Page 59 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

She had learned less about the mechanics by which people interact than she had about the alchemy of substances both familiar and foreign. She had learned more about the history of the empire than about the workings of the modern metropolis at her doorstep. And more about the dead, both famous and infamous, than about the living. Crath City’s inhabitants were almost as much of a mystery to her at thirteen years old as they had been on the day she arrived. But she had deepened her friendships around the table that she’d first been assigned to. Arpix, Meelan, Jella, and Carlotte were brothers and sisters to her now—fair targets for mischief and bickering, but trusted companions whose strengths significantly outnumbered their flaws.

However, what had marked time more significantly than the addition of learning or of height, or the coming of her seasons, was the arrival of new trainees, younger and smaller than herself. That and the changing of tables in the schoolroom. Like flotsam on a wooden river, time was carrying her along the inevitable course from the back of Master Logaris’s chamber towards the door through which she would eventually leave for good.

—

Livira had of course tried to return to the library chamber with the portal in it. Many times. She’d never been able to get back inside, and nobody seemed to believe that she ever had. Even if she could get in, the assistant appeared to have sealed the portal and then died.

She had come to the conclusion that her search for a way back to the Exchange and to Evar had to start among the roots of the library itself. This of course was a mystery of great interest to librarians, and naturally all the books deemed to be important had been hidden long ago within the twists and turns of indexes not shared with mere trainees.

Livira had never been one to be thwarted by rules. She had extended her searches along various tangents, pursuing crumbs of knowledge that others might have overlooked, venturing further out into the extremes of the library than was wise, permitted, or even vaguely sensible. If she could have stolen a horse and knew how to ride, she would have galloped off into the most distant chambers and plucked books at random from strange shelves in the hope of enlightenment.

She could also look for Evar’s chamber, of course. But since he, and his people for centuries before him, had been trapped within the room, it must be a forbidden chamber, and if she could open those sorts of doors then she’d have been back to the Exchange long ago. Livira told herself that her main quest was to reach the Exchange, and that alongside such a great achievement the rediscovery of one strange young man would merely be an added benefit. However, despite her own claim, and the certainty that Evar would long ago have left the wood through one of the many portals, her daydreams did constantly return her to the conversation that had been so rudely interrupted. Her imagination had many times brought their discussion to a more civilised conclusion followed by all manner of adventures as they explored the place together.

Livira’s searches hadn’t been entirely fruitless. There were books, as yet unclaimed, that spoke of the library’s origins. Many of them read like mythology, the ones that didn’t read like fiction or plain lies. Though, of course, the truth of a place like the library would probably sound stranger than any fiction, less plausible than a lie.

Her most recent find, from the book drifts of a distant chamber numbered in the hundreds, was a child’s story filled with woodcut illustrations. She had been on the point of discarding it when her eyes found a familiar name: Jaspeth. A name Livira had heard only once before, mentioned in passing by Evar among the trees of the Exchange. Instantly, the book had her full attention.

It told the story of two brothers, Jaspeth and Irad, the former depicted as a devil with cloven hooves who stole books from children, the latter shown as an angel showering illuminated pages from the heavens. Irad, it seemed, had built a library in the city his father had founded. The first library, in the first city. And his jealous younger brother was set on tearing it down. Jaspeth would whisper into the ears of sleeping children that knowledge was dangerous, a sin, and that he was protecting them. Irad, on the other hand, would answer the questions of even the smallest child with great patience.

On the last page, one child, angry with her own brother and her family who favoured him, came to Irad asking for a way she could punish them.

“Punish who?” Irad asked.

“All of them!”

“Everyone?” Irad asked, his smile serene.

“Every last one of them!”

And Irad had given the child a small box and the key to open it with.

The child took the box to the middle of the city, climbed the tallest tower, and opened it. It wasn’t clear from the woodcut image what exactly had flown out from the box. Strange squiggly lines? But what was obvious from the final image was that the squiggles killed everyone and ate the city down to the last stone.

Livira had closed the back cover, blinking at the illustration burned into the leather, showing Irad wearing his brother’s horns and Jaspeth wearing his brother’s wings. And the book had trembled in Livira’s hands.

Quite what message children were intended to take from the text, Livira wasn’t sure. But her own conclusion was that there was no reason why this book’s take on the origins of the library should be dismissed any more easily than those in any of the other books she’d found thus far.

Although of no help at all, the story of Irad and Jaspeth’s war over the library that Irad had built stayed with Livira, and it was Irad, angel-winged and devil-horned, that she pictured when she thought of what stood between her and returning to the Exchange.

Livira shook off the memory and hurried on towards the great outdoors. Today, for the first time since her arrival, she was to escape the library, see the sun, feel the wind, and experience freedom of the body rather than of the mind!

—

Master Logaris had set a challenge to their table to find as many of the books on a list requested by the laboratory as they could. These days Livira sat at table three, near the middle of the room with Arpix and four older trainees. Meelan and Carlotte, considered less advanced in their studies, sat behind them at table two. Jella worked with the bookbinders now after a brief stint in the scriptorium, copying books that house readers requested. Livira and the rest of that original “first table” sat with Jella at meals and she seemed much happier in her newest role, freed from constant study and examination.

Livira’s reward for recovering the most books from the list was to deliver the haul to the laboratory. She chose Arpix to help her despite his lack of muscles. He had been tall and thin when she first met him, and was considerably taller these days but no less thin.

“We’ll need to take this slow,” Arpix said as they approached the mountainside exit.

“How will that help?” Livira asked. “The faster we get there the less time we’ll have to carry this lot for.” Her shoulders were already aching where the straps of the two satchels were biting in.

“Our eyes will need some time to adjust to the daylight. It’s not the same outside.”

Livira shrugged. “I’ll squint.”

Arpix was right though. It always seemed bright in the library but the sun hammering the mountainside was something else again and shards of its light brought tears to her eyes no matter how tight she screwed them up.

“Careful!” One of the library guards caught her elbow as she passed. “It’s steep. Take a moment.”

---