The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

by Garth Nix

  They laid the bodies out in a neat row. Merlin hesitated for a moment, then stripped off three anoraks, taking one for himself and handing the others to Vivien and Susan. He looked at the cultists’ boots for another few long seconds, before shaking his head regretfully.

  “An anorak is one thing, but socks and boots from a dead person . . . we’ll have to try and get something in the village. I will take one of these handy shotgun bags, though, for the sword. Don’t want to frighten the locals any more than is absolutely necessary.”

  They also collected the cultists’ weapons and put them in the back of the Range Rover, and Merlin locked it and went over and locked the second car, where its occupants still sat, unseeing.

  “No need to tempt any passersby with guns, particularly kids,” he said as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the green Range Rover. Vivien got in the back, nudging Susan to the front passenger seat with a kindly shove. “We’ll get some local police up here as soon as possible. Though it seems your dad is keeping everyone away for now; I don’t know how long that will last.”

  “Until the fog lifts,” replied Susan automatically. She simply knew things now, within the borders of her father’s realm, at least. “About two and a half hours.”

  Merlin looked at her and started the car.

  “Anything else we need to know?”

  “The Black Bull does a good bacon sandwich,” replied Susan. “And there’s a phone box outside.”

  The Grandmother had warned Thurston, who had taken the news of Merrihew’s private dealings on behalf of the St. Jacques with a malevolent Ancient Sovereign very badly, far worse than the news of her actual death.

  “Apparently, he handed the phone to Cousin Sam and went and made a kind of pyramid out of Dickens and Trollope second or later editions—he didn’t disturb the firsts—climbed in, and has refused to talk or come out,” said Vivien. “Anyway, Great-Aunt Evangeline is coming in from Wooten to take over the right-handed and . . . Cousin Una has taken charge of the left-handed and she’s briefed Inspector Greene. The police have dropped the alert for us and Greene has organized a helicopter from RAF Catterick to pick us up and take us back to London.”

  “What about Holly . . . I mean Southaw?” asked Susan, through a mouthful of bacon sandwich. The roast beef sandwich she’d eaten atop the mountain had been delicious, particularly once salted, but it had barely touched the sides of her hunger.

  “No sightings as yet, and nothing bad has happened. Everyone’s on full alert. Helen and Zoë are cross-indexing everything we have on Southaw. Una has sent out teams to ask the usual suspects what they know and she’s going to ask Grandmother as well. Greene has got an alert out for Holly, in case he can come back in that shape, and she’s organizing police watches at all our locations, under the guise of an IRA threat, in case Southaw has his gangs attack.”

  “An IRA threat against bookshops?”

  “Important customers of the bookshops,” said Vivien. “It even makes sense. Half the House of Lords buy books at the New Bookshop to begin with. I’m not sure how Greene is explaining Wooten and Thorn Hall and the Birmingham workshop and so on, but they must be secondary targets. Southaw has definitely extended his demesne, but his historical locus is somewhere in Barnet—Helen and Zoë are looking into that—and most of his vassals and servants will most likely be concentrated in or around North London.”

  “You need anything else, love?” asked the cheerful woman who’d greeted them at the Black Bull as if they were royalty visiting not very incognito. It only took a moment for Merlin and Vivien to realize this was all directed at Susan, another aspect of her inheritance. It took Susan herself a little longer to work out what was going on.

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Staple,” replied Susan. She’d known the woman’s name immediately, as she did everyone else’s who lived in the village, which she found rather unnerving. Not that there were very many people about; the fog was still sitting all the way to the lake, and it seemed every tourist already in Coniston or the environs had decided to stay indoors, and even the locals were inclined not to be out and about.

  This was all definitely due to Susan’s dad. It had even been difficult to get a pair of constables from the Ambleside police station to come out to guard the bodies in the car park until Greene could organize a proper cleanup crew. They were both locals and clearly felt a strong desire to stay away from the Old Man of Coniston, a side effect of him banishing Southaw. The Old One’s “Go!” and “Get thee gone” had a lingering effect on more than the mountain’s rival.

