Codex Born (47 page)

The grove was still crowded, but now it was the Porters who had gathered here, and most of them were staring at me. Pallas and Gutenberg stood at my feet. I spotted Whitney and John, but not Toni. Maryelizabeth’s arm was in a sling. A woman I didn’t recognize was leaning against a tree while another libriomancer regrew her leg.

“Lena—”

“I’m all right.” The exhaustion in her eyes suggested otherwise, but at least she was alive.

Nidhi touched my wrist, feeling for my pulse. “What do you remember?”

I had been Nidhi’s client, and I knew her therapeutic voice. This was something else. Calm, but she wasn’t trying to hide her grief.

“Enough.” There was a woman in bronze, and a name, but when I tried to remember, the syllables slipped from my memory. I brought my fingers to my head, touching the skin where Gutenberg’s pen had traced his spell.

Hot pinpricks scampered up my ribs. I looked down to see Smudge crouched on my chest. “Hi, buddy.” I pushed myself up on my elbows and looked at Pallas. “How are things in Copper River?”

“Contained, but not controlled. We’ve cut off communications with the outside world while we work on damage control.”

I nodded. “How many casualties?”

“We won’t know for at least a day,” said Gutenberg. He picked up a lifeless metal grasshopper and held it to the light. Rainbows shimmered along the edges of the iridescent wings. He touched one wing, which was sharp enough to draw blood, though the cut healed quickly. “What happened to the students of Bi Sheng?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

He pulled a book out of his pocket, and it was all I could do to keep from swearing. It was the same A. E. van Vogt book he had used at the library to read Guan Feng’s mind. “Is Feng—”

“Gone,” said Pallas. “Jeff was found unconscious in the library. He hasn’t woken up yet, but I’m told he will recover.”

Gutenberg tapped the cover, and golden tendrils grew from his scalp, reaching toward Lena and myself. I watched it all happen again in my mind. Deifilia battled Lena. The two ghosts attacked. Bi Wei stopped them from killing Lena, then fell.

I remembered seizing control of the tree and turning it against Deifilia. What happened after was unfamiliar.

I saw through Lena’s eyes how she had locked Harrison in place, twisting the branch around his neck and trapping him with his dying dryad. Then she ran to me. She argued with the students of Bi Sheng, while to the side, another man worked over Bi Wei’s body. A woman knelt to touch my face. The last of the wendigos dropped to the ground and fled.

“The two of you let them go,” Gutenberg said, enunciating every word.

“They helped us to stop Deifilia and the Army of Ghosts.”

“Despite the sayings people repeat unthinkingly, the enemy of my enemy may not in fact be my friend.” He waved a hand, and the tendrils faded away. “You’ve freed an enemy we cannot see. They carry madness within them, Isaac. What happens when the first of their number loses their battle against the ghosts?”

I looked at Nidhi. “I could refer them to a good therapist.”

Several of the Porters cringed. I couldn’t blame them. Sassing Gutenberg wasn’t a wise life choice. But he had taken my magic, and I found it hard to care what else he did to me.

“Toni Warwick was found unconscious at the edge of town,” Gutenberg said. “She told us what you had given her, but she was unable to guard them from Bi Wei and her companions.”

Bi Wei had survived. I wondered if he could see my relief. “Will Toni be all right?”

“Eventually.” He leaned closer. His breath smelled of peppermint. “What was done once can be done again. Tell me of the books, their titles and content.”

I frowned. I could see myself pulling the books from
Beauty
as we drove through Copper River, but I couldn’t remember the titles. Nor could I recall the names of Bi Wei’s companions. Even the content of Bi Wei’s book eluded me, though I had a vague memory of poetry…“I don’t remember.”

Pallas stepped forward. “Sir, it was through Isaac’s relationship with Jeff DeYoung that the werewolves came to assist us. Without his help—”

“I know.” Gutenberg raised a hand. “He stopped Deifilia. He captured August Harrison. He ended the attack on Copper River, and no doubt saved many lives, including some of our own. But he risked much more. Had he contacted me when he learned of Deifilia’s assault on Lena’s tree, we could have contained the situation.”

