Bookburners: Season One Volume Two

by Max Gladstone

  “That’s not fair. It’s not my fault that people followed us, or that Liam needs us.”

  Grace snatched Sal’s phone from her hand and read the texts, ignoring Sal’s outrage. “Yeah, and he didn’t say he needed you until you asked him specifically if he did. That’s not what a friend does when she’s dedicated to a day off.”

  Sal grabbed her phone back and pocketed it. “Fine. Sue me for being concerned about the other members of our team, who are off dealing with danger while we’re here drinking heart-palpitation levels of caffeinated soda. Grace, you guys are the only people I know in Rome, my only friends. I’m sorry if I tend to be concerned about some people who are in danger. This team is all I have right now.”

  She stormed out of the bathroom and stopped in the lobby to read the text again. The team was in trouble; they needed her. Liam had laid out the details in the text.

  Trust your mind, Sal, Aaron had said in the alley. Own it. The light from his hand shone brightly for a moment in her memory.

  Now Sal closed her eyes, concentrating on the details. Liam and the others were handling an artifact that messed with time. What was it that was niggling at her about that? It felt familiar somehow, like . . . like she’d been thinking about it a lot lately. Grace.

  The light that Aaron had shone in her eyes flared. Would Grace’s own ensnarement in a time spell protect her from a different one? Would her candle cocoon her from the shock everyone else would suffer from this type of magic?

  Big logical jump there, Sal. But Aaron had told her to trust herself. She didn’t—not exactly. He’d helped her before, though. They’d never have found the Fair Weather without his guidance. And if she’d trusted him once, then…

  The problem was, she was alone, and Grace was left in the women’s room, unwilling to abandon her day off. She paused and considered going back, but honestly didn’t know what kind of argument would make Grace follow her. If she was so convinced the others could handle things alone, Sal wouldn’t be able to change her mind.

  The restroom door slammed open behind her and Grace stormed out, grabbing Sal’s arm as she passed. “One perfect day. That’s all I ever ask,” she said through her teeth.

  “Is it perfect when your family is in danger without you?” Sal asked, catching her stride.

  “Where are we going?”

  Sal told her. As Grace pulled her along, she thought about how Grace’s real curse wasn’t the candle, but the fact that she was tied so tightly to the team’s fates—as well as her own.

  • • •

  Place: Borgo Santo Spirito

  Time: 2:28:58 p.m.

  Sal, still half-running down Borgo Santo Spirito to keep up with Grace, considered reminding her that Liam had not strictly asked for Grace to come. They at least tried to respect Grace’s day off. But maybe what Grace needed was a good fight, where she could just let loose. The kind of fight she got during a job. Maybe she needed their “work.”

  Sal put on a burst of speed and grabbed Grace’s arm to slow her down. “At least you’ll get something to hit today, to make up for not hitting that guy in the alley earlier,” she said.

  Grace stopped suddenly. “Do you think I’m that simple? That hitting something—anything—is enough to make things better? I’m like an indentured servant to the Church, Sal, while my life burns away and everyone I know ages around me. When I die, I’ll have spent my life fighting, without a real chance to rest or enjoy myself or even just take a nap. Will hitting something make me forget all that?”

  “No,” Sal said quietly. “But you were mad before the movie, and now you’re madder. This will give you something to do with that adrenaline, and when you’re done, maybe you’ll be able to think more clearly. Enjoy the rest of the day.” She paused, then added, “Arturo needs you.”

  Grace’s dark eyes focused sharply on Sal, a spark of fear in them. Sal had never used Menchú’s first name before.

  “Where do we go? And what do I punch?”

  • • •

  Sal worried that there wouldn’t be anything to punch, really. Liam had said a time artifact was messing with them, and his phone time stamp was 11:45 a.m. Why had the text taken three hours to reach her? She knew sometimes phones delayed message delivery, but this was worse than usual. You couldn’t punch time.

  But Sal knew, gut-knew, that Grace was the only one who could save them. Aaron had told her to trust that. Grace herself wasn’t magical, at least, not as Sal understood it, but Sal’s theory rested on the fact that two time curses would counter each other, making Grace at least immune to whatever they were up against.

