Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

Chapter 17

Things are about to go very wrong.

Oh, didn’t you know that already? I should think that it would be obvious. We’re almost to the end of the book, and we just had a very encouraging victory. Everything looks good. So of course it’s all going to go wrong. You should pay better attention to plot archetypes.

I’d like to promise you that everything will turn out all right, but I think there’s something you should understand. This is the middle book of the series. And as everyone knows, the heroes always lose in the middle book. It makes the series more tense.

Sorry. But hey, at least my books have awesome endings, right?

I dismissed the soldiers, ordering them to return to their posts. Sing and Folsom joined me, looking at the book, even though they couldn’t read it. I figured my mother must have an Oculator with her to read the book—to her alone, the Lenses would be useless.

“You’re sure this is what we’re after?” Sing asked, turning the book over in his fingers.

“It’s a history of the fall of Incarna,” I said, “told by Alcatraz the First’s personal scribe.”

Sing whistled. “Wow. What are the chances?”

“Pretty good, I’d say,” Bastille said, rounding the corner and joining us. She still looked quite the worse for wear, but at least she was standing. I gave her what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

“Nice leer,” she said to me. “Anyway, this is the Royal Archives—”

“Not a—” Folsom began to say.

“—don’t interrupt,” Bastille snapped. She appeared to be in rare form—but then, having a piece of your soul cut out tends to do that to people.

“This is the Royal Archives,” Bastille continued. “A lot of these books have passed down through the Nalhallan royal line for centuries—and the collection has been added to by the Smedrys, the Knights of Crystallia, and the other noble lines who have joined with us.”

“Yes indeed,” Prince Rikers said, taking the book from Sing, looking it over. “People don’t just throw away books in the Forgotten Language. A lot of these have been archived here for years and years. They’re copies of copies.”

“You can copy these scribbles?” I asked with surprise.

“Scribes can be quite meticulous,” Sing said. “They’re almost as bad as Librarians.”

“Excuse me?” Himalaya huffed, walking up to us. She’d finished giving orders to the last couple of soldiers, who were arranging the books she’d just organized. The room looked kind of strange, with the back half of it still dominated by gargantuan piles of books, the front half filled with neatly organized stacks.

“Oh,” Sing said. “Um, I didn’t mean you, Himalaya. I meant Librarians who aren’t recovering.”

“I’m not either,” she said, folding her arms, adopting a very deliberate stance as she stood in her Hushlander skirt and blouse. “I meant what I said earlier. I intend to prove that you can be a Librarian without being evil. There has to be a way.”

“If you say so…” Sing said.

I still kind of agreed with Sing. Librarians were … well, Librarians. They’d oppressed me since my childhood. They were trying to conquer Mokia.

“I think you did wonderfully,” Folsom said to Himalaya. “Ten out of ten on a scale of pure, majestic effectiveness.”

Prince Rikers sniffed at that. “Excuse me,” he said, then handed me the Forgotten Language book and walked away.

“What was that about?” Himalaya asked.

“I think Folsom just reminded the prince that he was a book critic,” Bastille said.

Folsom sighed. “I don’t want to make people mad. I just … well, how can people get better if you don’t tell them what you honestly think?”

“I don’t think everyone wants to hear what you honestly think, Folsom,” Himalaya said, laying a hand on his arm.

“Maybe I could go talk to him,” Folsom said. “You know, explain myself.”

I didn’t think the prince would listen, but I didn’t say anything as Folsom walked after Rikers. Himalaya was watching after the determined critic with fondness.

“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” I asked her.

Himalaya turned, blushing. Bastille immediately punched me in the arm.

“Ow!” I said. (My Talent never seemed to work when Bastille was doing the punching. Perhaps it thought I deserved the punishment.) “Why’d you do that?”

Bastille rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to be so blunt, Smedry.”

“You’re blunt all the time!” I complained. “Why’s it wrong when I do it?”

“Because you’re bad at it, that’s why. Now apologize for embarrassing the young woman.”

“It’s all right,” Himalaya said, still blushing. “But please don’t say such a thing. Folsom is just being kind to me because he knows I feel so lost in Free Kingdoms society. I don’t want to burden him with my silliness.”

“But he said—gak!”

“He said ‘Gak’?” Himalaya asked, confused. She obviously hadn’t seen Bastille step forcefully on my toe in the middle of my sentence.

“Excuse us,” Bastille said, smiling at Himalaya, then towing me away. Once we were at a safe distance, she pointed at my face and said, “Don’t get involved.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“Because they’ll work it out on their own, and they don’t need you messing things up.”

