Bookburners

by Max Gladstone

  “Grace!” he cried, but she had seen.

  Of course. As if he could have doubted her.

  She climbed the last few feet to the cloud in a blur, and he felt her speed as pain in his chest—seconds she’d not get back, hours carved away from her, but also from him, from Liam and Asanti, from Sal. She smashed the glass case, grabbed the cloud, swooped down to ground level and, slowing a tick, danced past cracks to Wang Jianguo, crashed one statue into another, took one’s weapon and pounced on a third, cracked its head off its shoulders and moved to the fourth—fine. He felt the old familiar joy, the wonder at her movement, its mastery, worship made physical.

  But wonder did no work. The shroud pressed him back as he neared the bones, taut as a sail under stiff breeze; Menchú kept his strength and forced against the current, thinking of salmon, thinking of a bird he’d once seen when he was a boy, a hawk flying against a high wind, so still it hovered. One step, a second. A third. And that pressure against the cloth, at the floor—that was not the wind of time, not a crack, that was an object. He nudged it with his knee. Yes: the bones.

  He forced the shroud around them, and when he pressed the cloth against the bones, the wind stopped. He counted three bones in the shroud—that left one still in the box. He stood—pops in the knee. Grace still fought, slower now, saving time. He gave small thanks. He had never told her how much it hurt to see her move.

  The last bone was half in, half out of the box. He caught it in the shroud like the others, wrapped them tight, and leaned against the plinth, only just aware of how heavily he was breathing.

  Tom tore the shroud from his hands.

  Menchú realized what was happening too late. He caught the shroud before Tom could withdraw, and pulled; not expecting resistance, Tom stumbled, but the Network man was too big, too strong—Menchú tried to trip him, failed, and Tom ripped the shroud free.

  But in the brief struggle it had come unwound, and as Tom ran, a single bone spilled from within.

  It struck the floor, and shattered.

  4.

  Grace was beating one statue to rubble with another statue’s arm when the world split open.

  Blue light hit her like a tidal wave; she flailed, regained her footing, and burned fast to give herself time to parse the scene. A few minutes stolen from later would make all the difference now. She saw the oracle bone shatter, saw a jagged blue hole like a mouth open from it, and in that hole Arturo hovered, his outline chewed by silver-blue. The wide wound was already closing, the bone that sustained it broken—but a single crack extended fingerlike toward her.

  Tom zipped off down the hall on the cloud, gaining speed. He caromed off walls, bounced against the ceiling, unused to flight. He’d learn, but if she burned fast, slipped around this questing crack in space, ran after Tom, she could catch him, and the bones.

  But by the time she returned, the crack would have closed, and Arturo would be gone—vanished into a loop of his own memory. Alone.

  Wang Jianguo did not have the shroud this time. She would not save them. Too much risk of getting caught herself.

  There was hope. There had to be, even without the shroud. As they drowned in memories, back in the chamber with the bridge, Grace had known that a surface existed somewhere, even if she could never find it.

  No time like the present.

  He would have told her to go after Tom. To complete the mission. For that reason, along with all the others, she could not.

  Grace dodged around the crack that reached for her, ran to the center of the room, and dived into the light, arms outstretched, toward Arturo.

  • • •

  She saw him, he saw her; she saw her, he saw him.

  Lying in a Roman convent bed, blinking sleep from her eyes, and there he sat, burnished red-bronze by the candle flame, his expression still and kind, a book of Merton open on his lap, something from her shelf to read while he waited to wake her, and after all the years she still felt that moment’s temptation to burn a little faster to linger on him as he sat and read.

  The alley in East Berlin, saving him, and being him, being saved, running through the violence to make her pain worthwhile, then limping, broken, down foggy streets together in the rain, while all around a city rioted its freedom.

  He was hurt and she waited by his bed, reading, book after book; she did not sleep, did not need to, she ate when it suited her purpose. Days he did not remember, that she’d never told him about.

