Page 46 of The Book that Broke the World

Hellet vanished from view around a shoulder of rock. When Celcha struggled past the obstruction she found him gathering more flasks into a sack.

“Be careful with this.” He handed a second sack to her. It proved surprisingly heavy. “This took a lot of work and all the money they paid me plus some I stole from you and some I borrowed from Lutna to buy you a birthday present. Actually, that was most of it.”

“Hellet!”

“She seemed eager to give.” Hellet licked his teeth. “Guilt, I expect. You can’t buy your way out of what they’ve done to us, but she clearly wanted to try.

“Anyway, the quicksilver in those flasks is your present. So don’t drop it.” He twitched, almost losing grip of his own sack. “I spent all the money,” he repeated. “Also, I may have poisoned myself a little. So, I don’t want to have to do it again.”

Hellet led on, both of them burdened by their fragile loads of quicksilver. Celcha followed, feeling guilty that her brother had abused Lutna’s trust, even while acknowledging that everything he’d said was true. Guilt was like that, sticking in places where it didn’t belong, and rolling off others where it did just as easily as if it were quicksilver.

Counter to Celcha’s expectations the way became easier rather than more difficult. Soon they were heading steeply down on stairs that had been carved into the rock.

“What is this? Where are we going?”

“These steps were made by the citizens of an earlier city that stood exactly where Krath stands now. The histories imply that the canith and the humans have been building and burning down each other’s cities here for an unfathomable amount of time. This current one appears to be the first to host a lasting peace between them.”

“How do you know all this?” Celcha knew that her brother had become a voracious reader and had mastered the art even before reaching the library, but still, she too had been reading as fast as she could, and his books seemed to have divulged far more secrets.

“Yute told me. I think he wants to change my mind but can’t quite bring himself to command me. So, instead he’s settled on education and hope.”

“He could command you?” Celcha asked.

“Assistants can destroy matter with a wave of their hand. I’m sure that whatever constrains them it’s not the laws of nature as we know them, but rather some code of ethics imposed by their creator.”

The fissure had become so narrow that if Celcha were to lean out too far to save herself from the drop, she could bridge it with her hands pressed to the far side. The illumination had faded to a gloom through which the occasional mote of library light still meandered like a lost firefly.

The door came as a surprise. A round door of corroded steel with a handwheel at its centre by which it might be unsealed. Someone had been digging through the rock around the door’s perimeter and made considerable progress, though at no point had they reached past the metal rim.

“This would be a heap of rust, of course, if it were normal steel.” Hellet picked up a crowbar from a nearby ledge. “It seized up long ago, so I’m having to dig it out. All that practice finally paid off.”

“You didn’t need me at all,” Celcha said. “Except to fetch and carry.”

“You played your part, sister. Lutna wouldn’t have stamped her foot to get me into the gas house. I needed to know the basics of the system there.”

“But they won’t even let us back in,” Celcha complained. “Let alone fiddle with their machinery.”

“Don’t need to.” Hellet jammed the end of his crowbar into the area he’d excavated around the edge of the hatch. “It turns out we just needed to know their timings.”

Hellet exerted his strength, groaning. Celcha went to help him, lending her muscles to the effort just as she had so often back at the Arthran dig. For several long moments she was sure the door wasn’t going to give. She’d reached the point of giving up when she realised that the hissing she could hear wasn’t her own breath escaping clenched teeth or even the result of Hellet’s explosive effort. Surprisingly, she gained a second wind, fresh energy filling her straining muscles.

The whole frame surrendered, and rather than inching out or toppling gently into the fall, it shot forward as if punched from inside, striking the opposite wall with force. Celcha’s questions were drowned in the roar of methalayne blasting from the passage behind the door.

For some time, they clung to the rockface in the reflected swirl of the hurricane. The gas buffeted Celcha and filled her lungs. It made her feel light-headed and left her unsure how much time passed before the hurricane died to a gale and then to a strong breeze.

“I don’t understand,” Celcha called over quieting gusts. It wasn’t just the confusion that too much methalayne had brought. Hellet had told her almost nothing of his plans. She wanted to believe his reticence to be because he feared being overheard or spied upon by the head librarian’s agents even in their chamber. She feared his secrecy had other causes. She feared he thought her too weak for the task in hand. Yet here she was. Literally in the thick of the storm. “How is all this here?”

“Krath isn’t the first city to cook its meals on the grave gas of its predecessors.” Hellet spoke in a normal voice, audible over the rush of methalayne. “Before Krath the humans built a city called Tanylarn at the library gates. This hatch and tunnel are their work. Ironically, their corpses, sewage, and waste are now rotting far below Krath, making gas for those who came after them.” He held his hand in the flow and his fur streamed out. “Maybe Maybe is a ghost, but this stuff is definitely full of them.”

“They’ll find this place soon enough now.” Celcha looked up, half expecting to see a library guard peering over the edge of the chasm.

“So, we’d better get a move on.” Hellet handed her his sack and started to climb into the tunnel. “This side of the mountain is lousy with caves. The methalayne has been gathering in them for aeons. By sealing known exits the city founders increase the pressure and the reserve escapes in the gas house, where it’s pressurised further and stored in cylinders ready for release into the city’s pipes.” He turned around in the tight confines of the tunnel and reached back. “Here, give me the sacks—carefully—and then come in.”

Celcha joined her brother, and together, like dust-rats in a burrow, they followed the tunnel’s slope.

“Let me tell you what we’re doing,” Hellet said.

“That would be... helpful.” Celcha ground her teeth together and tried to remember that her brother did not think like other people did.

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