Unbound

by Jim C. Hines

  “Someone who would charge headlong into the situation, seeking answers without weighing the risks,” he added dryly.

  “I wasn’t—” I stopped myself. “I haven’t been at my best lately.”

  “I can imagine. Do you know where to find this key?”

  “I’m not sure.” D’Aurillac had destroyed the poem that contained his armillary sphere, but Meridiana was still imprisoned. I closed my eyes, remembering the shape of the poem, the carefully inked letters stretching together to create interwoven shapes on the parchment. Far more than any other memory d’Aurillac had shared, that poem was burned into my thoughts.

  “Good. Then Meridiana should be equally lost.” He turned back to the map. “The students of Bi Sheng have done an admirable job of concealing themselves, though I believe them to be hiding somewhere in eastern Asia. I’ve felt currents of their activities. Instead of openly trying to battle Meridiana or the Porters, they seem to have focused their efforts inward in some way. As for Meridiana, her targets have no obvious geographic pattern. Her base of operations could be anywhere in the world, assuming she has one at all.”

  Another flick of his hand cleared the screen. “You’ve met her gorgon, angel, and sasquatch.” He snapped his fingers as he spoke, each time pulling up an image of the monster in question.

  “Yeren, not sasquatch,” I said.

  “Really? I believe that would make this the first verified yeren sighting in history, though I’d need to dig into Johannes’ records to be sure.” Additional pictures and sketches continued to fill the screen. “Meridiana also has what appears to be an ogre of some kind, as well as a naga, a kitsune, a manticore, and a pair of mermen.”

  “Nine monsters and one out-of-control libriomancer.”

  “That we know of. We should assume she hasn’t revealed her full hand yet.” He slashed his fingers through the air, and the screen switched to a men’s tennis match. “How many ghosts do you think she’s gathered over the centuries?”

  “Hundreds,” I said. “Maybe thousands.”

  “Now that you’ve communed with Pope Sylvester II, she’ll be hunting for you.”

  “I know.” And if she couldn’t find me, she’d go after whatever leverage she could get, starting with Lena. Everything I did lately put them in greater danger. “Could I borrow your phone?”

  “I texted Miss Greenwood and Doctor Shah from the car to warn them. They’re none too happy with you, by the way.”

  “Yah, I got that feeling.” And rightfully so. First vampires, now Meridiana. Lena could protect them from most threats, but not this. “I need to get home.”

  “I’ve already made arrangements, but the flight doesn’t depart for another four hours.” Trust Ponce de Leon to be two steps ahead of me. He watched the tennis game for several minutes. “There’s no suppressing this, Isaac. You can’t cram an oak tree back into an acorn. What Meridiana and Bi Wei have begun will change this world.”

  “I know.”

  He chuckled. “I doubt that. No slight intended, but you lack perspective. You’ve never watched empires rise and fall, nor the chaos that erupts in their death throes. You’ve not seen intellectual, philosophical, economic, or technological revolutions sweep the globe like ocean waves, each one greater than the last. Do you know what led to my split with Johannes?”

  I tried to keep up with his train of thought as it lurched off the rails. “No clue.”

  “Nothing is eternal. Magic could be kept secret for a time, centuries perhaps, but not forever. Johannes and I both knew people would discover the truth, and when that day came, we knew the world would change. We had both seen what such changes could lead to. Fear. War. Genocide.

  “Johannes believed such change could be controlled. That we could minimize the damage and guide the world through its turmoil. His personal texts are full of plans for the revelation. Several such plans involve rather extreme actions.”

  “What kind of actions?”

  He waved a hand, dismissing my question. “What are the three oaths each Porter takes?”

  “To preserve the secrecy of magic, to protect the world from supernatural threats, and to expand our knowledge and understanding of magic.” I tried to ignore the hollow feeling the words triggered in me.

  “And what gives them the right?”

  “I didn’t know we needed permission to save people’s lives.” I thought back to an assignment from three years ago. “Who exactly should I have asked about that smog elemental I fought in Grand Rapids?”

