Page 142 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“I...” The look on Livira’s face made the answer forming on Evar’s lips unacceptable, unspeakable. He’d read that love was when the hurts of another became yours, every bit as sharp, even if you didn’t understand them. He didn’t understand what this man—he would call him a man—was to Livira, but he knew that he had to do something. “The centre circle. It’s a new wound. I can get him there.”

“The library’s on fire.” The flames that Evar’s anger had brought to the Exchange echoed in Livira’s eyes.

“Not my library.” Evar scooped the man up in both arms. He was heavier than he looked but not so heavy that Evar couldn’t run with him. Whether he could run a mile carrying him he’d have to find out. “Stay here,” he told Livira. “There are Escapes where I came from.” He hated to say it, hated to leave her with Clovis, with only Yute to talk his sister down. Part of him wished he’d held his tongue and let this nameless sabber die. But he wouldn’t have been able to live with that lie of omission any more than he could live with finding Livira gone when he returned, or worse—dead.

Evar glanced back at his sister. He wanted to say that she had trained for war her whole life, but her greatest fight might be not to use the weapon she had become. Even in his mind it sounded too pompous. Instead, he opted for mere honesty. “I saw what they did to you. It hurt me. I wanted to kill them too.”

Clovis’s eyes widened at that, and although she hid her pain, it twitched in all the small muscles of her face. She tried to speak but couldn’t.

“Please wait for me to get back. This doesn’t have to end in blood.” And with the numbers continuing to mount as armed sabbers carried on stumbling through the portal, stinking of smoke, he was no longer even sure Clovis would win. “Wait for me.”

With that he turned and walked towards their pool. Yute was speaking to Clovis, his voice closer to the endlessly patient tones of the Assistant when she had first taken charge of their care. Evar didn’t look back at Livira. She was probably relieved to have him go. Her people found his kind repulsive. They thought of them as animals. As dogs. She was probably embarrassed and revolted at the kiss they’d shared before the scales fell from their eyes. The library had played the cruellest of tricks on them.

He stopped at the edge of the pool.

“Shouldn’t we be running?”

He turned, startled. Livira was right behind him. “You should be back with your friends.”

“I’m coming with you.” Dark eyes challenged him. “Besides, most of my friends haven’t come through the portal yet.” Her voice cracked around this last part, as if she wasn’t sure they ever would, and she stepped towards the pool.

Evar moved to block her path. “If you come you can’t go back. If you enter our chamber, then in every time before it you’ll be a ghost. There’s no going back to your life.”

“Sabbers burned down my life.” She pressed past Evar.

With his arms full, he couldn’t stop her falling into the water.

Without hesitation he followed.

—

The crops were a mess, trampled, the ground torn and churned, stained black where the Escapes had died. The Assistant and the Soldier had already fallen into their waiting stances, the chamber being empty of their charges. As they turned to greet his arrival, Evar wondered how long they would have remained immobile without him. One foot outside time: that was how Yute had put it. Somehow it deepened Evar’s affection for the pair—that they had both managed to project some modicum of caring through the barriers that held them back.

Immediately, he set off running, trusting that the Soldier would follow if any Escapes were still lurking among the stacks. Livira caught up with him as he kicked down a portion of the book wall rather than subject the injured man to an awkward clambering over.

“He’s called Malar.” Livira struggled with the words, her voice thin, the stress on the wrong places. For a few moments Evar thought she was speaking a different language, but with effort he puzzled meaning from the mess.

“Malar,” he repeated, and broke loose half a dozen more books with a kick. The realisation hit him suddenly. “You’re... You never spoke to me before. Not in my tongue. The Exchange translated everything!”

“Lucky I learn!” Livira threw herself at the wall, shoulder first, and knocked out several more books.

Evar stepped over the remains and started to jog. He could outpace Livira but that would leave her vulnerable, and in any case, he couldn’t sprint a mile carrying an armoured sabber.

Together they ran through the stacks. The clack of the Soldier’s feet behind them was both a comfort, in that they would be protected, and a worrying declaration that danger lurked among the book towers.

“You come back.” Livira’s pronunciation was even worse when running.

“I came back,” Evar agreed.

“Bring sister,” Livira said, her diction too bad to carry accusation though it had to be there. “Help you kill me.”

“What?” Evar almost dropped Malar. “No!”

“Not need,” Livira puffed, “help?”

Evar glanced to the side to see if she was joking, but if there had been a smile it was already gone.

“Whether I’d need help to kill you isn’t the issue. I didn’t want to. I don’t want to.” He swerved around a thick stack and set a narrow one toppling as Malar’s boots caught it. “Why do you think I’m carrying this idiot?”

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