Page 66 of The Book that Broke the World

“My weapon’s nearly three feet longer than yours,” Malar muttered with Starval’s iron at his neck. “I should have run you through.”

“I’m fast.” Starval grinned, then frowned. “But not as fast as I thought.” He shook Malar’s sword arm gently. “Anyway, I’ve made my point. Put the sword down. We’re not here to kill Evar’s girl. You’re her friend, so we’re not here to kill you either, unless you make us.”

Malar probably retained vague memories of training Starval to use knives in the first place, adding practical knowledge to what the book had given the young canith. Livira doubted he intended the young assassin any harm either. Even so, both of them held the other’s gaze for a few heartbeats more before Malar returned his sword to its sheath and Starval rehomed his knife.

“I know all about Yute and his compromises.” Mayland came in closer now the naked blades had been clothed. “This is where they’ve brought us all. Each city built on the dust and ruin of the last. A world that’s little more than a cinder, subjected to repeated flashfires as one species burns itself down to make room for the next to have a try.”

“But you’re a historian; Evar said so. You’re really telling us that what we need is to burn the history books?”

“It turns out that the most important lesson that history teaches us is that history should not teach us. Lessons should be learned, not taught. Wisdom has to be earned, and no number of words can wrap the gift of knowledge sufficiently to keep it safe from misuse. The definition of madness is repeating the same action and expecting a different result.”

“Tell that to the man digging for water.” Livira knuckled her forehead, trying to muster a less glib reply. She couldn’t argue against the facts. Yute had been the one to bring to her attention the burn layers that stratified their geology. The histories recorded the reasons for them, but the fact of them was written in char in the sides of any hole you dug, and before you reached any water you would have cut yourself a path through millennia of rise and fall, rise and fall. “I understand what you’re saying, Mayland, but didn’t the first people to raise a city here also fail, only without the benefit of a library of past learning to blame for the disaster? Can burning the books really be the right answer?” Burning books felt as if it could never be the right answer, any more than throwing children off a cliff could be. But the words to turn that emotion-based answer into a logical truth evaded her tongue.

Mayland shook his head. “We tried once without the library and a thousand times with it. I’m not talking about burning books—books burn all the time: you still have the stink of their smoke on you, and I was raised beside the char wall. I’m talking about the library. Close its doors. Hide them. Bury it. Collapse the chambers if you must, but that’s mere drama. Simply put it beyond use and the job is done. The curse of memory is lifted from our peoples, and they can live in the freedom that brings. Maybe they will find new paths. Maybe they will walk the same ones, though without the burden of knowing it.”

“Ignorance is bliss?” Livira looked at him doubtfully. Her own mind’s refusal to release any iota of the past had defined her, made her, elevated her over others. And yet its blade cut in more than one direction. Yute had spoken of nostalgia as a poison, a knife that, as they grew old, men applied to their own flesh with increasing vigour. Memory should perhaps be an art, not the blunt refusal to surrender a single moment of experience, but a curation in which consideration is given to what has space on the shelves and what is consigned to the midden.

“Did you ever meet someone clever who was truly happy?” Mayland looked out across the Exchange, something leonine in the angles of his face where the dappled sunlight slid over his skin. “I don’t say this place is easy to let go of. I don’t say the library isn’t precious. It’s all we have of a countless multitude of cultures, vanished people, dead languages, all their works, their dreams, their faith.” He swung his amber gaze back to Livira—he had Evar’s eyes. “Imagine a path across a desert. Halfway along its length a brick of gold rests. You watch as one traveller after another reaches the spot and with great delight sees the gold. They pick it up and labour on under its weight. They die among the dunes, unable to leave their treasure behind, unable to walk the distance with such a load to carry. Their skeletons punctuate the road. Whatever it might be that they can purchase with this wealth, should we not bury the brick before the next traveller happens along?”

Livira felt as if the canith were drowning her in words. She considered herself a talker, but Mayland spoke like a prophet, somehow weighting his pronouncements with a gravitas that drew the listener on almost regardless of the content. “I...”

Starval moved swiftly to his brother’s side. “We should go.”

Mayland showed his teeth, running a long tongue across their serrated length. A sigh left him. “We should. Thank you, brother. My enthusiasm carried me away.” He made a short bow towards Livira and Malar. “Another time.” And with that he strode briskly to the next nearest portal and was gone, Starval following in his wake.

Livira blinked. “What was that about?”

“Someone they want to avoid is about to arrive.” Malar shrugged. “He’d said enough in any case. Always had a mouth on him, that one.”

Livira frowned, still staring at the off-world portal Mayland had taken. “What did you think about what he said?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

“I already told you: we choose sides with our gut. The words are to make us feel better afterwards.”

“And which side are you—” Livira remembered what he’d said. Malar was on his own side.

“Yours.” The soldier didn’t look particularly pleased about it. “I’m always on your side, Livira. Even if you can be pretty stupid for someone so clever. We’re family. I don’t know how that happened. I certainly didn’t want it to happen. But you don’t choose family. So, all his words don’t matter shit. I’ll take the side you take.”

“And which side am I going to take?” Livira had no idea. Mayland’s arguments still wrapped her.

“It would be easier if they were strangers, not boys we raised,” Malar said. “It would be easier if the black was bad, and the white was good. If the Escapes were demons and the assistants were angels. Then you could persuade yourself there wasn’t any choice. But you never had a choice, Livira Page. That’s what Yute called you, wasn’t it? Page.”

“I never had a choice?”

“You brought one thing out of the Dust. Just one thing that didn’t wash off or get burned with the rest of your rags. The corner of a page of a book. You’re not going to destroy the library or let it be destroyed. Right or wrong—and fuck knows which it is—it’s not going to happen. So, best just admit it, and start working out how to sell the decision to your brain.”

Livira opened her mouth to say something about two centuries in a library chamber having made quite the philosopher of Malar, but an assistant stepped from the portal beside her and put the words out of her mind.

“You have the book. Please give it to me.” He held out a white hand.

There are few journeys more painful than going back to a place you haven’t seen in many years. If you are lucky, it will have changed beyond recognition and, by having done so, will allow you to ignore the still larger changes in yourself.

No Returns: A Librarian’s Tale, by Ook Longarm

CHAPTER 29

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