by A J Hackwith
“Quite a while. But when I did, you would still end up in the Library with much to answer for. Unless you think I’ll never make it back because Heaven’s the surer bet in this little race. Is that your wager?”
His eyes were grass green, sunny and sharp, as he studied her. She thought for a moment he was going to take that bet and run. But the smile on his lips faded and he glanced down with an awkward cough. Claire thought she saw color drift across his cheeks as Hero grunted, “I was never a good gambler.”
“I knew you were a clever one.” Claire let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding and made sure that Hero walked in front of her.
He made an offended sound. “I just find Heaven’s agents interminably dull.”
“Well, long as you quit trying to hare off, I’ll endeavor not to bore you.”
“Now, that you’ll never do.” Hero stuffed his hands in his pockets as they headed back up the street.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
WHEN THEY RETURNED TO the alley to retrieve Leto, Andras was fussing at the boy’s waterlogged curls.
“That was fast,” Hero grumbled.
“Walter isn’t the only one who deals with artifacts like ghostlights. You’re easy to find.” Andras shrugged.
“Did the angels give you any difficulties?” Claire looked over the demon carefully for any signs of abuse.
“Child’s play. I left when the tall one threw a tantrum. All’s well in Hell, by the way.”
“What is this?” Hero made an injured sound that drew her attention. He dangled a large handgun pinched between two fingers. His lip curled like he smelled a dead animal.
“It’s called a pistol, Hero. Your sword would have been a little obvious in streets filled with cell phones. The sword changed to fit, like our ghostlights.” Claire rolled her eyes. “Or do you need me to show you how to use it? It’s like a sword. Just aim the pointy end and—”
“I know how to use a gun,” Hero said archly, sniffing one more time to ensure the full measure of his disgust was felt. He checked the weapon over with surprising dexterity, then stowed it in his coat pocket. “The muse foisted all sorts of combat manuals on me for instruction before we left. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t an insulting choice. Guns are all noise and bluster. Nothing intelligent about their use.”
“You’ll get along fine with it, then,” Andras said.
“Oh! A sarcastic demon. How original!”
“Uh, did mine change too?” Leto came up with a familiar blue lighter and held it up to the sun. It still glowed faintly, but it was markedly dimmer.
The pool of light had dimmed to a sliver of a thumbnail, sending a shiver across Claire’s shoulders. Measuring ghostlights was imprecise, but Claire had never been out long enough for it to matter. Usually, when out on an errand, she took note of when she left Walter’s office and entered Earth. But between trips to and from Hell, plus the hours spent in Valhalla, time had gotten fuzzy. Claire couldn’t do more than vaguely guess how much longer they had.
“It’s fine,” Claire said, voice grim. “Let us proceed, if we’re all done complaining?”
Claire motioned to the street. Leto exchanged a humiliated look with Hero but declined to say anything about his detour. Claire trusted they’d work it out themselves. She focused on the codex’s song, the snip of card pinched between her fingers in her pocket, and began guiding them up this alley, then down another. They finally paused outside what appeared to be an apex of the tourist district. From a map on the wall, Leto identified where they were. “Valletta. That’s in Malta?”
“Yes. The island was a British trading port in my day,” Claire said.
“It appears to now be a stronghold of old men with poor taste in footwear.” Andras frowned as a portly gentleman trundled by, flip-flops smacking against the ancient stone streets.
“Regardless . . .” Claire leaned against the wall. “The codex pages aren’t here.”
“I thought the point of this expedition was to locate the thing?” Andras asked.
“I can.” Claire’s hand waved vaguely to the northeast, where past the city walls they could see cobblestones falling away to rolling, dry countryside. “It’s that way, but we can’t exactly set out cross-country without knowing how far. I still can’t understand why the path couldn’t get us closer.”
Leto’s attention had turned back to the tourist board. A map was printed in bright colors, dotted regularly with saccharine-cute icons of desirable landmarks for tourists. His fingers drifted away from the “You Are Here” mark. “Could it be Mdina?”
