Bookburners: Season One Volume One

by Max Gladstone

  Instinctively, Menchú threw himself over the child-thing, shielding its tiny body with his own, covering his head and trying not to be noticed or caught in the crossfire. Only when the square once again fell silent did he finally dare to rise.

  All around, the buildings were studded with bullet holes, and under the straining glow of the streetlights, the cobblestones ran slick with blood. But in the center of it all, not a single villager had been touched. In shock, Menchú looked down at the child. Its unearthly appearance was unchanged. But then it smiled, and Menchú’s blood ran cold. It was not the smile of the boy he knew, or of any child on earth. It was . . . wrong.

  “Why are you smiling?” Menchú asked. Was this how God wrought His miracles?

  The child’s smile grew. “Because what comes next is fun.”

  Menchú stood there for the rest of the night. He found himself unable to move, speak, or intervene in any way as the demon who had possessed the boy tortured and killed every man, woman, and child in the village, there in the square in front of the church. At dawn, it turned to Menchú and slit its host’s throat.

  Its last words were: “Let this be a lesson to you, Father.”

  • • •

  Sal flinched as Menchú gripped both of her hands in his. “I couldn’t protect them, but I will protect you. I won’t let you be brought down by the temptation of your hopes like I was.”

  “But what about the rest of our people? How do we protect them?”

  Menchú didn’t have an answer.

  5.

  On the floor of the Archives, Grace shuddered and convulsed. Asanti held the other woman’s head, making sure she didn’t choke on the bile she occasionally dredged up from her empty stomach.

  Liam was doing the best of the three of them, and even he had emptied his stomach hours ago. Worse, the tone had grown so loud that it was impossible to hear each other, even if they shouted at the top of their lungs.

  Liam left his computer where he had been trying and failing to find a way to block whatever was causing the effect and carried a pad of paper over to Asanti.

  “No good,” he wrote.

  Asanti sagged.

  He flipped the page. “Your turn. I’ll sit with her.”

  Asanti yielded her place on the floor beside Grace to Liam and stumbled off, rubbing her forehead with one hand. Liam hoped that the stacks would have more answers than his electronic resources. Given how his search had gone, that was a low bar. He really should find his tablet. That way he could work while he watched Grace. Why hadn’t he thought to do that earlier? Noise, lack of sleep, lack of food. It was making him stupid. Can’t afford that. Have to stay sharp. . . .

  With a mental wrench, Liam pulled himself out of his downward spiral. No time for self-flagellation. He could get his tablet in a minute. Just going to rest here for a bit first. Grace’s head was pillowed against his thigh. The fact that she would never have allowed such intimacy had she possessed even a shred of consciousness somehow made the whole situation even worse. She had always guarded her privacy, and Liam had respected that. Seeing her now, he wondered if he should have asked more questions. Then, maybe he wouldn’t feel so helpless.

  Just a minute more. Then he would get the tablet and come right back.

  Just one more minute.

  As soon as his head stopped spinning.

  With the relentless noise and the pain it caused, Liam wouldn’t have thought sleep was possible, but he must have lost consciousness, because suddenly Asanti was shaking him awake.

  The whine was gone. The wind was back. Grace was still unconscious. But Asanti positively glowed with a smile that lit her entire face.

  “What happened?”

  “When I found you passed out, I killed the magnetic field, hoping that it might stop the tone, even if the wind came back.”

  “Congratulations. You’re two for two.”

  “That’s not the best part.”

  A flying book knocked Liam in the back of his head and sent his chin driving down into his chest. “Are you sure about that? Because this is just brilliant.”

  “Liam.” Asanti’s eyes danced with triumph. “Look around you. The wind isn’t just picking up books at random.”

  Blinking past the new pain in the back of his head, Liam tried to concentrate on the spinning storm around him. Asanti picked up a book that had fallen to the floor and another from a shelf.

