Codex Born (32 page)

Great-Grandaunt was not angry. Instead, she smiled and turned back to the star map. “Find them,” she repeated.

This time, when I looked to the clouds, I could
see
the stars burning beyond. “The Celestial Spear.” Despite the sunlight, I saw the constellation more clearly than ever I had before. I felt as though I could touch them, gather them to my breast like jewels. “How?”

“Through the [UNTRANSLATABLE] of your ancestor, Bi Sheng. This book was printed a hundred years ago. It and its sisters were shared and read by those with spiritual and magical strength. As each of Bi Sheng’s [UNTRANSLATABLE. SUGGESTIONS: DESCENDANTS, APPRENTICES] read the book, the words grew stronger. We read each book again and again, refilling the cup of its magic.”

Just as Guan Feng had done for Bi Wei. How many times had someone read this book over the years to sustain her? Thousands? How many hours did the students of Bi Sheng spend with these texts, fighting to keep their ancestors alive?

I laughed with delight, an outburst that would have earned disapproval from others, but Great-Grandaunt understood.
This book had brought the night to life. I saw not just pinpoints of light, but the Emperor of Heaven, the Celestial Kitchen, the First Great One…I saw what they represented, the meaning we had painted on the sky throughout the ages.

“Why me?” I asked, not daring to hope that there might be more.

“Because you see beyond the words. They open your eyes to the world, and you give them power, just as Bi Sheng did. Just as I did. And it is time you learn to use those gifts.”

It was a connection I had felt with few others: the excitement of libriomancy, of magic. None but another libriomancer could understand the wonder and amazement of that discovery, the thrill of our first forays into magic. With Bi Wei, I relived that delight through the prism of her life. If anything, her joy had been even stronger than my own.

In that moment, I touched her mind.

Joy vanished, replaced by pain and confusion. Everything about this place and time was strange. The only constant was the violence and war that had followed her. She had fled the Porters centuries before, and had awakened to find herself threatened by them once again.

Or had she awakened at all? Was this the madness that had claimed the Lost Ones? Power clawed like a beast trapped within her chest, fighting to tear free. Even as she struggled to contain the beast, it slithered through her fingers, seducing her with the promise of magic. It had been so simple to use that power to grasp the words of those around her, the angry orders of the one called August Harrison, the broken-but-familiar words of the Bì
de dú
.

Her own descendants practically worshipped her. Whereas August Harrison treated her with derision, as if she were nothing but a Miáo slave. Guan Feng often cursed him under her breath, but she obeyed his wishes out of gratitude and respect. He had been the one to restore Bi Wei.

He was the one who could bring back Wei’s friends.

Feng held her hand as they walked alongside a palisade of sharpened poles that led to a square watchtower. The ground was hard-packed earth, bordered by old wood and stone buildings. Fireflies crawled over the walls—no, not fireflies. Those were Harrison’s insects. Bi Wei was seeing the magic in each one.

Wherever they were, Harrison was taking no risks. He had ordered everyone along this time: twenty-four of the twisted monsters he called wendigos, sixteen readers, and another twenty guardians, not counting Bi Wei and Guan Feng. Roughly half of the humans carried firearms. The handheld cannons were as frightening and disorienting as the metal cars they had stolen to get to this place, traveling at unimaginable speeds.

“The north wall,” said Harrison.

Bi Wei didn’t move.

“What is it?” asked Feng.

She looked around, searching. “We’re being watched.”

I slammed the book shut.

“What happened?” Lena asked, fully awake and alert.

“It worked.” I studied Lena more closely. Her eyes were red and shadowed, her hair a disheveled mess. “Are you all right?”

“I essentially tried to switch from sleeping on a king-sized bed to a little throw pillow.” She managed a pale smile. “I’m fine. This isn’t the first night I’ve spent away from my oak. What did you learn?”

“Not as much as I wanted. I think Bi Wei might have seen me. She’s disoriented, but determined to save the rest of her people. There are at least sixteen more of these books, and a bunch of people she called guardians. They must have had a second camp or base somewhere.”

“Did you see where they were? How close are they to finding us?”

“Harrison isn’t after us. They’re looking for something else. Something magical, I think.” I stared at the book, reconstructing what I had seen. That palisade was familiar. “Oh, shit.”

I grabbed my phone and called Nicola Pallas. The instant she answered, I said, “Harrison’s going after the archive at Fort Michilimackinac.”

“How long would it take you to get there?” Pallas asked calmly.

“Too long. He’s there now, and he knows where the archive is.”

To Pallas’ credit, she didn’t ask me how I knew. “Do you know what he wants?”

“Let me pull up the catalog.” I hurried toward the front desk and powered up the computer. I could connect to the Porter network and see what books and other toys were stored at the old fort. Hopefully something would jump out— “Wait. Nicola, did the Porters transfer everything from MSU to Michilimackinac?”

“Everything save a handful of books and artifacts that were destroyed when the building collapsed.”

I remembered the Michigan State University library, both as a student and as a field agent investigating the attack that
crushed the entire building. I had cataloged some of the locked books the Porters used to store in the library’s secret subbasement. Of all the titles we had kept there, one would hold particular interest for August Harrison. “He’s going after
Nymphs of Neptune
.”

Lena had been discovered in lower Michigan. Until Lena, the Porters had thought it impossible to pull intelligent beings from books. You could infect humans from our world with vampirism and other afflictions. You could even yank something like Pixel the cat out of Heinlein. But a fully sentient mind? Impossible. Until it happened. Until an acorn from that book grew into a dryad’s oak, giving birth to Lena Greenwood.

Nidhi was the one who had discovered Lena’s origins in a secondhand copy of
Nymphs of Neptune
. Gutenberg had locked that book the very next day. I didn’t know how he did it, though I had heard whispers of an invisible inscription, a spell that spread out to affect every copy of a book. The locked book with Gutenberg’s enchantment had been moved to our archive in East Lansing for safekeeping.

“I can’t send another automaton,” Pallas said. “Gutenberg is still trying to repair the last one. Do you think Harrison has the ability to unlock books?”

I didn’t know how strong Bi Wei had become, but Harrison wouldn’t try to steal that book unless he thought he could use it, and that meant ripping open Gutenberg’s spell. “Probably. What about using an automaton to teleport someone else in?”

“The archive is magically shielded, remember?”

“How could I forget?” The Porters had chosen Michilimackinac because of its latent magical wards, spells placed more than three hundred years ago by French traders. Gutenberg had worked with Jane Oshogay, a historian and retired libriomancer who had moved here from Minnesota, to strengthen and build upon those wards. Wards I had foolishly volunteered to help test.

It had taken a day and a half for our healers to reverse the various curses, and another two weeks for my hair to finally start growing back.

“I’ll see what else I can do,” said Pallas. “And remember, I need your report on the Columbus incident.” She hung up without saying good-bye, which wasn’t unusual for her.

“He wants his own dryad,” Lena said tightly.

“It’s worse than that.” One dryad would allow him to restore the other students of Bi Sheng, but it would take time, and Harrison didn’t strike me as a patient man. “Why stop at one? He’s going to create an entire legion of dryad slaves.”

My mistake cost me my position with the shelter, though a number of the other volunteers privately thanked me for living out their fantasy, and several stayed in touch for a while. And then Hailey called two months later to tell me Christopher Hill had shot Melinda four times before putting the gun beneath his own chin and pulling the trigger. She said she thought it was better if I heard the news from a friend.