Bookburners The Complete Season Two

by Max Gladstone

  Her nose wrinkled in contempt. She reached for him; he tried to pull back, but her hair held him firm, and her palm settled against his forehead. Pain seared him. His spine became a white-hot bar of agony. He couldn’t scream. There wasn’t breath enough for the scream he needed.

  Somewhere, a door opened, and there was light, and the wires that held him surged and tossed. He landed hard, on stone, and he was still alive, which he felt pretty sure was a good thing.

  The Old Lady’s shop door slammed shut behind him.

  “Fuck,” he said when he recovered enough breath to say anything at all.

  “Glad to see you haven’t lost your old charm.”

  He knew the woman who owned that voice. He knew her lilt, knew how she screamed and how she laughed, knew her beneath his bones, knew her though his mind had forgotten all their history together save a name and a glorious glimpse.

  He pushed himself up onto his knees. She stood over him, hair shimmering golden in the light of the pearl the dragons chased. He found his own voice: “Christina.” Dressed in cashmere and corduroy, bearing an armful of weird mystic packages. Same green eyes. Same smile. He wanted to run. He wanted to embrace her. His—

  What did you call someone you’d known, loved, while you were possessed by a demon? A person for whom you would have done anything? A person you’d lost so deeply that only your blood remembered her?

  Ex, for starters.

  She laughed nothing at all like bells, and everything like herself. “Old Lady didn’t like you very much either, I take it?” She touched her forehead with her free hand. He hadn’t noticed before, taken in by her eyes and the sheer shock of her, but her skin there puckered around a silver glyph he couldn’t read. He touched his own forehead, and felt the same glyph, still hot to the touch. “Well, don’t worry. She’s a witch, no mistaking, but I’ve a thought or two about how to get back at her. If you’re game.”

  He tried to speak, and couldn’t.

  “Come on. I do like seeing you this way, but you can’t just kneel gawping forever. Up you come. I won’t bite.”

  And, Christ, she held out her hand.

  And, Christ, he took it.

  • • •

  “No fucking way,” Grace said, later, in their hotel. “Absolutely not.”

  Sansone’s plausibly deniable travel agent had booked one room for the two of them, and in fairness, the room had a nice view of the Bund and the Pearl and the weird ultramodern Pudong sky. It also had one bed. Liam, having found an extra set of sheets in a closet, was trying to make up the couch so he could nap before nightfall; Grace kept getting in the way. “It’s a good idea.”

  “It’s a good—do you listen to yourself when you talk? Are you listening to me?” She grabbed the sheets from him. He reached for them, but she stepped back. “We don’t have any idea what you were up to, while you were possessed. That woman—whatever she and her pals were building back in Turkey, that was just the beginning. You can’t seriously want to help them.”

  “I don’t.” He circled around her, and made a dive for the folded sheets; she dodged, and he hit the wall. “I don’t want to help them. But I saw the circlet with my own eyes. The Old Lady has what we need, and she won’t trade with us. Christina says she and her people have a way to get around that.” He rubbed his cheek. “That hurt.”

  “It’s Christina, now?”

  “That’s her name. What else should I call her?” He walked toward Grace, slowly. “You’re right. We don’t know who they are. We don’t know anything about them. But they know me. That gives me an in. She invited me to a meeting, that’s all. If nothing else, I’ll be able to learn more about them.”

  “These are, by your own admission, crazy demon cultists. They want crazy demon things.”

  “I can handle it,” he said. “Maybe I can even get the circlet.”

  “There are other ways.”

  “Not with this mark on my forehead. I tried asking around, after I left the Old Lady’s place. The other shopkeepers looked right through me, like I didn’t exist.” He drew close. Had Grace been anyone else, there was no way she could have stopped him from grabbing the sheets. But she wasn’t. “And, like you have room to talk. You spoke to the Chinese. Who aren’t even supposed to know we’re here.”

  She reddened. He wouldn’t have bet on whether that was from embarrassment or rage. “They did know. They were following us. I had to lock them down. There’s no reason we can’t use them to our advantage.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” A service cart rolled down the hall outside their room. Liam reached for the sheets, slowly, and this time Grace didn’t pull back. “I won’t get sucked in. We need the circlet to fix the Orb.”

