• • •
“On a scale of one to doomed,” Sal said, “you have to admit, we’re pretty close to ‘ghostly voices prophesying war’ territory.”
“One, don’t misquote Coleridge, and two, you’re being sensational.” Grace marched ahead of her into the Archives, which were empty, all Asanti’s little helpers—her worker bees and librarian monks—suspended until the trial’s end. The new concentric circles of shelves, the computers, clean desks, and caretaking apparatus, stood untended. “We did the right thing. Asanti did the right thing. We saved people and shut down evil magic, which is basically our entire job description. Yes, the stakes were higher than usual. We faced a new enemy, and defeated it with new methods. Which means there’s a shake-up at the top, and they’re looking for someone to blame. Asanti’s the logical scapegoat. But they know she did the right thing. They’ll respect that. They’d be idiots not to. They’ll give her a chance to play ball, and she’ll take it, because she values her work too much to risk leaving it to someone else—let alone the whole maybe-getting-executed thing.”
“Were we watching the same trial? She told them to throw the book at her.”
“She pleaded innocent,” Grace said.
“Because that gives her more of a chance to argue. She doesn’t think she can win. She just wants a fight.”
Grace picked up Diseases of the Common Beetle and thumbed past close-up photos of abdomens and mandibles, mesothoraces, and what-the-hell-ever-else.
Sal sat on Frances’s desk, thought better of it, and slid off. She moved to Asanti’s desk, thought better of that, and settled at last on Liam’s. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in here without her before. Maybe once, when the demon sleepwalked me in. But even then, she found me.”
“She’s dedicated,” Grace said, without looking up from a two-page spread of multicolored scarabs.
“Grace, you’re saying the Society will do what’s right, will protect its people.” It would have been so easy to say, You know that isn’t true. To throw Grace’s history right back at her: cursed in the line of duty, treated like a science project by her government, abandoned by her friends, lost to time. That had been Grace’s old Bureau of Official Secrets at work, not the SLO—but Sal didn’t think the SLO would have acted any differently. Organizations defended themselves first; they took care of their people second, or third, if at all. It would have been so easy to say, I don’t want them to do to Asanti what your old colleagues did to you. The words weren’t fair. The privilege of knowing those buttons and levers existed, of knowing the secret controls of Grace’s heart, came with the trust not to use them. “I’m not so convinced. These same people would have been comfortable just letting me disappear, back when I was possessed—feeding me to Team Two’s exorcism-and-torture program. You remember: the one where the Society never bothered to check if anyone survived.”
“I remember.” Grace had stopped paging through the book. From the tension in her shoulders, from the twitch in her jaw, Sal thought she was remembering other things too. Had she gone too far? Pushed the buttons even when she’d tried not to?
“Asanti went to bat for me when things turned bad last year,” Sal said. “And so did you. I’m alive now only because you didn’t trust the system then.”
“Varano’s gone.”
“I know,” Sal said. “And, yes, it’s possible they’ll do better by Asanti than they did by me. But do you want to run that risk? I’m not saying we have to go for her now, I’m not saying this is our plan A. But we should be ready to break her out if things get bad. I won’t let her—”
A door closed.
Grace snapped the book shut; she and Sal straightened and turned around. Meerkats, thought the part of Sal that was always watching the rest of her.
Menchú stood at the door leading to the Society hall. He’d closed it harder than usual, and Sal was certain she’d shut it behind her when they entered. So he had been listening. He slumped down the stairs, exhausted, leaning on the rail, and whatever he had heard, he didn’t mention. “Sal. Grace.”
Grace’s mouth opened, and Sal read questions in her eyes. She was missing the right word. Maybe there wasn’t one. She said, “Arturo,” which didn’t cover the half of it.
Of course, she couldn’t ask him to help plan Asanti’s rescue—or even to convince Grace. He’d rebelled against the Society to save Sal because the Society had been corrupt, because Sal had been falsely imprisoned. But Asanti had been arrested for good reason. She’d used magic. Now the Society had to decide how it felt about sorcery, and make that decision public through its judgment on the archivist. He’d been friends and sparring partners with Asanti for decades, as they gave their lives to the church that now came between them, and yet he couldn’t be part of any plot to save her. But he was torn, Sal thought, reading the corners of his mouth, the glance he shared with Grace, the shrug of his slumped shoulders. He wouldn’t stop Sal and Grace, either. Or share what he’d heard with the monsignors.
There were two of Arturo Menchú, each at war with the other.
So he slouched past them, and set one hand on Asanti’s desk, lost in thought, but in the end all he could ask was, “Where’s Liam?”
And that question, neither Sal nor Grace could answer.
• • •
There were too few noises in the clinic underneath the Vatican, where Society doctors cared for wounds they couldn’t trust a normal hospital to understand. The walls were soundproofed, the doors thick. Liam, entering the waiting room, wanted to hear groans, or heart rate monitor beeps, or the drip of fluids down tubes. He heard only silence and the scrape of the nurse’s pen over paper.
He closed the door without sound and stepped, as softly as he could manage, around the nurse’s desk and into the clinic hall. Back here there was a little sound, at least: the soft tread of sensible shoes on tile cleaned with aseptic cleaner. A gurney wheel squeaked. Fluorescent light made the green walls greener.
