Bookburners The Complete Season Two

by Max Gladstone

  “Asanti’s right,” Menchú said.

  Fox stood like a wall. “Do you drink, Father?”

  “Sometimes. Not now.”

  “Permit me, then.” A shelf beside Fox’s desk held a crystal decanter and two lowball glasses. He held the decanter to the light, judged its contents pleasing, and poured just enough to amber the bottom of his glass. Menchú smelled peat and smoke without a hint of sweetness. “You’re certain?” When Menchú didn’t respond, he lifted the glass to his nose, and inhaled. “I can’t drink much. I don’t drink—much. But I used to, and I remember the smell. You know the trouble with poison?”

  Menchú didn’t answer. He remembered the smell of burning human flesh, and a yacht on fire, and remembered Sal asking him why. There were other memories, too: Bouchard’s team riding into battle against the Tornado Eaters, Shah ordering her knights to stand down. But he still smelled flesh, and hair, and crisped skin.

  “The human nose and the human tongue,” Fox said, “aren’t so effective as a dog’s, but they work well enough. We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of years learning to recognize deadly flavors and odors found in nature. You read these books, right, about Italy in the Renaissance, and everyone’s going around poisoning everyone else, and nobody can smell or taste it, and those books are full of crap. Poison didn’t work like that until recently. Not until we could find the things that kill you, and take away the stuff that makes them taste like they could.” He drank the glass clean. “Are you sure you don’t want some?”

  “The topic’s made me nervous.”

  “Father. Do you really think I would poison you?”

  “I think you’re coming to a point.”

  He smiled then, for the first time, and so briefly Menchú might have imagined the curl of lip. Fox’s rage had receded; in the dim office he looked grim, sedate, respectable. Menchú had known too many grim, sedate, respectable men to trust another. The office, for all its dark wood paneling and appearance of opulent age, smelled like nothing, and stone under the nothing, and peat and smoke, fading already. “She isn’t wrong, Father. That’s the real killer. If she was wrong, we could kick her out, have a good laugh about that speech, and get on with our lives and our work. But the world is changing. We’re all scared.”

  Fox stilled after he said that word. Menchú did not think he said it often. The monsignor, head bowed, contemplated his glass.

  “Acquit her, then,” Menchú said. “Listen to her.”

  “There’s an idea.” Fox set the glass down and completed his orbit of the desk. A folder lay spread on an ink blotter that didn’t look to have ever seen use. Menchú recognized the list, though the type was too small to read from this angle. He had seen the charges laid against Asanti with his own eyes, reviewed each one, and for all their histrionics found them accurate. “And if we do—if we embrace her vision—then what? We run into this new world without discipline, without accountability? What’s our mission, as an organization, if we do that? What does the Society stand for, if not protecting people?” He drummed the fingers of his left hand on his desk.

  “You mean, what do you stand for.”

  Fox said nothing.

  “Team One has an ugly job. Your people kill—monsters, mostly, but in our line of work it can be hard to tell the difference between a monster and someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. If we change, what does that say about blood on your hands?”

  He risked the play, but he risked it wrong. Fox smiled. “Nah. That’s not what bugs me. Don’t get me wrong, I see why you think it would, Father. Saving is your job. My people don’t have the luxury. When my guys go out, they go because we’ve exhausted all the other options. We have blood on our hands, yes. Soldiers tend to.” His fingers stopped drumming. “We can know more about magic than we ever knew before, today. There’s more of it out there—I don’t deny it, and I don’t deny we have to grow to meet that challenge. But magic worries me. The more we know, the farther and faster we run, the greater the risk that we cause a problem we can’t control. Asanti’s a good woman. She’s brilliant. But she could be the one to feed us poison we can’t smell, or taste.”

  “So we help her,” Menchú said. “We watch her, and we control her.”

  Fox laughed, which Menchú also doubted he did often. “You, Father? Control her? You and Angiuli and your whole team, you’ve never yet succeeded in controlling Dr. Asanti. To be fair, that wasn’t your job—you worked with her, and until Varano fucked everything up, the protocols and limits of your work were clear. If we pardon her, she’ll run roughshod over you both, and nobody will notice it’s a problem until the whole damn world’s in flames. So my choice is blocked in: Let her go and the world burns. Sentence her and the Society breaks at the seams.”

