Bookburners: Season One Volume Two

by Max Gladstone

  Alex touched the book, and the burning words clung to his fingers, sticky and golden and sweet as syrup. He felt warm. He felt strong. And though there were no servants, and though there were no lanterns, and though there were no guests, still Soldown House filled with light.

  • • •

  Two nights until the solstice.

  Alexander Norse, age enough, as he’d say now, danced a flame from fingertip to fingertip and regarded the enormous tent, lit from within to nighttime roadwork brilliance, that towered over the farmland in this dry stretch of Rhodes. Far away, a mountain stood. Far above, stars watched. They’d watched him his whole life. He’d soon give them a proper show.

  Footsteps approached. He hid his light from the world. “Sir,” his servant said: a wind chime chorus, a fist clenching around broken glass. Others would hear the voice as a human woman’s, but he knew, and could see, the truth. It was his business to know such things. “Mr. Alhadeffs to see you.”

  “I am wanting,” said the old man by the servant’s side, “for you to explain what you have done.”

  Alhadeffs was a bent figure of olive and copper, with fierce black eyes and a fierce, curling, gray-thorned beard. Norse’s servant herself was brass, and silver, with springs of steel, her face a sculptor’s suggestion over a metal skull. Her fingers were knives, her heart a spring, and the only words in her brain were words he’d put there. To the farmer Alhadeffs, and to Norse’s own security team, she seemed a normal human woman, brusque and strong and well-armed. The mind closed to cover a wound, and she was a walking wound.

  “I am sorry if we’ve offended,” Norse said. “We have a permit for this dig, and you will be handsomely compensated for the damage my expedition inflicts on your land—though we are of course working to minimize such impact.”

  “Your men chopped down the olive trees in the eastern field.”

  A regrettable necessity. Ritual ingredients had an unfortunate tendency to resemble a deranged hermit’s shopping list. He required a mirror like the one that hung in the old purification chamber, with a frame made from local wood of sufficient age. “I am sorry. We will pay you whatever you need.”

  The man flushed. “Four hundred years, those trees have been in my family. What payment can you offer? Those olives were not mine. They were my daughters’ and my sons’.”

  “And I will pay you enough, Mr. Alhadeffs, that they will praise your memory when what’s left comes down to them.” He extended a hand. Alhadeffs did not take it.

  “You have not dug beneath my olives,” he said. “You cut them down. You do not dig in my land. You build atop it. You spill poisons into the soil. I will report you to the police, to the government.”

  “Please, Mr. Alhadeffs.” Norse set his arm around the man’s shoulders. “We’ll be finished in two days—that’s all. You’ll be rich, your farm will recover, and you’ll be all the happier, despite this unfortunate disagreement. Look. Come with me. Let me show you the progress we’ve made, so you understand why I can’t afford to interrupt our work at this critical moment.”

  He tried to guide Alhadeffs toward the tent, but the man pulled away. Norse’s hand grazed his neck. “No,” the old farmer said. “I will not work with you,” he tried to say next, but could not—fingers of skin knit across his lips.

  The new-grown flesh muffled his scream. He doubled over, clawing at his mouth, but more skin sealed over his fingernails, wrapped his fingers together. Skin climbed up his throat, covered his beard and his hair, sloughed over his nostrils. He fell. His eyes glittered with terror and fury before the skin covered them too, leaving him to writhe beneath a hardening caul of flesh.

  Norse knelt beside Alhadeffs, and stroked the new skin. It breathed, softly; Alhadeffs mewed inside, then settled as the skin sang him to sleep. Good. Norse’s world felt gray and saturated at once: as if something else, from somewhere else, replaced his normal vision. In better days he would have talked the man down, would have charmed him with a smile and a wink and a glass or three of ouzo. Not magic. Never magic.

  The recent strain was wearing on him.

  Let it wear. He’d be a god soon enough.

  “Bring him,” he told his servant. “We have work.”

  • • •

  Sal did not vomit after watching the farmer get sealed inside his own skin. Which was progress, of a sort, she supposed. Hooray.

