Paper & Blood

by Kevin Hearne

  Paper & Blood is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Kevin Hearne

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Circle colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hearne, Kevin, author.

  Title: Paper & blood / Kevin Hearne.

  Other titles: Paper and blood

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Del Rey, [2021] | Series: Ink & Sigil ; book 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020047856 (print) | LCCN 2020047857 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984821287 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984821294 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3608.E264 P37 2021 (print) | LCC PS3608.E264 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020047856

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020047857

  Ebook ISBN 9781984821294

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook

  Title page: antique pen: iStock/InaSchönrock; Flourish: iStock/Terriana; Pen and ink pot icon within the text: iStock/kite-kit

  Cover design and illustration: Inkymole/Sarah J. Coleman

  Art direction: David G. Stevenson

  ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  The Story So Far

  Chapter 1: A Call from the Land Down Under

  Chapter 2: Postponing Puissance

  Chapter 3: Flat Whites

  Chapter 4: The Gallus Wizard Van

  Chapter 5: The Hitchhiker

  Interlude: Papermaking

  Chapter 6: The Dead Drop

  Chapter 7: Way Too Many Legs

  Chapter 8: The Case of the Abandoned Cheese

  Chapter 9: A Campfire Story

  Chapter 10: Two in the Bush

  Chapter 11: The Calling of a Crow

  Interlude: The Chooser of the Slain

  Chapter 12: The Mother of Devils

  Chapter 13: The Rite of Passage

  Chapter 14: Roxanne

  Chapter 15: Wherein the Lost Are Found

  Chapter 16: The Present Is Always a Cusp

  Interlude: Paper Is a Phoenix

  Chapter 17: Lend Me Your Ears

  Chapter 18: Yakity-Yak

  Chapter 19: The Good Dug’s Story

  Chapter 20: The Alabama Troll Slayer

  Chapter 21: It’s a Trap

  Interlude: The Stain of Blood

  Chapter 22: Hammers Versus Lava

  Chapter 23: Jailbreak

  Chapter 24: The Oilliphéist

  Chapter 25: Letting It Go

  Chapter 26: A Fresh Start for an Old Goddess

  Epilogue: The Necro Crypt

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Kevin Hearne

  About the Author

  Since Al MacBharrais (pronounced as mac VARE ish) and his companions are Glaswegians and have a particular way of speaking, I’ve provided some guidance here as to how their speech should be pronounced, in case you want it. I haven’t tried to reproduce the Glaswegian Scots dialect in all its glory but rather chosen to focus on a few phrases and words that provide the general flavor of their speech. While it may seem disorienting at first, you do get used to it and will find the rules are pretty consistent. There are, as well, some specific words from the Irish language that probably need some helpful hints, since their pronunciation would not be immediately obvious to English speakers. So here we go:

  Caoránach = CARE ah NACH, an Irish name, where the final syllable would rhyme with rack, except that the ch sound is more like a guttural German thing instead of a hard k sound.

  Oilliphéist = UHL ih FISHT, because that i before the s means it’s a slender vowel and turns the s into a sh sound. First syllable would rhyme with dull. That’s your other Irish word.

  Okay, now to the Scots! First, and most important: Ye is not pronounced as yee, with a long e. No, no, no. Weegies are not speaking lines from old-timey pirate movies. Ye is pronounced like yuh and used in place of you in most cases. Sometimes they will take the trouble to spell and pronounce you the standard way, just for emphasis, but when they are calling someone a name, as in you jammy bastard, the vowel shifts differently to a short a sound, so it would appear as ya jammy bastard. For extra credit, you can combine them in repetitive phrases, as when a parent might call their mildly misbehaving child you rascal you; a Weegie would say ya rascal ye. In the same vein, yer is used in place of your and ye’re in place of you’re, and again, there’s no long e sound in either of those. The long e is next!

  Tae is pronounced like tee and is used in place of to in speech. Happy birthday to you, therefore, would be happy birthday tae ye, pronounced as tee yuh (except, I imagine, when it is sung).

  Gonnay is the same as gonna in English slang, but the vowel at the end is a long a, so the spelling reflects that.

  My is typically pronounced as ma in speech and is therefore spelled that way, as in I’m gonnay call ma mum.

  Head and dead are pronounced like heed and deed but spelled as heid and deid.

  Polis is the police, but it’s pronounced like POH-lis rather than poh-LEASE.

  To avoid using contractions like didn’t and couldn’t, the Scots often use nae in place of the n’t, pronounced like knee. So he didnae run far because he couldnae, since his shoelaces were tied. If the word not is to be used by itself, the t at the end is often dropped, resulting in phrases like I’m no gonnay pay for yer booze, ya wanker. Ye should pay ma bill instead. An interesting exception to the rule is the use of don’t instead of dinnae; while dinnae is commonly used on the east coast of Scotland, it isn’t used at all in Glasgow, and since Al, Buck, and Nadia are using Glasgow Scots, you’ll see don’t throughout. (There are actual linguistic papers that detail the “Glasgow Dinnae Gap” and yes I have read them, because I geek out on linguistics a bit.)

