Page 99 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Fictional men don’t count.” Carlotte waved the idea away. “The library’s stuffed full of stories!” Neither Carlotte nor Katrin were supposed to know about Evar, but Livira had confided in Neera. She’d needed to tell someone. And it seemed that Katrin had got hold of at least part of the idea. “Men are like books.” Carlotte returned to her theme. “But they’re not actually books, Livira. So you’re not going to find one if you’re always lost in the aisles.” Her tone became scolding. “Arpix is as bad. Locked books, both of you, gathering dust. What’s the point of that?”

“I’ve got a locked book in here!” Livira nodded towards the satchel on her lap in an attempt to change the conversation. “I mean, now I’m going to have to spend an age trying to fiddle the mechanism... Who puts locks on books? The whole point of this library is free access, and then they put books like these on the shelves. I bet the assistants could open them if they wanted to or provide a key... but no!”

Neera took the bait. “Free access? I’m not allowed into the library. Even Carlotte and Jella aren’t allowed in anymore.” She ended with a cough.

Livira shook her head. “Yes, but that’s just us librarians getting in the way. The library itself doesn’t care. Some doors won’t open, certainly, but you can wander forever in there and never see the same book twice.”

“I say the whole library is a lock,” Carlotte said with unexpected passion. “You think it’s offering you free access—but to what? Even librarians can only find what they want among a tiny fraction of what’s out there. And that’s because they’ve been working at it for generations. It’s a lie. An illusion. I’d like to get hold of one of those assistants, those impediments, and force them to explain themselves. Where’s the sense in it?”

“Does it have to make sense?” Katrin spoke quietly into the pause. “The world’s never made much sense to me.”

Carlotte sat up on the couch and folded her arms, pointing her scrawny intelligence in the direction of the beautiful, kind, but inarguably dim Katrin. “It should make sense. It should make sense because someone built it.”

“Didn’t the gods build the world?” Katrin’s face clouded in confusion. “Some of them anyway. Not Suggoth, because he’s more about eating things. That’s what Jammus says anyway...”

“Well, I don’t know about the world,” Livira said, “but the library should damn well make sense and I’m not giving up until I find out what’s going on, even if I have to pin an assistant to the wall and slap the answers out of them. And until I do that then poor Meelan will have to find someone else to moon over. All my other admirers can form an orderly queue and wait in line too. Because first I need to open this book.”

Carlotte took the hint, unusually for her, and stood to go, finishing her wine in one last gulp. She motioned with her fingers for the others to follow suit. “Well, if you manage it, you can come and help me with Arpix next. That boy definitely needs unlocking.”

Livira perched on the arm of the chair, too full of nerves to settle, flashing quick smiles and accepting hugs as she waited for the others to slowly take themselves off to their various duties. At last, she closed the door on Katrin’s back and slumped against it, sliding to the floor.

She began to ease her prize from the satchel; then, thinking better of it, she got up, slid the bolt in place, and went to her bedroom to examine the book there. She opened the bedroom door, screamed, dropped the satchel, and staggered back.

The black dog was there already. Waiting for her.

It’s in the nature of humans to want to belong to a group, to want to be accepted, appreciated, and needed. What is most frightening about their kind are the sacrifices they are prepared to make in order to become part of such a tribe, clique, sect, sewing circle, cult, or book club. Reason and morality are often at the top of the list of what must be surrendered as part of the club fees. Truth becomes a collective property, an adaptable shield used to shelter the in-group from those outside. Dogs, on the other hand, are great.

Training Your Labrador, by Barbara Timberhut

CHAPTER 43

Livira

The huge black dog stood facing the door, and although Livira couldn’t make out its expression the beast seemed to be giving off a strong air of silent reproach.

“You told her, didn’t you?” Her blood ran cold, shock tingling in her cheekbones. This was it. They’d throw her out. Yute had somehow made the whole library defy the king’s plainly stated will and had elevated her to stand as the champion and herald of her people—proof that the men and women who came in off the Dust were worth every bit as much as those born within the city walls. She hadn’t asked to play that role, but it had come with the robes. And now she’d not only let down Yute but all those for whom she was a beacon of hope. Katrin said some in the city were calling her a hero. Not the ones from her old settlement, except maybe those like Gevin and Breta—who were too young to remember how annoying and troublesome she’d been—but certainly those from other settlements. She’d thrown it all away now, because she couldn’t ever play by the rules. She’d made the case for the people who called them dusters and said they were all stupid, lazy thieves. She’d stolen the book, she’d been too lazy to find another way, and too stupid to understand the risks.