  “This is a seventeenth century grimoire,” she said, gesturing to the book she’d lifted from the floor. “Only copy known to exist. This”—she gestured to the one she’d taken from its place on the shelf—“is a first edition Francis Bacon. Rare, not unique.” Then she took both books and flung them into the air.

  Liam started. While he had been passed out, Asanti had clearly gone insane. “Did you just—?”

  “Watch.”

  Both books tumbled, pages fluttering, until they finally landed, open, on their backs.

  “What am I watching?”

  “The pages!”

  Liam blinked, still not seeing it. The Bacon lay there, unmoving. The pages of the grimoire continued to flip in the wind.

  “These books are the same size, with similar binding and weight paper. The wind is everywhere. Why aren’t the pages of the Bacon still moving?”

  And now that she had said it, Liam saw it. “The wind only affects books that are unique to the Archives.”

  Asanti nodded. “Yes. Now, if we can just figure out what that means—”

  But Liam already knew. “What it means,” he said—speaking carefully, but with growing certainty—“is we’re being hacked.”

  Finally, something he could work with.

  • • •

  At sunset on the third night of the Market, Sal arrived alone at Gutenberg Castle, where she was greeted by the disapproving frown of the Maitresse.

  “Where is the priest?” she asked. “I hope he hasn’t decided to depart prematurely.”

  Sal shook her head, fighting the feeling that she ought to bow or curtsy or something else that would probably just end up looking stupid. “He had an errand to run in town and was unavoidably detained. I’m expecting him soon.”

  The Maitresse gave Sal a penetrating look that went a step beyond a standard “disapproving superior” glare and straight to “look right into your head territory. Sal fought to keep her expression bland and concentrated on repeating an internal mantra of: I’m not lying to you. I’m not lying to you. I’m not . . .

  Almost as though she really could read Sal’s thoughts, the Maitresse’s lips quirked upward.

  “Very well, Bookburner. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  Sal nodded to the Maitresse and proceeded to beat a retreat across the courtyard as quickly as she could without looking like she was fleeing for her life. She wasn’t sure she managed it. But she hadn’t lied. Menchú was running an errand in town. She was expecting him soon. She just had something to do before he got back.

  The first night of the Market was for posturing. The second was for negotiations. The third was for deals. Over Sal’s head, but low enough that it couldn’t be seen outside the castle’s walls, a firework in the shape of a red dragon exploded silently. Sal didn’t give it a second glance. She had an appointment with the Index.

  • • •

  Opie grinned as she approached, noting that she was alone. “Baby Bookburner breaking the rules. Are you going to have to go to confession later?”

  “Not a Catholic. Let’s get on with this.”

  Opie opened the door and ushered her through with a mock bow. Sal stepped past him into the room full of fantastical computers, heartened to see that her suspicions were correct: bowing when you didn’t know what you were doing did look stupid. He seemed amused at her impatience as she waited for him to follow her inside.

  “You’re awfully eager to give up a piece of your mind.”

  Sal held his gaze, waiting for him to blink first. “I’ve seen some things sin
ce I took this job that I wouldn’t mind forgetting.”

  Opie made a small, negating gesture. “The Index takes what the Index wants. We can’t control—”

  “Cut the crap.”

  Opie’s jaw snapped shut with an audible click.

  “You were trying to stare through me from the first night of the Market. I think you found out that Mr. Norse had a grudge against the Society and offered to let him use the Index to find a weak spot in the Archives. Then, when everyone arrives at the Market and he attacks us—oh look—you just so happen to have the solution to our little problem, for the low-low price of a peek inside my head.”

  Opie scoffed. “Which makes perfect sense, if everything we do somehow revolves around you.”

  Sal shrugged. “Maybe you get the benefit of a happy coincidence, then. Bottom line, there’s something in my head that you want, and you’re not going to trust to random chance that this Index of yours is going to pull what you’re interested in.”

  “And what would you know that would be that valuable to us?”

  “I know what happened to my brother.”