Claire squinted over his shoulder. “Possibly. Or it could be anywhere in the countryside. Impossible to say without getting closer.”
“There’s a tour bus that goes that way.” Leto pointed to a thick blue line.
Claire cast a wary glance at the stable of buses that roosted along the street farther down and spared an aggrieved thought for her missing bag. “As much as you’d like to play tourist, Leto, you forget—I don’t have my books anymore to fake a fare or spin a story.”
Sure enough, a steady line of dawdling tourists was purchasing paper stubs, which they handed to the bus attendant as they got on. Claire could feel Leto’s mind turning as he searched over the crowds before stopping. “Maybe we still have something. Ma’am, may I borrow Hero?”
“Borrow me?” Hero echoed.
“Not all of you.” Leto gave him a positively cheeky grin and tugged him by one arm with growing confidence. “Just need your smile.”
21
LETO
There are cracks in the world. It’s how artifacts fall through to the Arcane Wing. It’s how muses slip through on strains of half-remembered songs. The world is permeable, and so is the mind.
There are small cracks in the world, and there are large ones. I hope you found one to hide you, B. To hide you completely.
I never want to see you again.
Librarian Claire Hadley, 1989 CE
“THAT WAS HUMILIATING,” HERO muttered.
“Look at it this way—you made her day.” Leto swayed with the rock of the bus and felt a grin threatening to escape. It felt strange, made his cheeks hurt. He couldn’t remember, of course, but it felt like something he hadn’t done for a while. A buoyant feeling tugged up inside him, smothering the other stuff—the demon stuff—for a moment. It had helped him start to remember things, human things. Like teenage girls and the internet.
Which was handy in forcing a flustered Hero to sweet-talk the ticket vendor. He’d helped Claire, and more important, it was fun.
Leto was having fun. He was pretty sure that wasn’t something demons were allowed to do. It was a satisfying kind of scandal.
“She propositioned me!” Hero wailed. “As if I would like to go for a tumble like some cheap—”
“She asked if you were on Tumblr. You should take it as a compliment; girls never want to share their Tumblrs with guys. Jeez, relax.” Leto paused with a thought. “Maybe when we get back to the Library, we should find you guys some unwritten books on the internet. There’s got to be something Doctorow didn’t get around to, maybe. Wait—does the Library even get Wi-Fi?”
He turned to Claire for an answer, but the librarian was hunched in her seat, staring out the window at the hard clay furrows that rushed by. Leto wasn’t precisely sure where Malta even was, besides on Earth, but it was sweltering. And that said a lot, since he’d come from Hell. Heat split the roadway, and the tour bus’s sad excuse for shocks transmitted every pothole into a teeth-shattering bass line. Leto, and everyone else on the bus, clung to his seat for dear life.
Everyone except Claire. The “song” she was tracking appeared to be giving her trouble. She swayed with the bus, eyes closed and lips pressed in concentration. After she nearly toppled for the third turn in a row, Hero muttered something sharp unde
r his breath. He shoved her into a free seat, neatly ignoring the death glare Claire pinned on him.
They passed more hard-baked fields, dusty war memorials, artist enclaves, before finally curling around a hill toward an ancient walled city. Claire let out a short breath and her eyes flew open again. “Here.”
Andras squinted at the sign lit up over the driver’s head. “Mdina, just as the stray guessed. You’re certain?”
“The stray has a name, you know,” Leto said.
Claire nodded as her eyes roamed out the window, unfocused. “It’s here.”
They piled out of the bus with the rest of the tourists. They were in a flat green park that filled the space between a modern—if something built within the last three hundred years could be called modern—suburb of town houses and the thick, ancient walls of the city. As on every tourist stop, they had to fend off numerous offers of special tours and “today only” deals from street peddlers as they wound their way through. A modern city had sprung up around the old establishment, brightly colored plastic and metal around a dusty stone center.