His heart beat fast. He glanced over his shoulder. He wasn’t afraid of being caught. He knew this place well. They knew him. He wasn’t supposed to be here, no, but on the master list of Shit a Team Three Operative Had Done That They Weren’t Supposed To Do, he doubted sneaking into the clinic even rated, these days, so long as he hadn’t swiped an invisibility cloak to do it and set fire to half of Rome as a distraction. He himself had been under care here so many times he’d started pestering the front desk for one of those cards you got in coffee shops—tenth visit’s free.
The front desk attendant at the time had observed that all his visits were, in fact, free, which did not change the principle of the thing.
The clinic wasn’t large, or hard to search—it was built for doctors to navigate in a hurry. Long before Liam was ready, he found himself in front of a door with a chart outside that named the patient: Haddad, Frances, over a grid of medical details that really weren’t his business. Acetaminophen allergy. He did not read any more.
There was a small window in the door, and through it he saw her body outlined under the bedsheet. The outline didn’t look normal. He could not see her face through the window, not at this angle. The light within the room flickered garishly. She was, he thought, watching cartoons.
She had been so excited about magic. He’d scorned her for that, scoffed at the wide-eyed exuberance. She would feel differently, he thought—Christ, had he even told her?—she would feel differently if she ever felt magic’s bite herself.
And now she lay in that bed, and he had walked away from Belfast whole, free of Christina, free of the demons, free at last of the shadow that had haunted him for years. He’d walked away once more, this time forever. How had he earned that?
Of course he hadn’t. Magic touched you, and scarred. Sometimes you scarred worse, that was all. Magic was like life that way. It had little reason, and less justice. It only had survivors.
God touched the world, God shaped the world, but He did not communicate through tragedy. Liam didn’t kn
ow if a priest would agree with that opinion; he’d never asked. He had been broken, after Prague, and by grace he was, not whole, but at least close to himself again.
There but for the grace of God, he thought, and reached for the door handle. But the thought skewed sour, and he pulled his hand back again.
He owed her something he could not shape in his mind or heart.
Liam turned away, and ran into the nurse.
“Mr. Doyle,” the nurse told Liam, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Our patients need their rest.”
“Fine,” Liam said, and let himself be escorted out.
• • •
Arturo knelt, and prayed, alone in his office. He asked Jesus Christ and Mary and all the saints for forgiveness. He asked for guidance.
He might have asked for aid, but someone knocked on his door.
He stood, grumbling through the cracks and pops in his knees, through all the tensions and weaknesses accumulated from a life of running from—and, more often than he liked, toward—demons. “It’s open,” he said, and poured himself a glass of water.
The door creaked. Shoes padded onto the thick rug. He thought he recognized the step, and took a sip of water in case he was right. When he turned to face the inevitable, Monsignor Angiuli was waiting.
The priest looked smaller, and more still, than Arturo had seen him in years. His hair was no less gray, no more thin. The lines on his face had not multiplied or sunk. The old man had carried something with him once, that was all, and had set it down somewhere. He did not seem to miss the weight. But when he walked to Arturo’s altar, and knelt, and crossed himself, he moved with such care Arturo worried he might be on the verge of collapse.
Arturo had known many good men in his service. He counted the monsignor among them. But sometimes goodness was not enough. The monsignor prayed for what felt like a long time, and around them the Vatican machinery ground on, papers pushed, carts wheeled. Somewhere, no doubt, someone said Mass.
Menchú did not speak first. There was too much he wanted to say, and everything collided on the way to his mouth, words tangling with words. He wished there were windows in his office to relieve this dark stone weight of prayer.
Angiuli stood. “Father,” he said, with his back to Arturo.
What are you doing here? was too direct. To what do I owe the honor? was too formal. Why did you abandon us? was what he wanted to say, but could not bear to. He had known Angiuli for decades.
And because of him, people had died. Because of him—
No.
“I didn’t expect you, Monsignor,” Arturo said.
“This is not a formal visit, Father. I’ve taken care that no one should know I was ever here.” Angiuli smiled sadly. “Not that anyone much cares where I go, these days. I’ve received a transfer, you know—I grew up near Naples, and my childhood parish needs another priest. My sister still lives nearby. It’s nice. I took my first communion there: an old stone building on a hill, surrounded by rolling fields, with the sea in the distance. Nihil interit, as Ovid has it.”
Arturo wanted to leave. Wanted to punch the old man. No, he did not want that. What had happened to them? It must be his fault, somewhere along the line. Some wrong turning, something he could have said years back to make their lives turn out better.
“I did wrong, Arturo. I should have acted, and I stayed my hand. I was afraid. I have always tried to do the right thing, but sometimes there is nothing right to do.”
You did well, Arturo did not say. As well as anyone, in your shoes. He lacked the skill to tell that lie.
“You do not have to forgive me, and it would not matter if you could. Forgiveness and healing, I trust to God and prayer and time and work. But some things have become clear to me in the few days since I stepped down. Freed of my burdens, I begin to understand.”
“You’ve come to give me advice,” Arturo said.