  “Jesus,” Liam said in the Rhodes Hilton, staring at the grainy night vision camera image on the television screen. The tent flap swung shut behind Norse and the smudge that followed him, carrying the other smudge that had once been the farmer. Magic played havoc with cameras at the best of times; Sal wished it had played a little more havoc, earlier. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

  “Once or twice,” Grace said, from her perch on the desk by the wall. She had a thumb in Ulysses.

  “Of fucking course.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Liam said nothing.

  Father Menchú sat on the bed beside Liam, his hands crossed, watching the television image. “At least we know we’re in the right place. Norse is here. The way he’s behaving—spending money, power, influence, using magic—he thinks the Codex Umbra is, too. I doubt he’d put so much on the line if he didn’t think there was a real chance he’d get the, what did Sal call it? The Norton Anthology of Evil? in exchange.”

  Asanti had turned away from the television when the man began to change. Not, Sal thought to judge from her face, out of disgust or revulsion: she’d known what was about to happen, and decided not to watch. “We knew that already. The Oracle doesn’t lie.”

  “You’ve had better experience with oracles than I have,” Menchú said. He volleyed the conversation back to Liam: “What are our chances? “

  “In my professional opinion?” Liam tapped an incantation on his laptop; the television blanked, then displayed a satellite photograph. “We’re right fucked. Here’s the site from two weeks ago: notice all the nothing here, where Norse’s tent stands now. The camp’s on the grid, but they have portable generators too, and if they have a network, it’s so hardened I can’t even knock on the front door.”

  “Physical security,” Grace added, “may not be airtight, but it’s strong. He’s working with local talent for the most part. They’re good. Barbed wire around the base, motion detectors, bright lights, guard rotations. We’re not sneaking in.”

  “What about Team One?” Sal asked. They all turned to look at her. “I don’t like the guns-blazing routine any more than the rest of you, but you have to admit: secret base, top security, evil magic . . . this is more their bailiwick. I’d rather deal with this on our own, but why shouldn’t we call in the big guns? Or the, you know, any guns?”

  Menchú looked tired. “I tried them already.”

  Sal blinked.

  “You’re right. It makes sense. But Corporal Shah—she’s in charge of Team One now, after Bouchard was eaten—doesn’t want to risk the chance that Norse could put up a magical fight. The island’s full of tourists, and there’s some sort of financial conference underway. Society diplomats can only hush up so much.”

  “It’ll be worse if Norse gets ahold of that book, is all I’m saying.”

  “I made that point. If it comes to that, they’re prepared to step in. Until he has the book, we’re on our own.”

  “If he gets the book, they might not be able to stop him.”

  “Nonetheless,” Menchú said, “that’s where matters stand. Corporal Shah does not want to start a bloodbath without cause.”

  “Of all the times for Team One to grow a conscience.”

  Nobody spoke for a long, silent minute. Finally, Asanti turned back to the television. “We could use magic.”

  “No,” Menchú said.

  “I think he wants to enter the Knights’ old archives: they used to stand on that hill, but they vanished just before the Ottoman invasion. Not burned—they were sent away. The Knights couldn’t escape wit
h the Codex, but couldn’t let anyone else have it either, so they just—shoved it off, into magic. He’s trying to find it again; we could do the same. The ritual’s mostly benign.”

  “After Glasgow, Oklahoma, and the Oracle, I don’t think we’re likely to survive another mostly benign ritual.”

  “You were the one who suggested the Oracle.”

  “And it almost killed us, again.” He shook his head. “No magic.”

  Grace set down her book. “Do we have another choice?”

  “We might have,” Liam said, “if someone hadn’t taken a day off to go to the movies.”

  Sal closed her eyes as the argument continued: the nearer they drew to the Codex Umbra, the more anxiously they circled the same old fights. There must be an option they hadn’t yet considered, something outside their usual approach, something Norse would never expect a room full of law-minded Bookburners to try.

  “Oh,” she said, and opened her eyes.

  The others were looking at her again, with a different, more hopeful expression.

