Chapter 43
The wait for the world to tell you that you’re special can be a long and lonely one. Better to get off your arse and let it know that you are.
Blowing Your Own Horn: Lesson 1: Pucker Up , by Miles Smoly
CHAPTER 43
Evar
Evar walked out of the Mechanism, blinking against the library’s light. He had seen the door as a bright rectangle in the void. Distant at first but closer with each step. Until the moment he escaped, a large part of him didn’t believe that, even with Livira’s help, the thing would let him go. And yet, stepping out had been as easy as stepping in. On the threshold, a strange anger suffused him, as if he had wanted the Mechanism to acknowledge its debt to him, as if he had wanted it to remember him as special, not simply another visitor to be taken in and set free like any other.
The scene that met his return blew those thoughts away like dust before a storm. Strangers, screaming, struggling, harsh shouts. The newcomers seemed all to be soldiers—just like those in the vision that Jaspeth had shown them—only leaner and dirtier. Scores of soldiers were wrestling Yute’s people into submission, binding their hands with cords, rope, or even strips of cloth. Those resisting were being clubbed or punched. Evar spotted Arpix’s long, skinny form sprawled on the ground, unmoving, a bloody wound on his forehead, hands tied behind his back.
Soldiers stood to either side of the Mechanism’s door, waiting to seize everyone as they emerged. It seemed that the last in had been the first out. He was the first canith to return.
Perhaps Oanold’s army had grown complacent as they overwhelmed unprepared civilians, some of them children or elderly. Maybe the appearance of a canith stunned them for a heartbeat. Or perhaps humans were just that slow. But even taken by surprise, Evar managed to strike the nearest soldier with a flat palm to the chest, hard enough to lift him from his feet. At the same time Evar pulled the man’s sword from his scabbard with his other hand.
Evar spun, tumbling another soldier and driving his stolen blade to the depth of its hilt through the chest of the man who had taken hold of Livira. He would have done more. A lot more. But someone among his many opponents threw a grenade. The explosion was by far the loudest thing Evar had ever heard and smoke swept in behind the shock wave, so fast that it swallowed all and any carnage.
For several dazed moments Evar staggered about, arms out in front of him, hunting Livira. He was sure he was calling her name, but no sound reached his ears. Instead, they were filled with a great, pulsing silence that sang a single high note.
His confusion cleared long before the smoke did but, lacking sight or hearing, his mind had little to work with. Time and again he collided with bodies that came out of the surrounding cloud. He dealt with them more gently now, not knowing friend from foe, seeking Livira.
Another concussion hammered through the smoke, further away this time. He turned towards it and found his arms full of Livira. She recognised him and clung tight. Evar held her with one arm, rotating slowly to ward off any danger that might come out of the thinning smog.
“What in the hells?” Clovis emerged from the Mechanism, Kerrol at her shoulder.
Immediately Clovis went to one knee beside the soldier Evar had killed. In her right hand the white sword pointed towards potential attackers while with her left she rolled the man from his front to his back. A snarl twisted her face, exposing every tooth she owned.
The smoke hung thickest around the mouth of the corridor to the main chamber. Its retreat revealed a dozen and more of Yute’s party, most huddled on the floor, some still struggling to free each other from the bonds they’d been secured with. None of the soldiers remained save the dead man and another hobbling into the smoke with a broken gait, bent around some agony.
“Arpix!” Evar looked around for the man who he’d come to realise was his first human friend apart from Livira. “Arpix?”
Clovis stood sharply, stricken. “Where is he?”
“They must have taken him,” Evar growled. “They were going to take them all. I saw—”
“Keep them safe.” Clovis pulled the orb from her armour and tossed it to Kerrol.
“They’ll eat him. They’ll eat him alive!” Livira broke free of Evar’s arm and started running towards the corridor. “I’ve seen it.”
Evar caught her before she got ten yards.
Clovis passed them both at speed, aimed at the retreating smoke. The route Oanold and his soldiers had taken to reach this place and this period—the two steps they had taken through time—had picked those same marauders who had slaughtered Clovis’s family when she was a small girl and placed them in front of her as a grown warrior. Their first jump in time had consumed most of the two hundred years that had always stood between Livira and Evar, and the second smaller jump had devoured the last decade or so, allowing Clovis the time to grow, whilst the soldiers’ guilt still lay fresh upon their shoulders, the blood of Clovis’s community still staining the uniforms of those King Oanold commanded.
