There was a moment’s silence. Then Grace reached out a hand and covered one of Aisha’s.
“Hey,” said Grace. “That, we can help with.”
• • •
Back in their hotel room, Grace and Sal packed while Asanti brought Menchú up to speed. Liam didn’t so much pack as pace.
“I’m … not sure I understand,” said Menchú, over Skype. “There’s no book?”
“According to Aisha,” said Asanti, “she is the book. Her family keeps an oral tradition of magic; they inscribe it in their children as they grow into their power. It would explain why she reacted so strongly to the silver—she is more magic than most magic-users.”
“This is bullshit,” Liam grunted. “How are we supposed to keep this from Jeanne?”
“Jeanne,” said Asanti, patiently, “knows there are things we cannot tell her. She invited us here to solve a problem. That’s what we are doing.”
“But hiding the fact that her intern’s a wizard? She could be in danger! We’re supposed to let her go on trusting her without knowing she could turn into—I don’t know, a bear or wolf or something? We can’t just trust her to do what she says she will and then let her go!”
“Yeah,” said Grace, folding a shirt. “Magic people definitely can’t be trusted.”
Liam opened his mouth to reply, then shut it. The silence gained weight and mass. Grace folded another shirt.
“Look, I didn’t—”
Grace shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. We need to kill an ifrit, and you need to get over yourself.”
“Hey,” said Sal, feebly, looking from one to the other.
“No,” said Liam, more quietly. “You’re right. I do. I’m sorry.” He exhaled, while Sal stared at him. “This isn’t the time.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” said Menchú, clearing his throat. “I wish I could do more to help from here. You’re certain we shouldn’t alert Team One?”
“Even if they could arrive in time,” said Asanti, “we promised Aisha we would limit our involvement. After all, as she said, the last time we were here, the Parliament burned down.” She coughed a little. “At any rate, she has a great deal at stake here. If she can’t destroy it with her magic, she intends to absorb it into her body and allow Grace to kill her.”
Menchú looked distressed. “What?”
“Aisha says that only magic can harm ifrits—but as she said, she is a sort of book. She can trap it inside her own body and hold it there until …” Asanti chewed her lip. “Until we shut her. Obviously we would rather it did not come to that.”
“Obviously,” said Menchú.
• • •
On the night of the anniversary, Aisha walked a wide, careful circle around the place she said the ifrit would rise, murmuring words in a language that sounded to Sal like Arabic.
“She’s layering guard lines,” Asanti explained, “trying to keep it from escaping upward the way the last one did, and keep its magic from escaping to harm the library. And us,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “It’s fascinating—I can’t place her dialect at all. I wonder how far back the transmission of the formula goes? If we had more time—”
“—she’d probably refuse to answer your questions,” said Sal. “On account of how you’re a Bookburner.”
Asanti sighed. “True. But one can dream.”
As Aisha chanted, green, shimmering lines began to appear in the air, trailing in her mouth’s wake before rising and spinning around the circle’s center in brilliant orbital lines. The space inscribed by them was fifteen feet across and went up almost as far as the windows. She stepped back and out of them, then walked over toward the team.
“That’s the best I can do,” she said, looking over her work. “A bit tight for a magician’s battle, but that’s probably for the best. You all know what to do if I fail?”
“Can I just say,” said Sal, “that I think this plan is terrible and there has to be some other way to do this?”
“I’m all ears,” said Aisha, brightly. “Totally willing to hear suggestions for next time this precise situation arises. For now—we’re out of time. So, to recap: It will appear; I’ll challenge it to a magician’s battle; if it beats me, I’ll suck it into my body; you’ll kill me with silver. Clear?”
“Crystal,” said Grace, tightening her grip around the dagger Aisha had given her.
“Great,” said Aisha, taking a deep breath. “I—really appreciate this. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it to myself.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Grace, a little gruffly. Then a red spark flared to life inside Aisha’s bubble, and she tensed.
“Here it comes,” she said.
The fire this time was less a column than a wall; the breadth and height of the creature unfolding within it was difficult to comprehend. But it couldn’t unfold completely; the green lines of Aisha’s magic covered it like layers of skin, drum-taut and seconds from bursting. The body taking shape was almost a perfect triangle: shoulders broad enough to stroll on, a burning torso muscled like Milton’s Satan. Only its eyes looked like its previous incarnations: white-hot circles of licking flame, looking straight ahead.
Aisha shouted something at it in the language of her magic, and it looked down at her. Then it raised an eyebrow—suddenly the team became aware of its eyebrows—and flexed the corded muscles of its arms until it burst every layer of green enclosing it, showering the room—and the team—in sparks.
It stretched its limbs, unfurled its wings, and laughed in a voice of heat and smoke and burning.
“These are cheap tricks, Nasiba,” the ifrit boomed. “I thought that we had an arrangement.”
“Is it … speaking English?” whispered Sal, next to Asanti. Asanti shook her head.
“I think it’s just … speaking, and we’re understanding its intent.”
Aisha looked stunned, then shook her head and rallied. “Ifrit, I challenge you to—”
The ifrit waved her words away. “Nasiba, why are you doing this? I told you I would wait. I have waited. I’m ready. Send me home.”
