Page 88 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

A herald stepped forward in black and vivid shades of red that Livira had never seen before. He began describing the king’s many titles and attributes in a voice so booming and exaggerated that Livira had to fight not to let her nervous tension find explosive release in a howl of laughter.

After what seemed an interminable announcement, the herald stated that the diplomatic confirmations would begin, then stepped back, allowing Livira a clear view of the king again. She stared, trying to marry the idea of a ruler of nations who bent truth to his whim with this puffy, painted old man. She was still staring when a growl from Meelan drew her attention to the figures approaching the throne.

“Algar...” Livira muttered the man’s name under her breath. Lord Algar came in wearing the white robe of his office, his curling powder-grey wig abandoned to reveal thin iron-coloured hair, hanging lank around the contours of his skull. The crimson eyepatch and disc of gold pinned at his chest were the only flashes of colour on him.

A young woman and two young men followed him, all dressed to stand before the king. Serra Leetar showed few signs of the girl who’d entered the Allocation Hall alongside Livira all those years ago. She’d grown into the woman she’d been destined to be, fit to stand among the aristocracy. The flow of her satin dress revealed all the curves that Livira’s flat, angular body still lacked.

“King Oanold.” Lord Algar made a low bow. “Allow me to present Leetar Hosten on the day of her appointment to junior diplomat in your esteemed service.”

“Hosten?” Livira hissed, recognising the name and turning to grab Meelan’s arm. “She’s your...”

“Sister.” Meelan spoke past gritted teeth as if the admission pained him.

Details of the two young men also being appointed swept over Livira without registering. She kept looking back and forth between Leetar and Meelan, searching for clues she should have seen long ago. This was why they were here? To see Meelan’s sister honoured? Meelan’s presence made some sense now. But surely Yute didn’t think Livira and Leetar were friends because they’d stood for allocation together?

Lord Algar and his delegation retreated, accompanied by polite applause. Leetar shot a hot-eyed look in Livira’s direction, or at her brother, it was hard to tell. Algar’s single eye sought Livira out and a small but ugly smile curled his lips as he swept past.

The next delegation advanced into the dregs of the diplomats’ applause: Hiago Abdalla from the laboratory wearing formal robes in a rather unpleasant shade of orange—possibly one chosen as the best at hiding chemical stains. He brought two well-dressed young women to be confirmed as alchemists, both older than Leetar—mid-twenties at least, in Livira’s opinion. They looked more like the daughters of well-to-do merchants than aristocracy. Perhaps those with less wealth had to wait longer, or maybe the stuff of a trained alchemist just took more time to filter out than that required for a diplomat.

Suddenly it struck Livira that Meelan wasn’t here to watch his sister. That same wealth was going to purchase him a librarian’s whites today, regardless of what table he sat on. Would Livira’s expulsion from the service be equally public? She stared at her knees, seeing only the blackness of her robes. Certainly, the king would appreciate her public censure. Lord Algar would at last have won his bet, and more besides. She imagined the crowd’s unrestrained applause at seeing a lowly duster, with ambitions far above her station, put in her proper place. Livira prayed to whatever gods might be listening that Yute would have the backbone to resist such pressure and conduct that part of the night’s proceedings in private with the other deputies.

“Come, Livira.”

Livira realised that Yute had got to his feet beside her. She looked up at him hopelessly.

“I know you’ll miss being a trainee.” He made a smile for her, kindness in his pink eyes. “It’ll all be over soon enough.”

She considered just leaving. Turning her back on the whole thing. But she couldn’t do that to Yute. Whatever else had happened down the years, Yute had put his faith in her that day in the Allocation Hall, and she wouldn’t disgrace him any more than she had to. She understood the pressures that had driven him to this action. Those she’d identified in intercepted correspondence must be only a fraction of the powerful individuals who had turned their will to oppose her. With a heavy heart Livira stood and followed him to where he stopped, five yards before the throne.

“King Oanold.” Master Yute made a low bow. “Allow me to present Livira Page on the day of her appointment to junior librarian in service to the library.”

