Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

Chapter 16

Writers—particularly storytellers like myself—write about people. That is ironic, since we actually know nothing about them.

Think about it. Why does someone become a writer? Is it because they like people? Of course not. Why else would we seek out a job where we get to spend all day, every day, cooped up in our basement with no company besides paper, a pencil, and our imaginary friends?

Writers hate people. If you’ve ever met a writer, you know that they’re generally awkward, slovenly individuals who live beneath stairwells, hiss at those who pass, and forget to bathe for weeklong periods. And those are the socially competent ones.

I looked up at the sides of our pit.

Bastille sat on the floor, obviously trying to pretend she was a patient person. It worked about as well as a watermelon trying to pretend it was a golf ball. (Though not as messy and half as much fun.)

“Come on, Bastille,” I said, glancing at her. “I know you’re as frustrated as I am. What are you thinking? Could I break these walls somehow? Make a slope we can climb up?”

“And risk the dirt and stone behind the wall caving in on us?” she asked flatly.

She had a point. “What if we tried to climb up without using the Talent?”

“These walls are slick and polished, Smedry,” she snapped. “Not even a Crystin can climb that.”

“But if we shimmied up, feet on one wall, back against the other one…”

“The hole is way too wide for that.”

I fell silent.

“What?” she asked. “No other brilliant ideas? What about jumping up? You should try that a few times.” She turned away from me, looking at the side of our pit, then sighed.

I frowned. “Bastille, this isn’t like you.”

“Oh?” she asked. “How do you know what’s ‘like me’ and what isn’t? You’ve known me for what, a couple of months? During which time we’ve spent all of three or four days together?”

“Yes, but … well, I mean…”

“It’s over, Smedry,” she said. “We’re beaten. Kaz has probably already arrived at the center of the library and given up those Lenses. Chances are, Kiliman will just take him captive and let my mother die.”

“Maybe we can still find a way out. And go help.”

Bastille didn’t seem to be listening. She simply sat down, arms folded across her knees, staring at the wall. “They really are right about me,” she whispered. “I never deserved to be a knight.”

“What?” I asked, squatting down beside her. “Bastille, that’s nonsense.”

“I’ve only done two real operations. This one and the infiltration back in your hometown. Both times I ended up trapped, unable to do anything. I’m useless.”

“We all got trapped,” I said. “Your mother didn’t fare much better.”

She ignored this, still shaking her head. “Useless. You had to save me from those ropes, and then you had to save me again when we were covered in tar. That’s not even counting the time you saved me from falling out the side of Dragonaut.”

“You saved me too,” I said. “Remember the coins? If it wasn’t for you, I’d be floating around with burning eyes, offering illicit books to people as if I were a drug dealer looking for a new victim.”

(Hey, kids? Want a taste of Dickens? It’s awesome, man. Come on. First chapters of Hard Times are free. I know you’ll be back for A Tale of Two Cities later.)

“That was different,” Bastille said.

“No it wasn’t. Look, you saved my life—not only that, but without you, I wouldn’t know what half these Lenses are supposed to do.”

She looked up at me, brow furrowed. “You’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“Encouraging people. Like you did with Australia, like you’ve done with all of us this entire trip. What is it about you, Smedry? You don’t want to make any decisions, but you take it upon yourself to encourage us all anyway?”

I fell silent. How had that happened? This conversation had been about her, and suddenly she’d thrown it back in my face. (I’ve found that throwing things in people’s faces—words, conversations, knives—is one of Bastille’s specialties.)

I looked toward the light flickering faintly in the room above. It seemed haunting and inviting, and as I watched it, I realized something about myself. While I hated being trapped because I worried about what might happen to Kaz and Draulin, there was a larger cause of my frustration.

I wanted to be helping. I didn’t want to be left out. I wanted to be in charge. Leaving things to others was tough for me.

“I do want to be a leader, Bastille,” I whispered.

She rustled, turning to look at me.

“I think all people, in their hearts, want to be heroes,” I continued. “But the ones who want it most are the outcasts. The girls and boys who sit in the backs of rooms, always laughed at because they’re different, because they stand out, because … they break things.”

I wondered if Kaz understood that there were more ways than one to be abnormal. Everyone was strange in some way—everyone had weaknesses that could be mocked. I did know how he felt. I’d felt it too.