“But I talked to Folsom and he likes her too! I should tell her about it so they can stop acting like lovesick crocodiles.”

“Crocodiles?”

“What?” I said defensively. “Crocodiles fall in love. Baby crocodiles come from somewhere. Anyway, that’s beside the point. We should talk to those two and settle this misunderstanding so they can get on with things.”

Bastille rolled her eyes. “How can you be so clever sometimes, Smedry, but such an idiot other times?”

“That’s unfair, and you—” I stopped. “Wait, you think I’m clever?”

“I said you’re clever sometimes,” she snapped. “Unfortunately, you’re annoying all the time. If you mess this up, I’ll … I don’t know. I’ll cut off your thumbs and send them to the crocodiles as a wedding present.”

I crinkled my brow. “Wait. What?”

She just stalked away. I watched her go, smiling.

She thought I was clever.

I stood in a happy stupor for a few minutes. Finally I wandered back over to Sing and Himalaya.

“… think about it,” Himalaya was saying. “It’s not the Librarian part that’s a problem, it’s the evil part. I could start a self-help program. World-Dominating Cultists Anonymous or something like that.”

“I dunno,” Sing said, rubbing his chin. “Sounds like you have an uphill battle.”

“You Free Kingdomers need to be educated about this as much as the Librarians do!” She smiled at me as I arrived. “Anyway, I feel that we should organize the rest of these books. You know, for consistency’s sake.”

I looked down at the book in my hands. “Do what you want,” I said. “I intend to take this someplace safe. We’ve probably wasted too much time as it is.”

“But what if there are other books in here that are important?” Himalaya asked. “Maybe that’s not the one your mother wants.”

“It is,” I said. Somehow I knew.

“But how would she even know it was in here?” Himalaya asked. “We didn’t.”

“My mother’s resourceful,” I said. “I’ll bet she—”

At that moment, Sing tripped.

“Oh dear!” Himalaya said. “Are you all right—gak!”

She said this last part as I grabbed her by the arm and dived for cover behind a stack of books. To the side, I could see Bastille doing the same with the prince and Folsom. Sing rolled over to my hiding place, then got to his knees, looking nervous.

“What are you all doing?” Himalaya asked.

I put a finger to my lips, waiting tensely. Sing’s Talent, like all of them, couldn’t be trusted implicitly—however, he had a good track record of tripping right before dangerous events. His foresight—or, well, his clumsiness—had saved my life back in the Hushlands.

I almost thought that this one was a false alarm. And then I heard it. Voices.

The door to the room opened, and my mother walked in.

Oh, wait. You’re still here? I thought that last line was going to end the chapter. It seemed like a nice, dramatic place.

Chapter isn’t long enough yet? Really? Hum. Well, guess we’ll move on, then. Ahem.

I stared in shock. That really was my mother, Shasta Smedry. She’d ditched the wig she’d been wearing at the party and wore her usual blonde hair up in a bun, along with standard-issue horn-rimmed glasses. Her face was so hard. Emotionless. Even more so than what I’d seen from other Librarians.

My heart twisted. Other than the faint glimpses of her I’d caught earlier in the day, this was the first time I’d seen her since the library in my hometown. The first time I’d seen her since … learning that she was my mother.

Shasta was accompanied by a dangerously large group of Librarian thugs—oversized, muscle-bound types that wore bow ties and glasses. (Kind of like a genetic mutant created by mixing nerd DNA with linebacker DNA. I’ll bet they spend their free time giving themselves wedgies, then stuffing themselves in lockers.)

Also with her was a young, freckled man about twenty years old. He wore a sweater vest and slacks (Librarian-type clothing) and had on glasses. Tinted ones.

A Dark Oculator, I thought. So I was right. He would be there to use the Translator’s Lenses for her, but this guy didn’t seem nearly as dangerous as Blackburn had been. Of course, my mother more than made up for the difference.

But how had they gotten past the soldiers on the stairs? It looked like Sing had been right, and they’d been tunneling into the stairwell. Shouldn’t we have heard sounds of fighting? What of the two knights on duty? I itched to rush out and see what had happened.

The group of Librarians stopped at the front of the room. I remained hidden behind my wall of books. Bastille had successfully pulled the prince and Folsom behind another wall of books, and I could just barely see her peeking around the corner. She and I met each other’s eyes, and I saw the questions in her face.

Something very odd was going on. Why hadn’t we heard any sounds of fighting from the stairwell?