  Ooyah! is an exclamation equivalent to ouch!

  Haud is used sometimes in lieu of hold, and it’s regionally accented, meaning it might be pronounced differently depending on where in Scotland the speaker is from. In this case we’re using the Weegie accent, so haud is going to rhyme with clawed. Overheard in Glasgow: Oi, ye only got two meters in distance pissing? Haud ma beer while I unroll ma firehose.

  A stooshie and a rammy are both Scots terms that refer to a violent confrontation. I take particular joy in these words, since they sound adorable but in practice involve the spilling of blood and the breaking of bones.

  A walloper is something big enough to give you a wallop, but the standard implication is that it might just be a huge dick.

  A pile of jobbies means a whole lot of turds.

  A jammy bastard is a person who’s extremely lucky but with the implication that maybe they don’t deserve to be.

  Gallus is an adjective that means stylis
h and impressive.

  Wot is just a shorter, vowel-shifted what, almost exclusively used by Buck Foi.

  The phrase nae danger can mean either no worries or no chance.

  A few Scots words that need to be broken down:

  Milngavie = mil GUY. Yeah, I know. That looks like three syllables and you’re wondering why the n and the v are silent, so that’s why I provide these guides. I’m told that in the extra-credit Weegie pronunciation, when it’s spoken quickly, the first syllable will vowel-shift to a short u, so it sounds like mul GUY.

  Bardowie = bar DOW ee, rhymes with Howie.

  Weans = waynes. But that there is a noun, my friends, not a verb. In Scotland it’s a contraction for wee ones and therefore refers to children. At one point in Glasgow, there was a baby clothing shop called Weans World.

  And, since this novel is mostly set in Australia, there are a few Aussie slang terms that might need some elucidation: Arvo is a term that means afternoon. Unco is a shortened version of uncoordinated. Flat out means incredibly busy.

  Also, you will find that there is a location named Donnelly Weir and an associated park and picnic area as well, but the road to it is named Donnellys Weir Road and the creek is Donnellys Creek. This is not an inconsistency or an editing error but rather reflective of how those places are spelled in Australia. The inconsistency exists in reality, in other words, and we are being consistent with that.

  * * *

  —

  Hope that all helps! And thanks for reading.

  In Ink & Sigil, we meet Al MacBharrais, an aging sigil agent who would very much like to train an apprentice to take over his territory so that he can retire, but they have a worrisome habit of dying. Six of them, in fact, have died in apparently freak accidents.

  When his seventh apprentice, Gordie, is found dead in his Glasgow flat, Al hurries over and discovers that Gordie had a hobgoblin imprisoned in one of his bedrooms. The hobgoblin informs Al that Gordie had been trafficking Fae, including a pixie, to some unknown buyer, and he escapes shortly afterward. Al finds a note that says the hobgoblin was supposed to be delivered to a ferry at eight p.m., and Al is determined to find out who’s behind it.

  He clears out Gordie’s flat—all the inks and papers, plus his phone and laptop—and takes the cage that the hobgoblin escaped from, leaving the one the pixie was in. He goes to see a hacker, rather outrageously named Saxon Codpiece, to see what info can be gleaned from the laptop. The information gleaned reveals that Gordie had sold six Fae creatures to someone over the past months and been paid a hundred thousand pounds for each.

  When he returns to his printshop, Al is met by the hobgoblin, who asks to be called by the name of Buck Foi. Buck claims he was lured to the plane by a fake offer of contracted service from Clíodhna, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann and Queen of the Bean Sídhe. Al offers him a legitimate contract to be his hobgoblin, and Buck accepts. Together they go to the ferry to meet whoever was supposed to buy him.

  It turns out to be three Fae acting on behalf of the actual buyer, a shadowy figure named Bastille. They kick Al and Buck’s asses for them and they manage to escape, but not without multiple injuries.

  Al informs the four other sigil agents—Eli, Diego, Mei-ling, and Shu-hua—that his apprentice is dead and was trafficking Fae to Bastille. They are mightily annoyed but will look for the dastardly villain. He also informs Coriander, Herald Extraordinary to the goddess Brighid, that someone is trafficking Fae. Coriander tells Al to expect a meeting with Brighid soon.

  When he does meet Brighid, she examines Al’s aura and informs him that he has not one but two curses on his head. The first curse he knew about: If he speaks too long to anyone, they begin to loathe him like no other. He’s lost his family to that curse and, as a result, communicates via a text-to-speech app on his phone with everyone he wants to maintain a relationship with. But the other curse is more subtle and more deadly: It waits for a year or so and then kills whoever’s in his service, in what seems like a fatal accident. Which means his seven dead apprentices were indirectly murdered and he didn’t know. It also might mean that Buck Foi is imperiled by the same curse.

