Bookburners: Season One Volume One

by Max Gladstone

  He looked at her over the rims of his glasses.

  “Fine,” she said. “Go ahead.”

  “It gets worse. You wanted to keep your brother safe. Look what happened.”

  “I’ll save him. These sea monsters of yours—I want to learn their names. And you need me. Liam has the tech side down, and Grace can fight, and you know the secrets. But none of you are cops.”

  “You wouldn’t be, either,” he said, “if you join us. Not in practice. You’d keep your badge—technically you’d be seconded to the Vatican—but we don’t work like cops work. I’ve seen men and women end up like Perry. I have friends the world forgot, as if they were never born. When I was your age I thought I could get to the bottom of all this. But there’s no bottom. It just keeps going down.”

  “I’m ready for that.”

  He laughed. “You have no idea what you’re saying.” But he held out his hand, and she took it. “Welcome to the team.”

  Episode 2: Anywhere But Here

  by Brian Francis Slattery

  1.

  The door was just a wooden door, made from three wide planks. Sal had just walked through the wide rooms and long hallways of the Vatican Library, with their marble and their frescos and their saints in a million colors, the kind of stuff that hit you over the head with the knowledge that you were most definitely not in America any more. Old Europe. Old money. Old secrets. Secrets within secrets. Compared to all that, this door looked like it was going to lead to a broom closet.

  Except there was Father Menchú, his hands behind his back, waiting for her.

  And there was a seven-pointed star on the door.

  “Looks a little Satanic for around here, doesn’t it?” Sal said.

  “Everyone says that the first time they see it,” Menchú said. “It’s a old symbol of protection. The Society’s entire library is shaped like that star. Ready to see it?”

  Sal nodded.

  “You sure you’re all right?” Menchú said.

  “I’m fine,” Sal said. “Let’s go.”

  Menchú opened the door. They found themselves in a little room with no apparent purpose—bad architecture, which, considering it was the Vatican, was a little surprising. If this were in America, there would be vending machines here, Sal thought to herself. Vending machines and trash cans. But it was just the top of a staircase, a twisting, black metal staircase.

  “It’s wrought iron,” Menchú said.

  “More like overwrought,” Sal said.

  Menchú laughed. “You haven’t even seen all of it yet.”

  The stairs corkscrewed below them for what seemed like at least four stories. The middle column was a rod of iron. The outside was a lattice of metalwork that Sal thought at first was covered in barbs, until she saw that the barbs were animals and trees, figures of people in the act of various gestures. The wonders of the natural world. It was beautiful. It was like being inside a birdcage.

  The ceiling above them vaulted away from the staircase and down in seven separate vertical segments, like frozen waves, like outstretched wings. We’re in the center of the star, Sal thought. There was light below them. Sal looked down.

  She was looking at a city. A city made of books. Books were stacked into skyscrapers, piled into neighborhoods. They seemed to cover the entire floor, from the walls to the bottom step of the staircase. As she got closer, Sal could see narrow pathways through the towers. Someone had started off with a system, bookcases in neat columns across the room. The bookcases were all still there. But the project had gotten out of hand, and now the cases were jammed, and there were stacks of books on top of them. Though, off to the left, there was a place that looked like a clearing, a source of light.

  “Asanti?” Menchú said.

  “Yes?” a voice called from the clearing. Sal couldn’t say why, but she liked whoever was talking already.

  “Is everyone here?”

  “Yes,” Asanti answered. Sal could just about hear her smiling.

  A different voice, then—Grace’s. “You’re late. By eight minutes.”

  “I’m sorry,” Menchú said.

  He really means that, Sal thought. What does that mean?

  “I’ll meet you at the bottom of the stairs,” Asanti said. “I’ve moved a few things around, so it’s not as easy to get through.”

  Asanti was tall, a good three inches taller than Sal, and her long graying dreadlocks, piled and twisted beneath a colorful scarf, made her seem taller still. But there was nothing imposing about her. Only a quick smile, eyes that seemed to spark.

