Page 83 of The Book that Broke the World

Yute shrugged somewhat guiltily. “I’ve been thieving from your kitchen.”

“How?” Salamonda sniffed the sausage while two score eyes watched the item’s every move. “I mean... it burned down, didn’t it? Or the canith took it. It’s certainly not hiding in your pocket...”

Yute looked down. Arpix could almost imagine the man’s feet shuffling beneath his robe. “A little here. A little there. I mean, legally it’s actually my kitchen.”

“You’re making no sense.” Salamonda said what Arpix had been thinking.

“I reach back across the years.”

“Through your pocket?” Salamonda handed the sausage absently to Jella, who stood closest to her.

“Yes.”

“Back in time?”

“Yes.”

“Stealing from my kitchen?”

“Yes.”

“Damn you, Yute!” Salamonda raised both her voice and her hand. “I thought I was going mad. I told you about it. Things going missing all the time. I blamed the delivery boy, I blamed Wentworth, I blamed poor Martha, who came to clean. I...”

“I’m sorry, Salamonda.” Yute stepped in range of the hand that had been raised to strike him. He set his own hand to her upper arm. “Back then I didn’t know it was me either.” He glanced at Jella, who was staring at the bounty in her grasp, trembling with restraint. All three canith were sniffing too, despite their pride. “Eat, Jella, eat. Have a bite and pass it on. I’ll see if I can reach in again and find the water pump.” And, so saying, Yute began a second slightly comical dive into his unfeasibly deep pockets.

He had to reach deeper this second time and Arpix could see the effort vibrating through the man’s narrow frame. Without warning, Yute jolted, his face twisting in sudden panic. A yelp of surprise escaped him, and he pulled—or tried to pull—his arm clear. For a moment Arpix wondered if he were going to see a man vanish into his own pocket in some sort of surreal accident, but before anyone could get to him to offer help, Yute managed to yank his arm free.

“That was... so...” A cracking sound split the air. Neither loud nor quiet, but a definite sound that Arpix felt from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. “Someone caught hold of me.”

For a moment the sausage was forgotten. The sound had admitted no direction, but it felt significant in the same way that the noise might had they been standing on ice above a deep lake or in front of a dam wall. Yute saw it first, something astonishing to all of those who had spent years within the vastness of the library. A crack running through the ground beneath their feet. Almost too thin to notice but commanding the eye with its wrongness even so. A black crack. And from it, almost imperceptibly, a black mist began to seep.

No one treads lightly enough to leave no tracks in this world. Others might see our trail as bruised hearts and broken promises, or perhaps saved souls and conjured smiles. But not one of us looks back at our own path without seeing disappointment in every step.

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickensian

CHAPTER 36

Livira

Livira almost escaped. That she didn’t even consider staying to try to help Gevin was a decision she felt would haunt her whole life. But, given her current circumstances, her whole life might not take her much further forward. She had vaulted the enclosure’s wall and, animated by terror, had threaded a path around the handful of hunger-weakened refugees standing between her and the nearest aisle leading from the centre circle.

Something had punched her in the back of the shoulder, knocking her from her feet. The bark of a ’stick arrived at the same time, and she started to fall. They’d shot her!

Being shot had felt like the blow of a fist. The pain didn’t have time to kick in until they were on her, and by that point the agony of the metal projectile being dug out of her flesh with the point of a knife eclipsed the original injury. She howled and fought, but the weight of several men pinned her down, releasing her only as the thing they called a bullet dropped to the ground beside her.

She rolled over with a groan as soon as they released her. The circle’s healing was already at work, soothing her pain, knitting flesh together. King Oanold stood flanked by two guards, a delighted smile on his face. Lord Algar regarded her with cold curiosity, the black book in his hand, firmly closed.

“We’re going to have to take her foot if she doesn’t promise not to run away again,” the king said, sounding thrilled by the idea. “We can start with toes.” He looked down at her. “Unless you just want to open a magic door for us now and avoid all that?”

“Why can’t you just walk out of here?” Livira hated the fear in her voice, but it was real and she couldn’t hide it. The king and his followers had turned cannibal and didn’t even seem ashamed of it. They’d perverted the library’s gift of healing into an abomination that kept their victims alive as they were devoured, maintaining the freshness of the meat. And they’d ignored the sustenance it offered, which although a misery in the long term was still a world better than killing and eating people. And as outraged as Livira was at all this, her voice told the true story. She was utterly undone with terror that they would do the same thing to her. Eat her alive.

“Just where have you been hiding these last few weeks?” Algar drawled.

“Two of the doors won’t open, and there are monsters behind the other two.” King Oanold proved more forthcoming. “Which is why we’ll be using the door you open for us instead. A door that takes us back to Crath.”

“Crath City?” Livira sat looking up at Oanold in astonishment, still hugging herself against the fear and the pain in her shoulder. “Even if you could go back... it was full of canith.”

The king gave her a pitying look and shook his head, grinning around at his subjects as if Livira were a deluded child. “My armies crushed those dogs the same day they jumped our gates. Rodcar Charant is too good a general for any pack of sabbers to pull down.”

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