Chapter Thirty-One #2
“Of course, a paradox book might be able to sway the course of the river. Rewrite history or regenerate it. But it would need a vast amount of power,” Edmund says. “Power the river can no longer sustain.
“Do you know how you can tell when your bookshop is dying irreversibly?” he says, and this time she catches the pain in his voice. “The bookshop below disappears. No Keeper, no paradox book.”
Cassandra sucks in a breath. “How many are there left, besides Chiron’s? Tell me you can still go down to the bookshop below.”
He only looks at her, the faintest glimmer of grief in his expression. So even Sharpe’s. And if Sharpe’s no longer has access to the bookshop below, it’s not hard to guess what’s happened to the members of the so-called society.
“You can imagine that Chiron’s bookshop suddenly holds a lot of interest,” Edmund says.
Chiron’s bookshop still has access to the Keeper. And that means its owner can ask for a paradox book.
“But if I asked for a paradox book, the river would collapse,” she says.
“And therein lies the problem.”
“So that’s it?” she demands. “The river is dying and there’s nothing we can do about it?”
He shrugs. “Maybe it’s not about saving the river. Maybe it’s just about saving what’ll be left when it’s gone.”
Cassandra’s stomach tightens. She’s been walking in the dark this entire time, and only now, pausing, has she realised that there’s an abyss on either side.
Even when she was at her lowest, when she’d just moved into the studio flat with the very last of her money and her nightmares were still soaked in blood, she had held on.
Because there was the river, running underneath them all, home when no one else would take her.
But if the river is dying, there’ll be no more melodic burr of its language, no more stepping into the water and feeling the world, past and present and future, come rushing to meet her.
Chiron’s bookshop, gone.
A woman slides into the seat on the other side of Edmund. “Are you paying? Because I paid last time.” Her attention shifts from Edmund to Cassandra, and her eyes narrow. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Beatrice—” Edmund starts.
Cassandra slides off her stool. “Don’t mind me.”
She’ll have to get hold of Edmund another time. There are already too many eyes on her, too many people who might stop to wonder when she became so cosy with an apparent stranger.
Behind her, she hears the woman, Beatrice, say, “Was that Cassandra Fairfax?”
Cassandra, not Cass.
Time to go.
She makes a beeline for the door, ignoring Fred’s attempt to get her attention. But before she can reach it, a man strides in, loud and brash. His gaze snags on her instantly and his smile widens.
It’s Roth.
“Wondered when you’d show up, Cass,” he says.
Two men flank him, enormous and very familiar because they’re the same men who barged into Maud’s, and then Sharpe’s.
One of them—Blake—looks at her and scowls.
Cassandra touches her forehead, where the nick from his ring remains, and thinks of Maud hiding in the coat cupboard.
Not slightly peculiar, in the way that all owners tend to be, but very, very fearful.
An awful foreboding settles in the pit of her stomach.
“Do you know how hard it is to get hold of you?” Roth says, then laughs. “But then I guess we’ve already had this conversation.”
“Roth!” Fred calls out from the back of the bar. “You owe me money, you fuck.”
Roth sighs, disappointed. “Blake, if you will.”
In one smooth motion, Blake grabs Fred, and with a casual hand, flings him into the wall. There’s a sickening crunch.
Cassandra blanches, as the other man advances on her.
Roth turns to Cassandra, his expression unchanged. “Now, Cass, you and I are going to have that chat about Chiron’s bookshop.”
She tries to summon that elusive sense of possibility that makes a reading feasible. But this isn’t a tributary bookshop, and the river is just an invisible thing, its sound a mere memory. Whereas the panic in her chest is all too real.
Roth pulls something out of his pocket—a piece of paper. His face scrunches in concentration.
“Blake, keep her there,” he commands. “I need a sec.”
He yanks a chain from around his neck and Cassandra almost laughs when she sees what’s hanging at the end. A vial of ink and needle. Roth’s delusions have finally reached an apotheosis. But he’s tipping the ink back into his throat with a grimace, and plunging the needle into his finger.
He can’t be serious.
Then she feels it: the river, twining to greet its new master. Her stomach plummets in realisation. Somehow, Roth has drunk from the river—and become a reader, with all the power that implies.
Shit.
Cassandra dives over the bar, glasses shattering in her wake, and lands hard on the tacky ground. The bartender glances at her, with an expression that suggests he’s seen this one too many times before, and it’s just his bad luck that it’s happening yet again.
She has never hated this bar more than now.
Outside the cover of the bar, Roth reads another line from his scrap of paper, and something explodes. She glances up—and the bartender pales. Cassandra pushes past him, just as one of Roth’s henchmen climbs over. A glass smashes over her head. There’s a roar—and a scream.
She scrambles out through the other side, searching for Roth and his men. But there are too many bodies now, too much noise and panic. Blood spatters the floor, but it’s impossible to tell who it’s come from.
