Page 51 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“You’re not her.” Evar had often imagined meeting someone new, usually a character from the pages of one of the books he so regularly consumed, someone—anyone—other than the three people he spent all his days with. He had never imagined that the first words out of his mouth would be a complaint that the stranger was the wrong person. He sat up and shuffled back to create some space between them.

The girl raised her head and gave him a withering look. She got to her knees. She was a child. A skinny, ink-stained child with a bruised face. Strangely, the blue robe she wore was dry, not even splashed, though it was spattered with dark stains that were not ink.

“Who are you?” Evar asked, but at that point she noticed her surroundings for the first time and stood, turning in a slow circle, drinking it all in. Evar stood too.

Eventually the girl’s dark eyes returned to him. “You’re very tall.”

“I...” The unexpected observation caught him off balance. “You’re quite short.” He frowned and tried to get the conversation back on track. “Where did you come from?”

The girl elevated one eyebrow at that and glanced meaningfully back at the pool’s black water, still dancing from her sudden emergence.

“I mean, what’s down there?”

“Down?” The girl echoed his frown. “I came from the library. I’m Livira. Who are you?”

“Evar Eventari.” The Assistant had always called him that. Whether it was his name when he first stepped into the Mechanism, he wasn’t sure. He opened his mouth and found he’d run out of words. A stranger. An actual stranger. How did you speak to people you didn’t know?

“What is this place?” Livira wandered over to the next pool.

“I...” Evar watched the child go. She was very bold for someone so small. “I don’t know.” And then, because it seemed an insufficient answer: “I was looking for someone.”

Livira turned round and offered a lopsided grin, the side of her mouth swollen from some recent impact. “You found someone.”

“A woman,” he said.

“Oh.” She looked back at the pool she stood beside. “Each of these must go somewhere else. This is an in-between kind of place. How many have you tried?”

“Uh, none.”

“None!” Livira peered at him. “Have you only just got here?”

“I was choosing,” he said defensively. “There are a lot of them.”

“You came from the library too?”

He nodded. “But this was the only way out from my part. We’ve been trapped for years, centuries. We—”

“What’s her name?”

“Whose?” For a moment Evar could only think of Clovis.

Livira rolled her eyes and came back to the black pool. “The woman you’re looking for.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a gleaming brass claw. Kneeling she began to cut a mark into the turf beside the water.

“I, uh, I don’t know her name.”

Livira stood up to admire her handiwork. The torn corner of a page lay on the grass beside her foot. “You don’t know where you are or who you’re looking for?” She glanced his way, perhaps impressed by him for the first time. “I’m doing the same sort of thing myself. Only I’m after a book I can’t read for someone I hate.”

“Which book do you want?” It didn’t seem important, but Evar felt it steered the conversation away from the fact he didn’t even know who he was searching for.

“Reflections on Solitude, by Arqnaxis Lox,” the girl said. “It’s written in Relquian.”

Evar furrowed his brow. He’d never even heard of Relquian, let alone the book. “I—” But a figure glimpsed between the trees stole whatever he’d been about to say. “The Assistant!” He started to run.

He could see her more clearly now, putting something down beside a distant pool. “Hey! It’s me!”

He leapt a pool in one bound and wove his path between two trees, ducking where the boughs hung low. The Assistant turned away, dappled sunlight gleaming on white enamel shoulders.

“Wait!”

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