Bookburners: Season One Volume Two

by Max Gladstone

  She waded through the sludge, drew a syringe from her shirt pocket, and injected Grace with sedative. Inelegant, but she didn’t care. She checked her knights: alive, barely. Waterlogged. Ngo would not walk again for a while. Possibly not ever without a limp.

  The rest of the team joined her, followed, at last, by Stretch, who wheeled his partner through the water, walking tenderly as if he hoped to spare the shine on his shoes. She wondered how he’d convinced her men to help him carry his partner through pits and deadfalls. She weighed the demon detector in her hand. “Come on. Let’s end this.”

  • • •

  “No,” Sal said. “I didn’t do all this just to watch him die.”

  “Sal.” The more he spoke, the more she could see him in the center of that Escher whirl. “I can’t give up this body.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I didn’t. I just—”

  “Find another way. Let him in.”

  “There is no other way.”

  “Make one.”

  The fire that coursed through her was only partially her own. The Hand laughed. She ignored it.

  “There’s not enough room in this body for both of us.”

  “Then make yourself smaller. Or get the hell out. Or else I’m not pulling this pin.”

  “Then your friends die. And you die. And the Hand wins.”

  “The Hand stays right here with Perry and me. And you. I bet you have something you want to do back on Earth, don’t you? Something you want really badly. Or else you wouldn’t have needed us. So—you get him back, or we all stay right the fuck here, with the Hand. Should be fun. Maybe the demons will pin us all to those tables side by side.”

  “I—” His voice broke. “There’s a way. But it’s not—we can’t both fit in here together. Not like we are. But we can combine. I can let him into me. Not two people, not a host and a rider like you and the Hand. One person.”

  “Fuck,” Sal said.

  “I can’t leave this body without killing it. That’s done. But this way you get a part of your brother back, at least.”

  She wanted to murder him. She wanted to say no. She wanted to stay here and fight this out, set this whole impossible place on fire until some other solution presented itself. And let Grace and Asanti and Liam and Menchú die.

  No.

  She did not want that.

  Goddamn.

  “Do I have your word?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She was crying. She did not care.

  She seized the final pin.

  • • •

  —and he’s run from colleagues and friends and Bookburners and criminals to land here, in his sister’s living room, with the Book of the Hand on the coffee table before him, upon a nest of T-shirts. Blood clouds warp and mist on the cover’s pale leather surface. No. He knows what human skin looks like, by now. He’s learned that, as he’s learned too many things he wishes he could forget.

  Voices at the door. Sal’s there, trying to protect him. “Sir, I’m a police officer, and I’m armed.” She doesn’t know these people, what they’ll do to him, what they might do to her. He’d hoped he could escape them, but he wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t smart enough. He never has been.

  But you could be, the book whispers.

  He’s frozen, and someone pounds against the door, but time slows and sound reaches his ears warped. The book has plenty of time to talk.

  You can hear me, it says, stronger now. You know what I can do. You’ve wanted this, in your every moment of weakness. Power without fear. Strength and independence. Accept me, and I’ll save you, and save her, too.

  He knows how the next part goes. He touches the book. Opens it. His tongueless mouth gapes and he weeps blood tears. He is power. He is pain.

  He is power and pain forever.

  But Sal—

  Sal’s not fighting. She walks toward him, ignoring the Bookburners, lowering her gun. “Perry. You don’t need him.”

  No, she doesn’t understand, he has to save her for once, to save them both, and without the book he’s weak, so weak, he knows what they do to people, everyone knows. The book’s the answer, the book’s the truth, he knows it is because it tells him so in a language only they can speak, they understand one another, the book and him.

  And Sal continues to refuse the script.

  “I’m here for you. We can do this. Together.”

  Her hand drifts toward him. His hesitates over the book cover. Red mists shape in anticipation of his touch.

  He ignores them, and reaches for her.

  Somewhere, a scream—

  5.

  Sal woke, free.