Leto consulted the brochure the tour guide had passed out. “It’s called the Silent City. It was entirely walled in to protect from raiders and . . . Huh, think that was a moat once?”
He leaned over a low stone railing to gawk at a deep ravine of green that ran around the base of the walls before Hero hauled him back by his collar. “I could throw you down there to check it out.”
Leto grinned. “Heights make you nervous, Hero?”
“Of course not. Now stop leaning over the gaping, death-inducing abyss.” Hero lied elegantly; Leto had to give him that.
A squat stone bridge spanned the former moat and led into the city. With Andras at the midway point, Claire stood frowning at the thick sand-colored walls. “This is problematic.”
“We don’t have time for problems, pup,” Andras said.
“We don’t have time for a great many things that we’ve been forced to contend with,” Claire said peevishly with a glare at Hero that Leto was glad not to be the recipient of. “It’s not— It’s just odd. I can still hear it. The codex pages are somewhere here in the city. But it’s all muddled, muted. Gone indistinct.”
“Maybe it was called the Silent City for a reason?” Leto offered.
“Nonsense.” Claire made an involuntary grab for where her shoulder bag should have been. She stuttered midmovement, appearing to remember its absence, and sighed. “This is ridiculous—no one could do this without proper equipment. I should have never—”
“Might I be of assistance, madam?”
Leto startled at the voice. A small olive-skinned man appeared at Claire’s elbow, having apparently wandered up from the wide entrance to Mdina. As if he’d been waiting for them.
That was impossible, of course. He didn’t seem suspicious. He looked like most of the locals, wearing a faded tee and jeans, which were a friendly sort of juxtaposition with the ancient bridge he leaned on. He had an open face, the kind that would have made Leto comfortable asking him for directions, or help with homework.
Huh. Homework. That was another thing he’d forgotten.
“Have you come to see our beautiful and fabled city?” the man asked, ducking his shoulders just so.
Claire made to dismiss him as she had every vendor she’d encountered. “No, thank you. We’re not—”
“Scholars, yes? You have the look about you,” the man interrupted. He tilted his head and something knowing colored his next words. “Can I suggest a tour of antiquities?”
Andras turned. “What makes you say that?”
“No offense, sir. No offense.” The small man wiped a baseball cap off his head and bowed. “They instructed me to wait here for visiting scholars. You seem to fit the description my employer gave.”
Claire narrowed her eyes. “And who is your employer?”
“Ms. McAllister, ma’am,” the man puffed up. “Best antiquarian in the country. From England, she is. Deals in the rarest books and antiquities that come through from east, west, anywhere.”
“Anywhere.” Claire pressed her lips together in the kind of suspicious look she gave Hero regularly. “What kind of books, exactly?”
“Ms. McAllister tends to a very rare collection. One-of-a-kind artifacts of the written word.”
Oh. That was handy. Leto’s hopes rose, but Claire exchanged a look with Andras. “We don’t have any means to pay.”
“Not a difficulty, ma’am. Ms. McAllister believes in the free trade of information for all and—”
“This is entirely suspect,” Hero hissed under his breath.
Andras shrugged. “What’s the risk? They’re merely human. You could take a fragile thing like him, couldn’t you, Hero?”
Hero at least knew enough to ignore Andras’s prodding. Leto chewed on his lip. They were right; it was probably suspicious, but it wasn’t as if luck hadn’t been screwing them over every which way up until now. Maybe they were due some good luck. Seemed only fair, to Leto.
“It’s not as if we have many other options, considering,” Claire said, evidently coming to a similar conclusion. “All right, sir. I would like to speak to this Ms. McAllister about her collection. If you’ll just direct us . . . ?”
“Oh, ma’am. One such as myself would never allow a lady to wander the city without an escort.”
