Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

Chapter 14

Yes, you heard that right. I—Alcatraz Smedry—needed a Librarian.

Now, you may have gotten the impression that there are absolutely no uses for Librarians. I’m sorry if I implied that. Librarians are very useful. For instance, they are useful if you are fishing for sharks and need some bait. They’re also useful for throwing out windows to test the effects of concrete impact on horn-rimmed glasses. If you have enough Librarians, you can build bridges out of them. (Just like witches.)

And unfortunately, they are also useful for organizing things.

I hurried up the stairs with Sing and Bastille. We had to push our way past the soldiers who now lined the steps; the men and women held their swords, looking concerned. I’d sent a soldier with a message for my grandfather and another for my father, warning them of what we’d discovered. I’d also ordered one of the knights to send a contingent to search nearby buildings—maybe they’d be able to find the Librarian base and the other end of the tunnel. I wasn’t counting on that happening though. My mother wouldn’t be caught so easily.

“We need to go fast,” I said. “There’s no telling when my mother will break into that chamber.”

I still felt a little bit sick for needing the help of a Librarian. It was frustrating. Terribly frustrating. In fact, I don’t think I can accurately—through text—show you just how frustrating it was.

But because I love you, I’m going to try anyway. Let’s start by randomly capitalizing letters.

“We cAn SenD fOr a draGOn to cArry us,” SinG saId As we burst oUt oF the stAirWeLL and ruSHED tHrough ThE roOm aBovE.

“ThAT wILl taKe tOO Long,” BaStiLlE saiD.

“We’Ll haVe To graB a VeHiCle oFf thE STrEet,” I sAid.

(You know what, that’s not nearly frustrating enough. I’m going to have to start adding in random punctuation marks too.)

We c!RoS-Sed thrOu?gH t%he Gra##ND e`ntWaY at “A” de-aD Ru)n. OnC$e oUts/iDE, I Co*Uld sEe T^haT the suN wa+S nEar to s=Ett=ING—it w.O.u.l.d Onl>y bE a co@uPle of HoU[rs unTi^L the tR}e}atY RATiF~iCATiON ha,pPenEd. We nEeDeD!! to bE QuicK?.?

UnFOrTu()nAtelY, tHE!re weRe no C?arriA-ges on tHe rOa^D for U/s to cOmMan>

(Okay, you know what? That’s not frustrating enough either. Let’s start replacing some random vowels with the letter Q.)

I lqOk-eD arO!qnD, dE#sPqrA#te, fRq?sTr/Ated (like you, hopefully), anD aNn|qYeD. Jq!St eaR&lIer, tHqr^E hq.d BeeN DoZen!S of cq?RrIqgEs on The rQA!d! No-W tHqRe wA=Sn’t a SqnGl+e oN^q.

“ThE_rQ!” I eXclai$mqd, poIntIng. Mqv=Ing do~Wn th_e RqaD! a shoRt diStq++nCe aWay a sTrANgq gLaSs cqnTrAPtion. I waSN’t CqrTain What it , bUt It w!qs MoV?ing—aND s%qmewhat quIc:=)Kly. “LeT’s G_q gRA?b iT!”

(Okay, you know how frustrated you are trying to read that? Well, that’s about half as frustrated as I was at having to go get a Librarian to help me. Aren’t you happy I let you experience what I was feeling? That’s the sign of excellent storytelling: writing that makes the reader have the same emotions as the characters. You can thank me later.)

We rushed up to the thing walking down the road. It was a glass animal of some sort, a little like Hawkwind or Dragonaut, except instead of flying it was walking. As we rounded it, I got a better view.

I froze in place on the street. “A pig?”

Sing shrugged. Bastille, however, rushed toward the pig in a determined run. She looked less dazed, though she still had a very … worn-out cast to her. Her eyes were dark and puffy, her face haggard and exhausted. I jogged after her. As we approached the enormous pig, a section of glass on its backside slid away, revealing someone standing inside.

I feel the need to pause and explain that I don’t approve of potty humor in the least. There has already been far too much of it in this book, and—trifecta or not—it’s just not appropriate. Potty humor is the literary equivalent of potato chips and soda. Appealing perhaps, but at the same time dreadful and in poor taste. I will have you know that I don’t stand for such things and—as in the previous volumes of my narrative—intend to hold this story to rigorous quality standards.

“Farting barf-faced poop!” a voice exclaimed from inside the pig’s butt.

(Sigh. Sorry. At least that’s another great paragraph to try working into a random conversation.)

