Page 32 of The Book that Broke the World

Lutna craned her neck to look up at the canith. “What did you just call me?”

“Princess Lutna.”

Lutna narrowed her eyes. “And who gets to say no to princesses, library guard?”

Jhar growled in his throat.

“That’s what I thought,” Lutna said. “Now take us to the gas room, because I don’t know where it is.”

Jhar’s growl descended to his chest. He turned and led off down the steps. Lutna sagged with relief and shot an astonished glance at Celcha, as if to say: Did that really happen? She fell in alongside Celcha and said in a slightly apologetic tone, “It just felt like you wanted to go there, and I feel so ashamed of my awful cousins...”

—

Celcha followed Jhar and Lutna through the streets. After all she’d seen since her walk up through the city on her way to the library many weeks earlier, she was able to take in more of it, appreciating more of the interactions carried out all around her. Even so, it still proved overwhelming and somewhat bewildering, and she was very glad to have a guide.

The gas room turned out to be on the far side of the city, downwind of the prevailing gusts that rattled down the mountain valley, but far enough from the walls that an enemy couldn’t easily attack the structure in the hope of creating an explosion. Jhar, appearing to have overcome any resentment at being told what to do by a princess, informed them that the gas wasn’t particularly explosive in any case, though a naked flame in a closed room would be a bad mistake were there a leak.

The building had been constructed on the lines of a small fort, boasting thick walls and defensive positions on the roof. Apart from the crenellations on high, and its vault-like front door, the place was as brutally utilitarian as the buildings at Arthran. A host of pipes, each thick enough for Celcha’s whole body to be needed to stopper it, emerged from one wall, brandished a valve wheel at the world, then plunged below ground.

A faint but tantalising smell haunted the air around the gas fort—as Celcha now thought of it. She saw Jhar wrinkle his nose at it. Lutna didn’t seem to notice it at all.

“Around the back, they said,” Lutna muttered. “A green door?”

Jhar led the way. The three of them got stared at by every passer-by, all dressed in working clothes and seemingly bound on their own errands. The looks were mostly of surprise, some tempered with suspicion. Oddly, Celcha drew hardly any attention.

The green door was a small square of verdigrised copper to the left of another trio of enormous pipes emerging from the rear of the building.

“Go on.” Lutna nodded at the door. “Who was it you had to ask for? H’sun? Make sure you tell me everything when you come back!”

“H’seen,” Celcha murmured. The scent of the gas was stronger here and tickled in her chest. She knocked on the metal plate. Three short knocks.

Nothing happened and continued to happen for long enough that Lutna began to say something, only to be cut off by the plate lurching forward half an inch then being hefted to the side. A black-furred ganar stuck its head out and stared aghast at Jhar.

“It’s all right!” Lutna stepped forward spreading her hands. “We’re with her. We’re not going to tell anyone.”

Celcha was too busy marvelling at the ganar’s fur. She’d never seen black fur before. She’d seen it dark with dirt, but this was something different, fascinating her eyes. Embarrassingly, she found she was panting, hauling in one deep lungful after another. The scent of the air seemed to be doubling the size of her chest. “H’seen,” she managed. “Ask for”—another breath—“H’seen.”

“No H’seen here.” The ganar started to wrestle the plate back into place.

“We’re not going to tell anyone...” Lutna said, adopting the same tone that had brought Jhar into line. “...unless you don’t take my friend Celcha where she wants to go. Otherwise, I’m going to tell everyone exactly what you’re doing. And if you don’t like that you can take it up with Library Guard Jhar Haccta here.” She raised and lowered her hand in the canith’s direction as if the nearly three yards of his height might have escaped the ganar’s notice.

Without waiting for an answer, Lutna bundled Celcha inside before retreating with a series of coughs. The doorway was so low that even Celcha had to duck. She straightened up to find the black-furred ganar blocking her path.

“Sorry about her...” Celcha dipped her shoulder in apology.

The ganar exposed his lower teeth in threat.

“I can go.” Celcha took a step back. “F’nort sent me. He thought it would be all right.” She drew a deep breath. “Why is the air so good here?”

The ganar shook his head as if wondering at her ignorance. “I’m Redmak. Follow me. Don’t touch anything.” With that he turned away and headed off into the growing darkness.

They passed through thirty yards of tunnel, turning left then right before emerging into a room lit only by tiny round windows in a high ceiling, each of the windows seemingly a tube cut up through yards of stone. “No lamps in the gas house,” Redmak grunted. “No flame. No sparks.”

The chamber housed several copper cylinders, like vast seedpods, all connected with pipes and punctuated with dials. Every pipe seemed to sport a handwheel so that its valve could be opened or closed. Another larger but similar chamber lay beyond the first one, filled with gloom and pipes in equal measure. Two ganar moved around checking dials; one of them paused to adjust a valve.

“I feel great,” Celcha muttered to nobody in particular. She felt wide awake, brimming with energy.

Redmak cracked a smile for the first time. As they walked, he began to point things out, parts of the gas system, each with its own function. He led her down a spiral stair fashioned entirely from wrought iron. The chamber below was lit only by what light filtered down from the already dim chamber above through glass-filled ports in the floor. Celcha waited at the foot of the stairs, breathing deeply, letting her eyes adjust. Her night vision had been trained in shades of grey over the course of thousands of days spent in the tunnels of the Arthran dig. It had, however, never been anything like as acute as it was now. Within a handful of heartbeats Celcha could see almost as clearly as if they were still outside. A score of ganar crowded the chamber around a single central steel hub, a great, dial-studded valve from which a single vast pipe led upwards through the ceiling.

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