Bookburners: Season One Volume Two

by Max Gladstone

  “Then why did you just make me come home?” Sal said.

  “Housekeeping,” the doppelgänger said. She walked into the kitchen. “Actually, you should come and see this. It’s going to be like the scene in The Shawshank Redemption when the warden finally figures out what’s going on.”

  “You’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption?”

  “My dear, everyone has. Come on.”

  “As if I have a choice,” Sal said.

  “Right now you do. I suppose.”

  “Don’t play mind games with me,” Sal said.

  “Sal,” the doppelgänger said, “your life since I entered it has all been a mind game. You don’t appreciate just how much I can make you see and do—perhaps because I haven’t yet exerted my full authority over you.”

  The doppelgänger lifted a finger into the air, and with a faint smile, she drew a line downward toward the floor. A slit opened in Sal’s vision, or the air, or the world—it was impossible to say which—and the doppelgänger reached in and pulled it open, like a curtain. Through the window in the air were miles of burning fields, towers that had once reached to the sky now crumbling in dust and smoke. Over it all, the shadow of a greasy wing blotted out the sky. The doppelgänger pulled the curtain closed and it was gone.

  “What did you just show me?” Sal said.

  “Whatever I wanted. That’s just the beginning.”

  Now Sal found her right hand rising in front of her, turning toward herself. The hand tightened into a fist, then extended the pointer finger, in line with her left eye. Slowly, irresistibly, the tip of that finger pressed closer to her face.

  “You wouldn’t,” Sal said.

  “It’s just to prove a point. I can probably fix your eye again after you’ve poked it out. But the pain will teach you a lesson.”

  The tip of the finger was too close to her eye and getting closer. That was when Sal made a decision.

  “I’m not doing this,” she said.

  “You are very much doing this,” the doppelgänger said.

  “Like hell I am.” Sorry, Perry, she thought. I failed you.

  In a move that must have broken the Hand’s concentration for a moment—there was no other way to explain why it worked—Sal ran for the balcony. The door was already open, which she was thankful for. It made what she wanted to do that much easier. She sprang for the railing. The doppelgänger didn’t move. Didn’t have time to, Sal thought.

  Sal grasped the railing with both hands, lifted herself up off the balcony floor like a gymnast, and started swinging her legs over. In less than a second, the momentum of that swing and gravity would send her headfirst toward the street. She wasn’t that high up, but she was high enough. She’d seen what happened to people who fell from heights like these. With luck, it wouldn’t even hurt.

  Except that midway through the swing, she stopped. Every muscle in her body froze, as if paralyzed. No. As if turned to stone. Her legs were suspended over the railing in midair. Her elbows were bent. She was just tilting forward. But her hands, her arms, weren’t letting go—they held on with a strength she hadn’t quite known she had.

  “Nice try,” the doppelgänger said. It waved its hand in the air, and Sal collapsed onto the balcony. “Come back inside. I have something to show you.”

  The doppelgänger was reaching for the handle of the oven.

  “You have something in there?”

  “Sal,” the doppelgänger said. “You really should bake more.”

  She opened the oven. A mist rose from it that smelled as if something amphibious had died in it. The mist cleared. There was a mortar made of dried lava. A clump of leaves tied in a bundle. A bird’s wing. A desiccated finger with a claw at the end of it. All around the oven, bright yellow spiders the size of Sal’s hands were spinning a network of webs into what looked like a tunnel. The doppelgänger opened her mouth and moved her lips as though she were speaking, but Sal only heard a few syllables, flitting in and out of silence; it occurred to her that the rest of them were too high, or too low, to hear. The spiders stopped what they were doing and turned to face her. They were talking back. The doppelgänger nodded and closed the oven door.

  “Good,” she said. “It’s ready.”

  “What is?” Sal said.

  “When I have the Codex,” she giggled, “all I need to do is say the magic words, and a portal will open between wherever I am and here. It’s my escape hatch.”

  “When did you do all this?” Sal said.

  “See? I told you it was going to be like The Shawshank Redemption,” the doppelgänger said. “You’ve been sleepwalking, night after night, ever since you got to Rome. At first I thought I might find what I wanted at the Archives, but what you had there was, shall we say, not germane to my goals. So then it was just a question of letting you go out, looking for the right book, the right amulet, even the right moment, for me to make my move. I had no idea it would come so soon, or be so promising. The Codex Umbra! I couldn’t have asked for better.”

  “To do what?” Sal said.

  The doppelgänger looked toward the ceiling, making a show of thinking. “Can you see it yourself?”

  Sal could. “No,” she said. “Please don’t.”

  “It only looks like hell to you,” the doppelgänger said. “To us, it’s what this world could look like when I flood it with magic. You may have noticed that the more magic there is, the more I can control it. If I bring enough magic into this world, I can make it mine.”

  “Why do you want this world so much?” Sal said.

  “Let’s just say that in my world, there are politics,” the doppelgänger said.

  “You mean that there are demons back there more powerful than you,” Sal said.

  “Demon is not a word we would use to describe ourselves,” the doppelgänger said.

