Page 78 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

No!” Evar reached for Livira as she fell. Still entangled with the Escape, she vanished into the same pool that she’d emerged from.

Another Escape came tearing between the trees and for a few frantic moments he was dodging blows. He used his speed to keep the nearest tree between them.

When he’d seen the first one drag itself from its pool with more pools smoking darkness behind, his heart had quailed and he’d tensed to run. At home he’d always had the pool as a place of sanctuary to make for, confident that the Soldier or the others would add their strength to his and make short work of any pursuer.

Here, though, as he’d turned to run, he saw Livira. Perhaps he might have outrun the Escapes but he’d known she wouldn’t make it. He’d come from witnessing the massacre of children and, despite the common-sense part of his brain screaming at him to leave, he’d known in an instant that he was going nowhere without her.

The Escape that Clovis had saved him from had been a particularly dangerous one, larger than normal, long limbed, armed with scythes against his knife. These ones hadn’t the same reach. These came with tooth and claw. His makeshift spear had given him the advantage.

At home he had been second-best at everything—taught by masters. Seen as second-rate. Dispatching the first Escape with Livira looking on had lit a fire in his blood. He had in that moment understood what Clovis had always been trying to tell him. It had been hard to learn on the losing end of her beatings. But wetting his spear with the black blood of a foe in defence of someone else had unlocked that lesson. And perhaps being washed so recently in the Soldier’s bloody experience of real death and real killing had finally put an edge on all Clovis’s teaching.

Evar danced to the side. The creature lunged, reaching around the tree with grasping talons. Evar caught the ebony limb lower down, braced his feet against the tree trunk, and hauled his attacker face first into the other side.

With a twist he leapt clear of the next enemy and threw himself after Livira. To his shock, the pool, which had seemed as endlessly deep as all the others, had become a shallow depression. He hit the bottom of the dusty basin hard, barely recovering his breath in time to scramble away as a hulking Escape hurried up to pound him.

Whilst only a small fraction of the pools seemed to be corrupted it still meant that there was a continual and growing stream of enemies converging on Evar’s position. They might be less deadly than the last one Clovis killed but it was obvious they would soon overwhelm him. Even so, with a wild cry, half despair, half exhilaration, Evar hurled himself at the thick-limbed Escape that had chased him from the dry pool. He writhed in the air as Clovis had taught him, arching his back to evade the foe’s clutches and at the same time trailing one arm wide to drag the razored edge of Livira’s brass claw across the Escape’s throat.

Evar came to a halt on the dry mud where Livira’s pool had been and stood his ground. He couldn’t just abandon her—she was the newest of the only four flesh-and-blood people in his life. And perhaps already the one he liked best. He hadn’t been able to help young Clovis, and it had hurt him deep inside. How could he walk away from a chance, however slim, to truly save a life?

A circle of Escapes began to build around him, reluctant to advance into the pool, perhaps wary after seeing their brethren dispatched with such economy. Evar twisted and turned, snarling, working to keep any of them from having a clear line of attack from behind.

You’d be a ghost there too.

Livira’s words, spoken into the curious quiet of his mind. She’d said he would be a ghost in her world too. Even if there wasn’t just baked earth beneath his feet, he would only be able to watch as the Escape killed her. She wouldn’t even know he was there. His chance to make a difference had been here—and it was gone.

Evar’s snarl turned to one of frustration. His frustration grew as he realised that even if he could break free of the circle of enemies around him, with all his turning he no longer knew the way back to his home pool. On one axis lay different worlds, on the other the past and present stretched off in opposite directions. Cursing, Evar jinked right then darted left into the brief gap that appeared as the Escapes reacted.

He dodged, ducked, and twisted, his feet scarring the turf as he wove a path around his foes. At one point he leapt high, caught a sturdy branch, and swung above two spine-backed Escapes. At each opportunity he looked frantically for the knife he’d stuck point-down into the soil to mark his home pool.

“Missed it!” He must have. He’d come too far. Behind him an ink-black horde boiled after him, more coming between the trees in other directions. “Damnation.”

Evar dived headfirst into the next pool.

—

Evar climbed out of the pool hardly noticing the action. Livira’s revelation that she saw doors of light hadn’t changed what he saw but it had changed how it felt to use them. He turned immediately and stared at the rippling water, Livira’s claw at the ready, jutting between the first two fingers of his fist. All his muscles seemed to tremble, eager to do battle should any of the Escapes follow him.

When at last he was confident there would be no pursuit he backed away slowly and let his attention stray to his surroundings. A library chamber yawned around him, but not his, or at least he didn’t think so. There were no crops, and the stacks were barely waist height, reaching for no more than a hundred yards around the pool, except in one direction where they marched off for a considerable way. Everywhere else the floor lay bare, stretching away to the distant walls.

Evar turned and saw the Assistant. “You!” She lifted a book from the pool and added it to a small stack by her feet.

She drew another tome from the waters, perfectly dry. An assistant, not the Assistant, Evar had to remind himself. This one was identical to his in every way save she had no blemish where the Assistant had a small, cratered dent on her left temple, no cuts on her palms, no wound on her shoulder. Also, where his Assistant, like the Soldier, was ivory and cream, this one was the white enamel of a perfect tooth, so gleaming and immaculate it seemed unreal.

“Can you see me?” Evar waved a hand at the assistant.

She paused to look at him but said nothing.

“You can. I chose the right direction at least. I’m real here.” He reached to press a hand on a book stack just to prove it to himself and stumbled, meeting with no resistance. His sense of balance abandoned him as a rush of images and knowledge ran through him, a swift, confusing mix, changing when his hand moved through different books.

“I am a ghost... But you can see me!”

The assistant watched him for a moment longer then returned to her work. She appeared to be stocking the entire chamber with books drawn from or via the Exchange. To fill it to the level of Evar’s home chamber would require ceaseless labour for decades, even lifetimes.

“Can you hear me?” Evar waved again, loath to touch her after the nightmare visions that contact with the Soldier had sent flooding through him.

Once more the assistant looked at him, said nothing, and returned to her work.

“At least tell me when this is,” Evar said. He stared around at the thousands of book stacks and the emptiness all about them. “Is it before or after I was born? Is it before or after I came out of the Mechanism?”

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