I didn’t want to go back.

“Yes, I want to be a hero,” I said. “Yes, I want to be the leader. I used to sit and dream of being the one who people looked to. Of being the one who could fix things rather than break them.”

“Well, you have it,” she said. “You’re the heir to the Smedry line. You’re in charge.”

“I know. And that terrifies me.”

She regarded me. She’d taken off her Warrior’s Lenses, and I could see the light from above reflecting in her solemn eyes.

I sat down, shaking my head. “I don’t know what to do, Bastille. Being the kid who’s always in trouble didn’t exactly prepare me for this. How do I decide whether or not to trade my most powerful weapon to save someone’s life? I feel like … like I’m drowning. Like I’m swimming in water over my head and can’t ever reach the top.

“I guess that’s why I keep saying I don’t want to lead. Because I know if people pay too much attention to me, they’ll realize that I’m doing a terrible job.” I grimaced. “Just like I am now. You and me captured, your mother dying, Kaz walking into danger, and Australia—who knows where she is.”

I fell silent, feeling even more foolish now that I’d explained it. But oddly, Bastille didn’t laugh at me.

“I don’t think you’re doing a terrible job, Alcatraz,” she said. “Being in charge is hard. If everything goes well, then nobody pays attention. Yet if something goes wrong, you’re always to blame. I think you’ve done fine. You only need to be a little bit more sure of yourself.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. What do you know about it, anyway?”

“I…”

I glanced at her, the tone in her voice making me curious. Some things about Bastille had never added up, in my estimation. She seemed to know too much. True, she’d said that she’d wanted to be an Oculator, but that didn’t give me enough of an explanation. There was more.

“You do know about it,” I said.

Now it was her turn to shrug. “A little bit.”

I cocked my head.

“Haven’t you noticed?” she asked, looking at me. “My mother doesn’t have a prison name.”

“So?”

“So, I do.”

I scratched my head.

“You really don’t know anything, do you?” she asked.

I snorted. “Well, excuse me for being raised on a completely different continent from you people. What are you talking about?”

“You are named Alcatraz after Alcatraz the First,” Bastille said. “The Smedrys use names like that a lot, names from their heritage. The Librarians, then, have tried to discredit those names by using them for prisons.”

“You’re not a Smedry,” I said, “but you have a prison name too.”

“Yes, but my family is also … traditional. They tend to use famous names over and over again like your family does. That’s not something that common people do.”

I blinked.

Bastille rolled her eyes. “My father’s a nobleman, Smedry,” she said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I have a traditional name because I’m his daughter. My full name is Bastille Vianitelle the Ninth.”

“Ah, right.” It’s sort of like what rich people, kings, and popes do in the Hushlands—they reuse old names, then add a number.

“I grew up with everyone expecting me to be a leader,” she said. “Only, I’m not very well suited to it. Not like you.”

“I’m not well suited to it!”

She snorted. “You are good with people, Smedry. Me, I don’t want to lead people. They kind of annoy me.”

“You should have become a novelist.”

“Don’t like the hours,” she said. “Anyway, I can tell you that growing up learning how to lead doesn’t make any difference. A lifetime of training only makes you understand how inadequate you are.”

We fell silent.

“So … what happened?” I asked. “How did you end up as a Crystin?”

“My mother,” Bastille said. “She’s not noble, but she is a Crystin. She always pushed me to become a Knight of Crystallia, saying that my father didn’t need another useless daughter hanging about. I tried to prove her wrong, but I’m too well-bred to do something simple, like become a baker or a carpenter.”

“So you tried to become an Oculator.”

She nodded. “I didn’t tell anyone. Of course I’d heard that Oculatory power was genetic, but I intended to prove everyone wrong. I’d be the first Oculator in my line, then my mother and father would be impressed.

“Well, you know how that turned out. So I joined the Crystin, like my mother had always said I should. I had to give up my title and my money. Now I’m realizing how foolish that decision was. I make an even worse Crystin than I did an Oculator.”

She sighed, folding her arms again. “The thing is, I thought—for a while—that I would be good at it. I made knight faster than anyone ever had. Then I was immediately sent out to protect the old Smedry—which was one of the most dangerous, difficult assignments the knights had. I still don’t know why they picked that as my first job. It’s never made sense.”

“It’s almost like they were setting you up to fail.”

