Page 31 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Evar felt like someone who’d been waiting his whole life for something to happen, constantly worried by the fear that it already had, and that he had missed it. The book—that was something, something that was happening to him, and as his fingers tightened around the covers, he swore that, whatever it was, he wouldn’t let it slip his grasp.

—

By the time Evar and Starval made it back to the pool the two surviving Escapes had already lost themselves among the stacks. Clovis and Kerrol were waiting for them with the Assistant and the Soldier. A council of war. Although there were only six of them now, they were rarely all in the same place at the same time. Somehow the depth of the siblings’ loneliness seemed to have made the company of a brother or sister hard to bear. The knowledge that each had years ago sucked the other dry of entertainment was a burden that made the silences uncomfortable.

Each knew the other so well that they might as well talk to their own foot for all the novelty they would get out of conversation. Besides, one of them was always in the Mechanism. It was their drug of choice, and even if the narcotics that Evar had read of were available in the library, he found it hard to believe any of them would have the potency to break the addiction that drew Starval, Clovis, and Kerrol back to the Mechanism the moment it was their turn.

“The wise move would be to stop using the Mechanism.” Evar said it just so that it had been said.

Clovis barked a harsh laugh. “Quitting the battlefield can sometimes be a step towards winning the war. But here, for us, the Mechanism is the war! What else is there for us except to grow old and die among these rotting books?”

Evar looked away, out across the border wall to the forest of stacks beyond. Clovis wasn’t alone in her swiftness to forget that these “rotting books” were all he had. The Mechanism had given him a blur where his first eight years had been, followed by a gaping hole where the others held memories of training and study decades deep. He’d refused any and all suggestions that he might return to it. For all he knew the next time it might spit him out ancient and alone, with his memory so blank that he wouldn’t even know that he’d lost anything. If nothing else, he worried that if he spent a day in it without incident, he might emerge to find that the others had killed each other. Sometimes the burden of holding together his randomly assembled family felt too much. Other days it felt like all he had—which was also too much.

Kerrol set a hand to his chin, perhaps seeking gravitas amid the stubble. He looked slowly around at them all as if being the tallest somehow made him their leader. “I’ve conducted a study into the matter. The Assistant was good enough to locate some relevant texts...”

Heads turned towards the Assistant. Despite her name, getting assistance from her was extremely rare. She’d fed and raised them, equipped them to read in a considerable number of languages, and protected them from hurting each other and themselves. Beyond that she seemed bound by constraints that allowed her to be of very little help either in the locating of books or in the business of finding a way out of the library. She wouldn’t even say how far beyond the doors the library extended. Starval maintained that the outside world lay behind one of the four exits. Mayland had thought it unlikely, saying that the few books that mentioned the library directly claimed that it had many chambers.

“The tomes I’ve been reading concern devices from antiquity that seem related to the Mechanism.” Kerrol reclaimed his siblings’ attention. “What’s leaking from the Mechanism appears to be excess creative energy—the fuel that powers its proper function and which, when used correctly, draws on the book brought into the Mechanism, taking its form and direction from the pages we wish to experience. When outside the Mechanism the stuff is, as we’ve seen, dangerous. It can take passing form from the books in the stacks but to be properly sustained it needs a person.”

“But why’s it always so aggressive?” Evar could still see the insectoid looming over the desks, jaws wide as it hunted them. “So destructive?”

“Perhaps that’s what’s inside us.” Clovis looked up from inspecting one of her knives. “We hate our lives and hence ourselves.”

Evar bit back on his reply. Clovis wanted war. If none came, then war against herself might be the logical alternative. But the rest of them? He wasn’t particularly impressed with himself—but “hate” felt like too strong a word. “Disappointment” was closer.

“Who’s doing it? That’s the important question,” Starval said.

“Does there have to be a who?” Evar asked. “Can’t it just be broken? Things break. Things wear out.”

“In the library?” Starval shook his head. “Has the light ever so much as flickered? The texts talk about the library’s age in geological terms. It’s built to last.”

Evar frowned. “We have a Soldier and an Assistant. Perhaps there are others whose job is to maintain things, to fix them if they go wrong. Only, the Mechanism is in here and they’re out there.” He pointed in the direction of the char wall. The char wall’s corridor was identical to those that led to the other three doors, except this corridor was crammed to the ceiling with books, all of them roasted into charcoal by some immense heat. When they were children the Soldier had forbidden any attempt to try to dig a way through but, when the Assistant had said they were grown, Evar had begun his tunnel immediately. He’d almost died three times in three separate collapses, but in the end, utterly filthy and after weeks of labour, he’d reached the door, to find it white and unsullied. And, like the others, this fourth door had resisted him. He’d beaten on it, wept against it, even cut himself once more and made a circle of his soot-stained blood. Finally, black as any Escape, he had crawled from his hundred-yard tunnel in defeat. Still trapped.

“Someone’s doing it,” Starval insisted. “Trust me. The Mechanism didn’t just break. I know murder. Someone is trying to kill us all.”

“Sabbers.” Clovis slammed her knife back into its sheath with an energy that suggested she was imagining driving it into an enemy’s neck.

“They came themselves,” Starval said. “Last time. So why not again?”

“If we knew how they came here then we might have an answer to that question.” Kerrol didn’t look at Clovis, but they all knew she was there when the sabbers came, there when they slaughtered everyone, saved only because her mother threw her into the Mechanism. Whether the book of war that had accompanied her had been chosen at random Clovis was unable to say, any more than she could explain the sudden appearance of hundreds of sabbers in the encampment among the stacks.

Evar had seen Kerrol remind her of these facts before. It seemed to be a goad he used to steer her in the direction he chose. It was easier to see when he did it to the others. Harder to understand how he got under Evar’s own skin so effortlessly and aimed him towards ends he would not otherwise have chosen. All Evar knew was that when he thought he saw it—when he fought against it—that had always seemed to be part of Kerrol’s plan all along and he still found himself doing his brother’s will and not even hating him for the offence. At least not enough to do anything about it.

Starval turned to Evar. “What do the histories teach us? You’re our Mayland now.”

Mayland had always liked to say there was nothing new under the sun—whatever anyone said, or did, he’d tell the others that history had seen it before and that the answer to any current dilemma was written somewhere, and had been waiting for them all their lives and more down among the dust and must of the stacks.

“I’m not—” Evar began his usual denial.

“You don’t know half what he did about the past.” Starval waved Evar’s objection away. “You don’t know half what I know about murder, or Clovis knows about war, or Kerrol knows about changing someone’s mind. But you’re still our second-best historian, assassin, warrior, and whatever it is that Kerrol is.”

“Psychologist,” Kerrol said.

“Too short a word for that shit,” Clovis grunted.

Evar knew it was true though he didn’t like to admit it. You can’t grow up in such a sterile environment alongside masters like his siblings and not pick up anything. In fact, they’d all tried to make him their apprentice at some point or other. He’d thought at the time they were just looking for an audience for their skill. But looking back he’d realised that perhaps they’d all felt a little guilty in their own ways. Guilty that they’d emerged from the Mechanism with gifts and he with only the wound where something had been ripped away.

“What do the histories say?” Starval asked again.

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