Bookburners The Complete Season Two

by Max Gladstone

  “What?” he asked.

  She feigned ignorance. “Nothing. Where are the others?”

  Menchú joined them a moment later. The dark circles under his eyes had darkened even more over the last few weeks, probably from the growing frequency of those meetings with the monsignors. Dealing with the cascade of consequences of Team Two’s fall from grace, no doubt.

  Menchú almost covered his double-take at Grace’s makeup. “You slept well?” he asked her.

  “Fine, Arturo.” She raised her chin, defiant. A wing of hair escaped to veil her cheek.

  Liam cleared his throat. “Let’s see what Team Four was up to, shall we?”

  • • •

  In the time that Sal had gone to wake up Grace, Asanti and her ducklings had set up a staging area in Team Four’s foyer. The cleaning supplies were stacked in the corners and all trace of Ink Kong was gone. Not so much as a scrap or smear remained. Sal picked up a flashlight and some batteries, and passed more on to the others.

  Father Menchú stared into the floodlit non-Euclidean landscape beyond the far door. He looked grim, his jaw clenched. “You were right to call in the whole team.”

  The chamber was dark and vast. Tiny lights twinkled in the expanse, then vanished. There was only one constant in all that space: a golden beacon shining warm and bright from deep within the maze of twisting stairways.

  “This,” Liam said, “is definitely not what I expected.” He stared into Team Four’s chamber—or whatever it was—his nostrils flaring. “I thought it would be like a, a lab, you know? Flasks and tubes and jars with pickled demons inside.”

  “I would at least have expected some books,” Asanti said. “Where are all the books?”

  “Where is all the anything?” Sal asked. “Or is this whole place just made of stairs?”

  “Only one way to find out.” Asanti stepped through the door, her flashlight cutting a wedge for them to follow. The rest trooped behind her, down a blessedly straight flight of steps. They were stone, at first, but soon changed to wrought iron.

  There was no dust, Sal realized. No rust. The place was pristine.

  A shriek came from behind them. They turned back to see Sister Theresa silhouetted in the floodlight, waving at them wildly. She was also standing at a seventy-degree angle. And so was the floodlight. And the door. The flight of stairs had looped around without them even noticing.

  “Wait. There’s one more thing to take care of.” Menchú went halfway back up. Sal’s stomach twisted in synchrony with Menchú’s progress. “We don’t know what we might stir up in here that could escape into the Vatican,” he told the assistants. “Go back out, close the door and wait for us in the hall. If you hear or see anything out of the ordinary, alert Team One. No matter how insignificant it might seem.” He paused. “If we don’t come back in … let’s call it one hour, then tell Monsignor Angiuli.”

  “Who will also call Team One,” Sal said.

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps he’d decide that a rescue mission would be unwise.” Menchú folded his arms. Sister Theresa looked set to object, but Frances placed one hand on her arm, said, “We’ll do it,” and backed the nun out into the hall. Frances’s glasses glittered in the hallway lights before she shut the door into the Vatican.

  “The clock is ticking,” Menchú said. He turned and followed his team into the darkness.

  • • •

  A scurrying noise came from somewhere outside their sweeping cones of light. “Rats,” Grace said.

  “It sounded like metal.” Sal shone her light toward the source of the noise, but saw only spiderwebs.

  “This can’t exist under the Vatican, can it?” Liam asked. “I mean, if this were really here, our archives would be …” He shone a light off to the side. “In this big empty spot right here. Where there are more stairs, big surprise.”

  Menchú took a deep breath. “Well,” he said, “we knew coming into this that Team Four worked with magic. Stay alert, and let’s stick close together. We don’t know what kinds of traps might be waiting here for the unwary trespasser.”

  “We’re not trespassers,” Asanti protested. “We’re rightful Society representatives. We belong here.”

  “And what did the construct think about that?” Liam asked. There was a silence.