The man standing in the pig’s posterior was none other than Prince Rikers Dartmoor, Bastille’s brother, son of the king. He still wore his royal blue robes, his red baseball cap topping a head of red hair.

“Excuse me?” I said, stopping short outside the pig. “What was that you said, Your Highness?”

“I hear that Hushlanders like to use synonyms for excrement as curses!” the prince said. “I was trying to make you feel at home, Alcatraz! What in the world are you doing in the middle of the street?”

“We need a ride, Rikers,” Bastille said. “Fast.”

“Explosive diarrhea!” the prince exclaimed.

“And for the last time, stop trying to talk like a Hushlander. It makes you sound like an idiot.” She jumped into the pig, then extended a hand to help me up.

I smiled, taking her hand.

“What?” she asked.

“Nice to see you’re feeling better.”

“I feel terrible,” she snapped, sliding on her dark sun-glasses—Warrior’s Lenses. “I can barely concentrate, and I’ve got this horrible buzzing in my ears. Now shut up and climb in the pig’s butt.”

I did as ordered, letting her pull me up. Doing so was harder for her than it would have been previously—being disconnected from the Mindstone must have taken away some of her abilities—but she was still far stronger than any thirteen-year-old girl had a right to be. The Warrior’s Lenses probably helped; they’re one of the few types of Lenses that anyone can wear.

Bastille helped Sing up next as the prince rushed through the glass pig—which had a very nice, lush interior—calling for his driver to turn around.

“Uh, where are we going on our amazing adventure?” the prince called.

Amazing adventure? I thought. “To the palace,” I called. “We need to find my cousin Folsom.”

“The palace?” the prince said, obviously disappointed—for him at least, that was a fairly mundane location. He called out the order anyway.

The pig started to move again, tromping down the street. The pedestrians apparently knew to stay out of its way, and despite its large size it made very good time. I sat down on one of the regal red couches and Bastille sat next to me, exhaling and closing her eyes.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

She shrugged. She’s good at the tough-girl act, but I could tell that the severing still bothered her deeply.

“Why do we need Folsom?” she asked, eyes still closed, obviously trying to distract me from asking after her.

“He’ll be with Himalaya,” I said, then realized that Bastille had never met the Librarian. “She’s a Librarian who supposedly defected to our side six months back. I don’t think she’s to be trusted though.”

“Why?”

“Folsom stays suspiciously close to her,” I said. “He rarely lets her out of his sight—I think he’s worried that she’s really a Librarian spy.”

“Great,” Bastille said. “And we’re going to ask her for help?”

“She’s our best bet,” I said. “She is a fully trained Librarian—if anyone can sort through that mess in the Royal Archives—”

“Not a library!” Rikers called distantly from the front of the pig.

“—it will be a Librarian. Besides, maybe if she is a spy, she’ll know what the Librarians are looking for, and we can force it out of her.”

“So, your brilliant plan is to go to someone you suspect of being our enemy, then bring her into the very place that the Librarians are trying to break into.”

“Er … yes.”

“Wonderful. Why do I feel that I’m going to end this ridiculous fiasco wishing I’d just given up my knighthood and become an accountant instead?”

I smiled. It felt good to have Bastille back. It was hard for me to be too impressed by my own fame with her there pointing out the holes in my plans.

“You don’t really mean that, do you?” I asked. “About quitting the knighthood?”

She sighed, opening her eyes. “No. As much as I hate to admit it, my mother was right. I’m not only good at this, but I enjoy it.” She looked at me, meeting my eyes. “Somebody set me up, Alcatraz. I’m convinced of it. They wanted me to fail.”

“Your … mother was the one who voted most harshly against your reinstatement.”

Bastille nodded, and I could see that she was thinking the same thing that I was.

“We have quite the parents, don’t we?” I asked. “My father ignores me; my mother married him just to get his Talent.”

Marry a Smedry, and you got a Talent. Apparently it didn’t matter if you were a Smedry by blood or by marriage: A Smedry was a Smedry. The only difference was that in the case of a marriage, the spouse got their husband’s or wife’s same Talent.

“My parents aren’t like that,” Bastille said fiercely. “They’re good people. My father is one of the most respected and popular kings Nalhalla has ever known.”

“Even if he is giving up on Mokia,” Sing said quietly from his seat across from us.

“He thinks he’s doing the best thing,” Bastille said. “How would you like to have to decide whether to end a war—and save thousands of lives—or keep fighting? He sees a chance for peace, and the people want peace.”