  “What if we steal our way in?”

  No one spoke, still, but the silence sounded . . . receptive, at least.

  “Father, you said there was a financial conference this week. Liam, is there a list of attendees? Maybe Norse is there, in some capacity?”

  Liam cracked his knuckles and plied the keyboard. Real computer work involved a lot more humming and waiting than rapid-fire typing and animated displays, but before long Liam leaned back on his elbows, smirking. “You know, this job’s pretty tough, with all the secret organizations and the magic. I sometimes forget how good I am.”

  “Give it to us,” Menchú said.

  “I’ve been building my known alias file on Norse, see, and—”

  “The point, please.”

  “He’s not technically attending the conference, but he’s on the guest list of a billionares-only sort of party being held by one Emma LaCroix on her yacht—”

  Grace groaned; Liam ignored her.

  “Can you score us invitations?” Sal asked.

  “Done and done.” Liam glanced up from the keyboard. “Wait. Why?”

  “We’ll get to that. Now you just need to rent yourself a tux.”

  2.

  “Now this,” Sal said, “is how I like my yachts.”

  Whoever Emma LaCroix was, she threw a hell of a party. Hanging crystals reflected firelight, and space heaters cast warm shadows on a deck swarming with the great and good—or at least the great—of fifty nations. Light-capped waves rolled off toward the jewel that was Rhodes. Ocean breeze cooled Sal’s skin.

  “Covered with infuriating, garish displays of wealth?” Menchú wore a black suit, black shirt, and white collar; Asanti, something heartbreaking in cream, and Sal herself black and spangles. Asanti (thanks to the Vatican Amex) had financed their expedition to procure fancy dress, but Grace had stepped up as fashion team leader, navigating boutiques, selecting cut and color, negotiating prices, and generally surprising the crap out of Sal.

  “Not possessed by demons,” Sal replied. Speaking of seizing opportunties—she snagged a champagne flute off a passing tray, and toasted the others. “As long as we’re here, why not enjoy ourselves?”

  “What is there to enjoy?” Menchú glowered at a man laughing by a roulette wheel.

  Asanti grabbed his hand. “Come on, you old Marxist. Let’s get to work.” She took point, leading them through the crowd.

  Roulette wheels and baccarat tables crowded the first deck, and dancers the second. On the third, the highest and least populous level, two massive and mostly naked men pummeled one another in a roped-off ring while an audience drank, watched, and sometimes spoke around the edges. Groans and the pop of flesh striking flesh added a complementary rhythm to the big-band music from below.

  A bell sounded the round’s end. The taller, thinner fighter staggered back to his corner, half his face curtained with blood.

  Norse stood near the bloody fighter’s corner, nodding approval. Two broad-shouldered men accompanied him, sensibly far back, wearing earpieces and—Sal judged from the poor fit of their jackets—armed.

  Sal cut through the crowd toward Norse; the mooks shifted, but did not try to stop her. Maybe they had standing orders against interfering when a woman in a cocktail dress approached their boss. “Enjoying the fight?”

  She had hoped for at least an instant’s surprise, but Norse turned from the blood with an easy grin. “It’s just grown more interesting, Detective Brooks. You look well.”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “Oh, come. I know you’re new to our game, but certainly you don’t hold a grudge for that minor lapse of mental privacy you experienced at the Black Market? Or for the invigorating chase I’ve led you on around the world?”

  “You killed people. You used me.”

  “And you caused me to incur the Maitresse’s disfavor. I assure you, you have no idea how much of an inconvenience that presents in my line of work. Good evening to your comrades as well,” he added as Menchú and Asanti joined them. “Madame Asanti! Unexpected and transcendent.” He bowed. “Your presence honors me. You really should get out more.”

  “You,” Father Menchú said, “are a monster.”

  The mooks tensed, but Norse raised one hand and they relaxed. “I want power,” he said, “and knowledge, for mankind. Your Church has spent millennia hoarding magic for no purpose but to scorn it, like a dragon using a mound of gold as a litter box.” He raised a glass and drank. “Which sounds more monstrous to you?”

