Unbound

by Jim C. Hines

  Gutenberg and Ponce de Leon acted like they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to kiss or kill one another. One moment they were arguing over the future of the world, the next they were laughing about some obscure magical misadventure from three hundred years ago.

  I had been given a large wooden drawing desk, which was set up uncomfortably close to the windows. So far, I’d sketched out more than half of the poem, though the words made no more sense than before. I jotted the translation onto a separate piece of paper as I went.

  Nidhi pulled a folding chair over and sat down beside me. She skimmed over my notes. “This looks like the writing of an unmedicated schizophrenic.”

  “D’Aurillac wasn’t crazy.” I stared at the poem. “He might be making me crazy, though. Him and Gutenberg. I can’t even use the phone to call Copper River.” I hadn’t spoken to Jennifer at the library since I left with Mahefa. I was so fired.

  “Nicola says the Porters have assigned a second field agent to guard your house and Lena’s oak. All of Gutenberg’s automatons are awake and alert. If anything happens in Copper River . . .”

  I twirled my pencil through my fingers. “Will that be enough? How many Porters has Meridiana killed? We know she’s taken at least one of Bi Sheng’s followers, too.”

  I spun the pencil again, then slid it behind my ear. I massaged my eyes and temples with my fingertips. “Meridiana doesn’t even need to attack. Just drop a spy into the neighborhood and wait for us to return. She knows Lena has to go back to her oak.”

  “Not for a while,” Lena said, strolling across the room. In one hand, she carried what looked like an ice cream float made of Neapolitan ice cream and Mountain Dew. “When Nidhi told me you had started a war with all vampkind, I figured we might be taking a vacation soon, so I took a few precautions.”

  Lena’s grin was almost smug. I glanced at Nidhi, who shrugged.

  “Another graft?” I hadn’t seen her carrying a branch from her oak, but I had been knocked unconscious before getting into Nidhi’s car, so who knew what they had packed in the trunk.

  “Not exactly.” Lena sipped her float, licked foam from her upper lip, then extended her left hand toward us.

  A blister bulged along the length of her palm like a swollen tendon. A long sliver darkened the skin. It stretched, tenting almost a centimeter before a slender spike of wood punched through.

  There was no blood. Clear fluid coated the bark, giving it a dark shine. The twig grew faster now, stretching upward and thickening until it was roughly the size of a chopstick. Delicate green buds uncurled into tiny oak leaves.

  I reached for her arm, then hesitated. She nodded permission, and I gently probed the skin of her forearm, feeling the hard bulge of the wood. I traced it back to the elbow, where it seemed to merge into the bone and joint. I imagined roots stretching through her arm, twining with her veins, digging into the muscle fibers. “You’re carrying a graft inside of you?”

  “Grafts, plural.” She turned her hand to admire the leaves. “My tree is my flesh. It contains me. Why can’t I do the same for it? Do you remember when I smuggled a wooden knife in my arm?”

  “Yah.” I touched the skin where the branch emerged from her hand. It gave slightly, sliding around the wood.

  She smiled and touched the leaves. “This is easier. More natural.”

  “How much do you have?” asked Nidhi. “How long can it survive inside of you?”

  “The wood doesn’t do as well without sunlight, but it’s thrived for two days so far. It helps when I’m able to get outside and spread my leaves, so to speak.” She flexed her hand, and the leaves turned brown. The wood slowly shrank back into her skin. “The thickest segment is near my spine, with thinner, softer branches stretching along my limbs.”

  “I would love to see an X-ray of that,” I whispered.

  Nidhi touched Lena’s palm. “Does this mean you no longer need your oak?”

  “No. I’ll need to go back eventually. This body isn’t big enough to fully contain that part of me. But I’ll have more freedom to wander. The idea seemed insane at first, but I’ve grown to appreciate a little insanity from time to time.” She winked at me.

  The tip of the branch disappeared, leaving only a trio of dried leaves that had broken from the branch. A tiny pearl of blood welled from the cut in her skin.

