Chapter 45
Few conflicts can match the ferocity with which siblings make war, their grievances born in the womb. The love that can run between them is more rare but similarly deep.
When Harry Met Morgan , by Nicholas Whitehall
CHAPTER 45
Livira
Why?” A shout.
Livira stood up, releasing Evar’s too-cold hand. “Why me?” she shouted again. There had been nothing ambiguous in the mechanoid’s aim. Its finger, scratched from tearing through a thousand steel poles, had been aimed squarely at her heart.
“My sister made this,” the assistant answered. Grey veins spread across him. “Her name is Celcha.”
At mention of the name the metal beast hurled itself forward, this time pressing against the assistant’s wall with untold force.
“I don’t know any Celcha!” Livira shouted. “I’ve never even seen a ganar.”
**
“Liar!” Celcha screamed the word at the girl’s face, eliciting no reaction, though at last Hellet’s head moved a fraction to acknowledge her.
**
“ She saw you though.” A degree of effort trembled the assistant’s words. “I suffered the same malady in my former life. When I was her brother, Hellet. Ghosts visited me most days.”
“Where did she see me?”
“When is more revealing.” Hellet looked over his shoulder at her and under the gaze of his white eyes Livira felt seized by a sense of vertigo. “She saw you, Livira. You and Evar Eventari dancing above the necropolis she had helped me populate.”
“You did that? You killed all those people?” Even with Evar dying in her lap and a vast killing machine looming over her, Livira shuddered with the chill of that memory. The image of so many bodies lying silent and dead in their homes had never left her.
Hellet inclined his head and turned to focus on opposing the construct’s efforts to reach them. A true assistant could have reduced it to dust with a wave of its hand, but Hellet’s doubts were visibly corrupting the white flesh he wore.
“Dancing?” Livira remembered it. That first kiss. She’d drawn Evar into it. Her hand tightened in his mane and, weak as he was, Evar raised his own to cover hers.
Before the kiss they had danced into the sky, not knowing that a city of humans and canith lay poisoned beneath their feet. Livira lifted her face to meet the hot copper stare of the creature trying to reach them. “But... we didn’t know about the dead. We’d just arrived. We didn’t mean to disrespect anyone.”
**
“Even now, even here at the end she lies!” Celcha had no control over her avatar: its purpose lay encoded in the lore that had been written through it. But if she had, she would have stamped the liar underfoot and silenced her falsehoods in one violent moment.
**
Hellet’s words came strained with effort, spoken to the monster before him. “She believed you were the ghosts who had paved my way to the library and schooled me in the arts of alchemy with a flawed book insufficient to the task.”
“Tell her we’re not!” Livira said, shocked.
Hellet slid back several inches before strengthening his defence and bringing the ganar to a halt once more. “This is not Celcha. She learned the ways of the Exchange better than you have and furnished herself with both education and influence.” Hints of pride and sorrow underwrote his voice. “She seeded this part of the library with these agents of her revenge, skipping through the years in her hunt. She lies ahead of us now, unable to interfere in these events. All we have is the anger she left behind—the hurt she imbued in this metal hulk. She is the unintended consequence of Mayland’s manipulations. I”—he touched his chest—“am the intended consequence. A fractured being so deeply wounded by the library that even when taken in as part of it I have worked for its destruction. I am the poisoned seed that he has sown.”
**
Mayland? Celcha tore one hand slowly down across her face, careless of the furrows her nails carved. Mayland? Maybe... She looked once more towards the canith at the Mechanism’s door. One tall, one short. She had never seen Starve clearly. Never more than glimmers. An arm, a leg...
**
With a grunt, Hellet thrust forward and the construct went staggering back a dozen yards. He half turned from it, staring not at Livira but at something unseen, standing between them. “Even understanding the wrong done to me by Mayland, I had to appreciate the elegance of the lesson, and the truth of it. The library places the power to commit vast crimes into the hands of those wholly unready for such responsibility. To fight it I took the white, and stepped out of time, losing who I was, losing everything save my intent.”