Others of Yute’s party crowded around them. Meelan, Leetar, Jella.
“They’re saying they got Salamonda too. And Neera.” Angry sobs broke Livira’s command of Evar’s tongue so it became hard to understand her.
“And Yute?” she asked Meelan.
“No.” He shook his head. Evar’s grip on the human’s language remained weak but he understood that Yute had yet to return from the Mechanism.
Livira twisted free of Evar’s hands. “I’m going with her!” She pointed at Clovis’s retreating figure, now barely visible through the smoke. “To get Arpix.” She strode off without looking back.
Evar made to go after her, but Meelan grabbed his arm and stared up, locking eyes, speaking with great intensity. “A hundred of them. Weapons. Arrow-sticks. Soldiers. You can’t win.”
Evar looked down into the young man’s pale, serious face. “I have to try.” He twisted his mouth around the strange words.
Meelan bowed his head. “We’ll all go. Arpix would come after me.”
Meelan’s sister grabbed his arm as he stepped forward, and Evar set a hand to his chest. “Me and Clovis. You slow us down.” With that he turned to Kerrol. “You know what’s coming?”
His brother nodded, eyes sombre.
Evar sprinted after Livira and scooped her up, knowing she would hate him for it. Ignoring her screams and punches, he hurried back to Kerrol with her and handed her into the prison of his brother’s arms. He fell to his knees before her.
“I am so sorry, Livira.” He bowed his head before her screams of frustration. “I’m not strong enough to see you die.”
And with that he turned, racing after his sister, passing over the head and headless body of the first straggler before he caught her up as she navigated the chamber beyond.
—
In the main chamber, Evar and Clovis faced the forest of shelf-towers once more, each steel-cored and reaching hundreds of yards up to brace the ceiling. The huge ganar automaton had been making slow but steady progress. Thousands of the towers lay in twisted ruins behind it amid the clutter of their contents. But still it had advanced less than halfway across the floor’s expanse and had half a mile to go before reaching the reading room.
Even so, the constant thunder of falling books, and the deep twang of metal fists striking steel columns, drowned out any cries from those the soldiers had abducted.
“There are a lot of them,” Evar said.
“They’re just sabbers.” Clovis rolled her head, neck joints cracking.
“Humans,” Evar corrected.
Clovis pinned him with her fiercest look. “Arpix is human, and I would face this danger for him alone. But the ones who took him are the sabbers I’ve been hunting my whole life. They’re the ones who killed my father, killed my mother, killed my true brothers.” The fierceness faltered at this as if she might have taken a step too far in the matter of brothers that were true or false. “You might take my war away from me with common sense and talk of where guilt ends and innocence begins. But this is my battle. The one I’ve waited for since the day they came. And here, somehow, lifetimes later, those same sabbers have delivered themselves to me and I will have my accounting with them. This won’t end until the last of these bastards has bled upon my blade—the Soldier’s blade: they killed him too, remember? I’m going to save Arpix, kill the king, and take this weapon, this book everyone’s talking about. This won’t end until every last one of these fuckers dies. And every kill you take from me I will hold against you, little brother.”
Evar bowed his head. He couldn’t argue with her. He had wanted to rescue whoever could be rescued. Arpix, Salamonda, and Neera first since they were dearest to Livira’s heart and to his own. If he came back with them then she would forgive him for leaving her in Kerrol’s arms. He would have been satisfied with a rescue. But Clovis would have her slaughter to weigh against the slaughter of old and, right or wrong, Evar would not leave her to the task alone.
“Come on.” Evar took the lead. He wondered where the skeer warrior was. If it remained in the chamber, he hoped it found the soldiers first rather than him. Let them expend their ammunition on the insectoid.
The orchard layout of the towers offered many long avenues of sight that narrowed into invisible distance, but the soldiers could not be seen down any of them. Instead, Evar had to rely on the training Starval had given him. In many places tracking the band’s progress was easy enough. Footprints in dust, spatters of blood, and dislodged books all told a tale. In other spots Evar’s decisions hinged on the smallest of clues. Sometimes instinct or an educated guess served.