Then she catches the acrid scent of smoke. Fire.
Another glass smashes against the wall next to her, and she ducks. One of Roth’s henchmen locks eyes with her, hands curled into meaty fists. She’s too far from the entrance now to make a quick escape. So a fight it is, then.
A fight, alone, in a room full of criminals, with more than one of them interested in taking Cass Holt down.
She’s faced worse odds, she tries to remind herself, even if she can’t think of exactly when. Instead, she wets her lips, tries to reach into that calm place inside of her, the one that’s always tethered to the river. She has to focus. She has to think—
Roth drags her out of the corner. Blood trickles from a cut above his eyebrow, his mouth pulled down in a snarl.
“Do you think I’m a fucking joke now?”
Cassandra tries to wrench herself away, but someone knocks into her, pushing her back towards Roth. The bar is clearing out, but smoke chokes the room, lit luminous orange from the flames in the booths.
“You’re pathetic,” she spits. “And a fucking joke.”
She tugs against his grip, but whatever reading he’s thrown on himself is too strong to overcome. Ink loops across his arms in clumsy whorls. He starts to drag her to the entrance.
“You’re coming with me,” he snarls, “and then we’ll fucking talk.”
If she leaves with Roth, there’s a strong chance she won’t survive to get back to the bookshop.
“You know what, I don’t think I am,” she says.
Then, with all her strength, she kicks him in the shins.
He howls in pain as she scrambles back, putting distance between them.
Roth starts for her, then inhales and coughs.
Heat warms one side of Cassandra’s face; flames surge towards them.
Roth throws one more hateful glance at her—and then he backs away, towards the exit.
“There’s nowhere for you to run, Cass!” he calls out.
Cassandra pulls the top of her jumper over her mouth and nose, eyes streaming.
He’s right; where there isn’t fire crackling, the smoke twines thick and black.
But the minute she goes for the exit, he’ll be there.
She tries to rally herself for a reading, but she can barely get enough oxygen to inhale.
There’s no choice: she’ll have to brave the exit. And Roth, and his henchmen—
A hand from the shadows hauls her backwards, dragging her through a staff door. She barely has time to gasp a breath to scream before Edmund Sharpe comes into relief, his face illuminated by the dim fire exit sign.
“Get off me!”
“There’s another way out, you fool,” he snarls.
Cassandra squints at the darkness just past him. It’s barely visible, but there’s the outline of a door. Sweet, clean air billows from it.
“This stays between us,” he hisses. “You didn’t see me tonight.”
He pushes her out of the way, but she grabs him. “You didn’t give me an answer about Chiron.”
Edmund yanks back, but she only grips his arm tighter.
“Really?” he says. “I’ve just saved your life!”
“What was Chiron doing?” she says, harder.
She came to this bar for answers; she’s not leaving without at least one.
“He was looking for a way to get around the paradox books entirely,” he says. “A way to circumvent the future. But it didn’t work. It won’t work.”
“Then there must be another way,” she says.
Edmund shoves her towards the silhouette of the doorway, striding after her. The thin light catches the edge of his face, and she’s shocked to see desperation flicker in his expression.
“You aren’t getting it. Think bigger than the bookshops for a second.
All those bloody owners who thought they’d try their hand at politics, crowning this king over that king, or making sure one war happens and another never starts.
You know just as well as I do that the owners meddle because we do it every single time we give someone a book.
And this is unparalleled meddling, with unparalleled power. ”
“Edmund—” she starts.
But he keeps going. “When the river goes, with all its magic, what happens to the choices from the paradox books? Sure, the owners who paid the price to the river—those decisions will stick around. But the rest? And don’t tell me you don’t know that some of the owners don’t pay up. I know you’re not that foolish.”
Maybe Cassandra is that foolish. Because until Eveline had suggested it to her, she had never imagined it as a viable alternative. Disobey Lady Fate? Disobey the river? Even as a thief, she had standards.
“What happens to the past?” he demands. “What happens to the fucking present?”
The world remade, Cassandra thinks, or terribly, terribly broken. But either way, unrecognisable.
Edmund closes his eyes briefly. “I’m telling you this because of Lowell—only because of Lowell, do you understand? Give up your bookshop. Or you’ll get hurt, one way or another.”
She stumbles onto asphalt and trips, landing hard on the pavement.
Blood sings in her knees. Outside, a dozen people are cramming into their cars, or staggering outside, the fire now burning in earnest. Someone looks her way and she ducks into the shadow of the building. When she looks up, Edmund is gone.
It’s a ten-kilometre walk along a dual carriageway back to London.
In the dark. She’d banked on taking a taxi back or even hitchhiking, but there’s no chance of that now.
Any sane person would take one look at the bar—flames broiling the roof, chemical smoke acrid in the air—and press their foot down.
She certainly can’t beg a ride home from Edmund bloody Sharpe.
There’s only one person left to call.