Justice (17 page)

The box itself was nondescript and unassuming in its design. It was smooth, polished, and completely unmarked, save for the natural knots from the tree from which it had been shaped. The box also lacked hinges or any sign of a seam. It was as if it had been carved from one solid piece of wood. Keyshawn ran his hands over it, looking for any entry point but came up empty.

‘Maybe the box is the clue?’ suggested Merlyn.

‘No,’ said Cal. ‘Noles just can’t see it. Hand it over, please.’

‘I just can’t see what?’ asked Keyshawn, reluctantly handing the box to Cal.

‘How to get inside,’ he answered as he pushed down on a small discolored area at one corner. A hiss followed, and a distinct click, as the seamless shell of the box slid open, revealing a very old leather-bound book.

‘How did you know that trigger was there, Fence?’ asked Ben.

‘Lucky guess,’ said Cal. ‘I’ve been sitting and staring at that box for the past hour outside. I kept going back to the one corner. It was too different from the rest of the box.’

‘He’s right,’ agreed Keyshawn. ‘I should have seen it.’

‘What’s this book about?’ asked Jules.

The cover was blank, as were the spine and the back. The interior pages shined with gilded golden edges, and the thick binding had to have been done by hand. There was tremendous care and diligence put into this thin book.

‘Well, it looks like a short read,’ said Cal as he opened it. ‘
Mutus
Liber,
’ he read off the title page. M noticed Keyshawn sat down heavily as soon as Cal said it. ‘Hey,’ Cal
continued. ‘It’s just, like, all drawings.’

‘What kind of drawings?’ asked Jules as everyone but Keyshawn pressed in to get a good look.

‘Ancient drawings,’ said Keyshawn. ‘Ancient drawings meant to unlock the key to alchemy.’

‘Like people-turning-lead-to-gold alchemy?’ asked Merlyn.

‘More like people-trying-to-create-the-philosopher’s-stone alchemy,’ said Keyshawn. ‘What you’re holding is the
Silent Book,
and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this one is probably a first edition.’

‘Wait, what’s the philosopher’s stone?’ asked Ben.

‘It’s like the Middle Ages equivalent of the Higgs boson particle,’ explained Merlyn.

‘Meaning?’ asked Jules.

‘Meaning that the philosopher’s stone was thought to be the magical element from which life itself sprang,’ said Merlyn. ‘Basically everyone looked for it, but they never found it. Because it didn’t exist.’

‘But if it did exist,’ continued Keyshawn, ‘its supposed uses are endless. It could turn anything into gold. It could grant immortality. And it would probably make a powerful fuel.’

‘Or make a powerful weapon,’ added M, remembering the destructive power unleashed by the moon rock.

‘I’ve heard enough,’ said Ben. ‘We need to get this book back to the academy immediately.’

‘No,’ said M. ‘The book wasn’t our only assignment. We were asked to bring back my mother. I think we’re missing something and I think we’ll find it in London.’

‘Now you’re just making stuff up,’ said Ben crossly.

‘No, Freeman’s right,’ said Vivian. ‘When the not-so-gentle giant attacked Devon back there, he screamed something about her not making it to London.’

‘He was probably setting another trap,’ argued Ben.

‘He’s too dumb to set traps,’ said M. ‘Believe me, I know from experience. Rex is all muscle, no strategy.’

‘Okay, let’s pretend you’ve all convinced me to extend our mission,’ said Ben. ‘Where are we going in London? Because, in case you don’t know, it’s a pretty big town.’

‘We know,’ M, Merlyn, and Jules all answered in droning unison, recalling their visit to the Black Museum and subsequent race through the clogged streets.

‘Here,’ said Vivian, flipping a tablet screen to face the others. ‘The British Library. They’ve just borrowed an original edition of the
Mutus Liber
from the University of Delaware in a good-gesture exchange. It arrives tomorrow.’

‘How in the world did you discover that?’ asked Cal.

‘Thank heaven for librarian blogs,’ Vivian said with a smile.

Ben stared at the others, sizing up the facts with a few heavy breaths. ‘Keyshawn, look through that book, and catalog everything you see. I want to know if a character’s eye color so much as shifts from scene to scene. The rest of us should set our sights on London and learn everything we can about the British Library. Hours of operation, security detail, collections, maps of the building. I’ll call base and tell them what’s up. Which leaves one question.’ He rubbed his jaw. ‘Has anyone here ever flown a plane before?’

