The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

by Garth Nix

  “Bit of Cockney’s good for a massive tip from the Americans,” said Audrey. “You wouldn’t Adam and Eve it, how they part with the bees and honey—”

  She stopped, chuckling, as a unanimous groan filled the car.

  “I don’t know how you make time to take normal passengers,” said Vivien. “Or find the gall. What’ll you do if Merrihew finds out?”

  “Split the takings,” said Audrey promptly. “Merrihew’s a pirate at heart. Long as I don’t mess up anything operational, of course. Which I’d never do.”

  Susan was digesting the information about the booksellers’ parents, but also what the Grandmother had said. She had noticed Vivien didn’t want to talk about that, or about her mother, which meant Susan’s parentage overall. At least not in the Old Bookshop, and not in the taxi. Which suggested she didn’t want Audrey or any other booksellers to know.

  “So, talking about fathers—” she started, a little mischievously. As she expected, Vivien interrupted her immediately.

  “Let’s not have lunch at the Northumberland,” she said. “The food is generally pretty bad. There’s a quiet pub I know nearby—”

  “I thought you were broke,” said Merlin.

  “I am,” said Vivien indignantly. “You can pay.”

  “We can get some burgers sent to my room,” said Merlin. “Won’t have to settle till the end of the month.”

  “I’ll pay, provided no one goes overboard,” said Susan. “I got paid yesterday.”

  “Oh good,” said Merlin, while Vivien said, “You will not! Merlin has money, but he doesn’t want to spend it.”

  “Anyway, I wanted to ask about your father,” said Susan as Merlin muttered something about sisters, but did not deny that he might, in fact, have some money. “Who is he?”

  “He’s an archaeologist. Met Mum on a dig where . . . things went wrong . . . she saved his life, they fell in love. But it’s hard to be married to one of us. They kind of drifted apart, and of course once we went away to school . . .”

  “We see him every now and then,” said Merlin, with a complete absence of filial devotion in his voice. “Richard Upbright’s his name; he’s quite a well-known archaeologist. He’s professor of European prehistory at Cambridge.”

  “Merlin Upbright,” said Susan, experimentally.

  Merlin shuddered. “Don’t, please.”

  “It’s no worse than Arkshaw,” said Susan. “Better, even. I wonder what my father’s surname is—”

  “We’ll find out,” interrupted Merlin.

  “What did your grandmother mean—”

  “Oh look, a brewery dray! I love shire horses.”

  A very slow-moving, rather enormous cart emblazoned with Greene King brewery signs was taking up one and a half lanes, effectively stopping all the traffic behind it. The team of four blinkered Clydesdales drawing the dray could be no more oblivious to the occupants of the frustrated cars behind them than the smock-wearing drivers.

  “I don’t,” said Audrey. “Horse-drawn vehicles shouldn’t be allowed in the city; it’s right out of order. The roads are slow enough already, and they’re not even really delivering beer. Hosses shouldn’t be allowed . . .”

  As Audrey continued on her diatribe concerning all the ills of London traffic, Susan leaned in close to Vivien and whispered in her ear.

  “Why don’t you want to talk about what your grandmother told me in front of other booksellers?”

  “But what gorgeous horses—I never mind dawdling behind them!” exclaimed Vivien loudly, and then very quickly, looking down at Susan’s shoulder so her mouth was not visible in Audrey’s rearview mirror, she hissed vehemently, “Later, okay?”

  “I mean, changing the guard is one thing, if you go down the Mall you expect it, but they’re regular, scheduled, not hosses popping up whenever, wherever . . .”

  Susan nodded and sat back. Audrey continued to talk about the intrusions of horses and other livestock and/or wild animals onto London roads, segued into pedestrians who didn’t have a clue and then somehow on to a monologue about one of her favorite books: The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume. Which was apparently from the nineteenth century and surprisingly was about a hansom cab driver in Melbourne, Australia, so Susan wasn’t sure why Audrey saw it as a kind of taxi driver foundation myth for someone driving in London. But in any case, Audrey’s dissertation upon it, interspersed occasionally with reactions to the current driving environment, provided all conversation until they passed the southern side of Trafalgar Square, darted across into Northumberland Street, and pulled up outside a huge but rather run-down Victorian-era hotel.

