Chapter 36
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.”
“But the fire...” Livira shook her head. “You ran away. That’s why you’re h—”
A solid kick to the ribs shut her up.
“A tactical retreat to draw the enemy away from the palace and expose their flanks to Charant’s arrow-sticks. The general had cannons too, thicker than a man. Fresh from the laboratory forges.”
“You lost,” Livira wheezed, unable to deny the truth despite the likelihood of another kick.
The king shook his head, laughing. “Lost?” His laugh became a theatrical booming. “Lost to dog-soldiers? No, child, we’re going back. My throne’s secure. You’ve fallen for the big lie. People like Yute will say anything to get the crown off my head. Sabbers overrunning Crath City, who can believe that? I’ve soldiers here who saw what was happening. The canith were just in the low town, and that’s always been full of traitors.
“My kingdom will rise to the call. We’ll harry these hounds out into the Dust and drag their bodies back to decorate the walls. If it hadn’t been for them setting that damn fire... blind luck they separated us, and we ended up here. Those white monsters could eat ten canith each for breakfast. Even my troopers have difficulty putting them down.”
“White monsters?” Livira tried standing up, wincing in pain and expecting to be thrown down again any moment. “You mean skeer? Six legs, more eyes?”
“Demons.” Lord Algar’s eyes slid to the side to measure the king’s approval. “Unholy creatures from the deepest hells, loosed by the foolish experiments of librarians like Yute.” It seemed he wasn’t going to include Livira among the librarians’ ranks even when levelling allegations of atrocities against them. “Dark magics like this.” He held out the little black book with which Livira had summoned a bubble of night.
“It’s not magic,” Livira said, “just something you don’t understand. You think the light here is magic too?” She regretted the words as soon as they left her lips, but the man’s stupidity had pulled them out of her. A guard stepped forward and slapped her across the face, a stinging blow. For a moment it put an image of Malar in her mind. He’d slapped her on the steps of the Allocation Hall, and it had been wrong despite the good intentions buried beneath it. Right now, though, she would welcome some of his violent shortcuts to good goals, like freeing her from the hell she’d dropped herself into.
At a nod from Algar, Jons took hold of Livira’s arm once more and twisted it behind her.
“I believe you were counting to ten, Your Majesty,” Algar said, his single eye boring into Livira.
“So I was.” King Oanold nodded with practised gravitas. “And despite your treacherous attempt to flee, girl, I will show you how decent humans behave, and begin at one rather than carry on from where we left off. I believe you were going to open a magic door for us.” He coughed importantly and swelled his chest. “One!”
“Wait!” Livira’s panic rose through her, threatening to overwhelm her intelligence. “I can open a door for you but—”
“Two!”
“—it takes a lot longer than you’re giving me.”
“Three!
“Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t,” the king interrupted his own count. “But you can still do it without your feet, certainly without your toes. And losing them will be both an incentive for your efforts, and a punishment for your escape attempt. Four!”
“I can’t! I just can’t. Please!” Livira hated herself for begging. She hated how this crude, stupid man had reduced her to a blubbering mess simply with his boundless cruelty. His methods took no cleverness, no wit, no skill, and yet were as effective as a hammer to the head. “Please don’t!”
“Seven!”
Livira had missed five and six in her distress.
Dozens were watching her now, expressions ranging from stony to empty to hungry. Only a handful bore traces of sympathy and none of those showed any signs of objecting. The alleged head librarian, Acconite, studied his hands with dedicated intensity.
Livira had imagined Malar coming to her rescue. She wanted it so badly that the images her imagination painted of his bloody arrival were sufficiently vivid to fool the eye—nearly. But however much she demanded that he step into the circle from one of the nearest aisles, he remained sealed away behind distance or time or both.
When something did emerge from one of the aisles Livira had been staring at wildly over the shoulders of the king and his guards, only she saw it, and when the others finally noticed the thing, Livira was the only one to understand what it was.
Oanold had decreed that the skeer were demons, but alien as they were, the creation that emerged behind him was closer to a product of the hells described in Crath City’s many temples. A pitch-black skeleton, taller than any man, bleeding drops of smoking tar from its bones, the only deviation from the remains of a regular human, apart from the colour and the fact they moved without the need for flesh, were the talons at the end of each finger, and the distended jaw full of shearing teeth and dagger fangs.
“Nine!” Oanold’s count held everyone’s attention. The man beside him only turned as the skeleton dipped its head to chomp into his neck. The black skull lifted sharply, tearing large chunks of meat free in a crimson shower. And the screaming started.
—
Livira knew an Escape when she saw one. She found it less terrifying than being mutilated in cold blood by people who hated her and would eat what they cut from her. But it was still terrifying, and she ran just like everyone else did.
Livira sidestepped a pale-eyed soldier, twisted from the clutching grasp of an old woman in soiled finery, and sped down the nearest aisle that led away from the Escape. She ran like a wild thing for a hundred yards, taking one turn after another, putting distance and barriers between herself and all horrors, both alien and human.