CHAPTER 17

THE SILENT BOOK

With her mask firmly in place, M felt her arms shake while she held the jet’s control wheel, but unlike the last time she’d been in a cockpit, this time the shaking wasn’t due to the jet crashing. This time it was M fighting her own nerves. Breathing deeply, she stared out the tinted windshield as clouds and the world rushed by. The ground beneath her was like a patchwork blanket, covering the earth with patterns of fields, forests, houses, and occasional cities. It was beautiful and still, but she knew all too well that when the ground got closer, it pulsed with life. It wouldn’t seem so serene careening toward them at six hundred miles per hour.

‘So, did your dad teach you how to fly?’ asked Ben over the comm link.

‘No, Cal’s mother did, sort of,’ answered M.

‘What do you mean,
sort of
?’

‘She means, make sure you buckle up for the landing,’ said Merlyn. ‘The last time she tried this, she took out an entire airport.’

‘Can we talk about something else?’ said M, steering the conversation away from her dubious flying skills. She had spent a good twenty minutes reviewing the jet’s manual and acclimating herself to the controls. This jet was much easier to handle than her last, mostly because the takeoff and landing didn’t require a runway. ‘What do we know about this
Silent Book
?’

‘I’m connecting to everyone’s visual feed in your masks now,’ said Keyshawn.

A small screen flashed on within M’s sight line, startling her. It was small, but the idea of watching a video while flying did not appeal to her. She set the autopilot on and relaxed, happy to turn her attention away from the open air in front of her.

The video showed pages from the
Mutus Liber
, and the artwork was megacreepy. Angels, or maybe demons, hovered in the sky next to suns and moons with human faces, while the people below collected key elements and mutated them into something new and unknown.

‘The
Mutus Liber
was created in 1677 in La Rochelle, France,’ said Keyshawn. ‘Before today, there were three known first editions, all identical. The book consists of fifteen plates, or artistic scenes, that many believe offer the secret to creating the philosopher’s stone, though the correct order of the scenes is heavily disputed to this day. Some say once the order of the book is unlocked, so will be the path to the stone.’

‘Wait, people actually still believe in this?’ asked Cal.

‘Apparently, yes, some people do,’ said Keyshawn. ‘And given the lengths that your friends from the Lawless School
went to, maybe you should believe in it, too. Now I don’t want to go into the minutiae of each scene with everyone, but it would be helpful for you to exercise your fresh eyes by looking over the pages. Maybe you’ll pick up something that I haven’t yet.’

‘This is like some next-level sudoku,’ said Merlyn. ‘There’s some writing here. What’s it about?’

‘The writing is spare,’ explained Keyshawn, ‘but the opening text announces the book as “wordless” and the ending text claims that “provided with eyes, thou departest”. ‘

From the cockpit, M shuddered at the phrase,
provided with eyes
. The box of eyeballs from the sick bay sprang to her mind, their squishy give and the watery moats that surrounded the floating irises, blankly staring in all directions.
Thou departest
. Like her father, like her mother, like the Lawless School, and almost everything else M touched.

Meanwhile, somewhere behind her, Keyshawn continued his lecture. ‘Some people say the book is cursed, even. As if it were a grimoire, or book of spells, but if you ask me, that kind of superstition only shows how very misunderstood alchemy was back in the day.’

‘Do we understand it now?’ asked Jules.

‘Parts of it,’ said Keyshawn. ‘Have you ever heard of chemistry? It came from alchemy, but has a more strictly scientific application. Lots of brilliant minds across all nationalities dabbled in alchemy. Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton …’

‘What about Geoffrey Chaucer?’ added M sharply.

‘That’s right!’ exclaimed Keyshawn. ‘Chaucer even wrote
an alchemist character into his
Canterbury Tales
, but he thought them to be devious types. You know, they were humans trying to play God.’

Another connection to Chaucer. M needed to have a private conversation with Keyshawn soon. He knew way more than he was letting on, but she had the sense that even he didn’t know how to connect all the dots yet.

‘So is this book considered religious, or is it scientific?’ asked Merlyn.

‘No, this book is wack,’ said Cal. ‘It looks like an ancient comic book with the most boring plot ever.’

‘Don’t be so dismissive,’ said Keyshawn, sounding defensive. ‘There’s a message here somewhere, hidden.’

‘A picture’s worth a thousand words,’ added M from the cockpit.

‘Exactly!’ agreed Keyshawn excitedly. ‘Words would ruin whatever the
Silent Book
is trying to explain. And these images, they’re essentially cryptograms that no one has ever cracked.’

‘Okay, my head’s starting to hurt just listening to you guys,’ said Vivian. ‘I’ve got another question, though. I looked up the
Mutus Liber
online and these pictures are posted everywhere. Anyone can look these images up, so what makes these first editions so important?’