“Only this: Decide, rather than waiting. Learn from my mistakes.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I will not be cardinal,” Angiuli said. “I was never right for the position. I knew it in my soul, and I only wish I had been brave enough to say as much in public before it was too late. And that leaves the Society without a head.”
“Fox,” Menchú began, but could not finish the sentence.
Angiuli took a Bible from Menchú’s desk and thumbed through it without settling on a passage. “He would love the seat. But he will not take it without a mandate, and while the selection committee has tilted conservative after Belfast, many will not support him. Without a unanimous vote, or near to it, Fox will not accept the office. The progressives in the committee will look to you, which gives you power. Use that power.”
“For what?”
“Your team needs a new monsignor,” Angiuli said. “You’re the logical choice—but you know, and I know, that logic counts for little in these affairs, especially after Belfast. You are tainted by association with me, and with your team. But if you were to support a strong, conservative cardinal to the seat, he could prove his desire to unify the society by appointing you monsignor in my stead.”
Arturo recited an Ave in his head, to fill the pause of thought. “No.”
“Then you accept a conservative cardinal and a conservative monsignor. Asanti will talk the Society into schism—you know this as well as I do. There are not enough radicals to carry the day, if that happens. Then Fox, or someone else, will have his mandate. And if you wait too long, you’ll lack any power to save yourself, or your team.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I, Arturo?”
“And you’ve been talking to Sansone.”
Angiuli spread his hands, neither confirming nor denying. “That is all I have to offer you, now. You’ve always been the stronger man. We need men like you in the monsignor role. And, when the time comes, you may be cardinal.”
“Over Asanti’s body.”
Smoke rose from the incense. The room smelled of sandalwood. Air rattled through a ceiling vent. “All life is sacred, Arturo. The Society needs you. It needs you more than it ever needed me.” Angiuli’s shoulders straightened once he’d said that, and he seemed relieved. “That’s all. I should go. I have been honored to serve with you, my friend.”
They shook hands, like two men anywhere.
Arturo closed the door after him, and leaned his forehead against it, and closed his eyes, and felt the motion of the world.
2.
The second day of the trial started bad and went worse.
More people came. Sal had not thought any more people could come, after the first day’s crowd. Surely only so many Vatican personnel knew about magic. But more folk depended on Team Three than Sal had ever realized, and the other way around. She should have known. Who had she thought bought the plane tickets and arranged the rental cars? Liam?
The prosecutor stalked between the defendant’s table and the bench. Sal hated the guy on first sight. She’d known enough courtroom vultures to recognize the breed: pale, patient, dedicated, hungry. Back on the force, they tended to be on her side, but even then she’d never liked them the way the other guys did. Police did their job, and if they were good police, they did their job the best they could. But even good police got stuff wrong all the time. She didn’t know a single good officer without a shred of doubt—some might not admit it until they were a fifth of whiskey into the night, but everyone had the collar they weren’t quite sure about, the questionable evidence, the snap decision that three years later still sat wrong. Prosecutors, though: Something must have skewed to make a human being look at evidence and ask themselves not whether the facts pointed toward guilt but what story they could tell to convince an audience they did.
The system had its logic. Sal knew that. She could have given a speech on the subject. She didn’t want to. She preferred to do her job. Unfortunately, for now her job involved waiting and watching the shrike at work.
The prosecutor built his
case matchstick by matchstick. He kept his hands folded as he paced the courtroom, and only unlaced his fingers to produce evidence or make brief, economical gestures. He wasted nothing.
He outlined their failure in Middle Coom. His rhetoric was as spare as his person. Sal forgot his exact words almost as soon as he spoke them, but the story lingered. He showed their first attempts to resolve the crisis, their explorations and investigations, and he showed how they failed. He brought Thavani Shah to the stand, and she recounted the disaster: the village a clear burn-and-forget case which Team Three dragged out to horrible lengths by their insistence on finding a magical solution to a military problem. (Sal’s editorializing, not Shah’s—the Team One leader answered with swift, sharp language. Sal recognized the patterns. Shah was trained to testify.) It didn’t work. The village died. And then Belfast almost died as well.
Asanti interviewed Shah after the prosecutor stepped down. “Corporal,” she said, and the courtroom sank into silence. Functionaries leaned forward. Hell, Sal leaned forward herself. “Would you have burned Belfast, if the situation there got out of hand?”
“I would have tried.”
“You would have failed.”
“Objection.”
Asanti did not hesitate. “Do you think you would have succeeded?”
“It’s not likely,” Shah said.
“Not with all the weapons in your arsenal?”
“Magic is insidious,” she said. “It can hide, bide its time, and reemerge when we least expect. Even if we had clearance to burn the city, the chance some portion of the Network would have evaded us remains high.”
“In your professional opinion, there was no straightforward military solution to this magical problem?”
“Not without more firepower than I’ve been allowed so far,” Shah said. “No.”
“No further questions.”
The prosecutor interviewed other Team One grunts. He presented maps and evidence. The court recessed for lunch, and Team Three ate together in the canteen, not speaking. After lunch, the assault began again.
Bookburners The Complete Season Two Page 49
