Page 143 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Not idiot. Save life. Many times.”

“Not an idiot. I’m sorry. But the reason I’m carrying this very heavy genius who thought he could stop my sister is because he matters to you.”

Behind them the regular clack-clack-clack of the Soldier’s feet faltered. Evar risked a backwards glance but could see no signs of trouble. The Soldier picked up his pace again and the three of them ran on.

Evar arrived at the centre circle’s clearing dripping with sweat. He sank to his knees, letting Malar slide from his grasp. His breath was ragged, the fur on his arms crimson where he’d held the man. Livira collapsed beside him a few moments later, gasping for air, retching with the effort it had taken her to keep up. The Soldier came to a halt behind her, untroubled, watching the stacks surrounding them.

The circle’s radiance began its work on all of them, slowly reversing the sources of the harm done to them whether by their own efforts or by others’. Evar’s strength returned as the circle’s power removed the poison of fatigue from his muscles and restored the chemistry of his blood.

Malar’s breath came in thin whispers between pale, almost bluish, lips. Not dead then. Evar sat back, almost certain that the circle would draw the man back from death’s edge. If he’d passed over then that would surely have been an end to it, but Evar had yet to see an injury the circle couldn’t heal. He wondered if the sabbers who had murdered Clovis’s people had stood guard around the circle to keep the wounded from it. He looked up from those dark thoughts to see Livira watching him.

“Hello.” He made to smile then forced it from his face. What did she see when she looked at him? One of the monsters who had killed her loved ones and dragged her from the ruins of her home? A creature she could no more desire than any other entry in the bestiary? He had never considered how he looked to others before, never cared. His siblings were the same as him, variations on a theme. The idea that he might be ugly, and the shame that accompanied it, were strangers to him. And yet it was the hope that hurt him most, that oh-so-thin sliver that could reach his heart even so. That kiss still burned on his tongue; those moments of closeness, when the space between their bodies had vanished to nothing, remained vital to him, too precious to release entirely. Livira had, in a heartbeat, become his addiction, and however unhealthy that might be he now knew no other way to live.

“Hello,” she said, her smile a fragile, careworn thing. She rubbed at her bloodshot eyes and returned her gaze to Malar.

“I...” Evar struggled for the words, as if it were he who was the stranger to the language. “Do you... I mean—”

Malar drew in a croaking breath and muttered something in the sabber tongue. It strengthened Livira’s smile.

Evar frowned and tried to fit his mouth around their language. “What does fuckme mean?”

Livira laughed and then to his horror her eyes filled with tears, and she broke into ugly sobbing.

“Livira!” Evar moved to her side, only to find the Soldier there first, leaning forward to place an ivory hand on her shoulder, the skin still bearing the marks of some ancient heat. It was an action so unlike the Soldier that Evar sat back down and stared.

A short while later Malar sat up with a groan and more pained exclamations, including several repeats of fuckme and fuck. He reached around and released two side buckles. His pitted iron breastplate fell away with a clang. Lifting a blood-stained padded shirt, Malar revealed the stomach wound that had nearly killed him. But for his skill, Clovis would have taken his head off, or at least sliced his throat. But for the armour, Clovis would have stabbed him in the heart. As it was, she’d struck up beneath the lower rim to gut him.

A livid red line was all that recorded the passage of her knife now. Even that was fading to a silvery scar. Evar had always thought that the method by which the circle healed would mean that no scars remained, the flesh returning to before the time of the injury. The library’s makers, however, had had different ideas. Perhaps they felt that every wound should leave some record, something to remind the person how short life can be and how disaster stalks us every hour of our lives, waiting its chance.

Evar wondered if there might not be an equivalent cure for injuries of the heart, a way to undo cruel deeds, sharp words, incautious honesty, and roll back each mistake. Perhaps not... He wondered where such a cleaning of his own slate might end. Probably at the moment of birth with the freedom to write a whole new story for himself, and to repeat every error he’d ever made.

Malar raised his head and glared at Evar, spitting out more words.

“He says he doesn’t like you,” Livira supplied. “And that if you so much as look at me sideways he’ll end you.” She paused while Malar said something else. “And he says thank you for saving his life.”

Translation is a powerful art requiring great intellect. It is not a process that can be conducted without bias. The page is regarded through multiple lenses, including those of the author, audience, and translator. Each brings something new to the text. The same sentences, pressed from one language and culture into the language and realm of another, can lead to war or to peace, with the difference sometimes dependent on the slimmest thread of reason.

Babel, by Josiah Maddie

CHAPTER 60

Livira

Tell that fucking sabber to eat shit,” Malar spat. “And if he lays a hand on you, I’m going to cut it off.”

Livira stretched her sabbertine around Malar’s instructions.

Malar had more to say. “Tell him if I see that red-maned cunt again I’ll cut her heart out.”

Livira growled and rumbled. “And he says thank you for saving his life.” Sabbertine gave her a sore throat, but she enjoyed the emotive form of the language. The harsher words sounded angry and almost required rage to generate. The softer sentiments were closer to a cat’s purring.

“And—”

“He saved your life, Malar. He ran all the way, carrying you. This place is repairing your body. You would have died any other way.”

“Huh.” Malar made a growl that sounded close to the sabbertine for excrement. “Well.” He looked around. “We should be getting back... to wherever we were... from wherever here is. Yute needs us.”

“He does.” Livira wasn’t sure why Yute needed them—he was an ex-assistant who’d lived hundreds of years and could effortlessly open doors she’d spent half her life trying to get through. He could probably have a portal swallow Clovis if she turned violent again. It was far from clear that he needed any of them. But it felt as if he did. In any case, they probably needed him. Also, she’d left friends behind in the Exchange: Neera, Katrin, Acmar... Acmar felt like a friend, or at least someone she cared for. She felt a responsibility for him, along with the others from the settlement who had had to carve out lives for themselves in Crath City and now faced a second upheaval of even greater proportions.

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