  “This is not right.” Liam stabbed at what might or might not have been the floor with his flashlight beam. He looked over the edge of a landing. The stairs were a little too narrow for comfort, a little too steep, and the fall led to far too much of nothing at all. “They could at least have put rails in,” he added, a bit plaintive. His voice didn’t echo off the walls, like it did in the Archives Here, the sound was simply swallowed up by the darkness. Sal heard a faint sound, like fluttering. Or maybe it was her own blood rushing in her ears.

  “I guess building codes weren’t invented yet,” Sal told him. She didn’t look over the edge.

  “In fact, some parts of the Bible describe building codes,” Asanti said, “including putting rails around the top of a flat roof so nobody can fall off.”

  “Good to know.” Sal stared straight at her feet, one step, two steps, doing her level best to stay in the exact center of the staircase. “Everyone check your shoelaces are all tied, okay?”

  Liam snorted from behind her.

  Up ahead, Grace asked, “Where are we going?” She looked at the stairs passing over their heads. “And how do we get there?”

  “The only landmark I see is that light.” Asanti faced the golden beacon, glowing steadily and impossibly far away. “We should try to figure out how to get there.”

  Sal chanced a look across at a spiral stair a stone’s throw away. Her stomach teetered, but she clamped it down. No time for that; she had a job to do. “Should we go back and get ropes? Mountain-climbing gear?”

  “In here, maybe gravity is what Team Four says it is.” Asanti trained her flashlight straight up, then straight down. Neither ceiling nor floor was visible. It was as though these twisting stairways had been constructed in a void.

  And then they hit a wide platform where four sets of stairs led up and down in all directions. A web stretched between the two up-bound staircases, reaching so far overhead that they couldn’t see the whole thing with their flashlights.

  “So that’s exciting.” Liam craned his neck to look at the set of steps passing twenty feet overhead. “How are we supposed to search this place to find what we need?” Or get out, he didn’t say.

  “Bread crumbs,” Sal joked.

  “It doesn’t look like we’ll be able to draw a map,” Menchú mused. “Not one that would make sense.”

  “How did Team Four find their way around this place?” Sal asked.

  “We can’t be sure that they did.” Asanti nodded again at the small sun. “There aren’t any reliable records of what happened to them, just centuries-old rumor and speculation. For all we know, this is the terrible thing that happened to them. Or perhaps they did it on purpose.”

  There was a fluttering sound. It grew louder and closer from the moment they first heard it.

  A flock of something winged darted and swirled around a distant set of stairs. Grace shone her light at the creatures, but the shapes were too far out of range and too erratic to get a good look. They dipped and curved behind another stairway, then down, far below the platform the team stood upon.

  “What are those things?” Sal asked, nervous but trying to keep it out of her voice. “Bats?”

  “Demons?” Liam suggested. He ran a knuckle under his earlobe. “We really shouldn’t be surprised to find demons here. I mean, there has to be a demon someplace to explain all this, right?”

  Grace frowned at the flock. “I don’t think they’re demons.”

  The flock burst up from beneath them. Wings beat at their shoulders; an endless stream swarmed around their heads and past.

  “Bats!” Sal covered her head with her arms and crouched low to stay out of the way. Liam and Menchú ducked down beside her
.

  Grace, on the other hand, leaned out over the emptiness, so far Sal was sure she must fall into the void, and snatched one of the things from midair. Then she held it out in two hands with mingled distaste and bewilderment as the rest passed by and vanished. “Not bats. Books.”

  It was a book, yes—a book twitching and struggling as if it were alive. The team exchanged horrified glances. “Grace, are you—”

  Grace frowned at the pages. “It’s not a magic book. At least I don’t think so. It’s Pope’s An Essay on Man.” The book trembled in her hands and emitted a terrible keening sound.

  “Should we bag it?” Sal asked.

  Menchú pointed to the receding flock. “I don’t think there are enough bags in the world for this place.”

  One of the dim lights in the darkness brightened and lowered toward them from somewhere not-quite-overhead. It wasn’t a firefly, nor was it a candle. It was an enormous clockwork spider.

  The spider was easily the size of a pony, but despite that, it hung from a strand of webbing fine enough that it slipped in and out of visibility. Eight eyes refracted the flashlight beams. Its legs and thorax were brass and crystal; the light glinted off razor-tipped legs and mandibles. Its glittering body held a sloshing reservoir of milky fluid, glowing faintly in the dimness. It worked its mandibles to reveal a pair of needles as long as Liam’s hands.

