Page 54 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“If you laid ladders across the tops of the shelves it would give a whole new way to access the aisles.” Livira told the Raven about her theories as they walked. “If I were head librarian I’d have walkways over the top and ropes you could swing on or slide along. And horses. Horses would be good. You could get along much better like that. Malar had a good horse. Malar’s this man who— Well, we’ve found a ladder...”

They’d left the labyrinth behind them. Livira wondered if ladders were rarer in this chamber or perhaps there was a cluster of them somewhere where hundreds of them had gathered, seeking safety in numbers.

Livira’s arms were pleased at the prospect of being able to put the Raven down at last, but the rest of her was less happy about the idea. She climbed awkwardly with her burden, still discussing the matter.

“I think you’ll be happy up here. You’ll be able to see for miles. Well, to the walls at least. And I guess you’ve not been up high for a while... Since you... broke your wing.”

She got to the top and heaved the bird up. “This will be all right, won’t it?” The bird looked dead. It reminded her of Henton, the soldier with Malar and Jons. He’d died on the journey from the Dust. She wasn’t sure when. Like the Raven he’d died when no one was looking at him. People seemed to choose those moments. It seemed a lonely thing, dying.

“I’ll sit with you a bit.” Livira left her hand on the bird’s back and gazed out across the shelf tops, her eyes prickling. The urgency of her mission slipped away from her. She got out the last of the apples she’d brought into the library against the rules and took a half-hearted bite. Without thinking about it she started to stroke the Raven.

Later—she couldn’t say how long had passed—a flash of white at the corner of her vision caught her attention. She turned and saw nothing. But something had crossed the small patch of floor she could see in the aisle below her, far to her left. She was sure of it. Something white. She stood, and immediately the drops to either side reached up for her, filling her with dizziness.

“Hey!” She began to run, hunched low so that if she started to fall, she could throw herself at the wooden floor beneath her feet. In one hand she still had the uneaten half of her last apple. “Hey, you!”

Straying closer to the edge allowed her to see more of the aisle floor twenty yards below her. A pure white figure was walking away. Another assistant. “Hey! Stop!”

The assistant stopped and turned around slowly while Livira closed on it as swiftly as her courage would allow. She came to a breathless halt directly above it. The assistant looked up. Like the one at the portal to the Exchange it was sexless, but the shape of this one in the chest and hips suggested male rather than female. Looking down at him redoubled the dizziness already making her sway.

“Yes?” A faint blue light flickered in his eyes, and his voice, though soft, reached her without effort. If seeing a young girl hurrying along the shelf tops surprised him in any way, none of it showed on the white enamel of his face or ruffled the calmness of his tone. Before she could speak the assistant seemed to notice something, tilting its head to the side as he stared at her. Livira’s fingers closed on air. Something rattled softly around her feet. She looked at her hand. The half-eaten apple was gone. A few pips lay scattered on the shelf top below her hand. The assistant spoke again: “You are not permitted to bring food into the library.”

“Well, that’s a stupid rule for a start!” Livira had more to say but looking down at the pips and the edge of the shelf with the too-distant floor beyond it had been a mistake. She shuffled her feet to keep upright. “Why don’t you—” And she fell into the empty space below.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Four-score men and four-score more,

Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.

Juvenile Amusements, by Samuel Arnold

CHAPTER 25

Livira

Livira jolted awake from a dream of falling where she hit the ground with just enough force to emerge into a mirror world on the other side of it.

The scream died on her lips as she sat up. She was in a circular clearing larger than those in the labyrinth. The shelves that terminated at its edge were the shortest she’d seen, just five yards tall, and those behind them increased in height steadily, giving the feeling that she was in the bottom of a vast bowl.

Her body was a single dull ache. “I fell!” She remembered all of it. Still sitting, she looked left then right and found the assistant standing close by. In one hand he held Reflections on Solitude, his fingers whiter than the creamy leather of its cover. “Yute.” Livira coughed out a laugh. “You’re whiter than Yute even.” Her thoughts felt fragmented as if her fall had broken them along with her bones.

“This is an unusual book.” The assistant held it up.

“It was hard to find.” Livira tried to get to her feet and found herself incapable, limbs making only token efforts to obey. “Very hard.”

“By some measures it should be the easiest book to locate in the whole library,” the assistant said. “Given that it is the only book we have two copies of.”

“I couldn’t find the other one.” Livira coughed. Her chest hurt. “Where is it? Where am I for that matter? And where’s my bird?” Arpix had said that assistants were rarely helpful, but Livira had too many questions not to try for some answers.

“The second copy is concealed behind other books. Your predecessors have organised many volumes in a hidden index that exists behind the rows displayed on the shelves. It seems an unhelpful system.” He lifted the book in his hand, regarding it with blank eyes. “This should be returned.”

“Wait!” Panic managed to get Livira to her feet. “Can’t you return the other one?”

“Why would I?”

Livira thought fast and talked faster. “An assistant brought that one to me. Someone wants to read it. The other one is lost. My friends have been looking for it for days and haven’t found it. Isn’t this place here so we can read what we want?”

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