  They arrived at the clockmaker’s street and looked down the dark alley where the shingle hung above the door, identifying the shop as Maestri del Tempo. The sign itself looked a hundred years old.

  The rest of Team Three stood outside the door. Well, Asanti stood. Liam and Menchú were sprawled on the ground, unmoving. Liam held his phone and stared intently at it.

  Grace surveyed the scene, arms crossed. She pointed to Liam’s backpack, where the corner of the magic-dampening shroud peeked out. “Liam’s got the shroud,” she said to Sal.

  “Great, get it from him and go get the artifact. I’m going to stay back here, but I think you’ll be okay to deal with this magic.”

  Grace smiled wryly. “I thought you said I got to hit something.”

  “We don’t know what’s in that clock shop, Grace. It could just be one little artifact, but I find it difficult to believe it’s creating some sort of time-slowing bubble all on its own. These things typically need a driver at the wheel, don’t they?”

  “I might get caught in the time bubble too.”

  “You won’t.”

  And with a trust that made Sal feel vaguely guilty, Grace ran into the alley, where she promptly disappeared.

  • • •

  Place: Maestri del Tempo

  Time: 2:32:06

  Grace knew pain. It had become almost an afterthought, as accepted a part of her new career as menstrual cramps had been in her teens. The night the candle changed her life. The bullet holes and knife slashes, acid and claws from demons, broken legs from Tornado Eaters. Pain was a way of life.

  Exhilaration, though. That was new. The moment she crossed the invisible border of the time bubble, the world around her slowed to a stop, but she remained herself. She could sense the conflicting time magic around her, like she had felt in Delphi. This artifact would feel her as an irritable grain of sand in its slow, uniform takeover of the city: Grace’s curse, which locked her to every second. For one of the few times in her life, the magic she encountered didn’t frighten her into action; this magic had handed her wings.

  Grace would not be Icarus, though. She jogged up to her team and waved a hand in front of Arturo’s face. “Hello? Can you hear me?” she asked.

  He lay on the ground, looking pained and annoyed. She felt a tiny hurt in her heart as she looked at the gray that streaked his previously glossy black hair. She considered reaching out to pick him up, but if he was super-slowed, or she was super-sped-up, she could break his bones by simply touching him. She stepped carefully around him, pulled the shroud out of Liam’s backpack, and, with one more glance at her frozen team, entered the clock shop.

  It would have been a dump, or perhaps a nest, a cozy and dirty place of clock parts and tools and myriad timepieces on the walls. Small cubbies and drawers were set along the sides, some open, some tagged with order numbers. It would have been a dingy place if the air wasn’t broken by golden streams of light rippling like a gymnast’s ribbon on the air. Some of these streamed quickly, some moved slowly. They all came from one area, the artifact, the watchmaker’s tool attached to a worktable with a vise.

  Grace realized with a shock that she had been here before, to have her watch serviced. She owned a Rolex, a gift from a Swiss watchmaker who had been grateful for her saving his livelihood from a gear-eating demon. The Swiss man had tried to tell her something about clock piec
es and nightmares, but Grace had let him explain to Arturo so she could focus on her part of the job.

  She knew this woman. Bella. The woman was on the floor, slumped in a corner against the wall. Her eyes were open and they were glistening with tears. Blood ran from the woman’s ears and nose, and from the mess, Grace could tell that something very strong had slammed her against the wall and broken her back. She still lived, or was in the second between living and dying, as she watched the time streams flow around her.

  The thing that had thrown her was a man, younger than Bella, but bulky, like a former athlete. His large hands turned the crank on the wheel of the artifact, the only thing besides Grace that didn’t move incredibly slowly. His eyes rose to hers, and they were brimming with bright, golden tears, dripping down his face like molten streams. He opened his mouth, and instead of a tongue, more molten time flowed out. His body convulsed, and he jerked, but his hand continued to turn the crank on the device.