Aisha stared at it for a long moment; Sal watched her mouth working without making a sound. Finally, she said, with a quiet that carried, “Nasiba was my great-grandmother. I’m Aisha.”
It was the ifrit’s turn to stare. “Ah. Forgive me, little one. You look alike. I thought—she did say she would need a long time. I forget how brief you are, how quick you burn.” Its gaze swept the room, locked on Grace, then on Liam, Sal, and Asanti farther back. “Who are these?”
“They’re not important,” said Aisha, quickly. “I—ifrit, I can’t send you home. I came here …” She bit her lip, closed her eyes, swallowed something back. “I came here to offer you a choice.”
The ifrit seemed to shrink—then did shrink, a little, as if to listen more closely to whatever Aisha had to say. “Speak, daughter of Nasiba’s daughters, and I will listen.”
“I can’t send you back,” said Aisha, thickly, “and I can’t help you stay. There are seven deaths between you and this world. But I can put you to sleep again—if you let me. Work with me and I can take you out of time.”
The ifrit looked at her for what felt like an age. “And my other choice?”
Aisha looked too miserable to speak. The ifrit nodded. “I see. I … had hoped to wake to better.”
“I promise,” said Aisha in a rush, “I promise I will work at this every day—I will teach my daughters our craft—I will find a way to fix this. But I haven’t yet. Until I do—”
“I will sleep,” said the ifrit, gently, “in the sleep that is not sleep, in the dreams that are not dreams, in the world that is no world, where every moment is an age. So Nasiba said to me. Is this to be my life, little one? An age of sleep and a moment’s waking to renegotiate terms? How many lifetimes of punishment for an accident?”
Aisha’s chin trembled, but she straightened her back and looked into the twin hearths of its eyes. “It’s the best I can do.”
“Strange,” said the ifrit, musing, “how one can sleep a hundred of your years and wake so tired. I am tired, Aisha. I am very tired.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“So am I.” The ifrit blew itself back up, so huge it looked as if its shoulders might crack the cupola. Grace tensed; Aisha stood her ground.
Then the ifrit bowed its horned head so low that the bone tips touched its chest. Its voice rumbled through skin and bone like an earthquake.
“I will do as you see fit. For the sake of your great-grandmother’s friendship, and for the hope of earning yours.”
As they watched, the ifrit began to uncoil into pale smoke; Aisha, bearing up beneath her disbelief, began weaving the smoke into patterns on the air, mapping her language over the gestures, spindling the whole of the ifrit along her hands and wrists, until all that was left of its heat and flame and muscle was a single pomegranate seed glinting in her palm.
“Tisbah aala kheir,” she murmured to it, and began to cry.
• • •
Jeanne and Asanti embraced in the lobby of the Château Laurier while the porters carried the team’s bags to the taxi waiting to take them to the airport. Aisha was there too—in smart casual attire that suggested she’d just finished a shift—telling Grace, Sal, and Liam about the history of the Rideau Canal.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t stay longer,” said Jeanne, “but I’m so grateful for what you did. Thank you. It can’t have been easy.”
“Easier than we imagined, in the end,” said Asanti, smiling warmly, before pulling Jeanne into a kiss. Sal and Liam shared the private look of siblings embarrassed by their parents’ affection. Grace leaned in closer to Aisha.
“What did you say to it?” asked Grace, quietly. “At the end.”
Aisha smiled a little. “Just ‘good night’ in Arabic. Literally it means ‘may you wake to grace.’”
Grace looked at her for a moment. Then she nodded. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” said Aisha, and sounded like she meant it.
Sal reached out a hand, and Aisha shook it. “Sure you don’t want to come along? A lot’s happened to the organization in a hundred years.” She looked at Liam, who raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I mean, I haven’t been here that long, but we’re a decent bunch of people.”
“I’m sure,” said Aisha, smiling crookedly, “but I’ve got exams to study for and a degree to finish. Like, keep in touch if you want but don’t blow up my phone, you know? Figuratively or otherwise.”
“What does someone of your … ah … interests even study?” asked Liam, equal measures curious and wary.
Aisha grinned. “Poli-sci, obvs.”
“Time to go,” called Asanti. “Jeanne, thank you again for your hospitality. See you soon, I hope.”
They hugged one more time, and parted.
Epilogue
Menchú opened his door to find Asanti holding a bottle of maple whiskey liqueur and two glasses. He smiled, and gestured her inside.
• • •
Sal opened her door to find Liam holding two takeout cups of hot chocolate and a box of pastries.
“So,” he said, a little sheepishly. “This is me wanting to talk.”
Sal stepped to the side, and smiled.
• • •
Grace lay in her bed, thinking of sunsets and stars while watching the flame of her candle flicker, tricking her eyes into seeing horns, limbs, a face.
She let three minutes go by before she reached out and pinched the wick into smoke.
Bookburners
Season 2, Episode 8
Present Infinity
Brian Slattery
1.
Asanti’s apartment was exploding.