  In the silence that followed, Sal could hear the faint hum of computers, the ripple of the sea horses’ aquarium, and the rustle of night moths pollinating the flowers blooming on the moss computer’s keyboard.

  “You have information I want; I have information you want. Let’s make a trade.”

  Opie blinked. “How very . . . pragmatic.”

  “I’m a practical person. Hell, we can dispense with this whole Index bullshit for all I care. You tell me, I tell you, we both go our separate ways.”

  The obnoxious smile was back. “No deal. How would we know you weren’t lying?”

  “How do I know your Index knows anything useful?”

  “Given that I’m not the one with the friends under threat of death, I guess that’s a risk you’ll have to take.”

  Sal made a show of scowling. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

  “Temper temper, Baby Bookburner.”

  “Friends dying. I didn’t sleep well last night. PMS. Take your pick. Plus, I think we both want this business concluded before Father Menchú gets back from his errand in Balzers.”

  That, at least, got Opie moving. He walked over to a large black packing case, opened it, and removed a wooden box just large enough to hold a pair of shoes. He closed the case immediately after removing the box, and Sal caught a glimpse of flames, skittering legs, and a brief moaning sound. Oh yeah, this is a great idea.

  The box remained connected to the packing case by glowing filaments wrapped in sinew-like tendrils that gave off a faint smell of burning meat. Remembering Scotland, Sal’s stomach gave a lurch, and she swallowed bile.

  “That’s the Index?”

  Opie nodded. “The box is the interface, the case is the processor, the server is . . . elsewhere.”

  He clearly wanted her to ask where “elsewhere” might be, and so Sal declined to do so. It would only bring back the insufferable smirk. Also, she didn’t really care. Her job was finding the weird stuff. How it worked was Liam and Asanti’s department. Assuming they all lived that long.

  “What do I do?”

  Opie handed Sal a slip of paper and pointed to a small table in the corner where a stack of paper, quill, and inkwell sat waiting. “Write your question on the paper. Hold the paper in your fist, and put your hand in the box.” He paused, then added, smirk back in place, “Don’t be afraid. Fear is the mind-killer.”

  Sal raised an eyebrow. “O . . . kay?”

  Opie made a disgusted sound and muttered something under his breath before gesturing to the table. “Just write it down.”

  Sal hesitated. “Does the Index read intent?”

  “Huh?”

  “How literal-minded is it? Can the Index figure out what I mean, or do I need to be careful not to make one of my wishes ‘Genie, make me a sandwich’?”

  Opie shrugged. “The more specific your question, the more specific the answer.”

  Well, that was helpful. With a sigh, Sal picked up the paper and quill. “This might take a minute.”

  The smirk was back. “No hurry. No hurry at all.”

  Ten minutes and a lot of blotting later, Sal clutched a folded piece of paper tightly in her clenched fist. Opie opened the box with a brass key that hung around his neck, and held it out for her. “Ready when you are.”

  Sal hesitated. The wood looked old, but she wasn’t enough of an expert to tell whether it meant that the box itself was ancient, or that it had been made from repurposed boards. Repurposed from what? Charon’s rowboat? The Ark of the Covenant? Lumber planed from a section of the True Cross? Perry had been into woodworking for a while in Boy Scouts. Maybe he would have been able to tell by looking at the joinery.

  Yes, think about Perry. And hope you’re still able to think about him after this is over.

  Opie, for all his professed patience as she’d crafted her question, made a small “get on with it” gesture. There was a notch cut into one of the short sides of the box for her wrist. Once Sal put her hand in and Opie locked the lid, she’d be stuck until he decided to let her out. Or until she wrenched the box from him, ripped out the connection that tied it to the packing case, and went running through the Black Market with a magical wooden box permanently grafted to her arm. Sal eyed Opie, sizing him up. She could take him. Even one-handed.

  Sal placed her hand in the box.

  Opie slammed the lid shut. Sal’s hand felt cold, then hot, then like it was being stuck with a hundred needles. She flinched. Opie locked one hand around her wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong. “Don’t. Move.”

