Page 75 of The Book that Broke the World

The soldier holding Livira twisted her arm up behind her and pushed her on. She walked awkwardly across the fallen books, unable to adjust her path. Even fractional movements filled her shoulder joint with pain. Whoever the man holding her was, he seemed to know a lot about hurting people.

For those first few steps, bowed over to relieve the pressure on her arm, Livira’s head was too full of pain, fear, and confusion for any speculation. Even so, despite all these distractions she somehow noticed something that seemed to escape the notice of everyone around her. Right in front of her, seemingly in the place where she had come to rest on the library floor, a web of thin cracks ran out in all directions like those on a pane of glass where a stone had struck. They became lost beneath the shelves and fallen books, and Livira was propelled onwards before she could focus on them. Even so, it amazed her. A lifetime in the library had schooled her in its impervious nature. In all that time she had seen one possible scorch mark and no cracks or damage whatsoever. And yet, just behind her, dozens of black cracks ran through the stuff of the library where part of her felt she’d merely stepped out from a portal, and part of her felt she’d hit the floor with considerable force, but not sufficient to break herself, let alone the ground beneath her.

The stink of the place still managed to register through Livira’s discomfort. It was as if these people had never discovered that the chamber corners slowly made organic matter vanish and had instead been befouling the area in which they’d chosen to live. Her stomach threatened rebellion and she was saved from vomiting over herself perhaps only by the fact that technically she hadn’t eaten anything for over two hundred years.

The king led on, passing a couple of junctions at which a single soldier had been positioned. Another corner and without warning they were in the centre circle. Livira felt the healing aura flowing through her.

The smell here proved worse, if anything. The floor space had been divided into dozens of areas by book walls, most of them chest high, some taller. Livira could see at least two dozen people, though many scores more could be hidden from sight. All were men and women from Crath, mostly soldiers, one woman in torn finery. Another man Livira felt she recognised from those gathered outside Yute’s house on the day the canith came, but even her memory had limits and she was less good with faces than with facts.

“Where’s Yute?”

The crack of her arm being brutally broken reminded Livira of the king’s instruction. She fell to the ground screaming, all control swept away by the tide of pain. She lay on the grimy stone for what seemed an age, breathless and hurting, before lifting her eyes to the circle of men around her. The king wore a broad smile and a chain of office that some attendant must have put around his shoulders. The soldiers looked bored. Lord Algar seemed much recovered and regarded her with cold interest. She noted that the front of his expensively lace-frilled white shirt was blood-stained, mostly around the chest. She didn’t think he’d looked like that when he escaped into the Exchange.

“Get up.” King Oanold’s smile vanished.

Livira was about to protest when she realised that her arm, though still painful, was no longer agonising. The centre circle was in the process of healing her, just as it had unwound her insult to Lord Algar’s nether regions. Awkwardly, she got to her feet and straightened up, half expecting a blow at any moment. She wondered where Malar was and whether he’d be able to save her without killing anyone. It seemed unlikely.

“How the hell did you get past my guards?” The king was about her height and despite the pervasive stench of sewage and rot she could smell both his lavender perfume and the stale sweat it sought to hide. Oanold moved his head from side to side as he studied her, as if trying to peer through her eyes at some truth lying behind them. “You were going to kill me in my sleep, weren’t you? You’re Yute’s assassin.”

Livira realised that Oanold hadn’t seen her arrival. He’d been sleeping. It must seem to him that she had leapt the shelf tops, evaded his guards, and climbed down to where he lay.

“Answer me!”

The soldier behind her sank his fist into the region of her left kidney. The rule of law appeared to be one of the things they’d left behind when abandoning the city.

Livira groaned. “I’m a librarian. I answer to the head librarian.” Technically Oanold had no authority over her. They were in the library, after all.

It was Algar who answered. “Since your canith friends killed the head librarian it’s Acconite who now holds that position.” He raised a hand and snapped his fingers. “Acconite!”

Deputy Acconite had always kept a low profile in the library. He’d specialised in recovering technical books, primarily on warfare, from the far reaches of catalogued library space. He had been the driving force behind the rapid development of the ’sticks the king’s soldiers now held. Without Yute working to thwart him, Acconite might have armed the military with beams of fire that would have turned the canith army to ash. Livira wasn’t sure where she stood on that issue. She had rather liked her old life...

The man who shambled into view, answering Lord Algar’s summons, bore little resemblance to the Deputy Acconite that Livira knew. The man had voted in favour of her dismissal, more than once, but even so her heart went out to him. His dark robe hid the grime but not well enough, the neat black triangle of his beard had become a greying straggle, but it was his eyes that spoke most eloquently of unknown horrors, all his old surety and arrogance gone, replaced by an unfocused emptiness that even the hardships of the Dust had never written on the faces of Livira’s people.

“Yute—” Livira remembered the crack as her arm had broken and bit off her objection, though it sickened her to be trained by such crude tactics and so swiftly.

“Yute is a traitor, and we shall have him soon,” the king snapped. “He and his rabble can’t hide forever. It’s just one room!” He beckoned the husk that had once been Deputy Acconite closer. “So, tell your head librarian who sent you and where he’s hiding!”

“Nobody sent me. I came by myself.”

The slap came from her left, as violent as it was unexpected, rattling her teeth, setting half her face ablaze and filling her ear with a sharp ringing tone.

“Yute sent you,” the king said, his good humour seemingly restored by the blood dripping from her nose.

Lord Algar’s brow furrowed. “I wonder about that, Your Highness. The girl is Yute’s special project. It seems odd that he would send her rather than one of the other dusters or someone among the no-accounts he brought up from the city. This one’s always been headstrong. She may have come on her own initiative.”

The king echoed Algar’s frown. “So, she’s a lone wolf assassin?”

“I didn’t even know you were there,” Livira protested, ducking her head against an anticipated slap. “What was I going to kill you with? I don’t have a weapon.”

“Check her.” Algar nodded to one of the guards.

The man rummaged in her book satchel. Other members of the group were beginning to gather, emerging from their book huts. “One book, string, ink. It’s just junk.” He tossed the satchel aside. Livira’s eyes followed it despite her trying to feign disinterest.

“No food?” A new light entered the king’s eyes.

The soldier patted down her robes. “Another book.” He moved on down her legs. “No food.”

A sigh went through the onlookers. Most of the men and women joining Livira’s audience were thin, hollow-cheeked, but not skin and bone. They were like Livira’s people in the settlement after a hard season, but not like they’d been that one time when there had been two hard seasons in a row; they were hungry rather than brought to the brink of death by starvation.

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