  This host was dead; whatever was inside had taken over completely. Grace regretted this, but part of her was delighted. Finally, something to punch. She picked up a clock and threw it with all her strength. The host’s body stopped convulsing and its free hand reached up and batted the clock away. She heard bones break in the host’s hand and arm, but it didn’t flinch.

  She ran toward the host, but was caught unaware when it opened its mouth again and howled. A golden river washed over her.

  She tried to dodge, but saw the inevitable coming for her. Bracing herself, she tensed, ready for the burning that had come when she had fallen through the wax. Nothing came.

  Watching. Always watching. Grace is a child named Chen Juan, a slip of a twelve-year-old girl who watches daily at the window while the big boys in her village chase her brother, laughing at him because of his limp. She sometimes cries when they catch him. Fai never cries, though. He is so brave.

  Gritting her teeth, Grace stood up, feeling the magics within her and without her fighting even harder. Her fingers ached from the strength of her grip on the windowsill as she watched Fai get punched and kicked.

  She ran at the creature again, and was ready when it opened its mouth. She launched herself off a stool and leapt over the worktable, hitting the demon in the chest, feet first. He howled as she collapsed his chest, and more time came out to flood over her, catching her full-force now.

  The books. She steals her father’s anatomy books and studies them, learning about pressure points and the soft parts and the weakest joints. Eyes, throat, fingers, belly, groin. No kwoon will take a girl to train kung fu, and her parents wouldn’t let her go anyway. So she teaches herself. At the next attack, Chen Juan runs out to help her brother. The bullies are no longer boys: they are necks and fingers and scrotums and knees. One of them is only an eye. It is easy, despite one of the boys landing a punch in her face.

  Night falls in 1989, and she cannot find Arturo. The darkness swallows Leningrad in June, when there should be twenty hours of daylight. A sorcerer has enshrouded the city in darkness so that he can bring forth his dark child, sleeping under the Hermitage Museum. He makes a mistake then, cracking a crude joke about the priest and his geisha. Red replaces the black in her eyes and she finds him effortlessly, remembering the soft parts, the weak parts. Arturo is safe.

  Grace blinked. Her eye was swelling up from the boy’s punch; she had red welts on her hands and wrists from the sorcerer’s whip.

  “Enough,” she said, and snapped the golden creature’s neck.

  The wheel on the clockmaker’s device began to spin with no hand on it, the golden streams moving faster instead of dissipating. Grace staggered to her feet and threw the shroud over it, trying to catch the handle as it tangled in the fabric.

  Her death. A bed. Someone she doesn’t recognize reads a newspaper to her. She turns her head from the date. She doesn’t want to know. Her last breath bubbles in her chest—

  The device stopped. Grace leaned over it, panting, watching the golden ribbons in the air begin to fade. She quickly unscrewed the vise that kept the artifact on the worktable, and headed for the door . . .

  . . . which was halfway to exploding.

  Time had begun to catch up with itself, and Grace realized the force with which she had hit the door to enter the shop was akin to a bullet hitting it, and once it hit the wall, that door began to splinter. She watched in fascination as it separated into pieces and those pieces began to split apart in midair. Time to get going.

  She tucked the shroud tighter around the time artifact and placed it neatly beside Arturo, then jogged back to Sal.

  • • •

  Place: Maestri del Tempo

  Time: 2:32:08

  Liam hit send on the text to Sal and glanced at Menchú, who was starting to rise to his feet.

  They were both tossed back by a massive wind, flattening them and blowing the door open.

  “Shit,” Liam said, and looked up. The door had exploded, leaving a rough memory of wood hanging from the hinges. Asanti leaned on the wall as if she had been pushed against it. Liam scrambled to his feet and ran to the door, skirting the edges of the stronger part of the time bubble. He blinked at the carnage outside, then drew back.

  “How long was I in there just now?”

  “Only a moment,” Menchú said, brushing himself off. “It appears the problem has solved itself.” He frowned at the enshrouded package next to him, which was the same size as the large wheel that had previously been attached to the clockmaker’s table.

