The Librarians were wearing the standard bow ties and business suits – the men extraordinarily muscular, the women looking lean and dangerous – but their suits were camouflaged. They carried guns and moved with a sleek, threatening air. This was a particularly dangerous group of infiltrators – though, oddly, they didn’t wear Warrior’s Lenses.
I tried to scream out and give warning to Aluki and Aydee, who were waiting just around the corner. But the gag was firmly in place. The Librarians began to chat tersely with one another, speaking a language I didn’t recognize. That surprised me, but it really shouldn’t have. Not all Librarians in the Hushlands are from English-speaking countries.
I calmed myself, breathing in and out. My Talent would get me out of a stoopid net, no problem. I just had to do it at the right time, when they weren’t looking.
Several of the Librarians scouted around the sides of the alleyway, peeking out, while two others – a brutish man and a woman with red hair – knelt down and began to go through my pockets. The woman pulled off my backpack, yanking it out through a hole in the net, while the man held my hands together and wrapped them with a tight string.
The woman pulled open the backpack, rifling through it. She raised an eyebrow at the bears, but stuffed them back inside. Next she began searching through the pockets of my jacket.
That’s when I got nervous. If they found my Lenses . . . It was time to escape. My Talent would probably surprise them, give me a chance to run. I took a deep breath through the gag and activated the Breaking Talent.
Nothing happened.
Well, okay. That was kind of a lie. Lots of things happened. Some birds flew by, a beetle crawled past, the grass converted carbon dioxide into sugar by means of the sun’s energy. My heart beat (very quickly), the Librarians chatted (very quietly), and the Earth rotated (very unnoticeably).
I guess what I meant, then, is this: As far as my Talent was concerned, nothing happened.
It didn’t engage. Nothing broke. I felt a moment of desperation and tried again. The Talent refused. It was like I could . . . feel it in there, seething, angry at me. Almost like it was offended by the things I’d talked about with my mother.
It had been a long time since I’d had trouble getting my Talent to do what I wanted it to. I had flashbacks to earlier years in my life, when it ran rampant, breaking everything I didn’t want to but unable to break things I did want to.
I squirmed in my bindings, and the beefy Librarian pushed me down harder. He had a cruel, twisted face.
The woman said something, sounding surprised as she pulled my pair of Oculator’s Lenses out of my pocket. I hadn’t put them back on after using my Truthfinder’s Lens on my mother.
The Librarians nearby all got dark expressions on their faces. The woman pulled something from her pocket – a kind of small gun. She pointed it at the Lenses in her hand.
They vaporized, turning to dust, then even that dust seemed to burn away. She shook the frames – which were intact – and inspected them, then tossed them aside.
That’s right! I thought. The Order of the Shattered Lens has the army. They hate all kinds of glass. That made me even more frantic. I squirmed enough that the big guy holding me down grumbled, and pulled something out of his pocket. Another type of gun.
My eyes opened wide, and I froze as he pointed it down and pulled the trigger.
And then I died.
No, really. I died. Dead, dead, dead.
What’s that, you say? How could I be dead? I survived long enough to write this book, you claim?
Well . . . um . . . I could be writing it as a ghost. So there.
BOO!
Anyway, you’re right. The gun didn’t kill me. It fired some kind of dart into the ground next to me, attached by a rope. He fired another dart on the other side, and the rope tightened, holding the net – and therefore me – to the ground. The woman got out a knife and cut my jacket off of me.
That’s right. My favorite green jacket, the one I’d been wearing since I’d left the Hushlands.
This, I thought with sudden fierceness, means war!
(And please don’t tell Bastille that I was nearly as broken up about losing my jacket as I was when she got knocked unconscious.)
The two Librarians retreated, one carrying the remnants of my jacket. They left me squirming on the ground, pinned against the grass, gagged. I was desperate by this point. Up above, the flying bats were descending into the city, bearing Librarian soldiers. People screamed throughout the city, yelling, a sense of panic to their voices.