  Grace let go of the book. It burst away from her and back toward its flock.

  A single drop of fluid dripped from one of the spider’s fangs and fell, steaming, to the stairs. The fluid disappeared at once, but a splatter mark etched the stone where the fluid had fallen.

  “Nice spider,” Sal said, low and quiet. “We let the book go. Why don’t you leave?”

  Grace stretched out her hamstrings and then lowered herself into a crouch. “I don’t think so.”

  The spider stepped onto a set of stairs. Its rear legs neatly cut the strand it had descended with. It moved toward them slowly, smoothly, inexorably. Sharp metal legs tapped with each step, and for a single, hysterical moment, Sal thought it would make an excellent tap dancer. Move over, Michigan J. Frog.

  Grace crept toward the spider, just as slowly, blocking the spider’s route toward Asanti and Menchú. “Show me what you have.”

  The spider lifted a blade-like leg carefully, then jabbed it toward Grace in a blur.

  Grace ducked, grabbed the limb with her hands flat on each side, and twisted it out of the joint. It came loose and fell clattering to the floor.

  Liam and Sal circled the spider from opposite directions, looking for an opening. How, Sal wondered, are you supposed to grapple with something basically made out of razor blades?

  Liam took his jacket off and put it on backwards, with the sleeves hanging over his hands. Ah—like that. Sal did the same with her hoodie. The thick fabric wouldn’t be razorproof, but it was better than nothing.

  The spider made no sound of distress or anger; it slashed toward Grace with another leg, and this time caught her in the shoulder and knocked her down. It lowered its fangs for the kill. Liam grabbed at a hind leg and pulled, but it didn’t come away. The spider shook the leg, like it was trying to get something off its shoe.

  Grace rolled under the spider’s abdomen, then twisted another leg away.

  She scurried off to the side, holding the limb in two hands like a baseball bat. Menchú pulled Asanti back to the edge of the platform, farther out of danger.

  The spider turned toward Grace, meticulous, seemingly unhampered by its recent amputation.

  Grace used its own leg to bash it in the face.

  Two crystal eyes shattered on the first blow. Blood streamed down Grace’s wrists from where her hands gripped the metal. She swung a second time. Another eye popped out and rolled off the side of the platform. Grace swung the spider’s leg a third time, now a little lower. One of the spider’s fangs snapped off at the root. Venom began to drip from it. But the leg snapped, too, leaving Grace holding only a twisted stub of metal.

  The spider settled low on its remaining legs, opened its mandibles wide, and jetted a fine spray of venom toward Grace. She turned her face away, blocked the spray with her arm and with its leg, but everything the spray touched sizzled.

  Grace dropped the remnants of the broken spider leg, darted forward, and twisted off another, as easy for her as twisting the cap off a bottle of soda.

  Sal lunged toward the spider and grabbed one of the thing’s legs with her hoodie-wrapped hands. She tried to twist, like Grace had, but she wasn’t strong enough to pull the joint free. The fabric of her hoodie started coming apart where it met the edge of the blade. The spider lurched and tried to kick Sal away.

  Grace grunted, then bashed the thing a few more times with her new weapon. This leg proved a little more durable. The head of the spider sported deep dents, and showers of flaked brass fell away. Venom drooled from its bent mandibles in a steady flow; smoke billowed up where the fluid fell.

  “Push it!” Sal shouted.

  Grace stepped back, and then Liam and Sal shoved the spider in unison. The spider fell forward into the growing puddle of its own poison. It twitched wildly, as dying bugs do.

  Grace twisted off a fourth leg, a fifth. She flung them away into the darkness. The spider stilled.

  “I think we’re about done here,” Liam said, mildly. He put his jacket back on the right way while Grace finished dismantling the spider’s machinery. Sal and Liam grabbed their flashlights again. Menchú hurried to Grace’s side, frowning over the already-healing cuts on her hands.

