Page 136 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“We could leave by a side door,” Livira said. “Where’s the next one after Chamber Two Hundred and Thirty-Two?”

“Chamber Two Thousand Two Hundred and Seventy-Nine.”

“Ah...” It wasn’t as far as it sounded but it was a good forty-six miles past the sabbers’ door, which was still some twenty miles off. “Can’t Yamala make a portal?”

“Not so soon.” Yute glanced at his wife.

“Can’t you?” Malar called.

“No.”

“Why not?” Malar sounded as un-Malar-like as Jella sounded un-Jella-like. The fear of burning to death had got to both of them in a way that it hadn’t yet got to Livira. She was sure that she too would start to unravel, though, once she smelled the smoke and heard the distant roar of flames. “Why can’t you do it too? You look the same!”

“That’s beneath you, Malar,” Yute admonished mildly. “Yamala and I came into this world through acts of sacrifice, a sundering if you like. We both retained different traces of who we were. What we were.”

“You were assistants!” Livira exclaimed. She’d harboured a suspicion ever since her journey to the ancient city with Evar, but Yute’s earlier deflection and the chaos of the past day had pushed it to the back of her mind. “You made yourselves human.” She paused. “Well, humanish. But why?”

“You picked a strange time for this conversation, Livira.”

“If we’re all going to die then humour me.” It actually seemed an ideal time since the portal she had drawn lay in the chamber immediately after the forbidden Chamber 7, and if she were to delay her questions until she’d revealed that fact it might be that Yute would never provide answers.

“I don’t think we’re all going to die. Not in the immediate future.”

Livira didn’t like the way Yute’s voice had dragged its heels across “all.” But seeing that, like Yamala, he too was struggling to maintain a decent pace she let him save his breath despite the burning urgency of her question.

“You should tell them, Livira.” Arpix spoke quietly but firmly at her right shoulder, just like the voice of conscience he had so often been in the past.

And as so often before Livira had to grudgingly admit that the scribe’s son was correct. “I can get us to the Exchange,” Livira said, the secret tearing itself unwillingly from her lips. “We can, me and Arpix. We drew it together. A portal. In Chamber Sixteen, closest wall.”

Yute and Yamala stopped, causing near collisions to ripple back down the length of the group stretched out between the shelves behind them. They turned their heads to look at each other, pink eyes meeting pink eyes, then slowly turned to face Livira.

“I told you she was a marvel,” Yute said to Yamala.

“How,” Yamala asked, “would you do something like that?” That “you” came freighted with an incredulity which carried unpleasant echoes of the attitude that trickled from King Oanold’s lofty throne, down through the likes of Lord Algar and Serra Leetar and continued to follow the social gradients down Crath City’s many slopes until it pooled in the gutters of the low town, the prejudice no less ugly for being in the minds of the poor.

Livira met the head librarian’s gaze. “I used the blood of an assistant.”

Yamala turned away with a shiver and led on.

—

Without climbing the shelves—and nobody was foolish enough to suggest delaying for that—there was no indication of the fire. Livira even persuaded herself that those involved in the fight by the entrance tunnel might have somehow extinguished what they started. It would be the only chance they got, so they’d be fools to waste it.

As the band pressed on through the turns and twists of endless aisles it grew increasingly difficult for Livira to believe in the idea that they were being chased by hungry flames. She’d seen a wisp of smoke rising. Perhaps it merely came from the barrel of one soldier’s weapon and had remained confined there. Her mind whispered warnings about the distance. It must have been a lot of smoke, surely? But Livira’s unwillingness to believe the worst helped her to ignore such whispering.

It was the breeze that blew away her doubts. A zephyr to start with, no more than a breath. At first it could perhaps have been mistaken for the passage of air over fevered skin created by the swiftness of their advance.

The air that had remained still, yet only slightly stale, for generations, held prisoner between innumerable aisles, began to stir. Only the dust marked these first motions. The aeons-long dance of dust motes, forever lit by the library’s omnipresent light, began to shift. Two steps to the right for every step to the left. Then three.

In time the occasional loose leaf, poking provocatively from the mass of its better-behaved brethren, began to tremble in anticipation, to wave for attention, to flutter in a breeze that couldn’t be denied. And by this point the once-muted drone of the distant fire, which had until now been drowned beneath the shuffle of scores of feet, the mere buzz of a lazy bee, raised its voice to a level that could no longer be missed, ignored, or wished away. It sounded large. And it sounded hungry. And it sounded closer by the minute.

A loose page rose at the junction ahead, lifted on a spiral of wind before being yanked away behind them, over their heads.

“Fuck.” Malar pushed to the front, taking Yute’s elbow and propelling him forward with greater speed. “We need to pick up the fucking pace.”

—

The wind died when they were about two-thirds of the way across the chamber. Everything Livira knew about fires said they needed air and would suck it in like a giant lung. But the wind fell from a noticeable breeze to nothing, all in the time it took to take a dozen strides.

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