“Something very odd is going on here,” my mother said, her voice echoing in the quiet room. “Why are all these books stacked like this?”

The freckled Oculator adjusted his spectacles. Fortunately, they weren’t red-tinted Oculator’s Lenses—which would have let him notice me—but were instead tinted with orange-and-blue stripes. I didn’t recognize that type.

“The scholars I interviewed said the place was messy, Shasta,” he said in a kind of nasal voice, “but who knows what they consider clean or messy? These stacks look like they were arranged and organized by a buffoon!”

Himalaya huffed in outrage, and Sing had to grab her by the arm to keep her from marching out to defend her cataloging abilities.

“All right,” Shasta said. “I don’t know how long it will be before someone notices what we’ve done. I want to find that book and get out of here as soon as possible.”

I frowned. That made it seem like they had gotten into the room by stealth. It was a good plan; if a book disappeared from the Royal-Archives-Not-a-LibraryTM, then it would probably be centuries before anyone realized it was gone. If they even realized it at all.

But that meant my mother and a group of about thirty Librarians had managed to sneak past the archives’ defenses. That seemed impossible.

Either way, we were in trouble. I didn’t have any offensive Lenses, and Bastille’s severing had her on the brink of collapse. That left us with Folsom. I’d just seen him do some serious damage, but I hated trusting a Smedry Talent as unpredictable as his.

It seemed a far, far better idea to get out and grab our army, then come back for a fight. I liked that idea a whole lot, particularly since we’d probably be able to send to the palace for Grandpa Smedry. (And maybe the Free Kingdomer version of a Sherman tank or two.)

But how to get out? The Librarians were beginning to move through the stacks. We were near the middle of the room, our position shadowed by a lack of lamplight, but we obviously couldn’t remain hidden for long.

“All right,” I whispered to Sing and Himalaya, “we need to get out of here! Any ideas?”

“Maybe we could sneak around the outside of the room,” Himalaya said, pointing at the mazelike corridors.

I didn’t like the idea of risking running into one of those thugs. I shook my head.

“We could hide in the back,” Sing whispered. “Hope they get frustrated and leave.…”

“Sing, this is a whole group of Librarians,” I said. “They’ll all be able to do what Himalaya did. They’ll sort through this room in minutes!”

Himalaya snorted quietly. “I doubt it,” she said. “I was one of the Wardens of the Standard—the best sorters in all the world. Most of those are just basic acolytes. They’ll barely be able to alphabetize, let alone sort based on the Sticky Hamstring methodology.”

“Either way,” I whispered, “I doubt they’re going to leave without this.” I glanced down at the volume I still carried, then looked across the central aisle to Bastille. She looked tense, poised. She was getting ready to fight—which tended to be her solution to a lot of things.

Great, I thought. This is not going to end well.

“If only my sister were here,” Sing said. “She could make herself look like one of those thugs and slip away.”

I froze. Sing’s sister, Australia, would be back with the Mokian contingent trying to lobby the Council of Kings to make the right decision. She had the Talent to go to sleep, then wake up looking really ugly. That usually meant looking like someone else for a short time. We didn’t have her, but we did have the Disguiser’s Lenses. I hurriedly retrieved them. They could get me out—but what about the others?

I looked across the corridor. Bastille met my eyes, then saw the Lenses in my hands. I could tell she recognized them. She nodded.

Go, the look said. Take that book to safety. Don’t worry about us.

If you’ve read through my series this far, then you know at that age I considered myself too noble to abandon my friends. I was starting to change, however. My nibble of fame—one I still secretly longed to taste again—had begun to work inside me.

I put on the Lenses and focused, imagining the image of a Librarian thug. Himalaya gasped quietly as I changed, and Sing raised an eyebrow. I glanced at them.

“Be ready to run,” I said. I looked at Bastille and held up one finger to indicate that she should wait. Then I pointed at the door. She seemed to get my meaning.

I took a deep breath, then stepped out. The center of the room was poorly lit, since we’d obscured a lot of the lamps with book walls. Those lamps were hung back in their places on the walls, even the one I’d tried to use to burn the place down.

I walked forward, holding my breath, expecting the Librarians to raise an alarm against me, but they were too busy searching. Nobody even turned. I walked right up to my mother. She glanced at me. The woman I’d always known as Ms. Fletcher, the woman who had spent years berating me as a child.

“Well, what is it?” she snapped, and I realized I’d just been standing there staring.

I held up the book, the one she was searching for. Her eyes opened wide with anticipation.

And so I handed the book to her.

Is this a good place? Can I stop here now? Okay, finally. About time.