Page 87 of The Book that Broke the World

Yute raised one hand to warn Meelan back. The other he reached out towards the mist. “I never thought to see the library’s blood. This place was not built to crack, and yet something has cracked it.”

Evar realised that he was understanding Yute. More than that, he couldn’t tell what tongue the man was speaking. His meaning was simply given up, as if he could whistle and achieve the same effect. “It makes enemies,” Evar warned. “It hunts your fears and becomes them.”

“Oh, I doubt that.” Yute glanced back at him. “I’m terrified of cocktail parties, awkward silences, and catching leprosy. I doubt it will become any of those.” He moved his hand as if trying to conduct the black haze before him. “More realistically I would say that the blood would take whatever strong emotions you have and knit them around any other ideas that happen to be close at hand.” He circled his fingers and the mist directly before him swirled, condensing into a black sphere. A click of his fingers and the ball flowed into a bunch of black flowers on black stems. “Colours are more difficult... apparently.” He pressed his lips into a thin line, concentrating. Another click and the flowers became an odd-looking weapon. “My old umbrella,” Yute explained. “It was black anyway.”

Arpix joined the deputy and peered at the mist. Although physically all he shared with Yute was a narrow frame, both held such a similar bookishness about them that in that moment Evar could imagine them father and son.

Evar lowered his knife and straightened up. “I’ve been running from my own fears my whole life?”

Yute looked back, raising white eyebrows. The umbrella dissolved into mist.

“Didn’t you just tell me as much?”

“Yes... but I didn’t know the Escapes could be other things. Good things.”

The librarian bent to examine the crack, his frown returning. “Most fears could have been good things before we let them harden into what they are.”

“Leprosy?” Kerrol came up behind Evar.

“Most. Cocktail parties I might have embraced and become a people person and led a happier life. If I’d turned more enemies into friends, perhaps I could have persuaded our king to find a peace with the canith. But this”—he reached towards the mist again—“this is a tool, and like any tool it can be both a weapon and a danger to those who wield it if they don’t properly understand its use.” The mist seemed to have reached its limit, extending about five feet above the crack before dissipating into nothing. Narrow at the point where the ground released it, blooming wider as it climbed. It held no odour and put no taste into the air.

“It’s a weapon.” Clovis approached, the humans parting before her.

“It’s dangerous,” Yute acknowledged. “It shouldn’t be here. There have been intermittent leaks from some of the mechanisms for a while, but the structure of the library itself has never cracked. Until now.”

“Do you know where Livira is?” Evar felt ashamed that it had taken him this long to ask. “Is she alive?” A thought struck him, but Arpix beat him to asking:

“Can Wentworth find her?”

“So many questions.” Yute counted them off on white fingers. “No. I hope so. And yes.” He looked for the cat. “Wentworth has never not been able to find something I wanted. The main question is whether you’re able to follow him to it or not. Or if he can bring it back.”

A commotion at the rear of the gathered humans drew Evar’s attention from the conversation. A small group was approaching the chamber corner along one of the many aisles that opened onto it, a patrol of some sort perhaps. Meelan gave a shout of recognition and ran towards them. For a moment Evar thought that Livira had returned, summoned by her name and the fact of his need for her. He started forward too. But Meelan’s run ended in the embrace of one of the two young females in the group of humans.

Evar watched the pair embrace. They had their arms around each other, hugging very tightly. The woman was of a similar height to Meelan, hair long, brown, and curling, where his was short and black, clothes more colourful than any of the other humans’.

“Brother and sister,” Kerrol said. “Not a mating couple.”

Arpix, overhearing them, snorted. “Yes. She’s his sister, Leetar.”

Yute came up behind them, calling his people away from the crack which ran across the aisle, appearing from beneath one set of shelves and vanishing beneath those on the other side. “Let’s keep our distance. We will need to relocate as I believe it would be inadvisable to sleep near to such a crack. Specifically, to dream near it.”

He set a hand to Arpix’s shoulder. “We could try following Wentworth to Livira but first I need to know how you evaded the skeer.”

“Oh.” Arpix went across to Clovis and with a boldness that made Evar and Kerrol suck in their breath, anticipating at the very least a slap that would put him on the floor, he reached into her weapons bag and drew out the orb. “This pushes them away. We found it under the Arthran Plateau.” He looked slightly embarrassed. “After being trapped there for four years.”

Yute nodded absently as if four years were a trifle. He took the iron ball into his hands and turned it over and over, as if looking for some maker’s mark. “Ganar work, I think.”

“That’s... a strange coincidence,” Arpix said, and he spoke briefly about the automaton several chambers back and the much larger one that had also chased the canith. He finished by taking back the orb when Yute handed it to him, saying, “I didn’t know the ganar had this sort of technology. I thought they were quite a simple species?”

Yute raised a single eyebrow at that, seeming surprised and perhaps a little disappointed in his protégé. “They came from the moons, Arpix!”

Arpix nodded, chastened. “I suppose that would take more than a long ladder.”

“The ganar are part of our unfortunate cycle. They have been masters of ships that sailed from Attamast and landed on our shores. They have been slaves. And they have been all things between.

“The automata are a curious phenomenon. Unlike most such constructs in the library they have never served as guides or aided in the curation of books in any way. Whilst functioning they defend their existence. They’re actively aggressive to humans or canith that go near them, but I’ve never heard of one giving chase before. And all the ones close to Crath City were destroyed in the early years of the establishment of that cycle’s library complex. The large one Evar and his siblings encountered may have moved in after the fire. Generally, they stay where they are.”

Arpix handed the orb back to Clovis before turning to face Yute again. “But what are they for? What are they doing?”

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