Page 25 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Honestly! Get inside.” The woman took his arm and tried to steer him across the road to the open door behind her, only noticing Livira at this point. “Another one, Yute?” Her voice somewhere between disapproving and disappointed.

Yute tore his gaze from his hand. “Livira, meet Salamonda. Salamonda, Livira.”

“She looks like she’s been through a thorn bush backwards,” Salamonda said, not unkindly. “And she could do with a bath.”

“I’ve ha—” But Salamonda didn’t give Livira a chance to protest that she had already had a bath. She fastened a meaty hand around Livira’s forearm and began to pull her towards the doorway, abandoning Yute in the street.

The ground floor was a kitchen, crowded with cupboards, hung with hams and links of sausage, strings of garlic, onions, and other unknown but surely edible objects, the air thickened by heat and by an array of scents that filled Livira’s mouth with saliva. A whole meal dangled just out of her reach!

A large iron stove poured warmth into the room. A table took up half the free space, its scarred surface scattered with knives, pots, onions here, a carrot there, bottles of unknown liquids standing sentinel dangerously close to the edge. Three small windows, one arched, one square, one round, pierced the rear wall overlooking a precipitous drop to the city below, and through these light streamed, hurling shadows across the floor, turning dust motes to golden dancers, and gilding every curl of smoke that escaped the stove.

“No dawdling.” Salamonda drew Livira on behind her as if fearful that Yute, now coming in through the front door, would catch them and wrest his charge free of her grip.

“More climbing,” Livira muttered as they began to ascend a wooden staircase that wrapped tightly back and forth across the inner left-hand side of the tower. The steps were barely wide enough to accommodate Salamonda’s girth and creaked alarmingly the whole way up. Yute followed behind as they passed room after room, all comfortably cluttered and filled with a diversity of wonders, few of which Livira felt equipped to name.

The third floor was lined with shelves, dark wood polished to a high shine, and every shelf, floor to ceiling, groaned with books. In sections, runs of similar books made bands of colour: ochre, warm brown, dark crimson; other shelves were more chaotic, with additional books laid lengthways across the tops of others. A large table was mostly hidden beneath a jumble of leather-bound tomes, many left sprawled open with their pages fanning like the plumes of strange birds.

“Is this... is this the library?” Livira stared in awe.

Salamonda’s laughter was loud and deep and left no sting in its wake. “It’s ‘a’ library, child. Not ‘the’ library. A very small private library.” She carried on up the stairs.

The warmth and smell of the kitchen pursued them for several storeys, gradually surrendering to a mustier aroma that reminded Livira of the books that had been briefly thrust towards her in the Hall of Allocation. Other scents wrapped around the book-musk, many she didn’t recognise but one that made her think of the shack where Ella had wrought marvels out of balls of wind-weed, the calming scent of the oil that lurked in the core of those tough fibres.

“You stay down here,” Salamonda said as they reached the penultimate level.

Livira paused but the instruction was for Yute, and a tug had her climbing the remaining stairs.

The room at the top had windows facing in all directions, the wind kept out by many small panes of glass leaded together to fill the frames. Five poles studded with footplates ran up into the various turrets Livira had seen from the ground.

The room boasted a bed, a thick rug, two wardrobes, a chest of drawers, and a desk on which were scattered papers and round-bellied bottles of ink in several colours. It looked as if someone had left it moments before they arrived, and yet Livira had the sense that nobody had entered here for quite a while. She couldn’t put her finger on the reason she felt that way but even as she questioned it the impression hardened towards certainty. Her fingers itched with the desire to touch everything, pick it up, put the best objects in her pockets. But something in that air of quiet abandonment kept her hands at her sides.

Salamonda turned to look Livira up and down with a critical eye. Livira returned the scrutiny. She’d never seen anyone remotely as fat as the woman before her. Salamonda’s dark eyes were sunk within a face that seemed ready to burst, only barely contained by the rosy skin stretched over bulging cheeks. It wasn’t an unfriendly face, though, even now when furrowed in consideration.