  As they piled out, a harassed family of two parents and three children between three and six, with numerous bags piled on the curb, began to get in, with the mother declaiming loudly in a Midwestern American accent, “We have to get to Heathrow real quick, driver.”

  “No problem, missus! We’ll be on the frog and toad in half a mo!” called out Audrey, popping out to help with the bags and an action that might be described as an ironic tugging of the forelock.

  “Come on up while I get changed,” said Merlin.

  “You need to be ‘real quick,’” said Vivien. “I’m starving.”

  Susan followed Merlin into the hotel, which was very busy. The lobby, which like the exterior was grand but run-down, was crowded with a horde of people checking in for some sort of conference. About seventy percent men—for other nations were still catching up on the postwar egalitarian reforms the United Kingdom had enjoyed—they all knew each other, apparently, despite the variety of accents and appearances from all over the world.

  “Dentists,” said Merlin gloomily. “Five hundred of them, I believe. The bar will be unbearable tonight.”

  Susan noticed a couple of teenagers lurking by one of the massive fake stone columns that broke up the lobby. They were dressed in New Romantic style, a kind of cross between Boy George and Adam Ant, with ruffles and lace and eye makeup, but both also wore white gloves on their left hands.

  “Are they more of your lot?” she asked Merlin as they weaved their way through the crowd of dentists, who seemed a lot less serious than dentists ought to be while attending a major professional event. Many of them were wearing Hawaiian shirts, for one thing.

  “No,” scoffed Merlin. “I’d say they’re confused about their music idols, can’t decide whether to be Michael Jackson or someone from Duran Duran. Our people work here. See that porter? That’s Cousin Heather.”

  “But she has gloves on both hands.”

  “She’s a porter! Got to protect your hands. Terribly wearing, handling luggage.”

  “‘Billie Jean’ has been quite helpful, in terms of disguise,” said Vivien, reverting back to the style-conscious teenagers. “Everyone thinks we’re simply Michael Jackson fans now. Hardly anyone asks me about wearing one glove since the song came out.”

  “Why don’t you wear them on both hands and avoid questions altogether?”

  “But then people would always be asking why we wear gloves,” replied Vivien, as if this answered the question.

  “Come on, we’ll take the stairs,” said Merlin. The queue for the two curiously undersized lifts was immense, made worse by dentists coming out or going in stopping to greet each other, with lots of shaking hands and hugs, while the lift doors fruitlessly tried to close around them.

  “What floor are you on?” asked Susan, who was already tired of going up and down stairs, though at least in this hotel she presumed they would not lead to such strange spaces as in the New Bookshop. In fact, she was tired in general, she thought. What with no sleep since the Kexa showed up, and then everything else . . .

  “Sixth,” said Merlin. “Come on! I’ll race you.”

  He sped off and ran up the grand staircase, looking rather like Diana the Huntress, turning quite a number of both male and female heads. Neither Susan nor Vivien ran after him, instead continuing to walk at the same pace. Or possibly even slower.

 
“Is he always like this?” asked Susan.

  “Only two settings, off or on,” said Vivien. “But the quicker he gets there, the less time we’ll have to wait while he changes clothes.”

  Something in the way she said that made Susan raise an eyebrow.

  “You’ll see,” said Vivien. “Merlin and clothes . . .”

  Vivien was right. When they pushed the door to room 617 open, Susan’s first impression was that it was an extensive walk-in wardrobe, until she saw a narrow bed hidden among the serried ranks of racks of clothes. Wheeled racks, which had clearly been purloined from various clothes shops or fashion warehouses. There were men’s and women’s clothes of all kinds, ranging from evening wear to sundresses with one rack entirely of denim, in all its glorious variations of trousers and jackets, from standard Levi’s to multiply patched, holed, and worked-on objets d’art that had probably once graced a catwalk.

