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There are very few good reasons for someone putting a bag on your head. But in some cultures, that’s just how they carry their bags.

Perspective and How to Change It , by Jabari Abimbola

Livira

For the journey to the Saviour, Tremon insisted that Carlotte and Livira be blindfolded and hidden beneath sackcloth in the back of a cart. Since Tremon was head and shoulders taller than either of them, weighed more than both of them together, and had a canith and two crossbow men to back her up, there was no arguing.

“Scar,” the younger of the two guards, drove the cart with seemingly nobody else to watch over them. He spent what felt like several hours clattering along city streets. Up the prevailing slope, down it, weaving in great figures of eight through built-up areas. Livira wondered who exactly the exercise was attempting to confuse.

Eventually the quality of the sound changed, and Livira understood that they had come inside some structure.

“Up you get, ladies.”

The sacks were pulled away. Livira could see nothing in the gloom but heard large wooden doors being closed with the rickety banging of a stable rather than the portals to some great castle. The place smelled of hay and livestock too. Stiff, sore, and edging towards angry, she shuffled out of the cart.

“I’ve had enough of touching things now.” Carlotte rubbed at her arms and side. “I’m ready to go back to being a ghost.”

“This way.” Their guide unhooded a lantern and led them past a series of stalls out of which the heads of incurious horses projected.

Rather than heading down, they aimed upwards this time, climbing a ladder into an attic as large as many churches. A second ladder led up to a trapdoor which opened after the man had knocked out a code. The secondary, much smaller, attic above had several shuttered windows offering potential escape routes over the roofs.

Tremon waited for them, crowding the place all by herself. Two well-armed guards squeezed in beside her, leaving space for a fourth person sitting in a plain wooden chair. This individual wore a white mask, curiously reminiscent of an assistant’s face, and a black cape concealed the rest of their body.

Carlotte and Livira wedged themselves in with their guide coming up behind them to close the trapdoor. “Well, this is cosy.” Carlotte beamed around at everyone, still enjoying the idea that so many people could see her.

Livira, more familiar with the consequences of being both visible and touchable, felt more apprehensive. The Saviour cut a sinister figure in his, or her, cape, dark eyes glittering behind the slits of their mask.

“The mysterious strangers.” The Saviour’s deep baritone settled Livira on “he.” He sounded like an older man, not ancient, but far past the flush of youth. “Normally, I wouldn’t entertain dealing with individuals who claim to have dropped into the city out of a clear blue sky. However, when you hear the nature of the matter in which you might be of aid to the cause, you will also understand my willingness to believe you.”

“You’ve found a portal?” Livira guessed.

The Saviour raised his hand. “First, I want you to understand our struggle. I wouldn’t ask you to risk yourselves in such a matter if it weren’t for the stakes not just for this city but for the kingdom, and even our neighbours. The potentate has been carried to his throne on a river of blood. He has made demons of the Amacar, an ancient religious sect who have lived peacefully among us for centuries. Their suffering has been a thing of legend, and still, as I raise my hand to the one true god, that is far from the worst of his crimes. This kingdom he has stolen is nothing to him but a weapon with which he might cut himself a larger empire. There is no bottom to his greed, no limit to the lives he will spend to feed it.

“In short we exist to end the potentate’s reign of terror and replace it with a lasting peace that is responsive to the will of the people and established on a foundation of fairness and tolerance.”

Carlotte snorted, perhaps used to the ways of kings and would-be kings. “You want us to help you empty the throne so you can occupy it.”

The Saviour tilted his head, and for a long moment of silence Carlotte was the focus of four disapproving stares, with only the Saviour’s emotion hidden. “An ungenerous but not wholly inaccurate assessment. I wish someone better to lead us. Chosen by the people.”

“I’m here for a book, not to kill anyone,” Livira said.

“We just need you to get us in,” Tremon said. “We’ll do the rest. Just give us…”

The Saviour waved her to silence. “My spies tell me that the potentate has a book that opens doors. There is, in the mountain above us, a library of surpassing size and great antiquity. Many of its doors will admit neither man nor canith, and our ancestors have long believed that the secrets for true power lie behind them.”