Before long though he could smell them and follow the charnel reek around every twist and turn. He came close enough to hear the tramp of feet, and glimpse figures hurrying along ahead of them only to be lost among the towers as the angles changed.
Evar’s heart began to thunder both with anticipation and with dread. The dead man’s blood still coated his stolen blade. Evar hadn’t enjoyed killing him. He knew humans, ones that he liked and loved. Taking the lives of others—even the worst of them—was not something he wanted to become used to.
When Clovis’s hand closed on Evar’s shoulder, and brought him to an unexpected halt, the tension inside him almost swung his sword her way. “Sorry!”
Clovis snorted as if the idea he might have hurt her was comical. “We need to go up. Projectile weapons in straight aisles can defeat the best of us. It’s how the Soldier—their Malar—died. And he was a fine warrior, even as a human.”
“You nearly killed him back in the Exchange that time without even thinking about it,” Evar protested.
“Focus!” Clovis punched his chest. “We’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to do this.” She shook her head. “And I did have to think about it. It might not have looked like it but that little human almost got me that time.” Clovis tapped the side of her head. “Focus.” And in the next instant she was swarming up a shelf-tower.
Ten yards above the ground Clovis struck out after their prey. She ran, setting her feet to the tight-packed books first on one shelf then on a shelf at the same level but on a different tower further along. And in this manner, skipping along the narrow and unstable edges offered to her, Clovis danced through the air high above the soldiers’ heads.
Evar followed, able to match her agility though delayed when one set of books betrayed him, spilling to the ground and leaving him lunging for the opposite tower to keep from falling.
The crash of books brought soldiers and their ’sticks swivelling in Evar’s direction, yet still they didn’t see him, their aim focused at ground level and on the dislodged tomes.
Clovis dropped among the enemy where they stood thickest. She spun, sweeping an arc that became a circle and, where the white blade went, bodies fell apart in crimson floods. She felled two more soldiers and was away, leaping from shelf-tower to shelf-tower, gaining elevation as if climbing a staircase that only she had the wit to see.
Evar closed his open mouth, aware that in the time Clovis had killed eight of the foe, he had done exactly nothing. Shouts went up from the dozens of troops scattered among the towers. A book close to Evar’s head jerked into the air and plunged to the ground, leaving fragments of pages swirling in its wake. A bullet! It had been hit by a bullet!
Evar leapt for a different pillar, closing off the angle that the shot might have come from. Other projectiles buzzed through the air.
“There! Up there!” Another soldier spotted him, calling her comrades to her. Four of them charged towards the base of his tower, swords drawn.
If they weren’t fighting him, they could be coming at Clovis from behind while she fought others. He needed to play his part.
Evar leapt into their path. He landed as Starval had taught him, rolled beneath their blades, bowled three of them over, half decapitated the fourth. Then he was moving, dodging this way and that, coming swiftly upon new enemies and leaving them behind him, stunned, wounded, or dead.
Every stride placed Evar at the centre of another set of avenues radiating out along the compass points and the diagonals, a set of lines down which anyone with a ’stick might sight their weapon. He kept moving, jinking left, jinking right, relying on his speed to gain the initiative in every encounter.
A man slid from Evar’s blade. Another flew back as Evar shoulder-charged him, sending him crashing into the nearest shelves with a sickening crunch. From time to time Evar glimpsed his sister crossing the line of his vision. More often he found her victims, their bodies ruined by sword blows. Always he heard her roaring rage, her shattered howls ricocheting among the towers.
Ahead of him Evar saw a group of soldiers and the first of the humans not wearing a uniform. The man stood taller than the five around him, though he was less broad than the rest. For a mad moment Evar thought he’d found Arpix, but as the man’s head turned his way Evar saw that in place of Arpix’s rags he wore a fine cloak, and that he was older, with a crimson eyepatch.
Evar raised his sword in challenge, the edge blunted by the work already accomplished. He moved to close the distance and make his attack but found himself on both knees. The small red hole in his jerkin just below his pectoral muscle confused him, as did the fact that he was kneeling.
Two of the soldiers advanced cautiously on him, blades levelled, the one-eyed man just at their backs. Evar still had things to learn about human expressions but felt confident in saying that the man’s smile promised nothing good.