  This was where Angiuli would have asked, What would you do in my place? Fox didn’t.

  “So, Father, you wanted to convince me she was right? I’m way ahead of you. For all the good it does. Now if you don’t mind, I’m still up to my neck in paperwork after Belfast, and I’d like to get some sleep tonight. Was there anything else?”

  “No,” Menchú said. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  And he wanted a drink, somewhere private and far away from Fox’s office.

  • • •

  A little camera rested in the corner of the long hall that led to Asanti’s cell, and that little camera watched everything that happened between the cell door and the door to the Society’s Vatican sub-basement. A small green light indicated the camera was watching, though there wasn’t much to watch: a narrow stone hallway, with two guards standing outside the entrance to the cell. One stood at martinet attention, rifle inspection-ready; the other checked a text message on his smartwatch.

  The door opened, and the overhead lights died. Darkness filled the hall, save for a floodlight illuminating the silhouette of an enormous woman, hooded and cloaked, one arm raised in an imperious gesture. The smartwatch guard shouted wordless warning—rifles were drawn—

  The camera’s small green light blinked off.

  Two men screamed, and their screams ceased in an electric buzz followed by a chemical silence.

  The lights flicked on again. Grace stood over the fallen guards, capping a syringe and returning it to her jacket pocket. Sal closed the door behind her, shucked off the hooded cloak, and traded her nine-inch platform heels for bare feet. She ran down the hall, carrying the cloak wrapped around the shoes.

  The archivist was reading in bed. She regarded them wordlessly through the bars, over the horizon of the Donne. “I’m not going with you.”

  Grace rolled her eyes. “See?”

  Sal grabbed the keys from her and tried the lock. “Of course you’re coming with us.”

  “You appear to have been smart about this thing, haven’t burned any bridges behind you, and—oh, my, is that a Maitresse costume?”

  “Homemade version,” Grace said. “The shoes set Sal back a little. She doesn’t own many pumps.”

  Sal cursed the seventh key, and tried the eighth.

  “I’ll have to tell her, if our paths ever cross again.”

  “They will,” Sal said. “We’re sending you to her as soon as we get you out of the Vatican. She’s spent a few hundred years evading Society capture. And you seem to be on good terms, so.”

  Asanti closed the Donne and drew back her covers. She wore a green nightgown, and had her hair in a kerchief. Questing feet found her slippers and she stood, with the book by her side. “How did you plan to get me out of the Society, let alone the city?”

  “Easily.” Keys, keys, keys. Who, ever, would have possibly needed so many? It’s not like there were that many cells in this goddamn place. Though maybe there were other prisons, elsewhere within the Society. Who knew what secrets Sansone hid, or Team Two had hidden before her? What doors there might be that no one had entered since Team Four left? “We have three hours before the guards change shift, and we have an escape route figured. This place was bu
ilt to keep people out, not in.”

  Asanti smiled. “I really do appreciate this, Sal. Grace. It’s kinder than I can say. But I’m not leaving.”

  Grace slumped in the metal chair by the bars.

  Sal was running out of keys. “You have to go. They’re coming for you, and we can’t stop them.”

  “Oh,” Asanti said, “I know. That was the plan.”

  “You’re suicidal.”

  “I’m not. I am willing to be a martyr, if that’s what’s needed. My affairs are in order. But it’s more likely they’ll kick me out, or possibly send me to prison for a while for theft, or something of that sort. In which case I’ll leave with a smile on my face, and do my time, and move on with my life, having done what I could do to save people who don’t want to be saved.”

  There were no more keys. Sal, furious, tried the first again, and turned it harder this time. The rusted lock gave, and she pulled the barred door open. At least, she tried. Asanti caught the bars and would not let her open the cell.

  Sal cursed and let the bars go.

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “You have kids, for Christ’s sake! And you know as well as I do the Society won’t give you a slap on the wrist, not after this.”