  “Please don’t do that again.” Gutenberg clutched an electronic cigarette between two fingers. The light in the end glowed a soft, steady blue. “This place is as secure as I can make it, but we’re keeping magic use to a minimum.”

  “Save it for the necessities,” I said. “Like prying into our memories?”

  “Yes.”

  Lena broke in before I could pursue that argument. “If we’re stuck here, could someone bring in a grow light? I’m not used to spending so much time inside with incandescents and fluorescents. It’s like trying to live on a diet of plain toast and tepid water.”

  “Nicola should be able to arrange—” He scowled and spun away, tapping a Bluetooth earpiece. “I don’t care what the Brazilian authorities are saying, you need to get her out of there.” He paused. “Absolutely not. Humans only. Babs can send reinforcements if you need, but I’m not risking a single photo getting out that could be used to suggest Porters are in league with monsters.”

  “Monsters?” Lena said softly.

  Gutenberg didn’t notice. He finished his conversation, jabbed the earpiece, and turned back to us. “I’ll talk to Nicola about your lights, but in the meantime, no magic. For similar reasons, the phone won’t work unless Nicola or I key in an access code. Your cell phones have been disabled and the batteries removed. The Internet is likewise off limits. Meals and supplies will be delivered to the apartment as needed. The windows are reflective from outside, so you can sightsee to your heart’s content so long as you stay within this apartment. Until we have Meridiana, none of you are leaving.”

  I started to ask if we’d be issued orange prison jumpsuits, but the gentle pressure of Lena’s hand on the center of my back calmed me enough to hold my tongue.

  “We know,” said Lena. “Nicola already explained the rules.”

  “My phone was a cracked brick anyway,” I added.

  “Yes, I repaired that for you. You’ll need it if we’re forced to evacuate.” Gutenberg turned toward the window and took a long drag from his cigarette. When he spoke next, he was almost apologetic. “Meridiana has declared war on my people. I’m trying to protect you.”

  I sat back. “I thought I stopped being your people when you kicked me out of the Porters.”

  “I can understand why you would think that.” He still hadn’t turned to face me. “This isn’t exactly falling out the way I had hoped.”

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “That depends on what the followers of Bi Sheng do next.” He glanced over his shoulder, but said nothing about my choice to allow Bi Wei and the others to escape. “Their letter to the world was probably the most helpful gift they could have given Meridiana, forcing the Porters to split our attention, to react instead of act. If they continue to aid her—”

  “They’re not trying to help Meridiana,” I protested.

  Gutenberg turned his full attention on me, making it feel like the gravity had just doubled. “You know this for a fact? I know you consider Bi Wei an ally, but even if you’re right about her, can you be certain about her compatriots?”

  “Bi Wei and her friends were terrified of the Porters,” Nidhi said. “They’re refugees from a battle they fought and lost five hundred years ago. You’re their bogeyman. That letter forced you to prioritize, to devote your people to other crises instead of searching for them. For now, as long as they don’t feel threatened by you, I doubt they’ll do anything that might draw your attention.”

  “Maybe.” Gutenberg brought the cigarette to his mouth, inhaled, then scowled at the glowing blue tip. “But the sooner Isaac can figure out that poem, the better off we’ll all be. Doctor Shah, I�
��d appreciate it if you could work with Nicola. Look over her shoulder at the reports from the field. Anyone showing the slightest hint of instability needs to be pulled out immediately. Lena, would you please join Juan and me in the other room?”

  “What for?” she asked warily.

  “As we manage the various revelations taking place throughout the world, the existence of magical beings will become known. There’s no avoiding that now. Your perspective would be helpful.”

  Lena didn’t answer right away. Given Gutenberg’s long prohibition against nonhumans joining the Porters, I suspected “Juan” had been the one pushing for Lena’s participation.

  She raised her glass. “All right. But I’m going to need a refill.”

  I was up past midnight, but I had filled in everything save the central circle and inner cross of the poem. When I collapsed on the sofa, visions of Latin swirled through my dreams.

  Sunlight woke me at what my body instinctively recognized as a ridiculously early hour. Gutenberg was standing in front of the windows, arguing with someone on his phone in what sounded like Swahili. I groaned and pulled the throw pillow over my face while he finished his call. His footsteps approached, stopping at the end of the couch.