“Bi Wei and Guan Feng trust me,” I said. “I can try to reach out to them, negotiate a truce.”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” said Gutenberg. “This is a Porter matter.”

It took me a moment to realize what he was saying. When understanding hit, I felt like he had transformed me to stone, starting from my stomach and working outward.

Nidhi put a hand on my shoulder, as if to restrain me. “Independence—impulsiveness, really—is one of the qualities shared by many of your best libriomancers.”

“It’s also a quality shared by most of our fatalities,” Gutenberg snapped. For the first time, he sounded truly angry. “Bi
Wei and her four companions have escaped, and the Army of Ghosts is awakening. Tell me, Doctor Shah, will you continue to defend him if it turns out he saved this town only to damn the entire world?”

I tugged free of Nidhi’s grip and stood. “The day I joined Die Zwelf Portenære, you made me swear to protect this world, to help us expand our knowledge, and to preserve the secrecy of magic.” I gestured at the oak trees towering over us. “I think that third part is pretty well screwed, but what about the rest? Bi Wei and the others knew about the Army of Ghosts, the danger you’ve feared for five hundred years. You
tried to murder
the only people who could have helped you fight them.”

I was yelling at Johannes Gutenberg. Oh, God, I was so dead. “How much knowledge have you burned because you were afraid it
might
be used against you? How many people have you killed because you were afraid?”

I swallowed and waited for him to transform me into a cockroach and feed me to Smudge. Instead, he simply sighed.

“I was young, and the world was different. Though people remain much the same. They say you learn from your mistakes. I’ve learned more than anyone else in recorded history. But the mistakes of the past do not excuse the mistakes of the present. Nor do they protect us from the consequences of those mistakes.”

I really didn’t like the emphasis on the word
consequences
. Neither did Lena, judging by the way she edged closer and shifted her stance.

“Isaac could still help us,” Pallas pointed out. “Even without magic.”

Gutenberg tilted his head in acknowledgment. “You assume it was my choice to dismiss him from the Porters, but Isaac made that choice before we arrived. Didn’t you?”

I straightened, determined to face this head-on. Locking my magic had been the first step, and it had saved me from madness. But Gutenberg wouldn’t stop there. Having determined that my memories were of no use to the Porters, he would take them from me as well. I would be erased from the
Porter archives, and from the minds of my peers. No wonder he hadn’t worried about holding this conversation in public; when he was finished, nobody else would remember it.

Lena stepped in front of me and kicked at Gutenberg’s hand. He dodged and stepped back. Before Lena could follow up, I grabbed her in a bear hug from behind.

“Are you insane?” I whispered. She could have broken free with ease, but she held back, presumably to keep from hurting me.

She turned in my arms to face me. “He’s going to take your memories.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” Lena was crying now. “Think, Isaac. None of the Porters will even remember your name.
I
won’t remember you.”

I hadn’t realized until now what that meant. Whatever independence or freedom she had gained from being pulled between Nidhi’s desires and my own would be lost. “I’m so sorry, Lena.”

The other Porters were shifting and muttering uneasily, all save Nicola. They didn’t understand. Few among us knew the truth about how Gutenberg dealt with those he considered criminals.

Gutenberg sighed. “I don’t do this to be cruel, Isaac. You acted to protect your home, using the best judgment you could. I understand that. I hope you’ll understand I’m doing the same.”

I kissed Lena, then pushed her toward Nidhi. I watched Gutenberg raise his pen and approach once again. If he was going to rob me of everything I loved, he could damn well look me in the eye when he did it.

The touch of the pen was like a syringe jabbing through my skin. Cold tingled over my body. Every muscle clenched painfully tight.

Gutenberg jumped back, and for a second, I thought I saw the shadow of Bi Wei standing between us. He flung the pen to the ground as if it were on fire.