With her three kids over for dinner and the grandkids with them—eight going on nine—everyone was trying to talk louder than everyone else. Her husband and older son were arguing politics, as they had for years. Asanti was aware by now that they did it as a kind of sport. Each knew the other would disagree with him. Each knew he’d never convince the other that he was right. It sounded like they were fighting sometimes, but they were both thrilled. It was their way of saying I love you. The grandkids were having a real fight that Asanti’s youngest dispelled by giving all of them a snack. Pans clattered in the kitchen, smoke and steam. Asanti was about to step out for palm oil—she had no idea she’d run so low—when the phone rang.
“Asanti?” the voice said on the other end. “It’s Izquierdo.”
It took her a moment, but then she remembered. The Mexican professor from the conference. They’d exchanged phone numbers and email addresses in Russia.
“How are you?” she said.
“You sound busy,” he said.
“Later tonight is better,” she conceded. “Can it wait?”
“You could say that,” Izquierdo said. He’d found something about her question funny.
“I’ll call you,” she said.
“Okay,” he answered, and hung up. So all the way to the store and back, all through dinner and dessert, between the small dramas and big comedies that brought her family together, she wondered what on earth Izquierdo could want to tell her.
She waited until her family had left, picked up the phone, and dialed.
“I found them,” Izquierdo said. “At least I think I did.”
“Team Four?” Asanti said.
He seemed confused for a second. Then: “Yes. Yes, if that’s what you call them. The Vatican’s wizards. I know where they went.”
“How did you find out?”
“The academic problem was one of synthesis. All the scholarship we needed to locate them was in existence. It just happened to be in seven different languages.”
“So how many languages did you learn between the conference and now?”
“None. I collaborated with some colleagues. There was my story about the hikers, which put them somewhere in the Tatra Mountains. Another tale, about an army battalion that went missing, placed the site of their disappearance at a specific distance from the border with Romania—”
“Which may have moved,” Asanti said.
“It did indeed,” Izquierdo said. “We allowed for that. Then there were four accounts—these proved crucial—in Polish, Romanian, Slovak, and, of all things, Turkish, of travelers from abroad in the Tatra Mountains encountering a person who could only be described as a wizard.”
“The stories say he used magic?”
“Yes. Which makes them impossible to believe. And the magic he uses is small, maybe one step above a parlor trick. But it is consistent with a certain character. Which is very interesting … because the stories are decades apart.”
“When is the most recent one from?”
“Perhaps a century ago.”
“There have been no sightings since?”
“If there have been, we’re unaware of them. It’s possible that no one is writing them down. Perhaps they’re in a state archive somewhere in Poland.”
“From the Communist era.”
“Yes. Some have been opened to researchers, but not all.”
“So it’s possible that there are more.”
“Yes. Though that’s beside the point.”
“Right,” Asanti said. “So where are they?”
“Our location is surprisingly exact. In fact, according to our maps, there is a town there now, called Biała Czapka. It means ‘white cap,’ and it is well named, because it refers to a peak north of the town that has snow on it for much of the year.”
“Team Four put their town inside another town?”
“Biała Czapka was built during the Communist era as an industrial town. It failed. Lately there has been an attempt at tourism, but it is not going well.”
“I see.”
“But the location of your wizards is, we think, even more specific than that. According to what we know, if you stand in the right spot in Biała Czapka and face north, you will find that four prominent peaks create a co
mpass—one due north, one due south, one due east, and one due west. That is where the wizards are.”
“Why do you think they did that?” Asanti had her own ideas, but she wanted to hear it from Izquierdo.
“Because the place the wizards created is, somehow, there and not there. It’s hidden. There is something you have to do, a mechanism you have to make work. A spell, a ritual you have to perform. I am not sure. But if you do it right, you will be taken there.”
“That makes sense,” Asanti said.
“Do you know what the mechanism might be?” Izquierdo said.
The Orb, Asanti thought. We just need to hit the right switch.
“I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t say for sure,” Asanti said. “Not yet.” She hoped he didn’t hear the hesitation in her voice. “Are you … planning to publish your findings?” she said.
“No, of course not,” Izquierdo said. “We may be zealots for our work, but we’re not idiots.”
Asanti laughed.
“But I will share what I have with you.”
“Thank you.”
“And now I have to ask: You will not share it with anyone else?”
“Of course not,” Asanti said.
“I thought as much,” Izquierdo said. “I would never have called you if I thought otherwise.”
“Thank you so much,” Asanti said.
“Let me know if you discover anything more,” he said.
“I will,” she said, and meant it.
2.
The boat heaved through the windy chop of the Mediterranean Sea, halfway to Tunisia from Italy. The captain Menchú had convinced to take them out was chortling the whole way, obviously enjoying the ride. Even more than Menchú’s discomfort, he seemed to be enjoying Sal’s and Grace’s grim determination. He laughed harder when Liam got sick over the side of the boat. But Asanti was most concerned about Frances, and the Orb, which they’d packed in a waterproof chest that Frances was keeping from sliding around by sitting on it in the pilot house behind the captain and the wheel.
Bookburners The Complete Season Two Page 28