“My people want peace,” Sing said. “But we want freedom more.”

Bastille fell silent. “Anyway,” she finally said, “assuming my mother was the one to set me up, I can see exactly why she’d do it. She worries about showing favoritism toward me. She feels she needs to be extra hard on me, which is why she’d send me on such a difficult mission. To see if I failed, and therefore needed to go back into training. But she does care for me. She just has strange ways of showing it.”

I sat back, thinking about my own parents. Perhaps Bastille could come up with good motives for hers, but they were a noble king and a brave knight. What did I have? An egotistical rock-star scientist and an evil Librarian who even other Librarians didn’t seem to like very much.

Attica and Shasta Smedry were not like Bastille’s parents. My mother didn’t care about me—she’d married only to get the Talent. And my father obviously didn’t want to spend any time with me.

No wonder I turned out like I did. There is a saying in the Free Kingdoms: “A cub’s roar is an echo of the bear.” It’s a little bit like one we use in the Hushlands: “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” (It figures that the Librarian version would use apples instead of something cool like bears.)

I’m not sure if I ever had a chance to be anything but the selfish jerk I became. Despite Grandpa Smedry’s chastisement, I still longed for the fleeting satisfaction of fame. It had been really nice to hear people talk about how great I was.

My taste of fame sat in me like a corrupt seed, blackened and putrid, waiting to sprout forth slimy dark vines.

“Alcatraz?” Bastille asked, elbowing me.

I blinked, realizing that I’d zoned out. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

She nodded to the side. Prince Rikers was approaching. “I called ahead, and Folsom isn’t at the palace,” he said.

“He isn’t?” I asked, surprised.

“No, the servants said that he and a woman looked over the treaty, then left. But never fear! We can continue our quest, for the servant said that we could find Folsom in the Royal Gardens—”

“Not a park,” Sing said. “Or, er, never mind.”

“—across the street.”

“All right,” I said. “What’s he doing in the gardens?”

“Something terribly exciting and important, I’d guess,” Rikers said. “Eldon, take notes!”

A servant in scribe’s robes appeared from a nearby room as if from nowhere, with a notepad. “Yes, my lord,” the man said, scribbling.

“This will make an excellent book,” Rikers said, sitting down.

Bastille just rolled her eyes.

“So, wait,” I said. “You called ahead? How’d you do that?”

“Communicator’s Glass,” Rikers said. “Lets you talk with someone across a distance.”

Communicator’s Glass. However, something about that bothered me. I reached into my pocket, pulling out my Lenses. I’d once had a pair of Lenses that let me communicate across a distance. I didn’t have them anymore—I’d given them back to Grandpa Smedry. I did have the new set of Disguiser’s Lenses though. What about the power they gave me? If I was thinking about someone, I could make myself look like them.…

(By the way, yes, this is foreshadowing. However, you’ll need to have read the previous two books in the series to figure out what’s going on. So if you haven’t read them, then too bad for you!)

“Wait,” Bastille said, pointing at the Truthfinder’s Lens in my hand. “Is that the one you found in the Library of Alexandria?”

“Yeah. Grandpa figured out that it’s a Truthfinder’s Lens.”

She perked up. “Really? Do you know how rare those are?”

“Well … to be honest, I kind of wish that it could blow things up.”

Bastille rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t know a useful Lens if you cut your finger on it, Smedry.”

She had a point. “You know a lot more about Lenses than I do, Bastille,” I admitted. “But I think there’s something odd about all of this. Smedry Talents, the Oculator’s Lenses, brightsand … it’s all connected.”

She eyed me. “What are you talking about?”

“Here, let me show you.” I tucked my Lenses away, standing up and scanning the chamber, looking for a likely candidate. On one wall, there was a small shelf with some glass equipment on it. “Your Highness, what’s that?”

Prince Rikers turned. “Ah! My new silimatic phonograph! Haven’t hooked it up yet, though.”

“Perfect,” I said, walking over and picking up the glass box; it was about the size of a briefcase.

“That won’t work, Alcatraz,” the prince said. “It needs a silimatic power plate or some brightsand to—”

I channeled power into the glass. Not breaking power from my Talent, but the same “power” I used to activate Lenses. Early on, I had simply needed to touch Lenses to power them; now I was learning to control myself so that I didn’t activate them unintentionally.

Either way, the box started playing music—a peppy little symphony. It’s a good thing Folsom wasn’t there, otherwise he would have begun to “dance.”

“Hey, how’d you do that?” Prince Rikers asked. “Amazing!”

