Bookburners: Season One Volume Two

by Max Gladstone

  “It’s not advisable,” Vaz said. “Our orders are to contain ourselves to the Archives.”

  “Hilarious,” Grace said. “Team One can do whatever the hell it wants in every country in the world except its own.”

  “Welcome to the Church,” said Liam.

  “That’s a little unfair,” Menchú said.

  “Is it?” Liam said.

  “Gentlemen,” Asanti said. “Let’s not fight amongst ourselves, all right? We don’t have to make their job any easier for them.”

  Which is when the Orb flared so bright that, for a second, they were all blind. They heard something crack. There was the smell of burning copper. The Orb fizzled and dimmed, but kept sparking.

  Upstairs, it sounded like someone was pounding on the door with a sledgehammer. The alarm screamed on and stayed on.

  “Uh-oh,” Liam said.

  Asanti headed to her desk.

  “What are you doing?” Menchú said.

  “This is my life’s work,” Asanti said. “Do you really think I haven’t taken some precautions?”

  • • •

  At the top of the stairs, the vault of the ceiling opened all around Eriath, Resketel, and Gorogor. There were the curved walls. There was the city of books below them in the gloom.

  The three demons had all heard about the Black Archives at some point in their existences on earth. It was the place where the magic things went after humans got the best of them, after the Society showed up to ruin the demons’ fun. It had always been a source of idle speculation as to what the place looked like. Demon society knew the Church was a wealthy, powerful organization, and over the centuries had constructed an elaborate idea of what the vaults were like, what powerful forces the humans could employ to keep the magic locked away. So Eriath, Resketel, and Gorogor imagined encountering wizards, witches, warlocks, shamans, priestesses. Women and men like the ones they used to see, way back when humans used magic all the time, before they swapped it for civilization and ruined the world. Beings of power.

  They laid eyes on Sal, Menchú, Liam, Grace, and Asanti, standing in a patch of light near the bottom of the stairs, ready to fight. Another man with a ludicrous hammer. Two men who looked to them like clowns. Behind them, a glass ball in a case was sparking. Something was wrong with it. It was overloaded. Aside from that ball, even the books piled around the humans reeked of mundanity—dead paper without a scrap of magic. They kept their real treasures locked in the vaults, Eriath supposed. She swept through the minds of the humans below her and noted, to her satisfaction, that they were afraid.

  “Is this it?” Gorogor said. “This is all it is?”

  “This will be easier than we thought,” Resketel said. That was when he noticed that Asanti was holding something, a remote control. She twirled a dial and pressed a button. The couple of stairs beneath them, with a strange kind of precision, exploded and began to fall. For Resketel, though, this wasn’t much of a concern. Quickly, effortlessly, he shed his host and spread himself out as a net to catch Eriath and Gorogor.

  Gorogor grew another arm out of his back.

  “Let us fall,” he said.

  Resketel did. Midair, Gorogor scooped up Resketel and Eriath and held them above his head. He landed on the floor with both feet.

  “Gorogor,” Eriath said. “It’s time.”

  Gorogor shed the rest of his human skin.

  Eriath closed her eyes and invaded Asanti’s brain. For the briefest of moments, the smallest possible passage of time, it made her stop, because Asanti’s mind was a thing of beauty, vast and organized, less a library than a cathedral of knowledge, of history, of memory. There was Asanti as a young girl in Kinshasa, holding her mother’s hand as they walked through the center of a bustling market, filled with the smell of vegetables and dust. Then there she was again, just a couple years older, in Paris. The sights and the smells were completely different, and her hand had grown; her mother’s had gotten a little stiffer, the skin a little thicker, but it still felt the same. There were the births of her grandchildren—it seemed she was there, in the room, for all of them—and she seemed to remember everything, the particular sounds of their cries, some like laughing, some like grieving for loved ones gone, but every one its own song. And then there was just how much she knew, how much she had done. She knew how to weave and spin her own wool. She knew basic carpentry and fly tying. She knew how to blow glass. She had forgotten almost nothing about any of it. Then there were her professional obsessions, her encyclopedic knowledge of the Black Archives. That was where Eriath found what she was looking for. It was a recent memory and therefore fresh, vivid with color, of the particular shelf, in the particular vault, of the Black Archives where she decided to keep the Codex Umbra.