“It didn’t feel like he was opening doors,” Livira said. The blows she had felt had seemed to rock the city’s foundations, but hardly anyone save her appeared to have noticed. The screaming hadn’t started until the Escape had turned up at the tavern door. “Opening doors wouldn’t make the library bleed.”

“Bleeding? I suppose you could call it that.” The Saviour inclined his head. “I hesitate to describe a book as a blunt weapon, but reports are that the potentate isn’t using knowledge from inside the book to gain access to new chambers. Instead, he is—”

“Punching through walls?” That’s what it had felt like.

“Correct.” The mask hid any surprise. “The book is a source of great destructive power where the library is concerned. The potentate appears able to focus that destruction. His aim is far from perfect, however. Cracks are reported to be spreading from the passageways he has opened up, and those cracks are not confined to the library. Fissures are running beneath the city and one in particular looks to have connected the palace sewers to the main system. Allowing the possibility of sending a task force through to strike a blow for—”

“If you know about it, then they’ll know about it too.” Carlotte seemed unimpressed. “The fact you need this breach at all tells me the main access points are monitored.”

“None of the sewer system is guarded anymore,” Tremon growled, looking daggers at Carlotte for interrupting the Saviour. “It’s too dangerous to go down there. Which also means they don’t need guarding.”

“Instead, they’ll guard the exit points with three times the numbers,” Carlotte said.

“The fissures are where the Escape came from.” Livira understood why they wanted her now. “The blood monster,” Livira clarified. “There are more of them down there?”

“Many,” the Saviour agreed. “But you have a magic that works against them.”

“It’s not magic.” Livira didn’t want to explain further. Perhaps it was magic.

“And Narbla”—the Saviour mimed a pipe—“said you turned it away, ordered it to leave.” He paused, as if expecting confirmation. “If you can not only clear the way for us but turn what had been impediments into allies, then you may be the salvation of this nation.”

Livira waited for Carlotte to say, So you mean she’ll be the saviour and not you . It felt too perfectly teed up, too completely Carlotte, for her not to say it. But she didn’t.

“You’ll help me secure the book?”

“If you promise to take it far away.”

Livira eyed the mask. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to read the truth on the man’s face if it were exposed to the light, but the mask brought the fact home. Few of those who sought power would willingly pass up the chance of more. Perhaps the Saviour would have a change of heart when it came to letting the book go. On the other hand, were Livira to refuse to help, would he let her and Carlotte go? Or seek to compel them? Or simply discard their bodies in a ditch?

Livira exchanged a helpless glance with Carlotte. She hadn’t expected or wanted to be hauled into the middle of a bloody intrigue, let alone intrigue on which the fate of a nation stood. She knew next to nothing about this potentate. The man might be a saint, painted as a devil by those who sought to overthrow him. “I…” She looked around the room, at the frowning faces of the four guards, at Tremon’s blunt curiosity, at the Saviour’s blank mask. “I need to be on the right side of this. Or at least, the least wrong. Make me believe this potentate of yours needs to die. Don’t use words. I’ve heard enough words.”

The Saviour nodded slowly. He turned to Tremon. “Let Narbla show them.”

The cart trip after leaving the stables hideout was shorter than the one that brought them to the Saviour, but no more comfortable.

“Bugger this. If he jolts us over one more pothole, I’m—”

“Ssssh!” Livira reached out under the sacking to cover Carlotte’s mouth.

The cart slowed to another stop and someone clambered on to join or replace the driver. They rattled on around another couple of turns, through busier streets, then down a long incline. A low growl from the driver’s seat. “This looks promising…”

Finally, they drew up somewhere quiet. Livira caught a whiff of pipe smoke.

“Out you get.” The sacks were swept away to reveal a starry sky and the midnight silhouette of their original canith guide.

“Narbla, I assume.” Livira edged off the cart, looking around.

The canith sniffed and took a pull on her pipe.

They were in a small loading area behind what seemed to be a smith’s forge, closed for the night. Their original driver appeared to have abandoned them.

“I need somewhere to go,” Carlotte complained.

Narbla shook her head. “Hold it.” She puffed out a cloud of noxious smoke. “Come on.” The glowing ember in her bowl led them through the dark. Behind Livira, Carlotte stumped her foot on something and hopped on, cursing.

