I try to wrench myself from his grasp. I cannot manage it until he has led us away down a side street.
“Imbecile!” I scream. “Moron! You great sack of meat! Stop it! No more. Not again. Not ever again!”
Nyasha tries to interject. “They would have–”
“What? Hurt me? Imprisoned me? So? What do I care?” I turn back to Bron. “Let me do it! For once, let me suffer! Let them hit me and make me bleed! Stop pitying me! Stop trying to fix me! You can’t. You can’t. I just–I just want. That’s all. So get your filthy, horrible hands off me and let me be! Let the crippled girl fall. Why not? You’re only delaying the inevitable.” I begin to weep. I can’t begin to express how angry, how incredibly furious I am. My body trembles. I lean against an abandoned car, and I glare at Bron through the tears. “I hate you! I hate both of you. Why can’t you just leave me? What is wrong with you? Do you know how long I tried to get rid of you, Bron? Just stop it. Stop it. Stop trying so hard to protect me. I’m so sick of it. I want to tear your head off, you fool….”
Bron looks at me. It’s out in the open now. He knows I heard him in the Well when I was dying, when he confessed he pitied me. He has to know now that I heard him, even as slow-witted as he is. “Stop staring at me! Say something.”
“We might be able to sneak around back,” Nyasha says. “It looks like some of the rear has collapsed.” She is looking away from me, toward the Library. At least she has the shame to look away. I can see how red her face is.
I wipe my cheeks. I can’t stand here with that man looking at me like an ox. “At least one of you knows how you can help, if you really want to.”
* * *
I wait as Nyasha scrambles up the mound of rock, the skeleton of a nearby building, left for us to climb. Bron hovers nearby like a lost dog
“I can’t change, Calea,” Bron says. “I won’t.”
“No one ever does.”
“If you won’t let me protect you, who will?”
“No one.” I stare him in the eye. “No one.”
Nyasha scurries back down. “There’s an opening. I saw a hallway and books, no soldiers. I thought I heard some movement, probably those librarians the soldiers mentioned. We’ll have to stay quiet.”
“It’s a library,” I say. “That’s part of the deal.”
She gives a half-smile. “You’re right.”
They wait. They dare not broach the subject.
“I think this way might be the smoothest for–” Nyasha offers.
“I’ll find my own way up.”
This is climbing, not mountain hiking. My fingers ache a quarter of the way up. My prosthetics are nearly useless, my arm and leg mere symbols, without the strength and coordination of real limbs. Bron is behind me somewhere, ready to stop me if I fall. I take one ascent at a time, resting at the level places, planning my route with precision. It’s mind over matter for me, and it always has been.
Nyasha waits at the top, offering me her hand. I refuse it, and though I can hardly breathe, I say, “I’m strong enough now, aren’t I, doctor?”
“You preferred the mountains to the caravan. I figure you’ll manage the hard way if it kills you.”
I nod pertly.
Bron stands at my side, silent. His breath is slow and even.
“Where to?” Nyasha asks.
We are in a long, crowded corridor. Shafts of light from holes in the ceiling illuminate roiling clouds of dust. Air flows through unseen cracks and fissures. The books Nyasha mentioned tumble in from an adjacent room, the wall somewhere, possibly back in the rubble we climbed. It’s a disorienting space. The hallway seems intact at first glance, but a second reveals its moth-eaten interior. The walls are stitched in a cobweb design, the ceiling knit together by chance.
“This way,” Bron says, taking the lead. He steps gingerly forward.
I follow as carefully as I can manage, my leg trembling from my previous exertion. I will regret it tonight, but they need not know that. Nyasha follows after. When I look back, I see her gazing up at the pocked ceiling with wide eyes.
Ah, yes, she’s had a building collapse on her before. Superstitious girl. “Keep up. Bron knows what he’s doing.”
She stares at me. “I don’t understand you.”
I shrug. Occasionally, Bron is useful. The sweat has drained the anger out of me, and I am near my books. And I have not forgotten. I am biding my time.
We reach sturdier halls, enter into a room strewn with books. Two long wooden tables dominate the center of the room. I take up a few of the volumes–natural history. My search may lead me here, but this is not where I wish to begin.
I lead now. My childhood was spent in libraries, among books, not in fiction like many of my classmates, but among the solid facts of the world–cause and effect, cycles and evolution, equations that undergird every action and reaction. Life dissected, abstracted, systematized, and peer-reviewed. I know where I want to go, where the books I need reside. Bron slows me.
“Get out of–”
He covers my mouth. “Listen.”
Nearby, the sounds of movement. Men are working, rearranging. Fine. I jerk away from Bron, change direction. The building is a series of interconnected caverns filled with shelves and tables, each alike, each a unique portrait of destruction. I stride through them. Biology, chemistry, zoology, meteorology, history–endless history–the library has tricked me. I turn, backtrack, find the thread again. I find stairs. I descend carelessly, nearly tumbling down the steps. There–magical studies.
The room is enormous, the shelves toppled, the books in heaps. Paths lead around the piles, footsteps in the dust, dust in the footsteps. Where to begin?
They are hovering about, waiting.
“Leave me. I’m done with you.”
I take the nearest book. A Treatise on the Subterranean Magical Network. I sit and begin to read.
* * *
I throw the fourth book aside. It crashes against the wall. The sound brings me briefly back to my surroundings. The first thing I notice is Bron, standing at the door, watching me. Ceaselessly.
“Go do something.” Even Nyasha is picking through the books, reading what she can understand.
He shakes his head imperceptibly, though he comes near. He’s afraid of my voice carrying. I talk just as loud. “You’re not my bodyguard anymore. Go. Do something.”
“I will wait.”
“We need food. Go look for work.”
He hesitates.
“This is the safest place in the city. Go.”
“You want me gone.”
“Yes. Haven’t I made that clear?”
Finally, he nods. “You must learn to live.” He takes a knife out of somewhere. I am a bit startled with the deftness of the motion. “Take this.”
“I won’t need it.”
“Take it.”
“I don’t know how to use it. Keep it.”
He smiles a little. “You do know. I fear for any man who attacks you.”
I take it. I don’t know why I put up a fight. I don’t want his help, even in this. And…and I am afraid of the knife, I think. It is cold and light in my hand . “How am I suppose to read with this?”
“A bookmark?” Bron suggests.
“Take Nyasha with you.”
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