Page 137 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Keep going!” Malar urged.

The stillness that had been the library’s trademark for millennia now suddenly seemed uncanny. The calm before a storm.

The distant boom was muffled but spoke of immense power.

“What the fuck is there to explode?” Malar complained. Nobody offered an explanation.

They hurried on, children whimpering, the elderly struggling to keep pace, Salamonda labouring at the rear. Every now and then a shot would ring out behind them. Sometimes a flurry of shots, with faint accompanying screams. The fire’s advance was swift, but the people who’d started it were outrunning the flames for now and seemed to be gaining on Yute’s party.

—

By the time they were approaching the far wall the conflict behind them sounded frighteningly close. A rolling retreat, Malar called it. A spread-out battlefront where small bands fought, fell back, made a new stand. And all with the sabbers advancing as surely as the fire.

As the distance to the wall narrowed, Livira determined to run ahead and use the time before the others arrived to get a look at the situation from the shelf tops. Malar, Arpix, and Meelan followed at her heels. A long sprint brought her breathless to the clearing before the corridor to Chamber 7.

Looking back, she could see the smoke hovering high above the aisles, pooling beneath the ceiling that had always seemed impossibly high. A fierce orange glow lit it from below, a light like nothing ever seen within the library before. Meelan had already found a ladder and swarmed up it while Arpix held it steady.

Livira’s fear finally found her. She could imagine nothing more terrifying than the advancing blaze. She was the bug in the hearth, scrambling across kindling as the flames rose. Her legs trembled so fiercely that for a moment they could hardly keep her standing.

She thought of the winged man back at the entrance to the chamber. She’d greeted him when they reached his side and had run her hands over the polished metal of his arms, not knowing it would be for the last time.

“Goodbye, old friend.” She was glad that she had got to hear him speak, and glad that he had retreated back to his slumber. She hoped the fire would not wake him and that when it came his end would be a swift one.

“Small fires there, and there.” Meelan had climbed onto the shelf top. He pointed left, then right, then left again. “There too.” The angle of his arm made them look worryingly close.

“Sparks flying ahead of the main front?” Arpix guessed.

Livira was climbing after Meelan when the second detonation rumbled through the air.

“That’s not good,” Meelan said above her.

“What isn’t?”

“Smoke. Lots of it.”

Livira got her head above the shelves and saw for herself. A great rolling cloud of smoke, hundreds of feet thick and filled with flashes of fire, coming their way at speed from the far side of the chamber.

“Oh gods...” Meelan’s voice faltered.

Livira had seen it too. “Another!” She pointed but it had gone already. A sabber hauling itself over a shelf top little more than a hundred yards away then dropping into the next aisle.

“More!” Meelan pointed further back. Not far ahead of the advancing smoke a score or more sabbers were running the shelf tops, leaping not one but two or even three aisles at once with a natural aptitude that made Livira’s hard-won skill look like a toddler’s stumblings.

Along an aisle that aimed towards her, closer even than the leading sabbers, Livira glimpsed the gleam of silver ’stick barrels: soldiers running, and civilians too by the look of it.

“Down!” Livira screamed. “Get down!” The sight of it all had paralysed them, wasting precious time. Livira’s feet flew over the rungs, barely making contact. She landed heavily beside Arpix and made room for Meelan. Yute and Yamala broke into the clearing at a pace that was closer to running than walking, the others beginning to pour in behind them.

“We need to go!” Livira seized Yute by both hands, steering him towards the corridor. “Right now!”

Yute, stumbling, protested. “You don’t need me. When a chamber’s ablaze the doors will open for anyone. The alternative is too cruel.”

“Lead them anyway.” Livira pushed Yute onwards and turned to help shepherd the rest of the party through. Bodies began to pass her, most too quick for recognition. Katrin hurried by, pale-faced and red-eyed, clutching her husband’s hand. A mother carrying the baby that Livira had stolen hours earlier. Library staff. Master Jost, too frightened or distracted for her customary sneer at Livira.

“Have you seen Salamonda?” Livira grabbed the next person to pass her. A man she didn’t know. A man spattered with blood across the left side of his face. He pulled free and another man jostled past. Both looked similar. Uniform. “Soldiers!”

“Time to go.” Malar took her arm. Soldiers carrying ’sticks were now hurrying from most of the aisles that ended in the clearing. An undisciplined crowd, panic in their faces.

“Salamonda’s still out there.” Livira shook him off. There could be others too. How many children had passed her? Not all of them, surely? Had she even seen Jella?

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