  With the help of a couple of clues and the hacking skills of Saxon Codpiece, Al figures out that Bastille is the alias of Simon Hatcher, a CIA agent who resides in Reston, Virginia. He flies there with Buck, teams up with Eli, and they make the accidental discovery that hobgoblins can get high off salsa.

  When they go to Hatcher’s home to interrogate him, they get confirmation that Clíodhna is indeed behind the trafficking from the Fae planes. And what she wants from Hatcher is a way to make the Fae immune to iron, subjecting them to experiments that alter and corrupt their bodies and minds. Armed with why if not how and where the dirty deeds are being done, Al and Buck return to Scotland and contract a barghest—a ghost hound—to track the pixie that Gordie had sold just prior to Buck. Climbing into the wizard van of his manager and accountant, Nadia, they follow the barghest to a secret underground facility in the hills above a wee village east of Stirling. The pixie, Cowslip, warns them of danger ahead and that the corrupted Fae have all gone quite mad. There, Al, Nadia, and Buck confront the corrupted Fae and ultimately the evil scientist behind it all. Clíodhna, however, is beyond Al’s power to punish, and he must take what comfort he can in foiling her plans and forcing her to cease her trafficking scheme. Cowslip is sent to Taiwan to recover, with the aid of Mei-ling, the sigil agent there.

  To celebrate their victory, Al, Buck, and Nadia hop in the wizard van to steal a barrel of Highlands whisky and bottle it under the label Buck Foi’s Best Boosted Spirits.

  If you have to tell someone they’re going to die soon, it’s a good idea to buy them a whisky first. That way they can drink it or throw it in your face and feel a tiny bit better either way. It’s only polite.

  Buck Foi thought about throwing his dram at me—his hand drew back, ready to strike—but he reconsidered and tossed it down his throat instead. It was getting on toward bedtime on a Sunday night. It might help him to sleep.

  “How long have ye known this was gonnay happen?” the hobgoblin demanded. He had a new waistcoat on, a subtle black-on-black pattern that amused me. He would never admit it, but I think he was either trying to impress my manager, Nadia, or else he was impressed by her and emulating her fashion philosophy that all colors were excellent so long as they were black. The stated reason for wearing it, however, was that he needed to wear something appropriate to the Glasgow Necropolis, since we had gone there for a nice gothic sulk that morning while the organ droned in the nearby cathedral. It was a thirty-seven-acre city of the dead set upon a hill, populated by solemn mausoleums and weathered markers commemorating the lives of Victorian well-to-dos, and the gravitas it exuded did tend to make one feel that at least a nod to formality was required. Without walking it myself, I taught him the winding steps of the Old Way hidden in the grass between the graves, which would let him go to Tír na nÓg if he ever found it necessary. He already knew the steps to the Old Way in Kelvingrove but not to this one or the one in Virginia Court.

  I replied to him via my text-to-speech app—the good one on my laptop, which at least sounded Scottish, albeit from Edinburgh instead of Glasgow. [Brighid told me about the curse shortly after you signed up to be in my service. We had more pressing matters to attend to at the time—a goddess trying to kill us and an utterly mad man-eating leprechaun and all that—so I waited just a wee bit.]

  The hobgoblin teleported himself up to the kitchen island next to my laptop and waggled a pink finger in my face. He was only about two feet tall, so he liked to stand on the counter and look down at me instead of up when he had an important point to make. “That was a couple of months ago, ol’ man!”

  [Aye, but I also wanted you to enjoy bottling and distributing Buck Foi’s Best Boosted Spirits. A nice soft time, a short span of happiness to enjoy and remember before I laid any
more stress on you. Wasn’t that nice, giving away all that whisky to the Fae Court?]

  “Aye, it was a good laugh.” His expression relaxed for a moment, recalling it. Two hundred bottles of ten-year-old whisky made from an honestly stolen barrel from the Highlands, given for free to the faeries and the Tuatha Dé Danann themselves. “Did ye know, MacBharrais, they composed songs in my honor on the spot? I mean, half of it was howled, because ma whisky kicked off an epic drunken orgy, but still: They sang me songs. I’m no a culture hero yet, ye know, not like Holga Thunderpoot, but it was quality all the same, and I think I have a legitimate shot at achieving that rare status someday if only I don’t die first.” He practically shouted the last two words, and I received a few wayward flecks of manic spittle. I cringed a little more than I might have a few years ago; echoes of the coronavirus pandemic bore heavily on everyone’s psyche, though hobgoblins were not known to transmit viruses to humans.

  [I’d like you to live to achieve that status, believe me. Not just because I care about you, though I do. If I can get rid of these curses, I can talk without this app. I’ll be able to speak with people again for more than a few days or weeks without causing them to hate me. I’ll get my family back. And I can finally train an apprentice to replace me so I can retire. An apprentice that won’t die of a sudden accident, like you’re apparently fated to do.]

  “Come on, now. There has tae be a way around this, right?”

  [Several ways, yes.]

  “How many is several, again?”

  [More than two, I think, but less than a half dozen.]