Page 32 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

It was hardly the first time Evar’s siblings had asked for answers to the fundamental unknowns of their captivity. None of them really expected anything new from him this time, but Starval liked to be told things several times—perhaps looking for inconsistencies that might reveal a lie.

“The histories say a lot of things. Some of it contradictory. They say things about different empires, and we don’t know which empire surrounds us. They say things about different worlds, and we don’t know which world we’re on. They say things about different times, and we don’t know when our kind became trapped here. They say things about different species... and we don’t even know which species we are. We know we’re not icthid because they live beneath the waves. We know we’re not ganar or skeer because they have fur and armour-plates respectively. But what we don’t know vastly outweighs what we do know.”

Clovis spat. “I’d know a sabber if I saw one again.” Her eyes clouded with memory. “Two of everything we have two of. Nose and mouth not so very different. It’s how their legs bend. I’ll never forget that.” A shudder.

“The only relevant lesson I can find in the past,” Evar said, reclaiming the conversation, “is that when things start to break, they get worse not better. A leak becomes a flood. So, expect the trickle of Escapes from that Mechanism that you refuse to leave alone to become a deluge until the stacks are thick with them and we’re fighting this battle at the wall.”

“All the more reason we should end the ones that got away.” Clovis spat again. “Two at once!” She shook her head in disbelief. “And how big was the one that got sucked back in?” Her stare challenged him to repeat his claims.

“Four,” Evar said.

“What?” Clovis darkened.

“Four Escapes.” He realised that he had been the only one to see the full horror of the situation and that he had mentioned neither of the miracles. “Three regular ones, but the Soldier destroyed two of them.”

“Four?” Kerrol asked, horrified.

“The Soldier?” Starval frowned, glancing towards the enamel warrior. “The Soldier fought Escapes?”

Quite what the Soldier’s function was Evar had never fully established, but the Assistant had barely acknowledged the Escapes before today. It had been as if they didn’t exist. One part of the library incapable of opposing another. The Soldier had watched for them, but only to direct the siblings. He hadn’t intervened until now.

“He attacked the first and then the second attacked him.” Now Evar thought back on it, it had been as if the Soldier had declared war and the Escapes had responded—the truce between them suddenly void. “It might have been because the first one was going to kill me.” Evar turned towards the Soldier, who had stood statue-still this whole time, the ivory mask of his face devoid of expression. “You did it to save me?”

The Soldier snorted. Evar had never heard him sound more like a person. “I did it to save the book.”

“What book?” Starval looked confused.

Clovis stalked towards them, small but bristling with the potential for violence. “Not that tatty thing from the tower?”

Kerrol leaned in, blue eyes fixing on the corner of the book where it protruded from Evar’s jerkin. “What’s it about?”

“Evar doesn’t know. Ask her.” Clovis pointed to the Assistant. “It’s a language she never taught us. But she knows. Don’t you?”

The Assistant’s eyes glowed a pale violet but her only answer was the same silence that most questions received.

“Let me see the book,” Kerrol said.

Evar didn’t want that. Even if Kerrol couldn’t read it, it was still Evar’s name that was written on the first page. It had been intended for him, Evar; the line began: Evar! Don’t turn the page. I’m in the Exchange. Find me at the bottom— He didn’t want Kerrol turning that page any more than he would want his brother rummaging about among the secret thoughts within his head. And yet this was Kerrol. If he wanted the book, he would get it. He wouldn’t even have to steal it like Starval, or take it like Clovis: in time, a much shorter time than Evar liked to admit, he would steer Evar into giving it to him, and when he did so he would think it for the best.

Slowly, Evar eased the book from its place tight against his chest. The more he resisted sharing it the more the others would understand its importance to him, the more likely it would become a stick to beat him with. Kerrol would know that already, of course, but despite his brother’s insights into the rest of them, the depth of Kerrol’s vision seemed unable to penetrate his own skin, leaving him as afloat on the sea of his own emotions, prejudice, and desire as the rest of them. Giving him this victory would lessen the advantage he would take from it.

“Here.” Evar reached out, offering the book.

But a pale hand took it. The Assistant plucked the book from his grasp and studied it with eyes so bright that their hot blue light cast the shadow of her other hand across the leather. She ran her gleaming fingers over the worn cover as if reading a tactile story all her own among the tiny bumps and indentations.

“It’s Evar’s book,” she said, her eyes dimming. “Let him keep it.”

And as she handed it back it seemed that she had uncovered something. For there, where there had been no title or decoration, ghostly lines held the remnants of the light that had spilled from her eyes. Within the faint outline of a circle lay a thousand barely visible lines, scrawled without purpose, a tangle, the mass of them growing denser towards the centre. And out of that chaos a shape might be imagined, a figure, a person walking towards Evar as if emerging from the smoke of some unseen fire.

Cavers are, for many, the very definition of bravery. For a non-subterranean species to face the fear of tight spaces in depths where light has never ventured requires courage. But ask the caver who they admire, and without fail they will name the divers. Those who practise that same madness, but through flooded caverns and flowing tunnels.

Secrets of the Deep, by Miles Stanton

CHAPTER 14

Evar

Evar’s lost brother, Mayland, had had intimate knowledge of an endless number of mythologies. Mythology was, he said, the product of history. Just as the trees of ancient forests fell and became buried and compacted by each subsequent generation, covered over, buried ever deeper until the crushing pressure of untold fathoms changed their structure into coal, history itself became buried by the flood of years and crystallised into myth. He knew so many tales concerning the origin of all things, and told them with such gusto, that after his disappearance the others had perhaps missed the entertainment of his storytelling even more than they had missed their brother.

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