Blackburn continued to chuckle. He walked slowly across the room, his feet crunching on shattered glass. He shook his head. ‘Do you realize how much trouble it’s going to be to gather up all these broken Lenses, have the shards sorted, then have them all reforged? My Librarians will spend months remaking my collection!’
I have to do something, I thought. Bastille continued to fight, but more and more Librarian thugs were surrounding her. They already had Quentin and Sing pinned. Nobody, however, seemed to notice me. Perhaps they thought me unthreatening because I had been knocked down.
I scanned the room. There, a short distance away, I saw them – the Lenses of Rashid, lying temptingly in the middle of a pile of discarded monocles. They had fallen to the ground during the blast along with the other Lenses Blackburn had held during the fight.
I gritted my teeth.
I have to use the Lenses of Rashid, I thought, crawling forward slowly. I have to—
Wait. I want you to do something for me. Try to recall the very first part of my story. It was way back in Chapter One, before I even told you about my name. Back then, I spoke about life-and-death situations, and how they make people think about some very odd subjects. The prospect of dying – or, in this case, watching someone dear to you die – does strange things to the mind. Makes it think along tangents.
Makes it remember things that it might have otherwise thought unimportant.
Grandpa Smedry was going to die. And, strangely, at that very moment, I noticed the lantern that still stood on a pole at the very center of the room. The lantern holder . . . it looked something like a rutabaga.
Rutabaga, I thought. I’ve heard that word recently. Rutabaga . . . fire over the inheritance!
I scrambled forward. Blackburn spun. I threw myself toward the Lenses of Rashid – but I didn’t grab them. I grabbed a Lens sitting next to them.
The Firebringer’s Lens.
Blackburn’s foot came down on my arm. I cried out, dropping the Lens, and a pair of Librarian soldiers quickly grabbed me. They yanked me to my feet and pulled me backward, one holding each of my arms.
Blackburn shook his head. From the corner of my eye, I could barely make out a Librarian finally tackling Bastille. She struggled, but three others helped him hold her.
‘My, my, my,’ Blackburn said. ‘And here you all are, captured again.’ He looked over at Grandpa Smedry, but the old man was obviously no threat. Grandpa Smedry was dazed, his leg bleeding, his face puffing up from bruises he’d apparently been putting off since his torture.
Blackburn bent down, picking up the Firebringer’s Lens. ‘A Firebringer’s Lens,’ He said. ‘You should have known better than to try and use one of these against me, boy. I’m far more powerful than you.’
Blackburn turned the Lens over in his fingers. ‘I’m glad you brought me one, however. There weren’t any in my collection – they’re quite rare.’ Then he picked up the Lenses of Rashid. ‘And these. Supposedly the most powerful Lenses ever forged. Didn’t your son spend his entire life gathering the sands to make these, old Smedry?’
Grandpa Smedry didn’t answer.
‘What a waste,’ Blackburn said, shaking his head. Then he raised the Firebringer’s Lens to his eye. ‘Now, we’re going to do this one more time. You are going to start answering my questions, old man. You’re going to tell me the secrets of your order, and you’re going to help me conquer the rest of the Free Kingdoms.’
Blackburn smiled. ‘If you don’t, I’m going to kill every one of your friends.’ He looked around the room. My companions stood, held by Librarian thugs. Only Bastille still struggled – Sing and Quentin looked like they had been punched a few good times in the stomach to keep them quiet.
‘No,’ Blackburn said, ‘not one of the Smedrys. Your blasted Talents are too protective. Let’s start with the girl.’ He smiled, focusing his single eye on Bastille.
‘No!’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘Ask your questions, monster!’
‘Not yet, Smedry,’ Blackburn said. ‘I have to kill one of them first, you see. Then you will understand how serious this all is.’
The Firebringer’s Lens began to glow.
‘NO!’ Grandpa Smedry screamed.
The Firebringer’s Lens fired . . .
. . . directly back into Blackburn’s eye.
