Page 26 of The Book that Broke the World

“It’s very dangerous if we don’t go through the portals together. Holding on to each other. We could both end up here but in different times. Or be ghosts, but just to each other, or something... Anyway: don’t do it.”

“I thought I saw something.” Malar didn’t sound apologetic.

“An Escape?” Livira spun around. The Escapes scared her, even with Malar and his sword close at hand. They felt both horribly alien but at the same time tied to the library in some intimate manner. Her schoolmaster, Heeth Logaris, used to say that she was 60 per cent water by mass, 40 per cent minerals, and 100 per cent questions. But when it came to the Escapes her desire to avoid them trumped her desire for answers. “What did it look like?”

“A woman.” Malar frowned. “In a blue dress. I only caught a glimpse. Vanished way down there.”

Livira bit her lip, considering a host of possibilities. Gradually the living silence of the forest and the slow warmth of sunlight filtering down through the branches eroded her worries to the point at which her natural confidence could reassert itself. “We should go find the book like the assistant said.”

“And be ghosts again.” Malar slapped the tree hard enough to leave the pattern of its bark across his palm.

“If we believe that assistant, we’re going to be ghosts everywhere but here, forever, unless I bring this book back.” She understood his reluctance. She found it hard too, but Malar had defined himself, or been defined, by his physical talents, none of which he could exercise if he passed through everything, and everything passed through him.

Malar grunted. “Which one? Which portal do we take?”

Livira took a few steps back, considering the problem. “This one.”

Malar, still sulky, rolled his eyes, and then scowled as if angry at himself. “We just fucking came out of this one.”

“This is a timeline.” Livira spread her arms, her pointing fingers sweeping across the portals that stepped away left and right to unknown distances. “But it’s discrete—each door is a step—back or forward in time. I’m not sure how much, maybe a decade, probably several. The point is that Evar found the book less than a year before the time we just left him at, the time when that assistant towed us away from him like we were naughty children.

“If we take the next portal that way”—she nodded to the right—“well, we’ll end up a decade or more too early. He’ll be a little boy without the book, or won’t even be there yet.”

Malar knuckled his forehead. “If we go back... won’t we just go back? We’ll probably find that git of an assistant still waiting there.”

Livira held her hand out to him. “I think I can find a way to the when and the where we want to go to.” When Malar hesitated, furrowing his brow, Livira stared at him and then looked pointedly at her outstretched palm.

“Fuck my life.” A growl. Malar folded his large, calloused hand around her smaller, narrower one, and followed her back into the sparkling light.

—

Livira knew the place she wanted to go. She could picture it. The time, she had less of a feeling for, but the portals had brought her to the Exchange at just the right moment on basically every use. She felt that this was an integral part of their design and hoped that by simply opening herself up to the process, and wanting what she wanted, the library’s magic—or technology as Arpix had dully insisted—would do its job.

The dazzle of the light faded to the image of hands in earth. Her hands. Her hands pulling her forward through green things growing. It reminded her for a moment of the bean rows at the settlement, in the first weeks when they were watered five times a day and the dust hadn’t yet layered their leaves. A vivid, vulnerable green that it had always seemed cruel to coax out into her harsh world.

She stood up to find herself beside Evar’s pool with Malar getting to his feet beside her. The three canith she’d left behind so recently were all in front of her, wholly ignorant of her presence.

Evar and Clovis were approaching from the book stacks. Livira had to admit that Clovis was a magnificent creature, with her flame-red mane and dark eyes flashing, the points of her canines aiming for her chin. Livira still bore the scar where Clovis had clawed her—a reminder, if she ever needed one, of just how terrifying it had been to have the warrior giving chase at her heels. Clovis seemed a far better match for Evar. Livira thought she herself must seem very frail to Evar in comparison. She’d been worrying about other things too, physical things, and seeing the pair of canith striding towards her suddenly brought those issues into sharp focus. After meeting Yute’s cat, Wentworth, Livira had done some research on the animals. She’d read some very uncomfortable things about their mating habits. Things involving spines and tearing. Sometimes Livira wished her memory was less steel trap and more sieve.

The assistant in which Malar had been trapped—the Soldier—was walking through the greenery, careful to trample nothing, patrolling for rats perhaps, or weeds. He glanced Livira’s way, registering her but saying nothing. Malar, drawn to his old prison and his old self, advanced on the Soldier, slowly, head tilted, studying him intensely. Livira left him to it and returned her attention to the approaching siblings.

The tall canith, Kerrol, rose from where he’d been sitting and put down a large scroll he’d been studying. “What’s the excitement?”

Clovis exchanged a glance with Evar before responding, “There’s no hiding anything from our brother, always so perceptive!”

Evar offered an uneasy grin and said nothing.

“The plan worked. I killed the Escape.” Clovis looked as if she’d enjoyed it.

“And the other thing?” Kerrol asked.

Evar answered this time. “We found the tallest tower ever. A giant! I knocked it down with my face.”

“Remarkable.” Kerrol frowned. “What’s the book about?”

Livira hadn’t seen the book until Kerrol mentioned it. But there, clutched tight at Evar’s side, was her book, the book she’d made from repurposed covers and stolen flyleaves. The volume was a cuckoo that could sit within the library without being ejected by assistants as unchosen—the whole thing was merely books that were already chosen, but now redistributed and with added notes.

Livira wondered whether it had been her who had hidden it in the book tower. Her fabled memory didn’t reach far into the period she’d spent trapped in that timeless space within the assistant’s body. She hadn’t been entirely imprisoned though—some aspects of her had leaked to the surface. Had she also completed her book? Written the final chapter with a white hand? Had she found some set of narrative and thematic threads to bind the disparate stories into a cohesive whole?

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