Page 159 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“It’s against the rules.” Malar started to lower his blade.

It had been Livira’s memory that had defeated the Escape and some among her fellow librarians might have called that stranglehold on the past her defining characteristic. But only the ones who didn’t know her well. Livira—the weed—always found a way past; she lived to break rules.

“It’s against the rules,” Malar repeated.

“Good.” Livira seized the sword’s end and drove her palm against its point. The pain was intense, bringing her to her knees. She reached out, smeared her hand across the library floor, and shuffled in a full rotation to draw a circle around herself. Light shimmered across it, and she fell through.

The greatest puzzle is one not understood until the final piece is set in place. Life, appropriately, can be like that, all the pieces tumbling together in a slow dance until in one last joining of hands epiphany strikes.

A History of the Jigsaw, by Icarus Salt

CHAPTER 68

Evar

Evar hadn’t seen what he should have seen when the first assistant had burst from the smoke and fallen to his knees.

One of the Escapes inside it had emerged and shot off into the advancing smoke. Malar had aimed himself at the fallen assistant and Livira had plunged into the smoke, aiming to beat the Escape to the second assistant somewhere back there in the swirling blindness.

It wasn’t until later when Livira finally broke free of the smoke, now wearing the second assistant’s body, and Malar followed behind her, that Evar found himself with the Soldier to one side of him and the Assistant to the other. Not just nameless, identical assistants from the unknown numbers that served the library, but the Soldier and the Assistant: the ones that had raised him. The ones he’d left alone to fight the skeer.

Running before the fire he had little time to wrestle with the enormity of what had happened. If he paused to consider it for only a moment he felt that the weight of epiphany might pin him to the ground. In one moment his whole life had been inverted, and he’d been left spinning. He tried to focus on the now: Livira’s friends needed saving or they would burn.

When they reached the centre circle, Evar immediately knew something was wrong. Well, everything was wrong. Livira’s friends were trapped and facing horrific deaths. He still had trouble seeing a group of humans as anything but sabbers, but individually he knew they were every bit as important to someone as Livira was to him. And even sabbers couldn’t be left to burn. Everything was wrong, but something specific was wrong with Livira and with Malar. The man, usually so free with his foul mouth, and so cautious in his movements, ready for anything, was silent and still. Livira didn’t greet her friends, didn’t rejoice at finally being seen, albeit in a borrowed body. Instead, she ignored them. Ignored him.

“Cut me,” she said, hardly seeming to see the humans crowding around her, not hearing their pleas or their questions. “Quickly.”

“Livira? Can you hear me?” Evar braced himself as he passed through one of the humans and stood directly between the Assistant and the Soldier. “Livira?”

“It... it’s... forbidden.” Malar seemed to be struggling. There was colour in his eyes, the same darkness that Evar had only ever seen once before in those blank white orbs. “It’s against the rules.”

Evar had seen those eyes darken just the one time—in front of the char wall when Evar had been considering digging. What had the Soldier said...?

I’ve lost her. I’ve lost myself...

And then the threat, the only time the Soldier had ever spoken with true passion: Know this... if you hurt her, no army will save you from me.

“It’s against the rules.”

“Good.” Livira snatched the Soldier’s sword and stabbed it into her palm. She collapsed to her knees with a cry of pain, and with three sweeps of her bloody hand she had sketched a circle about herself.

“No!” Evar reached for her. He was fast enough this time, faster than he’d been when the pool had reclaimed her in the Exchange that first time. Faster than when the Escape had crashed into her and carried her into the pool the second time. Faster perhaps than he had ever been. But he was a ghost and fast as he was Evar couldn’t catch her. In a broken moment she was gone.

Livira fell away from him into the portal that her own blood had written.

Evar plunged in after her.

He rolled from the far side of the portal, coming to his feet amid the wood that had always waited for him. The Exchange, normally both empty of people and full of peace, was, for once, crowded and noisy—at least around the portal he’d emerged from, a portal that now burned at his back, radiating a heat that singed his fur. He’d been brought back to the scene he’d left. Perhaps a few minutes had passed in this place since he was last here.

Evar had left the refugee humans led by Yute and Yamala being confronted by Clovis, with Kerrol a fascinated onlooker. Now, though, Yute was in the process of ushering the refugees through a portal that lay between Livira’s time and Evar’s. That was a good thing, since there were many more soldiers than he remembered. Well over a hundred of them. Hopefully, Yute could continue to siphon them away before they decided to replay the battle they were running from.

Clovis watched the exodus with Kerrol, the desire for violence twitching through her limbs but restrained, at least for now. He doubted the numbers held her back. Perhaps the goodness that he had always hoped resided at her core was keeping her from the fight that would doubtless end her and her family, albeit at the cost of scores of human lives.

Yamala watched from the other side of the proceedings. Of Livira there was no sign.

“Livira!” Evar roared her name, causing everyone to look his way, a dozen gleaming ’sticks starting to rise. Evar didn’t care. All he cared about was Livira. The forest could catch fire and it wouldn’t distract him from the singularity of his purpose. Nothing could. Except when it did. “Liv—”

Mayland’s sudden appearance from a portal just behind Yamala took Livira’s name from Evar’s tongue. Evar, who just moments ago had actually been a ghost, stood stunned, as if he were seeing a real one for the first time.

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