Bastille regarded me quizzically. I set the music box down, and it continued to play for a time, powered by the charge I’d given it.

“I’m starting to think that Oculatory Lenses and regular technological glass might just be the same thing.”

“That’s impossible,” she said. “If that were so, then you could power Oculator’s Lenses with brightsand.”

“You can’t?”

She shook her head.

“Maybe it’s not concentrated enough,” I said. “You can power the Lenses with Smedry blood, if you forge them using it.”

“Ick,” she noted. “It’s true. But ick anyway.”

“Ah, here we are!” Rikers said suddenly, standing up as the pig slowed.

I shot Bastille a look. She shrugged; we would discuss this more later. We stood and joined Rikers, looking out the window (or, well, the wall) at the approaching gardens. My sense of urgency returned. We needed to grab Himalaya and get back to the Royal, nonlibrary Archives.

Rikers pulled a lever, and the back of the pig unfolded, forming steps. Bastille and I rushed out, Sing hustling along behind. The Royal Gardens were a large, open field of grass dotted occasionally by beds of flowers. I scanned the green, trying to locate my cousin. Of course Bastille found him first.

“There,” she said, pointing. Squinting, I could see that Folsom and Himalaya were sitting on a blanket, enjoying what appeared to be a picnic.

“Wait here!” I called to Sing and Rikers as Bastille and I crossed the springy grass, passing families enjoying the afternoon and kids playing.

“What in the world are those two doing?” I asked, looking at Folsom and Himalaya.

“Uh, I think that’s called a picnic, Smedry,” Bastille said flatly.

“I know, but why would Folsom take an enemy spy on a picnic? Perhaps he’s trying to get her to relax so he can mine her for information.”

Bastille regarded the two of them, who sat on the blanket enjoying their meal. “So, wait,” she said as we rushed forward. “They’re always together?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s been watching her like a hawk. He’s always looking at her.”

“You’d say he’s been spending a lot of time with her?”

“A suspicious amount of time.”

“Hanging out at restaurants?”

“Ice cream parlors,” I said. “He claims to be showing her around so that she’ll get used to Nalhallan customs.”

“And you think he’s doing this because he suspects her of being a spy,” Bastille said, her voice almost amused.

“Well, why else would he—”

I froze, stopping on the grass. Just ahead, Himalaya laid her hand on Folsom’s shoulder, laughing at something he’d said. He regarded her, seeming transfixed by her face. He seemed to be enjoying himself, as if …

“Oh,” I said.

“Boys are such idiots,” Bastille said under her breath, moving on.

“How was I supposed to know they were in love!” I snapped, rushing up to her.

“Idiot,” she repeated.

“Look, she could still be a spy. Why, maybe she’s seducing Folsom to get at his secrets!”

“Seductions don’t look so cutesy,” Bastille said as we approached their blanket. “Anyway, there’s a simple method to find out. Pull out that Truthfinder’s Lens.”

Hey, that’s a good idea, I thought. I fumbled, retrieving the Lens and looking through it toward the Librarian.

Bastille marched right up to the blanket. “You’re Himalaya?” she asked.

“Why, yes,” the Librarian said. As I looked through the Lens, her breath seemed to glow like a white cloud. I assumed that meant she was telling the truth.

“Are you a Librarian spy?” Bastille asked. (She’s like that, blunter than a rock and twice as ornery.)

“What?” Himalaya said. “No, of course not!”

Her breath was white.

I turned to Bastille. “Grandpa Smedry warned that Librarians were good at saying half-truths, which might get them around my Truthfinder’s Lens.”

“Are you saying half-truths?” Bastille said. “Are you trying to fool that Lens, trick us, seduce this man, or do anything like that?”

“No, no, no,” Himalaya said, blushing.

Bastille looked at me.

“Her breath is white,” I said. “If she’s lying, she’s doing a really great job of it.”

“Good enough for me,” Bastille said, pointing. “You two, get in the pig. We’re on a tight schedule.”

They jumped to their feet, not even asking questions. When Bastille gets that tone in her voice, you do what she says. For the first time I realized where Bastille’s ability to order people about might have come from. She was a princess—she’d probably spent her entire childhood giving commands.

By the First Sands, I thought. She’s a princess.

“All right,” Bastille said. “We’ve got your Librarian, Smedry. Let’s hope she can actually help.”

We headed back to the pig, and I eyed the setting sun. Not much time left. This next part was going to have to go quickly. (I suggest you take a deep breath.)