“We’ll need to do something about that dome,” Shasta said. “How do we get through?”
I reached into my pocket and fingered the Shamefiller’s Lens. “Can you open these windows for me?”
“Sure,” Kaz said. “Might get a little windy in here though.”
“Let’s try it.”
Kaz nodded, dodging us out of the way of a firing gun emplacement, then hit a button on the glass dashboard. One of the penguin’s eye-windows retracted.
My ears popped and a rush of wind hit me in the face. It’s shocking how hard it is to breathe with so much air coming so quickly. It’s like trying to eat popcorn fired at you by a bazooka. Still, I was able to raise the Shamefiller’s Lens and point it at the dome. My hair whipping about on my head, my bow tie fluttering, I focused a blast of energy into the Lens and let loose a concentrated beam of humiliation at the dome.
“I can’t believe I stopped those three Librarians at the perimeter,” said a loud, deep voice in my head, “all because they were carrying confiscated bits of glass. The entire army went on alert, and everyone thought they were double agents! I could have just crumbled upon myself with shame. I should have seen, shouldn’t have stopped them.”
I waited, listening, but nothing was happening.
“The dome’s too strong!” Kaz said. “Should I turn us away? We’re heading straight for it!”
“Hold steady!” I said, driving more power into the Lens. It started to get warm in my fingers.
“And the shame of not being able to keep the rain off people! I’m a dome. I should be able to keep things dry. At least provide shade? But nobody can even see me! All I do is scan for glass Lenses that almost never come this way. What good am I really? Then there was the moment with the Scrivener.…”
What?
“Alcatraz?” Kaz said, urgent.
“Keep going!” I shouted, pumping more energy. The Lens was getting hot, like the glass I’d melted earlier. That seemed very dangerous.
“I stopped him, of all people,” the dome’s voice said, “just because he had a Lens on him. Everyone saw it. I can’t believe—”
The Lens burned my fingers. I cried out as a section of the dome exploded, opening a hole the size of a large building.
I dropped the Lens, wagging my fingers. I’d burned them good, but the Lens—fortunately—hadn’t melted. It hit the floor with a plink and rolled to the side. Kaz let out a whoop and steered us right through the hole, then pushed a button to close the window. Many of the other Free Kingdomer ships followed us through immediately.
I sucked on my fingers.
“Nice work,” Kaz said.
I nodded absently. The dome had mentioned the Scrivener. I could only assume that an inanimate object wasn’t going to lie in its own thoughts.* Someone really was calling himself the Scrivener. An ominous title.
“Hey, what’s that column of smoke?” I said.
Kaz followed my gesture. Near the center of DC—not a great distance from the towering Washington Monument and the Mall—a line of smoke rose between some of the buildings.
“A crash perhaps?” Kaz said. “Or a stray missile?”
“Could be,” Shasta replied, “but the dome would have stopped most missiles and a lot of debris.”
“I think someone else is fighting back,” I said. “That smoke is from three or four different buildings, all burning. And … is that a barricade?”
We were past too quickly to make out more.
“You guys should go get ready for the drop,” Kaz said, steering us over the center of DC.
“Try to keep it level, if you can,” Shasta said.
“Tall order,” Kaz said. “And I, by definition, am not particularly good at those. I’ll see what I can do.”
Shasta rose to leave, but Kaz reached out and took her by the arm. “What are you going to do when you find him?” he asked her. “Have you thought about that?”
“Of course I have,” she said. “I’m going to stop him.”
“Will you kill him?” Kaz asked, meeting her eyes.
“I love him, Kaz,” my mother said.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
She pulled her arm away. “I’ll do what I have to. If that means pulling the trigger, then so be it.”
She stalked away. I recovered my Shamefiller’s Lens, which had cooled enough to handle, and followed. Their conversation left me feeling a little out of place in my own story, which should never happen. So let’s talk some more about me.
Alcatraz was a silly Oculator boy who had a proclivity for stopping a story at a stoopid point to start an additional story. On occasion, Alcatraz put words such as “cockapoo” into his books. That word in particular brought him vast humiliation on two occasions. Sadly, his boss didn’t spot said words, for both cockapoos hid in a long paragraph about Alcatraz’s most amazing points—and rational folk usually skip such things. Alcatraz is guilty of casually ripping apart causality to find a sandwich, is guilty of occasionally imitating a fish, and is guilty of hating baby cats. Also, writing full paragraphs without any Es is hard.
“Would you really kill him?” I asked my mother, catching up to her in the glass hallway.
“Yes. And you? If the fate of the world hinged on your answer, could you kill your father, Alcatraz?”
“I…” I swallowed.
“You’d better be able to,” she said. “I spent your entire life trying to make a hard man out of you. If the time comes, child, you stop him. Whatever it takes.”
Such a cold response. I didn’t want to think about what she’d said. There would be another way to stop my father. We could talk some sense into him. Right?
Shasta didn’t seem to think so. She’d always been like that—so knowing, so certain, so smug. She didn’t so much as stumble as Kaz swerved Penguinator; she merely leaned against the wall with one hand and remained in place.
It made me want to do something to disturb her calm.