  “I’ve tried to change the world before. The Moors. The Indians. I believed—I knew—I was on the side of right. I intended to save them, to spread knowledge and civilization, even if I had to slaughter half the population to enlighten the rest.” He downed the rest of his Scotch and poured a second glass. “Countless cultures paid for my arrogance. I vowed never to put myself in a position to make such mistakes again.”

  “The Porters aren’t conquering anyone.” I wasn’t used to being the one to defend Gutenberg and the Porters.

  “Not this week, perhaps. But conquest and control come in many forms, Isaac. Time after time Johannes and I fought over this point. God’s plan may be infallible, but ours are not, no matter how well-intentioned. It’s not our place to shape the world.”

  “Is that why you refused to answer my calls? Why you’ve disappeared and done nothing while Meridiana works to turn this world into a planet ruled by ghosts?”

  His eyebrows rose. “I wouldn’t call saving your life nothing. But you’re correct, the time for hiding is over. Whatever Johannes’ plans, Meridiana’s are far worse. You can’t fight this war alone, Isaac. Nor can he. I will return to America with you, and we will decipher the clues Gerbert d’Aurillac shared.”

  I nodded gratefully. The Porters could ignore my calls, but they couldn’t ignore Ponce de Leon. I finished my drink and asked the other question I had been scared to ask. “I heard the ghosts of the people Meridiana transformed into monsters, but I didn’t hear Jeneta. If she was dead, I should have heard her voice, too. Do you think there’s a way to free her from Meridiana?”

  “Perhaps. The best chance might be the same spell Johannes used to protect you from Meridiana and her ghosts.”

  Lock Jeneta’s magic. She would never forgive me. “What would that do with Meridiana already rooted in her body?”

  “I don’t know, Isaac. But our first priority is to stop Meridiana. Even if it costs an innocent child her life.”

  The dude was messed up, mumbling to himself and talking to people who weren’t there. I thought about finding a cop, but he wasn’t really hurting anything, you know? I’d only been in Rome for two days, so what did I know? Maybe this sort of thing happens all the time there. Plus he had this accent, like he was Canadian or something, so I figured he was probably harmless. Just a tourist who partied too hard and was trying to walk it off. And then he started puking right there in the middle of the church, and there were monsters and s—, and we got out of there.

  I looked back through the doors, and that mother—— started waving a gun and flinging lightning bolts out of his hands. Everyone was running and screaming and s—. Next thing you know, some clown in an angel costume with a sword is chasing the guy into the street.

  Don’t ask me what set it all off. The guy didn’t look like a terrorist or anything. He was all skinny and pale, like someone who spends too much time in his mom’s basement playing World of Warcraft and downloading porn, know what I mean? But I know what I saw. That nerd was doing magic.

  You’ve seen the pictures, right? Blackened walls. Melted gold. They’re trying to say lightning hit the church. Really? Lightning hit inside the church? In the middle of the day, with the sun shining? I’ve got two words for that. Bull and s—.

  There is some seriously weird s— going on. Bad enough we’ve got to make sure terrorists don’t sneak onto another plane and blow our country to hell. Now we’ve got to worry about magic Canadians, too? That’s just not righ
t.

  —Excerpt from a CNBC News Interview

  IF YOU HAVE TO FLY, I strongly recommend taking a sorcerer as a traveling companion.

  No papers? No problem. Ponce de Leon purchased a postcard at one of the shops outside the airport and transformed it into a passport, complete with stamps showing I’d also been to France, Spain, and Austria. The shock-gun became a large digital camera, and the half-empty vial of vampire blood a telephoto lens.

  “The spells will wear off after twenty-four hours,” he warned. “Under no circumstances should you try to take anyone’s photograph.”

  An hour later we were waiting on the tarmac while what seemed like the entire Italian commercial air fleet taxied down the runway ahead of us. I leaned over the armrest to whisper, “I don’t suppose you could jump us to the head of the line?”

  “Even my magic has limits, Isaac.”

  I returned my attention to the brown paper bag spread flat on my seat tray. I had sketched the general shape of Gerbert d’Aurillac’s poem from my memory. A large triangle contained two circles, and a series of intersecting lines. The next step was to work Latin characters into each shape.