Footsteps approached from behind too, and Evar, understanding at last that he had been shot, struggled to get up. He only made it to one knee.
“It’s a shame it can’t understand me,” the man said. Evar thought he must be the Lord Algar that Livira had written of in her books. “Look at his eyes, though. He knows this is going to hurt.” Algar glanced around. “Haven’t they caught the others yet? I hope this isn’t the only one we take alive.”
One of the soldiers stepped forward, arm raised for the killing blow.
“Stop, you idiot!” Algar snapped. “Just tie it up. We’ll let the circle heal it, and then see what punishments the king has in mind.”
“Good eating on one of these,” a female grunted behind Evar. Some of the others laughed. Algar made no response, but his single eye burned with a hunger that was about more than food.
One of the soldiers behind grabbed Evar’s arm, and he found himself too weak to stop them. His struggles merely brought another man to the task.
“Put his eye out.”
The words were spoken quietly and took a moment to register with the soldiers.
“What?” the woman asked, though it seemed she must have heard.
“His eye,” Algar said. “It won’t kill him. Indulge me. The pain might help keep him alive until we get him back to the circle.”
The woman shrugged and drew a short, broad-bladed knife of a sort used for tasks rather than combat. An arm snaked under Evar’s chin from behind, controlling his head. Evar tried to bite the woman as she moved the steel point towards his right eye. She jerked her hand back.
“Kemmit, hold his head.”
A hefty, black-bearded man approached, pulling on thick leather gloves. Evar understood in that instant both the weight of fear that Livira must have felt at the mercy of these creatures, and the limitless bravery she had shown in her insistence that she go back.
Evar had said that he wasn’t strong enough to see her die. He was glad now that she would not see his death.
Strong hands knotted in his mane and the knife point glimmered back into his vision. He roared and twisted but the bullet had taken more out of him than the blood filling his lung; and neither terror nor rage would put it back.
When the hot gore splattered across his face it took Evar a while to understand that it wasn’t from him. Not until the bodies started to fall around him did he understand that Clovis had arrived.
—
“What are you doing?”
Clovis had taken hold of Evar’s jerkin, grabbing it at the back by the collar, and was dragging him away.
“I’m dragging you away.”
It made sense, but this was Clovis and these were the sabbers she’d ached to revenge herself upon since she was a small girl. “You’re letting them go.”
“I’m not letting you go.”
Evar’s heels traced two bloody tracks across the library floor as Clovis pulled him back the way they’d come.
“Clo, I’m dying anyway.” He coughed up a red splutter to prove it. “Go save Arpix.”
Clovis’s snarl came so loud and loaded with anguish that it sounded as if it should have burst from her in a shower of blood. A larger one than had accompanied Evar’s cough. The snarl wavered, gained strength, strayed towards a howl, then stumbled into words. “I can’t leave you.”
“Clo—”
“There are healing circles. Arpix and the others aren’t going to die in the next hour. You will. I can go back...”
“You can’t open the door.”
“There will be a way.”
The anguish in her voice hurt Evar more than the hole in his chest did. He knew Clovis bitterly wanted to exact revenge on the soldiers who had—just weeks ago in the humans’ experience—slaughtered her people. Canith blood still stained their uniforms. But more than this, he knew that particular desire was not the heaviest thing weighing against him in the scale upon which this decision had balanced. Clovis wanted to save Arpix. Even more than she wanted her vengeance. And despite those desires, both so strong that they might better be named requirements—here she was dragging him away from the battle she had dreamed of for half a lifetime.
Evar let his head loll to the left. “And that thing’s coming. It’s me it wants.” The automaton’s crashing advance was louder and closer. Evar caught glimpses of the destruction down every diagonal.
“It’ll have to come through me,” Clovis replied past gritted teeth, picking up speed as she aimed for the reading room. They had no chance of making it to the centre circle in the current chamber. Not if the automaton had them in its sights. They’d be intercepted before they got there.
“Leave me.” Evar coughed. “You can come back with the others.”
“We still have time.” With a grunt Clovis reached a half jog.
The automaton paused from tearing at the forest of bars still blocking its progress. It began to back away, the clang of metal feet on library stone managing to get an echo even from a chamber two miles across.
