I stepped up to Dif. “Probably best if we wait,” I told him over the racket. “Let them assume we’re fighting.”
He nodded, holding his ears and glaring at the dinosaurs. Shattering Glass. His dislike of them exceeded even Bastille’s. I shook my head and decided to spend a few minutes looking through this archive room. It was filled with rows and rows of books—every one of which appeared to be a biography of a stenographer. I’d had no idea that people wrote biographies of stenographers, let alone that there were enough to fill dozens upon dozens of shelves. Honestly, I barely knew what a stenographer was.
The Librarians kept everything immaculately clean, but none of these books seemed read. Their spines were too perfect, the pages pristine. What was the point of all this? Wasn’t information supposed to be used?
At the back of the room I found a small table with a chair by it, as if placed as a reluctant concession to the idea that someone might someday come here and violate these books by actually reading them. Hung above it was a mirror, and I stared at myself in it, hood back, exposing my youthful features.
My life lately had been a sequence of improbable disaster after improbable disaster—it left me wondering, was this what my life would be like from here on out? What about school? I hadn’t particularly enjoyed school, mind you, but I was pretty sure that there were things left for me to learn.*
I stared into that reflection as the dinosaurs continued their fight behind me.
Then the me in the mirror walked away.
I gasped, jumping back, reaching into my pocket for one of my Lenses. A Librarian trap? But no … the mirror suddenly showed another place, a place like what I thought I’d seen in the glass of the storefront on the street above.
White pillars, cobbled streets, statues and fountains …
Incarna, I thought. The kingdom from way, way back where the Smedry line—and the Talents—had begun. It was a bit like Greece, but with cooler clothing.*
In the mirror, Incarna was burning.
I stepped up to the mirror and raised my fingers to it. The glass was cool to the touch, but I felt as if it should burn me. The phantom version of me moved through the streets, and my view followed, showing me a ruined paradise. Flames flickered out of buildings that, made of stone, should definitely not have burned.
A shock of some sort made everything tremble, and a nearby building collapsed, spewing dust. The phantom passed, as if oblivious to the destruction.
I’m watching it, I realized. The day Incarna fell. Refugees had fled, some making it to Alexandria—where eventually my great-great, super-great-grandfather had died and been buried.
He’d blamed the Talents. Was that what had lurked inside me? The power to destroy cities? Continents? Civilizations?
Why in the world did I feel like I wanted the thing back?
The Alcatraz in the mirror had grown more shadowy—almost smoky. It moved through the burning town, approaching a place where the buildings were actually melting. They broke apart, large sections turning molten red. Ahead, a brilliant light shot toward the sky.
I frowned, pressing against the glass. Did I … did I recognize that light from somewhere?
“Cousin?”
I jumped, spinning around to find Dif standing behind me, watching me with a cocked head. The dinosaurs continued their mock battle, screaming now with what seemed like pain—all the while throwing furniture at the walls.
“Wow,” I said. “They’re really getting into it.”
“We all have a savage side to us,” Dif said. “Some bury it more deeply than most. Why were you staring at that mirror?”
I spun back around, but the glass had reverted to normal, just showing my face. “I…” I said, then shook my head. “Do you know what kind of glass this is?”
“Aren’t you the Oculator?”
Of course. Idiot. I pulled out my Oculator’s Lenses and looked at the mirror, but the glass gave off no glow. There wasn’t anything special about it.
I tucked away the Lenses.
“Are you all right, Cousin?” Dif said. “I mean, I know we’re supposed to be strange and kooky, but I hadn’t realized that extended to making out with mirrors.…”
“I wasn’t ‘making out’ with it.”
Behind us, Douglas yelled something about a fort made of brassieres, something else about arresting silence, then let out a string of Ohs like he was singing in a boy band. Finally he collapsed to the floor.
“Dif,” I said. “You’re sure your Talent is still working?”
“It is,” Dif said. “I used it outside, when we were first put into that group of Librarians.”
So that was how he’d slipped away. “What happened? What did it do?”
Dif shrugged. “You tell me. You were looking right at me when I used it.”
“I was?”
He nodded.
“I can’t remember a thing.”
“That’s the Talent for you,” Dif said. “So … when are you going to use yours? I’ll be honest, I’ve wanted to see the Breaking Talent in action for quite some time.”
I started, then realized we’d never explained it to him, not directly. “I broke the other Talents,” I said, walking back through the stacks toward the dinosaurs.
“What, really?” he said, following.
“Yeah,” I said. “Mine isn’t working, and neither is Grandpa’s, or Kaz’s. I’m wondering if what I did was localized—like, maybe only the people who were nearby me lost their Talents, since yours is still working.” I shook my head. “Once we get out of here, we’ll need to contact the other Smedrys and see if their Talents are working or not.”
Dif nodded, seeming stunned by this information. I stepped up to the dinosaurs. Douglas the T. rex lay on his back, little arms sticking straight up. “How was that?” he asked.
“Perfect,” I said, picking up the sword I’d brought in. “I’ll bet the Librarians are horrified. When we get back to them, hopefully they’ll lead us where we want to go.”