  For months she’d borne the Hand, its fingers slithering around her heart and weaving through her brain stem, unawares—for months ignoring its hooked gentle whispers in her ear. She felt fiercely light, and she heard a ringing silence. Sal was Sal again, and joyous.

  Then memory caught up with her.

  She woke, free, yes, in a chalk circle to the pound of booted running feet. Her first attempt at speech produced a hacking cough before her lungs remembered how to fill. Someone shouted words she did not recognize. She couldn’t even place the voice. Grace, maybe? Half-conscious, she reeled to her feet, staggered across the silver circle, and blinked her eyes into focus.

  “I said, freeze!”

  That, Sal understood.

  Also, the guns.

  Team One troops ringed the far wall of the chamber, crouched, aiming. Laser sights danced over Liam’s computer, over his chest. A dot rested on Father Menchú’s collar. Three darted across Asanti’s face. The Archivist seemed more annoyed than unnerved. Sal looked down. Five dots burned on her own bloodied shirtfront.

  She understood, then, how Asanti felt.

  Corporal Shah stood at the room’s entrance, behind her troops, and beside her stood Stretch, wheeling the wreck of Balloon in a chair. Sal’s guts seized at sight of them. She filled with anger, or was that fear? They tasted about the same. She remembered a wooden table and stars overhead.

  “Back for more?” Sal said. “Convincing Corporal Shah to do your dirty work?”

  “You escaped custody,” Balloon replied.

  “You’re possessed by a demon.”

  “You misled your teammates.”

  “There’s no end to your lies and wickedness.”

  Sal wanted to argue, wanted to strangle each of them in turn, but didn’t spare either Balloon or Stretch a glance. Shah watched her with the patience of a guillotine. “Corporal. These men tortured me. They’ve killed others. They, and the Cardinal, have been spying on all of us, and conspiring to cover up their crimes. Liam’s computer has the proof: a recorded confession.”

  “Recordings can be faked,” Stretch said.

  And Balloon continued: “So can eye-witness testimony.”

  “If a demon is involved.”

  “As one is, in this case.”

  “The demon’s gone,” she said. “I kicked him out. That’s what all this is—real exorcism, not torture. No one has to die today.” She hoped. God, she hoped. Perry lay in the circle behind her, unmoving. She wanted so badly to check on him, but those gun sights pinned her with coherent light. “Don’t you see? We won.”

  “She’s telling you what you want to hear.”

  “The enemy’s lies know no bounds.”

  “The enemy will stop at nothing.”

  “Sal,” Menchú said, “is telling the truth.”

  Asanti nodded. “We all heard the Cardinal’s confession.”

  “And even if we hadn’t,” Liam said, “I have the recording right here.”

  “The demon’s turned them all.”

  The firing team crouched. Sal could not see faces beneath or behind those plastic visors. “Where’s Grace?”

  “Safe,” Shah said. “Unconscious, but well. Better than I can say for the soldiers she tried to stop from reaching this chamber. You inspire a particular loyalty, Ms.
Brooks.”

  “Take us back,” Sal said. “Put us on trial. We’ll tell everyone what we know.” If the case ever came to trial. If they did not disappear into some cell somewhere. And how much work would Balloon and Stretch need to do before any of them would confess to anything?

  “And give your team more opportunities to escape, and the demon inside you another opportunity to strike at the Vatican.”

  “You’re being used. This isn’t what you were meant for. We have a duty to protect people, and you’ve been drawn into their sick power games instead. Once they have their claws in you, they’ll never let go.”

  “Fortunately,” Shah said, “we have another option.” Shah removed a tube of black metal from her pocket. Three needle-sharp prongs capped one end, a ruby the other. Sal did not at all like the expression on Balloon’s face when Shah produced the device. “You’ve just volunteered, Ms. Brooks, to be the first field test subject of Team Two’s demon detector.”

  “Demon detector?” Asanti scoffed. “We’ve tried for centuries to build one, without success.”

  “Team Two claims to have solved the problem. This is, they say, a working prototype. Gem lights up, you’re corrupted.”

  “They’re lying. Do you have any proof it works?”