This is the point where, usually, I come up with some brilliant plan to save everyone. I tried hard, searching through my options. But nothing occurred to me. I was pinned down, my Talent refused to work, and I had no Lenses. About a billion Librarian soldiers were descending on Tuki Tuki, and dawn was still hours away.
Why is it I always ended up in these kinds of scrapes? My life over the past six months seemed to me like one bumbling disaster after another. I wasn’t any good at fighting the Librarians, I was just good at getting kidnapped, locked up, knocked out, and covered in tar.
Just like my Talent, my wits failed me. It happens, sometimes, particularly when your victories seem so accidental, like mine often do. Besides, even if I could somehow escape the net, Tuki Tuki was still doomed. I couldn’t stop thousands of Librarian soldiers.
It was hopeless.
To the side, the Librarians emptied my jacket pockets. They lifted up the Translator’s Lenses.
And, with a flash, destroyed them. My inheritance was gone. One of the most powerful sets of Lenses ever created, something my father had searched for more than a decade to gather. And these Librarians had destroyed them without ever knowing what they meant.
Well, so be it.
Now, at this point, you’re probably pretty frustrated with me. ‘Alcatraz,’ you’re probably screaming, ‘you can do it, little guy!’ Or maybe you’re screaming, ‘Hey, Bozo, stop being so depressed and do something!’
If you’re yelling either of those things, might I remind you that you’re talking to a book? It can’t really respond to you. Do you talk to inanimate things often? (Man, you really are a weirdo.)
Anyway, whenever I’d been put in a situation like this before, I’d thought of some kind of brilliant plan at the last moment. However, it’s really tough to be brilliant on command. Sometimes, you get trapped, and there just isn’t any way out.
I lay, pinned down, staring up at the sky. What had I really accomplished since I’d met my grandfather? I’d rescued my father, and in doing so had unwittingly helped him in his crazy quest to give everyone Smedry Talents. In Nalhalla, I’d gotten back my father’s Translator’s Lenses for him. Another step toward helping him destroy the world.
And now, here I was in Mokia. I’d accepted the throne, becoming king. For what? So I could convince them to keep on fighting when they should have surrendered? So I could make Bastille fall in combat?
The Librarians vaporized my Courier’s Lenses next. Then they got out my Bestower’s Lenses and my single Truthfinder’s Lens. The Librarians vaporized one of the Bestower’s Lenses.
There, I thought. I’ve finally done it. I’ve failed.
Above, in the air, Librarians dove into the city on the backs of their robotic bats.
And behind them, something appeared from the darkness.
Tiny at first, but growing larger. Shadowy vehicles, flying through the night.
More Librarians, I thought. That’s obviously what that is. More Librarians, flying in gigantic glass birds. That makes perfect sense. My, those Librarians look awfully strange, wearing armor and carrying swords like that. One might even think that they’re actually . . .
I sat upright, shocked. Or, well, I would have sat upright, save for that whole pinned-to-the-ground-and-tied-up thing. So, anyway, I lay pinned to the ground, tied up, but I did it feeling completely shocked.
There, swooping down out of the darkness, was a fleet
of twenty glass vehicles with Knights of Crystallia riding on their backs. They dove behind the bats, dropping into the city. The sounds of yelling, fighting, and cheers of war rose in the air.
It had worked. My stoopid plan had worked.
Perhaps I should explain. Do you remember back right before Kaz ran off to attack the robots? You should, it was only, like, two chapters ago. (Too busy talking to books to pay attention to reading them, eh?) Anyway, I sent him with a message for my grandfather. ‘Tell him that we really, really need him here by midnight. If he doesn’t arrive by then, we’re doomed!’
You might have ignored the message. Of course we wanted my grandfather to arrive immediately; it was obvious.
But Kaz’s explanation of Talents had changed my perception of them. The way we, as Smedrys, see the world affects how the Talents work. Like Aydee – if she thinks there are thousands of teddy bears, then there are. Reality doesn’t matter as much as the Smedry’s view of reality.