  “And stay out.” Grace kicked the reservoir of milky venom over the edge.

  Asanti watched it fall with some regret. “I would have liked to get a better look.” She bent to examine one of the remaining spider legs, instead.

  “Are you all right?” Sal asked Grace.

  Grace wiped the blood from her hands onto her pants. “Piece of cake.”

  There was a sharp click, so sharp it made Sal’s fillings hurt. The world twisted and came apart into pieces. The place where Liam and Sal stood turned sideways and disappeared into a pocket of nothingness. The platform where Grace, Arturo, and Asanti stood reassembled in a new configuration. But Liam and Sal fell into the void.

  3.

  Sal and Liam fell toward a set of stairs perpendicular to the ones they’d started on. Sal reached out a hand to try to catch herself on the narrow end of a riser as she fell past it into the blackness. Instead, she and Liam slid along a step, and then somehow sideways was down and they stopped, like an arrow settling flat into the grass after a long flight. Liam’s arm rested on Sal’s thigh. He snatched it away and picked up his dropped flashlight.

  “Are you … okay?” he asked.

  “Nothing broken,” she said lightly. “At least, not yet.”

  Sal got her feet under her and crouched, shaky, looking for the others. The gravity change meant she couldn’t tell where they’d fallen from. There—there, she could see their flashlights. From where she stood, it looked like they were sticking straight out from a wall.

  “Hey! Hey, over here!” Sal called.

  “Are you all right?” Menchú’s voice was faint. “Can you get back up to us?” His flashlight trained on them, so all Sal could see was a blinding circle.

  “Do you mind aiming that somewhere else so we can see you?” Sal asked, shielding her face with one arm. She tried to wrap her brain around the way the stairs wove and combined. “I don’t think we can get to you from here,” she said.

  Liam stood up beside her. “Nothing to climb over on,” he said. “Wouldn’t recommend you trying to jump down to us, either.”

  “How much time do we have left?” Sal asked. “Maybe as long as we’re separated, we should keep searching and you can go back and report what we’re seeing in here.”

  Menchú called back. “Can’t,” he said. “The stairs we took to get here are gone now.”

  Liam looked at his phone. He tapped the screen a few tim
es, frowning. “This says we’ve been in here for six hours. That can’t be—”

  Asanti’s voice carried to them, clear and worried. “What happened to the doorway out?”

  Sal tried to get her bearings. She could see the golden beacon they’d been following; it glowed the same as it had the whole time, warm and friendly. But the floodlight they’d left behind was gone.

  “Did Team One shut us down?” Sal asked.

  “We haven’t been in here that long. It’s only been maybe twenty minutes,” Father Menchú protested. “I—my watch says it’s been two hours.”

  Liam looked back to his phone. “I’d expect electronics to screw up around magic, but isn’t your watch mechanical?”

  “Yes. Unless there’s something else at work affecting time, too. Grace? Do you feel different in here?”

  Grace shrugged. “Not really.”

  “So we can’t be sure how much time we have.” Asanti sighed.

  “Damn.” Sal sat down on heavily on the stairs. “Well what do we do now?”

  Grace shone her light under her face like a kid about to tell a spooky story while camping. “Go to the light.”

  “Did anybody ever make her watch Poltergeist?” Sal muttered. “Was that on purpose, or …?”

  “We’ll meet you there,” Liam shouted. “However long it takes.” He turned toward Sal, but didn’t look at her. “Come on, just sitting there isn’t going to get us out of this.” He trotted away up the stairs, the path that seemed to lead toward the beacon.

  After a moment, Sal picked up her flashlight and followed.

  • • •

  The stairs had changed several times as they climbed and descended: iron, stone, wood, even lush carpet at one point. Sometimes, to Liam’s relief, there was a banister of glossy wood or rough metal. Mostly the edge led into nothingness.

  “Marco,” Sal called, from time to time.

  “Polo,” Menchú answered back.

  Liam kept a wide distance from Sal as they walked together. Wider, even, than the generous bubble of not-sleeping-with-you-anymore required. Sal ignored it as they crept up stairs and across bridges. His problem, not hers.