Page 21 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“I’ll come too.” Evar turned away from the pool. The days following the destruction of an Escape were the ones when another Escape was most likely to free itself from the Mechanism. The Soldier would stand guard.

“Wait for me.” And, knowing that the Soldier would not wait, Evar gave chase.

... scattered in the streets, the bodies of the smaller children already carried away by wild dogs. The town of Lakehome was younger than its oldest resident, Kanna Gelt, who first built a log home on Shimere’s shore. In a scant fifty years its population had grown to over five hundred souls. Fewer than twenty made it to the gates of Crath City. Most of those who survived the sabbers’ raid succumbed to the hardships of the Dust. Cratalacs alone accounted for nearly forty disappearances. Not a single night passed without...

Eyewitness Accounts of the Lakehome Incident, collated by Algar Omesta

CHAPTER 9

Evar

Evar followed the Soldier down the corridor leading to the reading room. The destruction of one Escape often presaged the appearance of another, and this was the place they’d appear.

The ceiling of the passage was far lower than that of the stack room. Even so, a giant as tall as Evar and his siblings all standing on each other’s shoulders wouldn’t have had to stoop. A similar passage led from the far side of the stacks to the second reading room, identical save it lacked the Mechanism.

The Mechanism lay at the centre of the room, surrounded by nearly a thousand reading desks. Presumably they had once been arranged in neat rows, but Evar had never seen anything except the current chaos—a chaos that he had actively worsened when playing endless games of “the floor is lava” while growing up. With his brothers and sister, he’d created innumerable desk-islands linked by weaving bridges of desks where the gaps grew progressively wider. In other places the tables had been upended and stacked to make walls, tunnels, and forts... Battles had played out here. Blood, both imaginary and real, had been spilled aplenty. But even with all four brothers against her Clovis had only ever been defeated by falling unaided—generally in pursuit of Starval whose acrobatic prowess exceeded even hers.

Once, smarting from yet another Clovis-related tumble into the “lava,” Evar had snarled from the ground that she might win every fight, but Starval could kill her in her sleep.

“So, if I fall out with Starval I’ll remember to deal with him before bedtime,” she’d replied.

“You’d only know you’d fallen out with him if he wanted you to know.” Starval was hard to read, a sunny liar on the surface but with darker waters swirling beneath.

Clovis had shrugged. “At least you’re an open book—you want to punch me in the face. Come and try it!” She’d showed her teeth in a fierce grin. “Anyway, Kerrol would tell me if Starval meant me harm. Kerrol knows how everyone’s feeling.” She had frowned at that, glancing towards the brother in question as if thinking that perhaps he knew too much for his own good.

—

As they had grown, those tensions had only worsened. They were young, overburdened with talent, and trapped with no target for their frustration but each other. Clovis believed Starval had murdered Mayland. Kerrol said maybe, but Kerrol said what was needed to achieve his unknown aims. Evar didn’t think Starval capable of killing any of them, whether they were true siblings or not.

Kerrol said that Evar was the drop of oil that kept the cogs and gears of their family from seizing. He called him the peacemaker and said that without Evar, Starval would have murdered him and Clovis in their sleep. He said without Evar Clovis would have butchered one of them in a moment of anger, and that he—Kerrol—would surely have tormented any survivors into madness just for the diversion it offered.

Evar did not enjoy that weight upon his shoulders, though he sensed the truth of it. Most often, the others spoke to each other through him these days. The Assistant had been sufficient to keep order among children, but she lacked the subtlety, or perhaps interest, to untangle the dysfunction of their adult lives.

The Soldier plotted an efficient path through the scattered desks. The Assistant waited by the Mechanism’s single door, perfectly still, her ivory eyes invisible in an ivory face.

Despite her emotional distance, the Assistant had been the closest thing to a mother that they’d had growing up. Each of them had projected the fading memories of their own mothers, lost generations ago, onto the Assistant’s ivory symmetry, until in time one became the other.

Like the Soldier, the Assistant’s flesh was as impervious as enamel, the only difference between them being that her sculpting leaned towards the female form, and where the Soldier’s eyes were no different from the rest of him, hers held a bluish glow from time to time. The glow came when a question required special thought, though Evar could never seem to guess which question might trigger it.

Also, sometimes when nobody was nearby, the Assistant could occasionally be observed acting as if she were seeing things, perhaps people, that weren’t there. At such times her eyes shone brightest.

As a mother the Assistant left a lot to be desired. She was like a tool designed specifically for one job being used for something to which it was poorly suited. A claw hammer used to arrange flowers, perhaps. But still, whatever force had compelled her to the task carried with it an innate if crudely realised kind of love that each child had in their own way reciprocated.

She had always been hardest on Evar when the siblings were children: even the others admitted it. He felt her judgement now as he approached. As a boy he’d protested the unfairness of her expectations: Clovis hadn’t known how to decline the verb either; Kerrol had also started the fight; Mayland had cheated on the test too; Starval had stolen the rolls and given him one.

“It isn’t fair,” he’d said, time and again, smarting beneath her sharp, non-physical discipline.

She’d replied only once but the words had stuck with him. She’d caught Evar and Starval trying to steal the Soldier’s sword while Mayland sought to distract him with questions about ancient wars. Mayland had scurried off with the Soldier in pursuit, leaving the other two brothers in the grip of two white hands, both boys dangling from an ankle. Starval had been sent on his way without his favourite knife. Evar had been told to translate, from Eleayan to Truc, a thick and dull tome on the gods of a long-vanished people. “But Starval only—”

“You should know better. Do better. Their minds are overfull. Each of them crammed with not just the words but the deepest meaning of the book they vanished into the Mechanism with. Those texts and the wisdom and knowledge of their authors are grafted to their souls. You, Evar Eventari, appear to have returned with nothing tangible, and thus I expect more of you.”

And so, he’d learned more, read more, studied more, tried to understand the expertise of his siblings in the hope that some might rub off and infect him with their particular competencies.

He did, however, remember how she had sat with him as a child when he caught a fever from some tainted book. The dedication with which she had mopped his brow, and watched over him while he shivered, had remained with him years after the fever broke.

And once, only once, when Clovis had broken his teenage heart, the Assistant had wrapped her ivory arms about him and held him close until his pride left him, and his tears flowed.

“Oh, Evar,” she had said, not sounding like herself at all. “Oh, Evar Eventari, she was never the one for you. That girl’s still waiting.”

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