Bookburners: Season One Volume Two

by Max Gladstone

  They ordered and then settled back. Grace lowered the ice pack, her face already healing. “We had better not tell Asanti that we secretly did some work today.”

  Sal grinned, relieved that she had been right about the time magics working against each other. “If only we could slow everything down whenever we need you to punch something.”

  Grace shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. I’ll destroy anything I touch when I’m that fast. That door is sawdust by now, and if I had touched Liam or Asanti, I could have killed them.”

  “And that bruise on your face, really from a fifteen-year-old boy in 1920?”

  Grace shrugged. Their food arrived, and she snagged a chicken foot from a platter. “It’s the only explanation, I didn’t just remember what had happened; I was there. The same with the Soviet sorcerer in ’89.”

  “Intense. I’m sorry you had to deal with that alone,” Sal said.

  “It’s okay. I enjoyed it,” Grace said. “You were right. I needed something to clear my mind. So are you going to tell me about the tour guide who was following us?”

  Sal grew cold. She had hoped Grace hadn’t recognized Aaron. She thought up a lie, and then sighed. Grace didn’t deserve that.

  “He had some information about Norse,” Sal said. “He gave me a clue about the time magic.”

  Grace frowned as she sucked on a chicken foot. “How did he know?”

  Sal shrugged. She honestly had no idea. “He said I didn’t answer the phone, so he came looking.”

  Grace raised an eyebrow. “In all of Rome.”

  “I don’t know,” Sal said, not looking at her. “I was more concerned with what he was telling me rather than why.”

  “You need to tell Menchú,” Grace said. “What did he say about Norse?”

  “Just that he was up to something today. And told me to look into not just what the artifact was, but why. What’s the purpose of it?” Sal asked. “Why stop time?”

  “It didn’t stop all time,” Grace said. “It may have eventually, but it was just holding that shop and the alley where it was. Why would someone want to stop that particular shop?”

  Aaron’s advice. The light. A sense of focus. “Norse wanted to delay us. Again,” Sal said slowly.

  “You’re thinking this was sabotage?” Grace said, frowning with skepticism.

  “It makes sense. Without you, I don’t know how we could have fixed it. Norse doesn’t know about you, so he didn’t know you could just cut through that magic like a hot knife through butter. It makes sense.” Sal was talking faster and faster, getting excited.

  “That . . . does make sense,” Grace said thoughtfully. “But this means we have to tell Arturo, and he’s going to know we worked on my day off.”

  Sal grinned. “We’ll tell him you needed to blow off some steam, and you ran across a possessed dude who needed punching.”

  • • •

  Place: Sal’s Apartment

  Time: 7:03:41 p.m.

  After their midafternoon meal, Grace didn’t want to stop. She’d fought a demon, but she was determined to live the fullest day she could. They hiked the city, looked at ruins (something, admittedly, Sal had not paused to do since she had arrived), shopped for shoes—or, rather, Grace shopped, ending up with a pair of heels with a price tag Sal tried very hard not to think about—and finished off the day at a mug-painting café where they had suboptimal coffee and painted mugs in hideous colors. They were supposed to pick up the final product the following week, and Sal idly wondered if they would ever return for their art.

  Finally Grace agreed to some downtime involving sweatpants, movies, and ice cream in Sal’s apartment. They even stopped to buy Grace some sweatpants for the occasion. She had not participated in such a ritual before, never having taken her day off with a companion.

  “How is this better than a movie theater?” she asked, frowning at Sal’s television. “The screen is so small.”

  Sal started counting off her fingers. “One, sweatpants. Two, we pause the movie anytime we need to pee. Three, snacks cost about a tenth of what we pay in the theater. Four, we can watch whatever we want, my DVD collection and internet-streaming permitting. And five, sweatpants.”

  Grace perked up. “Can we watch the Matrix trilogy?”

  Sal made a show of looking at her clock. “We have time for the first one,” she said, inwardly wincing at the thought of all three movies at once.