  “You want her,” Grace said. “Christina.”

  “I won’t go down that road again. If they can get us the circlet, we have to try.”

  “Who says they can?”

  “The worst that happens is I have a chance to fill the holes in my head. I lost so much, Grace. I don’t miss the man I used to be. But I want to know what happened to him.”

  She let go of the sheets.

  “Thank you,” he said, but when she didn’t answer, he didn’t push the issue. He slept the rest of the afternoon in dreamless green.

  3.

  Christina had given Liam an address, and a time, which was how Liam found himself, after dark, standing in front of an establishment of the kind he’d sworn a thousand times he’d never step near.

  He’d dressed in sober clothes for a hard night’s work, blacks and grays, balaclava in his inside pocket with the gloves, brass knucks if the situation called, and his cross, of course, with three backups. If the game was black-bag work in the Bizarre, against the Old Lady, damn straight he was going in loaded for war. He expected the conversation to be in a dark room out of the way, the kind of room they had in the back of the kind of bar where your feet stuck to the floor and the only place to sit was a torn stool between two hulking rugby players named Steve.

  Christina’s address belonged to a pub with a cheerfully lit green sign that read “O’Flannigan’s,” flanked with shamrocks. A “My Goodness, My Guinness” placard stood in the window. Liam skulked in the shadows across the way, praying he’d made a mistake, or she had. Six local girls staggered out, arm-in-arm-in-arm-et cetera, and while the door was open Liam heard the Pogues and the Dubliners singing “The Irish Rover.”

  Christ.

  He wasn’t entirely certain how people in this country crossed the road, so he watched a while longer without arriving at any answers. Finally, he settled on tagging along with an eighty-year-old man carrying nine FCUK bags who decided to Frogger it across. Safe on the other sidewalk, Liam braced himself, raised his hood, kept his head down, and entered the bar.

  There was one hell of a crowd; he wouldn’t have had any trouble passing unnoticed had a hulking bear of a man with a foot of thick red beard not pointed to him, roared, “Man o’ the hour!” and bowled toward him, checking drunks into other drunks but stepping carefully around the waitstaff. Liam glanced over his shoulder, hoping the giant was aiming for someone else, and missed his chance to duck or dodge the rib-creaking hug in which he was caught and lifted. “Liam! My man, have we missed you.”

  Excuse me, Liam tried to say, I understand that I probably look a lot like someone you used to know, but I was sort of minorly possessed by a demon at that point, there are a lot of things I don’t remember, I’m so sorry, I really don’t mean to be a disappointment. What he actually managed to say was “—Aaaah—”

  The giant set him down, but kept an arm at least as thick as Liam’s own thigh wrapped around Liam’s shoulders, and swept him back, tossing drunks left and right. “God, man, what the fuck happened to your hair?” He rubbed Liam’s close-cropped scalp. “Going bald, or what? How the hell have you been?”

  “Er,” Liam said, but before he could think of anything less imbecilic, they passed through the last of the crowd. And there she sat.

>   Smiling.

  Not triumph. He thought he’d recognize that expression, at least. No superiority there, no control, none of that old nasty edge he’d seen on Sal’s face when the Hand possessed her. The woman—Christina—Christina smiled like someone happy to see him. She uncrossed her legs. And even though that motion had been utterly casual, even though there was a table between them for fuck’s sake, literally, he remembered those legs. She raised her glass to him, in a toast, and he remembered that throat, too, as she drank. The silver glyph glittered on her forehead.

  “Hi, Liam,” she said to him, and “Simmer down, Tom,” when she set down the glass. “Give him space. He doesn’t remember.”

  Tom uncoiled his arm from Liam, leaned back against the wall, and grabbed a beer. “Doesn’t remember what?”

