Page 105 of The Book That Held Her Heart

“Still…” Yute prevaricated. “We should—”

“Wentworth!” Kerrol called out a loud imperative. “Wentworth! We need help!”

Something huge loomed behind Livira, accompanied by the sound of shelves splintering and falling back. The light dimmed and quailed as if it were being blocked, which was impossible—in the library the illumination bled from the air itself.

Livira hadn’t completed her turn before a desperate scream swelled and then cut off with an awful crunching sound.

Wentworth had become huge, larger than a skeer warrior, big as an elephant, Livira guessed, though she had never seen such a creature. More importantly, the cat was less Wentworthy than Livira had ever seen him: his fur had become almost black, mottled with shadow, his claws scythe-like, his eyes lambent amber slits, and his teeth…his teeth had just passed entirely through King Oanold’s neck.

Wentworth spat out the man’s mangled head a heartbeat after his bleeding body hit the floor. Clovis moved with breathtaking speed to put herself in front of Livira who of the remaining party had been standing closest to the beast. She held her white sword between her and the cat, and unless Livira imagined it afterwards, her arm trembled.

“Wentworth!” Yute ran past them both, towards the cat, his voice neither fearful nor angry, but full of sorrow.

Wentworth glowered down at the librarian, jaws dripping crimson, as the man came to him unhesitatingly. Yute’s head came only to the cat’s great fur-laden chest. He reached out, patting Wentworth while turning back to face Livira.

“I worried this would happen…”

“You worried he’d bite someone’s head off?”

Yute winced. “It seems he developed a taste for fascists when we were last together…But no. This.” He looked up at the fang-filled maw and wild eyes pointing his way. “Wentworth has always been attuned to the library. By many accounts he is part of it. As the library fails, so will he.”

“He doesn’t look happy about it,” Clovis murmured, not lowering her blade.

Livira swallowed, trying to see past the teeth and blood to Salamonda’ssleepy stair-cat that had so often ignored her, and every once in a while been of immense use. “Wentworth…” She swallowed again, and tried with more force in her voice, hoping it wouldn’t dry up this time. “Wentworth. We need to reach the centre. I might be able to help you if we can, but I don’t know how to get there.”

The cat locked eyes with her and suddenly she knew exactly how prey felt. Beneath a weight of fur, muscles tensed, ready to propel Wentworth into motion. For a long moment it seemed that the only question was when he would spring at her, rather than if. The moment passed, and the cat turned away, shrinking as he started to climb the slanting shelves that his bulk had toppled into the next aisle.

“Follow him,” Mayland said. Rather unnecessarily, in Livira’s opinion.

Wentworth took to the shelf tops, heading west while all around them pieces of the ceiling started to fall. The cat appeared unbothered, though he kept up the dedicated pace of a cat summoned to the kitchen. Livira could tell that he was leading them to the door to Chamber 7. If his intention was to take them to the centre by foot, the journey might be measured in months or years, although the length of the journey felt academic. If it was more than ten minutes, Livira was fairly sure the problem would be solved by them all being crushed by falling rocks.

Before they’d covered half the distance to the door, pieces of the ceiling were falling all around them, a steady hail ranging from fist-sized bits to chunks substantially larger than Wentworth at his biggest. The cat led at a pace dictated by Yute’s best efforts at running. He sprinted along shelf tops, effortlessly leaping aisles, then pausing for the humans to catch up. In the old days he would have collapsed in a furry puddle or sat nonchalantly licking a paw. Now he stalked impatiently, agitation twitching in his tail.

Once, when Wentworth had ranged far ahead and was a mere dot atop the shelves at the end of a straight aisle more than a hundred yards long, the place he was sitting in exploded without warning, splinters and pages flying in all directions, dust billowing. Livira screamed despite herself, but a moment later she spotted the cat ten yards closer, stalking the shelf tops.

For a moment she found her heart aching for the lost books. She had never even scratched the surface of what was to be read in Chamber 1, let alone the tomes in Chamber 2, but even so, part of her had always thoughtthat she would have the chance to read any given book here. To see them taken away, not just from her but from humanity, hurt her in ways she couldn’t properly put into words.

“How are we not dead yet?” Carlotte panted beside Livira.

“I’m your early-warning system.” Arpix spoke up behind them, voice grim.

Carlotte looked back at him, frowning.

“I’m taller,” Arpix explained. “The rocks will hit me first.”

Behind him, Clovis pointed up in alarm.

Livira had been avoiding looking up, all of them had, not least to keep from getting an eyeful of grit, and also because it was better not to think about deaths that could strike from places beyond their control, but she did so now.

In any normal light the presence of a vast raven high above might have been signalled by its shadow falling across them. Edgarallen—it had to be him—had grown to such titanic dimensions that Livira suddenly knew the truth of the childhood stories Ella had told her out on the Dust. Tales of rocs whose wings darkened the sky and could tear up a hundred trees in their great talons.

Livira hadn’t called him. She had no feather. She hadn’t spoken his name. And yet here he was, flying as a shield above them, shedding pieces of the ceiling from his flight feathers as his wings deflected an untold weight of masonry from their heads.

“Run!” She shouted it even though they were already running. Surely even on this scale the raven couldn’t protect them, or himself, for long.

Even as the thought crossed her mind Edgarallen’s whole body shuddered, and a few moments later a huge chunk of ceiling rolled off his back.

Wentworth waited forthem by the corridor to Chamber 7. Kerrol ended up picking Yute up and running with him. Starval did the same for Yolanda and Leetar despite their protests. By the time they emerged from the shelves, all the humans were in the arms of canith, Livira borne beneath one of Mayland’s arms and uncomfortable about it in several ways.

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