  Keanu Reeves was waking up in a vat of goo, attached to many cables, when Grace fell asleep. They were on the couch, sharing a blanket, and Grace was relaxed back, her face soft, her breathing deep.

  “When was the last time you just took a nap?” Sal wondered quietly. She turned the volume down on the television a bit, tucked Grace in with the blanket, and went to the kitchen to make some tea. While the water was heating up, she called Asanti.

  “I’m sorry to bug you at night,” Sal said. “I wanted to let you know that we’re okay. I’ll make sure she gets back to her room in an hour or so.”

  “That’s fine; I appreciate your telling me,” Asanti said. Sal could hear a television in the background. “Although I’m fairly sure Grace can handle the trip home by herself.”

  “Someone has to wake her up first. Has that woman ever napped just for the pleasure of it?”

  Asanti laughed. “You know, I have no idea. How did the day off go?”

  “Fun, except for that spin class. Exciting at times. We got bothered by that guy, though, the one who warned me about the yacht.”

  “What happened?”

  “I think he wanted to make sure we were going to help you, since we were the only ones who could. Well, Grace was. I was just there to watch. Don’t tell Grace I told you. I think she doesn’t want Menchú to know she worked on her day off.”

  “Well, we had already figured out it was you two. Thanks for that, by the way. I’m more troubled by this Aaron fellow showing up again.”

  “I’ll tell Menchú about it tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure it was benign. He told us to have your backs,” Sal said, hoping Asanti wouldn’t hear the lie of omission.

  “I should warn you,” Asanti said. “Liam and I are taking our day off tomorrow.”

  Sal grinned. “I’ll try to leave you guys alone.”

  “I think Liam would have rather had his day off today,” Asanti said, a strange edge to her voice.

  “You couldn’t do without three of us, though, right?” Sal asked.

  “That’s not what I’m getting at. He didn’t like you two having a day off together, and I think I know why.”

  “Oh, so you know about that,” Sal said, feeling tired all of a sudden.

  “Not until you just confirmed it. You two hid it well. But it’s over, that much is obvious,” Asanti said. “It’s probably for the best, actually.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Sal said, and in an instant she found herself spilling everything to Asanti: her feelings of isolation and loneliness, how she and Liam had connected early and passionately, and how they had flamed out as fast. Asanti listened patiently and didn’t interrupt.

  When she was done, Asanti said, “Liam has a strong need for control. Especially self-control.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Sal said, laughing bitterly.

  “He must have had strong feelings for you, to pull back so abruptly,” Asanti said. “It’s got to be hard to see you spending time with someone else, someone he himself has tried to befriend. He and Grace are sparring partners, but they’re not what one would call close.”

  “It’s probably got to do with the secret. He knows she has one even if he doesn’t know what it is,” Sal said. “When do you think he’s going to find out the whole truth about her? He needs to be told. It’s not fair to him.”

  “That is Grace’s decision,” Asanti said.

  Sal sighed. “All right.”

  “There’s something you should know,” Asanti said. “The artifact we recovered today: Liam traced it back to a Cambrid
ge archive purchased by a Mr. Norse and immediately sold to another buyer.”

  “Norse again. We figured the same.”

  “Luckily you and Grace saved us.”

  Sal laughed. “Grace, really. How did you figure it out, anyway?”

  “There is only one person we know who could resist the time magic and would leave the artifact with us. And you were the only person who would have figured out that Grace would be unaffected. The one thing we couldn’t figure out is how you got her to work on her day off.”

  “She needed something to hit. I think she forgot for a moment that she actually enjoys her job. She lost her temper and you guys said you were caught in a time spell, so I put two and two together and set Grace on the artifact. She said a guy had been corrupted by the artifact and was . . . swimming in time or something.” Sal shrugged, then remembered Asanti couldn’t see her. “But it all worked out, so long as you guys are okay.”

  “We are, thank you. Get some rest tonight. You sound tired, which is not what a day off is supposed to do to you.”

  “I’m on it. I’ll wake Grace and send her home.”

