Page 132 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Livira

The group of survivors took far longer than Livira would have liked to get to the bottom of the stair. The eclectic group of city folk that Malar had delivered to Yute’s door, including nearly a dozen from Livira’s settlement, was slowed by their need to gawk at everything. Malar himself was by no means immune. Livira took a certain measure of satisfaction in having shown the soldier something that robbed him of his normal cynicism and left his mouth hanging open. He’d led her into the city half a lifetime ago and she’d stared about her in awe. Now it was his turn.

The business of passing babies and infants down the oversized steps also slowed progress. Even so, Salamonda was the last down, puffing and panting, with Meelan dutifully at her side.

The head librarian returned to the bottom step, seemingly in order to get the altitude she desired to address the company. Instead, however, she looked past them into the mouths of the many aisles leading from the clear area at the stair’s base.

Yamala took a small white knife from her robe.

“Don’t...” Yute reached towards her, stepping forward. But Yamala cut her palm. Livira noticed her other hand was bound with a white bandage, nearly invisible against her skin. The blood that welled up had a pearlescent hue. Yamala closed her fist around it and held her hand high.

“Assistance.”

For a long moment nothing happened, and the library’s silence held everyone’s tongue.

“I am here.” An assistant stepped out into the clearing. A male one. Possibly the one that had saved Livira long ago after her fall. She couldn’t tell. They all looked the same. The same enamel face devoid of personality, the same vaguely human lines.

“We require protection and a place of safety,” Yamala said.

The assistant bowed its head. “Follow me.”

Livira fell back to walk with Meelan and Arpix. “She can summon assistants now?”

“Who knows what she can do?” Meelan rumbled. “I’ve never seen her before. Arpix hasn’t either.”

“I do know that Yute and some of the other librarians went to her room,” Arpix said. “I saw them hurrying past my door just before Meelan arrived. Yute told me to join them. But I went to get the rest of you. I didn’t reach the main corridor before Meelan came rushing up with the sabber right behind him—”

“Wait, that was one sabber? One sabber killed all those guards...?” Livira blinked, astonished.

“Anyway, my point is that there’s no way any of Yute’s group could have got out of there without secret tunnels,” Arpix concluded.

“There’re no tunnels. Or at least if there are they’re still secret.” Lastri, a junior librarian that Arpix was friendly with, spoke up behind them. “Yamala cut her hand and drew a circle on the wall with the blood. It was the strangest thing you ever saw. It—”

“Filled with light,” Livira said.

“Yes.” Lastri looked crestfallen. “It brought us all to the door in one step.”

“Couldn’t she have taken us where we’re going then?” Jella asked, sounding more like Carlotte, which immediately filled Livira with worry for her friend again.

“Maybe she doesn’t have an endless supply of blood,” Meelan suggested.

—

Yamala, with Yute now at her side, followed behind the assistant. The rest of the party straggled out for some distance, the aisles allowing no more than two to walk abreast. The continuous tramp of footsteps sounded out of place in the library where Livira had spent almost all her time alone. She was listening to it when she caught something new, a slightly different tempo: clunk-clunk-clunk. There was something worryingly familiar about it. Clunk-clunk-clunk. Louder by the moment.

“Something bad’s coming!” Livira shouted. “Get ready to run!” She knew what it was but “bad” covered it more effectively than an explanation.

It came from behind them. The jet-black assistant, corrupted years before by the Escape that had come after Livira from the Exchange. The screaming and pushing began immediately. As the survivors began to squeeze past Yute, Yamala, and the assistant at the front, someone gave a desperate shriek. The black assistant had caught one of the bookbinders around the back of the neck and now lifted the woman from her feet.

“No!” Livira tried to go back but Malar hauled her on.

The sound as the assistant tightened her grip, pulping flesh and shattering bone, made Livira’s stomach heave. The corrupt assistant dropped its victim carelessly, letting her fall into a disjointed heap.

In a frenzy of pushing and squeezing, Yamala’s band reversed its order. The assistant who had answered her call was left facing its darker twin with the librarians ranked behind it.

The black assistant tilted her head to the side, accompanied by a slight creaking.

“Leave.” The guide assistant pointed towards the main door.

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