The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

by Garth Nix

  “If your father is still extant, it’s possible he sent the Fenris,” said Merlin cautiously. “I mean, that would make sense. An Ancient Sovereign securing his child.”

  “Why wouldn’t he tell me?” asked Susan. “He could have phoned! Or come to visit Mum. I think whoever wants to abduct me is an enemy of my father, and so, of me.”

  “We really need to find a phone,” said Vivien, shaking her head. “We need more information. That has to be our main objective.”

  “Keep watching the murmuration,” said Merlin. “And the helicopter. And we need to change this car.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The night wraps me in darkness

  Clouds deny the stars and moon

  I see nothing, hear nothing

  Perhaps I do not even exist

  THEY DROVE NORTHWEST ALONG A COUNTRY LANE, A NARROW STRIP of asphalt hardly wider than the car, bordered by flat, wire-fenced fields of clover and other hay grass, a rural vista of extreme dullness, certainly not a tourist’s picturesque green and merry England.

  Susan looked back at the murmuration of starlings through the rear window. The vast, constantly moving cloud of birds was over the wood now, dark, groping, fuzzy-edged fingers swooping down into the trees and up again, to rejoin the huge flock above.

  “I think they’ve worked out I’m not in the wood anymore,” she said.

  As she spoke, the murmuration broke into four smaller versions of itself, each of these pulsing clouds billowing out to strike north, south, east, and west. Smaller tendrils of birds extended from each group, swooping over roads and fields, spreading the search in all directions.

  “Ornithologists will be wetting themselves,” said Vivien. “Can you see the helicopter? I can’t.”

  Susan scanned as much of the sky as she could see through the rear window.

  “No.”

  “There’s a phone box,” said Vivien.

  Merlin shook his head, and drove past the telephone box that stood lonely and proud at the intersection of two country lanes. It was one of the new steel-and-glass ones, and looked rather like it had landed there from space.

  “We’re still too close to the murmuration. It’s too isolated, we’d be too easy to spot,” he said. “Let’s get into the next decent-sized village, call from outside a pub or somewhere.”

  “Come to think of it, I am absolutely starving,” said Susan. “Can we get something to eat?”

  “We can’t stop long, we need to get clear,” warned Merlin. “But I’m hungry, too. . . . I guess you could get some sandwiches or anything that’s ready-made. Vivien and I probably should stay out of sight as much as possible, though the police will be looking for a man and a woman, not two women. Or three, for that matter.”

  “I’m more worried about the murmuration,” said Vivien.

  “But the birds are way behind us now,” said Susan, looking out the back again. “What can they do, anyway?”

  “Kill or stun us quite easily, I’d think. Imagine getting hit by a thousand starlings at once, at speed. Besides, any entity who can raise a murmuration and send it searching around someone else’s mythic wood can do other things as well,” said Vivien. “I really need to talk to some of the senior right-handed.”

  “Whoever it is must have a cauldron,” said Merlin. “Summoning a murmuration of starlings might be the least of the things that they can do. And whoever it is might have Cauldron-Born somewhere close by. I wish we knew which one it is.”

  “Presuming it isn’t ours, it has to be the Bronze or Copper Cauldron,” said Vivien. “Unless there are others our seniors haven’t bothered to tell us about. There has always been speculation the Bronze Cauldron wasn’t melted down after all, despite the firsthand accounts and Major Claypole’s report. I wrote an essay about that in fifth form. And though the Copper Cauldron hasn’t been seen since Roman times, it is only presumed missing. Maybe the Old One who has it simply went to sleep with it in some deep cavern, and now they’ve woken up.”

  “But why use the cauldron now?” asked Merlin. “And why try to kidnap Susan? I mean, she could have been snatched far more easily from her home, before we even knew about her. Why do it now?”

  “Maybe whoever it is didn’t know she existed,” said Vivien slowly. “Until she turned up at Frank Thringley’s.”

  “But Frank knew about me already,” said Susan. “He sent Christmas cards every year, to ‘Jassmine and Susan.’”

