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They had buried her up on the mountainside where the human entrance to the library had stood. Mayland’s joints did not take kindly to the climb. He was old, his body falling further behind in the march of time with every passing year. He had not expected to outlast her.
He was certain by now that he would not outlive her.
Livira Page had slipped away three years prior, having lived the thousand lifetimes of a reader and more. She had been found by a client in the reading nook Wenthworth had led them into, a book in her lap and an equally lifeless Volente curled at her feet. The cat had disappeared by the time Mayland had arrived from Crathe. Only Edgarallen remained to guard the shop.
The book, when they’d opened it, had been blank. Judging by the cover, it had been her book, the book, which she had never titled nor shared. It was Arpix who had noticed that when its embossed boards had once been the black of charcoal, they were now the devouring black of spilled ink, of the once-library’s blood.
So they had buried the book with its author, and Mayland had retired from governance to devote himself once more to the pursuit of the truth between the lines. Every new release that had crossed his path, he had read, or at minimum skimmed. He could not devise a contradiction by which to obtain the ultimate proof, but after three years, he was as certain as he would ever be.
It would have to be enough.
Starval announced his arrival with a scrape of his boot on stone. The best preserved of Mayland’s siblings, he’d lost none of the stealth of his youth. Denial had always been his strong suit.
The wind was wicked up here on the slope. It blew their manes all ways, sparing them the discomfort of meeting the other’s eyes.
“Here,” Starval said. In his extended palm lay a knife that had once been the clasp of a book, and more recently the clasp of a heart. Mayland took it up, a rumble of discontent rising in his chest.
Starval would not be persuaded out of his guilt, foolish though it was. Not even Mayland could claim fault for that one. Evar Eventari had died from the arrow-stick wound Oanold’s men had dealt him, simple as that. If the study of history had taught Mayland anything, it was that few people got to go in meaningful ways.
What he had done, in replacing Evar’s lost blood with the library’s, had not been a rescue. What had risen in the vaults had not been their brother. Bathed in the library’s timeless glow, none had noticed that the story of Evar Eventari had gone on in his place, telling itself to those who had loved him.
Mayland had known, though. And as their new reality had asserted itself, he had known that so would the truth.
Blood was not ink. Parchment could not turn back into skin. Their brother had been left behind in a world they would spend their lives trying to escape back into, ever crashing into the immovable wall of the back board.
Evar found his ways to speak on them on these journeys even so. Sometimes slyly, his mane barely a glimpse in the crowd. Sometimes his words would echo unexpectedly out of a character’s mouth, too close to memory to have been coincidence. Sometimes he would appear as himself, immortalised on purpose, yet tell them something new.
Following Livira’s passing, Mayland had foolishly hoped to hear from them both. Old age did that to minds, skewed them towards fancy in preference to the too well known hard truths. He’d hoped, and been disappointed, but neither had his worst worry come to pass.
Where Evar’s passages had once drawn his rheumy eyes, now nothing did. No new echoes spoke out of unrelated mouths. In the sequels where he should have appeared, the character was omitted, changed beyond recognition, or summarily killed. He would no longer speak to me, one despairing author had written in their endnotes, and Mayland had cried for the relief.
Worse than silence, he had feared finding Evar’s voice speaking on alone, forever calling out to the reader who was no longer there to hear.
Wherever they had gone, separately or together, Ever was free. Mayland had to believe that.
He knelt in the dust and set Starval’s knife to the tombstone.
After much deliberation, they had kept the inscription short. Livira Page, it read simply, no qualifiers added to reduce the sum of all she had been. Some of the library’s magic must have clung to her, though, or perhaps to this place, for although the letters had been set in the script of the Crath City of Livira’s youth, Mayland saw them as his own.
He hoped the same would be true for the second name he now added below hers, his strokes not as fancy but carved in deep.
Evar Eventari
The knife slipped from Mayland’s fingers, its job done, as he threw back his head to howl his grief at the sky. Age, they said, blunted the edges of loss, but what good was that when the blade remained buried in the flesh? He had been so young, so self-righteous, had achieved so much and regretted little less, but at the end of the road, he howled alone.
Starval watched him in silence, refusing to join his voice in. But when Mayland was done, when his howls had petered out into sobs, his brother set his hand on his shoulder.
“Goodbye, Evar,” Mayland choked out, his head bowed low. “And... I’m sorry...”
Starval squeezed his shoulder, acknowledgement or reassurance, only Kerrol would have known. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet but even.
“Farewell, brother. And... thank you.”
Be careful what you wish for. I miss my enemies as much — if not more — as I miss my friends.
The final entry in the journal of Mayland Eventari, Chancellor Emeritus of the Republic of Crathe