  “Isaac, good, I had something I wanted you to see.”

  “Isaac’s not here right now,” I said through the pillow. “He’s home in Copper River having a nightmare, probably brought on by bad Cudighi. Leave a message, and he’ll get back to you as soon as he wakes up.”

  I waited on the off chance that reality might respond to my wishful thinking, then sat up and tossed the pillow aside. Fatigue vanished when I spotted the book Gutenberg had set on the coffee table. Large, bound in brown leather, with vellum pages. “What’s that?”

  “Selected Writings on the Mind of God. By Gerbert d’Aurillac.” He sat down and opened the front cover. “Mostly mathematics and magic, with a smattering of astronomy and music.”

  I hardly dared to breathe. “How old is this?”

  Gutenberg smiled, one of the first times I had seen such an unshielded expression on his face. It made him appear almost human. “It’s an original manuscript, penned mostly by d’Aurillac himself. From my private library.”

  I stared at the pages, imagining Gerbert at his writing desk, dipping a sharpened quill into his inkpot to trace each letter. He would have left blank spaces for the lines of red text that denoted the word of God, and for the larger, decorated drop caps. Sketched constellations filled the margins, along with bisected circles that could have been exercises in geometry or an attempt to map the orbit of the moon. “You just happened to have this sitting around?”

  “It was back home in Mainz. I had it delivered last night.” He sat back, clearly enjoying my appreciation. In that moment, he wasn’t the master of the Porters, nor was he the man who had stolen my magic. He was simply a book collector showing off one of his prizes. “I’ve had a long time to accumulate old tomes. I’ve got an early draft of Frankenstein you should read someday. Shelley’s original ending changes the entire message of the story.”

  “Why are you sharing this with me?”

  “Because I knew what it would mean to you to see it. And because I hoped it might provide additional insight into d’Aurillac’s mind. He says nothing of Meridiana or her prison, but he does discuss the structure of magical spells, along with certain principles he learned from an Arabic master.” He grabbed a spiral-bound document and set it alongside the book. “I also printed out one of d’Aurillac’s known puzzle poems and its solution. He prepared this one as a gift to Otto II. The structure is simpler, and I don’t believe there’s anything magical about it, but it should help.”

  “Thank you.” Whatever his intentions, the presence of the thousand-year-old book had burned through my fatigue, leaving eagerness and excitement in its wake. I brought the book and printout to my writing desk and sat down to study Gerbert d’Aurillac’s poem to Otto II, comparing it to my own notes. This was simpler, yes, but both poems shared some of the same basic structure.

  The first page of the solution looked like a word search, only instead of straight lines, the words were hidden in the shapes of Arabic numerals and Greek letters. “‘From Gerbert to Otto,’” I read, tracing the loops of a Celtic knot. The puzzle used the letters of Otto’s name just as the poem in my mind used Anna’s. Each of those letters marked the beginning of a line of text to be stacked one atop the next, creating the grid for the word search.

  “Breakfast should be here in an hour,” Gutenberg said. “If you and your companions have any preferences . . .”

  I shooed him away and turned the page, then snatched up my pencil and began to write.

  According to the notes Gutenberg had provided, Gerbert d’Aurillac’s original poem to Otto II would have come with thirty-two pages of instructions.

  The poem d’Aurillac had planted in my head came with a total of zero.

  Once the raw poem was complete, I copied out each line of text to create the word search grid, starting each line with the larger letters from Anna’s name. But how to arrange them? Did I work from the inside out or vice versa? Clockwise or counterclockwise? There were fourteen As and Ns, breaking the poem into a total of twenty-six segments, most of which had two or three lines of text. With sixty-four lines in total, there were too many possibilities to simply guess.

  I tried following the pattern used to translate Otto II’s poem, but after three hours of rearranging and staring, I had yet to find a single hidden word or phrase.

