Page 92 of The Book that Broke the World

“I will see his body and say my farewells.” Clovis slammed her sword back through the loop on her belt.

Evar, who had stood back to let Livira’s friends crowd about her, came closer now and she took his hand, a lifeline to keep her from drowning in misery. She had fought so hard to reach him, but Malar’s life had never been some coin that she was willing to pay for passage.

Yute stepped into Clovis’s path, dwarfed by the canith. As one, the humans sucked in a sharp breath. Livira had seen Malar nearly killed when doing something similar, but surely Clovis was more trusted now, though she still had her hand on the hilt of her sword. She and her siblings seemed to be travelling with Yute and his party. Suddenly Algar’s words played through her mind: Since your canith friends killed the head librarian. That couldn’t be true? The words escaped her mouth: “Where’s Yamala?”

The question seemed to undercut Clovis’s rapidly building anger. Unexpectedly, Arpix reached the canith’s side and set his hand to her sword arm. The fierceness left Clovis’s eyes, and she lowered her gaze.

“Mayland killed Yamala.” The words came from beside her. Evar’s voice.

“No!” She looked up at him, astonished. And then, “I met him just recently. In the Exchange.”

Livira left Evar’s side and went to stand before Yute. She wasn’t sure if it had been days since she last saw him or centuries. It felt like a lifetime, and although theirs had never been a relationship that hugs or touching was a part of, she took both his hands in hers, finding them strangely cool. “I’m sorry about your wife.”

Yute met her gaze, the old kindness in his eyes along with an older sorrow. “I’m sorry we’ve lost Malar.”

It was enough to start Livira’s tears flowing again. She tried to choke them off with anger. She looked over Yute’s shoulder to Clovis, who stood conflicted, twitching as instinct vied with unfamiliar emotions, pulling her this way and that. Evar must have told his sister that Livira had lain trapped at the heart of the Assistant. It was written in her eyes and the way they could no longer meet Livira’s.

Livira opened her mouth to say that Yute should stand aside, that he should clear Clovis’s path and unleash her on King Oanold’s soldiers. But the words wouldn’t leave her tongue. She had seen Clovis as a small girl, fierce around her hurts, seen her grow, seen her show Evar the first flesh-and-blood affection of his new life. “There are too many of them, Clovis. You can’t dodge bullets.” Part of her desperately wanted to loose the warrior on the king, Algar, and the monsters who served them. The soldiers might be battle-hardened and carrying the most advanced arrow-sticks, but even so Livira thought Clovis would put a large hole in their ranks. Perhaps even win. But “perhaps” was not enough. And Evar would not stay back while his sister fought.

Livira looked away from Clovis and Yute, studying the familiar faces all around her. People she had known most or all of her life. Neera coughed, and for the first time Livira noticed her among those crowded into the aisle. All of them so precious to her and so vulnerable. She wanted to tell them that they had to attack, that what Oanold’s people were doing was so heinous it couldn’t be allowed to stand. She wanted to tell her people from the settlement that little Gevin was being eaten alive. To tell Clovis that the body she wanted to honour was being dragged away to be feasted on. But there were children here, a baby, friends. All her mind would show her was the aftermath: Neera, Yute, Arpix, Evar, all of them shot through like Malar had been, gasping out their final breaths in a welter of their own blood, more meat for Oanold’s kitchen.

Livira fell to her knees beneath the weight of it. Evar and others crowded forward with cries of alarm. She felt their presence pushing on her from all sides, adding to the pressure. A scream built inside her in the space where the two halves of her were being torn one from the other by opposing forces, by impossible choice.

The scream, which felt as though it might physically tear her apart so her body could match her mind, never came. Yolanda came instead, stepping quietly around the corner.

At first only Livira saw the girl, past the legs of those surrounding her as she remained on her knees. Yolanda stood, watching, so white, so lacking colour that she seemed not to be a part of the world. Then Yute turned, drawn by an invisible thread, and saw his daughter. With the muted gasp of a gut-shot man, he joined Livira on his knees.

“You should not be here.” Yolanda’s voice felt like a chill wind, as if she really were the ghost her paleness painted her to be. “Have you not heard the summons, Father? The cracks are spreading. We need to go.”

“My child... Yolanda... We thought you were—”

Yolanda silenced the aching rasp of Yute’s voice with a raised hand. “Can you not hear it?”

“I hear something.” Yute got slowly to his feet, struggling, as if the weight of all his centuries had suddenly fallen upon him. “But I didn’t understand what I heard. I’ve forgotten so much. Made so many mistakes.” Yute winced as if stung by a memory. “Your mother—”

“My mother might have taken my side, but the others have slain her, and still you won’t commit, Father.” She turned and walked away. “Hurry. They’re nearly here.”

A heartbeat after she disappeared from view into another aisle the percussive explosion of a ’stick being fired rent the air. Muffled shouts rang out. Not close, but not far either.

“Come on!” Livira set off after Yolanda, breaking the indecision that had paralysed the group.

Any experienced librarian will tell you that much of what is found among their shelves defies classification. Most often by virtue of being many things at once. Sometimes those categories show only minimal overlap, and sometimes, as with “hero” and “villain,” they are almost entirely the same thing.

Who Indexes the Indexers?, by M. L. K. Dewey

CHAPTER 40

Evar

Livira!” Evar intercepted the racing girl, sweeping her into his arms, lifting her from the ground, and spinning to absorb her momentum. For several heartbeats she fought him in her panic, and Evar took the blows until with a sudden stillness she understood who had hold of her. In that moment she collapsed against him, burying her face in his mane as he pressed his own to her neck, inhaling her. He hadn’t truly believed it until that moment when her scent filled him. He squeezed her, trying to tame his strength in case she might break. He had thought her dead. He had hoped against hope that she wasn’t. That the spirit which had entered the Assistant had escaped her white prison when the skeer destroyed it. But he hadn’t known, he hadn’t believed, and he had lived with the ache of her absence for what might only be days but felt like a thousand years, all the time trying to deny the hurt and the loss and the hope.

“Livira.” A whisper now as her friends erupted all around them with cries of joy. Feeling the others start to tug at her, Evar reluctantly set her down. Before he released her though, Livira tightened her arms about his neck and her lips found his ear.

“I missed you.”

Evar stepped back as Livira’s friends surged around. Her unexpected arrival had been the sudden intake of a breath he’d been short of ever since he found the Assistant’s broken body. For the long, glorious moments during which they had been alone in each other’s arms, held in the privacy of a fictional forever, Evar had felt himself mended.

For Evar, who had so seldom been hugged, it was a state he could happily have drawn out for an age, but the world had too quickly reimposed itself. Livira’s fear and grief demanded an accounting, and the friends who crowded round were people she had known far longer than she had known Evar, and from whom she had been parted for far longer—at least on their side of the equation.

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