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Despite the fact that many of the worst things to ever happen happened in basements, people keep digging them.

Domestic Architecture , Vol. 6, by Atle Norstad

Evar

Amid the page-storm in the blackness of the vaults, Evar had been drawn into a story that Livira could surely never have written. A nightmarish tale where he lay in the broken body of a horror, tended or tortured by a dozen or more ganar, most of them too afraid to let their eyes stray to the dismembered ruin that seemed to be his flesh. When they did look his way, he could sense the effort with which they pushed down any tendril of self-awareness, before it reached up to throttle them with the knowledge of what they’d become.

Evar would have convinced himself that some other person, unknown to him, was the author of this tainted tale. He saw, between the mirrors that surrounded him, a white figure, short as the ganar but slight. The white-child. And then he saw Livira, her ghostly form fighting its way through the wall as if escaping a tangle of hook briar. They locked eyes in a moment of frozen discovery, before an awful pain and a voice much stronger than his own drove him out of both the body and the dream.

He’d regained his senses perched on a fragment of solid ground with a void yawning on almost every side. Finding Arpix alive had been a great relief. Discovering Livira’s absence had reinstated his anxiety almost immediately.

Now, as Celcha led the way on short legs down the corridor joining the reading room to the main chamber, Evar walked with his siblings at the head of a long, dusty vanguard, comprised mainly of the soldiers he had so recently been at war with.

Arpix and Clovis were between Evar and Starval. Starval had his knife out and was testing the blade against his thumb, distrust haunting his face. No assassin wants to be let down by their tools, and yet somehow the edge he had so often honed had left no mark on the human lord.

Clovis had Arpix’s hand in a firm, almost triumphant, grip and she met any glance from her brothers with challenging eyes. The librarian seemed confused, looking alternately apologetic and relieved, unable to keep a foolish smile from straying across his lips. Evar understood that last part at least. When he was reunited with Livira he had no intention of leaving her side again for quite some time.

He could feel Lord Algar’s stare boring into the back of his neck, as if the man’s hate had been made into something physical that reached out for him. It hurt to endure his presence. Even so, Evar would not kill him if the peace were lifted. Starval’s pragmatism might be the most sensible route to take, but Evar didn’t want to live in a world where such paths defined him. It was hard to deserve something as good as Livira whilst being so flawed, and he wasn’t going to do anything to deepen that inequality. Livira, Evar guessed, would have kicked Lord Algar between the legs and left him to it. Killing and revenge didn’t seem to be part of any of the many languages she had learned.

Mayland walked behind them, head down, deep in thought.

As they pressed on, moving out among the never-ending book columns, lines of sight narrowed to rapidly changing corridors. The scores of soldiers and dozen or more civilians had ample opportunity to slip away from their non-human leader and her company of canith, but it seemed the numbers flickering into view behind them remained constant.

Evar found that his siblings had moved up to join him. Arpix had detached himself from Clovis and was walking in conversation with Salamonda and a girl from Yute’s group, and Evar raised a hand to acknowledge the older woman.

“Are we really just going to follow this ganar?” Starval asked. “Whose side is she on anyway?”

“I can hear you, you know,” Celcha said without looking back at them. “And I’m on my side, mostly.”

“Irad or Jaspeth,” Starval said, defiantly. “Burn the library or unchain it?”

“There’s always a third way.”

“You’re on Yute’s side?” Starval asked, surprised.

“I’m not even sure Yute’s on Yute’s side.” Celcha shook her greying head. “Maybe there’s a fourth and a fifth way. A whole spectrum! Analogue over binary…”

Starval frowned, impatient. “Are we really just going to follow this ganar?” he repeated himself, more loudly this time.

“No.” Mayland spoke for the first time. “She’s more lost than we ever were. She’s grown old chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. There’s no centre to the library and even if there were, it’s of no more significance than the edge. We’re going to find that book.”

For once Evar found himself in agreement with his oldest brother. “We need the book.” It was his gateway to Livira. He had to have faith that somehow it would reunite them, because nobody else seemed to be trying to. The library seemed in no hurry to bring him to her, and perhaps it might not last long enough for chance reunions. A faint shudder ran through the ground beneath his feet, ground that had never once in his life shuddered before.

“The king took it.” Arpix spoke up behind them. “King Oanold. He had it with him when he fell.”

“We need to find him then. If we can get to the Exchange—”

“Excuse me, ma’am.” Salamonda had come around the other side of Arpix with Neera in tow. She caught Celcha’s attention. “I’m so sorry to ask, but how is it that you don’t starve in this place? We have desperate people, and I was…”

The ganar turned her dark eyes to Salamonda, peering at her out of the silver-furred caves of her brows. Salamonda’s question immediately woke Evar’s appetite, which had been strangely absent since the library’s blood had replaced his own. In an instant he felt every part of his own starvation.