  “Frankly, Archivist, I don’t think you and your team are in much of a position to accuse anyone who hasn’t broken into the Vatican of anything. Ms. Brooks, you understand what I’m offering.”

  Sal did. Pass the test, and Team Three goes free, evidence believed, all debts paid. But she wouldn’t pass. There was no such thing as a demon detector. If they had the technology, they would have used it on her. What, then?

  Say she failed. Say that gem glowed from within. Say she launched herself at Shah, tried to kill her. Say she went down, shit, in a hail of bullets while resisting arrest. Her guilt would be clear; the others could claim the demon controlled them. Beg off. Survive. Maybe.

  Slim odds, but better than the odds they faced now.

  “Do it,” Sal said.

  Menchú shouted, “No!” but when he began to move, more lasers swung to his chest. Asanti’s hand settled on his shoulder.

  “Come on.” Sal glared at the Corporal. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The firing team parted before Shah’s advance. She marched forward, grim and inevitable. “Kneel.”

  Sal glared pure hatred into her, but Shah didn’t seem to notice. Sal knelt.

  The corporal drew her sidearm, and leveled it at Sal’s head. She set the detector on the floor between them, and circled counterclockwise. Her first shot would take Sal through the temple.

  “When you’re ready.”

  The demon detector was lighter than Sal expected. She set the needles over her heart. She tried to plan what she would do when the gem glowed, but now there was so little time left, she could not quite fit everything she wanted to do inside it. Perry was back, at least, or a part of him. The team would be safe. And the world.

  That counted for something.

  She plunged the needles into her chest, and waited for the killing light.

  But the jewel stayed dark.

  “Interesting,” Shah said, and shifted aim. “Mister Desmet. Mister De Vos. Please do not move. I would not enjoy shooting you.” Sal heard an unvoiced much in that sentence.

  Sal forced herself to stop staring at the gem, and look up. The firing team had swung their rifles round to Balloon and Stretch.

  “Insane.”

  “Preposterous.”

  “You really think—”

  “I think,” Shah said, over and through their protests, “your own device seems to have exonerated Ms. Brooks. Which lends new weight to her team’s accusations. Don’t you agree?”

  Sweat ran down Balloon’s cheek.

  Stretch tried, for whatever mad reason, to run. Shah’s gun spoke once. Stretch fell, and screamed.

  “He’ll be fine,” Shah said, and offered Sal a hand up. “Come on.”

  “What . . .” was all the question Sal’s numbed mind could frame.

  “They couldn’t even rig a decent fake.” Shah drew a nine-volt battery from her pocket, tossed it up into the air, and caught it. “A weapon in their hands indeed. We have brains, you know.” The battery vanished into her pocket. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Oversight has questions, and you owe them answers. And me.”

  “Thank you,” Sal said to Shah’s retreating back.

  Behind her, in the circle, Perry groaned, and sat up. “Sal? I dreamed—”

  Before he could finish, she was there.

  Epilogue

  Sal found Asanti swearing in the Archive.

  “Can you believe this mess?” The demon invasion and their own break-in had left the orderly maze of piled manuscripts a swamp. Sal waded through leather-bound tomes, and tried not to step on any scrolls. They might snap. “And you haven’t even seen inside the secure vaults. I can’t believe those morons didn’t let me back in earlier.”

  “They hadn’t formally decided we weren’t evil yet.”

  “Evil or not, this is damned inefficient.” Asanti strained to lift a book with a snarling face embossed into the cover, and deposited it with a thud on Liam’s desk, which had ended up miraculously clean after the chaos, all its loose papers knocked to the floor. “We need every second to reassemble the collection. Looks like my grandnephew’s bedroom in here, only with less Kleenex everywhere.” She blew dust off the book’s cover. The growling face twitched, wrinkled its nose, sneezed, then resumed its mute snarl. Asanti stroked its forehead. “Not to mention tracking down what’s lost. The vaults were unsupervised for seventy-two hours; I don’t even know what’s missing from the deep catalogue yet. Now Arturo’s on parole, I hope he understands that top priority for us, in the near future, will be to track down the absent volumes. Five hundred years of archivists thinking of this as a black box—I barely even know what we had, let alone what’s gone. And the further I get into deep storage, the more vaults I find. If my predecessor knew how much was down here, he didn’t tell me.” One of her braids had come loose; she tossed it over her shoulder. “Not your problem, though, I expect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You joined to save your brother, and you got him back. The Society hasn’t exactly treated you like family—or, if they have, I’d rather not know the details of their family lives. Why stay?”

