The Book of Blood and Shadow

by Robin Wasserman

  “How long do we wait?” Adriane said.

  I shrugged.

  “What do you think he’s doing in there?” she said.

  “Do you care?”

  “No.”

  11

  Eventually.

  “Eli?”

  I knocked harder. “Eli?” No answer.

  No sounds at all from behind the door.

  I turned to Adriane. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’m still wishing we had a gun.”

  “I’m going in,” I said.

  She spread her arms wide: Be my guest. Then she pulled out a car key that fit a Mercedes parked four thousand miles away, gripping the jagged silver like it was the world’s smallest knife.

  “Seriously?”

  “Told you that self-defense class would come in handy one day.”

  “Actually, you told me the only hard part was pretending to pay attention while you drooled over Coach Gorgeous.”

  “You know I’ve always been good at role-play.” She raised the key. “Just remember: Aim for the soft tissue. Or the balls.” She sang tunelessly, “ ‘Eyes, throat, nose, groin, that’s the way you make ’em scream.’ Coach Gorgeous wasn’t great with rhymes.”

  I opened the door.

  The chair was empty. The window was broken. Eli lay on his stomach, face turned toward us, eyes closed. Forehead bloody.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  Adriane dropped to his side, and a beat later, I followed her, lips forming the word please even as I hated myself for thinking it, because if wishes or prayers or whatever hadn’t saved Max, or Chris, or Andy, I didn’t want them saving him. And yet: Please.

  “Pulse,” Adriane said, fingers at his throat.

  We turned him over, watching his chest rise and fall. Adriane called out his name, then slapped him.

  “Adriane! Don’t.”

  She slapped him again. Nothing. “You want to carry him out? Or leave him here? Or maybe just hang around until our new friend shows up with reinforcements?”

  “Eli!” I shouted. “Wake up!”

  His lids fluttered, dropping shut again for a moment, then opening to reveal dazed saucer eyes. He blinked slowly, twice, and groaned. “He got away.”

  “He hasn’t lost his grasp on the obvious,” Adriane said. “That’s got to be a good sign.”

  “Can you stand?” I took his arm. He let me help him into a sitting position.

  “He hit me with something.” Eli rubbed the drying blood on his forehead. “I’m okay. Just”—he tried climbing to his feet, then thought better of it—“give me a minute.”

  “We may not have a minute,” I said. “They know we’re here—”

  “How did he get free?” Adriane asked.

  “I don’t … He just did,” Eli said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Let him rest for a second,” I told her.

  “It doesn’t seem a little strange to you?” she said. “The guy’s about to spill his guts, Eli kicks us out of the room, and next thing you know, he’s gone?”

  “Right. I untied him, threw him out the window, then whacked myself in the head. Does that sound about right?”

  “For all I know, you sliced and diced him and stuffed him in the closet.”

  Eli looked around pointedly at the four bare walls and distinct lack of hiding places.

  “Or, fine. Under the bed. Out the window. Wherever. Makes as much sense as him magically untying himself.”

  Eli stood. “I’m okay now. Let’s get out of here.”

  Adriane didn’t argue. In fact, she didn’t say anything as we raced down to the street and wound a convoluted route through Prague, returning to the hostel only after we were sure no one had followed us.

  “We’re going to our room now,” Adriane told him when we made it back to what now passed for home. “And we’re locking ourselves in until we figure out what to do next. Don’t call us, we’ll call you, and all that. Come on, Nora.”

  “I’m on your side,” he said. “You know that. Nora, you know that.”

  “We made a mistake,” I said. “It was a stupid plan.”

  “So we make another one.”

  “No, we make another one,” Adriane said. “When we need you, we’ll let you know.” She turned and started for the dingy staircase, apparently assuming I would follow her.

  “Nora—” With the black eye and dented forehead, he looked sweetly pathetic, like a cartoon puppy with a torn ear. I hesitated. Adriane didn’t know everything.

  But then, neither did I. And whose fault was that?

