Page 54 of The Book that Broke the World

Evar didn’t know. “Maybe because canith faces are different and we look for different features to hang our recognition from? Or because you had more on your minds when you first came here? I think it might be something you see early on or never.”

Arpix translated for the others. Some nodded, thoughtfully, while others debated in their swift birdlike chatter. “How do you even know Carlotte?”

“I was with Livira when she found her.” The young woman was perhaps the last human Evar had taken a close look at before arriving at the plateau. He hadn’t been sure she was a friend to Arpix or the other humans, but either way he hadn’t been keen to repeat the story of their encounter because it had seemed inevitable that it led to a grisly end. “The library was on fire, and she was running from the flames.” The last part he didn’t want to say, even now. “A band of canith had her captive.”

Arpix’s brows rose at that. He pressed his lips into a thin line then took a deep breath. “She must have escaped them.”

Kerrol loomed over them both. “How is a human girl, that Evar saw days ago, immortalised in stone, here, in an ancient statue? The thing has to be a thousand years old if it’s a day.”

“She must have escaped the canith,” Evar echoed Arpix, thinking hard. “And made it to the Exchange. From there she could go to any time.”

Kerrol shook his dark mane. “But, if I’ve understood you, you can only visit the past as a ghost that nobody can see or touch, and you can’t touch anything yourself?”

“Yes...” Evar drew the word out through his teeth.

“It appears,” Arpix growled, “that Carlotte managed pretty well for a ghost.” He went over to translate to the other humans before returning with the clay pot and a supply of bean husks to burn. Just lighting the thing took an age of striking stones together to catch and kindle the sparks. It was full dark by the time he succeeded.

Evar had to force himself not to flinch as the flames began to lick up. He’d been fascinated by his first encounter with fire but since then its destructive side had dominated, culminating in the library inferno. He doubted he would ever be comfortable near an open flame again.

Arpix roused Clovis from her half doze and began to stitch. Evar started a new conversation, more to distract Clovis from the pain than through any urgency.

“So, brother, sister, what are we going to do?”

“Well, we can’t just hide on this hill for the rest of our lives.” Clovis snarled as the needle went too deep.

“I’m all for hiding,” Kerrol said. “My shoulder hurts. And besides, I like watching these humans. It could take me years to learn all—”

“We’re not spending years here!” Clovis shook her head. Arpix tutted and told her to be still.

“Agreed.” Evar didn’t plan to copy the humans. He hadn’t escaped the chamber he’d lived in all his life to be trapped on a dusty plateau for the rest of it. “But where do we go? What do we do? And why?”

“We find our kind,” Clovis said. “We raise an army and we come back here to end the skeer.”

“Why?” Evar shook his head. “Why spend the lives of canith who value them to end the lives of skeer who seem indifferent to their individual fate? War is the means to an end. It can’t be an end in itself.”

“Because—” Clovis winced as the needle tugged. “Because they control the library, and it’s technology that wins wars. People keep building cities at the foot of the mountain, and burning them down, for a reason. The library is the ultimate weapon.”

Kerrol leaned forward, the light of Arpix’s firepot casting him in warm angles and invisibly black shadow. “Now we come back to the war that matters. The one our brothers have chosen sides in.”

“Mayland?” Clovis scowled at him. “What was he even talking about? And why did Starval go with him?”

Kerrol grinned. “You’re too busy with the small picture to see the big one, sister.”

“Not watching what’s in front of you was what got you stabbed,” Clovis growled.

Kerrol shrugged. “I’m not the one being stitched up by a human.”

“Enough!” Evar overrode Clovis’s hot reply. “Kerrol’s talking about Mayland’s pet mythology.”

Kerrol took over. “I am. The idea that there’s a struggle between the library’s creator and his brother. An ideological war between those who believe the library should serve as a kind of universal memory. A memory we can easily access after we obliterate ourselves, which is something we appear to do on a regular basis as soon as we discover the means to do it efficiently. And, on the other side, those who believe we should start from scratch each time. Those who think that the handful of ignorant children who survive the periodic calamities should start again in a place like this. Banging the rocks together.” He shot a glance at Arpix, who ignored him.

“There are more sides to it than that,” Evar protested. “There’s whatever it is we have now. It’s certainly not easy access. Easy access would be an assistant bringing you the book that answers the questions you have, and finding the relevant section for you, and translating it too. And there’s a host of other options.”

“People don’t like a host of options.” Kerrol held up two fingers. “No matter how nuanced debate might be at the start, if lots of people are involved then it ultimately condenses around two poles deemed to be irreconcilable. And then you have your war. Which in and of itself is an argument against the library. When evolution has shaped us to tribalism, how can we be trusted with the means to reduce tribes to dust?”

“That sounds insane,” Evar said.

“Not really. If you pick the solution you think is best out of a host of possibilities then everyone is going to have a slightly different answer to the problem. You need support, so you accept a few small changes and move to someone else’s solution. Now there are two of you behind one idea. You need more. The process repeats and repeats. You see people coalescing behind an idea you hate, and it becomes more important to be lined up behind something vaguely palatable that has the numbers to oppose them than it does to get exactly the solution you wanted. In the end there are two solutions, aligned against each other. And in the library’s case, two ideologies and an uneasy truce.

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