  I drew the letter A in the seven places where the spokes intersected the outer circle. The inner circle was the same, but with Ns instead of As. I moved on to the words within the triangle.

  “Interesting.” Ponce de Leon studied my work through the thin rectangular lenses of his reading glasses. “A carmen figuratum, yes?”

  “Not just a visual poem, but a puzzle.” Recreating the poem was only the first step. Once I finished, I then had to decipher it.

  He touched the letters. “Anna. Meridiana’s true name.”

  That name had to be part of the key to understanding d’Aurillac’s poem, but the rest of the text seemed to be the Latin equivalent of word salad, as if the author had cut apart every word from the original and flung them into the air with no care for where they landed. I continued to write them out as best I could from memory, taking a brief break for takeoff.

  Ponce de Leon touched one such fragment. “This says, ‘Temperate bull expires Caesar urine.’ I’m a fair poet, but the metaphor eludes me. Unless we’re to assume Meridiana is imprisoned by the power of dead bulls and the piss of emperors.”

  I rubbed my eyes. I had filled in only a fraction of the text, and already my head was beginning to throb. Fortunately, we had a long flight ahead of us.

  I finished the outer triangle and part of the vertical spoke before my eyes gave out and I surrendered to sleep, but the poem stalked my dreams. Geometric shapes unraveled in my hands, brown-inked letters slipping through my fingers before I could grasp their meaning. I made a little more progress during our layover in New Jersey.

  Ponce de Leon woke me shortly before our descent into Detroit. I rubbed grit from my eyes. “Do you ever sleep?”

  He shrugged. “When I have time.”

  He had made additional notes on a separate piece of paper, playing with words as if they were anagrams. He had also penciled the first letter of each word in a single column, but if those letters held any hidden meaning, it was beyond me. I folded the sketch and tucked it into my back pocket.

  Lena and Nidhi waited for us by the baggage claim. My shoulders sagged with relief to see them standing there, unharmed by Meridiana or pissed-off vampires or Mahefa or anyone else I might have crossed in the past week.

  Lena rested her weight on a thick oak cane that would have gotten her thrown out of the airport or arrested if security had realized what she could do with it. I slowed, uncertain how to greet them.

  She handed her cane to Nidhi and strode toward me, her expression unreadable. She stopped with her face inches from mine and looked me over, as if searching for injuries. Her nose wrinkled. “We need to get you a shower.”

  “Hey, I’ve been stuck on planes for—”

  Before I could finish, she twisted her hands into my shirt, yanked me close, and kissed me.

  I wrapped one arm around her shoulders and slid my other hand up her neck, my fingers combing through her hair. As her arms encircled my waist and her lips pressed against mine, she shared her desire, her anger, her relief, and her pain more effectively than words.

  She kept hold of my shirt when we finally broke away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “We saw the reports about the lightning storm inside that church.” Her nose touched mine. “Get into a brawl like that without me again, and I will drop Smudge down your pants.”

  “That seems like an awfully cruel thing to do to an innocent fire-spider.”

  She flexed her arms ever so slightly, and my ankles lifted from the floor.

  “Right,” I said hastily. “No weenie roast necessary.”

  That earned a crooked smile. She hugged me one more time, then stepped away so I could greet Nidhi. I hugged her, too, which I think surprised us both. “Are you and Lena okay?”

  “Yes, thank you. We had one undead visitor, but Lena took care of her.”

  “What about Mahefa?” I forced myself to look at Lena. “Did he show up to claim the rest of his price?”

  She took her cane back from Nidhi and wrapped her fingers tightly around the wood. “No sign of him yet.”

  Maybe the petrification of his hand had been enough to scare him away from anyone associated with me, but I doubted it. That wasn’t the way my luck had been working lately.

  “What about you, Isaac?” asked Nidhi. “Are you all right?”

  I started to give her a flippant response about uncomfortable airline seats and leftover newt slime, then caught myself. At the very least, I owed them honesty. “No. Not really.”