He studied me, eyes flitting side to side as if I were an enormous newspaper. “It would appear you’ve made a friend.”

I sagged in relief, and might have fallen if Lena hadn’t caught me.

“Very well.” Gutenberg retrieved his pen and tucked it back into his pocket. “Perhaps as you see the damage caused by the forces you’ve allowed to escape, you’ll change your mind about aiding us. In the meantime, we
will
be watching you, Isaac Vainio.” He turned to Pallas. “I’ve given the other Regional Masters a summary of what we’re facing, but we’ll need to gather and share as much information as possible. First, we need to make sure this site is fully neutralized, then do what we can to control the rumors.”

“Why bother?” Knowing Gutenberg couldn’t take my memories had made me bold. Or stupid. Probably both. “The students of Bi Sheng are free. You think they’re going to worry about keeping your precious secrets?”

“What do you suggest?” Gutenberg asked, his words deceptively mild.

“I lost friends today. Their families deserve to know why. They deserve the truth.”

“You don’t know what the truth would do,” he said softly. “I’ve seen how they respond to truth. I’ve lived through the Inquisition and the witch hunts. I’ve watched my loved ones burn.”

“Sir,” Pallas said, “whatever we do, we should act soon. I’ve called for healers, and can split the rest of our forces into teams.”

Gutenberg nodded and stepped toward the edge of the grove. He turned around to look at me, his expression unreadable. “Farewell, Isaac Vainio.”

The Porters did their best, but they couldn’t manipulate the minds of an entire town, let alone everyone who had seen or read about the story online. A photo of the dragon smashing its way into town had gone viral, and a six-second video of a
wendigo at the ice cream shop kept popping up on various social media sites no matter how many times the Porters tried to take it offline.

Nor could they find and destroy the remains of every one of the hundreds of metal insects and other creatures Harrison and Deifilia had sent to attack us. They did their best to track down the wendigos, but I had no doubt we’d be seeing more “Bigfoot sightings” for months to come.

The Porters had trapped a fair number of wendigos, but they hadn’t found them all. Nor were any of the people they restored to human form associated with the students of Bi Sheng. I knew Harrison had transformed some of his own people, but Bi Wei and her friends must have hunted them down, saving their own and making sure they couldn’t be captured and used by the Porters.

None of which was my concern anymore.

I sat in the grass, my back against one of the outer oaks of Lena’s grove, and tried to read. I had picked up Gaiman’s latest, but I hadn’t managed to get past the first two pages. Not because of any problem with the writing, but because when I read his words, I felt nothing.

I knew there was magic here. Given Gaiman’s fanbase, I should have been able to touch this book’s magic in my sleep.

I sighed and set the book aside. Maybe I would be better off rereading an old favorite. Preferably something light. Pratchett’s Discworld series would keep me busy for a while.

Lena had somehow shrunk the surrounding oaks of her grove to a more reasonable height, and was currently clearing a section of the canopy, folding the branches back to allow us a better view of the stars and a distant comet that should be visible through the telescope later tonight. I had a new eyepiece for the scope that I’d been wanting to try.

I pulled a crumpled piece of green paper from the pocket of my jeans. The front was an advertisement for a book club that had met at the library over the summer. On the back, I had done my best to recreate the lines Gutenberg had engraved into my skull.

Sileo
. Latin for
I am silent
.

“Any progress?” Lena asked as she emerged from the grove.

I shook my head. “It’s not a form of libriomancy I understand. If he had written a longer phrase, I might be able to find a source, but this is just a single word. It could refer to anything. I suspect the pen is as much a part of the magic as the writing. I’d give half my books to get my hands on it.”

I didn’t tell her about the e-mail I had received from Nicola Pallas yesterday. I hadn’t told anyone, though I had reread it until I memorized every word. I was certain Nicola had broken some rule or another in sending it, which was amazing all by itself. Or maybe there were simply no rules for a situation like mine, and she had taken advantage of that omission.