  The archivist’s eyes were level, and fierce, and stronger than the cell bars. “I do have children. And grandchildren. My children are adults, and my husband loves me, and I’ve met all my grandchildren. I did not become the archivist planning to grow old here. I’ve always known this job might kill me.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Sal,” she said. “I made my case. I gave the Society decades. They know that. And the harder they move against me, the more they break themselves. The organization might not die in a day after I’m gone, but it won’t last. And when the horses are finished eating one another, there will be a better Society, one ready to do the job they hired us for.”

  Grace checked her watch. “We’re running out of time.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Asanti said. “I thought this through, back at the beginning—not the details, of course, the Network and all that, they were a surprise. But when I started pushing the Society’s limits, I knew a day would come when they pushed back. I’ve prepared. The one thing I can’t allow is for magic to spirit me away in the dead of night. That would prove every suspicion Fox and his retrogrades ever entertained. I’m sorry for the risk I put you through, by not making you promise not to try something like this. I didn’t realize—” She stopped to catch her breath and close her eyes, and did not open them again, or speak, until her eyes were dry and her voice level. “I knew you cared. I should have credited how much. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. But I have to ask you to leave.”

  Sal tugged the bars again. Asanti braced herself, and would not let them go. Sal ran scenarios: They could overpower Asanti, carry her through the Society—moving with a captive was harder than moving with a willing escapee—but with Grace, she could manage.

  “Sal,” Asanti said. “Please. This is hard enough. No matter what happens, the Society, or whatever takes its place, will need you, and Grace, and Liam, and Arturo. Let me do what I have to do.”

  “Christ.” Sal felt Asanti’s strength through the bars. She was stronger.

  She let the other woman guide the cell door closed, and let the latch engage.

  “What will we do with Bozo and Chuckles in the hall?”

  Asanti shrugged. “I’ll tell them someone offered me freedom, and I did not accept. It has the advantage of truth.”

  “Asanti.” Sal didn’t have other words. Grace watched them both.

  “I don’t suppose either of you brought a book? A body can only stand so much Donne.” She tested the door’s latch, found it stable. “Shame. But it was a slim chance anyway.”

  Sal watched her through the bars.

  “Go, Sal. That sedative won’t last forever. I imagine Liam’s waiting for you both, and wondering what’s gone wrong. You don’t want him to worry himself to death.”

  “Some days, I wonder.”

  Asanti laughed. “Thank you. And—I’ll see you around.”

  • • •

  Hilary Sansone answered the door in pink silk pajamas, with her hair in a towel and a cup of licorice tea in hand. Behind her lay her apartment, finished in plush and cream. Perfectly anonymous bookshelves squatted at the room’s edges, featuring rows of small porcelain and pewter figurines, mostly dancers. Three art books lay on the low glass tabletop next to the plush cream sofa, one of which was open to a spread of Herculaneum murals. “Arturo,” she said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Menchú felt battered and weary after the day, and after a half hour spent pacing in Sansone’s building’s lobby under the doorman’s glare as he pieced together the words he’d use. As soon as he got the logic clear in his head, it clouded again.

  “I want you to understand,” he said, “I’m doing this for her. I don’t care about power. I don’t care about the game. I don’t care about Society politics, beyond our mission. But I care about her.” Saying that hurt parts of him he hadn’t known existed anymore: as if some part of Arturo Menchú had been bound with wire until all feeling stopped, and then the wire was unwound, and the pain began. “Those are my terms. If you can’t accept them, I will leave right now.”

  Someone else might have sipped her tea to temporize.

  “Come inside, Arturo.”

  And he did.

  4.

  There was no public trial the next day. Deliberations, was the story that went around. Clerks returned to their files, Team Two’s spies monitored their phones and sources, and Team One’s soldiers hit the gym. Sal and Grace went to a rooftop restaurant and drank Bellinis.

  “At least nobody’s tried to arrest us for, I don’t know, whatever, yet.”

  “They’ll think of something,” Grace said.

  “You knew she wouldn’t go with us.”

  “I suspected.”