And although Livira was no longer sure the assistant was speaking to her she understood his meaning. She too had lost herself in the timeless white, rarely surfacing, and even then unable to explain herself to the mayfly lives flowering and dying around her.
Veins of ivory, old and almost yellow, were spreading across Hellet as he spoke. Grey fault lines showed themselves across his back. Livira knew the marks for what they were: the weakness and corruption that marred the assistant’s perfection when the spirit within stepped out of the timeless clarity of its view and muddied itself with the now—with real emotions and desires.
**
“Hellet? Why did you let me...” But it wasn’t true. He had asked her not to, and who knew how much effort those words had cost him? Words that Celcha had ignored. “Those two?” She looked at the pair of canith beside the Mechanism. “Maybe and Starve?” A cold horror enfolded her, prickling every hair she owned. All her labours culminated here. A vast tonnage of steel-wrapped vengeance. Now poised to snuff out innocent lives, this Livira and this Evar, within view of the true culprits. “No...”
**
The automaton lunged again and this time Hellet slid back several yards, throwing Clovis clear. Kerrol rushed to his aid, holding the orb ahead of him in both hands. He’d wrapped cloth about his palms, anticipating the heat that had come when Evar used it to ward off the smaller automaton. Already the orb was shaking, its edges blurring.
Clovis rolled to her feet and scrambled to guard Evar and Livira. She snarled up at the construct, showing bloody teeth as she crouched beside Evar, blade raised, her other hand on his shoulder. “There was no time. I couldn’t leave you to this thing, brother.”
“Wait!” Despite Evar lying at her feet so close to death that it chilled his flesh, despite the imminence of her own demise beneath the ganar’s fists, Livira wasn’t ready to concede the library’s guilt. It seemed to her that this wasn’t something random happening to them as they escaped Irad and Jaspeth’s audience. This was the same argument, made flesh. “Wait! If Celcha had known more , she wouldn’t have set this thing loose on us. If you had known more , you wouldn’t have killed a city. Shouldn’t you have known more, not less?” Livira turned to Yute’s daughter, the white child, for support. “That’s why you never came back to your parents? They’d given up immortality for a dream you didn’t share. You were truer to Irad’s vision than his own angels were. They were part of the compromise, feeding knowledge out in dribs and drabs, through a filter. You left because you hated what they stood for but loved who they were—you thought opposing them would hurt them more than losing you?”
“She was wrong.” Yute’s quiet voice reached her.
“Will it go?” Livira asked Hellet. “If I let it have me?”
“There’s Evar too.” Hellet’s whole body shook with the effort it took to hold back his sister’s vengeance. Small shards of him fell away, tinkling as they hit the ground. Behind him Kerrol leaned into the effort, pushing the orb’s aura at the ganar while the cloth about his hands smoked and charred.
“Evar too? Can’t she see he’s dying!” Livira’s breath hitched in her chest and a painful sob broke from her. “Can’t she leave him be?”
**
“Stop!” Celcha shouted it at her own creation with the same force she had screamed into Livira’s face just a short while before. And it ignored her as completely as the girl had. Celcha threw herself at the metal leg and rebounded. The thing had been designed to see and track ghosts. Even to touch them. Celcha fell back, feeling the hatred that had leaked out in the brief contact now crawling across her skin. “Stop!”
**
Livira set Evar’s head gently from her lap and stood up, knowing that even if the chance that her death would satisfy the construct was slim, she would put it to the test and take that gamble. She walked steadily towards the huge automaton, not looking back even once since she knew the sight of Evar’s face might halt her in her tracks.
“Stop!” Hellet shouted, though whether at Livira or his sister’s creature was unclear. Assistants never shouted but this one had, and in the same moment the ganar-automaton swept him up, grabbing both his legs in one hand. The swing of Hellet’s body sent Kerrol flying backwards, his hands on fire, the orb making a glowing red streak as it spun free.