Around the corner the light of scattered streetlamps replaced the starlight’s efforts. The librarians of New Krath must have found different texts than those of Crath City, for their lamps had a different glow to those of Livira’s youth, a whiter light but with a hint of blue and prone to sudden fluctuations. The street they illuminated wasn’t crowded but a handful of citizens were in sight even at this late hour, all of them heading in the same direction. Narbla joined the flow. “Don’t bring attention to yourselves.” She cast an eye over Carlotte’s tattered gown and shook her head. “If you can help it.”

Livira and Carlotte followed, clutching themselves against the night cold. A strange urgency had taken hold of the citizens around them: they walked with the brisk determination of people not prepared to miss an appointment, a curious mix of seriousness and suppressed delight on their faces.

The numbers increased as they closed on a square where at least a dozen pitch torches held among the already gathered crowd competed with the street lighting. A woman’s cries brought Livira’s gaze to the open doorway of one of the tall, terraced houses that bordered the square. The place seemed to be the focus of the onlookers’ attention. A black-clad canith emerged, military of some sort maybe, though his leathers didn’t look like armour. He dragged the wailing human out behind him.

Carlotte tugged Livira’s arm and nodded to where a man and two children stood in the custody of three human officers in the same ominous black uniforms.

The woman being dragged towards them, and the man, both looked too old to be the parents of such young children. Grandparents, Livira assumed.

“What’s going on?” Carlotte hissed.

Narbla shushed her, gave her a hard stare, and placed one large hand on the back of her neck.

Two officers held the sobbing woman upright while the canith who had dragged her out prowled the perimeter of the clearing at the crowd’s centre. Livira noticed with surprise that an untidy heap of books lay by the children’s feet, as if tossed roughly to the ground.

“Helma and Ivon Gradson!” The canith announced, pointing an accusing finger in the old couple’s direction. “Seemingly honest members of our society. They even have the potentate’s portrait hanging in their entrance hall…but…” He spread a hand towards the two pale-faced children. “…they had rats in their cellar! Amacar rats!”

The mob sucked in its breath as though this were a revelation. Those with torches pushed to the front, a ring of fire. The canith officer continued with his street theatre. “It doesn’t end there. It doesn’t end with sheltering the children of those who seek to undermine us. It doesn’t end with raising another generation bent on corruption, theft, and moral decay. Impure blood to pollute the lineages of our glorious city.” He shook his head and turned his accusing finger on the piled books. “Apparently, the Gradsons are ‘intellectuals.’?” He put such scorn into the word that the crowd laughed. “Apparently, the library isn’t sufficient for them. They need their own collection. And behind the first row of the Gradsons’ books, what do we find? Subversive filth by Amacar authors. Pollution between two covers. Wrong thinking that the true library would never allow within its great halls.”

He drew a silver flask from inside his jacket and, removing the top, splashed the contents liberally over the books, not caring that the two children were also splattered.

“Light it.”

Without further invitation, the torches among the crowd were tossed in, and the pile of books burst into flame with a great whoomph of heat. The children screamed and struggled, allowed a measure of retreat only when the blaze became too hot for those holding them.

Livira stepped in close to Narbla. “How do they know the children are Amacar? You said it was a faith.”

“And a culture, shared among a particular race of humans and a particular race of canith,” Narbla replied in a low voice beneath the jeers of the crowd as chains were set around the old couple’s wrists. “You can tell by looking, if you look hard enough.” She turned away.

“What will happen to them?” Livira couldn’t look away. The people’s faces, lit by the burning books, had a demonic aspect to them, their hate now something visceral, unleashed by the fire.

Narbla turned back, her face grim. “The people who sheltered them will be put in prison, their property taken by the state. Or, if they don’t know anyone with any influence, they might just be hanged at the Alarg. The children will probably be sent to Artha Island. It would be kinder to hang them too.” She paused, letting the fire speak below the cruel laughter and the insults of the crowd. Fragments of burning pages spiralled up with a smoke that stank of old memories. “Are you in?”

“Hell yes,” Carlotte answered without hesitation.

Livira watched the flames dance a moment longer. “I’m in.”