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Livira, still clutching her newly reclaimed book, staggered out of the portal and immediately turned to berate Malar, who followed her.

“Stop pushing me!”

“Everyone needs a little push now and then.” Malar drew his sword with the same fluid motion he always used to greet trouble.

Livira backed away, hands raised. “We don’t all need a little stabbing too.”

“Get behind me,” Malar snapped, advancing past her.

Two canith were watching them, a tall one leaning against a tree not far from their portal, and one that looked to be considerably shorter crouching close by. This second one looked up from whatever he’d been poking with his knife on the ground and showed his teeth in a grin. The tall one had a golden mane, the short one a mane so dark black that in places it looked a midnight shade of blue.

“Mayland. Starval.” Livira knew them both. As an assistant memory had no meaning. A timeless being has no memory. But now she remembered them, though in the wisps of a waking dream. Starval hid from everyone, himself most of all. He studied endings, and how to bring them about. Mayland studied change and had never believed in either endings or beginnings. Both were, in their own ways, more dangerous than Clovis with all her razor edges.

“Correct.” Mayland pushed himself off the tree trunk and bowed politely. “What has Evar been telling you about us?” Neither he nor his brother paid Malar any regard at all.

Livira found the question a little strange. “Well, for one thing, he told me you were dead, Mayland.”

“Not dead. Gone.”

“And you left the others behind? Evar always wanted to escape that chamber. How could you leave him there?”

Mayland shrugged. “You know how it is with the Exchange. Time gets away from you.”

Seeing Malar still bristling in the corner of her eye, Livira reached out and set her hand on his sword arm. “These are Evar’s brothers. They won’t hurt us.”

“His fucking sister put a hole right through me,” Malar snarled, keeping his blade ready.

Starval stood, his grin a little wider. “Clovis has quite the temper. We’re both more reasonable. No stabbing.” He held up an open hand as he returned his knife to his belt with the other. “Promise.”

“They weren’t with Evar and the tall one when we met them here that first time.” Malar kept his sword raised, eyes flitting from one canith to the other.

“I was there,” Starval said. “I just tend to keep to the edges of things.”

“I came along a bit later,” Mayland said. He watched both Livira and Malar closely, as if calculating something. “I see you have the book that Hellet asked for.”

“Hellet?” Livira shook her head, holding the book tightly to her chest. “An assistant sent us.”

“They have names, you know.” Mayland came to stand at his brother’s shoulder. He looked to be nearly as tall as Kerrol, while Starval was more like Arpix’s height. Very tall for a man, very short for a canith. “Just because they forget them doesn’t mean that we should. Sometimes they reclaim them, like your friend Yute did.”

“And Yamala,” Starval said, no longer grinning.

A flicker of annoyance crossed Mayland’s brow. He glanced left and right along the world’s timeline, the row of portals stretching into the past and future. The portal he’d been standing closest to was off the worldline. Livira wondered where it might lead and remembered her own brief venture onto another world. The air had savaged her lungs and driven her back in moments. But Evar, who as a ghost had been able to stay, reported short, broad humanoids covered in golden fur, gathered at the entrance to a library of their own.

“Time is always short in this place,” Mayland said. “Which is odd, since in another very real sense there’s no time at all here. But the fact is that people, both welcome and unwelcome, are apt to turn up if you linger. So, forgive my forwardness, but have you decided which side you’re on?”

“My own,” Malar growled, sounding angrier at being ignored than he would have been at insults or even an attack.

“He means in the library’s war,” Livira said.

“And I meant what I said.”

Livira added herself to the list of people ignoring Malar. Mayland’s question was a big one, very big, and he seemed curiously invested in the answer. Livira had assumed that her association with Evar would ensure their safety where the brothers were concerned, but the glint in Mayland’s eye had started to fray that certainty. As the Assistant, Livira had known that, while personable enough, Mayland had committed himself to learning the lessons of the past, and to applying them without fear or favour. The present, he said, was the gateway to the future and what was learned from history had to be carved upon it, even if that meant it bled.

“I’ve yet to pin my colours to the mast.” Livira chose a nautical reference, thinking of the tome she’d taken the first page of her own book from: Great Sailing Ships of History. She hoped Captain Elias would approve. “Yute says compromise—”

Starval moved so fast that it didn’t seem real. In the space of a finger-snap he’d twisted in past Malar’s extended sword, drawn his knife, and set it to Malar’s throat while holding the wrist of the soldier’s sword arm with his other hand.

“You got me!” Starval looked down with amazed delight at the thin cut across his ribs where Malar’s blade had caught him as he twisted out of its way.