  I cut each line onto its own strip of graph paper, which kept the letters evenly spaced and allowed me to move them about. In order to search for word shapes, I borrowed one of Nicola’s computers to scan, enlarge, and print the “answer key” to d’Aurillac’s older poem. Squares of clear plastic cut from a large freezer bag, plus a black permanent marker, let me trace templates of the shapes from that poem. But no matter how I slid them around, I found nothing in his poem for Anna.

  Either the shapes were wrong, or else I hadn’t found the proper sequence for putting the text together. I considered asking Gutenberg if he could yank a magic code-breaker out of a book, but if it was that simple, I’m sure he would have done it by now.

  Gutenberg and Ponce de Leon crossed the room, heading for Nicola and the computers. Gutenberg was talking sharply into his phone. “Tell Mohamed an automaton will be there in two minutes. He needs to— No, that’s what Meridiana wants. Karim is already dead. If he tries to rescue the body, she’ll take him, too.” He peered over Nicola’s shoulder at one of the screens and muttered to himself what sounded like a Middle High German curse. “If Mohamed so much as cracks a book before the automaton arrives, you take him down yourself, understand?”

  “Won’t work,” said Ponce de Leon. “Mohamed and Karim were siblings, and he’s too skilled a fighter. Tell her to throw up a sandstorm if she can. It will hold him back and buy them time.”

  “A sandstorm against a kishi?” Gutenberg snapped. “The damned thing has two faces. Blind the human face, and the hyena will track them by scent.”

  “Mohamed . . . isn’t he the one who likes to use the Guinness Book of Records?”

  Gutenberg nodded.

  Ponce de Leon grinned. “Trinidad Scorpion Pepper.”

  “Ha!” Gutenberg spun away. “Tell Mohamed to rip open his Guinness and hit that thing with the essence of the Trinidad Scorpion Pepper. Whatever you do, make sure the wind is blowing away from you both.”

  I found myself holding my breath along with them and counting the seconds. How long had it been since Gutenberg sent the automaton?

  “Good.” Gutenberg stepped back and ran a finger through his hair. “Now get the hell out of there.”

  Ponce de Leon clapped Gutenberg’s back. Gutenberg waited a moment longer, then ended the call.

  “Meridiana?” asked Nicola.

  “She’s hunting us like animals.” Gutenberg fumbled his electronic cigarette out of his pocket. “She captu
red Karim, allowed her ghosts to seize control of the body, and used it as bait. I’m sending Barbara Palmer down there to clean up the mess. Mohamed needs a firm hand to keep him from doing anything stupid, and it will get Babs off my back.”

  Babs was a Regional Master from down south. Other Porters called her the “Tex-Mex Libriomancer,” but never to her face. I didn’t know her background, but if she was giving Gutenberg a hard time, I liked her.

  “If Meridiana is chasing random Porters, it means she hasn’t found our location yet,” Ponce de Leon pointed out.

  “So instead she’s taunting us,” Gutenberg snapped. “Showing the Porters I can’t protect them. Pushing them until they burn themselves out trying to fight her with magic, and once that happens, she crawls into their thoughts and seizes control.”

  “You can’t fight every battle yourself,” Ponce de Leon said.

  Gutenberg shrugged him off. “Meridiana’s ghosts unravel our magic faster than we can create it. Unless we find a better means to fight her, she’ll continue to eliminate us one by one.”

  “You saved two lives today.”

  “And I lost a third.” Gutenberg flung his electronic cigarette at the window so hard I was amazed it didn’t break.

  “How long has it been since you slept?” Nidhi yawned as she entered the living room. Lena followed behind her.

  “Years,” snapped Gutenberg. “Not since Nancy Kress released Beggars in Spain. I don’t have time to sleep. You’d think immortality would give you more time to accomplish things. Instead, every year lengthens the list of what must be done, and time slips past ever faster.” He strode over to retrieve his cigarette. “My apologies. Did we wake you?”

  “Yes.” Nidhi walked up to Gutenberg and poked him in the chest. “You’re still human. More or less. Maybe your body doesn’t need to sleep, but your mind needs a break. Go watch a movie. Read a book. Play Monopoly. Nicola will let you know if there’s another emergency.”