  “I just realized I must have lost my job,” said Susan, looking at the almost empty pint in front of her and thinking about collecting glasses. “Damn. And I don’t even know what day it is. Is it Tuesday?”

  “Wednesday,” said Vivien. “We lost two days in Silvermere.”

  “I was only there for about an hour at the most,” said Susan.

  Merlin muttered something inaudible but disparaging.

  “I liked the Twice-Crowned Swan,” said Susan. She sighed. “I suppose now is not the time to be worrying about having a job or not.”

  “You might be able to get it back. You know, once you can tell us where the Copper Cauldron is, you can probably stay out of . . . well . . . what Greene would call the weird shit.”

  “What? Go back to Milner Square and pick up where I left off, as if nothing’s happened? Sit down for a cuppa with Mrs. L and chat about the weather?”

  Merlin and Vivien exchanged an awkward glance.

  “What?”

  “We realized you don’t know,” said Merlin. “Mrs. London was killed by that Cauldron-Born.”

  “Oh,” said Susan. “Oh . . . poor Mrs. L. I wonder who’s going to look after Mister Nimbus.”

  They sat quietly for several minutes. Susan was remembering Mrs. London’s cups of tea and small kindnesses, and the others were thinking of her, too.

  Merlin was the first to break the silence, tapping his feet together in the slippers Mrs. Staple had provided for him and Vivien. Susan had been surprised to see neither bookseller’s feet were badly cut, only scratched, but Merlin had shrugged it off with an offhand comment that it took things like Raud Alfar arrows to really do them harm.

  “Stop that,” said Vivien. “It’s annoying.”

  “It helps me think,” said Merlin. He stopped tapping his feet and began to click his teeth instead.

  “You’re doing that on purpose to annoy me,” said Vivien.

  “What? I’m thinking!” replied Merlin. But he stopped the clicking.

  “How do you booksellers deal with an Ancient Sovereign, by the way?” asked Susan, after another minute of silence. “Since cutting their mortal heads off clearly doesn’t work.”

  Merlin looked at Vivien.

  “There are various ways,” said Vivien cautiously. “I’m not sure this is the best place to discuss that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t think Dad’s listening,” said Susan. It felt very strange to say that. “He’s . . . here, but distant. Not exactly asleep, but . . . quiescent.”

  “That’s pretty much what we’ll try to make happen to Southaw,” said Vivien. “Force him into a dormant state, only for a lot longer than the rest of the year. I’ve never actually been involved, or seen it done, because we haven’t had to do it to any Old One in my lifetime. I guess that’s part of what Southaw managed for Merrihew, the ‘peace’ we’ve had for so long. But there’s a procedure I suppose you’d call it, or a ritual, which requires at least nine of the right-handed, and three even-handed, and as many of the left-handed as are needed to keep off the minions and so on while we do it. And it has to be done at the Ancient Sovereign’s locus of power. Which is usually but not always something tangible, like a rock, or a mountain, a spring, or a standing stone.”

  “But you don’t know where Southaw’s locus is yet.”

  “We probably do know,” said Merlin. “He’s in the Index, so the right-handed will have a historical record of t
he bounds of his demesne and maybe the actual locus as well. It’s only a matter of finding where it’s been recorded.”

  “I doubt it will be as straightforward as that,” said Vivien, somewhat gloomily. “Southaw is no ordinary entity, even for an Ancient Sovereign. He has the Copper Cauldron. I don’t think any of us know what powers that gives him. . . .”

  “At least it isn’t our problem anymore,” said Merlin. “The aunts and uncles and senior cousins can deal with Southaw and recover the cauldron. We get a helicopter ride home and hopefully everything will go back to being moderately quiet again. And Susan and I can go out for that drink.”

