Page 94 of The Book that Broke the World

The white child stopped and rounded on them. “It was made in the likeness of a particular ganar. Both of them were. All of them were. The same ganar. Though ganar may all look the same to you...”

“What?” Evar looked at the child in astonishment. “How many of these monsters are there? And which ganar? And why? And how?”

Yute answered the first question. “There are many, though the vastness of the library makes them seem few. The first kings of Crath City spent many lives and resources aiding the librarians to clear those few found close to the entrance. They were all hostile to humans, though not given to lengthy pursuits.”

Yolanda answered the second question. “They are made in the likeness of Celcha. A ganar who mastered many of the mysteries of the Exchange, all while causing far less harm than you two have.” Her pink eyes took in Evar and Livira with disdain.

Livira, perhaps stung by the accusation, pointed at Yolanda. “You tried to stop me taking my own book, so don’t talk to me about doing damage! I was sent there by an assistant to prevent it harming the library, and you tried to stop me. Many times.”

Yolanda ignored her. “Your last question, Evar Eventari, was ‘how?’ The how of it is that this ganar, Celcha, applied the power and the influence she gained from her use of the Exchange to have these automata built as agents of her revenge. They were built to hunt and kill you and Livira Page.”

Evar shook his head. “That’s nonsense. I’ve never even met a ganar. None of them is going to devote themselves to killing me.” Though as he said it a cold tingle ran the length of his spine. What the child had said made no sense, but it also had a strange kind of truth to it.

“I’ve never seen a ganar either,” Livira protested. In the distance the crashing came again as more shelf-towers surrendered to overwhelming force.

“Well, a ganar has seen you and she was not well pleased.” Yolanda turned and led on towards the corridor to the reading room, now just a hundred yards or so away. “Using the Exchange comes with a price. Any assistant worth their keep should have prevented you from doing so. As to your book—it should have stayed in the past where its damage was limited. The assistant who sent you to retrieve it has been corrupted and intended only harm.”

“You found your book?” Evar asked Livira. He nearly called it his book. He felt that he had lived among the pages as long as she had, maybe longer.

The worry lines scoring Livira’s face deepened, the carefree nature that defined her banished. Evar found himself hating whoever had done that to her.

“I found it. But they took it.” She looked in the direction they’d come. “Back there...” She paused. “Those cracks... I think they all spread from where I hit the ground when the Exchange spat me out.”

Evar reached out a hand and set it on her far shoulder, guiding her closer to him. “Can one book really cause that much trouble?” Whether it could or not, the fact seemed to be that metal monsters created solely for the purpose of hunting and killing Livira were on the march, and Evar, while having no idea how to stop them, had no intention of letting it happen.

Livira shrugged his hand away and advanced on Yolanda. “You couldn’t have told me any of this while you were trying to stop me?” Anger in her voice.

“Would you have believed me? Do you believe me now?”

“I don’t know... maybe. But it would have been nice to have had the chance to decide.”

“There are rules.” Yolanda glanced at Yute. “Though my father seems to have forgotten them. Rules about what can be said and done in given places and given times. Which lines can cross, which must stay apart. And you ran headlong through all of them. I tried not to repeat your crime.”

They walked on without speaking.

—

They reached the passage to the reading room well ahead of the automaton, and entered it, leaving the distant sounds of rending metal and crashing books behind them. Evar noticed that Yolanda had picked up a fairly big tome along the way. A volume whose cover displayed a large circle in which a black half swirled symmetrically into a white half.

The chamber Yute’s daughter led them to contained nothing but the Mechanism at its centre. If there had ever been reading desks here, not even their dust remained. An assistant waited in front of the Mechanism’s door.

“Is that...?” Livira squinted as if there might be some detail that would tell one assistant from the next. “Is he the one who—”

“He who was Hellet,” Yolanda said. “Brother to Celcha of the ganar. The enemy’s willing tool, shaped by the plans of Mayland of the canith. He managed to covertly corrupt an assistant, by sowing the seed before the initial conversion.”

“I still don’t understand what these ganar have against me and Evar,” Livira protested.

“The Exchange breeds and multiplies coincidence. It is part of its engine. The way it functions.” Yolanda shook her head. “Surely you know this? Did you think such things end at the portals it delivers you through, or, like the illusions and translations, might also not follow you, entangling you with others to whom you are already connected?”

“I...” Livira let her silence answer.

Yolanda shook her head. “The library’s founder waits for us within. The enemy is with him. It is a time for choosing sides.”

“Irad and Jaspeth are in there?” Evar’s eyes widened and he stared at the uninspiring grey lump of the Mechanism.

Yolanda shrugged. “If you like.”

Stick-shot in the distance broke through the irregular crashes of the automaton’s approach. Livira spun around in alarm, her expression fading from shock to something unreadable. “I can’t!” She started back towards the exit and the sound of their enemies. “Oanold and the others... they’re eating people. Our people! Gevin—they’re eating Gevin! That’s the evil here. Not Irad or Jaspeth. The library’s not the problem. It’s us. We’re the evil, humans, it’s us.”

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