Taking advantage of the moment, I twisted with a sudden motion, raising my hands and grabbing the arms of my captors. I sent out shocks of Talent and felt bones snap beneath my fingers. My captors cried out, jumping back and cradling broken limbs. Blackburn fell to his knees, and the Firebringer’s Lens fell free, leaving a smoking socket behind. He screamed in pain.
I stepped toward the now powerless Dark Oculator. ‘When I grabbed the Firebringer’s Lens, Blackburn, I wasn’t trying to use it on you,’ I said. ‘You see, I only needed to touch it for a moment – just long enough to break it.
‘It shoots backward now.’
19
I apologize for that last chapter. It was far too deep and ponderous. At this rate, it won’t be long before this story departs speaking of evil Librarians, and instead turns into a terribly boring tale about a lawyer who defends unjustly accused field hands.
What do mockingbirds have to do with that, anyway?
I scooped up the Firebringer’s Lens, spinning toward the thugs who still held my grandfather. The Librarians looked down at the fallen Oculator, then back up at me. I raised the Lens.
The two men dashed away. In the fury of the moment, I didn’t even realize that I’d finally been able to pick up the Lens without it going off.
Grandpa Smedry slumped back against the wall in exhaustion. However, he smiled at me. ‘Well done, lad. Well done. You’re a Smedry for certain!’
The other thugs in the room backed away, towing their hostages.
‘There are two of us now,’ Grandpa Smedry said, righting himself, staring down the Librarians. ‘And your Oculator has fallen. Do you really want to make us mad?’
There was a moment of hesitance, and Bastille seized it. She swung up and slammed her feet into the back of the Librarian in front of her. Then she pulled herself free from her surprised captors.
The other thugs dropped Quentin and Sing, then dashed away. Bastille chased after them, cursing and kicking at one as he rushed out the door. But she let him go, grumbling quietly as she turned to make certain Sing and Quentin were all right. Both seemed well enough.
Blackburn groaned. Grandpa Smedry shook his head, looking down at the Dark Oculator.
‘Should we . . . do something with him?’ I asked.
‘He’s no threat now, lad,’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘An Oculator without eyes is about as dangerous as a little girl.’
‘Excuse me?’ Bastille huffed, rolling over one of the Librarian thugs that she’d knocked out before. She pulled off his sword belt and tied it around her waist.
‘I apologize, dear,’ Grandpa Smedry said in his tired voice. ‘It was just a figure of speech. Sing, would you do me a favor . . .?’
Sing rushed over, steadying Grandpa Smedry. ‘Ah, very nice,’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘Quentin, gather up any unbroken Lenses you can find. Bastille, be a dear and watch for danger at the door – there are others in this library who won’t be as easily intimidated as those thugs.’
‘And me?’ I asked.
Grandpa Smedry smiled. ‘You, lad, should recover your inheritance.’
I turned, noticing the glasses that still lay on the ground. I walked over, picking them up. ‘Blackburn seemed disappointed in these.’
‘Blackburn was a man who focused only on one kind of power,’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘For a man whose abilities depended on seeing, he was remarkably shortsighted.’
‘So . . . what do these do?’ I asked.
‘Try them on,’ Grandpa Smedry suggested.
I took off my Oculator’s Lenses and put on the Rashid Lenses instead. I couldn’t see any difference – no release of power, no amazing revelations.
‘What am I looking for?’ I asked.
‘Quentin,’ Grandpa Smedry said, turning toward the small grad student. ‘What do you think?’
‘I really wouldn’t know,’ Quentin said. ‘The legends are all so contradictory.’
I started. ‘Hey! I understood him!’
‘That’s impossible,’ Quentin said, still gathering Lenses off the ground. ‘I have my Talent on. I’m gibberish for the whole day.’
‘Actually, you’re not,’ I said. ‘And you weren’t truly gibberish those other times either. Did you know that your Talent can predict the future?’
Quentin’s jaw dropped. ‘You can understand me?’
‘That’s what I just said. Thanks for the hint about the rutabaga, by the way.’
Quentin turned toward Grandpa Smedry, who was smiling. ‘No, Quentin,’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘I still can’t understand you.’
I stood, shocked. What in the world . . .?