A heartbeat later the automaton hammered Hellet into the ground like a fisherman might brain his catch upon a rock.
**
“No!” It had been a hundred years since Celcha last saw her brother. A hundred years since he’d failed her. But still she cried out as though his pain was hers, and as he cracked, her heart did too. Had he seen where her vengeance would take her? Had he seen her now on the day he asked her to set it aside? With every ounce of her will Celcha tried to force her avatar to stop. But this day had already happened, and the past has never cared about regrets.
**
Assistants didn’t shout and they didn’t break. This one did both. Where he’d hit the library floor mother-of-pearl blood coated the stone. The automaton brought him crashing down again, this time aimed at Livira. She could see the fist and body descending from on high and knew herself to be the target. It seemed slow, as if she should easily be able to step to one side, and yet somehow, she could not. Instead, she stood stuck between heartbeats, waiting to be turned into a gory paste.
Something tumbled her away at the last instant. The thing turned out to be a person throwing her aside with their own weight and sending her to the floor where the outer curves of the metal fist came close enough to brush against her legs.
Again, the fist shot towards the ceiling, dangling Hellet’s remains and leaving another splat of his strange blood, this time mixed with crimson. Of the person that had saved her there was no sign. Perhaps the scream that came from Leetar’s mouth was a name, but heartbreak made it an incomprehensible howl. Even so, Livira knew it had been Meelan who had knocked her clear.
**
Celcha might have carried the deaths of thousands upon her shoulders for a lifetime rightly or wrongly, but the human that vanished into a welter of her brother’s blood beneath the blow struck by her avatar was so unequivocally her fault that at last the weight of her guilt took her to her knees.
**
The ganar-automaton stamped forward, one huge metal foot crashing down within arm’s reach of Livira’s head. It raised an arm to swing Hellet’s dripping corpse at Evar, still helpless on the ground. The world slowed around Livira once more as she began to sit up. She stretched her arm towards Evar, his name on her lips, frozen in the tragedy of the moment.
Beside Evar, Clovis waited with her useless sword. Starval, moving so quickly as to make even canith look slow, whipped upwards with a broad strip of leather. The oversized slingshot released its stone at the height of its arc, and the still-smouldering orb shot out of Livira’s view.
Hellet’s body smashed down and broke into bloody pieces, missing Evar by a yard. The automaton staggered backwards, its feet crashing to either side of Livira. She turned and saw that fire filled its open mouth, as if the orb had rattled down its throat. Two more backward steps and a muffled detonation shook the automaton from head to foot. It fell slowly, venting white smoke from every joint, and hit the ground with the sudden speed of a rock falling from a great height.
Livira stood unsteadily. The automaton’s steel and brass body blocked the room’s exit and already the smoke was starting to obscure its remains. “Evar!” She began to stumble towards him.
Clovis ran towards their fallen foe, seeking a path past its corpse to reach Arpix. The smoke drove her back, choking. She staggered away, eyes red, and rasped at Livira, “Make sure my brother gets out of here. I have something to do.” So saying, the canith sheathed her sword then advanced, still coughing, on Yute, pushing aside the terrified civilians in her way. “You!” It didn’t look as if covering her blade was an act of peace—rather that she intended to rip the librarian apart with her bare hands. “You...” It seemed no other word could get past her anger. The one who sent the sabbers among her people stood before her. She advanced on the author of her life story, the one who had written in the first line of it that her family would fall beneath invaders’ swords, ending the soft days of her childhood in the space of one bloody hour.
The people Yute had saved from the death of their city scattered before the canith’s wrath, leaving her a clear path. A path into which Wentworth stepped, eyes narrow, tail twitching, teeth bared, showing for once the face that must have been the last thing in life that ten times a thousand rats had seen. Also at least half a dozen cratalacs.