Aydee’s and Grandpa’s Talents are very similar. She moves things through space and puts them where she thinks they should be. Grandpa moves things through time, putting them when he thinks they should be – so long as that when is something he perceives as being late.
Does your brain hurt yet? ’Cuz if it does, try being me. Anyway, here’s the short of it: You might think Grandpa’s Talent works only when he’s late. But that’s not true. It works when he thinks he’s late.
There was no way he was going to get the knights to Tuki Tuki on time. His Talent wouldn’t let it happen. But if he thought that he was already late . . . If I could persuade him that he needed to be there at midnight . . .
Then he might just arrive at twelve thirty instead.
In the sky above, a bird flew by with a distinctive, white-haired man in a tuxedo riding on the back, waving a sword wildly like he was a conductor leading an orchestra. I smiled despite myself. I’d gotten my grandfather to arrive early – all by tricking him into thinking he was late.
But I was still captured. None of the knights came near to where I was laying. The Librarians around me looked to the sky with shock, guns out. The one holding my Lenses – the single remaining Bestower’s Lens and my one Truthfinder’s Lens – dropped them for the moment.
The fighting in the city grew louder.
This left me feeling very odd. I’d been convinced I couldn’t save Tuki Tuki. But I had saved it. Or, at least, I’d taken a large step toward doing so. I hadn’t failed them as king.
The me from the past had been clever enough to come up with a plan, even if the me from the future hadn’t been able to. (Not me from the far future, that’s the one writing these books, I mean the me from the slight future, the me tied up, which is actually the me from the past, as the me from right now is the one writing. Actually, that me is the past me too, by the time you read this. And actually—)
‘Shut up!’ I said to myself. Or, at least, I tried to. Being still gagged, it came out as ‘Shusmalgul pulup!’
There wasn’t time to think about my failures, my past, or my future. Because my Librarian captors were focused on me again. One lowered a gun, pointing at my head.
I felt a moment of panic. These were Librarians of the Shattered Lens. They were the most devoted, the most fanatical of all Librarians. And they hated Oculators passionately.
They knew what I was, and they weren’t about to let me get rescued. The lead Librarian cocked his pistol. It didn’t look like one of the fancy, laser pistols used in the war. Just an old-fashioned Hushlander pistol, the kind that shot out a bullet and made you very, very dead.
I tried my Talent. Nothing. I struggled but was pinned tight. I could wriggle my right hand, but that was it.
One of the Librarians said something, as if objecting to the murder of a tied-up kid.
The Librarian with the gun barked something back, quieting the opposition. He looked at me, eyes grim.
I panicked. I couldn’t fail now! Not when everything was confused. I needed to know. Was my father right, or was my mother? What was this all about? I’d gotten the knights to Tuki Tuki. I couldn’t die now! I couldn’t! I—
The Librarians had dropped my backpack right beside me.
I blinked, realizing for the first time that a string was peeking out through the back zipper. One of the pull-tag pins for the bears tucked inside; I could see a bit of purple fur peeking out behind the tag.
Frantic, I strained my fingers out and pulled the tag, yanking it. The backpack lurched up against me, but the tag pulled free.
The Librarian pulled the trigger.
There was a crack in the air as the gun fired.
Something flashed in my eyes, the backpack exploding, vaporizing, the bullet vanishing in the air. The explosion washed over me, and – as I’d planned – it destroyed the net, the tag, and everything tying me down.
Of course, it also vaporized my clothing.
∞
Now, perhaps, you can see why I asked you not to act out that last chapter. If you decided not to take my advice, then I really can’t be blamed if you get in trouble for tying yourself to the ground and running around naked for the rest of the afternoon.
Anyway, what just happened is something we call a teddy bear on the mantle. This is an ancient storytelling rule that says, ‘If there’s an exploding teddy bear that can destroy people’s clothing in a given book, that teddy bear must be used to destroy someone’s clothing by the end of the book.’ Coincidentally, this is actually the only time a book has included a teddy bear that can destroy people’s clothing, and hence is the first, last, and only application of this literary law.