Then I turned, rushing over to Sing’s gym bag, which lay on the side of the room. I unzipped it, digging through the ammunition to find a particular object: the book I’d swiped from the Forgotten Language room.
I opened it up to the first page. The mechanics of forging a Truefinder’s Lens is complex, it read, but can be understood by one who takes the proper time to study.
I looked up, staring over at Grandpa Smedry. The old man smiled. ‘There are a lot of different theories about what the Sands of Rashid do, lad. Your father, however, believed in a specific theory. Translator’s Lenses, they were once called – they gave the power to read, or understand, any language, tongue, or code.’
I looked back at the book.
‘Yes,’ Grandpa Smedry said tiredly. ‘Just wait until we show these to your father – if we can ever find him.’
I spun. ‘So you do think he’s alive?’
‘Perhaps, lad,’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘Perhaps. Now that we have those Lenses, perhaps we can find out for sure. I wish I’d had a way to discover sooner. If I’d known for certain whether he was dead or not, do you think I’d have let you get raised by foster parents?’
I paused. Well, I guess the Lenses won’t help me when he makes no sense.
I opened my mouth to demand more, but Bastille cut me off. ‘Trouble coming! Librarian – the blond one.’
I rushed over to the corridor and saw Ms. Fletcher striding toward the room, a troop of at least fifty soldiers marching behind her. These men and women were armored with shiny breastplates. A few Alivened lumbered in the background.
‘Time to go, I think,’ I said, pushing Bastille back. Then I slammed my hand into the ground.
The floor just in front of me fell away, blocks tumbling down to the storey below us. I backed away from the hole with Bastille.
‘Oh, very clever, Alcatraz,’ Ms. Fletcher said, stopping at the pit’s edge. ‘Now you’ve trapped yourself.’
I smiled, raised an eyebrow, then pressed my hand against the back wall of the room. The bricks separated, mortar cracking. Sing came over and gave the wall a hefty push, topping the bricks into the next room.
I winked at Ms. Fletcher, then reached down to slide a sword from the sheath of a fallen soldier. Ms. Fletcher stood with arms crossed, regarding Blackburn with a sour expression as I ducked out the broken wall after Sing, who was carrying Grandpa Smedry.
‘Quickly, now!’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘We’re late!’
‘For what?’ I asked, running beside Sing and Quentin. Bastille, of course, ran ahead of us, watching for danger.
‘Why, for our dramatic exit, of course!’ Grandpa Smedry said, sounding a bit tired. ‘Ms. Surly back there will try and cut us off at the front doors of the library.’
‘Well, I’ll just make us another door,’ I said. ‘We’ll bust out the back wall.’
‘Ah, lad,’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘Haven’t you realized? This entire building is inside a box of Expander’s Glass – just like the gas station. Expander’s Glass is very hard to break, even with a Talent. Besides, if you did, we’d be crushed as the entire library tried to burst out of the hole you’d made.’
‘Oh,’ I said as we reached a stairwell. ‘Well, then, I have another idea.’
‘What?’ Grandpa Smedry asked.
I smiled, then reached into my pocket. I pulled out a small white rectangle: the library card we had taken off of the dungeon guard.
The main lobby of the library was unusually busy for a weekday evening. People milled about, perusing stacks of books, completely unaware – of course – that everything they saw was filled with Librarian fabrications.
They knew nothing of Alivened, of Librarian cults, of Smedrys, or of Lenses. They just wanted a good book to read. (None of them were, unfortunately, able to check out this volume. Not because it was banned – which it is – but because it simply hadn’t been written yet. Those poor people may never know the joy they missed out on.)
Small children looked through the picture books. Parents checked out the latest thrillers. The rebellious, trouble-making types looked through the fantasy section. A few unfortunate kids ended up with meaningful books about dysfunctional families.
Few of the people noticed the large number of Librarians gathering behind the front desk. Fewer still noticed that these Librarians were oddly muscular. What nobody noticed, however, were the weapons carefully stashed behind the counter. Ms. Fletcher stood at the front of the group. She wished to avoid making an incident – but when incidents were necessary, they could be contained. Smedrys were far more difficult.