  She hung up, and then checked to see if Grace was still dozing on the couch. She was.

  Sal went to the mirror in her bedroom and looked at herself, standing where she had when she had woken up that morning. She met her own eyes and felt a frightening sense of vertigo. Then she remembered the white light.

  “I wanted to check on you,” Aaron had said.

  “You don’t automatically know everything in the world? My underwear size? My menstrual cycle? My favorite cake flavor?” Her hands were starting to flail. She had to calm down. She took a deep breath and forcibly relaxed her shoulders.

  He smiled, annoying her further. “I could know those things if I wanted to, but in this case, perhaps I should say I wanted you to know I was checking on you. I wanted to know how you think you are doing.”

  Sal choked out a laugh. “Oh, I’m great. Shot a Tornado Eater in the face. Probably caused irrevocable emotional damage to a young boy. Thought about getting a tattoo. Fought meat. Among other things.”

  “Are you sleeping well? Are you feeling confident in your self-control?”

  Sal had stopped her rant and looked at him closely. “Why?”

  “Do you wake up in places other than your own bed, Sal?” His voice was soft.

  “Why?” she asked again, her voice breaking.

  “Do you ever meditate? It does wonders to still the mind. Helps one know oneself.”

  “Stop saying one. You’re talking about me; don’t mince words.”

  He continued as if she hadn’t interrupted. “I think your mind is full of tumultuous waters that could use some stilling. Do you meditate?”

  “I . . . don’t. No.”

  “You should. Sit.” He had gotten off the box and faced her as she took his place. He raised his hand, palm out to her, and it glowed with a white light. “Now watch my hand, and clear your mind.”

  Sal looked instead at his eyes. “This sounds more like hypnotism than meditation, and I don’t trust you that much.”

  “The light is there to give you a focal point for your meditation.”

  “You went through all this trouble to teach me to meditate?”

  “No one else was doing it,” he said. “Oh. And, the next time Liam contacts you, pay attention.”

  Then there was light. And then there was nothing.

  Now, in her bedroom, Sal took a deep breath and pictured the light again, and the sense of vertigo fled. Frustration bubbled up inside of her, a foreign feeling, and she tore her eyes from the mirror.

  She looked down and noticed one thing was wrong with her dresser. A strange memory poked at her, and she flipped up the lid of her small jewelry box, the one that held, among other things, the tarnished silver cross she had received when she had rescued Perry. The box was empty.

  She looked into the mirror again. “What did I do?”

  Episode 11: Codex Umbra

  Max Gladstone

  1.

  Alex hated the Somerset house. Rooms full of shadow rambled and transformed when he wasn’t looking. His parents liked to tell the story of their first visit, fresh from Hong Kong in linen and silk, winding up the long narrow drive: “Dear Alex was so excited to see his grandmama’s estate for the first time that he climbed up front beside Jonathan and pressed his nose against the windshield—but when we rounded the hill he fell back, screaming!” Which, told with the proper arch and timing, yielded laughs around dinner tables in Singapore, Fiji, Sri Lanka, and Grand Cayman, and the clinking of champagne flutes. Alex himself laughed with the other guests, aping their sophistication, projecting charm he did not recognize as charm: a child of eight so far above his more childish self of four.

  His parents waited for the laugh to finish before continuing the story: “Of course, when he met his grandmama, when she introduced him to the house and it got to know him, all fear vanished. He ran down the upstairs halls and jumped on the beds and curled himself in nooks reading. Our brave little Alex.” And sometimes, if Mother felt particularly cruel, she’d pinch his cheek there, and turn on him the private smile that always scared him in company. Private things, he already knew, were best kept private. Sharing that smile where others could see—the smile she used to banish nightmares and soothe him to sleep in hurricane winds—sapped its power. One day he would need that smile, and find its potency gone.

  Their friends, at dinner parties on islands around the world, did not understand. They were warm-weather people, though they professed allegiance to a chill, wet, distant home. Not even his mother understood: she had not known Soldown Manor as a child. She had come to it as a grown woman, in Father’s company.