  To make the small room even more crowded, there were piles of books under the racks. Nearly all orange-spined Penguin paperbacks, as far as Susan could see, arranged alphabetically by author in piles of six or seven. They looked fairly new, but obviously read, some with ordinary bookmarks poking out, and one—The King’s War 1641–1647 by C. V. Wedgwood—was on the bed and kept open with a clothes-peg about halfway through.

  Merlin was nowhere to be seen, at least until a door previously hidden from view swung open, pushing a rack aside to reveal a very small bathroom, with a shower cubicle perhaps two-thirds of the size necessary for an adult human to stand up, and no bath. Merlin stood in the doorway, in black leather pants, frilled white shirt, and a burgundy leather waistcoat. He had also acquired a large moustache, a drooping thing that looked like a hairy blond slug stuck under his nose.

  “I am ready!” he declared. “Susan, help yourself if you want to get changed into something else.”

  “I like this boiler suit,” said Susan.

  Vivien grimaced. “Merlin, that moustache . . . really . . .”

  Merlin stroked his new addition.

  “Good, isn’t it? A friend from the D’Oyly Carte gave it to me with a bunch of other stuff when they shut down last year. This was the Major-General’s from The Pirates of Penzance.”

  Susan nodded, relieved that he hadn’t grown it in a matter of minutes. He had talked about being “shape-shiftery” and she’d thought this might be an example.

  Merlin cleared his throat and began to sing in a powerful baritone:

  I am the very model of a modern Major-General,

  I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral—

  Vivien leaped upon him and put her hands to his throat. The siblings swayed to and fro, sending clothing racks scudding on their casters, until Merlin managed to weakly get out, “Enough! Okay, I won’t sing.”

  “Good,” replied Vivien. “Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”

  But Susan didn’t move. She shut the door behind her and leaned back on it.

  “Why do I have to keep doing this? I’m not going anywhere and I’m particularly not buying anybody lunch until you tell me why you didn’t want any of the other booksellers to know what your grandmother said about my ancestry,” she said firmly. “I’m clearly deep in an absolute sea of shit and I want to know what direction to swim in to get out of it.”

  “I think the adjective should be with shit, not sea. It should be a sea of absolute shit—” started Vivien.

  “Answer the question!”

  Merlin blinked and raised his eyebrows. Vivien frowned.

  “She needs to know,” said Merlin to his sister.

  “I know! Look, Susan, according to Grandmother, you’re not entirely an ordinary mortal.”

  “Go on.”

  “I think Merlin has explained to you that the mythic landscape is layered, and usually quite local. Entities and environments are generally confined to a particular geographic area and often also to particular times of day or night, phases of the moon, that sort of thing. Even weather, as with the things that come out after rain, or only when it snows. And they are bound by custom and lore to behave in certain ways, to do certain things, and of course these days are mostly dormant anyway.

  “But above these local entities, which number in the tens of thousands, there are around nine hundred or so greater beings, who can command all the lesser ones within far larger bounds, which might be geographic, seasonal, temporal, or defined in other ways. Again, they’re generally dormant, but the potential is there. Perhaps most important, if they are somehow awoken, they have the power to bind new vassals to their service, magically ensuring near-absolute loyalty. We call them Old Ones, or the Ancient Sovereigns, or sometimes High Kings or High Queens of Faerie.”

  “Like Oberon and Titania?” asked Susan.

  “Shakespeare knew too much,” muttered Merlin.

  “Well, sort of; there are two such Ancient Sovereigns who have been called by those names, though they are not as depicted in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Their power is immense, over a large part of what we now call England, but only within the bounds of a single day, the summer solstice. And those two have not risen to the present world for at least six or seven hundred years.”

  “But what have Ancient Sovereigns got to do with me?”

  “Your father must be one,” replied Vivien bluntly.

  Susan’s mouth fell open, and did not close.