  It was in a metal box, and the box was locked. But it was so close. Just behind one of those doors. There were two combinations to get through those doors, but Eriath knew them already. What were a few numbers after all she’d sifted through?

  Eriath took the memories she needed, jumped out of Asanti’s head, and jumped into Resketel’s. Gave him Asanti’s knowledge. Asanti had felt the whole thing, Eriath knew. If she had more time, she could have been more subtle. But there was no time.

  Go, she thought to Resketel. And opened her eyes.

  It all took less than a few seconds. Except for Asanti, nobody had even moved yet.

  • • •

  “They know where the Codex Umbra is,” Asanti said.

  Grace looked in their general direction, toward the bottom of the stairs.

  “There were three of them, right?” she said.

  “Right,” Asanti said.

  “I can’t see them at all,” Grace said. “Really wish you didn’t have so many books in here right now.”

  Asanti hit another button. Floodlights fired up on the ceiling.

  “Better?” Asanti said.

  “Yes,” Grace said, “a little.”

  A dull roar came from the bottom of the stairs. They could all hear the flutter of pages flying and tearing, and then saw a cloud of paper rising above the towers of books, as though they were being mowed, or harvested. Gorogor broke through the final stack of books, just before the edge of Asanti’s desk.

  He was now a fat, squat thing on five legs, a sixth limb curving out from the middle of his back like a scorpion’s stinger, except that it ended in a large, long-fingered hand. His eyes were lost somewhere in the folds of his face, and he had a huge mouth, now full of pulped paper. He spat it out in a wad and snarled.

  Schaffner and Huegin yelled and fired their weapons at Gorogor. They put at least twenty holes in him, making him slick with some pinkish substance that oozed out of his wounds. But it didn’t slow him down at all. He leapt forward as though he were a cricket, and was on top of them. They stopped yelling, Schaffner because his ribcage was shattered and Huegin because his neck was flattened. A sound came out of Gorogor that must have been pleasure.

  Grace shot Vaz a glance.

  “You ready?” she said.

  “Absolutely,” Vaz said.

  Vaz leapt in and gave Gorogor a wallop of an uppercut with the hammer, jerking the demon’s head around. Grace snarled and jumped onto Gorogor’s back, grabbing onto the base of his arm. The hand at the end arched over and in, trying to pluck her off. She reached up and snapped the wrist. Gorogor howled. Grace smiled.

  Then Gorogor hopped, much higher and faster than his legs should have been capable of carrying him. With Grace on his back, he bounced from wall to wall, a cannonball of fatty flesh. Vaz jumped in pursuit, careening off the walls, striking blow after blow with the hammer. The three of them plowed into piles of books and laid them low, carving channels through the stacks and towers. Making chaos, just like Gorogor was supposed to. Grace hung on.

  The rest of them almost didn’t notice Resketel, who had wriggled out of his host and left the remains on the floor by the stairs so he could change shape unencumbered. The rug, the desk, the area Team Three occ
upied, was between him and the door he needed. That didn’t matter. He stretched himself out until his limbs were impossibly long and skinny and in two steps had passed over Team Three. But Resketel made a mistake, brushed against a book that somehow hadn’t fallen over yet, and made it plummet to the ground.

  Liam looked up.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” he said, and jumped for Resketel’s passing leg. “Sal, come with me.”

  Sal didn’t move. Menchú shot her a glance, somewhere between confused and angry. But there was no time to question it. He followed Liam.

  At the door to the vault, Resketel was putting himself back together. He was, more or less, humanoid, though with features a talented child would make out of wet clay. They worked, but there was no detail. They were put together in haste. He raised an appendage, formed a ball at the end of it, and two fingers out of the ball, enough to spin the combination lock on the door.

  Liam reached Resketel first. He had the idea that he would give this thing a full-body tackle and knock it to the floor. But Resketel just stretched out all around him, accommodating him. An image popped into Liam’s head of trying to break through a giant condom that was still rolled up. He pushed into the membrane and then started to try to gather it in his hands to move Resketel. Menchú caught up and headed for the appendage that was fiddling with the lock.

