Bookburners

by Max Gladstone

  “Sal!”

  “I did it!” she shouted back. “The thing didn’t go in!”

  “Try something else!”

  Ellsdale groaned, and shifted beneath her. Fingers shaking, Sal searched for the harness of his chains.

  • • •

  The world tore, and the rift light blazed in the sky. The Thames shivered; the frozen waves writhed. All along the river, the servants Asanti had summoned plied their trade, silent and secure, sculpting riverbanks and buildings, adding angles, rendering curves concave and convex at once, pulling reality as Arturo Menchú knew it up to code.

  But when the world tore, Asanti screamed, and fell to her knees. The servants staggered. They downed tools, stopped. Some flailed, destroying the work they’d made. The light grew brighter, and the surfaces they’d not yet touched began to mar, to glow, to grow eyes, mouths—Asanti’s voice slipped over syllables. She tried to stand, and could not. The world was a weight that pushed her down.

  They could die, right here. And it would be his fault.

  Or.

  He had heard the chant, so simple, monosyllables repeated: alph ev nur zem jeh ahl kef and on like that. Menchú could speak eight languages with some proficiency, he’d lost track of the number in which he could manage a few words, and he did not recognize these. But part of the reason he could speak so many languages was that he had a good ear for accents and tongues.

  Perhaps this set his immortal soul at risk. But the world was dying. Surely God would understand.

  He knelt beside Asanti, beside her circle, reached in and took her hand, and spoke: alph ev nur zem jeh ahl kef. She looked to him, grateful, and he did not feel ashamed. Their voices joined. Along the riverbank, the work began again.

  • • •

  Sal’s chains snared the dead spirit’s sides, and pushed. The harness dug into her shoulders—but, thank God, directed most of the weight down, into the earth, leaving the chains free to push.

  “Sal!”

  “I’m trying!” The chains surged; earth cracked beneath her. She pressed the enormous body down, and down. Chains broke its scales. “There’s too much current! Can you direct it somehow?”

  Silence.

  “Perry, I’m losing—”

  The resistance broke. The spirit fell through the rift.

  “It’s in! Frances! Stop!”

  For a moment she thought it wouldn’t work, that Ellsdale was right, Frances had lost it after all, she was too far gone to let that power go—but then, with a crack, the earth began to close, the ground to shake, the weird geometry that had bent the Tower Bridge unwound, and the walls of water shivered. And here they were, at the heart of the catastrophe—in the center of the Thames.

  It would be nice to savor a moment’s triumph. She would like to know what that felt like, one of these days. For now, though: “Run!”

  • • •

  Liam fought side by side with Grace. Better than old times: in tandem, in trust. She marshaled her speed, not wanting to waste too much time at once—he liked that change, and honored it by being everywhere she could not, sprinting to close a breach in Team One’s line, catching a fanged monster that slipped through the line. That clarity stayed with him: he knew who he fought, and why. The sides were clear, and the purpose, too. Perhaps he would die: grow too confident in the press, and fail. But confidence did not capture the fullness of this feeling: He felt too small for confidence. On the line he became a tool, an instrument; he worked in the sight of God, toward whatever purpose He set.

  He did not notice, until Grace was hugging him, that they had won. “They did it!” The light in the sky was gone. Blue slashed through the pink, which was now only the pink of sunset, not so sick and cloying. The river seethed and smashed and settled. Across the battlefield, Soo rose from a pile of corpses, panting, one arm badly broken at her side, blood leaking through armor, but alive.

  Liam was cheering before he realized he had opened his mouth. All up and down the line, weapons raised to the sky, primal bellows, joy: cries of England, cries of victory, just crying, men and women, weeping, relieved. Even though the buildings remained broken, transformed, even though Big Ben up the river bend settled back to earth several blocks from Parliament, even though an enormous monster raven still wheeled many-winged in the sky.

  “We did it,” Grace said.

  “Not so neat as our usual jobs,” Liam allowed, “but it’ll do the trick. Shouldn’t have doubted Sal.”