Salamonda crossed the room, navigating between the poles—a tight squeeze in places. She opened the smaller of the two wardrobes. “These, I think.” She nodded and plucked out a blue dress, which while a world away from the finery that Serra Leetar had worn in the Allocation Hall was also a world away from anything Livira had ever owned, both in terms of quality and cleanliness. Salamonda motioned for Livira to open her cloak. The woman’s face fell when she did so.

“Gods below! We’ll have to burn those! And where are your shoes?”

“In the future.” Livira was tired of being judged.

Salamonda frowned then pressed away a smile before it could take command of her lips. She held the dress towards Livira, taking care not to make contact. “A little big...” She shrugged. “Choose three and bring them down. Find some shoes too. You’ll grow into them. I’ll be heating up the water.”

Livira said nothing, wondering both about the heating of water and about where the catch in all this might lie. Her Aunt Teela had offered little by way of wisdom about the world but one maxim she often repeated was: There’s always a price. She looked around again. She’d been aching to help herself, to fill her pockets in this place of plenty. The unexpected instruction to take what she needed had removed the wind from the sails of her imagined thefts.

Salamonda creaked away down the stairs, leaving her alone. Livira stood, tingling with an emotion she only half recognised. Kindness carries a weight; it’s a burden all its own when you have nothing. Some undeniable part of Livira wanted to bite the hands that offered so much so freely. Pride is stupid, pride is blind, but pride is also the backbone that runs through us: without pride there’s no spring-back, no resilience. Malar had been precise with his kindness as only those who’ve been hurt and humbled themselves can be. Livira’s lips were bruised where the back of his hand had caught her, but it was a different quality of sting to the one that ran through the salvation Yute offered. There would be a weight to these dresses that she hadn’t felt beneath Malar’s best cloak. And though the soldier could probably never explain all that, Livira felt that in his bones he understood it.

Ignoring the clothes, Livira inspected the nearest pole instead. A thin layer of dust covered each footplate. She climbed up, into the turret above, stopping only when her eyes were level with the observation slits and the cone-shaped roof lay inches above her head—ready to become her hat should she climb just a little higher. Both her shoulders nearly touched the wall. This was a view no adult could share.

From the slits Livira could see out across the city, from where it washed against the mountain’s roots all the way to the outer wall and beyond into the hazy infinities of the Dust. That same haze had swallowed her horizons every day of her life until this one. Turning her head, she could look out over the road they had been following. The road itself wasn’t visible—she would have to be able to lean out and look down to see it—but she could see the houses opposite the one she occupied. The building directly across the road was also a tower, but a wider one and built against the cliff like a drunk man leaning on his friend for support. A patch of faded colour caught Livira’s eye. Not on the building but on the rock some fifty feet above it. Protected from the weather by an overhang. Symbols had been daubed there in red paint, now faded with age, symbols not unlike those she had memorised from her scrap, but each of them half a yard tall. It seemed to Livira that this “writing” which Yute and his friends kept hoarded between the covers of their books was eager to escape. The scrap had found her out in the depths of the Dust, and here was more of it, in unexpected circumstances. Someone had risked their neck to set it there, high on the rock. Indeed, as Livira started her descent into the room, she found yet more writing, this time scored into the wood of the turret’s inner frame with a knife or some sharp edge. She ran her finger over the neatly executed letters, repeated the action more slowly, and then returned to the room to choose her garments.

Livira picked three smocks and a pair of leather shoes, the first she’d ever worn. She took the shoes off again—not understanding the laces—and then carried them down the creaking stairs.

—

“That was quick.” Yute was sitting in the shadowed corner of the room below, perched on the edge of a wooden chair as if ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Beside him, its head level with his elbow, sat a creature that seemed to be mostly fur.

Livira took a step back up the stairs and hugged the bundled clothing protectively to her chest. “What’s that?”

Yute looked surprised. “Wentworth is a cat. I doubt you’ve seen a bigger one.”

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