‘She’s right,’ said Merlyn. ‘What’s so special about this copy?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Keyshawn sullenly. He clearly hadn’t worked that out. ‘I’ll run a scan to check if there are any discrepancies with the images online and see what I come up with.’

‘Ware, how’s the library intel shaping up?’ asked Ben.

‘I’ve got some news,’ answered Vivian, ‘but I’m not sure you’re going to like it.’

‘How hard can it be to get a book from a library?’ asked Cal. ‘Isn’t that, like, the whole point of their existence?’

‘Well, they do things differently at the British Library,’ said Vivian. ‘First of all, their
Mutus Liber
is part of a special collection. To get near it, we’d need access to a reading room. And no one under eighteen is allowed in those rooms.’

‘Talk about R-rated reading!’ marveled Cal.

‘That’s not all,’ continued Vivian. ‘Even if you were old enough, you still have to request a reader pass in advance and have proof of ID and proof of your permanent residence.’

‘If we knew an ident, we could get in,’ said Jules.

‘But you wouldn’t be allowed to take the book off the premises,’ said Vivian. ‘Could we get a Fulbright team to shut the whole place down?’

‘No,’ said Ben. ‘Our assignment, our problem.’

As the plane flew through the clouds, a silence fell over it. ‘Right, then,’ said M at last. ‘So we’ll have to break in. What’s your take, Jules?’

‘Well,’ started Jules. ‘Vivian’s spot-on about everything, but there is a free tour that’s open to all ages. I think that’s our in.’

‘So we start the tour, slip into the back, and then Dewey decimal our way to the prize?’ asked Merlyn. ‘Seems too easy.’

‘Oh, I can make it harder for you,’ groaned Vivian. ‘This isn’t a quaint little cottage library. First of all, it’s designed
to keep books safe and sound for at least the next thousand years. The temperature is set at seventeen degrees Celsius, with no more than sixty-five percent humidity.’

‘That actually sounds rather pleasant,’ said Ben.

That actually sounds like the Fulbright Academy,
thought M.

‘Yes, well, that is the nice part,’ admitted Vivian. ‘But I wanted to lead with the good news. The bad news is that most books are shelved according to height.’

‘And we know exactly the right size of the book,’ said Keyshawn triumphantly, holding up the old text. ‘Unless you have another curveball, we’re good to go.’

Vivian sighed. ‘If you’ll allow me to finish. The storage facility of the library extends eighty feet underground in a labyrinth of shelving to hold its in-house collection of more than thirty million titles. Not to mention that they receive newspapers and periodicals from around the globe every day, which means their collection is constantly growing at a rate of perhaps eight thousand units per day. All said and done, they probably have four hundred miles of books organized by an unfamiliar catalog system of shelf markers and grid patterns, with separate librarians for each quadrant of the collection.’

Now that sounds
exactly
like the Fulbright Academy
, thought M.

‘Ben, why don’t you know this?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t this in your backyard?’

‘Never been to London,’ he answered. ‘But I’ve found a secure meadow that we can land in. The jet should be well hidden there.’

‘Um, how?’ asked Cal. ‘It’s a big, space-age jet, not a horse-drawn carriage.’

‘Besides being a big, space-age jet,’ said Keyshawn, who joined M in the cockpit and began flipping switches on the control panel, ‘this aircraft is also equipped with noise-cancellation speakers to hush any and all flight noise to the outside world. It also has a high-tech camouflage system that allows the body of the jet to mimic the environment around it. If a helicopter pulled up next to us right now, they would have no idea we were flying beside them.’

‘Whoa, you hear that, M?’ said Jules. ‘You’re totally Wonder Woman flying in her invisible jet!’

Invisible or not, a voice wheezed across the pilot headphones. ‘Noles, come in.’ It was John Doe. ‘Are you engaging the advanced stealth mode on my plane?’

Keyshawn quickly grabbed a pair and put them on. M grabbed the other pair and listened in, too.

‘Respectfully, sir, there’s more to this assignment than meets the eye. And we have a lead, but time is of the essence. To get more intel, we’ll need to be extra discreet.’

‘Are we on a secure line?’

M flashed her eyes at Keyshawn.

‘Yes, sir,’ Keyshawn lied.

‘Good. You remember our little arrangement, Noles.’

‘Understood, sir. I believe our current mission is too important to abandon. If need be, you can arrest me when we get back to the academy.’

‘You have more to lose than that,’ Doe threatened before cutting out completely.

Keyshawn leaned back and took a deep breath. Closing
his eyes, he stayed in the front seat next to M. After a minute, she asked, ‘So what’s Doe holding over your head? What is he threatening you with that’s worse than being arrested?’

‘That,’ said Keyshawn, without opening his eyes, ‘would be my entire family.’