“Do we have to go back to them, Cousin?” Dif asked. “We could just continue on deeper into the Highbrary.”
“We’d have no idea where we were going.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Dif said. “I think I’m getting a feel for this place. Besides, how complicated can it be? Librarians made it, and we all know they aren’t the brightest of people!”
“Don’t underestimate them,” I said. “There’s no reason to be foolhardy.”
“Huh?” he asked, confused. “I never thought we needed a reason.”
I helped Douglas to his feet—no small task, since even though he was a small T. rex, he still must have weighed like a gaglazillion pounds.*
“You’re sure you don’t want to slip out the back?” Dif asked, thumbing over his shoulder.
“Quite sure,” I said, looking to Douglas. “Now,” I said to him. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to bite your lip again.…”
Chapter
16
Yes, I mentioned Bastille in that last chapter.*
Presumably this removes some of the tension for you in this book. After all, if she’s talking to me in the future when I am writing these books, then she obviously gets healed. Right?
Yup. Bastille is fine.
She’s not the one who dies in this book.
I stepped out onto the rope bridge, carrying a sword covered in Douglas’s blood. (And yes, he wasn’t kidding: A T. rex’s bit lip can be really amazing in its blood-flow output.) Dif joined me as we silently crossed the gap.
Librarians clustered around the place where the bridge ended. They’d been creeping forward—the Dark Oculator at the very back—to see what was going on. I stopped in the center of the bridge and held up the bloody sword, causing a round of murmurs from the pile of Librarians.
Far beneath me, the fans went wub, wub, wub.
Then they went wubwubwubwub.
Finally they went something like: WUBWUBWUBWUBWUB�
�WOWWE’REGOINGFASTNOWMATE!
For some reason, the fans had chosen that moment to go into overdrive. This was an air intake for the ventilation system, meaning the fans drew in the air and pushed it throughout the entire Highbrary. And that meant I was suddenly in the middle of a vortex of wind, blowing down from above, trying to suck me off the bridge and into the fans.
I shouted in alarm and dropped the sword, grabbing the sides of the bridge and holding tight. Dif did the same, looking at me with a surprised expression.
Wait. I could see his expression. His hood had fallen back in the wind. Which meant … yes, mine had as well.
I looked toward the Librarians. They looked back.
Then the Dark Oculator screamed in terror and ran away back down the tunnel. The other Librarians followed, leaving behind a solitary figure who put her hands on her hips.
Dif and I pulled ourselves across the bridge as it swayed dangerously. Fortunately we made it across, though just as we stepped off, the bridge pitched from side to side, then finally ripped apart.
I gulped as I watched the wooden planks get sucked down into the vortex. I glanced at Dif, who looked nonplussed.* Something was definitely wrong with those fans.
Now that we were out of the wind tunnel directly above the fans, the air wasn’t being pulled as much. Still, we walked down the hallway to get away from the noise.
“You know,” my mother said, looking in the direction the Librarians had fled, “that was completely unfair.”
“Huh?”
“Why are they afraid of you?” she said, folding her arms and tapping her foot. “Do you know how hard I tried to cultivate a fearsome reputation? They don’t care about me, but they run away from a teenage kid with a bad haircut? Bother.”
“You’re a terrible mother. You realize that, don’t you?”
“I’ll bake you cookies or something to make up for it,” Shasta said. She hesitated. “That’s a thing mothers do, right?”
“You don’t know?”
“Never got around to studying for the job,” Shasta said. “Honestly, you’d think they’d give us an instruction manuel* or something.”
Well, regardless, this plan hadn’t turned out. Not only had I lost my cool bloody sword, the Librarians had run away.
“Well, now what?” I asked as we stopped in the tunnel.
“Hmm?” Shasta asked.
“That Dark Oculator was going to lead us to the Forgotten Language texts.”
“Why would she do that?” Dif asked.
“She thought I was serving the Scrivener,” I explained. “I told her I’d been sent by him.”
Dif started. “What?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She wanted to test that I was as powerful as I claimed, so she sent me to kill the monster.”
“Dinosaurs,” Shasta said dismissively. “I can’t believe that nobody noticed. Hasn’t anyone in here heard a T. rex throw a tantrum before?”
Drat. I’d been hoping she’d think I’d done something incredible. “Well, the Dark Oculator is gone, so she can’t lead us to the Forgotten Language archive. Now we’ll have to start all over.”
“Yes,” Shasta said. “We could do that. Or we could use this.” She held up a small, mobile-phone-like device.
“Is that—”
“The Dark Oculator’s authenticator?” Shasta said. “Yes.”
“And you—”
“Picked her pocket,” Shasta said. “What? You thought I was just lounging out here composing an epic ballad or something? Thank you for the distraction, by the way.”
“Great. Let’s turn it on!”
Mother tucked it into her pocket.
“Wait! What are you doing?”
“Let’s go over those rules again,” she said, looking me in the eyes.
“They aren’t negotiable.”
“Really? That’s too bad.” She started to walk away.
I grabbed her by the arm. “You turn that thing on.”
“Or what, Alcatraz? Are you willing to hurt me to get what you want? Do you think you could actually manage it if you decided to try?”