  Resketel worked fast. The door opened, just a crack. All of Resketel turned to almost-liquid, dropped to the floor, and slipped through it.

  “Goddammit,” Liam said.

  “Asanti,” Menchú said. “Lock this place down and call the rest of Team One.” He pushed the door open with his shoulder and he and Liam charged in. They were now in a triangular anteroom with a door on each of the other two walls. It was designed to be confusing, to slow anything down that didn’t know where it was going and trap it there. But Resketel knew where he was going.

  “Sal!” Menchú called. “Help!”

  • • •

  Sal still hadn’t moved. She watched as Grace flew around the room on a demon’s back, Vaz in pursuit. She spared a look for the two mangled Swiss Guards on the floor, half-covered now in fallen books and torn pages. Liam and Menchú had run after another one. There had been a third. Where was it?

  The demon was still leaping through the air. Grace almost flew off it but held on.

  Like a rodeo in a library, Sal thought helplessly. Like a bull in a china shop.

  Inside her head, the Hand was laughing at her. But she could tell she was frustrating it. When it wasn’t her own suicide she was contemplating at the same time, it turned out she could keep the Hand at bay. At least for a second. Not for much longer.

  Stop resisting me, she heard the Hand say.

  Sal was trying to leave, to get the Hand as far away from the Archive as she could. The Hand wouldn’t let her. But Sal was putting up enough of a fight that, at least for the next thirty seconds, nothing was moving.

  I don’t want to have to shatter your ankles in order to move them, the Hand said. But I will if I have to. I can still make you walk.

  Go ahead, Sal told him.

  You don’t mean that, the Hand said.

  Try me, Sal said.

  You’re even stronger than I thought, the Hand said. She caught a hint of genuine admiration in his voice. It will be a pleasure to break you.

  In the air above them, Grace was climbing toward the demon’s throat.

  As though from far off, Sal felt someone touch her arm. Asanti.

  “Sal?” she said. “Are you all right?”

  If Sal hadn’t been looking at Asanti when she spoke, she wouldn’t have understood the words. Her ears were rushing with blood.

  “No,” she said, with great effort, against the Hand’s will. She looked at the tank Asanti held.

  “What . . . is that?” Sal asked.

  “It’s a flamethrower,” Asanti said. “For the demons, hopefully. But if they win, maybe for the books. It’s better than the demons having them.”

  “Use it . . .” Sal said. Use it on me, she was trying to say, but the Hand stopped her.

  “I plan to,” Asanti said. She ran toward the part of the Archives where Liam and Menchú had gone.

  You have less than a minute before you fall to me, the Hand said.

  It’s a minute I can be proud of, Sal said.

  • • •

  Resketel chuckled to himself. He had this.

  He was a puddle on the floor of the antechamber. He extended a crude tentacle upward toward the next door he needed to open and spun the combination lock to the vault where the Codex Umbra was held.

  “What’s the call?” Liam said.

  “If we can’t stop the demon,” Menchú said, “maybe we can stop the door.”

  Liam nodded. Both men charged for the door, stepping into Resketel, who had just finished unlocking it. Resketel formed another tentacle and headed for the handle. Menchú and Liam braced themselves against the door. Resketel tugged at the handle. The door didn’t move.

  “Ha, you shite piece of Silly Putty,” Liam said.

  Menchú smiled. Resketel let out a little gurgle.

  “That’s right,” Liam said. “Ready to give up?”

  Then Resketel made sure they could tell he was just chortling. He grew four pseudopods out of himself, latched onto the humans’ legs, lifted them up and away from the door, and tossed them to the other side of the antechamber. As Liam and Menchú were scrambling back to their feet, Resketel inched the door open and slithered through.

  He was in the vault now, a long room with four stories of shelves that vanished to a point somewhere in the middle distance. The shelves were locked down, protected with metal shields that must have been triggered when they broke in. Resketel glanced toward the ends of the shelves and saw that each one could be unlocked with a key. He loved it when safety measures worked in his favor.