  “Sal!” she said, and left him so fast the wind of her movement bowled him over. He picked himself off the ground and ran after, human-speed; saw, approaching the foot of the Tower Bridge, Asanti and Menchú, stopped; saw Perry, still faintly glowing, saw Sal, carrying Frances. Saw, too, Shah, her weapon drawn.

  • • •

  “Shah,” Sal said, keeping herself calm and measured. “You don’t want to do this. My brother helped save this city. We saved the world. Without him—”

  “Your brother,” Shah said, “and Doctor Asanti and Doctor Haddad, got us into this mess in the first place. We’ll sort all this out later—decide on punishment, on next steps. But for the moment, I need them in custody.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” Perry said, calm as fuck, as if the gun didn’t concern him, which was exactly the wrong impression to give, here and now. Sal could have murdered him—but in a friendly, sisterly way, on her own terms.

  “He’s right.” Asanti’s hand slipped from Menchú’s as she stepped forward, regal, between Perry and Shah. “The Society failed us, and humanity. It failed its mission. It couldn’t change with the world. And now that the world needs it most, it will be too hidebound to lead. I’m done hesitating. For now, there’s work to be done.”

  Perry’s glow brightened, burned, blinding. It enveloped Asanti, and Frances in Sal’s arms. Sal reached for her brother, lunged for him. She heard a gunshot.

  When the light failed, Asanti and Perry and Frances were gone.

  4.

  Sal drifted through a world on mute.

  They passed through many airports on the way back to Rome. Heathrow flights were canceled: an enormous monster raven kept harassing planes. Television cameras covered the whole thing; confused footage, but undeniable. London was changed. Six-legged dogs climbed walls. Pub taps poured beer that turned drinkers to living gold. Men and women had become statues, and statues began to walk. Ghosts of Winston Churchill still chased people through Hyde Park. She couldn’t bear to hear the meaningless newsroom chatter, the speculation about what had happened, why the whole world was different now. The chyrons were bad enough, talking about unexploded ordnance, terrorism, weapons testing. Weapons testing! The cameras interviewed a buff, bald man with an earring and an improbable name who seemed quite pleased about the fact that the prime minister’s head had been replaced with a scarab’s.

  They did not talk. They did not have to. Sal sat between Grace and Liam. Grace read the clouds. Liam worked his rosary. Sal kept her hands in theirs the whole flight. Across the aisle, Menchú stared at the back of the seat in front of him.

  Fox was waiting for them when they landed in Fiumicino.

  • • •

  Menchú sat in the cardinal’s office in the Vatican, and struggled to contain his fury. One of them had to, and Cardinal Fox didn’t show signs of trying: “Dereliction of duty. Secret research. You let Asanti build a team under your nose. And now, London. The transformations haven’t stopped. The buildings haven’t returned to normal. Space itself is warped, the prime minister has an insect head, there are enormous rib bones in Hyde Park. This is everything you were supposed to stop. You have failed on every level.”

  “We,” Menchú said, when he could contain himself no longer.

  Fox rounded on him from behind the desk: an enormous shape in shadow, relieved by the feverish light of his eyes.

  Menchú knew his place. He was supposed to sit, to listen. To obey. He had made vows to this effect. But he was done.

&n
bsp; He stood. He stabbed his forefinger into the pile of newspapers on Fox’s desk, all blazoned with images of London and conflicting headlines: ATTACK, HORROR, MYSTERIOUS, REELS. “This is everything we were supposed to prevent, Cardinal. Your bluster, your hard line, failed. We saved London, as much as it could be saved, only because of people you ignored.”

  “Traitors,” Fox said, “whose failures made this situation worse.”

  “Without them, without their methods, we would have been useless!” Menchú’s voice swelled. A tide built in him, built through him, a rage too great for a mortal heart to frame. “Useless. And now: Where have you been? The world knows magic exists. Where has the Vatican been? These people are asking what happened. And we take no responsibility. Will you step up? Will you be the big man?” He made himself breathe. “Or will you run, and hide?”