Clovis paused.
Livira fell to her knees at Evar’s side and took his hand in hers. He smiled weakly and she smiled back through her tears. Behind her, Leetar’s sobbing gave voice to her own heartbreak.
Yute spoke, addressing Clovis. “In the past, when the ganar-automata were damaged beyond a certain level, they would explode. Oanold’s predecessors took care to lead them to empty chambers before serious battle. I don’t imagine we have very long before this room fills with jagged pieces of machinery flying faster than stick-shot in all directions.”
“I’ll die with your heart in my hands then,” Clovis snarled.
Yute bowed his head. “My mistakes have caused great harm. But would your time not be better spent getting your brothers to safety?”
“Safety?” Clovis frowned at him through the mist-like smoke. “We’re trapped in here with a bomb.”
Yute stifled a cough. “Lord Irad said we would divide ourselves between three paths. I see three doors leading to three quests.” He pointed to the faintly iridescent pools of Hellet’s blood, the three largest sufficiently big to admit even a canith into whatever worlds lay beyond their surface.
Mayland, who had been leaning almost nonchalantly against the Mechanism, shrugged himself forward and set a hand to Clovis’s shoulder. She flinched beneath his touch.
“Looks like I’m Jaspeth’s pick. Though I’d have torn this place down without him if he didn’t exist.” He took his hand away. “Leave this one to his floundering. He’s been failing for centuries. There’s no worse punishment for his kind. He’d welcome what you want to do to him, believe me.” And with that he went to join Livira, Kerrol, and Starval at Evar’s side. Clovis glanced at his departing back, at Yute, at Wentworth, and then with a snarl she turned to follow him.
Yolanda went to stand by the pool that Leetar knelt weeping beside. “Lord Irad has charged me with representing his cause. Any who wish to bring his true vision into being and replace this”—she waved her arm at the surrounding chaos—“failed experiment in compromise between opposites with something pure and glorious should come with me.”
Yute stood alone by the third pool. He looked at his daughter and seemed suddenly old, the centuries piled upon him. “I’m fluent in more languages than I can count, but in none of them can age speak to youth. I say compromise—you hear weakness and cowardice. I say wisdom—you hear blinkered thinking, you see me hidebound, afraid of change. I say that the solutions will be messy, unsatisfying, and may leave both sides feeling dirty. You hear the call of distant trumpets; you see the vision of a future glittering on some high hill, raised above the murky swirl of warring faiths.”
“Are you trying to get us all killed?” Yolanda returned the ache of his gaze with a cold glance. “Go. Let’s not stand here talking until we die.” And with that she stepped into the glimmer of Hellet’s blood and was gone.
Clovis bent to take Evar with her through the pool Mayland had chosen. Livira glared up at her, tightening her grip on Evar.
“Go, sister. The girl and I will bring him.” Mayland nodded at Livira. Clovis showed her teeth, moved away from Evar, and, without a backward glance at Yute, she stepped into the pool, vanishing in an instant. Starval followed.
Kerrol, trembling with pain, his burned hands clutched to his chest, met Livira’s eyes. “All of these words are noise. The only role the brain plays in these decisions is to come up with the explanation after the heart has chosen.” Slowly he walked to join Yute.
“Kerrol!” Mayland called after him. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Kerrol didn’t turn until he reached Yute’s side.
“This isn’t you!” Mayland shouted, flustered for the first time.
Kerrol sat and shuffled into the pool of light, his legs swallowed by the floor. “It’s all me, brother. But you won’t understand it until it’s written as history.” He gave a smile. “Keep them safe.” With a final shuffle he was gone, swallowed away to some other place. Yute, looking around with a sad smile, kept his place as if hoping more would choose his path.
Evar seemed to be slipping in and out of consciousness. Mayland shook himself then bent to take Evar’s shoulders. “Get his feet,” he told Livira with a degree of irritation.