  “There are two bodies inside,” Liam said. “And the artifact isn’t on the table anymore.”

  Asanti crouched next to Menchú, peering at the package without touching it. “That’s because it’s right here.”

  “What the hell happened?” Liam asked. “Did someone who has another time artifact come in and save us?”

  “Or someone who has spells or abilities that stand outside of time,” Menchú said thoughtfully.

  “Or curses,” whispered Asanti, looking at Menchú. His eyes went wide momentarily, but he said nothing.

  Liam sighed audibly and stomped past the shattered door into the clock shop. The woman on the floor—dead. Looked as if it was blunt-force trauma. The man on the floor—also dead. He appeared deflated; the blood that leaked from his nose and ears was tinged with streaks of gold. He had no eyes and his open mouth showed no tongue, only charred holes.

  Liam felt the man’s pockets for identification, not realizing until it was too late that his finger had trailed through some of the gold-tinted blood on the man’s shirt. He quickly wiped it off, expecting it to burn.

  She stretches out beneath him. “Show me the vastness, Liam.” He is vaguely gratified she isn’t making a bad sexual pun. There is ecstasy, and then a buzzing high, and then the wires, and then there is nothing but vastness for such a long time—

  Liam wiped his fingers on his jeans hastily, his mind reeling with the memory of his ensnarement. He stood. “They’re both dead. Looks like the man messed with the artifact and probably killed the woman.”

  Asanti and Menchú didn’t answer. They were too busy conferring on the street. Liam crossed his arms and surveyed the ruin of the shop. If it had been a computer game, he would have been able to take his pick of the contents, but even though it was coded into almost every game, people tended to frown on grave robbers in real life. Shame, too. There were some nice clocks on the wall.

  “Liam, we’re calling the police. It’s time to go,” Menchú said through the door. “We’re done here.”

  “Better call the cleanup crew first,” Liam said, wiping his fingers on his jeans once more. He felt tainted. “It’s not completely cleared in here yet.”

  Menchú nodded and began to dial the special crime-scene cleanup crew that commonly worked with Team One.

  Liam rubbed his fingers together unconsciously, trying to rid himself of the heady feeling of the memory, sexual and terrifying. He didn’t need to go back to those times.

  • •
•

  Back in the Black Archives, Liam scrubbed his hands under hot water until they were red before meeting Asanti and Menchú for debriefing.

  “I don’t know why you didn’t want to stay there longer,” he said. “That wind we felt was definitely not human. Don’t you want to know what it was?”

  “I have Asanti doing some research on that. What I’d like you to do is find out what you can about this.” Menchú produced the artifact, careful to touch it only with the shroud. “I have a bad feeling about it.”

  “Beyond the fact that it just killed two people?”

  “Yes. Far beyond that.”

  4.

  Place: Red Jade

  Time: 3:32:10 p.m.

  Seconds after she had left, Grace reappeared in a gust of strong wind behind Sal. Her face was swollen, and her hands and forearms were red.

  “You look like hell,” Sal said.

  Grace smiled. “You were right. I needed that.”

  “You want to tell me what happened?”

  Grace motioned to her. “I’m starving. Let’s go and I’ll tell you along the way.”

  • • •

  Grace took Sal to her favorite restaurant, Red Jade. Inside, the owner, an ancient Chinese woman, greeted them joyfully and came to embrace Grace. They spoke in Chinese briefly, and then Grace introduced her to Sal. The woman led them to a corner booth and said to order what they liked.

  “I didn’t know you had friends outside the team,” Sal said as they sat down.

  “Zhen is an old friend. I saved her restaurant in 1984,” Grace said, calmly accepting an ice pack delivered by an earnest young waiter and putting it on her face.

  “From what? Demon?” Sal asked.

  Grace shook her head. “Mafia. Arturo and I were having dinner when they got visited. I didn’t like them. Before we went back home I convinced them to leave her alone.”

  “And she hasn’t noticed that you haven’t aged in the past thirty years?” Sal asked.

  Grace smiled. “She knows I helped her. Doesn’t much care about the rest.”