  “So you’re the new recruit Menchú thinks so highly of.” She extended a hand. “I’m Archivist Asanti.”

  “Sal.”

  They shook hands.

  “Welcome to the Black Archives of the Societas Librorum Occultorum. Come in. The others are waiting.”

  Asanti guided Sal and Menchú through the towers of books, talking as she went.

  “The library was built in the 1400s—the architecture gives that away, don’t you think?—when the Society’s collection grew a little too large and a little too dangerous to have in broad daylight, or just sitting in some monastery. Take a left. No, the other left. That’s it. We are now in the only central chamber of the library. There are seven chambers radiating off of this one. Each one has a small antechamber, with the larger rooms beyond that. Just in case something gets out in the library, you understand, and we need to seal it in.”

  Sal glanced back at the staircase. Now it looked like a strand of DNA, ascending into the gloom until it disappeared in the middle of the ceiling.

  “Let me guess,” Sal said. “The antechambers are really small, awkward spaces.”

  “That’s right,” Asanti said.

  “Like the room at the top of the stairs.”

  “Exactly,” Asanti said.

  “The idea being that at least some of the things that get out of the books, if they get out, are too big to fit in those spaces.”

  Asanti looked back at Menchú. “I see why you brought her on,” she said.

  “How often do they get out?” Sal asked.

  Asanti and Menchú looked at each other.

  “It hasn’t happened yet, on our watch,” Menchú said.

  “And before that?” Sal said.

  “The last one was centuries ago,” Asanti said. “We’ve learned to take far more precautions now.”

  They came to the clearing Sal had seen from the stairs. There was a wide oriental rug on the stone floor. Liam was sitting on a couch. He gave Sal a quick, friendly smile. Grace was standing by a coffee table, her arms folded. An easy chair next to the coffee table was empty. Lamps balanced on stacks of books, which functioned as end tables. At the far end of the rug was a desk, with another wooden chair behind it.

  On the desk—besides still more books and a phone that looked about fifty years old with a compact switchboard attached to it, and a small lamp—was a faintly glowing orb, housed in a glass case, hooked up to a contraption of wires, gears, and screens.

  “What’s that?” Sal asked.

  “Cuts to the chase, doesn’t she?” Liam said.

  Grace nodded with approval.

  “This,” Asanti said, “is how we get our assignments.”

  “What, do you shake it up?” Sal said. “Like a Magic 8 Ball?”

  “Unbelievable that I never thought of that before,” Liam said.

  Grace and Menchú both looked at Liam.

  “What is she talking about?” Grace said.

  “It’s this . . .” Liam mimed shaking an 8 Ball.

  “What, like a cantaloupe?” Grace said.

  “No,” Liam said. “You ask it questions, like you’re using it to tell fortunes.”

  “You use a cantaloupe to tell people’s fortunes?” Menchú said.

  “No, it’s . . .”

  “Can we move on, please?” Grace said. Sal nodded. This woman is speaking my language.

  “Yes, let’s,” Asanti said. “
We just call it the Orb. It alerts us when a new magical force appears in the world.”

  “I don’t follow,” Sal said.

  “It could be that some magical event has occurred. It could be that some sort of creature has . . . emerged from wherever they emerge from. Or that someone has cast a powerful spell. Or it could be as simple as someone opening a magic book.”

  “Opening a book where?” Sal said.

  “Anywhere,” Asanti said. “Anywhere in the world.”

  “It looks old,” Sal said.

  “The Society has had the Orb for centuries,” Asanti said.

  “But some of those parts look a little newer than that,” Sal said.

  “Over the centuries, as the Society’s work has broadened and become more precise, we’ve been able to make some modifications.”

  “You figured out how magic works?” Sal said.

  Asanti looked at Menchú again.

  “Not exactly,” Asanti said.

  Sal’s brow furrowed. She turned to Menchú. “The Society uses magic?” she said. Accusing. Hurt.