“Is the Scrivener really still alive?” I asked.
Shasta spun on me. “Where did you hear that?”
“I reversed one of the Librarian bugs we found,” I said. “We overheard She Who Cannot Be Named talking about the Scrivener. Biblioden. He can’t possibly still be alive.”
Shasta studied me. “There are … rumors. I never gave them much credence, but recently talk has grown. Some claim to have spoken with him, to have been given orders by him. If Kangchenjunga has joined the believers … well, she’s not one to be easily taken in. Either she’s playing along for some reason, or something convinced her.”
Shasta seemed troubled. That was a welcome departure from smugness, but I hadn’t provoked the reaction I’d wanted. I considered doing something really upsetting, like telling her I’d decided to write fantasy novels for a living, but there was no call to be so extreme. Even I need to have some standards.
We again reached the room with the exit bay, and I pulled off my Grappler’s Glass boots and stowed them. Beneath, through the glass floor, I could see the city passing in a blur. We were lower than before, but still way too high to survive a jump. “So … um,” I said to my mother, “how do you think we’re going to—”
Cousin Dif burst into the room, wearing a backpack and bunny slippers. They were an odd match to his plaid shirt and bow tie, and he’d swapped his pants for a pair of very pink shorts.
“Hushlander disguise in place!” he proclaimed.
“I thought they said you’d lived over here,” I said.
“I have! I did an extended internship in San Francisco.”
“What sort of internship?” I asked, skeptical.
“On a wilderness preserve,” Dif said. “With tents, and animal trainers, and lots of people in bleachers.”
“A … circus?”
“Yes! That’s what it was called. I worked among them for years, observing how to dress and act around Hushlanders until my skills for infiltration were perfected.” He paused. “Oh, I almost forgot!
No wonder you’re skeptical.” He reached into his backpack and took out a top hat and put it on his head. “There. Perfect Hushlander costume!”
I was speechless. Sometimes being confronted by monumental stupidity does that to me.* Before I could recover, Draulin joined us.
She wore a sleek blue evening gown with sequins and a slit up the side, her hair done up as if for prom, her lips bright red. Long gloves covered her arms almost all the way up to her shoulders.
My eyes bulged almost out of my skull.
Draulin was a woman?
Okay, so maybe I’m not one to be making wisecracks about other people’s monumental stupidity. I mean, I knew that Draulin was Bastille’s mother, wife of the king of Nalhalla. But … you know, I’d kind of always imagined that she slept in her armor.
“Great costume,” Dif said.
“Thank you, Lord D’if,” Draulin said, fiddling in her handbag—which, if it was like Bastille’s, held her sword in a mildly impossible pocket of space-time. “Lord Kazan, is your line still open?”
“Yup.”
“Will these Hushlander transmission devices work inside the Highbrary?”
“They should.”
“Excellent. We will be in touch. Be careful up here, Lord Kazan. Do not forget you carry my daughter in this ship.”
“I’ll try not to get us blown up,” Kaz said.
It took a few more minutes—as one might expect—before my grandfather decided to join us. Being late wasn’t only his Smedry Talent, it was a way of life. He finally trotted in, carrying a roll of cloth, and grinned at Draulin. “It really is just like old times!”
“Are you going to sink this city too?” Draulin asked him.
“That happened one time,” Grandpa said. “And everyone got out. Mostly.” He began distributing pieces of cloth.
I took mine with a frown. It was about the size of a towel, and was thin and white. What was this?
Grandpa pulled open the wide bay door on the side of Penguinator. Wind whipped at us, loud enough that I could barely hear Kaz say, “I’ll steer us through that smoke Alcatraz spotted earlier. That would be a great place to jump, as you’ll be hidden from anyone watching.”
“Yes,” I began, “but—”
“A great place to jump?” Dif said. “Out we go then!”
And he shoved me right out the door.
Chapter
Frog
You may have noticed the odd numbering of chapters in this book. Then again, maybe you haven’t noticed. I mean, we both know you aren’t exactly the sharpest sword in the armory. If you were the smart type, you’d be doing something more productive with your time than reading this book. Like, say, swimming with hungry alligators or eating thumbtacks.
We’ll pretend for now that you noticed the chapter names. Good for you. Here, have a cookie.
No, it’s not a dog biscuit. Why would you think I’d try to give you a dog biscuit? Simply because they were on sale.
As I plummeted to my death, I at least got to check off “Jump out of a giant flying glass penguin without a parachute” from my list of things to accomplish in life.*
Granted, I didn’t want to check “die” off my list just yet. This left me in a difficult spot. And then another. And then another. (You see, I kept moving and leaving one spot for the next, as will happen when you’re plummeting at high velocity through the air.)
Fortunately, I had barely enough time to wrap myself in the towel-like length of cloth Grandpa had given me. Then I crashed into the ground.
And bounced.
You see, glassweave cloth can be very helpful for not dying. It had saved Bastille on numerous occasions, and this time it saved me. I was left with a very broken sheet of cloth—cracked like glass—but I survived. Dif plowed into the ground beside me, then Grandpa, my mother, and finally Draulin. We’re Smedrys (well, most of us), and so diving face-first into danger is both our primary method of attack and our backup plan.