  Christina’s gaze slid back to Liam. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she knew, and wanted to give him a chance. He looked to Tom—no memories there, for all he knew this guy was a plant, but then, so far his flashbacks had been sexy-times-only. And Tom looked, and sounded, so damn happy to see Liam. But as Liam searched for words, Tom’s broad face clouded. Which, weirdly, felt worse than looking at Christina. Liam had had his share of lovers since waking up. He wasn’t proud of this, exactly, and he confessed afterward, of course, but they helped. He couldn’t remember when he’d last seen someone so happy to see him.

  So even though it was tipping his hand, even though this was probably what Christina had hoped for, he said, “I don’t remember much, I’m afraid.”

  Tom’s eyes widened in shock. “Not even Sweden?”

  “Sit down, Liam.”

  He sat. Christina slid a pint of stout across the table to him. He picked it up, thought about calories and drugs and how much gym time he’d missed recently, and drank anyway. “No. Not Sweden.”

  Tom clasped Liam’s shoulder in one huge hand. “Sweden, though! You have to remember Sweden. You can’t just forget a thing like that. You were like a god in Sweden.”

  Liam tensed. “With magic, you mean. I don’t do that anymore.”

  Tom laughed. “Not magic, man. The way they looked at you. Everyone wanted to be you or do you or both. Robbing from the rich and giving to who-the-fuck-ever, and no one could say otherwise. And when we were done, the parties—you can’t have forgotten about the parties! Or Helsinki? Or what’s-her-name, you know, the drummer, and when her girlfriend started after you with a knife and then the cops came and the whole place was on fire, and you got away with all the diamonds and sent the money to UNICEF on a novelty-sized check?” He drank half his beer in a single pull. “What did they do to you in the Church, man? It’s inhumane, making a man forget times like that.”

  How could he answer? What Liam knew: Menchú had found him in a basement in Prague, with wires coming out of his body, part of some enormous machine. That didn’t square with Tom’s hacker-prince image—but when he turned to Christina, he saw a look on her face that scared him. She was remembering too, and fondly, and watching for a sign Liam did not know how to give.

  “There’ll be time for memories later,” Christina said. “Tonight, we have work.”

  Tom nodded.

  “Plan’s simple.” She leaned across the table. Of course: Tom already knew the score. “Smash-and-grab. We both want something the Old Lady has, so we go in and take it. Tom’s on scout. I can take the alarms. You’re with me—I imagine you’ve picked up some of that Bookburner knack for walking into magic and coming out smelling rosy.”

  “They’ll notice us.”

  “The hell they will. Tonight’s a revel—they’ll be drunk and disorderly. Even the Old Lady goes to dance. We’ll sneak through the crowd.”

  “Sneak how?” He pointed to his forehead. “After the Old Lady gave me the mark, no one in the Bizarre would even talk to me. I don’t know how you bought those packages.”

  “I’m the more persuasive of the pair of us, my dear,” she said.

  “Still. I don’t know much about magic”—she laughed, and he ignored her—“but I bet this glyph holds a strict geas to stay away from that creepy house.”

  She reached into the V-neck of her blouse. Liam looked away. When he looked back, she held a small corked vial of green sand. “Fruits of my afternoon labors.” She removed the cork with her teeth, tapped sand onto her fingertips, and rubbed the green into the skin of her forehead. The glyph came away, scar and all. “And so,” she said, “we wipe away our past.” She tipped more sand onto her fingers. “Are you with me, Liam?”

  “Course he is,” Tom said.

  Liam drank. He thought. He set down his glass, and met her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Then lean in.”

  • • •

  Grace trailed Liam, Christina, and the giant to the City God Temple. The cabbie kept pestering Grace about her relationship to Liam, but when she finally gave in and said, “He’s my brother,” he laughed and let the matter drop. She tipped him, and continued on foot. Less risky to trace them from the rooftops; she climbed a drainpipe and feather-stepped across alleys until the trio reached the reflecting pool, and dove through one at a time. As they crossed, golden fireworks flashed inside the water; the sky above remained gray, lit from beneath by the glitter of the city.

  Grace hopped two roofs over, and landed soundlessly behind Wang Jianguo. The ASB woman lay at the roof’s edge, staring down through binoculars. She didn’t hear Grace approach—or she faked surprise when Grace cleared her throat.

  “Friends of yours?” Wang Jianguo asked.