  “It did,” Menchú said. “In the past. It doesn’t anymore. Not like that.”

  Asanti sighed.

  “That’s not much of an answer,” Sal said.

  “Well, it’s the best one you’re going to get right now, Detective,” Grace said. “I’m guessing that, as a former law enforcement officer, you’re smart enough to know that the Society’s relationship to magic is complicated even though its stated mission is to lock magic away forever. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Sal said.

  “Great,” Grace said. “So you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Sal said. She took a deep breath. “Please just continue.”

  Grace turned to Asanti. “You were saying.”

  “All right,” Asanti said. She pointed to a small display of flip-clock numbers. “Thanks to the modifications, when the Orb detects a magical anomaly, it’s able to tell us where it happened. Latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates. Right down to the second.”

  “Well . . .” Liam said. “That machine’s a bit . . .”—he waved one hand in the air equivocally—“dodgy.”

  “It’s close,” Menchú said.

  “Yes,” Liam said. “Close enough to buy plane tickets. Then it’s my job to start really narrowing it down. I check with my network. Antiquarians. Curio collectors. Parish priests. Magic hunters.”

  “Magic hunters,” Sal said.

  “Yeah, you know, like tornado hunters, except magic,” Liam said.

  “So those ghost-hunter cable TV shows are real?”

  “Oh, no, those are fake. If they were real, the cameras wouldn’t work around the ghosts.”

  “We’re getting off-topic,” Grace said. “Again.”

  “Right,” Liam said. “I also read the papers. I listen in on police chatter. Check blogs, even. Status updates. Like I do all the time, except in a more focused way. Looking for anything weird.”

  “You’re looking all the time?” Sal said.

  “Well, yes, because it turns out even the Orb doesn’t catch everything.”

  “It catches most things,” Menchú said.

  “Some things,” Liam said.

  “I imagine you find plenty on your own anyway,” Sal asked, and looked at Grace. Grace smiled back at her. Thank you for keeping these boys in line.

  “Absolutely,” Liam said. “Even when the Orb goes off, and I’m narrowing it down, I find a lot of things not related to what we’re looking for. But eventually—usually by the time we absolutely need it—I’ve narrowed it down so we can bag it and tag it.”

  “Bag it?” Sal said.

  Menchú produced a shroud from his pocket.

  “If it’s a book, or some other artifact that we can carry, we wrap it in this. Keeps the magic contained until we can bring it back here.”

  “Let me guess,” Sal said. “That shroud is magic, too.”

  Menchú shrugged helplessly. “The mission couldn’t be clearer,” he said. “Find the magic and lock it up.”

  Lock it up. He said it, Sal thought, as if he was passing along a mantra. Something he repeated to himself to keep his focus.

  “So you collect all these books and magic wands and amulets, bring them here, and then what happens?” Sal said. Then she looked around. “These aren’t all magic books around us, are they?”

  “Oh, no. That would be dangerous,” Asanti said. “These are just reference books. The real magic books, I catalog and then lock away in one of the seven chambers connected to this room.”

  “And no one ever looks at them again,” Sal said.

  “Well,” Liam said, “that’s the idea, anyway.”

  “Why don’t you just destroy them?”

  “Someone tried that about seven hundred years ago,” Liam said. “Turns out we don’t know how to destroy a magic artifact without unleashing the magic that the artifact contains. Thankfully they had the good sense to try it on something relatively benign.”

  “Relatively,” Menchú said. “The artifact turned water into wine.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Sal said.

  “The reports of the aftermath are sketchy,” Menchú said, “but it seems that there was a flash as the artifact exploded, and it affected all the water within a half mile of here. Including the water in the people.”

  “Oh,” Sal said.

  “Yes,” Menchú said. “We don’t know if all artifacts react so violently when destroyed, but we’re not eager to experiment.”

  “So what happens now?” Sal said.

  “Now?” Menchú said. He looked at the Orb. “We wait.”

  “We have a little downtime, then?”

  “Yes. Until we get our assignment.”