  They pulled one another down, tangling in memories of all they held together and all they could not be.

  Texas, her leg broken, taking shelter from the Tornado Eaters, afraid—really afraid, for the first time in years, hers or his, as they sat together in the dark, as he put his hand on hers and that was all, but neither of them could say it, because to say it was to make real all those years of saying nothing: his whole life, and so much of the vanishing violent span of hers, which they could not let become a lie.

  Whose thought was that? Whose memory? Hers budded into his, and back.

  They tangled down. Was truth what you lived? Was truth the possibility denied, because it could break you, because it could break both of you, because neither spoke?

  Seek it—seek the truth, in fists, in blood and broken bones. Seek it in dead friends, in tears, in memories of pain. Damnation, bliss, and time. Spinning, spinning, down, with no sense where up might be, or if up was anywhere, as the world collapsed around them, to trap them here inside each other, forever.

  Would that be so much of a change?

  Her thought, or his? It did not matter.

  Hands touched, tightened, in the silver-blue black, all the color of a healing bruise.

  No.

  None of this was a lie.

  They were children, little more than children, in that rusted shipping container in Guatemala: He lit her candle, for curiosity, because it was there, not yet having learned the Bookburner’s art of not touching, and she broke free of the box in which her friends had left her, and their eyes met, black into black with jungle green above, wet air hot in her chest, and he saw her, dust-covered, soot-streaked, hair dotted with straw and broken wood, and they were desperate, endangered, strong, ridiculous, glorious kids. They were in love: Of course they were in love. They were friends for thirty years. They saved each other, and everyone. They were heroes, and to be a hero is to be in love.

  And if they had been other people, in another time, it might have gone differently: sex, certainly. Children, if it came to that. Whatever kind of life they would have built together, neither having ever been sold the lie about picket fences and half acres of fertilized lawn.

  But if they had been other people in another time, they would not have been themselves, and neither could fathom the other not being the one they loved. Arturo could not want a world without Grace as Grace. Grace could not want a world without Arturo as Arturo.

  They clutched the false image of someone they would not have wanted anyway.

  So they let it go.

  Their memories entwined, and untwined, and together they kicked toward the surface.

  • • •

  Menchú came back to himself on the stone floor beside Grace, and hoped waking after being thrown onto stone floors was a habit he’d someday break. He rolled to his side, found his feet where he’d left them. “Grace!” She didn’t stir; he shook her, produced a groan. Plaster dust and chipped rock fell from the ceiling, but the ceiling was high up, and they fell with force. Was he bleeding? No time to check. Grace’s eyes opened, but did not focus. He pulled her to her feet; she leaned on him. Too slow like this—they would never reach the bridge before the library collapsed, if it was collapsing. Grace would recover, but would she recover in time?

  “Ms. Wang!” Not visible, already crushed, or behind the broken statuary, or fled? No—there, at the door. She had been running, couldn’t blame her for that, but at his cry she turned back, dodged falling rock, grabbed Grace’s other arm, helped her up, and togeth
er they ran through the dark, retracing steps in the green light of her chemical lamp. Left turn, right. A bookcase fell behind them, another ahead. They ducked through the slantwise gap between case and wall, and bowed their heads beneath a rain of scrolls.

  They came to a fork; Menchú remembered that the path ran left, Wang Jianguo thought right. The argument brought Grace around. She found her feet, and her voice, and led them.

  The cave allowed little room for conversation. The run filled time and bodies, took over minds, crowded out even ancient fears of being crushed underground. Menchú followed in Grace’s footsteps, and found his pace, and his way, without effort. She ran slowly so they could follow, and sooner than he expected, they reached the room with the bridge.

  Which had collapsed, of course—but Wang Jianguo’s soldiers remained, some, and she shouted orders across. Thrown ropes clipped to Menchú’s waist, and Wang’s, and to the walls, and they worked hand over hand across the chasm. Grace took a running jump, landed on the other side with a skid, and turned back to offer him a hand across. She knelt beside him while he caught his breath. “Arturo, can you run?”