  “Sure, but he might have kept it quiet for his own reasons,” said Merlin. “An ace in the hole.”

  “There were other people at Frank’s house, weren’t there?” said Vivien. “When you first arrived. Did you introduce yourself as Jassmine’s daughter, Susan?”

  Susan thought back.

  “Yes,” she said. “One man answered the door, the one with the sawn-off shotgun in the shopping bag. I wonder . . . even then I wasn’t as frightened as I should have been. I said I was Susan Arkshaw. And there was another man in the room when Frank talked to me, a bodyguard I guess. Oh, I’d forgotten . . . Frank asked how Mum was by name. He said he was pleased to see me . . . he said something about a ‘good time to visit.’”

  “Frank definitely answered to some higher boss, and his people probably did, too, or at least would have afterwards,” said Merlin. “What if that boss was actually someone from the Old World, or somewhere farther up the chain there was a mythic entity involved?”

  “It would be the first time one of the Ancient Sovereigns has ever involved themselves so much in mortal affairs,” said Vivien. “I mean, Sippers and changelings, half fay of various kinds, a few entities that like taking on mortal form, they can get mixed up with crime. And there’s the Death Cultists, I suppose, but I wouldn’t call them criminals, more like terrorists. And they’re usually only associated with the lesser or perhaps middleweight entities, the bloody ones, who seek human sacrifices. As far as I know, there’s never been an Ancient Sovereign associated with mortal criminals. Why would they?”

  “Advantage over others,” suggested Merlin. “Mortals aren’t bound by the same strictures as those of the Old World. If you had both mythic entities and mortal servants at your beck and call, it would make you more powerful, right? I mean for things like breaking wards.”

  “Yes,” said Vivien. “It’s just so unusual. Or it has been, before now.”

  She didn’t sound convinced, but at the same time, was clearly unable to dismiss the concept.

  “It doesn’t change our main objective anyway,” said Merlin. “Which is to get the hell away from here, and then identify Susan’s father—”

  “And take me to him,” interjected Susan.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Merlin.

  “We need more information,” said Vivien, looking back to smile at Susan, taking the sting out of Merlin’s curt dismissal.

  Susan wanted to say they had to take her, she felt the compulsion inside so strongly. But she kept her mouth shut, and thought about that. Maybe this feeling she had really was a compulsion. Perhaps her mind had been meddled with in the same way as the Birmingham thugs or the police who’d tried to shoot Merlin.

  She didn’t think so, because she otherwise felt fine and perfectly compos mentis. But she still worried about it.

  The lane they’d been following had no traffic at all, but there was an intersection up ahead with a more significant road, with a steady stream of vehicles flashing across.

  Vivien consulted the road atlas as Merlin slowed down for the stop sign. Susan looked across at yet another nondescript field, a new-mown expanse with rolls of hay. She was surprised to see a scarecrow on a cross in the middle of the field, since there were no crops to protect. She hadn’t seen an old-fashioned scarecrow since she was little, and even then it had been made by a local farmer to entertain his children, not for any practical use. This one was a classic Worzel Gummidge type of scarecrow, straw stuffed into old clothes, with a partially decayed pumpkin for a head and oddly pink paper cups for eyes
, the fancy kind with the ruffled edges used for making cupcakes. . . .

  The scarecrow’s head turned. Susan felt its gaze, those pink eyes meeting her own.

  “Scarecrow!”

  Vivien and Merlin looked over. The scarecrow lifted one stilt-like leg, pulling it out of the earth, and then it lifted the other and stepped forward, leaned down, and hunched over so it could also use its long, stick-straight arms to scuttle forward, all too like some horrible, frightening insect.

  “Damn!” exclaimed Vivien, and Merlin gunned the car, sending it rocketing around the corner with a squeal of rubber and a blast of the horn from the car on the main road that’d had to slow down to let them in.

  The scarecrow changed direction, leaping forward, but as Merlin overtook a slow Fiesta and accelerated again, it clearly realized it could not catch up. Instead it rose up to its full height, tilted its horrid, putrefying pumpkin head back, and let out a ghastly screech, audible even over the roaring engine.