“It’s backing up,” Evar muttered.
“That’s not good.” The reading room entrance loomed ahead of them and Clovis broke free of the shelf-towers.
Livira, Kerrol—who no longer held her—Meelan, Jella, and many of the others were standing at the start of the corridor and rushed forward as soon as they spotted Clovis.
A crowd bore Evar towards the reading chamber, speeding Clovis’s effort. Behind them, back in the main chamber, the automaton’s steady retreat turned into a rapidly accelerating advance, the tempo of its many-ton footfalls rising towards a roll of thunder.
“Hurry!” Clovis shouted over the approaching storm.
They didn’t stop until they reached the reading room and as they carried him Evar wondered if the Mechanism might not be the way for Livira and the others to escape what was coming.
Clovis finally laid him before the Mechanism and Livira fought to his side. The anger on her face melted as she understood the seriousness of his injury. “We need pressure on the wound, front and back!” She took his knife in a trembling hand and started to cut strips from her robe; Evar tried to apologise again for his weakness, but could only cough, speckling Livira’s now-pale face in crimson.
Others reached them. Clovis stalked around Evar as Livira and Jella fussed at the holes the stick-shot had left in him. Evar let his head loll and observed proceedings, strangely distant both from his pain and from his fear. Only concern about Livira still ached within him, the rest he could slip away from—he could fall through the floor like when he was a ghost, leave it all behind him. But her tears would fall, and he would feel them no matter how deep he sank.
The Mechanism had released Yute and his daughter, but more than that it had given up two others who had presumably answered the summons before Evar’s party arrived. Standing on the opposite side of the Mechanism’s white door to that chosen by Yute and Yolanda were Mayland and Starval, one tall and golden, the other short, dark, and watchful.
If Yute and Yolanda held any enmity for the canith who had murdered their wife and mother respectively, none of it showed on their faces. Yute looked sad rather than vengeful. His daughter appeared pensive and, like Starval, watchful, though her focus seemed to take in more than just what might be visible to others.
Many from Yute’s party had gathered around him at the Mechanism. Evar knew they would be telling him that the automaton was coming, burdening the white almost-human with their fears, seeking reassurance. Evar doubted Yute had any to give.
Starval came the other way rapidly, elbowing Livira aside to reach Evar. He snapped a sharp glance up at Clovis. “What have— How could you let this happen?”
Clovis made no reply, her own gaze fixed on Yute, the person who had sent Oanold and his followers to her chamber. Evar let his head roll back and took her in. Even from this unusual angle he could see the fury rising through her. Oanold’s troops were the bullet that had torn through her life, but the finger on the trigger had been Yute’s.
Starval tapped Evar’s chest. “The lung’s flooded.”
A sudden lancing pain made Evar gasp and choke. He looked down, thinking he’d been stabbed, only to discover that he was right. Starval had thrust between his ribs what looked like a thin silver rod.
“It’s draining the blood?” Livira snarled, her mastery of their language drawing a surprised look from Starval.
“Yes.”
Evar saw that the rod was a tube. He doubted that Starval carried it to save lives, but there was a crimson stream at the far end, and whilst it seemed that as a general rule blood should be kept on the inside, in this instance it did seem to be helping Evar catch his breath.
Clovis stopped her pacing. “I should go.” She looked at him and Evar saw her conflict. “I’m no good here. Arpix needs me.”
Evar would have told her that she was doing good. That she had saved him, and her presence made him stronger. But she was right. Arpix did need her. He managed a small nod and without another word Clovis was gone.
The pounding charge out in the main chamber ended in a huge crash, but one that didn’t end as suddenly as it came. Instead, the initial collision became a prolonged rending of metal. The automaton had discovered that with sufficient run-up its momentum would carry it a considerable distance through the shelf-towers.
The tearing began to slow, but even if the automaton didn’t reach them on this charge, it seemed likely that it might win through on the next effort.
“Will it save him?” Livira asked Starval as soon as her voice could be heard.
“No.” Starval looked towards Mayland. “He needs a centre circle. Or a proper doctor. And soon.”
