entered the city, but—unlike in every work of fiction Livira had read, where if someone coughed they were bound to die of it in the next chapter—this seemed merely to be a chronic irritation. Neera had been a thin child, angular, with a sunken chest. The years had done little to fill her out, but she had an unconventional beauty to her despite the alarming blade of her nose: kohl-darkened eyes watched the world with shrewd intelligence from beneath luxuriously long lashes, and the thick, braided length of her oil-black hair was a wonder.

Katrin, the last of Livira’s guests, opened her mouth to speak, but whatever she’d had to say was lost under the sudden deluge of gossip that Jella was unable to hold back any longer.

Having drawn nothing but curious glances, Livira sat herself on the arm of the only free chair and perched her book satchel on her knees. She glanced nervously at the door from time to time, wondering if she’d truly got away with it, and also how she could graciously get rid of her visitors.

“...and Livira still hasn’t got a boyfriend,” Jella concluded about ten minutes later.

This was hardly news, but Carlotte’s eyebrows shot up as if it were a great surprise rather than her favourite subject. “Maybe if we explained it in terms she’s familiar with?” She turned towards Livira and put on a fake tone of condescension before continuing. “Men, Livira, are like books—easy enough to read if you know the right tongue. But first you’ve got to get the cover open.”

Jella snorted loudly. “I’d get Meelan’s cover off in a heartbeat if I was the one he mooned over.”

“He’s very handsome,” Neera said.

“And rich.” Katrin’s contribution. She’d married her husband, Jammus, six months earlier; he was also a survivor from the Dust but from another settlement—Livira had yet to meet him. “But Livira likes someone in the library, doesn’t she?”

---