  Sal kept a straight face. She’d learned something, even if she wasn’t sure how to use it yet.

  “Now let’s go back to the Archives,” the doppelgänger said. “I don’t want to miss the show. You can take us there or I can make you take us there.”

  “I’m going,” Sal said. “But just so you know, the second you give me the chance, I’ll kill you.”

  The doppelgänger vanished. The Hand was back in her head, right behind her eyes.

  I wouldn’t want it any other way, she heard him say.

  5.

  Vatican City was a little quieter than usual. The news had gotten out that something had happened there, and some of the tourists were staying away. Though not enough of them. The line to enter the Vatican Museums and Library stretched down the block.

  “We are not waiting in that,” said Gorogor. He gritted his teeth.

  “Easy,” Eriath said. “Remember what we talked about?”

  “Excuse me?” Gorogor said.

  “About holding it together and just following us until we’re inside.”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  “Good,” Eriath said. “Come with me.”

  Eriath, Resketel thought. You can hear me if I think directly to you, yes? As I can hear you when you think directly to me?

  Yes, Eriath thought back. Privilege of being a mind reader. I can open a two-way street.

  Good, Resketel thought. So Gorogor can’t hear me talking about him. Why did we

  pick such a loose cannon?

  You know why, Eriath thought back.

  The three of them walked to a little office inside the Porta Angelica. A good-natured official waited behind the counter.

  Do I destroy him? Gorogor thought, loud enough for Eriath to hear.

  No! Eriath thought. We’re not even inside yet.

  “Good morning!” Eriath said to the official, who nodded. “We have an appointment.”

  She pulled a small stack of blank papers out of a satchel and handed them to the official, who looked them over with eyebrows raised. He stamped them and signed them, then looked at the three of them.

  “Welcome back to the Vatican, professors
,” he said. “I trust you know where you are going?”

  “We do,” Eriath said.

  “Please proceed,” the official said. The three of them continued on their way, blank pieces of paper in hand.

  “What did you make him see?” Resketel said.

  “I didn’t make him see anything,” Eriath said. “I let him see what he wanted to see. I let his brain make us whatever would make his job as easy as possible. The fantasy is more persuasive—and forgettable—that way. To tell the truth, I was expecting him to make us ambassadors, or perhaps police. But apparently visiting professors are the easiest. At least for him.”

  “Well, professors are so docile,” Resketel said.

  “And delicious,” Gorogor said.

  Resketel made a sound of disgust.

  “That was a joke,” Gorogor said. “I occupy professors. I do not eat them.”

  They were approaching a courtyard jammed with parked cars. There were three entrances to the building in front of them. A white door to the right.

  “That’s it,” Eriath said, pointing to the door.

  “You really do know where you’re going,” Resketel said.

  “It’s easy when you can read people’s minds.”

  “So you know where we’re going once we get inside?”

  “No. We’ll just have to find someone else.”

  A policeman met them with a quizzical look on his face as they entered.

  “We are here for research,” Eriath said, showing the blank papers again. “If you’d please show us to a librarian, we’d be much obliged.”

  The policeman scrutinized the pages. Then: “Right this way.” He led the trio to a man clutching a small stack of books under his arm.

  “Hello again, Massimo,” Eriath said. “It’s good to see you.” She pulled out the blank sheets of paper again and handed them to the librarian.

  “Yes! Of course!” Massimo said. “Welcome back.”

  “Thank you,” said Eriath with a small smile. “These are my associates.”

  “It’s his first time here?” Massimo said, pointing to Gorogor, who was staring at the explosions of color on the walls and ceilings. They’d lost him for a moment.

  “Yes,” said Eriath.

  How are you going to do this? Resketel said.

  Power of association, Eriath said.

  “I hear the renovation of the library went splendidly,” Eriath said.

  “Oh yes,” Massimo said. “We’re quite up to speed now. So much more has been digitized since the last time you were here. The Vatican Library is more accessible than ever. It could be the most accessible it has ever been in the entire history of the Church.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Eriath said, and leapt into Massimo’s brain. “But surely not everything is digitized, even so.”

  “No,” Massimo said. As he spoke, Eriath watched Massimo’s memories light up. There was a stultifying argument Massimo had to sit through, months ago, over whether a folio full of meeting minutes from the eighteenth century should or should not be digitized. Massimo had said nothing for the entire meeting, thanks to his certainty that no one would ever look at them in whatever form the Vatican stored them in. They could hire a skywriting plane to spell out the contents above Rome and still no one would look. In Massimo’s memory, the head librarian, whom Massimo thought of as a tool, had gotten very passionate about it and hurled curses at another librarian. Some things we must still keep to ourselves, he had said. Massimo, daydreaming, had spent the entire meeting replaying in his head being in bed with his wife two nights before. It had gone on for a while, and been particularly satisfying to both of them, and Massimo recalled that he had smiled a little, there at the meeting, feeling pretty sure that his coworkers had no idea his sex life was so torrid. The secret made it better.

  In the library, Massimo smiled a little. Eriath tried not to laugh.

  “Some things, I imagine, can’t be digitized,” Eriath said.

  “That’s right,” Massimo said. “For all kinds of valid reasons.”