I looked to Dif, who shrugged, seeming to say, “I told you we should have snuck away on our own.”
I looked back to my mother, grinding my teeth. “What do you want?”
“When we find your father,” she said. “You may talk to him. You may try to get him to see some sense. But if he doesn’t listen, I get to deal with him. In any way necessary.”
“No. We can’t—”
“What do you think we’re doing here, boy?” she snapped. “Are we playing games? Have you been with that fool of a grandfather of yours so long you’ve lost the ability to see the world as it has to be?”
I stepped back, shocked by her outburst.
“We,” she shouted, “are going to stop him. That’s what we came to do. Even if it rips us up inside, we are going to stop him. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
“I…”
Did I?
Why else had we come? What steps was I willing to take?
“As long as I get to talk to him first,” I said, reluctant. “You don’t take any … steps until I am done and give you the go-ahead.”
“Fine,” Mother said. “But I only concede because I hope, against my better judgment, that he’ll listen to you when he never listened to me.”
Mother clicked something on the authenticator, and a spray of light rose from it, projecting a three-dimensional set of glowing red gridlines into the air. It showed all of the passageways, archives, and chambers of the Highbrary. Projected like this, it looked a lot like an anthill with tons of tunnels and burrows.
I located where we’d entered—a place near the middle of the main chamber, easily recognized because of the tall, spindly tower topped by an altar.*
From there, I followed our trail on the map to locate the fan chamber. There were several of them marked on the map—were all the fans blowing this hard? Even standing a distance away from it, the air current was noticeably strong.
This place was enormous. I squinted, reading notation after notation in the air. How long would we be safe just standing here? What if—
“There,” Dif said, pointing at a notation. “Forgotten Language texts. Mauve-level authenticator required.”
“And … what do we have?” I asked.
“Gamboge,” Mother said.
“Which is…?”
“High enough to get us in,” she said.
I nodded in relief, memorizing the path between our location and the archive. We’d have to return to the main chamber, then head down a different set of tunnels. It was practically on top of another wind tunnel.
“Let’s go,” Mother said, moving to turn off the authenticator.
I stopped her, raising my hand, tracing the path again. I’d noticed something else on that map. It was practically on the way—
Suddenly the authenticator flashed brilliantly, the projected image growing much brighter. I backed away. Had I done that to it somehow? But I wasn’t even touching it.
Mother flipped it off, looking annoyed. “It’s hot to the touch,” she complained, stuffing it back in her pocket. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!” I said. But there wasn’t time to protest my innocence—I had a plan. Much like the old plan.
But with a quick diversion.
I took off running. Shasta grumbled and fell in behind me, Dif at the back. We emerged into the main cavern, with its sweeping rock bridges and hundreds of archive huts. A gaping hole in the ceiling spilled light down in a golden column near the center. The sound of gunfire popped in the distance—Himalaya’s team was still fighting, thankfully.
We turned right. The Librarians in the main cavern were all abuzz, scurrying about, shouting. Something had sent them into a panic, it seemed. Most had suffered the exploding ceiling and the subsequent invasion with merely passing interest. Why would they suddenly be concerned?
Well, at least I didn’t feel out
of place breaking into a jog. Perhaps that would help us look busy, so nobody else would conscript us into a monster-slaying team.*
My mother pulled up alongside me as we jogged. “What’s going on?”
“I have no idea.” I fished in my robe pocket, bringing out the phone. It felt strange to be using something so ordinary, but there it was. It had only three numbers saved; I dialed the most recent one.
It rang, then Himalaya answered. “Yeah?” she said, sounding out of breath.
“Did you guys do something?” I asked.
“Other than get forced to the second floor of our building?” she said. I heard gunfire over her line. “This isn’t going well, Alcatraz. They’re going to overwhelm us soon.”
“Understood,” I said. “You guys should get out of there. I don’t think we need you as a distraction any longer.”
“Yeah,” Himalaya said. “About that…”
I felt a chill.
“They dropped a Librarian task force onto the roof of the building where we’re holed up,” Himalaya said. “And they set up sharpshooters on the next building over. There’s no way we’re going to be able to use the grappling lines to climb to the surface. I was hoping you’d have some kind of plan to get us out. We’re pinned down in here.”
Shattering Glass.
“That distraction with the wind was helpful though,” Himalaya added.
“The wind?” I said.
“Yeah,” Himalaya said. “The ventilation is blowing into the archive at a furious rate, enough to knock over some of the shelves near the air duct in our building. It’s scattering carefully catalogued piles of information in a completely casual, careless, and unorganized way.…”
I could hear her twitch over the line.
“You don’t need to reorganize it all right now, Himalaya,” I said, brushing past a group of anxious Librarians who were heading toward an archive where—inside—I could see a little mini vortex spinning sheets of paper in the air. Well, at least now I knew why they were acting so crazy.
“I know, I know,” she said. “But it’s so messy. Anyway, it’s distracting to my people, but just as bad for the Librarians outside. The one reason we’re still alive is because groups of enemies keep breaking off to go help clean one archive or another.”
The Dark Talent Page 12