  Fox paced to the shelf beside his desk. He picked up a letter opener; it looked tiny in his hand. He spoke, without any affect save the flatness of pure fact. “You are out of line, Father.” He set the letter opener down, and turned back to face Menchú. “We will find Asanti and Doctor Haddad and Ms. Brooks’s brother. We will stop them from causing further damage. And in the meantime, consider yourself and Team Three grounded. You stay in Rome. No communications. No work. Stay put, and shut up, and obey until we fix this.” A hand tightened into a fist. Knuckles cracked. “Dismissed.”

  • • •

  Guards took Menchú home. He prayed, at first: breviary. He sat, alone and not alone, and imagined the others, likewise. He poured himself a little aged tequila, and set it on the table by his hand, but did not drink.

  He heard a knock on the door.

  When he opened it, the guards were gone, and Hilary Sansone stood there in an overcoat, with a thick manila envelope under her arm. Team Two’s chief looked as precise as ever, as if nothing had changed. “You really screwed up this time, Arturo.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Will you come inside?”

  She tossed back a half shot of tequila without seeming to notice. She circled his modest room, reviewing the titles of books on shelf, the accumulation of dust, the texture of the carpet, always evaluative. By her motion he realized how still he’d grown. She had set the envelope on his table. He did not pick it up or open it. After a while, she drew a small box from her pocket, and flipped a switch. A blue LED blinked on.

  “What’s that?”

  “A little something to confuse our audience,” she said. “A stitched-together conversation between the two of us, calm, polite, professional. I made it out of recordings of our previous meetings.”

  “You recorded our meetings?”

  She answered that with an expressionless pause. “You were right, Arturo.”

  He wanted to deny it, to ask what she meant. Instead, he only said, “I know.”

  “We tried to stop this, didn’t we.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “We were too late. Fox would have been the right leader four years ago. I thought we had more time. But now we have a man who wants to build a sand wall against the tide. Maybe there was never any hope at all.” She leaned on the table, and looked away from him. “The least we can do is save what we can.”

  He said nothing.

  “Open the envelope, Arturo.”

  It held a cell phone: a black brick, primitive. Also passports and a lot of cash. “Sansone.”

  “The rest of your team have phones in their apartments. I’ve arranged for your minders to look the other way for a few hours. Find Asanti. We need her. Bring her home—and do what you can to fix this.” She found the strength to look at him, then: cold and piercing and so, so steady. As if she’d never shown a moment’s weakness, as if that lean were all an act. Perhaps it was.

  “How do I know you’re not just trying to get us out of the way? Setting us up to die?”

  “You don’t,” she said, and left.

  When she was gone, and the hall was empty, Menchú reached for the phone.

  5.

  Liam watched his knuckles in the waiting room.

  He thought about dedication. He thought about Soo, on the line, full of purpose. How much had he lost, and how much had he left behind? After his rescue, after the demon, he’d turned to the Church. To the faith of his fathers and mothers, down generations since Patrick. But he’d turned to it as a boy seeking shelter, a master’s hand, a path to keep him safe, so long as he walked it and did not stray.

  But God was not a hiding place.

  God was a hill you climbed—no, not a hill at all, but a mountain, higher than any in the world. God was that moment on the slope when you could go no further, when there was no path, and you had no more strength to walk, and yet you must, you would, you did.

  He had lost so much. But what he had left, he would give.

  They called his name. He went into the back, shook the hand of the woman with the nose ring. “Where do you want it,” she asked as she washed her hands, “and what will it be?”

  He sat in the chair, and waited for the needle.

  • • •

  Grace packed in the convent. “One duffel,” she said, “isn’t much space, all things considered. This jacket, or that?” She spun around, and showed them.

  “The red one,” Sal said.

  “Red?”

  “On the left?”

  “It’s maroon.”

  “That’s, um. It’s a reddish sort of maroon?”

  “I don’t know why I ask your opinion at all.” But she did choose the maroon; good cut, versatile, and she liked the color.