  She did not know how it felt to see that crumbling, vine-shrouded expanse, that elegant ruin like some toy or tool God had abandoned, small beneath the boiling gray sky, yet so much bigger than Alex Norse, age four. Soldown Manor, the beast of his family, crouched at the end of the road and watched their approach with rows of enormous black glass eyes. Waiting, it breathed through gated mouths. Long dark runnels discolored the stone where ivy did not grow: the beast stained by its own ichor. There was no end to the thing. If he let it draw him in, he would remain whole, embedded in its belly.

  On that first trip he did run down the upstairs halls, in part to flee the skin-wrapped bone sculpture with fierce glittering eyes his parents introduced as Grandmama, but also in part because he thought, Now that I’m inside, I must find some escape. If I can map Soldown Manor, I can—if not master it—at least conjure it to devour someone else, and spare me. He jumped on beds to chase out dead souls. He curled in nooks because nothing could sneak up behind him there except the walls, and he read because, buried in a book, he could ignore the featherlike, fingerlike shapes moving at the edge of his vision. He held the books close as masks.

  Mother did not know. Father told the story, too. But he did not laugh. Father had been the last Norse raised in Soldown Manor, and there were reasons he made his fortune in Hong Kong.

  They spent Alex’s twelfth Christmas at Soldown. In years past, Father said, servants lit lanterns to fill the manor with light. For one night, no shadows lingered on the estate. But this year’s only guests were Grandmama’s manservant and her live-in nurse, the only music the sound of ventilators and heart monitors and a distant drip of water. Father watched his mother on the bed, and worked his hands as if washing them. Mother held his arm. He did not seem to notice her.

  But Alex could not wait in that firelit room where Grandmama lay. In her eyes, darting beneath thin, stretched lids, in the unconscious grasping of fingers like once-taut gloves pulled over a wire frame, in the regular rasp of her machine-forced breath, he found something he feared more than the breathing manor’s hunger.

  He did not run from the firelit room. He climbed the stairs he’d charted in his panic long ago, round and round and up and up, until he reached the long halls down which he’d fled, age
four. They seemed narrower now, and shorter. Whispers drew him on.

  In the drawing room where he’d curled in the corner, he looked up. One of the ceiling panels was hinged. He had never noticed before.

  He stacked books on a chair, climbed from the desk to the stack, strained (teetering atop the books) with a broom handle, and pressed the panel’s edge. With a click, the panel slid back and then down. A ladder unfolded from it like a mantis’s arm extending. Soft creaks spoke to long disuse. The ladder’s brass feet settled softly into light depressions in the drawing room carpet.

  Alex climbed, either out of Soldown Manor, or farther in.

  The cramped, low-ceilinged room above was dark. Narrow triangular windows would have admitted sun, but the sun had set long since. By the light from the open trap door Alex saw shelves on the three windowless walls, all dust-covered. One shelf held calipers and needles and knives. One shelf held books—older, larger, rougher than the books in the drawing room or parlor or any of the libraries. One shelf held skulls: rodent, cow and ram, lizard and monkey and horse and man.

  Many boys Alex’s age would have screamed, but Alex had spent more than half his life hating the manor, and fearing it. He was too tired to scream. If anything, he felt gratitude: on this dark, starless night, the house confirmed his fears, and showed itself to him.

  Against the fourth wall, beneath the triangular windows, stood a desk, empty save for a book. And the book breathed.

  Here lay the secret heart of the hated house, as small and unassuming as any book with covers closed. He could turn away, retreat, shut the panel, and know he had faced the house’s brutal core, he had swum to the bait on the lure and found it wanting. Soldown’s hold over him would break. Leaving this room, he need never return to it again.

  But leaving, where could he go? Save down and down and round and round to the firelit room and his father washing his hands in air.

  Alex opened the book.

  He read it by the darkness beyond the window: the night lay on the pages like candleflame, and the words caught and burned with viscous, wet radiance.