  “I’ll drink to everything going back to being quiet,” said Susan, draining the last swallow of her Theakston’s Old Peculier.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  In my dreams I fly so, so high

  Effortless, my body still

  In repose, a pillow beneath my head

  Yet rushing heavenwards

  Falling up, instead of down

  THE HELICOPTER, AN RAF PUMA HC MK 1, LANDED IN THE FIELD BEHIND the Black Bull shortly after the fog had dissipated. But even though the fog had lifted, the day was still gray, with only a little sunshine breaking through here and there. Most noticeably on the peak of the Old Man, though whether this was by her father’s choice, even Susan couldn’t tell.

  The crew chief ran to meet Merlin, Vivien, and Susan, checked their descriptions against her notes, and carefully read Merlin’s and Vivien’s warrant cards.

  “You’re not carrying any explosives, hand grenades, flashbangs, or anything like that, are you?” she shouted over the rotor and engine noise. She hadn’t lifted the polarized visor on her helmet, so it was hard to see her expression, but her tone of voice made it clear such items would not be popular.

  “No,” Merlin shouted back. He indicated his yak-hair bag and pointed at his ankle, where a small lump indicated the presence of his backup pistol. “Personal weapons only. And I’m the only one armed. Oh, and the sword in the bag.”

  Susan held up the bag.

  “A sword? What . . . never mind . . . as long as there’s nothing that goes bang,” yelled the woman. “I had an incident with your lot once. Could have killed all of us.”

  No one answered that, since the “your lot” she mentioned almost certainly were not the booksellers, but some other much more normal part of the secret world, like MI5 or SIS.

  “Bend your head a bit, don’t need to crouch,” shouted the crew chief. “Follow me.”

  She led them to the open body of the helicopter, where two benches ran lengthways back-to-back down the middle of the main compartment, with net webbing to lean against between the benches. There were comms headsets on some of the seats, their cords plugged in above.

  “Two this side, one the other!” shouted the crew chief, pointing to the benches. “Headsets on, seat belts on!”

  Vivien went first, going around to the other side. Merlin and Susan sat down together. When they were in, the crew chief slid the door shut, lessening the noise from deafening to merely annoying, before she went back to a higher, forward-facing seat next to the left door. She would have a good view out, but the others wouldn’t.

  It was a bit quieter once they got the headsets on. Susan noted the crew chief had a proper harness while the passenger seats down the middle only had lap belts, and fairly basic ones at that. As she was tightening her belt, her headset crackled, followed by the voice of another woman, but one who had the laconic drawl of pilots everywhere.

  “Good afternoon. As we have been instructed that this is a no names, no questions flight to London, I will not be introducing myself or the crew, other than to say you are in good hands with Mel back there. Please study the card she will show you on safety procedures and ensure you follow her instructions at all times. Flying time today will be approximately one hundred and ten minutes; we will be landing at RAF Northolt shortly after thirteen hundred hours. It is drizzling and gray in the capital, but apart from making everyone depressed, we should have no problems with the weather. Tea and biscuits will not be served, unless you brought some with you. Sit back and enjoy the flight.”

  There was a click as they were cut out of the comms circuit, the turbines whined higher, and the rotor blades began to spin faster. The crew chief handed Susan a safety card that was mostly pictures.

  “Read the card and pass it on. Stay seated and belted unless I tell you otherwise.”

  Susan had only flown once before, a short flight with her Mum to Dublin for a brief holiday when she was eleven. The passenger safety card for the helicopter was much the same as the one she’d studied so carefully then, on the VC-10. She looked at the pictures, checked her belt, looked at the door to see how it opened, then passed the card to Merlin.

  The helicopter lifted off, climbed quickly, and circled to the south as Merlin studied the card. With the helicopter banking, Susan could only see sky out her window, but looking over her shoulder past Vivien, who was directly behind her, back-to-back, she saw Coniston Water gleaming below. Something inside her felt the comfortable, secure glow of knowing “that’s mine,” but it was at odds with her higher mental processes, which were in something of a state of anxiety as she processed what had happened, and worried about what was going to happen.

  As a child, she had daydreamed about finding her father, making him a composite of all the nicest fathers of her friends at school. She’d imagined her dad returning as a long-lost sailor finally rescued, or as a recovered amnesiac like in the film Random Harvest, coming to his senses and returning to his lover, to be delighted to discover he had a wonderful daughter as well.

