The Book That Wouldn’t Burn (The Library Trilogy, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

“There are no useless skills, girl. Only talents that have yet to find an application.”

Where another might um and ah, or simply pause, this man filled the space with an obscenity.

And the truth is that nobody can truly appreciate world-class talent unless they themselves have spent a great deal of time trying to be even a fraction as good.

He had read many books about people who had escaped from prisons, each prison more terrible and impenetrable than the next. It seemed to him that what had set apart those remarkable individuals who did indeed win free was that they all had something to escape for rather than from. A reason to aim themselves at.

A woman of middling years sat behind this one, sandy hair tied back in a severe bun, and eyes that suggested her mind might also be tied back in that same no-nonsense manner.

The Soldier had a quote: Steel demands to be used. Which, according to him, meant that any weapon aches for violence and sooner or later that ache will pervade the one who owns it, until at last the weapon owns them.

“Gods below! We’ll have to burn those! And where are your shoes?” “In the future.”

Kindness carries a weight; it’s a burden all its own when you have nothing. Some undeniable part of Livira wanted to bite the hands that offered so much so freely. Pride is stupid, pride is blind, but pride is also the backbone that runs through us: without pride there’s no spring-back, no resilience.

“What’s that?” Yute looked surprised. “Wentworth is a cat. I doubt you’ve seen a bigger one.” “I’ve never seen a smaller one.” Livira cocked her head, considering the beast. “Are you going to eat it?”

Some people strive so hard for centre stage—bleed themselves dry for your attention—and when they finally get there and the lights find them, they discover that all they had to say is ‘I was here.’

“None of us really know what we’re here for or what we’re supposed to be doing. So, we shout out, hoping someone will hear, hoping someone will see us and reveal the great secret.”

She was used to being told not to ask questions. Adults didn’t like it. But she had always thought that they knew the answers and that they simply found it too irritating to supply them to a child on demand. And yet here was a man who dwelt in a city built on selling knowledge, a man with direct access to the library from which that wisdom came, and rather than deflecting questions with angry denials he admitted his ignorance with weary acceptance.

“And if she’d hit you just then?” The woman had seemed genuinely worried. “Well, then I might have been forced to reach for the sharpest weapon at my disposal.” Yute continued to stride forward and raised his arms as if he might be summoning a thunderbolt. “Sarcasm.” Livira wasn’t sure what sarcasm was, but it sounded pretty bad.

A prism can divide white light into an infinity of shades. The colours of the rainbow are simply a taxonomy applied reductively for convenience of use. Where indigo ends and violet begins is a debate that might be substituted for any shelving argument amongst librarians seeking to place a novel. Even fact and fiction can bleed into one another.

Like all hunters, sorrow advances on slow, silent feet, until the last moment when it attacks from cover, springing with such speed that the impact rocks its victim on their heels.

It had taken murder, death, blood in the dirt, the destruction and upheaval of everyone she had ever known, but the world had given her exactly what she had always wanted and never been able to name. Unknown gods had heard and answered the wordless prayer of her life. She had left the Dust behind her. She was clean, fed, chosen, and special. And it was all her fault.

To listen to some of her older classmates, if a spine got broken the librarians would rather it belonged to a trainee than to a book.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that if you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all?” Livira shook her head. “She died when I was little, but I’d remember if she’d said something that stupid.”

“Well, little Yuteling, have these brats taught you anything?” Logaris fixed his pale eyes on Livira. “Yes.” The man furrowed his brow. “And what’s the most important thing you’ve learned?” “Brevity.”

“One thing’s for sure, I’m not in kansas anymore.” It was a phrase in half the languages he knew and one that had led to a saying almost as ancient: “We don’t even know what kansas is anymore.” Mayland said that in the histories some held it to be a real place, some a mythical city, and others still an enlightened state of being. Evar leaned towards agreeing with those who thought it was a state.

The knowledge that he couldn’t possibly read all the books on offer put a peculiar pressure on choosing his next read. There must be diamonds out there, the best book in a thousand, the best book in a million, and surely he didn’t want to waste his time reading one that was merely adequate when he could be reading one of those diamonds? So instead, he often wasted his time hunting for a read instead of reading.

From Livira’s own reading of the histories of lost civilisations, power had a tendency to clump together. Any small concentration of it rapidly drew in more, and it jealously accumulated in any hands that managed to grab a portion. Money did the same and seemed to be, according to Arpix who did not apologise for the pun, another side of the same coin.

Few things are worse enemies of civilisation than a corrupt official, but an honest official of corrupt laws is definitely one of them.

All of us steal our lives. A little here, a little there. Some of it given, most of it taken. We wear ourselves like a coat of many patches, fraying at the edges, in constant repair. While we shore up one belief, we let go another. We are the stories we tell to ourselves. Nothing more.

All of us in our secret hearts, in our empty moments of contemplation, stumble into the understanding that nothing matters. There’s a cold shock of realisation and, in that moment, we know that nothing at all is of the least consequence. Ultimately, we’re all just spinning our wheels, seeking to avoid pain until the clock winds down and our time is spent. To give someone purpose is to free them, however briefly, from the spectre of that knowledge.”

“Hurts don’t stop, but they fade into shadows of what they were. That’s sad. That something so vital, something that bit you so deep, can be eroded by time into a story that almost seems like it happened to someone else. Any hurt. The years have taken away her meaning. It lessens us.”

Kindness is a language in and of itself. In order for it to be understood it requires that both the speaker and the listener be trained in its syntax.

“It’s always the books you don’t have that call to you, you know that. Not the ones already on your shelf. They can wait.”