  Then it fell apart, sticks and straw and old clothes tumbling end over end in the direction it was scuttling, leaving a line of debris across the field.

  “Watcher,” said Vivien. “Why’d you look at it, Susan?”

  “What? I was curious!”

  “It felt your gaze,” said Vivien. “It wouldn’t have noticed us in the car otherwise.”

  “What are the birds doing?” asked Merlin. “We might be far enough away they didn’t hear its warning.”

  “Still spreading out from the wood in all directions,” said Susan. “I can’t see any coming this way in particular.”

  “That scarecrow won’t be the only Watcher,” said Vivien. “If you see another scarecrow, don’t look directly at it. Or at any strange sculptures or things like that.”

  “How am I supposed to not look?” asked Susan crossly. She was weary, and hungry, and still damp, and tired of being the center of inimical attention.

  “You can look. But don’t meet their eyes,” warned Merlin. “Damn!”

  He swore as a farm tractor towing a long trailer loaded with hay turned into the road about two hundred yards ahead of them, instantly slowing the three cars in front of Merlin’s. It was doing no more than ten miles an hour.

  “The starlings aren’t on us, and the helicopter’s not in sight,” said Vivien. “We’re good.”

  “I guess so,” grumbled Merlin, slowing down to join the line of traffic behind the tractor.

  A second later, a police Ford Granada came into view, coming towards them on the other side of the road. It cruised along, not in any hurry, and they could see the driver and the officer next to him looking at the cars behind the tractor and trailer.

  “Sit up straight, Susan,” said Merlin. “They’re looking for two people, not three, remember.”

  The Granada drew closer, still at the same speed. It slowed down as it came level with the Capri. Merlin glanced over and smiled, Vivien looked, too, and Susan tilted her head up, wondering if, like the Watcher, she shouldn’t meet their eyes.

  The police car drove past, and there was a general sigh shared by Merlin, Vivien, and Susan. Followed a moment later by a similar shared, sharp intake of breath as the Granada screeched to a hard stop, began a swift three-point turn, and the blue light on top flashed on and the siren whooped into action.

  Merlin put his foot down, the Capri lurched out into the opposite lane and roared down the wrong side of the road, swinging back in front of the tractor just in time to avoid a head-on with a Mini that veered off the road on to the muddy verge, unfortunately not blocking the police car, which was now in pursuit.

  Merlin changed gear, the speedometer jerking from thirty to fifty and then seventy, which to Susan felt much, much faster than she’d traveled with the wolf even though it wasn’t, because the narrow, badly surfaced country road was definitely not the motorway.

  “They’re onto this car,” said Merlin grimly, working the steering wheel as he lost traction on the back wheels around the next corner, a quite gentle veering that would have been fine at thirty miles an hour. “They’ll have the helicopter back as well. Tighten your seat belts.”

  “Uh, there’s no seat belt back here,” said Susan.

  “Brace yourself, then!” snapped Merlin. “Vivien, can you put them under when I stop? I can’t shoot another innocent person.”

  “Yes!” said Vivien, who had tightened her belt and was holding on to the dash with both hands. The knuckles on her ungloved hands were white. “Stopping is good!”

  “Get ready!” shouted Merlin.

  There was a village ahead, with houses clustering close to the road, narrowing it even more, a blind bottleneck impossible to take at speed. But there was a gated track off to the right before that, leading into a field.

  “Stopping!” yelled Merlin. He braked suddenly, dropped back several gears, dragged the hand brake on, and spun the wheel. The right side of the car lifted up off the road and for a heart-stopping moment it felt like it would go over before it thumped back down again and they were sliding backwards with a terrifying squeal of rubber. The Granada was coming straight at them until Merlin blipped the accelerator again and the police driver jinked his car to the left and kept going, while Merlin slowed the car’s backwards progress enough that when the rear end of the Capri collided with the gate to the field it was not so much a full-on crash as an arrested stop, sending the gate flying in pieces and crumpling the back of the car.