She began to slow, gasping for breath, trying to tame her panting so she could hear any pursuit. Her thoughts caught up with her soon enough. She’d seen Escapes in all manner of scary forms before, but they’d always looked as if somewhere in the world, or on some other, there might be real creatures built along the same lines. The skeleton, however, with its devouring maw and fleshless frame, seemed built of fear, a creature out of the pages of some horror novel. Moreover, it seemed curiously suited to its victims, a group of starving cannibals, of whom many—surely most—would have had misgivings about the nature of their meals.
Over her still-pounding heart and the scattered screams—none as distant as she would have liked—Livira could hear no sign of any chase. The boom of several ’sticks brought an end to the screaming and prompted Livira to carry on. She walked as quietly as she could, avoiding the books which even this far from Oanold’s camp had been scattered from the lower shelves in large numbers. She wondered if it was an act of vandalism or if they’d been looking for something...
Livira thought that with the chaos of the Escape’s attack, the distance she’d run, and the convolutions of the shelving, she’d done enough to win clear. So, it came as a terrible shock then when thirty yards further on she turned a corner and found herself face to face with two of Oanold’s men.
“Would you look at that, Bertat! It’s a duster.”
Livira could tell that under the human grime both were palace guards, with golden tassels still attempting to gleam on their epaulettes. Both had untidy growths of hair on what would previously have been shaven scalps. One greying, the other a drab brown. The pair had little else to set them apart. They could be brothers. The older man had a seam of scar across his forehead. The younger man had the same amused cruelty in his eyes that the king had. The other just looked hungry. Both appeared to be intent on recapturing the king’s prisoner and largely unconcerned about any nightmares stalking the aisles.
Livira turned to run but one of them got a hand on her shoulder and yanked her back.
“Hello, boys.” Malar had missed a dozen opportunities to arrive with perfect timing, but Livira forgave them all for his appearance now, walking unhurriedly along the aisle she’d just come down, his sword in hand. “I wouldn’t advise reaching for those ’sticks. You don’t have enough time.” He continued to approach, neither slowing nor speeding his pace, his arm at his side, blade lifted only enough to keep it from skimming the floor. “Draw steel if you like.”
The younger guard wrapped a thick arm around Livira’s neck. “Watch me snap her like a twig.”
“Snap who? The librarian?” Malar shrugged. “You’d think she might be useful in a library, but do as you feel best.”
“You don’t want her?” The older guard sounded puzzled.
“A bit young for me.” Malar sucked his teeth, eyes narrow. “Besides, I’m more the killing sort.” He brought up his blade. “I mean, I’ll stab you through her if you like, but it seems poor sport. You’d have more of a chance with a weapon in your hand.”
The younger guard, apparently feeling outraged at the challenge to his manhood or whatever it was that made people ready to gamble their lives on a sharp edge, threw Livira roughly aside and drew his blade, a shiny length of steel with a richly enamelled hilt, in keeping with his station.
“You too?” Malar tilted his head towards the older man in query.
“Do I know you?” the man asked.
“I doubt it.” Malar limbered up his wrist. “You may have heard of me, though. They call me—” Mid-sentence Malar lunged, skewering the younger man through the throat. A side swing half decapitated the older man with his sword partway drawn from the scabbard. “Malar.”
Malar held a hand out to Livira and pulled her to her feet.
“Not so fast.” A steady voice some way behind Livira.
She turned to see Jons about thirty yards back along the aisle, staring at them both down the gleaming barrel of a heavy ’stick. Sweat slicked his short dark hair to his forehead, and he stood with his feet apart, broad shoulders hunched around his aim, face red, eyes calm.
Close to his head a strand of smoke coiled upwards, the smoulder of the fuse that would ignite the chemicals whose swift combustion would drive the projectile forward. Fire amid the aisles!
“Fucksake.” Malar spat on the ground. “You can lose yourself in the library, they told me. Never see a fucking soul for days, they told me. And here we are with every Harry, Tom”—he yanked his sword from the second guard’s neck, aiming his gaze at Jons—“and fucking Dick, showing up like they’re taking stage cues.”
“You should run along, Malar,” Jons said, his aim unwavering. “King wants the girl. Didn’t say nothing about you.”
“I’m a bit old for running, Jons.”
“Just let us go.” Livira tore her gaze from the bleeding bodies at her feet. “He’s your friend. You helped save me as a child. Nobody knows we even met out here.”
Jons shook his head almost imperceptibly. “You’re the girl who opens magic doors. The king said so himself. I need a door even more than a square meal right about now. Got black devils in with us now, as well as the white ones outside.”
“I don’t know how to open doors,” Livira protested. “The Exchange is—”
“You won’t change Jons’s mind with words, Livira. Words hang on trust, and trust is hard to come by, especially when you’re pointing a ’stick at someone. Soldiers’re always getting fucked over with fancy words.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Jons said.