  The pain faded, leaving Sal’s skin cool, but not as intensely cold as before. She felt a soft brush of fur across her knuckles. Then something wet and sticky slid across the base of her palm. Not a tongue. It can’t possibly be a tongue. Was not-a-tongue any better? No, definitely not. Sal shuddered, and suddenly the bones of her hand were on fire. She tried to open her hand, but her muscles weren’t listening to her commands, nerves too busy transmitting a constant stream of Pain! Pain! Pain! to carry any other instructions. Sal gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and concentrated.

  • • •

  Sal was back in her past, in a self-storage facility in New Jersey. Perry, or Perry plus a demon, floated in midair, surrounded by a pile of books, pages flipping madly. But it wasn’t the same. Because the Index was there too. Breathing down the back of her neck, breath hot and moist, like a wolf ready to snap its jaws through her spine. And when it did, it would take this moment from her forever. This was what the Index wanted. And it was hungry.

  Trapped in her own memory, Sal reached for the Book of the Hand. Bare fingers inches from the cover. A hair’s-breadth away. She could feel the jaws closing, teeth piercing the skin of her neck, and with every force of her will that remained, Sal wrenched her mind to another memory. One much more recent.

  • • •

  She was in her room at the B&B with Menchú, on the phone with Liam. “They’re hacking the Archive,” he said. “Not the computers. The books. I’m sending a file to your phone. You need to memorize it.”

  As the wolf’s teeth sank into her neck, Sal called up the file to her mind. It was a complex mathematical function represented as a single abstract image. Sal hadn’t slept at all, committing every twist and overlap to memory. It was amazing what you could do, if the incentive for success was strong enough.

  According to Liam, the Index shouldn’t read the image as a threat. Because to Sal, it was only an image. She didn’t understand the math behind it, or the program behind the math. She was just carrying the candy coating, to trick the Index into swallowing the whole thing down.

  Because even if Sal didn’t understand the meaning, it was there. Hidden and coded in every twist and turn and recursive loop. A tiny seed, planted in fertile ground.

  • • •

  Sal could hear shouting. Opie and others. She felt a pain like someo
ne tearing the flesh from her hand, and then a sharper one as something hit her in the head. She inhaled to shout and choked on a lungful of smoke.

  Sal coughed for moments, hours, years, until she managed to open her eyes. Apparently the thing that had hit her head was the floor, and she took in the room from her new low and cockeyed angle. Smoke poured from the crate that housed the Index. Her phone, tucked in her pocket, buzzed frantically. Sal crawled to a corner, completely ignored by the frantic techno-cultists who had flooded into the room since she’d closed her eyes.

  Sal finally got her hands—hey, she had both hands again—around her buzzing phone. “It worked?”

  Liam’s voice sounded more tired than she had ever heard it, but also relieved. “It worked.”

  “Good.” Sal hung up. The Guardians were pouring in along with the Maitresse. And there was Mr. Norse, followed by Father Menchú, whose errand in town had been to keep the billionaire distracted until it was too late for him to stop Sal’s plan. A fact that Mr. Norse had realized too late. Sal decided that Menchú could handle him. And the Maitresse. And the Guardians. He was good with people. It was his job.

  • • •

  The Market Arcanum concluded without further incident. When dawn broke over the Alps, Sal watched the men in wolf-cloaks walk out of the castle and right back into the woods. The women in evening gowns pulled on cloaks and veils to hide their tattoos before alighting into their limousines. The techno-cultists had packed their computers into a white panel van and left as soon as it became clear that the Maitresse did not view the destruction of the Index as sufficient cause to evict Menchú and Sal from the Market. Mr. Norse departed rather more gracefully, although his last words were not exactly a comfort.

  “Until next time, Bookburners.”

  A shadow fell across Sal’s path as she and Menchú carried their bags to the rental car, and Sal looked up to see the Maitresse herself waiting for them. Even in daylight, and without her flanking Guardians, she radiated authority.