The blast radius of the bear grenade wasn’t large enough to hit the Librarians. (Pity). However, it was just large enough to vaporize the ends of their guns. It also dropped me into a crater in the ground that was some five feet deep. I could see the Librarians above, standing, dumbfounded by what had happened.
I felt a surge of adrenaline. Not because I was still in danger, but because I was now lying stark naked in the middle of a war zone. And though the weather was tropical, the night air still felt rather chilly on my skin.
I scrambled free of the hole, blushing furiously, dashing past the Librarians. I stopped only long enough to scoop up my jacket – with the Bestower’s Lens and the Truthfinder’s Lens lying on top of it.
The Librarians finally began shouting and giving chase. The explosion had shocked them, but a naked Smedry seemed to have shocked them even further. I tried holding my jacket down to obscure the most delicate parts of my anatomy, but that made it really awkward to run. Keeping my skin intact was more important than keeping it covered, and I started running through the zoo as quickly as I could, holding the jacket and Lenses in my right hand.
So it was that I tore around a corner, completely in the buff, and ran smack-dab into the middle of Aluki, Aydee, twenty Mokian soldiers of both genders, and Draulin, Bastille’s mother.
It was not my finest moment.
‘Librarian commando superspy assassins!’ I cried out, hiding behind Draulin, who wore her full Crystin plate armor and helm. ‘Following me! Gak!’
The group turned to look in the direction I’d come from. No Librarians followed. We all waited for a few tense moments, then finally Draulin looked back at me. ‘Er, Lord Smedry? Are you all right?
‘Do I look all right?’ I asked.
‘No, you look naked,’ Aydee said.
‘Gak!’ I said, quickly covering myself with my jacket, tying the sleeves around my waist. It had been cut off of me, though, so it didn’t stay on real well. ‘Ah,’ Aluki said, nodding. ‘I know this story. His Majesty is pretending to wear invisible clothing to show how stoopid we all are.’
‘I don’t think that’s how the story goes,’ Draulin said, eyeing me appraisingly, ‘not do I believe that Lord Smedry is taking part in such an elaborate scheme. Those are grenade powder marks on his arms.’
I looked down, noticing that the explosion had dusted my
arms with a bit of burned gunpowder. ‘Er, yes,’ I said, holding the jacket in place. ‘And I was being chased by Librarians.’
‘It is well that we came, then,’ Draulin said. ‘Come with me, Lord Smedry. Aluki, you should take your soldiers and warn the perimeter guard that a group of Librarian infiltrators are haunting the zoo. They likely saw us up here and decided not to confront us directly.’
The Mokian saluted, taking his soldiers and rushing away. Draulin steered me and Aydee toward a field behind us, where a glass bird was waiting, this one shaped like an owl. I hurried forward eagerly, hoping to find some kind of clothing inside. We found Kaz waiting for us, a big grin on his face.
I hurried up to him. ‘Kaz! You did it! You got the message to your father!’
He shrugged modestly. ‘I should have realized why you chose the words you did, kid. The moment I spoke them to him, the ships all seemed to speed up, instantly.’ He eyed me. ‘You may have just revolutionized the way we think of Talents. If my pop’s Talent can be tricked into making him early . . . Well, it will change everything.’
‘It’s what we were already doing with Aydee,’ I said as Draulin and Aydee herself climbed into the glass ship. We stood in a kind of cargo bay at the base of the owl. ‘She’s the one who sparked the idea in my head, actually.’
The girl smiled pleasantly at that, though she obviously had no idea what I was talking about. It was her ability to keep getting fooled that make her Talent work.
Though . . . as Draulin sent Aydee off to the head of the owl to help pilot, I thought I saw a twinkle of understanding in the girl’s eyes. Could she understand? Did she know exactly what was happening when we tricked her into adding things wrong? Sometimes, living with a Smedry Talent requires a person to develop in very odd ways. As a child, I’d learned that everyone would hate me for breaking things and had compensated by pushing people away.
Could Aydee have learned to trick herself into ignoring numbers and speaking randomly, off the top of her head, when asked to add something?
Alcatraz Page 73