Despite the buildup of Librarian troops, most of the people in the room went about their libraryish activities. All in all, there was a sense of peace about the room. It was the joy and simple contentment that comes from being around books, Librarian sanctioned or not.
That peace ended abruptly as a door at the back of the room burst open, and a group of dinosaurs rushed in.
It didn’t matter that the dinosaurs carried books. It didn’t matter that they were smaller than one might expect. It didn’t matter that most of them wore clothing. They were dinosaurs – and they were very, very realistic.
The screaming started a second later.
Mothers grabbed children. Men cursed, demanding to know if this was ‘some kind of a joke!’ Librarians stood, shocked. Their hesitation cost them greatly, for within seconds there was an air of general chaos in the room.
That was when I burst through the door, carrying a sword (something I still figured I should have had all along). I was followed by Bastille Crystin, dressed in her stylish silver clothing. Quentin followed in his tuxedo, carrying Sing’s gym bag, now filled with Oculator’s Lenses. Sing came last, wearing his blue kimono and carrying Grandpa Smedry.
The dinosaurs dashed ahead of us, inadvertently crowding the people against the checkout counters. A few librarian thugs broke through, but the others got trapped behind the desk, blocked by a horde of frightened people and excited dinosaurs.
Bastille met the first Librarian thug. She ducked his sword swing, then shoved him aside. He fell as she hopped over him, waving her sword toward the crowd. The people shied back in confused fear.
A Librarian behind the counter raised a crossbow.
That’s new, I thought, moving between the man and Bastille. I stared down the crossbow bolt, thinking about just how dangerous it was. This last bit was, of course, to convince myself. I was beginning to get the hang of my Talent. It only worked at a distance when—
The crossbow’s bowstring snapped free, flipping the crossbow bolt uselessly into the air. The Librarian watched it, dumbfounded, and I smiled, leaving Bastille to intimidate the people – and therefore keep the Librarians trapped. I rushed over to pull open the front library door.
I held it for Sing and Quentin. Bastille left next, and I paused, turning and smiling at the packed room. One of the dinosaurs – the T. Rex – finally reached the checkout desk. He slammed down his pile of books, then placed the library card on top of it.
&
nbsp; ‘I’d like to check these out!’ he said eagerly.
Ms. Fletcher stood, arms folded as her soldiers tried to push through the crowd. She met my eyes, and I could see from her expression that she knew she was beaten.
I raised my sword to her in a gesture of farewell. The blade immediately fell free and dropped to the ground.
I stared at it for a moment. What? I thought I was finally figuring out how to control my Talent!
Ms. Fletcher gave me a curious expression, as if confused by my gesture, and I sighed, flipping the broken bit into the room. Then I stepped out onto the sidewalk. Sing (still carrying my grandfather) and Quentin ran ahead, moving toward Grandpa Smedry’s little black car, which still waited where it had been parked.
Bastille still stood by the door. She met my eyes. ‘All right, all right,’ she said. ‘You were right about the dinosaurs. This time.’
I stepped aside as some brave library patrons finally pushed past me out onto the street.
‘Your dinosaur friends are just going to get caught again,’ Bastille said.
‘Charles said he’d try to get them to leave in the confusion,’ I said, joining her as we ran across the street. ‘It’s the best we can do.’
And it really was. Honestly, you have no idea how hard it is to work with dinosaurs. It’s no wonder the Librarians made up the myth about them going extinct – pretty much everyone in the Free Kingdoms wishes that one were true.
Sing set Grandpa Smedry in the passenger seat of the car, and Quentin squeezed into the backseat. Then Sing took the driver’s seat – holding the useless steering wheel as the car took off. Bastille’s silver sports car pulled up just a second later. She climbed in, but I paused. My door had no handle. Finally, Bastille opened the door by rapping on the inside dash. ‘The inner door handle is gone,’ she said, frowning.
‘That’s very strange,’ I said sliding into the car. ‘Now, can we get going?’
She smiled, throwing the car into gear, then she slammed down on the pedal. I turned, watching out the back window. Behind us, a bunch of Librarians had finally managed to push their way out of the building. They watched in dismay as Bastille’s car squealed away.
Alcatraz Page 18