  “Then I want to see my brother.”

  Menchú nodded. “Let’s go,” he said.

  • • •

  Sal was already lost. They were in another part of the Vatican Library, another underground hallway, though this one was ornate as could be—more ornate, even, than the places in the Library aboveground, where tourists gawked and took pictures. It meant something for a secret part of the building to look like this, Sal figured. Someone, at some point, had amassed a lot of wealth, a lot of power, for part of the organization. And with those things, a lot of impunity. And they wanted whoever visited them to know it.

  Got it, Sal thought. Loud and clear.

  “We’re not keeping my brother in the hospital?” Sal said.

  “We moved him here because we thought this would be safer,” Menchú said.

  Not for him, Sal thought. For everyone else.

  Menchú gestured to a row of four carved wooden doors, painted and embossed with gold. They looked like stained glass windows.

  “These are the offices of the monsignors for the Society,” he said. “One for each team. Team One was and is a full-combat team. Team Two became diplomacy and public relations. You could think of Team Three—that’s us—as acquisitions and storage.”

  Sal nodded toward the fourth door. “What does Team Four do?” Sal said.

  “There is no Team Four,” Menchú said.

  Sal raised an eyebrow. Please go on. Menchú caught it.

  “There used to be a Team Four,” he said. “Just as there used to be a lot more magic in the world. The Society originally developed four teams to deal with the magic.”

  “What was Team Four’s job?”

  Menchú paused, looking for the phrase. “Research and development,” he said at last.

  “They tried to use magic,” Sal said.

  “As I said,” Menchú said, “there is no Team Four anymore. The Society—and especially the fighters on Team One—are very grateful for what Team Four accomplished. But there came a time when the risks were not worth the gains.

  They passed by a large space that looked like a courtroom. Natural light streamed in from above. The ceiling was several stories above them, and all glass.

  So that’s how far
below ground we are right now, Sal thought.

  “This is where we all meet, when we need to,” Menchú said. “The team leaders, the monsignors, and the cardinal.”

  “So the cardinal sits behind the bench?”

  “When he’s officiating, yes,” Menchú said.

  “To pass judgment.”

  “Sometimes to appear impartial,” Menchú said. “Or simply to understand what happened in a complicated case.” But Sal could tell she’d struck a nerve. Menchú didn’t like the hierarchy any more than she did. Maybe he liked it less. What the hell, Sal thought. Let’s poke that nerve.

  “You’ve been here a while,” she said.

  “Yes,” Menchú said.

  “Ever thought about having the cardinal’s job?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Menchú said.

  “Didn’t want to pursue it?”

  “It was offered to me once. I didn’t take it.”

  “Desk job’s not for you?”

  “It’s complicated,” Menchú said.

  Two men wearing vestments passed them in the hallway. They both, Sal noticed, had unusually shaped heads. One of them was very round; Sal imagined his skull looking like a volleyball. His face was packed into the center of the front of it. His tiny ears seemed glued to the side. And his hair didn’t know what to do; there was no place to lie flat. The other man had a very long face, a towering forehead. It was as though his head was made of taffy. Sometime during his childhood, someone had pulled on it, and it didn’t go back to normal.

  Balloon and Stretch, Sal thought. She took a mental picture.

  Menchú nodded at them. They nodded back. Then, in unison, they gave Sal a very scrutinizing glance, a once-over. Sizing her up. Cold. Calculating. Sal got the distinct impression that they didn’t like what they saw.

  The two men kept walking. Sal waited until they were out of earshot.

  “Who are they?”

  “Desmet and De Vos,” Menchú said. “Part of Team Two.”

  “Those guys are part of diplomacy and public relations?” Sal said.

  “Also exorcisms,” Menchú said.

  Sal almost laughed.

  “They’re good at their job,” Menchú said. “That’s what matters.” But Sal could still hear a little twinge in his voice. There had been a reason he didn’t introduce her to them, and it hadn’t been just because she didn’t speak Italian.