  Her wildest imaginings had never gotten close to what her father actually was, and his reception of her did not match any of those childhood dreams. Susan felt this as a kind of dull ache, a weight of disappointment. He hadn’t seemed to care very much that he had a daughter, and he hadn’t asked about Jassmine at all. In fact, he seemed to consider Susan as a kind of offshoot of himself.

  “My daughter will go with you to bring the cauldron back,” she whispered, forgetting she had a microphone off the corner of her mouth.

  “What was that?” asked the crew chief. “We’re all one comms circuit back here, and I don’t want to know anything I’m not supposed to, okay?”

  “Sorry,” said Susan.

  Merlin looked at her, smiled, and made a zipping motion across his mouth. Susan nodded. She didn’t want to talk anyway. She leaned her head on Merlin’s shoulder and back against Vivien. Merlin reached into his yak-hair bag and pulled out a book.

  Susan started to read over his shoulder, recognizing the character of Harriet Vane, though she hadn’t read this particular one of Dorothy Sayers’s books. Merlin kindly tilted the book to make it easier for her, though she thought it irked him a little—she didn’t like people reading over her shoulder herself—but she found her eyes very heavy and her head started to roll forward and before Merlin had even turned the first page she had fallen sound asleep.

  She woke rather groggily sometime later—Susan wasn’t sure how long—to hear the pilot’s voice again, crackling in her ears.

  “Hi, back there. We’re coming up to RAF Northolt, but we’ve been instructed to land you a little over to the east at Totteridge Green in Barnet, we’ve received ATC clearance for that, I’m told the LZ will be secured by police and LIBER MERCATOR elements, whatever they are. I also have a message to relay, which is as follows: Southaw locus is Totteridge Yew, Barnet. I say again: Southaw locus is Totteridge Yew, Barnet.”

  “Copy that,” said Merlin. “Uh, did they give you a particular approach, pilot? We’ll want to avoid flying over or near the . . . uh . . . locus.”

  “Uh, no information on that. We’ve got the LZ. We’re about five minutes out.”

  “If you see any weather or other unusual phenomena, I strongly advise . . . er . . . turning away from it, or whatever the technical term is.”

  “We’ve got a stric
t corridor from ATC, have to conform to that. I’ll recheck.”

  Susan leaned forward to look out the window, which was flecked with streaks of rain. She couldn’t see much more than gray sky without undoing her belt and getting up to improve the angle, which she thought would be frowned upon by the crew chief and a bad idea anyway.

  “Uh, we are seeing something unusual ahead, a localized drift of fog between us and the LZ, but we’ll clear it by a few hundred feet. We’re landing on the other side.”

  “Go around, pilot!” snapped Merlin. “Viv! You sense anything?”

  “Old One,” said Viv. She pointed down. “Southaw.”

  The helicopter wasn’t changing course.

  “Pilot, go around!”

  “We’re well above it now, no prob—”

  White blanketed the windows, thick as if cotton wool had been plastered on in an instant. A few seconds later everyone jumped at the sound of a heavy impact, like a thrown brick hitting the side of a car, and then there was another, and another, sharp and loud even over the helicopter’s own noise.

  There was confused and muffled talking through Susan’s headphones, then the pilot came on again clearly, her speech more clipped now, but without panic.

  “Bird strike! We’re going down! Prepare to—”

  The fog split apart as a bird smacked straight into the window opposite Susan, smearing it with blood and feathers. There were thuds and bashing noises all over the helicopter now. The engine noise changed, whining higher, and the rhythm of the rotors became uneven.

  Merlin ripped off his headphones and tightened his seat belt, Susan copying his actions. She could feel Vivien doing the same thing behind her.

  “Lean forward and clasp your knees!” shouted the crew chief, who was pulling her straps tight and crossing her arms to grip the upper straps, her thumbs along the belt.

  There were more and more bird impacts, smacking into the helicopter like heavy hail. The windows were almost completely obscured in blood and feathers, and fog blurred whatever might have been seen through the gaps.