  “You should rest,” I told him. “Then we’ll talk.”

  “Just take this,” he said, and pulled a creased page out of his pocket. “I found it in the library. Before the guy showed up.”

  “What is it?”

  “Proof I’m trying to help you,” he said.

  I accepted the offering but didn’t bother to look at it. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  “About what?”

  “What happened in that room. Or anything … about anything. About you. You want to prove something to me, try starting with some answers.”

  His back straightened. “You’re right. I should get some rest.”

  “Right.”

  “I am trying,” he said.

  “Try harder.”

  12

  Don’t think about Max.

  Don’t think about Max.

  Don’t think about Max.

  I was trying, too.

  13

  Latin had always made sense when nothing else did. That was the point of it, for me. Language as mathematical equation, slotting one word in for another, shifting positions, adding, subtracting, substituting, applying one rigorous rule after another, until eventually, from the jumble of letters, a single, true meaning emerged. One meaning, hidden beneath all the mistakes and wrong turns. One puzzle, one solution. Latin was a question that supplied its own answer.

  “Why are you even bothering?” Adriane asked, flopped on the bed, eyes closed against a rising sun.

  “Because it could help.”

  She sighed.

  “They wanted it; we have it. That’s got to matter.”

  “No, Nora. It doesn’t.”

  I ignored her and turned back to the page Eli had given me, the end of Elizabeth’s story, its jagged edge a perfect fit with the torn page we’d found at Strahov.

  The torn page Eli had found, or claimed he had. But if he’d stolen the rest himself, why? And why give it back to me now? If he was only pretending to help us, why wasn’t he doing a better job of it?

  I stopped thinking about that and focused on the words. Mihi dixit se fecisse pecuniae causa.

  It was the money, he told me. It allowed him to imagine a future, before he had anyone with whom to imagine it.

  But it was not just the money.

  It was no accident, he said, that Václav had come to him. Václav had known Thomas as a child, not well, but well enough. Václav had seen Thomas’s family consigned to poverty because his ancestors had been foolish enough to stand against the Empire, and against the Church. Like Václav, Thomas came from a once-distinguished line that had nearly been extinguished at the hands of the Hapsburgs, only because they longed for a closer relationship with their Lord, closer than the Church could allow.

  Václav asked him to consider what would happen if the Hapsburg Emperor, secular leader of the Church, gained the full powers of divinity. Ruled with the power of God, rather than only His divine imprimatur.

  —He asked me to save my people, and save myself.

  And he paid you, I said.

  —And he paid me.

  All Thomas needed do was report on my actions, a simple request before he knew me. Once he did know me, once we became something to each other, he could do nothing. Václav was dangerous, not just to Thomas, but to me.

  So he continued to spy.

  —I knew no other way. If I had told you the trut
h …

  He had been afraid, I knew, but not of Václav. He feared me, and what I would do, if he confessed. What we would both lose.

  Did you know what was going to happen tonight, I asked him, what they would demand of me?

  —I know Václav believes he needs you. He believes that the Lumen Dei must be handed over willingly. By you.

  Thomas grasped my hands and promised to save me, to finish this, to redeem himself.

  —No.

  They had given me a choice, these cowards who hid their faces. I would not turn from that. I would destroy the Lumen Dei, or I would join Groot in presenting it to the Emperor, or I would spirit it away and deliver it to Václav, reaping my own reward. None of these choices could guarantee my life, but any of them would be mine. Ours, Thomas corrected me, swearing he would stand by me.

  —No. Mine.

  I left him there, in the dark of the church, penitent. I left him behind, and when I saw him again, it was too late.

  For two days, I was tortured by the choice that lay before me and the betrayal that lay behind. Dearest brother, how many times I wished you could guide my hand. But the choice was mine alone and, however poorly, I made it.

  Groot rejoiced at the arrival of Kepler’s calculations, and he proudly showed me the device he had constructed in my absence. The Lumen Dei was as glorious as promised, and with Kepler’s work in hand, Groot and the Emperor could easily align it with the heavens and entreat the Lord.

