Page 24 of The Book That Held Her Heart

Mayland filled Evar’s vision, but even so he became aware of something odd happening all around them. The pages underfoot were variously crumpling and folding themselves into strange shapes, some reminiscent of parchment flowers. The rustling competed with the fluttering fall of pages, now thick enough to limit vision to ten yards or so. The thunder came again, louder, nearer, angrier. A sourceless rage began to bubble deep inside Evar. Mayland’s lies, Mayland’s machinations had led them to this. His brother had abandoned them. Left them trapped when he could so easily have shown them the way out.

The anger winding its way up from Evar’s guts found its echo on Mayland’s face. A mocking sneer, a poorly disguised hatred staring out of what had become a stranger’s eyes.

Mayland shook his golden mane. “Words have had their chance. So, forgive me if I cut to the chase. Iamgoing to destroy the library. And Iwon’tallow you to stop me, Evar.”

Another boom from above as if a raging god were trying to break the sky. Pages fell in off-white curtains, a tumbling confusion adding to the drifts on which they already stood.

Reflexive anger drove Evar’s hand towards his brother’s throat. At no point did he mean to harm him. Simply to show Mayland that he wasn’t in a position to deliver ultimatums. In a fight Mayland had no hope against Clovis, Starval, or Evar, and it was time to remind him of the fact. Whether it was a lesson that Evar would enjoy teaching wasn’t the point.

It was possible that Clovis or Starval could have stopped him, but neither of them tried. Both stood statue-still, almost lost in the page-fall. Instead, Evar’s hand simply slowed as if he had thrust it into mud that thickened as he pushed through it.

“How?” Evar snarled, trying first to press forward and reach his target, and then to pull back the imprisoned arm.

“I’m impressed by the speed with which you learned to control what’s running in your veins, brother.” Mayland’s eyes flitted to the hole in Evar’s chest. “But I’ve been studying the library’s blood for years. I’ve been gone longer than you think I have.”

“I—” A wave of Mayland’s hand cut off Evar’s hot reply by taking command of both his jaw and his tongue. The casual gesture of power didn’t seem to be for Evar’s benefit though. Mayland stared past him into the page-fall, eyes narrow. “Well, this complicates things.”

And in that moment a new strength filled Evar, redoubling his rage. His hand found Mayland’s throat, and within a blinding maelstrom of falling paper he lifted his brother from the ground with a single arm and began to squeeze.

Those who believe that we are nothing more than survival machines—the end product of a billion-year evolutionary war—are incorrect. We are less than that since we have added conscious cruelty into the already vicious mix. And we are not the end product.

The Genetic Handbook, by Fiona Bayzelon

Chapter 12

Anne

In the rainswept streets of Amberg a virulent hatred ran free, communicated from friend to friend, neighbour to neighbour. In the gutters, water gurgled its way to the drains, trickled through gratings, and was swallowed into a dark underground sea. In the alleys, in the beer houses, across the factory floor, ran a darker muttering. A long-brewed anger had begun to crest. A fire banked across years, fed on lies, devouring the tail of its own prejudice. If it were a volcano, this would be the stage just before the eruption, the time when the ground began to bulge and mound, smoke escaping the cracks, tremors running through the bedrock.

Even in the parlours, the knitting circles, and the creches the talk was of justice, of payback, of it being time. The insult could stand no longer. The list of imagined crimes had grown too long and crossed too many lines. The Jews had to pay. The Jews, and any who stood in the path of the nation’s greatness, any who threatened the purity of their blood, any who challenged the efficiency of the machine into which Herr Hitler was forging the nation.

Anne had not been privy to any of the conversations in which hatred fed off suspicion. She hadn’t seen suspicion devour the newspapers’ lies only to vomit out ten times more, their falsehoods both deeper and more fantastic. She had felt only the edge of the thing, and deduced the existence of the whole, just as a fossil hunter whose diligent chipping has revealed asingle bone might know in their heart that the entire monster waits for them, entombed in the stone of the cliff that towers above them.

And yet, in Madame Orlova’s parlour an unexpected strangeness eclipsed the brewing violence outside. If not for their host’s own example of the many forms into which humanity might be cast, Anne would, to her own shame, have come to doubt that either man before her was in fact a man. As they took tea and talked of books, Yute seemed steadily more unusual, his whiteness beyond even that which might be credited to albinism. While Kerrol appeared to grow by the minute, shedding some cloak that had baffled Anne’s eyes. Even the enormity of seven feet in height wouldn’t encompass him. Perhaps eight might just do it. He might even threaten Goliath’s inhuman record and top three yards. Moreover, in the light of Madame Orlova’s old-fashioned oil lamp, his mane seemed closer to that of a lion than a man’s hair. His lips thinned almost to nothing, the planes of his face taking on a more canine shape. His body too threw new shadows, his legs not even jointed in the same way Anne’s were.

Stranger still, as the conversation continued and the tea cooled, Kerrol’s speech became harder and harder to understand, until at last it sounded to Anne’s ear like the growls and rumbles of a large, highly educated dog.

“I’m sorry.” At last Anne had to speak. “What language is it that you’re speaking now, Mr. Kerrol? I can’t follow it at all.”

Yute and Kerrol exchanged a look, the tall man raising a quizzical brow. Kerrol growled out something else, an interrogation of some sort.

“She says she can’t understand you either,” Yute said.

Kerrol nodded.

“Wait,” Anne protested. “How can he understand you but not me?”

“Everyone understands when I talk.” Yute frowned. “The words at least. It’s a talent left over from when I served the library in a more formal capacity.”

“More formal than a librarian?” Anne asked. “What were you? A shelf?”

Yute acknowledged her attempt at a joke with a small smile. “Something like that.”

“Would you be a dear, Anne, and fetch some little cakes from the kitchen?” Madame Orlova tilted her misshapen skull towards Anne. “I feel today is a day for cakes. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?” A sighlifted her shoulders. “They’re under the china dome on the sideboard, and there’s a silver stand in the high cupboard by the back door.”

Anne got to her feet rather faster than she had intended. Even with the fascinating company, an offer of cake was something to be leapt at. She hurried through the indicated door and found herself in a narrow kitchen lined by cupboards with many small doors and drawers. A smaller window, divided into four little panes, afforded a view of a brick wall, the edge of a roof, and a sky already shading into night. Anne’s grandfather always maintained that whatever the clever Dr. Einstein might have to say about speed and time, the swiftness with which it passed was really more about the quality of the conversation. A good discussion would, he maintained, devour the hours and leave you staring at midnight before you knew it.

She found the cakes quickly enough beneath a flower-patterned dome. Smallish cubes of three-layer sponge with white icing and a pink icing flower on top of that. Finding the silver holder required rather more exploration, and Anne had all manner of questions concerning the odd mechanical devices, curious jars, spice pots, and newspaper-wrapped parcels she uncovered before finding the three-tiered cake stand.

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