  He tried.

  Wang Jianguo screamed orders in Chinese. The soldiers sprinted down the long front hall past the torches—no longer frozen now but burning bright, the subterranean hall full of warmth and welcome even as it collapsed—the jagged hole in the stone wall at the passage’s end grew smaller as they approached, its edges rounded, healed, closing. They dived through; Menchú was the last, bent low, squeezed through the shrinking gap, but it caught his pack. Grace sawed through the straps with her knife, and the stone snapped shut, unbroken once again.

  With a grinding roar, the enormous carved mouth whose jaws had framed the wall closed too. Sickle-curved teeth meshed with teeth, and stone lips settled, and a lion’s head glared at them with carved, slitted eyes.

  The roar went on and on. Soldiers cursed. Menchú, turning round, saw dirt rain down the cliffs. “What is it?”

  Grace pointed—up.

  The crevasse was closing.

  Wang Jianguo tried her radio, settled for shouting to the camp. Lines unspooled down the cliff; Menchú’s fingers fumbled his first three attempts to connect the carabiner, but at last it snapped shut, and he spun the lock, and the winches at the top began to pull. He caught Grace’s hand before they rose together.

  The earth snapped shut behind them and lay smooth and unbroken, as if there had never been a crevasse, as if the library and its bones had been a myth, which he supposed they were. The mist closed to cover the earth. He knelt, and thanked God, and thanked Grace, and bowed his head.

  When he looked up, she was ringed by guns.

  5.

  Grace glared at Wang Jianguo, hand outstretched, as if there were no soldiers around her, as if their rifles didn’t matter. She could beat them—she thought. It would take time, that’s all. What did she need time for, anyway? “Give me the book.” She spoke English. She wanted Arturo to hear. Wanted him to understand.

  She gave Wang Jianguo this much credit, though no more: The woman did not pretend. She unshouldered her pack, zipped it open, and produced the black ledger. “Why?”

  “You lied. You cheated.”

  “This book belongs to us,” Wang Jianguo said, in Chinese. “It belongs to our country. Each artifact the old regime collected, the tools they hid—they’re all recorded here, somewhere. We need to understand. This is a start.”

  Grace followed her into Mandarin. “It was all about that book. You put us in danger without saying why. These soldiers trusted you, followed you—but you did not tell them what danger they faced, or that you caused it. You don’t deserve that book. Give it to me.” Soldiers traded glances. Wang Jianguo seemed unconscious of how quickly aim could shift.

  “Grace,” Arturo said, softly. “The book belongs here.”

  “She set us up, Arturo. She set all of you up.” Shifting to Chinese and back. “How did Tom find this place? Do you really think Christina knew where it was? Or had that seal? Wang Jianguo had Tom under surveillance in Shanghai, months ago. They must have picked him up at once when he came back through the border. Wang Jianguo needed expertise: someone who knew enough about magic to break into a place she didn’t understand, so when things went wrong, she could call us to investigate. Could call me to guide her in, and through, and give her everything.”

  “I just want to do my job,” Wang Jianguo said. She seemed tired, and Grace hated that exhaustion—Wang Jianguo didn’t deserve to be anything so normal as tired. “I have to keep people safe. I will not be beholden to you, or to anyone, for the knowledge I need to protect my country.”

  “You almost destroyed your country! If those cracks had spread—”

  “Are you telling me that you would have helped us, if I had told you the truth? If I brought you in from the beginning? Or would you have brewed up some imperialist excuse that let you keep everything for yourself, and leave us in the dark?”

  She was wrong—wrong all through. This wasn’t Grace’s country any more. A new nation had settled over familiar ground in her absence, growing roots to tap the old one’s corpse. But Grace would have helped. She told herself she would have helped. “You’re wrong.”

  “And yet I have the book.”

  “The library’s closed.”

  “We’ll think of something. From this, we’ll learn the lay of the land—what was here, and what dangers we should watch for.” She closed the backpack again. “If you really wanted to help us, none of this would have been necessary.”