  “You seem almost happy,” Sal said. “I mean! Don’t get me wrong. I like this a lot more than the-end-is-nigh Grace, with real karate-chop action.”

  “Karate?” Grace raised an eyebrow as she pondered blouses.

  “Like, you know, how you advertise a kid’s toy. Not important. But I am curious.”

  “I suppose”—she chose white, gray, peach—“I am feeling better.”

  “A rift opening in London improves your mood?”

  “Not like that.” She knelt, and set the folded shirts in the duffel. Head down, focusing on the fabric’s texture, she considered keeping silent. Sal could work out the details on her own. But that would be unfair. She remembered Arturo, and the silence that had stretched too long between them. “I know I’m dying.” She tensed for Sal to interrupt her, but she didn’t. “I can’t escape this curse. But before this, my death would have been just—a death. Sooner or later I’d fight my last fight, and poof. But everything has meaning now. London was just the start. The angels’ project, it’s winding down. We’re headed into the end of the world. And at least I can last long enough to fight it.”

  “We’ll make it through,” Sal said, as Grace knew she would, but she heard the hollowness behind those words. Sal wanted that to be true, but for the first time, maybe, she considered, really considered—not from fear, not in a moment of struggle, but philosophically, on her friend’s bed—that it wasn’t.

  Grace reached for her. Their hands clasped.

  Sal’s phone rang. She listened, nodded, hung up. “Twenty minutes.”

  “Plenty of time,” Grace said. Together, they packed her clothes. They packed the candle, in its hurricane lantern. And then, at last, they packed Grace.

  • • •

  Menchú walked a final lap within Saint Peter’s.

  They had made this basilica too large—in many ways. Practically speaking, it bankrupted Europe. Architecturally, for all its genius, the ceiling soared so high it ceased to seem like a building at all. Some cathedrals suggested Heaven, coaxed the soul skyward through arches and buttresses, built eternities of air in spaces between stone. Saint Peter’s merely replaced the sky.

  He paused before statues, before the tombs of popes. He lingered on mosaic replicas of Raphaels, so massive and finely wrought he could not see the gaps between the tiles ten feet away. He rounded the nave, and stared up at the altar that was supposed to hold the Spear of Longinus. Of course, th
at was only a copy—they’d had to send the real one to the moon in ’72.

  Overhead, far overhead, the Holy Spirit in the shape of a stained glass dove descended.

  He walked toward the door, pacing over porphyry circles embedded in the marble, past the lines on the basilica’s floor that marked where other great cathedrals ended: this the limit of Santa Maria del Fiore, that of Notre Dame.

  He stopped, and so did time, at the foot of Michelangelo’s Pietà. Christ died forever in Mary’s lap, and forever lived. With his eyes he drank the folds of her robe, like the folds of water. He lingered on her face, on the Christ’s outstretched arm, the blood. Which of the Madonna’s fingers had been broken by a vandal’s hammer? They had used the dust and shards to make the finger whole again.

  For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered, or come into mind.

  Tourists snapped pictures. He prayed, and thought of Guatemala, and a small church he no longer knew, but which had never left him.

  He stood, and crossed himself, and left into the light.

  • • •

  Halfway from Rome to Florence, Sal’s phone rang. Not the black one in her pocket—her real one.

  She muttered apologies, fished it out.

  “Don’t—” Liam said, but she had already seen the name on the screen.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  The road rumbled beneath.

  “Yes. We, um, we saw what happened in London. Are you guys okay?”

  A beat. A breath.

  “Yes. I know, it’s weird that the woman they’re talking about on TV has my name. I—” She waved off Liam’s glare. “Sorry, Mom. I—you know, I’m headed out of Rome, so I’m going to have to change this number. I’ll give you a call when I have a new one.” The van bounced over a pothole. “No,” she said, “I’m not working there anymore. Different job, now.” She breathed out. This was the part she was dreading. “Perry left Rome. I’m going to find him. We’ll fix everything. And then I’ll bring him home.”

  “Sal,” Liam said. “They can track us.”