  “Quite a number of mythic entities can take mortal form, and wander in the world, albeit in a generally reduced, more vulnerable form,” added Merlin hurriedly, noting Susan was temporarily unable to speak. “When in mortal shape it is possible for them to have children with ordinary people. According to Grandmother—who is very rarely wrong—you’re one of these children.”

  Susan exhaled slowly, suddenly aware she’d been holding her breath, and also shut her eyes and her mouth while she counted to three before continuing.

  “And this is a problem because . . .”

  “It doesn’t happen often, and usually the parent isn’t a significant entity, so we don’t worry about it,” said Vivien. “But if they are significant . . . you see, the most powerful of the Old Ones can bind practically anyone or anything, of the Old World or the New. Including us. The St. Jacques, the left- and right-handed booksellers.”

  “So a child of an Ancient Sovereign is big, bad news,” said Merlin.

  “And in the past our general policy when one of these children is discovered was to . . . um . . . execute them,” said Vivien.

  Merlin bent down and picked up his yak-hair bag. His left hand rested on the top, and Susan was acutely aware of the revolver inside, and the weapons he doubtless had elsewhere on his person.

  Chapter Ten

  A most humble bookman of yore

  Held authors in considerable awe

  But it was all just an act

  For as a matter of fact

  He hated every writer he saw

  “AT LEAST, THAT’S WHAT WE WERE TAUGHT AT SCHOOL,” CONTINUED Merlin. He rummaged in the yak-hair bag, found a tortoiseshell comb, and carefully began to groom his oversized moustache.

  “There haven’t been any mythic-mortal offspring for a long time,” said Vivien. “Recorded by us, anyway. The last one was in 1818, if I remember correctly. I’d have to look it up.”

  “So,” said Susan. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Heavens, no,” said Vivien. “Those were simpler times, and we had more leeway. Imagine the fuss now. Besides, if you had the power of an Old One, I’d feel it. And you don’t.”

  “I don’t kill my friends,” said Merlin. “Not on purpose anyway.”

  “But Thurston and Merrihew are not only very old, they are very old-fashioned, and perhaps even more important, very bloody lazy. They’d probably want you locked up at the least because that would be the easiest thing, and they might even go for the traditional solution to the problem,” said Vivien. “So it’s better they don’t know about your lineage for as long as possible. Which by my estimation wil
l be about two days, since Merrihew has gone back to Wooten, ostensibly to take charge of the school but in practice to fish; and the New Bookshop has bought Sir Anthony Blunt’s library, so Thurston will be busy cataloging and gloating for at least that long, possibly longer. Both of them are far more interested in their ordinary pursuits than they are in our more esoteric responsibilities.”

  “Which is why they should retire and let more competent people take charge,” said Merlin. “But that’s another story. Anyway, we have around forty-eight hours to find out exactly who your father is.”

  “How will that help?” asked Susan. She felt very detached as she spoke, as if it wasn’t really her in this situation. Too many things had happened, too quickly, and now there was the threat of being killed by people she had supposed to be a force for good. It was as if Inspector Greene had calmly announced that the police had orders to shoot her on sight.

  Then there was the news about her father.

  A mythic being, not even human . . .

  “Well, some of the Ancient Sovereigns are far more malign than others,” said Vivien. “Many are passive, and there are even some that are benign. The Oath-Makers, for example, so-called because they affirm oaths made by others, rather than enslaving lesser entities or people.”

  “Oath-Makers often inhabit stones or the like,” offered Merlin. “Which would become confused with their singular property, so to swear upon Fingael’s Stone, for example, would be known to make an unbreakable oath, because Fingael . . . er . . . resides, I suppose is the best way to put it . . . in the stone.”

  “Are you saying my father could be a stone?”

  “Well, mythic entities usually have a primary physical locus: a stone, a hill, an ancient tree, a section of river, a spring or well . . . all that sort of thing. . . . Obviously, your father wouldn’t be only a stone or a pool or whatever, since he would have to take full mortal shape to . . .”