Page 107

“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.”