Overhead, Penguinator blasted away, and a few Librarian jets chased after it. I hoped the pilots hadn’t seen us make the drop-off, though that hope was a flimsy one. We’d gone too early because of Dif’s interference; the line of smoke I’d seen earlier was still several streets off.
“Well, that was fun,” Grandpa said as he climbed to his feet. “Anyone dead?”
“Does my pride count?” Draulin asked, dusting herself off.
“I don’t think so,” Grandpa said. “I killed that years ago. Dif, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but shoving my grandson out of planes is usually my job. So next time, kindly refrain until I give the word.”
“Sorry, sir,” Dif said, looking abashed.
“Now then,” Grandpa said, “suggestions on what to do next?”
“Run?” Shasta asked.
“Well, I don’t really need the exercise right now, as—”
The building beside us exploded. Troops wearing bow ties and sweater vests barreled around a corner farther down the street, carrying guns.
“Ah,” Grandpa said. “So our hasty drop was spotted, was it? That’s disappointing. I think—”
“Run!” I said, towing him after me as we all scrambled around a corner. Several of the Librarians started firing, but we managed to get out of their line of sight.
“This way to the Highbrary,” Shasta said, turning down a street.
“No,” I said, turning the opposite direction. “This way.” I barreled forward, and fortunately the others joined me, though Shasta complained vociferously.
I ran us through a little garden between two large buildings with ancient-looking stonework. The streets here were wide, yet desolate. I didn’t see a soul—other than the Librarians chasing us—until I stumbled upon a group of terrified people huddled in a small touristy shop.
It was a shock to see people in normal clothing. A clash between my old life and my new one. I was actually back in the Hushlands. America. Nearby a cracked doorway looked in on a convenience store, where a television on the counter was playing to a group of worried people. I slowed here.
Inside, the television displayed a reporter holding a stack of papers, with a blurry picture of the DC area on the screen beside him. “… Nobody knows the nature of the invaders, though some eyewitnesses claim to have seen strange, baffling technology.…”
I started running again as Draulin passed, hauling me after her. Shattering Glass … how must all this look to the common people? A crazy assault out of nowhere? A defending army nobody recognized? The Librarians ruled in secret.
Or they had. Cleaning all of this up would take a whole lot of memory toads. That brought a smile to my lips—one that was quite nearly ripped clean off as a Librarian mortar exploded on the street.
I was thrown to the ground, but as a hail of bullets came from our pursuers, I found Draulin standing crouched between me and the Librarians, arm raised before her face, her glassweave dress and gloves blocking the fire.
Funny thing about Knights of Crystallia—they complain all the time about us Smedrys getting into danger, yet they seem attracted to danger like a novelist to bad puns.*
“Go!” Draulin ordered.
I went.
“This sure is exciting!” Cousin Dif said, glancing over his shoulder as I ran past him to lead the way again. He seemed completely unrepentant, considering that we’d only been spotted because he’d forced us to jump early.
“Where are we going?” Shasta demanded as we lurched around a corner, passing an abandoned cart full of T-shirts and miniature flags.
I pointed ahead, hoping that my gut instinct was right. I had seen something down here, hadn’t I? Someone fighting back? Because if I was wrong, we were likely dead.
But no … that was a barricade, formed out of wooden furniture—most of it desks with lots of little drawers. People hid behind the sides and top of the barricade, though I couldn’t make out any details.
It didn’t matter. If they were fighting, then they were on our side. I led the others toward th
e barricade, Librarians on our tail. Just a little farther and …
One of the people on the barricade stood up. He wore a bow tie, a sweater vest, and horn-rimmed glasses.
A Librarian.
I stumbled to a halt.
A Librarian.
Whoever had been fighting back—if indeed anyone ever had been—the Librarians had already gotten to them. That meant I’d put my family directly between two enemy forces. No place to run—the road dead-ended at the barricade, with buildings burning to either side.
Everyone pulled to a stop around me, Grandpa with Lenses out, Draulin clutching her sword—her swanky evening gown riddled with cracked bullet marks.
The Librarians behind us had nearly caught up.
“Now,” Grandpa said, his voice tense, “would be an excellent time for the Talents to return, don’t you think, Alcatraz? Very dramatic.”
“I don’t … I don’t know how.…”
“Try,” Grandpa said. “You are the focus of the bloodline, lad. You have the Talent in its most pure form. That’s why you were able to break it.”
“I don’t fix things, Grandpa,” I whispered. “I only break them.”
“Try,” he repeated.
I didn’t even know where to start. Unbreak the Talents? Grandpa might as well have told me to breathe underwater, count from one to a sasquatch, or write a book without making fun of anyone. How did I manipulate the Talents?
I tried flexing, then thinking really hard. Nothing happened of course, though I did think for a moment that I saw something. Reflected in the glass of a broken window nearby—a storefront. That window reflected a version of me, except wrong. A translucent, shadowy version of me.
The Bane of Incarna, they had written in the tomb of Alcatraz the First. That which twists, that which corrupts, and that which destroys.
The Dark Talent Page 7