Page 14 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

For a while all questions deserted Livira, her curiosity voiced only by eyes that blinked and grew wide and flitted from one astonishment to the next. She almost missed Jons leading his and Henton’s horse off down a side road as the thoroughfare Malar was following started to climb the slope. Only Malar led them now, and with nobody guarding the rear it would be easy to slip away. Livira could smell food and water, though she could see neither, and the scent was driving her mad. The stone houses lining the street were several storeys high with dozens of windows both shuttered and unshuttered. She could be through one of those openings and hunting the source of those tantalizing odours. Water first, then something to fill her belly. Malar wouldn’t even know she was gone until he got where he was taking them.

First it had been the vastness of the Dust holding her where she was. It had never been her aunt’s expectations, or the sabbers’ rope, or the unvoiced threat of the soldiers that had imprisoned her. It had been the fact that she was lost—she’d been lost her whole life, bound to the one point that she understood. And now? Ignorance still held her captive. She knew too little to stray from the path and the knowledge chafed her worse than the rope had. Malar knew it too. He didn’t even glance back to see that they were following. In the end it was his indifference that kept Livira at his heels. It might please him if she ran. Relieve him of a responsibility he hadn’t ever wanted.

“Dusters!” A small boy threw a stone, missing all of them, and ran away with two friends, laughing.

“Your kind aren’t liked here,” Malar said matter-of-factly, without looking back.

Livira hadn’t known she had a kind. “Why?”

“The criers say your lot don’t do anything to keep the sabbers at bay.” Malar shrugged as if he knew how ridiculous that was. “There’s even rumours the settlements are in league with them.”

They climbed higher and her legs complained. The buildings grew higher too, reaching for the sky’s pitiless blue. The crowds thinned enough for the children to gain the space to breathe. Livira noticed that up here the looks thrown her way grew even more disdainful. They passed through a long street so steep that anything you dropped might roll away and whose sides were crowded with carved entrances, the doors open wide, the faces of gods and demons set into the stone above them. Incense flavoured the air and from gloomy interiors the sounds of bells and chanting and gongs reached out.

“What gods do the city people have?” Livira hadn’t considered that they might not honour the same collection of wind spirits and roaming godlings that the settlers did.

“Too many to fucking count.” Malar spat outside the door of one narrow building whose pillars were carved with bones and skulls. “The library’s the real religion in Crath though. It’s given the people more than this lot ever have.” He waved an arm up the street. “Folks these days don’t have time for gods. Progress is the new deity.”

Still the city rose before them, an endless tide of stone, until at last, far above them, it did finally end and hand over the climb to the mountain, which took the challenge and ran with it, making it nearly all the way to the heavens. They’d only just left the temples and shrines behind them when little Gevin collapsed. Acmar, prompted by Benth who was labouring once again beneath Breta’s weight, picked the boy up and carried him, a grimace of effort on his broad face. Livira noticed that Malar’s scowl deepened but he didn’t offer any more rides on his horse, as if that were something that could only happen outside the walls with nobody to see.

“Where’s he taking us?” Katrin wanted to know, even though she’d been told.

“Allocation.” Neera puffed and wheezed as if she still had dust in her lungs.

Livira wanted to know who decided their fate and what they’d done to be allowed to make such decisions. She found herself amazed that all this had sat here her entire life, just beyond the horizon, ignoring her existence completely. And now, suddenly, this mass of stone and people had decided it owned her and had the right to set her to a purpose.

“This way, dust-rats.” For the first time Malar turned away from the main street into the shade of a side road. And there, rippling and glistening in a great stone trough, was more water than Livira had ever seen in one place. “Slow down, you little fucks!” Malar roared, catching Neera by the neck as she rushed at the water with new-found energy. “Sips! Sip it! I don’t want you throwing up over my nice clean city.”

Livira tried to take his advice. She knew he was right. But the water tasted so damn good. Even when Malar’s horse stuck its great head beside hers and began to guzzle noisily, she couldn’t find it in her to stop.

Finally with a heavy stomach she rolled to the side, fighting off sudden nausea. She stretched her legs out across the cool flagstones. Malar stood and watched, shaking his head in disgust. “Dust-rats.” He drank, then took a double handful of water and splashed it over his face. His skin beneath the dirt was paler than Livira had realised. He took another mouthful, swished it around, and spat it against the wall.

“Damn, but it’s good to get the taste of the Dust off my tongue.”

“The dust has a taste?” Livira blinked.

“It’s sour!” Malar stared at her. “By the gates, if someone puts an apple pie on the windowsill to cool, they cover it. If the dust gets at it nobody wants any.”

“What’s an apple?” But what she was really thinking of was when Jons said “twenty years back, on the Kerlo border.” Malar was old. Just a few years shy of Old Kern, but Kern had been hollow-chested and milky-eyed, no match for a sabber even with four others at his side. Perhaps the dust turned people sour too—old before their time.

Malar had already turned away, leaving her question about apples unanswered. He went to his saddlebags and drew out a bundle of black cloth.

“There’s so much!” Katrin had both arms in the water, past her elbows. “How did it get here?”

The question distracted Livira from Malar’s activities. How had it got there? A hundred buckets’ worth. More, perhaps. Just standing there with none of the passers-by taking a second look except to frown at the children.

Lacking an answer, Livira turned back to Malar. “How—”

The soldier shoved her, one hand flat to her chest. The wall of the trough met the back of her knees, and in the next moment she was floundering in the water, the cold shock of it stealing her breath. She flailed in terror, crying out only to find water flooding her mouth. Somehow, she caught hold of an edge and hauled herself out, blind and coughing. Strong hands seized her. For a moment she thought she was being pushed back in and used her teeth.

“Fuck that, you biting little shit-bag!” Malar set her on her feet. “That bath’s for all your questions. Ask some more if you want another.” He shook his head. “Let’s see if you can keep your fucking mouth shut longer than you take to dry.”

Livira coughed and spat. Some of the children were laughing nervously. A woman passing by snorted her amusement. The horse snorted too. She found herself angry. Furious. “I should have let the dust-bear have you!”

“Yes.” Malar nodded. “Yes, you fucking should have.” A wooden post stood beside the trough and the soldier tied his horse to it. “Come on then, rats. Time to get rid of you. You’re lucky we got in on a Wodesday or you’d be bedding down in the stables till it was one.”

He waited for them to rise, patient for once, then led them back to the main street. It climbed sharply though the gradient no longer seemed so taxing to Livira, thirst quenched, muscles fired up with rage. By the time it levelled out in an enormous square she was no longer leaving a trail of wet footprints. At the square’s centre stood a round, stone-sided pond, dwarfing the trough they’d just drunk from. It had a stone... creature... at the middle, spouting streams of sparkling water into the air. Buildings far grander than any yet seen bordered the square, each fronted by carved pillars and with steps that all the children could climb shoulder to shoulder and have room to spare. Livira found it hard to believe that people could have built it all. Maybe the gods that they no longer believed in had done the work.

Malar marched the children towards the smallest of the buildings, though it still seemed far too large and important to want anything to do with anyone from the Dust. The square’s stone acreage lay almost empty, at least compared to the city streets. Perhaps the inhabitants preferred the shade. The sun and the hungry air had already stolen most of the water from Livira’s rags and it was no place to linger when you had an alternative.

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