  Grace felt sick. She balled her fists, and prepared to burn.

  Arturo passed through the soldiers; their aim shifted. Sights settled on his chest. “Grace. We should go.”

  Half blind with rage, still she found him, and let him lead her away.

  • • •

  He did not trouble her silence until the jet reached cruising altitude over Chengdu and circled northwest toward home. Since leaving the site, they had traded a few words about passports, tickets, plans. There was so much to plan, and so much more they did not know how to plan around. What did Tom want with the oracle bones? Where was he going, and how could they stop him? At least their goals were clear: find the bones, find the shroud.

  All that felt like clouds: massive beyond measure, yet they passed through unmarked. They could babble about Society business without touching the silence, without using the other, heavier words he did not know how to speak.

  Grace set her hand on his, and closed her book. “I’m glad,” she said. “Not for Wang Jianguo, not for the library, but—I’m glad we saw each other.”

  As if it was so easy. But then, he had always loved her directness, the ease with which she tore through illusions others would call unbreakable chains. “I can’t believe we hid it so long.”

  “Did we, though?” She caught his hand; he held hers. “I knew.”

  He realized, then, the weight on his soul. He confessed, of course, regularly, embraced the sacrament. And he governed himself. Lust might be a sin, but love was not—you could not be absolved from love. “So did I.”

  “And we didn’t talk about it, because we were kids back then, and we knew this was how it would be, and we couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t. But.” She breathed out. “I’ve thought a lot about death, recently.”

  “Grace.” He heard the fear and censure in his own voice, and wished he could take it back, but she pressed on as if he had not spoken.

  “Mine. Yours. The world’s. It’s bad, Arturo. Asanti’s censure. Fox in charge. The tide rolling in. I can fight, and fight, but there’s only so much candle left. I know how much. I worked it out. ‘No one shall know the day or hour’—isn’t that how it goes? But I do. And it feels so bleak. We were supposed to trust each other. But everything we didn’t say got between us.”

  “You’re my friend,” he said. “I love you. And I love God, and I love my calling. We are fools—I am a fool, at least. I spent so long thinking those
loves were at odds. They are not. Duty gives a frame for love, lets it grow. I’m not jealous. I don’t mourn what could have been. I … thought I should, for a while. That was all.” He had strayed from his purpose. “I wish I could say all this would be fine. It won’t be. So much is my fault. But we will fight all the way. And we will save as many as we can.”

  “All of them,” Grace said, “if Sal has anything to say about it.”

  He laughed at that. “Yes.”

  She squeezed her book, and slid it into the seat-back pocket. “Thank you.”

  He took her hand, and felt her warmth and strength and returned it all as best he could. She trusted him, to let him hold this piece of her heart. They flew for a while, saying nothing, contemplating the future. And then, because silence was the enemy: “Grace.”

  “Yes?”

  “You didn’t want to talk to me, in the library. Or in the car, or in the tent. I pushed.”

  “You wanted to help.”

  “I wanted to feel like I had helped, which is different. I wanted to push the silence onto you—I wanted to oblige you to respond. To draw something from you that you could not give. Was I all that different from Wang Jianguo, in the end?”

  Her eyes found his. “Yes.”

  And so they flew.

  Bookburners

  Season 3, Episode 7

  The Cracks in the World

  Margaret Dunlap

  1.

  Even though she wasn’t in the Archives, Asanti didn’t have to picture the digits spinning down on the thirty-six-hour clock. They were right in front of her. Because Fox had his own, perfectly synchronized to the one that hung above her desk.

  Of course he does.

  And so Asanti stated the obvious. “We’re running out of time.”

  Fox very nearly smiled. The indulgent expression of a parent to a petulant child. “I’m aware of the time, Archivist Asanti. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re not cleared for fieldwork. Team One will be departing for Seattle within the hour. They can handle anything that Team Three hasn’t.”