  I dared not go home, lest the angry priest return. I dared not venture into the city, lest Václav’s men grow impatient. I dared not face Thomas. I stayed in Groot’s laboratory, and there I slept, on a bed of straw and feathers, pretending, when I crossed paths with Václav, that I did not know his secret, nor he mine. I dared only ask God for guidance, but, as ever, received only silence in return.

  Perhaps this is why I chose as I did. Perhaps I had grown impatient waiting for Him to answer. The Lumen Dei needed to be given willingly, Thomas had said, and that was how I gave it. It was neither for silver nor to spare my life that I brought the Lumen Dei to the edge of the city that night and gave our Father’s legacy away. If left with Groot, the device was destined for the Emperor, and forgive me, but I could not grant such a gift to our Father’s murderer. I could not give Rudolf and his heir power over this world and the next, any more than I could consign the Continent to a millennium of Hapsburg rule.

  I believed I was doing right. I could not know what was to happen.

  This is what I tell myself, in those sleepless hours before dawn. I could not have known.

  But I know this. Of all my regrets—and if measured by tears, there are enough of these to flood the river—I regret most that I left Thomas behind that day without telling him the truth. I regret that the last words I would ever say to him were harsh, and he will never know that I forgave him as soon as the confession escaped his lips. That I had no other choice.

  She had forgiven him. Inexplicably, impossibly, she had forgiven him. I was disgusted. And maybe, against my better judgment and two decades of feminist rearing, a little ashamed, because I couldn’t have done it. She loved him enough to forgive him, no matter what he had done. And then lost him anyway.

  She was probably better off.

  I could steal from Groot, my brother, but I cannot steal from you. This is the only reason I have not dashed the Lumen Dei to pieces, but dismantled it with care, and led you down this dangerous path. You now hold Kepler’s calculations, and all that is left for you is to build the spine of the device, the brass and wood guts of the machine that can do no more harm to me but untold amounts to you and your world. We both know how easy it is to ignore a warning. I have learned that it is also foolish. But perhaps it is foolish to issue so many, while at the same time giving you all you need to go forward.

  So few things in this world are eternal, but it appears my foolishness numbers among them.

  Your path ends here—

  The rest was in English.

  BE IT BUT GREEN EVIL, THE MYTH TRODS.

  LURE A RARE SKY.

  HOW, FATHER? VISIT. WIN.

  MOUTH WELT, BE THORN.

  I knew Elizabeth well enough by now to know her poetry was never just poetry. Especially when it was about as poetical as a kindergartner’s crayoned Mother’s Day card. I played with the meaningless words, trying out different substitution algorithms, searching the rest of the letter for a number, a clue, something to yield the answer. There was nothing.

  We were so close. One more piece, that was all the Hledači needed to fulfill four centuries of dreaming, and this was the key to stopping them. Elizabeth hadn’t convinced me that the Lumen Dei was worth killing for, or that it would be any more dangerous in the hands of the Hledači than it would be in a landfill, so maybe there was no reason to care. But I did. It was nearly the only thing I cared about anymore—it was the only thing left. They’d taken Chris away from me; they’d taken Max. They would not take Elizabeth, or her legacy. Whether the Lumen Dei was worth the world or just worthless, they would not have it.

  Not after what they’d done.

  I flipped through the letter again. But maybe the answer wasn’t there. Maybe it was in the nonsense words themselves. Maybe it was just that simple.

  An anagram, a child’s game. My father had liked to play with them, back when he played. Every sentence is a liar, he used to say. At least anagrams are up front about it.

  BE IT BUT GREEN EVIL, THE MYTH TRODS.

  LURE A RARE SKY.

  HOW, FATHER? VISIT. WIN.

  MOUTH WELT, BE THORN.

  There were enough letters for an eternity of false starts. Ebbed Eighteen Thirty Volt Strum … A Leakier Sun Worry … A Vise Forthwith … Trouble Tenth Whom.