When the great chimneys of outdated industry are brought to ground it is a spectacle that draws thousands of eyes. The muted explosion, the moment of doubt, the inevitable collapse that seems slow only because of the sheer scale of the structure. When great chimneys are built, the interest is considerably more muted. Perhaps it is just a matter of timing.

Appetite for Destruction, by Rose L. Axe

CHAPTER 39

Evar

Evar had read about cities but unlike his siblings, with their frequent use of the Mechanism, he had never seen one, walked its streets, marvelled at its architecture, and looked in awe upon its multitudes.

He descended the mountain slope, discovering a winding stair carved into the rock, and came into the city through a great square surrounded by many-pillared halls. The networks of distant lights that had patterned the night became a constellation through which he moved. Lights that swung from their owners’ hands or the wheeled vehicles in which they were drawn; lights that glowed behind elaborate screens set across high windows; lights that burned within glass cowls set to illuminate the streets. And the people. Evar had thought the library of Clovis’s youth to be heavily populated but those one or two hundred would be utterly lost among the tens of thousands here.

Evar had never seen a flame before, save the pinprick spread of campfires viewed from the mountain. He followed a carriage trying to see into its lanterns, fascinated by the dancing flames. If he’d been able to, he would have reached out and taken one for closer inspection. He stopped, realizing he’d been led deep into the square. People walked on every side of him. Evar turned and turned, trying to watch them all, becoming aware of the wide and amazed smile that was already starting to make his cheeks ache.

It seemed that this city must be in his past, but was it in Livira’s past too, or her future, if she had one? Did the same city stand decades or centuries later outside the library in which he and his family-by-association had been trapped their whole lives? Did it lie in ruins? Evar liked to think that it had risen from whatever destruction the army at its gates would visit upon it, and waited for him in even greater glory, filled with people who would welcome his escape.

He thought, on balance, that it must lie in his distant past, centuries even before Livira’s time. He had only advanced three pools down the row to visit Clovis’s childhood, which had been decades before the time he’d left. To reach the pool that had led him here he had run a considerable distance further down the row, passing dozens of pools after the one that had claimed Livira. Had he strayed from the row, he would, according to Livira’s theory, have ended up in a different world entirely.

Evar shook such thoughts away and returned his attention to what lay before him.

The small scale amazed Evar as much as the large. The clothes that people wore! Evar was aware of fashion as a concept, but he had never seen anyone other than Livira wear a garment not made from the repurposed leather of ancient book covers. The variety, the colour, the way the cloth hung, or didn’t, the necklaces, brooches, chains: all of it bewitched his eye. It was as if these people had become birds from some steaming jungle and created their own vivid plumage to signal their importance or desirability.

Evar wandered the crowds, trying to avoid collisions that might temporarily immerse him in the thoughts of other people. The wind hushed to a whisper down among the buildings and Evar discovered that whilst it couldn’t touch him it could bring him scents. His nose, tuned to detecting small variations in the near-uniform book-must of the library, soon became overwhelmed by the assault of aromas from dire to delicious with everything in between.

This was the life he’d been so long denied. A life of variety and choices. Here he could choose a direction and walk in it for an eternity without ever seeing the same thing twice. He came to a halt at the middle of a street where people crowded along either side, clumping around the glow of stalls selling unknown foods for which Evar’s stomach groaned with a passion it had never shown for the pallid bounty of the pool-garden. He spread his arms, looked up at the night sky, and made a slow turn, whirling the stars above him along orbits of his own decree. In Clovis’s chamber he had felt alone, ignored by her people, closed out from a family much like his own but larger. Here there wasn’t that same cohesion. The populace was so large that each was a stranger to every other person in the street. Here he felt an equality that he hadn’t before. Were he as solid and real as those about him they would still pay him little heed.

Evar watched the faces pass. This was a city as it had been hundreds of years before either he or Livira was born. Everyone he could see—and there were so very many of them—was long dead, dust in the wind. The thought made him sad, and he pushed it away. If this was the same city that Livira knew at the foot of the mountain then hers must be an ancient metropolis.

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