  The sun shone very bright in the sky. Sal felt herself burning and adjusted her sunglasses, then moved her chair to place herself more firmly in the shade. Grace’s broad-brimmed straw hat cast all the shadow the other woman needed. She wore a sundress and white leather sandals, and her mouth glistened from gloss and alcohol. She licked peach pulp from her lower lip. “So why did you help me?” Sal asked. “Why didn’t you try to talk me out of it?”

  “I hoped you were wrong. And I was willing to take the chance. But she’s brave.”

  “As hell.”

  “And smart.”

  “As hell.”

  “I don’t know,” Grace said, “if that’s a good choice of words.”

  Sal turned to her, sharply. “Was that a joke?”

  “I make jokes all the time.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “I have a dry sense of humor.”

  Sal let it drop, and raised her glass. “To Asanti.”

  “Asanti.” The crystal rang. Bubbles danced in Sal’s mouth, and the sun burned brighter. It was the wrong drink. Somewhere, in a better world, they were drinking whiskey. In a better world, there were tears.

  She reached for Grace’s hand, not knowing why she did, and Grace took her hand, and held it tight.

  • • •

  Menchú waited in a small dark room beneath the Vatican, where there were no chairs. The electors gathered: the papal rep and various selectmen, Sansone present in a non-voting capacity. Fox should have been there, but candidates for the cardinal’s office were not allowed to vote on their own selection. Menchú did not know whether this made what he was about to do easier. He could see it both ways.

  Sansone watched.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, because they all were, and wasn’t that the most vicious joke of this whole God-damned situation. “We have a decision to make.”

  • • •

  The orderly led Liam through an open door into the room where Frances lay. She paused the television: some cartoon Liam didn’t recogn
ize, an enormous green centipede-serpent thing with a mane, menacing a few people hiding behind a hand. Weird. She set the remote on her lap, and he did not look at the place beneath the sheet where her legs should have been. She folded her hands. “Liam.”

  He heard so many questions there: Why did it take you so long to come? What’s happened to Asanti; nobody will tell me anything and I’m furious. The sheer fact of my incapacitation doesn’t mean I have lost interest in the Society’s affairs, let alone the will to participate in them, and for all the doctors insist on keeping me under observation, I know there’s nothing they can do—I’m as healthy as I’ll ever be, and they refuse to listen, perhaps because they’re afraid of me going into the courtroom, and yes, I know there’s a trial, try to keep up, I deduced it from some damn clue, from the mudstain on the nurse’s shoe or the scent of lavender in the air, and I want to know everything: How’s Asanti holding up in court? What’s she been accused of? How is she defending herself, or is she?

  And, beneath all that local stuff: What was it like for you? You came out the other side with all your arms and legs, you didn’t transform to anything weird, but you’ve lived for years as if there were traps in your mind, and you might be an asshole, but at least tell me—how did you survive? What was it like to love something, fiercely, and have it break you, and keep living?

  “Hi,” he said, and meant: I don’t know. Look at me. I’m terrified. I paced outside your room for days because I knew I had to come in here, I knew I had to face you and face the blame you—totally deservedly—would heap on me. And you had to have seen that, because you’re too fucking smart to have missed it, and you had to have thought, Why won’t this asshole just step through the door and tell me the secret? And the answer is, I don’t know any secret. Some days I can be my old bastard self again, some days I feel on top of the world, I’m the king of all internets, ruler of what I survey, I’m a good team player and I save lives, and some days I’m a wreck, and I get out of bed because my phone tells me to, and I go to the gym because my phone tells me to, and I eat because my phone tells me to, and I pray because my phone tells me to, and if I don’t I start thinking about taking a short walk into traffic, or opening a vein. And I’ve had help. Some’s God’s and I don’t even know if you believe in Him. Some of that’s friends, and it’s all I can do to remember that they believe in me. And some of that’s pills and a shrink, and different pills when the old ones stop working. And some days it’s still not enough. You want answers. Those are the only ones I can give. I know you think I’m just some wanker who never grew up. But I’m here because it helps to have someone, and I’m here because we’re all broken, and I’m here because no one is.