For a long moment Celcha stood, looking up at Salamonda as if wrestling with some decision, perhaps old memories of when different humans had held complete power over her and had abused it. Behind Salamonda and the canith, the soldiers shuffled to a halt, starting to crowd, those at the back muttering, not understanding the reason for the hold-up.

The ganar shook herself slightly, as if throwing off an unworthy thought. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.” She reached into her robe and brought out an ornate flask of enamelled copper with a narrow top that she unstoppered. “What is it that humans like to eat? Apples, is it?”

“C-cake,” Salamonda stammered. “We like cake.” Her whole body shivered.

“Hmmm. I don’t know about cake.” Celcha thrust her staff at Neera. “Hold this.” Then she reached for Salamonda’s hand, taking it in her smaller, furry grasp. “You’ll have to help me. Hold out your other hand…Lower, where I can reach it. Flat, as if you were holding one of these cakes.”

Salamonda did so, the tremble in her arms now. Celcha raised the flask and began to tip it very slowly. “Think of the cake. Picture it. Taste it.”

“I am. I really am. It’s one of the ones I used to make, honey almond—”

“You don’t need to tell us. Tell your hand.” Celcha continued to tip the flask and a black drop formed at its lip.

Evar recognised the stuff immediately. The library’s blood. He’d seen Yute make it into a tiny horse that ran around his palm. It hadn’t lasted, though. The same stuff now ran in his veins, bonding him with the library in a way that a life lived entirely within its walls hadn’t managed.

The drop swelled, pregnant with possibilities, glistening, swirling with dark reflections…and fell.

“Oh!” Salamonda cried out and nearly dropped the cake in her hand. Evar had never seen one, but he’d seen illustrations. This looked far more tempting. So large that it started to sag over the sides of Salamonda’s hands, beginning to teeter until Celcha released her grip and gave Salamonda two hands to wrestle with her creation.

“Is it real?” Neera gasped.

“It smells real!” Evar’s nose was full of the wonderful aroma.

“Mnnghhn!!” Salamonda’s mouth was too full to form comprehensible words.

“Is it real, or a trick?” Evar demanded. The Mechanism wouldn’t feed you, he knew that. Or rather it would feed you, but it wouldn’t sustain you.

“Both.” Celcha eyed him with sudden interest. “It’s real and it’s a trick.”

The ganar stepped towards him and Evar stepped smartly back, worried in that moment that the little creature might turn his blood to cake with a wave of her hand. Celcha halted her advance, turned, and caught her staff as Neera let it fall. The young woman joined Salamonda, uninvited, in devouring the cake. The thing fell apart between their two sets of hands, crumbling chunks dropping to the floor. The canith resisted following those pieces to the ground, mouths twitching into snarls of self-control. The soldiers, wary of the canith, hesitated, but an older woman, a citizen of Crath City, in a simple shawl and skirt, broke from the lines, scrabbling after the crumbs.

That single act of casting aside caution in favour of food started a flood. The soldiers surged forward.

“Stop!” Celcha raised her staff and her voice boomed like rolling thunder from every direction. Everyone stopped, even the soldiers on their knees, though those with something in their mouths continued chewing. “Nobody who fights will be fed. Everyone who doesn’t fight will be.”

And with the combination of threat and promise, Celcha turned aside what could easily have been a riot, one that might have tested whatever peace magics she’d woven. Instead, under the direction of officers indistinguishable from the rank and file, the remnants of Oanold’s army formed an orderly queue.

“Those Escapes could have been anything we wanted?” Starval asked Evar’s question. “We could have been eating them instead of being hunted by them?”

“We could have turned them into this…cake?” Evar joined in.

Mayland shook his head. “To make something real, like she’s done, that’s rare skill.”

Evar realised in that moment that the hunger he saw on his brother’s face had little to do with cake. What Celcha had done, Mayland couldn’t do. Time’s variable currents and the unpredictable twists of fate had somehow reversed Mayland’s and Celcha’s places. The ganar was the master now. And possibly what hurt Mayland most was that she wasn’t taking advantage of the upper hand.

“To do that here,” Mayland continued, “I didn’t know it was possible. In the Exchange I might—”

“The Exchange!” Evar couldn’t believe he’d been discussing cake when he still had to find Livira. “How do we get there? You know a way, right?”

“I know a way.” Mayland didn’t look very enthusiastic about the prospect.

“Let’s go, then.” Evar glanced around as if Mayland might open one of the magic doors.

“We will.” Mayland nodded.

“Yes.” Clovis elbowed her way between her brothers, headed towards Celcha. “But first, we eat.”