The dog just looked at her.

“I’m already ashamed, all right?” Livira threw the satchel onto the bed and stomped past the dog to sit heavily down on the mattress. “Enough with the looking at me.” She pulled the book out and scowled at it, then at the dog. The lock was set into an iron plate that entirely covered the ends of the pages and connected with the two hinges that ran from the iron-ridged spine across the width of both covers, making it almost like a box with the only view of the page ends being at the top and bottom.

“It’s no use trying to guilt me into taking it back. I’m not throwing myself on anyone’s mercy. If she wants it, she’ll have to come and drag it out of my hands.” Livira took her lock picks out. “Until then...” She set to work.

The game was up, but if she could coax the secrets of the Exchange out of the book before her then who knew what options might open up? “You’re still staring.” Livira worked the picks as fast as she could. The lock’s mechanism wasn’t making much sense. She glanced up at the hound. “You don’t know the Raven, do you? He’s annoying too.” She had looked for the Raven over the years, pursuing hints and rumours in some of the better hidden works that her new rank had led her to. She’d never found so much as a feather, although several other librarians claimed to have heard its squawks. A mid-ranked librarian named Anderida reported that she’d seen it on a shelf top but that it had vanished by the time she found a ladder and returned. Most frustratingly of all, Arpix had returned from a week-long trainee expedition and recounted with unusual excitement his encounter with a curious bird. It was his failure to take advantage of the situation that prompted Livira into full disclosure of her adventures to him.

Livira very much wanted the Raven’s help to enter some of the many sealed chambers. She had summoned him that one time in the Mechanism, but that had been a moment of terror and the bird had come to rescue her. She couldn’t abuse that kind of connection, no matter how much she might want the bird’s services as a glorified key. Also, he had reclaimed the feather that Yute had given her, and her reading had indicated that without a feather no amount of screaming would summon the Raven.

She needed more than access to Chamber 7 to get to the Exchange. The portal there had gone. Perhaps the Escape-tainted assistant still roamed the aisles there too. Or she might have mastered the doors and have vanished into the vastness of the library. Two years ago, Tubberly, the junior librarian who had summoned Livira and Meelan to Yute’s house, had gone missing in the library. His remains hadn’t yet been found. Livira often wondered if he’d strayed into the Escape’s path.

“Focus!” Livira’s jabbing at the lock became more frantic. It wasn’t making any sense. She’d specifically sought out information about lock-making in the empire and time in which the book was written. And the lock still wasn’t making sense.

The book had been written in an empire that had washed up around the foot of the mountain she sat in, but of which nothing remained, not worn stones, shards of old pots, or even traces in the main language of Crath. It had been an empire whose calendar and counting of years had no connection to the ones that Livira used. An empire that was an island in history, cut off from those that came before and after it—cut off, if Yute was to be believed, by man’s inability to avoid self-destruction. Yute had said that the library allowed men to teach themselves how to light fires long before it taught them how to extinguish them. And the result was that time and again they burned their world down with some cunning new kind of fire.

“Damn it! What’s wrong with this thing?” Livira gave the book a shake. At first, she thought the mountain was shifting but then realised that the low rumble she was hearing was the dog’s growl. “All right, all right! I’m not hurting it.” She stroked the cover to reinforce the point. “What is it with you and the Raven? It’s like you’re guarding every grain of sand in a desert. I bet there’s a million books out there that say much the same thing as this one. It’s finding them that’s the problem.” She continued to grumble as she settled back to her lock-picking.

Livira wasn’t sure how long she’d been working at the mechanism. Her eyes were starting to ache. Her fingertips hurt from pressing on the picks. She had four of them in the lock at once now and was attempting a difficult but nonsensical manipulation when the knock came on the door, causing her to spill all the picks into her lap with a curse.

Instantly fear replaced focus. They’d come for her, and she hadn’t even opened the damned book, let alone absorbed its mysteries. She squeezed past the dog and hurried to the door.

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