  “I don’t have that many friends.” Which was true. “Why did you post snipers?” She did not point to their positions. Always a chance she had missed one, and she didn’t want Wang to know that.

  “Caution,” Wang replied. “If the night turns ugly, if something horrible escapes, we want to be ready.”

  Grace doubted bullets would stop anything horrible that emerged from the Bizarre, but this was not her operation. Even though it could have been, if everything had gone differently. “How did your people get kicked out of the Bizarre?”

  “It’s been a long and busy time since ’49. There were… misunderstandings.” Wang Jianguo set down her binoculars. “I explained your presence to my superiors. You have your safe conduct. The next time you come back, if you don’t warn us in advance, things won’t go so well.”

  “I understand.”

  “Make sure your bosses understand. This is our territory. These are our people. Work with outsiders if you want. But we handle our own business. Our territory, our operations, our people.”

  Not yours, by implication. Grace heard the accusation—collaborator—in Wang Jianguo’s voice—traitor—and breathed deep, calmed down. She wanted to say, I fought for our country before you were born. She wanted to say, I knew this city from a seed, I knew this city before they burnt it down and built it up and burnt it down and built it up again. I knew it when this vision you sell to outsiders was the breathing truth. You don’t get to cast me out from here. This place is mine. I was a woman here, and I fought.

  But that was a fight she could not win, and did not want to lose.

  “Did you search for my names?” she asked.

  “I did.”

  “What did you find?”

  Wang Jianguo looked away.

  “We had a deal,” Grace said. “We’ll tell you what’s on the other side.”

  “I don’t want you to tell me. I want to see for myself.”

  “The pool won’t let you in.”

  “Maybe it will. If you bring me.”

  Grace stood and turned to leave.

  “If it doesn’t work,” Wang Jianguo said, “I’ll tell you everything I know. I just—I want to see it with my own eyes.”

  Want, or need? She was hungry. How much experience did the ASB have with magic, anyway? So much must have gone underground, after the Revolution—not that the magical world had ever been particularly aboveground in the first place. They hid. They had their reasons. They had eve
n more, now.

  She wanted to paint Wang Jianguo as an enemy, but had Grace herself been any different? What stood between them, save history and a few bad days?

  “Come with me,” Grace said. “Before I change my mind.”

  • • •

  Liam kept his head down and followed Tom and Christina through the revel. He did not look up at the dragons cavorting in the sky around their weird pearly football things. He did not look at the people around him—monsters, really, monsters in fancy dress that made them look more monstrous. A few of the weirder fellows, he saw when he let his eyes wander, wore masks shaped like human faces. He hoped they were masks. He kept his eyes on Christina’s feet after that, and ignored the incense in his nostrils, the beat that echoed in his chest, the music that called him to unnatural revelry.

  But no one noticed them. The silver glyphs were gone. Liam wondered if Sam the hedgehog was off somewhere in this crowd, partying. He hoped so, which surprised him. Sympathy for the monsters—that was new.

  Oddly, given how densely packed the courtyard was with other revelers, the tiny pavilion with the plain wooden door stood unattended. Christina stopped beside the building, reached into her purse, and produced a velvet pouch, from which she took a small green board patterned with silver circuitry. Liam’s skin itched beneath his cross. Christina knelt and touched two leads from the circuit board to blank flagstone. Liam blinked, or the courtyard did, and when his eyes sorted themselves out, he saw a tarnished silver circle etched with glyphs he didn’t recognize inlaid around the pavilion. How had he missed it before?

  Magic.

  Dammit.

  The circle smoked, and the courtyard stank of ozone. He listened for a scream, for a change in the revel tempo, but heard none. Christina knew her business.

  “Come on,” she said. “Unless you’d rather wait until they catch on.”

  • • •

  Grace expected the sudden cold, but she did not expect the light.

  She came to on the surface of a pond, and found her feet amid the lilies and the lotus. Wang Jianguo lay on the water beside her, gaping up. Grace held out her hand, which Wang ignored; her eyes reflected glories in the sky. Grace shrugged, pulled Wang to her feet anyway, then looked.