“But you’re forgetting who I am, old friend.” Malar started to walk towards the man.
“Next step’s the one I blow your head off. I’m wise to your tricks, friend .”
Malar lowered his voice. “When he shoots, you have to run.”
“I’m not leaving you!” Livira was outraged.
“Then I’ll have got shot for nothing.” Malar kept on walking towards Jons. He raised his voice, addressing the man again. “You should wait until I’m closer. You won’t have time to reload.”
“Hard to miss at this range.”
“Even so.” Malar gestured with his head, indicating the corpses behind him. “You’re remembering who I am, Jons. Palms starting to sweat. Aim wavering. It’s not so easy when—”
The ’stick boomed, a thunderous sound, much louder than Livira had imagined it might be. Malar jerked around and stumbled back against the shelves. Smoke bloomed about Jons and a ringing silence filled the emptiness behind the shot. For a moment it looked as if nothing but the books were holding Malar up—his graceless slide to the floor inevitable. In the next heartbeat he shrugged himself away from the shelves, leaving crimson-spattered spines behind him.
“That could have gone better,” Malar croaked, and began to shamble towards Jons. “You should run. You think you’ve got time to reload, but you don’t.”
Jons glanced behind him, considering escape, then with a curse he broke open his arrow-stick along an unseen hinge and began fumbling in the powders that would propel his next projectile.
Malar staggered on, making slow progress, a scarlet trail behind him. The bullet appeared to have gone through his chest and Livira couldn’t understand how he wasn’t dead. A terrifyingly slow race ensued, Malar consuming the space between him and Jons one agonised step at a time, Jons going through the many intricate stages required to fire his weapon again. It almost seemed that he had to perform his own little miracle of alchemy right there before them.
With barely six feet between them Jons began to raise his ’stick while the point of Malar’s blade trailed lazily behind him as he closed the last few steps.
It had taken Livira far longer than she’d hoped to find a suitable book. She knew, from experimentation that would appal any librarian, that books make terrible missiles. Aside from having aerodynamics only slightly less chaotic than that of a playing card, they opened in flight and after that any attempt to instil aim into the initial throw was lost. The book Livira required was bound shut, slim but not floppy, small but not too small.
Her throw arced in the air, slicing a curved path that at first would have had it strike Malar between his shoulders, but ended up skimming past his sword arm and following an ever-sharpening turn that brought it crashing into the side of Jons’s head.
The ’stick boomed again and another cloud of smoke billowed. Jons turned to run, somehow evading the rising swing of Malar’s sword, though the blow took the weapon from his hands and threw it against the shelves.
Livira, who had been sprinting after her thrown book, passed Malar and threw herself at the back of Jons’s legs, making no attempt at a grapple. The man came down with a clatter and an oath, joining Livira in a tangle on the floor.
Jons was rising before Livira could, one hand pulling an ugly knife from his belt. Livira, unable to twist free, screamed and tensed for the thrust. It never came. Jons’s arm stiffened and then went slack. He’d risen onto Malar’s blade and unlike when his bullet had passed through Malar’s chest, Malar’s sword found something immediately fatal on its journey through Jons.
As Livira disentangled herself, Malar sat down heavily, his back to the shelving. He coughed and bright red blood peppered the air. His voice came faint and wheezing. “One of those healing circles would be good about now.”
Livira came to kneel at his side. She felt calm. She knew she should be weeping, begging Malar to stay, telling him she loved him. But this was Malar. He wasn’t going to die, not here in the library shot by an idiot, not anywhere. “It’s going to be fine.” She believed it.
Malar put his head back, blood dribbling from his chin. He raised an eyebrow. “Fine?”
That look put a crack in Livira’s armour and a scared, tragic, empty feeling tried to leak in through it. “We can fix this.” She put both hands over the hole in Malar’s chest, as if hiding the problem was halfway to solving it. “Pressure on the wound!”
Malar coughed again and blood bubbled between Livira’s fingers. “Fuck...” He wasn’t looking at her. “You’d think this couldn’t... get worse.”
The smoke from Jons’s second shot wasn’t dissipating as it had after the first shot. If anything, it seemed to be getting thicker. Livira followed Malar’s gaze to where, some yards away, a thin column of smoke was rising amid the loose pages that Jons’s ’stick had fallen onto. Books that had been tumbled from the shelves scattered the whole area. As her eyes fixed upon the exact spot, an orange tongue of flame woke and licked upwards.
“No!”
For a moment Livira was trapped, unable to take her hands from Malar’s wound. Perhaps too far away to stop the flames spreading in any case.
White smoke swirled, hinting at a ghostly figure. “Not today.” A white foot came down to snuff the flame. And Yute’s pale child stood before them, her pink-eyed stare impossible to read.
Livira was never sure when it was that Malar died, only that her hands were on him and that he was not alone.