  Every line had a ridiculous number of permutations. But I had endless patience and an emptiness to fill, and every once in a while, I hit on a word that sounded right. It sounded like Elizabeth.

  Birthright. Knew. Love. I let instinct guide me. It shouldn’t have worked. But:

  YOUR BIRTHRIGHT SLUMBERS BENEATH THE DOVE,

  WHERE I FIRST KNEW TRULY WHAT IT MEANT TO LOVE.

  Their first kiss, I thought. On a stone tower that had fallen centuries ago.

  Or their first fade to black, in a grassy field somewhere in the empty map between Prague and Graz.

  The first place he took her hand, the first place she looked into his eyes, the first place he held her and tilted his forehead to hers, his gaze fixed on her lips, and whispered, because it was only for them, “I love you.”

  Max.

  Adriane had scrunched up his jacket, the one he’d draped over her shoulders on that last night, and tucked it under her head. His jacket, under her head, like it was a pillow, like it was nothing. I didn’t say anything. It probably smelled like her now, anyway.

  She deserved to know.

  “Adriane …”

  Her eyes were closed, but she was awake. We’d shared too many sleepovers for me not to know the tells.

  “It’s naptime,” she said, without opening her eyes, a tinge of sleep in her voice.

  “I need to—”

  “What?”

  Tell you something.

  “Ask you something.”

  I stopped. We both waited. Finally, “What?”

  “When did you know you were in love?” I asked.

  She stretched, catlike, angling her body toward the dim sunlight. A faint smile crept across her face. Maybe she had been asleep after all, because when she spoke, it sounded almost like she was describing a dream. “It was at the Spot,” she said. It was the name we’d given to the narrow spit of land that stretched toward the center of the Chapman Reservoir. Shaded by sugar maples, bordered by gently lapping blue, reachable only by a twenty-minute hike from the road and discovered only by mistake, it was the perfect spot for summer swimming, fall picnics, and breezy nights beneath a blanket, under the stars. The kind of spot that makes you feel like you’re in an impossibly bori
ng movie about impossibly true love. It was our spot, the four of us, though Max and I had often snuck off there on our own. Apparently we weren’t the only ones. “We weren’t even doing anything. Just lying there. He’d made this cheesy crown for me out of weeds, and I was afraid I had bugs in my hair, but other than that, it was perfect. That’s when I knew.”

  “Really? Not until senior year?” We hadn’t found the Spot until a few weeks before school started—almost two years after she and Chris had started dating.

  She opened her eyes and sat up. “No, of course not. Way before that.”

  “But then how was it at the Spot?”

  “Oh. Right.” She paused. “I hate to tell you this, but … I’ve known about that place forever.”

  I shook my head. “We found it together. That day when we were lost—”

  “That’s what you wanted to think, because it made a good story. So we let you.”

  “What? Why would you lie about that?”

  She shrugged. “Why would I lie about this?”

  “Fine. You lied. Everyone does, right? Forget it.”

  “Come on, don’t be mad.” It was her whiny, kidlike voice, the who, me? of sloughed-off responsibilities and evaded blame. “You have to forgive me; I’m your best friend.” When it was convenient. “It’s in the rule book.”

  “I forgive you,” I said mechanically, my mind somewhere else. I’d read Elizabeth’s bloodstained letter so many times I almost had it memorized, especially the last line: I can forgive you almost anything, my brother. But I cannot forgive this.

  She couldn’t forgive him leaving her behind; you could never love anyone enough for that. But anything else, she could forgive, because she loved him—as she had loved Thomas, no matter what.

  I forgave him as soon as the confession escaped his lips.

  When she knew truly what it meant to love?

  That couldn’t be right. Some things had to be unforgivable, no matter what. Some things, when broken, stayed that way.

  But it didn’t matter what I thought. This was Elizabeth’s game. And Elizabeth had believed in forgiveness.