  Oddly enough, that drew a smile from Nidhi. She gave me a small, understanding nod. After glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, she reached into a canvas shopping bag and pulled out Smudge in his traveling cage.

  He skittered around in quick, tight laps when he spotted me. I took his cage and grinned. “I feel the same way, buddy.” I searched my pockets for something to feed him, but came up empty.

  Lena handed me a half-empty package of M&Ms. Smudge reached a bristly leg through the bars to nudge my hand, like a child searching for a prize. I slipped him a yellow one. “What’s the media been saying about Rome?”

  “It made CNN’s roundup of ‘Magic Watch,’” she said. “There were reports of a magical commotion inside, but the only decent photographs were after the fact. They did have footage of what looked like an angel standing on top of the church.” Her voice trailed off as she spotted Ponce de Leon, who had stopped a respectful distance behind me. Her stance shifted slightly, and she adjusted her grip on her cane.

  “Who is this?” Nidhi asked.

  “He’s the reason I survived the attack on that church.” I stepped to the side. “Juan Ponce de Leon, this is Doctor Nidhi Shah. You’ve met Lena once before.”

  “Not in person.” He shook their hands, his attention lingering on Lena. “You are quite the interesting snarl of conflicting magic, aren’t you?”

  “I’m sure you say that to all the dryads.”

  “Have the news reports come up with anything else?” I asked.

  “They’ve connected Bi Wei’s list of Porter archives to the fact that both the Michigan State University library and Fort Michilimackinac suffered ‘unexplained incidents’ this year,” said Nidhi. “It’s slow, but they’re piecing the truth together.”

  Ponce de Leon was already walking toward the exit. “Revelation is a foregone conclusion. Johannes will be working to control the message and minimize the damage to his organization, but Meridiana’s actions force him to respond quickly. Men under pressure make mistakes, and he is no exception.”

  Lena jerked a thumb at Ponce de Leon’s back, her cocked head voicing her silent question. What is he doing here?

  “He’s here to help,” I said quietly. “I think.”

  “Did you find the answers you were looking for?” Nidhi asked.

  “Not
exactly.” I slowed as we reached the parking lot, but Ponce de Leon seemed to know exactly where he was going. “I have a better idea what we’re up against, and what Jeneta—Meridiana—is searching for. And I know who Meridiana really is.”

  Nidhi’s car waited for us on the far side of the McNamara Parking Garage. I recognized the car first, then the man standing in the shadows beside it. “Oh, crap. Hi, John.”

  John Wenger was a Porter field agent, tall and slender and dangerous. He held a hardcover book in one hand and a small silver-and-black pistol in the other. “Lightning in the middle of a church, Isaac? How could you? The artwork you destroyed was irreplaceable.”

  “In my defense, they started it.” I saw Lena readying her cane. I put a hand on her arm. John wasn’t a bad guy. And even if she took him down, he wouldn’t be alone. They wouldn’t send a lone field agent after an ex-Porter, especially an ex-Porter whose lover had fought everything from vampires to one of Gutenberg’s automatons. “How goes the effort to protect the archives?”

  “Not good.” John grimaced, but the gun never wavered. “We’ve kept anyone from getting inside our facilities, but the mundanes have used satellite and radar imaging to confirm the existence of at least two archives we know of. They’ve halted the reconstruction of the MSU library in East Lansing, and there’s a fight brewing over whether or not to reexcavate the site.”

  I folded my arms. “If you’re not too busy worrying about hiding your archives and hunting down a rogue ex-Porter, maybe Gutenberg could spare some people to help me stop a reincarnated empress who wants to make herself a god?”

  “Rogue ex-Porters, plural.” John was one of the most polite, easygoing people I knew, but there was violence in his words. “We’ve lost seven that I know of, not including yourself. For some it’s national or religious loyalties. They’re worried about all-out war, and want to make sure their ‘side’ wins. Others see the secret getting out and figure this is their chance to cash in. There’s also a libriomancer who may have gotten herself imprisoned or killed in Pakistan, we’re not sure. And the EARM has a team looking for another one who’s gone missing in North Korea.”