Leto dearly wanted to see Claire put the man straight on what he would or would not allow a lady like Claire to do. But before that could happen, he’d taken her by the elbow and guided her over to a strange, old-timey carriage drawn by a single horse. He kicked out a small step for the carriage and executed a deep bow.
Hero and Andras seemed reluctant to follow, so Leto gave in to temptation and walked up to the carriage and hesitantly petted the horse. Its hair was delightfully sleek under his palm, and Leto suspected he’d never been this close to a live horse before. He must have grown up in a city, then? He filed that information away for later.
After a moment, he turned away and found Claire shaking her head at him with weary amusement. Andras and Hero had evidently overcome their objections and boarded the carriage already. Leto sheepishly climbed into the middle seat.
With all aboard, the guide snapped into action. He clipped a flimsy velvet rope over the doors, all the while muttering courtesies that sounded like a song: “You’re welcome and honored guests to Mdina. The Silent City welcomes you.” Over and over. Leto supposed it was the kind of act that tourists paid extra for, though he didn’t see the point of it. A little creepy, really. They clattered over the bridge toward the great entrance to the walled city.
A massive stone seal sat at the top of the giant arch. It was surrounded by scrollwork and bore circles and crosses, each slashed through with negative space, upon its crest. Leto thought the shadows it cast looked jagged upon the scrollwork, like daggers spearing the pages. A chill raced up his back as they passed under it, and Leto suppressed a shudder. Tourists passed unawares, streaming into and out of the city like a gentle tide.
The gate spilled out onto a courtyard, hemmed with stone buildings nearly as tall as the walls and just as old. Nothing was new here. Half a dozen alleyways spindled out from the courtyard, though visitors mostly contented themselves to mill quietly between shops.
It was eerily quiet; the Silent City had earned its name. There was a hush that settled heavily over the city the moment they passed under the arch. Even the hub of vendors and buses outside failed to leak in; all sound was buffered out by the looming, thick stone walls.
Leto was about to say something—anything—to break the silence when Claire twitched beside him. She looked sightlessly toward the south walls as the carriage took them deeper into the hive of stone buildings. Her hand fidgeted with the pocket that held the calling card scrap. “It’s here.”
“The codex?” Andras asked. He sniffed. �
��If we can hear it again, let’s dump the guide. He is obviously up to something.”
“Exactly what I said five minutes ago,” Hero said.
“No, he’s still leading us in the right direction.” Claire lowered her voice. “As long as he’s taking us toward it, we’ll tolerate whatever foolishness he’s about. It may be this McAllister is in possession of the codex pages.”
“And what part of that doesn’t scream ‘terrible trap’?”
Claire ceded that point. “You’re awfully cautious for a hero sometimes.”
“The living ones usually are.”
Their guide led them down a series of progressively smaller lanes that offered little shade. The sun had reached high in the sky and was unflinching. Andras picked at his increasingly damp shirt with a grimace. “Is Earth always this . . . unpleasant?”
“You’ve never been above?” Claire sounded surprised.
Andras’s look turned sour. “Rarely and only when I can’t help it. Not during daylight. Subject to dreadful summonings back in the day, before I rose to power. Artifacts usually come to me agreeably enough, not the other way around.”
“That must be nice,” Claire said.
“Heard that,” Hero said.
They came to a stop in front of a narrow structure. It was not so much a storefront as a warren of windows and balconies built into the surface of the outer wall itself. Andras craned his neck up and shook his head. “Strange place for a book collector.”
“Ms. McAllister will be waiting for you in her study.” Their guide reached a small door and bowed low enough for his hat to practically scrape the sidewalk. “My colleague inside will show you up.”
Hero tilted his head. “You’re not seeing us in?”
“Alas, I am not. This one must see to new arrivals at the gates. Please to have a pleasant day, my friends.”
The strange little man swept back a step and hurried down the street. They watched him disappear around the corner before they turned to stare at the door ajar before them. Hero gave a weighty look to Claire, but she held up a flat palm.