She sat for a moment. “I never thought about it that way. Why would anyone do such a thing?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But you have to admit, it does sound suspicious. Maybe someone in charge of giving the assignments was jealous of how quickly you made it to knight, and wanted to see you fall.”

“At the cost, maybe, of the old Smedry’s life?”

I shrugged. “People do strange things sometimes, Bastille.”

“I still find it hard to believe,” she said. “Besides, my mother was part of the group that makes those assignments.”

“She seems like a hard one to please.”

Bastille snorted. “That’s an understatement. I made knight, and all she could say was, ‘Make certain you live up to the honor.’ I think she was expecting me to bungle my first job—maybe that’s why she came to get me herself.”

I didn’t reply, but somehow I knew we were thinking the same thing. Bastille’s own mother couldn’t have been the one to set her up to fail, could she? That seemed a stretch. Although my mother had stolen my inheritance, then sold me out to the Librarians. So maybe Bastille and I were a well-matched pair.

I sat against the wall, looking up, and my mind turned away from Bastille’s problems and back to what I’d said earlier. It had felt good to get the thoughts out. It had helped me, finally, sort through how I felt. A few months back, I would have settled for simply being normal. Now I knew that being a Smedry meant something. The more time I spent filling that role, the more I wanted to do it well. To justify the name I bore, and live up to what my grandfather and the others expected of me.

Perhaps you find that ironic. There I was, deciding bravely that I would take upon myself the mantle that had been quite randomly thrust upon me. Now, here I am, writing my memoirs, trying as hard as I can to throw off that very same mantle.

I wanted to be famous. That should in itself be enough to make you worried. Never trust a man who wants to be a hero. We’ll talk about this more in the next book.

“We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?” Bastille asked, smiling for the first time I’d seen since we fell down the shaft.

I smiled back. “Yeah. Why is it that my best soul-searching moments always come when I’m trapped?”

“Sounds like you should be imprisoned more often.”

I nodded. Then I jumped as something floated out of the wall next to me. “Gak!” I said before I realized it was just a Curator.

“Here,” it said, dropping a leaf of paper to the ground.

“What’s this?” I asked, picking it up.

“Your book.”

It was the paper I’d written in the tomb, the inscription about the Dark Talent. That meant we’d been trapped for nearly an hour. Bastille was right. Kaz had probably already reached the center of the library.

The Curator floated away.

“Your mother,” I said, folding up the paper. “If she gets that crystal thing back, she’ll be all right?”

Bastille nodded.

“So, since we’re trapped here with no hope of rescue, do you mind telling me what that crystal was? You know, to help pass the time?”

Bastille snorted, then stood up and pulled aside her silvery hair. She turned around, and I could see a sparkling blue crystal set into the skin on the back of her neck. It was clearly visible above the collar of the black T-shirt she had tucked into the trousers of her militaristic uniform.

“Wow,” I said.

“Three kinds of crystals grow in Crystallia,” she said, letting her hair back down. “The first we turn into swords and daggers. The second become Fleshstones, which are what really make us into Crystin.”

“What does it do?” I asked.

Bastille paused. “Things,” she finally replied.

“How wonderfully specific.”

She flushed. “It’s kind of personal, Alcatraz. It’s because of the Fleshstone that I can run so quickly. Stuff like that.”

“Okay,” I said. “And the third type of crystal?”

“Also personal.”

Great, I thought.

“It’s not really important,” she said. As she moved to sit down, I noticed something. Her hand—the one that had been holding the dagger that had blocked the Frostbringer’s Lens—had red and cracking skin.

“You okay?” I asked, nodding to her hand.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Our daggers are made from immature swordstones—they aren’t meant to hold out against powerful Lenses for long. A little of the ice got around and hit my fingers, but it’s nothing that won’t heal.”

I wasn’t as convinced. “Maybe you should—”

“Hush!” Bastille said suddenly, climbing to her feet.

I did so, frowning. I followed Bastille’s gaze up toward the top of our hole.

“What?” I asked.

“I thought I heard something,” she replied.

We waited tensely. Then we saw shadows moving above. Bastille slowly pulled her dagger from its sheath, and even in the darkness, I could see that it was laced with cracks. What she expected to do at such a distance was beyond me.

Finally, a head leaned out over the hole.

“Hello?” Australia asked. “Anybody down there?”