Jess spotted the speaker, who’d climbed on a stone bench and was now lecturing those passing by as he held up a journal. It wasn’t a blank from the Serapeum, stamped with the Library’s emblem. What the man brandished was far finer, with a hand-tooled leather cover and his name on it in gilt. His personal journal, in which he would write daily. Jess had one quite like it. After all, the Library provided them free on the birth of a child, and encouraged every citizen of the world to write their thoughts and memories from the earliest age possible. Everyone kept a record of the days and hours of their lives to be archived in the Library upon their deaths. The Library was a kind of memorial, in that way. It was one reason the people loved it so, for the fact it lent them a kind of immortality.
This man waved his personal journal like a torch, and there was a fever-light in his face that made Jess feel uneasy. He knew the rhetoric. The Garda would be on the way soon.
People gave the lecturer a wide berth, scared off by his passion and his wild eyes. Jess looked around. Sure enough, a knot of red-coated London Garda was heading towards the spot. The Burner saw them coming, too, and Jess saw his face go pale and set under that untidy mop of hair. He raised his voice even more. ‘A man cannot be reduced to paper, to lines and letters! He cannot be consigned to a shelf! A life is worth more than a book! Vita hominis plus libro valet!’
That last rose to a ringing shout of victory. The man reached under his coat and took out a bottle of poison-green liquid, thumbed off the cap, and poured a single drop on the cover of the personal journal he held. Then he threw the book down to the stone floor, and in a second it ignited with a shocking burst of flame that burnt emerald at the edges and bloomed in a towering column straight up into the air. Those closest stumbled back with alarmed gasps and cries of surprise.
‘Greek Fire!’ someone screamed, and then there was a scramble, a full-on rush of people for the exits. It impeded the progress of the London Garda, who were heading against the tide.
‘The Library wants you to live blind!’ the Burner shouted. ‘I die to show you the light! Don’t trust them! They lie!’
Jess should have run, he supposed; he was buffeted on all sides by those with more sense, but he lingered to watch the man with frozen dread and – yes – fascination. The book, burning on the stones, held a ghastly echo for him of helpless fury and horror, as if the pages themselves were screaming for rescue. It was an original work, an only copy, written in ink on paper. It was the man’s thoughts and dreams, and it was … dying. It wasn’t On Sphere Making, but Jess had to fight the impulse to rush to save it, regardless.
‘Out of the way!’ a Garda cried, and pushed him almost off his feet, towards the exit. ‘Get clear! Don’t you know Greek Fire when you see it, you fool?’
He did, and he also realised – all too late – that the Burner didn’t just have the drop that he’d used on the book for his demonstration. The man had a full flask-sized bottle of the stuff, and he was holding it high. It glittered in the dim light from the windows like a murky emerald.
Jess took a step back, and stumbled on his train case. He fell over it, still watching the Burner. I should get out of here, he thought, but it felt as if his brain had gone to sleep, lulled by the mesmerising rush of the fire. He wanted to leave, but his body wouldn’t respond.
‘Cork that bottle, son,’ one of the Garda said as he approached the Burner. He was older, and he sounded authoritative and oddly kind. ‘There’s no need for this. You’ve made your point, and if you want to destroy your own words, well, that’s your burden and no one else’s, sure enough. Cork that and put it down. No harm done. You’ll only have a fine, I promise you.’
‘Liar,’ the man said, and for the first time, Jess realised that he was, in fact, only a little older than Jess himself. Twenty years old, at most. He looked serious, and desperate, and afraid, but there was something in his eyes, something wild. ‘You’re a tool of the Library, and I will not be silenced by you! Vita hominis plus libro valet!’
It was the Burner’s motto: A life is worth more than a book.
They were also his last words.
The young man upended the bottle of Greek Fire over the front of his clothes and then poured the rest on his head, and the men who’d been advancing on him backed up, then turned and ran.
Jess saw the chemicals glow, spark, ignite, and consume the Burner in green fire that blew up towards the vaulted ceiling in an awful explosion of light. The sound was like nothing Jess had ever heard before – an indrawn breath of sucking air, and the crackle and fizz, and then the screams.
Oh, God, the terrible screams.
One of the Garda grabbed Jess and bowled him over the edge of the platform to crash hard down onto the gravel bed of the tracks, only a few feet from the iron skirt of a locomotive. The man’s weight crushed him down on a rail, and he struggled to breathe. From the corner of his eye he saw the firestorm billowing over their heads, a torrent of green and yellow and red.
The screaming stopped, and the horrible banner of flame drew back in, though the fire still raged.
The Garda who’d pulled him over the edge kept him down when he tried to stand up. ‘No,’ he said, panting. His face was pale under his black helmet. ‘Just stay down, the air’s toxic up there until it burns completely out.’
‘But he’s—’
‘Dead,’ the man said, and held Jess’s shoulder tightly. ‘And nothing we can do for him. The stupid boy, he didn’t need to—’ His voice was unsteady, and then it failed him altogether, and for all that Jess had grown up as enemies with the Garda, in that moment they were united in horror. ‘Damned Burners. No reasoning with ’em. Getting worse every year.’ The man blinked back tears and looked away.
Jess sat back against the rough stone wall and stared at the flickering glow of the fire above them until, at last, it died.
The Garda questioned him – not that they suspected him of anything, but he’d stayed while others fled, and he was of an age when young men might turn to such causes. He answered truthfully and showed them his Codex, which contained his travel papers to Alexandria, and his official acceptance letter. He worried about missing the train, but nothing was running, not until the Garda were satisfied the danger was gone.
It took several hours, and he supposed they’d sent word to his family, but no one came. He remembered his da being told that his older brother Liam had been taken while running books, and the grief and resignation on his father’s face. His father hadn’t stood up to claim Liam. He’d not be visiting the Garda to retrieve Jess, either, should the worst come to pass.
Jess’s nerves were as tight as wires, but the Garda finally let him return to the tracks, where scrubbing had removed all trace of the Burner’s death, except for discolorations. The book, Jess thought, as he stood and looked down at the smaller stain on the floor. This is where the book died. It was the same ugly black scar as where the Burner had ignited himself on the bench.
Books and men left the same traces where they burnt.
The idea that the young man had taken his personal journal with him into the flames left a sour taste in the back of Jess’s throat; it wasn’t just that he’d given up his life, it was that he’d given up any hope of people understanding his purpose. Maybe nobody would have ever read it; maybe his reasons would have been found utterly mundane and useless. But by burning it, he’d erased himself as completely as anyone could. To a modern man, growing up with the comfort of knowing the Library would keep his memories intact, it seemed … inconceivable.