Livira did as asked.
“Help me get him in.” Mayland looked down at Evar. “Brace yourself, brother.”
Evar opened his eyes, frowning confusion. “Livira...”
“One. Two. Now!” Mayland heaved. Livira heaved.
Evar slid away through the light. “Livira!”
Livira stepped forward to follow him, but Mayland’s hand covered her chest, halting her as effectively as a door. He spoke in Livira’s language. “I’ve watched you, human. This is not your way.”
“Evar’s way is my way.” She glared up at him, mind racing. A dozen different thoughts tried to cram themselves through her head simultaneously. Could she dodge past him? How could she not have seen this coming? Would he kill her like they said he’d killed Yamala? How long until the automaton exploded? Behind all of that, though, there was the calming thought that the instant he was gone she would follow, regardless of the threats or consequence. “He’s my path.”
The fingers of Mayland’s free hand twisted as if he were stretching out an ache or manipulating the air itself. “You still have a lot to learn, Livira.” The tips of his fingers darkened rapidly, looking as if they had been dipped into tar. “Who do you think made sure your book would find my brother? And do you really think you can stop the library from falling to the weapon that you forged between you?”
“I don’t care about the lib—”
But before she could finish, Mayland had stepped back and dropped from sight, trailing his arm. She threw herself after him, but as the last of Mayland’s arm was swallowed from view it was as if his black fingertips had snagged a piece of silk laid upon the floor. The whole of the pool swirled away—a width of cloth whipped through a small hole, gone into the ground, leaving only glimmers.
Livira fell to her knees, clutching at the last traces of the light as it shimmered on the floor. The denial she would have screamed escaped only as a gasp of anguish from a throat too tight to accommodate it. Smoke flowed across the floor like milk.
“Livira!” Yute called to her.
She turned heavily, coughing on the smoke which, despite its creamy flow, clawed at the throat and would have brought tears to her eyes were they not already wet.
“Watch my daughter for me,” Yute said.
“You’re not going to tell me I should work with you? Find a middle way?” She didn’t care if the explosion came. Evar would die without her, without saying goodbye.
“I don’t recall ever talking you into anything.”
Livira walked to the other pool, guided by Leetar’s weeping more than the dim, shifting lump of her, just visible through the thickening whiteness.
Other shapes began to move. Survivors from the city, many of them survivors of the Dust before that, some from her settlement. It seemed they had been waiting for her decision to free them from the paralysis thrust upon them by a battle wholly beyond their experience and outside their comprehension. Yute had gathered them and led them to this place but whatever loyalty those acts had earned him had been eroded by the experience.
Livira found herself beside Leetar, a hunched form on the ground, with a dozen others at her shoulders. She could no longer see Yute and if he had more to say it was lost in the coughing.
“Let’s go.” It was all she could find to say. She took a firm grip on Leetar, and stepped forward, dragging her in too.
**
Celcha knelt alone as the smoke thickened about her. When the explosion came it shook her far less than what she had already seen. The blast wave, sewn with fragments of her avatar, left her untouched. The detonation didn’t drive her to the floor—she chose to fall.
“Sister.”
Celcha turned her cheek from the unfelt ground. Hellet stood above her, holding out his hand, strong and wrapped in the scars of his subjugation just as he ever was in the labyrinth of her memories.
Celcha lifted herself from the ground and reached for the offered hand with her own trembling fingers, expecting to find nothing but the phantom of her needing. Instead, a firm grip pulled her to her feet.
“How is this possible?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re a ghost too?”
“I am.”
“How do you feel?” Celcha looked up at her big little brother.
Hellet frowned, flexed his shoulders, pursed his lips. “I feel... free.”
Celcha’s throat constricted around her reply. Freedom had been all they ever wanted. She asked another question. “Where’s your body?”
“I don’t know.” Hellet smiled that oh-so-rare smile of his, showing tombstone teeth. “Shall we go and look?”