  “The Cardinal’s gone,” Sal said. “Balloon and Stretch, too. Court-martialed, disciplined, exiled, imprisoned, whatever. We won, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Still.”

  “And Sansone’s cleaning house in Team Two. I don’t buy the a few bad apples story any more than you do, but the council’s given her a big broom, and she’s using it. She’s one of the good guys, or she would never have helped you rescue me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be comfortable here, but this is as clean as the Society’s likely to get.”

  “Balloon and Stretch imprisoned you. Tortured you. Would have killed you. Did kill others. They didn’t do that on their own.” Asanti reached for a book, which snapped at her fingers. She caught its covers closed and bound them with a leather strap. “If I were you, I might see myself elsewhere.”

  “And miss all the fun?” Sal shook her head. “What would you do without me?”

  Asanti set down the book. “You really are staying.” She covered her smile almost as quickly as it appeared. “Good. I’ll need a stronger back than mine to open the lower vaults.”

  “I wondered,” Sal said, “if you had any books about angels.”

  • • •

  Somewhere, a young boy runs screaming down the hallway of an enormous mansion. He does not remember what he’s running from. He cannot bear to turn his head and look. But whispers catch his ears like thorns—slight, sharp whispers in tongues he does not know—and those whispers and those tongues build nests beneath his terror. He does not understand their promises.

  The boy does not know that all hallways e
nd.

  The boy does not realize that the smartest monsters know where you’ll run, and wait.

  The boy will learn.

  • • •

  A man carries a book into a pub in the Seven Dials in London. He meets a woman there. They talk, over drinks; she touches his arm, flirting.

  When last call comes, the bartender decides to wake the man sleeping at the corner table. He is not asleep. The book is gone. So is the woman. The coroner, later, finds five white dots on the man’s arm—positioned correctly for a human hand, but printless and unbruised.

  • • •

  In a dark, dry room, someone lights a candle.

  • • •

  Sal made it home by sunset, hip-checked the door closed, and dumped her keys into the bowl. “Perry, you’ll never believe what I found.” Just saying those words out loud, and knowing she could expect an answer, felt warm.

  “Decent pizza?”

  She set the stack of books down on the kitchenette counter. Perry sat in her couch, backlit by setting sunlight. Comatose months had left him pale and shrunken even compared to his pasty, skinny baseline, but he looked better, if not exactly good. “We had pizza last night.”

  “Doesn’t taste like back home.”

  “What, like Domino’s? This is the good stuff. Keep an open mind. I asked Asanti about angels—we’re still not sure what Aaron is, was, but she had a few books that might shed a little more light on the situation.”

  “Yeah,” Perry said, apologetic. “Sal, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  “What’s up?” She circled around the counter and sat on the couch. He didn’t look like he wanted to be touched—drawn into himself, wound tight. Hands together, long fingers interlaced.

  “I keep having these dreams, you know?”

  “Angel dreams.”

  He nodded. “I think Aaron, he— I— I think there was some crazy shit going on with him. Some reason he needed a body, some stuff he wanted to finish, stuff he would have, might have finished if you hadn’t . . . forced him to let me back in. I’m thinking, maybe I should look into that. It’s only fair, right?”

  She gripped her own wrist. “I’d be careful, if I were you. There’s a lot more to magic and demons than you think, even now. We’re only just starting to learn what’s out there. Now our names are clear, Menchú’s argued us a wider mandate. Maybe we can look into some of these . . . angel dreams of yours..”