Page 99 of The Book that Broke the World

The smoke hung thickest around the mouth of the corridor to the main chamber. Its retreat revealed a dozen and more of Yute’s party, most huddled on the floor, some still struggling to free each other from the bonds they’d been secured with. None of the soldiers remained save the dead man and another hobbling into the smoke with a broken gait, bent around some agony.

“Arpix!” Evar looked around for the man who he’d come to realise was his first human friend apart from Livira. “Arpix?”

Clovis stood sharply, stricken. “Where is he?”

“They must have taken him,” Evar growled. “They were going to take them all. I saw—”

“Keep them safe.” Clovis pulled the orb from her armour and tossed it to Kerrol.

“They’ll eat him. They’ll eat him alive!” Livira broke free of Evar’s arm and started running towards the corridor. “I’ve seen it.”

Evar caught her before she got ten yards.

Clovis passed them both at speed, aimed at the retreating smoke. The route Oanold and his soldiers had taken to reach this place and this period—the two steps they had taken through time—had picked those same marauders who had slaughtered Clovis’s family when she was a small girl and placed them in front of her as a grown warrior. Their first jump in time had consumed most of the two hundred years that had always stood between Livira and Evar, and the second smaller jump had devoured the last decade or so, allowing Clovis the time to grow, whilst the soldiers’ guilt still lay fresh upon their shoulders, the blood of Clovis’s community still staining the uniforms of those King Oanold commanded.

Others of Yute’s party crowded around them. Meelan, Leetar, Jella.

“They’re saying they got Salamonda too. And Neera.” Angry sobs broke Livira’s command of Evar’s tongue so it became hard to understand her.

“And Yute?” she asked Meelan.

“No.” He shook his head. Evar’s grip on the human’s language remained weak but he understood that Yute had yet to return from the Mechanism.

Livira twisted free of Evar’s hands. “I’m going with her!” She pointed at Clovis’s retreating figure, now barely visible through the smoke. “To get Arpix.” She strode off without looking back.

Evar made to go after her, but Meelan grabbed his arm and stared up, locking eyes, speaking with great intensity. “A hundred of them. Weapons. Arrow-sticks. Soldiers. You can’t win.”

Evar looked down into the young man’s pale, serious face. “I have to try.” He twisted his mouth around the strange words.

Meelan bowed his head. “We’ll all go. Arpix would come after me.”

Meelan’s sister grabbed his arm as he stepped forward, and Evar set a hand to his chest. “Me and Clovis. You slow us down.” With that he turned to Kerrol. “You know what’s coming?”

His brother nodded, eyes sombre.

Evar sprinted after Livira and scooped her up, knowing she would hate him for it. Ignoring her screams and punches, he hurried back to Kerrol with her and handed her into the prison of his brother’s arms. He fell to his knees before her.

“I am so sorry, Livira.” He bowed his head before her screams of frustration. “I’m not strong enough to see you die.”

And with that he turned, racing after his sister, passing over the head and headless body of the first straggler before he caught her up as she navigated the chamber beyond.

—

In the main chamber, Evar and Clovis faced the forest of shelf-towers once more, each steel-cored and reaching hundreds of yards up to brace the ceiling. The huge ganar automaton had been making slow but steady progress. Thousands of the towers lay in twisted ruins behind it amid the clutter of their contents. But still it had advanced less than halfway across the floor’s expanse and had half a mile to go before reaching the reading room.

Even so, the constant thunder of falling books, and the deep twang of metal fists striking steel columns, drowned out any cries from those the soldiers had abducted.

“There are a lot of them,” Evar said.

“They’re just sabbers.” Clovis rolled her head, neck joints cracking.

“Humans,” Evar corrected.

Clovis pinned him with her fiercest look. “Arpix is human, and I would face this danger for him alone. But the ones who took him are the sabbers I’ve been hunting my whole life. They’re the ones who killed my father, killed my mother, killed my true brothers.” The fierceness faltered at this as if she might have taken a step too far in the matter of brothers that were true or false. “You might take my war away from me with common sense and talk of where guilt ends and innocence begins. But this is my battle. The one I’ve waited for since the day they came. And here, somehow, lifetimes later, those same sabbers have delivered themselves to me and I will have my accounting with them. This won’t end until the last of these bastards has bled upon my blade—the Soldier’s blade: they killed him too, remember? I’m going to save Arpix, kill the king, and take this weapon, this book everyone’s talking about. This won’t end until every last one of these fuckers dies. And every kill you take from me I will hold against you, little brother.”

Evar bowed his head. He couldn’t argue with her. He had wanted to rescue whoever could be rescued. Arpix, Salamonda, and Neera first since they were dearest to Livira’s heart and to his own. If he came back with them then she would forgive him for leaving her in Kerrol’s arms. He would have been satisfied with a rescue. But Clovis would have her slaughter to weigh against the slaughter of old and, right or wrong, Evar would not leave her to the task alone.

“Come on.” Evar took the lead. He wondered where the skeer warrior was. If it remained in the chamber, he hoped it found the soldiers first rather than him. Let them expend their ammunition on the insectoid.

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