Starval’s attention returned to Evar and, in a whisper, Evar asked the question that had been eating him ever since Mayland snapped the head librarian’s neck. “Why, brother? Why take Jaspeth’s side? You want to destroy the library?” He coughed and less blood came up than before. “Mayland killed that human. She was no threat.”
Starval raised an eyebrow in a show of surprise, though his dark eyes held something like hurt, shame even, as if the question was a blow he’d been expecting. “You should understand, Evar. You more than anyone. They kept us trapped our whole lives, brother. You didn’t even have that”—he pointed at the Mechanism without looking at it—“for a kind of escape.” He shook his head. “This place is an anchor around our necks. Around everyone’s neck. Shouldn’t we be allowed to forget? We have to be burdened by the memory of... everything?”
“And the librarian?”
“Have you tried omelette yet?”
Evar frowned his confusion.
“There’s so much out there, Evar. Almost all of it good to eat. Eggs.” He shaped one with finger and thumb making an oval. “Beautiful things. Perfectly designed. Full of slime that will turn into a bird if you let it. But break them and you can make an omelette, and if you’d tasted one, you’d be breaking eggs. That human—”
“She wasn’t an egg, Starval.” The words hissed weakly from him, but Evar saw his brother flinch under their weight.
The automaton began another charge and conversation rapidly became impossible.
Kerrol looked towards the entrance and shouted over the din. “It’s going to be in here soon. Can we go back in?” He pointed to the Mechanism.
Evar couldn’t hear what Yolanda said but he could see her shake her head. The audience was over; the rules were back in play. Starval patted Evar’s shoulder and stood, turning as he did so. He ran back to Mayland, and Evar watched the pair arguing for a moment before Livira seized his attention, literally. She took his mane in both hands, kneeling beside him, and steered his face towards hers, close enough that she didn’t have to shout.
“You said you weren’t strong enough to watch me die. Well, I’m not watching you die either, and I’m not looking away. So, that leaves you only one choice.” Her voice cracked. “Don’t die.” A tear fell. “Please don’t.”
Evar, surprised to find that he was now on his back, reached up and pulled Livira down, holding her to his good side. He felt curiously numb, slightly weightless. He decided that if he had to die this would be the way he chose, lying peacefully with the person he loved tight against him. If it wasn’t for how much he knew it would hurt Livira he would close his eyes right now, squeeze her to him, and sleep that sleep he needed so badly, a soft oblivion without dreams.
“Wake up!” Livira shook him.
Evar opened his eyes to see Mayland nodding slowly as Starval continued to remonstrate with him. Mayland stepped to the Mechanism’s door and reached above it, placing his hand flat on the grey stuff of the structure. He bent his head as if in deep thought.
“Evar, what are you—” Livira broke off, following his gaze.
Mayland completed whatever he’d been doing and backed away. Heartbeats later the door melted into mist and an assistant stepped out from the blackness within. Maybe the same Hellet who had watched their arrival from beside the Mechanism.
From behind Evar came an awful ringing, the sound of metal columns hundreds of yards long being torn free, twisted, and sent flying to bounce against the chamber wall. The automaton had broken out of the shelf-towers. Evar caught sight of its gleaming bulk filling the corridor, coming forward, slowly now, trailing ringing steel. Before it, made tiny by its size, Clovis came running, blade in hand.
The assistant walked past Evar, past Clovis, past them all, heading towards the entrance. Up close, its white enamel had a faint ivory mottling hinting at what the library might consider impurities. The Soldier and the Assistant had shown similar signs, though Evar would never consider Livira’s presence in the Assistant as something impure.
The newly arrived assistant and the huge ganar confronted each other at the entrance, the automaton hunched to fit within the corridor walls. Its metal body was dented and cut with bright scratches where jagged steel must have scraped across it. Breaking a path across the chamber had taken a toll on it where the years had failed to register.
“No.” The assistant held out a white hand, palm forward.
The mechanical ganar lunged forward with an awful silent fury. It hit an invisible wall and came to a dead halt, though Evar saw that the assistant was jolted back some fraction of an inch. Clovis came to a skidding halt behind him and lent her strength to keep his place.
The ganar recovered itself and pointed with one stubby finger. There was no ambiguity this time. The digit was aimed squarely at Evar.
His “Why?” escaped him as a gasp.