  Vivien and Merlin were out in a few seconds, kicking the pinched doors open, but Susan took longer to struggle free. She retrieved the sword and stood up in time to see the police Granada slide to a halt across the road. The doors opened but before the officers could do more than get out, Vivien was in front of the car, raising her arms and inhaling deeply. When she exhaled and lowered her hands, the two police officers fell, sprawled on the road.

  From a distance, it looked like they’d been shot with a silenced weapon.

  Merlin leaned into the car and grabbed Vivien’s British Caledonian bag and his own yak-hair bag. “Come on! We have to move.”

  “Where?” asked Susan. The tractor and the cars behind it had stopped, and people were getting out to gawp—or possibly attempt to intervene; the farmer from the tractor was pulling out a metal star picket from the trailer, obviously intending to use it as a club.

  “To that copse over there to start with,” said Merlin, pointing to a cluster of birch trees on the other side of the field. But there were only perhaps a dozen trees, with fields all around; it didn’t offer any serious cover. “Viv, can you cloud anyone observing so we can cut away back to the village after we leave the copse?”

  “I can try,” said Viv, but she didn’t sound confident. The farmer was now advancing down the road, and there were a couple of other people following. One had a tire iron.

  Merlin took the Smython out of his bag. Susan caught her breath, and almost cried out not to shoot anyone, but he pointed the revolver well off to one side and fired two rounds into the verge in front of the approaching good citizens. But the double boom, the flying earth where the bullets impacted, and the sight of the weapon had the desired effect. The farmer and his followers sprinted back to take cover behind the tractor.

  “Run,” said Merlin.

  They ran for the copse, skirting a patch of deep mud in the middle of the field. Merlin led them behind the trees, where they were out of sight from the road, but there was nowhere to go beyond which they wouldn’t be brought into view, only more open fields.

  “You ready to hide us?” he said to Vivien.

  “I can do two minutes max,” warned Vivien. “What good will that do?”

  “Enough,” said Merlin. He pointed over towards the village, about fifty yards along a side lane from where the main road narrowed between the houses. There was a fairly unattractive pub, a 1960s brick building with a large black-and-white sign that said “Food” over the inn sign, which was too far away for Susan to make out the name. “You see the pub? We run for
that. They’ll have a phone, we’ll call in, get the info on Susan’s dad.”

  “But . . . but there’ll be police swarming here soon,” Vivien started to say. “Maybe we should surrender—”

  “We’ll have at least ten minutes,” said Merlin.

  “And we’ll be stuck in the pub! What are you planning, a siege? We can’t—”

  “No,” said Merlin. “There’s a pond in the village green. See, look through the gap between the pub and the house next to it.”

  Vivien stared at him.

  “How does that help?” asked Susan.

  “One of the left-handed to open the way; one of the right-handed to follow the ley,” said Merlin, looking straight at Vivien. “I know traditionally it’s done by Thurston and Merrihew, but it doesn’t have to be them, does it? We can do it.”

  “And take Susan?”

  “Where?” asked Susan.

  “Can you think of anything else?” asked Merlin, ignoring Susan’s question.

  “Like I said, we could surrender to the police.”

  “The murmuration is moving, there are Watchers in the fields, whoever is after Susan wouldn’t hesitate to take her from a police station. And kill us if we got in the way.”

  “But she’s the child of an Old One! What if we’re wrong about her?”

  “I’m right here!” protested Susan.

  “We’ll explain later,” snapped Vivien.

  “It’s a last resort, okay?” said Merlin. “Come on, we can’t waste time.”

  “Uh . . .” Vivien vacillated, then suddenly nodded firmly and took an extra-deep breath. Holding it, she raised her arms, turning her palms outwards. She brought them down slowly and put them together, silver light shining from the edge of her glove. She lifted her right hand and placed it on top of Merlin’s head. Susan gasped as he shimmered and became transparent. Not completely invisible—she could still see a vague outline if she stared right at him—but close enough. Vivien touched Susan’s head next, with the same result, and then patted herself on the head, and, without waiting, ran towards the pub, still holding her breath.