Codex Born

I pointed to various locations that would give us—that would give them—a better vantage point against incoming forces. “The water tower. The clock tower at City Hall. The mine’s north of here, so I’d suggest putting people at the railroad bridge here. It has a good view of the river.”

In twos and threes, the Porters set out with their books and weapons. Toni and Nicola were the last to go, leaving me, Lena, Nidhi, and Jeff alone with the unconscious body of Guan Feng.

“I don’t care what anyone says,” Jeff announced once they were gone. “That man is a douchebag.”

“Isaac, please.”

I made my way around the front desk and retrieved Bi Wei’s book from the drawer. The whispers in my head grew louder when I touched the cover.

“What are you doing?” Nidhi asked warily.

“I can hear her.” I sat on the floor and flipped through the pages.

“Isn’t that a good reason to not read the book?” Jeff asked.

Even without donning my translation glasses, I could almost understand the words. “I’m not going to try magic. I promise. I just…I don’t think this is possession. She’s asking me for help.”

Lena leaned over my shoulder. “Do you trust her?”

“I’m not sure.” I could barely hear her, as if she were shouting from a great distance. I made out August Harrison’s name, and something about ghosts, but we needed a stronger connection. I sagged back in the chair. “The Porters tried to kill her five hundred years ago. Now we—I—gave Harrison the tools to bring her back, and to let the Army of Ghosts into her mind. She’s fighting for her sanity. She’s a victim. Our victim.”

“Or she’s trying to get her hooks into your head so she can find out what the Porters are up to,” Jeff said.

“I don’t think so.” I pulled the glasses from my jacket, unfolded the earpieces, and slipped them on. Text flickered to life. I started to read, then hesitated. “But if I start spewing pea soup or anything, I’d appreciate it if you got me the hell away from this book.”

I chose a page at random and began reading about Bi Wei’s first attempt at magic, the continuation of a project her great-grandaunt had begun years before her birth. They had hoped to create a book in which writing on one of the blank pages would cause the same message to appear on other copies. The goal was to find a replacement for the signal beacons on the Great Wall.

Using blocks of movable type painstakingly carved from wood, they created identical books using a technique known as butterfly binding. Printed pages were folded in the middle and stitched together, leaving the reverse sides blank. The text included everything from poetry to military strategy, with one thing in common: thematically, every piece emphasized the importance of communication.

Imagining Bi Wei poring over her copy of the book, reading and rereading as she attempted to imbue its pages with magic, made me feel ashamed. My own early magic had been entirely selfish, limited to pulling toys and trinkets from one book after another.

How open had the practice of magic been in China during the Ming Dynasty? Had the Emperor been aware of Bi Sheng’s students? What of the common people?

“Isaac.”

I jumped. “ Bi?”

“Where is Guan Feng? Is she—”

“She’s alive. Gutenberg put her to sleep.”

Her words seemed to come from the book itself. “You heard me.” I sensed the quiet laughter she wouldn’t let reach her lips. “It worked.”

I found myself smiling in return. I had theorized that something like this might be possible, but the last time I had tried, a ghost had attempted to eat my soul. “Are you thinking in English or Mandarin?”

“Mandarin, which is how I hear your words. You hear English?”

“That’s right.” I wanted to warn her to get as far from the mine as possible. Instead, I simply asked, “Wei, what’s happening?”

“August Harrison collapsed a short time ago, and hasn’t awakened.”

“That was probably my doing,” I said smugly. Blowing up the dragon had hit him harder than I could have hoped.

“Then you may have destroyed us all. Deifilia has bound him in ropes of living oak. She brought two of my fellow refugees from their books, and she now commands Harrison’s metal creatures.”

“Deifilia’s in charge of the magic bugs?” I blinked and looked to Nidhi, trying to split my focus between the book and the real world. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Nidhi was shaking her head. “August Harrison would never surrender his power to Deifilia, nor would he want a lover who desired his power. It shouldn’t be possible for her to take control of his weapons. She can’t act against his wishes.”

She brought her fingers to cover her mouth. From the shock in her eyes, she had made the same leap I had. There was at least one way for a dryad to grow beyond the desires of her mate.

“She has another lover,” Lena whispered.

“She’s existed for less than twenty-four hours.” It had taken days for Lena to begin to bond with me, for my desires to come into conflict with Nidhi’s.

That conflict was the key. The tension between our desires gave Lena a degree of freedom. Every time she argued with one of us, whether it was about the ethics of killing in self-defense or whether Douglas Adams should have stopped his trilogy after the fourth book, she lit up inside. It was hard to stay angry with someone who took such obvious joy in being able to disagree.

“I would love to see Harrison’s face when he finds out.” My moment of schadenfreude passed quickly. How could this have happened? Given Harrison’s possessiveness, Deifilia wouldn’t have sought another lover on her own. At least not deliberately…“Lena, your personality began to change even before we—”

“I prefer ‘evolved,’” Lena said. “But you’re right. Sex isn’t the key. Frank Dearing owned me long after his body lost its potency.”

“Wei, when Harrison collapsed, did Deifilia take a large insect from his body? A cicada?”

“She wanted to protect him, and to keep anyone from taking control of his weapons.”

The cicada which was telepathically connected to the Army of Ghosts. Lena had created a degree of freedom for herself by taking another lover. Deifilia had found an entire army. An army that wanted only two things: to live, and to destroy.

Nidhi summed it up with surprising succinctness. “Oh, shit.”

19

The automaton was centuries old, charred and cracked from the unimaginable heat of Isaac’s battle. Fingers of carved walnut hung limp, hinged with pegs fitted so precisely they were invisible. The body and limbs were oak, taken from a tree that had stood for more than a hundred years before falling to the bite of the ax.

The jaw creaked open, shedding chips of black-and-gray carbon. “You’d be risking your life,” said Isaac Vainio.

He didn’t understand. How could he? He was human. Had been human, rather. Before he pulled his dying flesh into the body of a wood-and-metal monster, a golem built by one of the most powerful magicians in history, all to stop a madman.

I could feel the life slipping from the wood, like water leached away by too much sunlight. The automaton was dying, and Isaac with it. Had it been a tree, the leaves would be brown, and the branches would have snapped in the slightest wind.

Gutenberg had known. He understood my nature far better than Isaac. Better than Nidhi. Perhaps even better than me. I loved Isaac Vainio. Loved him as much as Nidhi, though in different ways and for