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Both of them looked surprised, but only one of them spoke. The general frowned in disgust and uttered a single word. “Blunt!” He yanked the sword clear in a shower of crimson.

It was as if the blood had got into Livira’s eyes. She screwed them up, and when she rubbed them clear found herself still standing but once more in the library chamber just on the edge of the crop circle. Malar stood facing her, looking as amazed as she felt. Evar was striding away from them, aimed at the Soldier out amongst the greenery.

“Blunt...” Malar muttered, and looked at his hands.

“You were there?” Livira looked at him sharply. “In the dining hall?”

“That was real?” Malar’s eyes widened still further, reminding her of the library guards and their owl-helms.

“Wait!” Livira tilted her head. “That was you? You were the general? How did you even get into my story?”

His eyes narrowed. “What? I’m not good enough to write about now?”

“That particular story. Killing people.”

Malar scowled. “I glanced over just as you vanished. It looked like you touched the book and... bang... you were gone. Only without the bang. So, I came over and touched it too. I’m supposed to be guarding you, after all.”

Livira wasn’t sure who had given him that job, but she let it slide. “We were both in the story.”

“Not that I’m agreeing that makes even a jot of sense, but how are you supposed to grab the book and bring it back with us if you vanish inside it the moment you touch it?”

Livira thought about that for a moment. “You know,” she said, “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

One of the worst things about humans is everything. But I’ll tell you what’s ten times worse than a human... two humans. And what’s ten times worse than two humans? You’ve guessed it: one child.

A Complete History of Humanity, by Hubert Duck

CHAPTER 14

Celcha

Yute said you shouldn’t talk to the ghosts,” Celcha said. “I don’t think he knew you already were. He said it like it was the worst thing you could do.”

“He’s clearly not very imaginative then.” Hellet closed the door to their quarters behind them and began to tuck into the food on the tray he’d been carrying. He’d piled it with black bread and carrots. Celcha liked the bread, but carrots were a marvel and she’d eat nothing else if it didn’t leave the tables bare.

The trainees had all made directly for the food hall on their return from the expedition to the first ganar chamber. Librarians Markeet and Sternus, however, had managed to delay satisfying their hunger awhile longer, preferring instead to present themselves before the head librarian to devour her praise. Nobody expected a great work to be recovered on a training exercise, particularly from a location as close as the first ganar chamber, but the book—whose title Celcha had yet to learn—appeared to be the find of the week, if not the month or even the year.

“He thinks we’re a problem.” Celcha hadn’t liked being called a crack, or a rock in the stream. She’d been called far worse things, of course, but these things were said without malice by someone who had at his fingertips a repository of knowledge vaster than anyone who had not seen it could imagine. “He said we’re dangerous.”

“We are dangerous,” Hellet replied without concern.

“I don’t think...” Celcha hesitated. It felt as if Hellet had spent more time speaking with his ghosts over the last few years than with her. As if she were the stranger, the outsider. “I’m not sure you should talk to Maybe and the other one anymore.”

Hellet peered at her through his fur in a way that strengthened the feeling she might no longer be his closest confidante, though she knew with certainty that she was the one who loved him most—the only one—and that whatever these ghosts wanted it wasn’t all for Hellet. Perhaps none of it was.

Hellet chewed and swallowed. “Didn’t they bring us here?” he asked. “Out from beneath Myles Carstar’s heel? We’re well fed, better treated. I know I prefer reading books and wandering shelves to hacking tunnels out with a pick, in the dark.” The air around him gleamed and glittered, stirred by turbulent phantoms.

“They did.” Celcha couldn’t deny any of it. The good fortune that had befallen them was beyond her dreams and it hadn’t truly fallen. It had been pushed.

Hellet shrugged. “All right, I’ll stop talking to them.” He bit off half a carrot and set the rest down. He wiped his hand and reached into his book satchel, pulling out the black book he’d retrieved from the ganar city within the library.

Celcha sat back, chewing on a heel of bread. She’d got what she wanted, but it had come too easily. All of this had come too easily, and she mistrusted every part of it. Hellet, however, she trusted. She had to. He’d never lied to her that she knew of. And if she didn’t believe in him then what was there left for her to believe in? This was Hellet. All that remained of her mother and father. The same boy who had gone trembling to the whipping post and howled as the steel cane divided his flesh. Blows that had been meant for her.

So she said nothing and instead sat and watched as Hellet leafed through the black pages of his black book, frowning at the narrow silver script. The air continued to glimmer around him. Starve seemed particularly interested in the book, bending over or even through Hellet’s shoulder to peer at a page from time to time.

“I don’t think you should listen to them either,” Celcha said at last. “That’s probably as dangerous as talking.”

Hellet lifted his gaze from the pages before him. “It’s hard not to listen.”