“Jaspeth. Irad’s brother. That’s what your Yute said. Irad made the library and the assistants to tend it for him. Jaspeth opposes the library, and the Escapes are his servants, trying to tear it down.” “Do they really need to?” Malar asked. “It’s burning, in case you didn’t notice.” “It’s always burning somewhere,” Livira pointed out. “Yute said that too. But it’s just the books that burn. And the shelves. The assistants restock, and people like us, creatures like us, rebuild. That was the compromise to stop the war—the library’s vulnerable, difficult, inconvenient, but eternal.”