  Now Massimo’s memories were sweeping through the library, the building itself, just like Eriath wanted. She followed his mind’s eye out of the splendor of the reading rooms, down the much more quotidian hallways that led to the back offices, and past a wooden door with a seven-pointed star on it. Massimo had never given the door much thought, but he had noticed it just enough to wonder what it was. He’d never asked; it was a question that occurred to him only when he passed the door, but he forgot it a minute later. A few times, the question had reemerged in his mind when he saw a similar shape somewhere else. He thought to ask about the mysterious door then, but then was distracted by other things. He also kept seeing the shape in Game of Thrones, which he’d become a huge fan of, but he wasn’t the kind of person who brought his work home with him, so the question flitted through his mind and left again. It was never in there for long. But it was in there long enough.

  And now, just lately, a policeman had been stationed at that door.

  Eriath thought to the other two, Found it.

  Let’s go, then, Resketel thought back.

  “Well,” Eriath said to Massimo. “It was very nice to see you.” She headed into the library with Resketel and Gorogor in tow.

  “Where are you headed?” Massimo said.

  “I’m sorry, I thought the forms I gave you were clear.”

  “That’s a staff area,” Massimo said. “I can’t let you go there unaccompanied.”

  Now? Gorogor thought.

  Not yet, Eriath thought.

  “Fine,” Eriath said. “I’ll appreciate the help.”

  They walked through the library, opening a small door into one of the back hallways. They passed a middle-aged man with a mop and a bucket, getting ready to clean the floor. Something about him made Eriath jump into his head for a moment. And there: it was just as she thought. This man was a soldier posing as a janitor. There was a gun in a holster beneath his jacket, and he knew how to use it better than anyone on his unit.

  He also knew exactly what door it was that he was defending.

  We’re close, Eriath thought to the others. She picked up her pace, just a little.

  “You seem to know where you’re going very well,” Massimo said.

  “You took me here last time,” Eriath said, and jumped into Massimo’s brain to plant the memory. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Massimo said. “I do remember.” But the librarian seemed startled that this was the case. In her haste, Eriath had been sloppy, and something about the memory—Eriath didn’t have time to figure out what it was—wasn’t sitting right with other memories he had.

  We’re losing him, Resketel said.

  Hold on, Eriath said.

  The door they wanted was now just down the hall. There was the policeman, this one in uniform.

  “What was it you said you were looking for again?” Massimo said.

  “I didn’t say,” Eriath said.

  They were in front of the door now.

  “What’s their business here?” the policeman said.

  “Would you care to tell me what you want?” Massimo said. He finally sounded a little irritated. No: A little worried.

  Eriath looked up and down the hall. There was no one else around. She sighed.

  “Gorogor,” she said. “Do what you came here to do.”

  Gorogor curled his hands into fists and raised them above his head. For a split second, the fists bulged, as though they were being pumped full of air. Then they popped, in a small firework of blood and tissue. There were purple fists beneath it, nine-fingered, with scaly skin and pulsing with veins. The new fists grew until they were as big as Gorogor’s head. Bigger. Gorogor brought the fists down onto Massimo’s and the policeman’s skulls. The policeman cried out and dropped. The librarian let out a small moan and flopped to the floor, as though a switch had been flipped.

  “Are they dead?” Resketel said.

  �
�Their brains are,” Eriath said.

  “Sorry,” Gorogor said.

  “It was only a matter of time,” Eriath said. She nodded toward the door. Gorogor popped an even bigger fist out of his right arm and started punching. The door was thick, the hinges sturdy. It took twelve hits for Gorogor to break it, but he did at last.

  An alarm shrieked. From somewhere down the hall, the demons heard voices.

  “There goes our cover,” Resketel said.

  “Then we only have a little more time.”

  They ran through the broken door and started down the spiral stairs to the Black Archives.

  6.

  The Orb had given off a faint glow an hour ago. Its numbers spun.

  “What does that mean?” Schaffner had asked.

  “It tells us where magic is being used,” Asanti said.

  “And where does it say that is?” Huegin said.

  “Right here,” Asanti had answered.

  Team Three had looked around the room, at each other. Sal wondered if somehow the Hand had set it off, but then there was the demon’s voice in her head, at the top of her skull, soaked in sarcasm. You think your Magic 8 Ball’s going to find me?

  Schaffner and Huegin fetched their rifles. Vaz, without any indication that anything was out of the ordinary, fastened a vest to his chest and proceeded to hoist aloft a hammer that was far too big for him.

  “Please try not to upset the books with that,” Asanti said.

  Vaz winked. “I’ll do my best, madame.”

  The next couple times the Orb shone, the light inside got brighter and brighter. The numbers didn’t move.

  “What is it saying now?” Schnaffer said.

  “Too close to say,” Asanti said.

  “I feel like I’m on a sinking ship,” Liam said.

  “Or sitting on a bomb,” Grace said. “This strategy is crazy. Let’s go do what we always do. Bag it and tag it.”

  “In the Vatican?” Menchú said. “I’m not even sure the authorities would allow it.” He looked at Vaz.