Page 147 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Don’t let him fight them,” Livira said from under Evar’s arm. “He’ll die.”

Evar nodded. “Follow!” He shouted it in the human tongue and ran for the pool.

—

Evar was able to put Livira down at the chamber entrance and let her run unassisted. He kept to a pace the two humans could manage, bringing them breathless to the pool. The Assistant came to meet them at the book wall.

“Creatures are attacking the Soldier,” Evar told her. “Real creatures, not Escapes, insectoids. Big ones. Three of them.” He stretched his arms to show their width.

“You opened the door.” The Assistant looked at Livira, a red glow in her eyes that Evar had never seen before.

“You kept them trapped in here,” Livira shot back. “For hundreds of years. Prisoners!”

“I am unable to open the doors,” the Assistant said, the glow fading. “I am impure.”

Impure? The Assistant was the purest thing in Evar’s life. “Wait! Where are you going?”

“To fight beside the Soldier against the skeer.” The Assistant vaulted the wall, landing more lightly than the Soldier would. “Return the humans to the Exchange.”

“I can help.” Evar looked between the Assistant and Livira. “Wait!”

“I cannot.” The Assistant began to run towards the corridor. Evar realised that he had never seen her run before.

He started after her. “Wait! Please!” He faltered and looked back at Livira. Both of them held a piece of his heart, though he hadn’t ever understood how much the Assistant owned. She had taken her real estate in his soul fraction by fraction over the years, advancing her claim with such slow stealth that he had never noticed. The others might say that her patience and devotion were part of her nature and that the span of their lives was nothing to her, a flicker in the eternity of her existence. Evar might have agreed with them, but the depths of him disagreed.

Livira’s claim was different, manifold, and growing with each passing moment, though the memories that were chaining him to her were memories not of the woman before him but of the ghost of her that the Mechanism made from her writing to entertain him and lead him through the landscape of her imagination.

What decided him was his belief that the Assistant would not be harmed whereas something as small as a scratch from his sister could almost kill Livira. One needed his help. The other was the one he went to for help.

“We need to go.” He reached for Livira’s hand and started to lead her towards the pool.

“Will they be all right?” Livira looked after the Assistant, her brow furrowed.

“Yes.” Evar had seen the Assistant take on bigger bugs than these skeer.

Livira allowed herself to be led. Malar followed.

They reached the pool and stood amid the ruined crops. Evar eyed the trampled kale he had been tending since planting it some months earlier. For no reason that he could pinpoint it brought tears to his eyes. It was silly. They were just plants. More could be grown.

“Come on.” He was still holding Livira’s hand. The heat generated between them had little to do with body temperature.

They jumped and the pool claimed them.

You can’t go back. Time is a river and there’s no swimming against it. You can’t go back. Yesterday does not wait for you. The past is on fire. What you find when you return to it will be ashes.

The School Reunion, by Ian Evans

CHAPTER 62

Evar & Livira

Evar clambered out of the pool, Livira beside him. The scene in the wood had hardly changed, as if the hour and more spent with Malar and Livira in the chamber had occupied none of the Exchange’s time. Clovis still glowered at Yute. The human refugees still clustered by the portal through which they were still arriving. Yamala still stood to one side, observing her fellow “fallen” assistant. Kerrol watched fascinated as if seeing every conflict within Clovis’s skull written in the twitches of her face as she struggled to deny Yute’s words. If this rationale had come from any source other than an assistant, or something close to one, she would have disembowelled them before they’d got through their opening argument.

Evar had never thought to see someone stand between Clovis and her war, let alone a frail creature like Yute. But his calm logic seemed to be inflicting a death of a thousand cuts on Clovis’s desire to murder anyone from the species that had destroyed her life. Even so, violence trembled in the air and the balance that Yute had miraculously established could easily fall to either side of the knife’s edge. The Exchange’s insistence on translation could sink them in an instant if the one-eyed human with the ugly mind opened his cruel mouth again to stain the air with more of his opinions.

Livira ran ahead of Evar and Malar, swinging her head as if looking for someone. Malar muttered an oath and gave chase. The pair gave Clovis a wide berth. Evar, following, saw the swift glance exchanged between Malar and Clovis—killer to killer, though in truth Malar was the closest Clovis had ever come to taking a life, assuming that neither Escapes nor the creations of the Mechanism were properly alive.

Two girls with anxious expressions broke from the group of refugees to greet Livira. Evar’s arrival behind Livira caused the pair to startle back from their hugging and handholding with cries of fright. A young male with shaking hands came forward to protect one of the females. Others among the crowd—males close to the one-eyed trouble-causer—levelled the steel barrels of projectile weapons at him.

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