Page 95 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Livira became a stranger in her own body. She stood, wrapped in her librarian’s whites, unable to move, a child beside the wet mouth of the well once more, that first sabber approaching to turn her world on its head.

“Livira!” Meelan’s shouts sounded distant though he had been standing beside her. Now, somehow, he stood between her and the sabber, which, presented with a thousand paths by which it might cross the square, had chosen to run directly at Livira.

Meelan, neither tall nor broad, held his ground, the blue of his trainee robes whipped around him by a sudden wind. She saw in that moment that she would lose him to the sabber as she had lost so much before. Her mind’s eye showed her a grey tide following in the sabber’s wake, the tens of thousands gathering on the margins of the Dust, the army that would test their walls for only so long before breaking over them in a single, unstoppable wave.

“Run!” Livira could only shout it at Meelan. Her legs rooted her to the flagstones, as if any attempt at evasion would be futile in the face of the sabber’s speed. The glitter of the beast’s blade hypnotised her, the white glimmer of wolf’s teeth in a wide roar.

The final moments came so swiftly that Livira stood imprisoned within them. An explosion, as loud as it was unexpected, barked behind her, and the sabber, in the act of bearing down upon Meelan, became a rag doll tumbling in the grip of its own velocity. It hit the ground, bounced, rolled, scythed Meelan’s legs out from beneath him, and came to a tangled halt at Livira’s feet, one yellow eye finding her face.

The sabber’s sword, a crudely forged length of blood-stained iron, lay against her shins. Freed from her paralysis, she hefted it up in both hands. The sabber watched her without turning its head, crimson teeth exposed in a grin or a snarl or a grimace. Meelan staggered to his feet behind the beast as Livira raised the sword to deliver a death blow. Something unreadable in the sabber’s regard stopped her. Was it loss? Resignation? Recognition? Or simply intelligence?

Two soldiers crowded past her, one to either side, ’sticks aimed at the sabber’s head.

“It’s dead,” the first one said.

The second soldier ended the discussion with another percussive blast showering sparks. The bloody result was thankfully hidden behind a cloud of acrid smoke.

Livira stumbled backwards, dropping the sword, and Meelan reached her side.

—

When Meelan had recovered his book satchels, and Livira had recovered herself, they headed on together, aiming for the library. Neither of them spoke—perhaps because their ears were still ringing from the ’stick shots—though Livira could sense Meelan watching her closely. She realised that the sword hilt had left her hands bloody and tried to wipe them clean on her robe. “I’m fine,” she lied in answer to his unasked question.

By the time they reached the road on which Yute’s house stood Meelan had actually asked if Livira was all right, and Livira had lied again and said yes. Meelan had not yet called her out on either the first lie or the second.

Salamonda was waiting for them on Yute’s steps, watching the street. She intercepted Livira, taking her arm as if everything that had happened was written on her forehead, plain as day. “You come with me, and I’ll get you something hot.”

Quite what magic Salamonda relied upon for news Livira had never discovered, but she did discover, holding a cup of steaming chai to her lips, that the shock of the sabber still echoed in her fingers, making it hard to sip without spilling.

Salamonda put Livira to shame by noticing Meelan’s injury. Blood matted the black hair at the back of Meelan’s head and spattered the collar of his robes. Salamonda waved Livira away while she fussed over the trainee with a bowl of warm water and various cloths. “He’s upstairs.”

Livira found herself marching up the wooden stairs, animated by an anger that hadn’t been there until Salamonda aimed her towards Yute.

She found him alone for once, Wentworth no doubt off thinning the rat population. Yute looked up from his book at her purposeful stride.

“This should be on your hands.” Livira thrust out her palms, showing the rusty stains left by the sabber’s sword hilt. The blood of unknown people. “You’re holding us back.” The librarian had told her as much years before when he’d tried to recruit her to his cause.

Yute looked up from her reddened fingers to study her face. “It’s a question of what I’m holding us back from.”

“With the right books the alchemists could arm our soldiers with weapons so powerful that no sabber could ever challenge the city.”

“Every new weapon that was first given to the army has ended up killing more humans than sabbers.”

“The city will die if we can’t help defend it better!” Livira realised she was shouting.

Yute studied his own pale fingers. “My hands were bloody long before you were born, Livira. I’ve seen cities die before. More often from too much than from too little.”

And, as often before, Livira found herself defeated not by Yute’s arguments or authority, but by his quiet pain. The unspoken faith he had in her remained a burden. It wasn’t even that he believed she would see the rightness of his approach—it was that he still thought she would find a new path where he had not.

She turned on a heel and stalked back down the stairs, having added guilt to her anger. The memory of the sabber’s yellow eye haunted her, watching her as it died. It had come to kill her. She hated it. And yet, even as she resolved to deliver to the city, without Yute’s help, the weapons it needed to survive, she felt stained by more than blood.

—

In her new, professional life Livira swam in the shark-infested waters of library politics, and had neither drowned nor lost a limb, despite being well out of her depth and receiving many nasty nips to her extremities.

In her personal life, she’d flirted with Arpix for sport and in competition with Carlotte, finding amusement in how oblivious the young man was to their overtures. She’d flirted with Meelan with a rather more focused desire to explore uncharted territory. And having explored it, felt bad about her inability to return his stronger feelings.

She’d read an ocean of books on every topic under the sun, sometimes pulling them blind from the shelves, having already sworn herself to reading whatever she took hold of. And still she had hardly read the first letter of the great book of the library, much less turned the first page. She’d pursued the library’s secrets with devotion, hungry for knowledge, but all the time the memory of Evar’s last words to her ran beneath those efforts: You need to go. Back where it’s safe. And the image of him, standing to defend her against a sea of nightmare.

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