Page 49 of The Book that Broke the World

After ten yards the tunnel began to dip slightly and to narrow, speeding the flow of gas. Celcha’s journey was over; a dog might manage the remaining distance but not a library-fed ganar. With a shaky hand she took the first of the flasks from the sack. Everything they’d done so far could be undone or walked away from. This act, this unstoppering of the flask, this pouring of the liquid silver... this was what would either get them killed, or change history, or both.

Celcha tried to imagine it. A whole city drugged to sleep. Several thousand ganar suddenly handed the power of life or death over the humans and canith who had subjugated them. For a moment visions of the ganar slaughtering their former masters ran through her head. Surely it wouldn’t come to that? Surely having been shown the ganar’s power and having been shown mercy the city of Krath would change its ways? Their queen would sign a new accord. A three-way peace. An equality.

“...eeeelcha...” Hellet’s distant voice carried on the gas flow, a note of query in it, she thought, rather than panic.

Doubts still assailed her. She wasn’t intended for decisions this big. She had never wanted anything but a chance at comfort, the right to earn respect, a life not overshadowed by constant fear. And in that moment of reflection the decision was made for her. The ganar had none of those things.

She opened the flask, poured it out, watched the quicksilver trickle away down the pipe, driven by gravity and the force of the gas that smoked as it passed over the scurrying droplets. She opened another and another and another, tipped one after the next until they were all gone, then shook the sacks to free the trickling contents of the broken flasks. And finally, wearily, she shuffled back to the drop, then began to inch down it for the last time to join her brother.

—

“Where?” Celcha struggled to see. “Where am I?”

“You fell. I caught you,” Hellet wheezed. He lifted her to her feet. Above her the mouth of the pipe gaped, still inhaling its endless breath.

Celcha patted herself down. She had cuts on her elbows and her ankle felt as if hot skewers had been driven into the bones.

“If they catch us, you’ll have to kill me.” The pain from her ankle, although a pale shadow of the cruelty done to her in Arthran, reminded her of the punishments for even small infractions. She didn’t want to find out what the city kept in store for her latest crime.

“Of course.” Hellet showed her the knife he had in his book satchel. “Their power over us is finished. One way or the other.” He took her hand and pulled her towards the crack they’d entered the chamber by.

“What now?” Celcha hobbled after him, wheezing.

Hellet answered in short bursts of words punctuated by ragged breaths. “They’ll switch cylinders in about two hours. Hopefully the quicksilver will follow the gas into the cylinder. At the least it will sit somewhere in the compressor. When the new cylinder goes online the altered gas will flow everywhere in the city. It will be dark outside, cold; the city will still be awake. The gas won’t burn, so the lights and fires will go out and it will spread. The ganar will inherit the city come morning. We’ll need to go out there and tell them what’s happened. After that they need to decide their own fate.”

Celcha frowned. “We’re a bit like the library then.”

“How so, sister?”

“The library puts knowledge in your hands and it’s up to you to understand it, judge it, use it. It gives you opportunity and leaves you to take it or ignore it. We’ve done the same. Only a bit more forcefully.”

“I suppose we have.” Hellet nodded then broke off to cough for a score of paces before finally controlling himself. “We should hurry. Methalayne’s the proof that you can have too much of a good thing.”

—

Hellet remembered the way out, which was fortunate, since both ghosts had vanished soon after leading them to the intake. Celcha followed her brother in a daze, her mind wandering. Her thoughts fractured and diffused into the gas. She managed to worry that Hellet might become as disoriented as her and lose the way. It was her last coherent worry for a while.

—

Celcha woke with a yawn. She luxuriated in the moment of comfort, as complete as any experienced in her library bed. The rocks digging into her side, the small stones embedded in her cheek, the ache of her ankle, the rawness of her lungs, and the knife twisting in her brain, all introduced themselves one by one, forming an orderly queue. Memory arrived last, prompting her into an ill-advised scramble that, instead of putting her on her feet, simply rearranged her across the rocks and very nearly pitched her into the chasm on whose side she had collapsed.

Hellet lay on the narrow path ahead of her, snoring loudly. Just below them, the gorge into which she had almost thrown herself appeared to be filled with a yellowish fog that lapped at the path just a few yards from Celcha’s feet.

“Hellet!” She hobbled over to him and started to shake him. “Wake up!”

Her brother woke with a comfortable yawn that mimicked her own so closely that she immediately took a firmer hold and warned him to stay still, in case he also completed his return to consciousness with a startled lunge.

“How long did we sleep?” Celcha knew it was a foolish question as she asked it. “And what’s that stuff!” She aimed Hellet’s attention at the fog.

“Oh...” Hellet struggled to his feet. “We were unconscious long enough for someone at the gas house to shut off the supply and for the changed gas to back up to... here.”

Celcha looked at the undulating surface of the fog, a strange yellow sea. It seemed closer to them than it had been. “It’s still rising.” A faint acrid scent reached her nostrils and clawed at her eyes. “We should go. Now!”

“Yellow?” Hellet retreated ahead of her, muttering to himself. “It shouldn’t look like that.”

By the time they reached the top, the rising gas had swallowed the place where they’d been lying.

Hellet stared down at it. “It’s heavier than air but it will mix as soon as it finds a breeze. It’s going to spread over the cavern floor and then follow us down the stairwell. So, it will put all the librarians to sleep too.”

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