  He pulled himself up and grew long legs, built for running. He gave himself a fleeting couple seconds to consider the objects he was flitting by. There was a rope that promised the man who found it he could climb to heaven, then strangled him to death when he tried. By a strange coincidence, Resketel had been there for that. There was a helmet that offered infinite protection to the wearer as long as he didn’t mind going insane first. There was a statue of an angel, guarding the vault, and a holy relic, the finger bone of a saint, in a metal glove under glass. A sticker below the case read “In Case of Emergency, Break Glass.” Resketel smiled to himself. At least this librarian had a sense of humor.

  And there were the rows upon rows of books locked away, in all the languages of this world, several from Resketel’s, and more from beyond them both. Some were just blank pages, he knew. Others were illegibly black with ink. The mischief that could be made with it all! But Resketel was smart enough not to be distracted by that. He knew what he’d come for, and thanks to Eriath, knew just where it was.

  He found the right shelf, shaped a short appendage into a key, and had it unlocked quickly. The metal shield slid away and there was the safety box the Codex was in. Another lock that needed a key, another finger shape. It was all too easy.

  He already had the Codex out of the box was headed toward the door when Liam and Menchú got inside. Resketel grew a head, a face, out of courtesy to them. It allowed him to throw Liam and Menchú a hideous, triumphant smile and emit a shriek of glee. The two men lunged toward him. Resketel admired their pluck. But they were exhausted, and it was a simple thing for Resketel to bend his legs wide and avoid them. Menchú’s age seemed to catch up with him all at once. His attempted tackle made him lose his equilibrium and he hit the floor, hard. Liam was younger, stronger, and doubled back. He sprinted, leapt, and managed to latch himself to what, in Resketel’s current form, passed for a torso. Still heading toward the door, Resketel first just elongated the arm holding the book so Liam didn’t have a chance of getting it. Then he split himself in two.

  It was a trick he liked to save for this point in a jo
b. His adversaries always found it so demoralizing. Liam watched in astonishment as the body he was clutching withered away in his arms and dissipated. He fell to the floor. The legs kept running. Before the upper part of the torso, with head, arms, and the Codex Umbra still attached, hit the floor, it had grown legs, too. The upper half jumped and joined with the lower half just before Resketel reached the door, and he was out.

  He could hear Liam and Menchú calling behind him as they picked themselves up and gave chase, syllables that must have been the names of the other people on their team. He didn’t care. The door to the hub of the Black Archives was still open. There was Asanti, standing in the way, smiling.

  “Perfect,” she said. “I don’t even have to burn any of my books.”

  She let out a sheet of flame from the nozzle of the flamethrower. Resketel recoiled for a split second. But even this wasn’t so bad. He jumped up and spread out over the ceiling. Asanti let out another burst of fire at him, though by then he was already racing down the walls, a liquid in a fast flood, except for one hand still clutching the book. He channeled the rest of himself into the seam between the wall and the floor. To Asanti it looked like the book itself had grown invisible wheels. It raced along the edge of the floor and then between her legs. Resketel regrouped behind her and burst through the doorway, into the library.

  It was snowing shredded paper. Gorogor lay on a slope of books that had fallen into a pile, as if for a bonfire. His head was at an odd angle and the humans who had fought with him stood over him, panting; they must have gotten the better of him.

  Eriath was already halfway up the stairs that remained, rickety from Asanti’s explosion, but still there.

  Gorogor’s dead, she thought in Resketel’s head.

  Good, Resketel said. They’ve done our work for us.

  Yes, they have, said Eriath. Right about then was when Resketel was glad he could hide his thoughts from his partner. It saved him the awkward conversation they would have to have when Eriath understood that Resketel was already figuring out how to kill her, and have the Codex for his own. Eriath was the one who wanted to use the book to take over this earthly realm. For someone so smart, Resketel thought, she was incredibly naïve. Sure, the taking over part would be fun. But running it afterward, managing the slaves and minions, not to mention overseeing the vast bureaucratic infrastructure to torture the doomed and the damned—that, Resketel had decided, would be his own personal hell. Besides, Resketel liked this world fine just the way it was. He even found much of it beautiful, more beautiful, in its small, subtle way, than anything his own world had offered to his sight.