  Menchú’s knuckles cracked. Sal set a hand on his arm.

  “I did not expect a warm reception, Mr. Norse,” Asanti said. “You haven’t exactly been a model of bonhomie.”

  The next round’s bell disturbed the music, and the bleeding fighter staggered to meet his opponent. Around the deck, glittering men and women turned back from rails and sea to watch the blood sport. “Call me Alex, please.” Fist met face. “And, though we work on different sides, do know that I hold you in the highest respect.”

  “I’m waiting for the evidence,” she said.

  “For evidence—God, how about my being here, engaging in this conversation, rather than fobbing you off on security when I know none of you have a legitimate invitation? We’re not allies, Madame, far from it. I have tried to check you and your friends at every turn, as you know.” The bloody fighter raised his arms to absorb a rain of punches. “But we have a common cause. We want to understand this strange new world so we may use it, and build a civilization on the breast of the rising tide. “

  “You invaded my library,” Asanti said.

  “And you’d no doubt happily return the favor.” The fighter fell back, one eye swollen shut now, rolling with body blows, ducking away from jabs. His sweat glittered. A woman in a short skirt laughed at something the man beside her said. “You and I, Archivist, want to protect the world from its changes. I feel magic should bow to man. In the Codex Umbra, we have a vital tool: demons, collected and collated, name by name, with their secret needs and words of power, so each may be called or loosed on the world at the wielder’s whim. We could use that power to prepare ourselves.”

  “Enrich ourselves, you mean,” Menchú said.

  “Prepare. We’ve all seen the signs. Magic is seeping back into the world, whatever the cause. Outbreaks grow common. Children perform feats of magic the most learned practitioners of our art would have believed impossible ten years back. Your team’s staffed for magic the way it used to be, not the way it is, or for what it will become—your organizational goals are outmoded, your objective incoherent.”

  “And yet we win.”

  “You never win, Father. You postpone. Madame Asanti knows this. I bet she’s told you as much, and you’ve laughed it off.”

  Asanti raised her chin. “We do the best we can with the materials to hand.”

  “As do I. But I have more materials, and greater freedom to use them.”

  “Like
a child left alone in surgery has freedom to play with the tools.”

  “Yes—and, if such a child’s careful, he can learn. I have. Ask yourself this, Archivist: when the world breaks and magic returns—not these pale shadows you’ve fought and contained for so long but real magic, golden and true—would you have rather spent your decades in a terrified, vain attempt to fight the future, or preparing yourself to rule the wave?”

  “You can’t rule a wave,” Asanti said. “We can ride waves, yes. Channel them. But waves laugh at scepters. Some powers are beyond our reach.”

  “That’s what people said of lightning. When the walls fall down, I’ll be Alexander Norse, tamer of demons, and your backward Church will stand, as ever, on the wrong side of history. But I’m no genius—I just have vision. You have the languages, the mind, the discipline. Work with me. We could achieve wonders.”

  “That’s enough,” Menchú said. “We’re leaving.”

  “How about it, Asanti? Or you, Detective Brooks? You have hidden depths; I can teach you how to use them.”

  Sal looked away. “I’m good, thanks.”

  “The Father’s too hidebound, but if either of you want to be on the winning side, well. I’m always hiring. And I have a very comfortable benefits package.”

  Menchú’s wet, dark eyes glistened. “You won’t win,” he said. Asanti put out one hand to stop him, but he ignored her. “I’ve seen a hundred like you before: you talk revolution, but you want power for yourself. You sicken me.”

  Norse retreated a step, his forehead wrinkling in perplexed innocence.

  “Excuse me,” a deep voice said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you three to leave.”

  There were four of them, all built to a size Sal didn’t know people were still made. Shoulders that broad should have gone out of style with Hercules. “It’s all right,” she said. “We were going anyway.”

  In the ring, the bleeding boxer ducked around a punch and struck his opponent three times in the face. A fourth punch, to the body, doubled the man over, then back to the head, cross after cross. The opponent fell, to a light rain of applause.