Alcatraz (58 page)

The knights had stood and were making their way from the room, likely eager to get away from my grandfather and me.
I watched, helpless, as Bastille followed them.
She shot me a glance as she left and whispered a single word.
‘Thanks.’

Thanks
, I thought.
Thanks for what?
For failing?

I was, of course, feeling guilty.
Guilt, you may know, is a rare emotion that is much like an elevator made of Jell-O.
(Both will let you down quite abruptly.)

‘Come, lad,’ Grandpa Smedry said, taking my arm.

‘We failed,’ I said.

‘Hardly!
They were ready to strip her knighthood completely.
At least we’ve got a chance for her to get it back.
You did well.’

‘A chance to get it back,’ I said, frowning.
‘But if the same people are going to vote again in a week, then what good have we done?
They’ll just vote to strip her knighthood completely.’

‘Unless we show them she deserves it,’ Grandpa said.
‘By, say, stopping the Librarians from getting that treaty signed and taking over Mokia?’

Mokia was important.
But even if we
could
do what he said, and even if we
could
get Bastille involved, how was fighting a political battle going to prove anything to do with knighthood?

‘What’s a Mindstone?’
I asked as we walked back to the Transporter chamber.

‘Well,’ Grandpa Smedry said, ‘You’re not supposed to know about that.
Which, of course, makes it all the more fun to tell you.
There are three kinds of Crystin shards.’

‘I know,’ I interjected.
‘They make swords from one type.’

‘Right,’ Grandpa Smedry said.
‘Those are special in that they’re very resilient to Oculatory powers and things like Smedry Talents, which lets the Knights of Crystallia fight Dark Oculators.
The second type of shards are the ones in their necks – the Fleshstones, they call them.’

‘Those give them powers,’ I said.
‘Make them better soldiers.
But what’s the third one?’

‘The Mindstone,’ Grandpa Smedry said.
‘It is said to be a shard from the Worldspire itself, a single crystal that connects all the other Crystin shards.
Even I don’t know for certain what it does, but I think it connects all Crystin together, letting them draw upon the strength of other knights.’

‘And they’re going to cut Bastille off from it,’ I said.
‘Maybe that will be a good thing.
She’ll be more her own person.’

Grandpa Smedry eyed me.
‘The Mindstone doesn’t make the knights all have a single mind, lad.
It lets them share skills.
If one of them knows how to do something, they all get a fraction of a tad of an iota better at that same thing.’

We entered the room with the box, then stepped inside it; apparently, Grandpa Smedry had left instructions for the boxes to be swapped every ten minutes until we returned.

‘Grandfather,’ I said.
‘My Talent.
Is it as dangerous as you said back there?’

He didn’t reply.

‘In the tomb of Alcatraz the First,’ I said as the doors to our box closed, ‘the writing on the walls spoke of the breaking Talent.
The writing .
.
.
called it the “Dark Talent” and implied it had caused the fall of the entire Incarna civilization.’

‘Others have held the breaking Talent, lad,’ Grandpa Smedry said.
‘None of them caused any civilizations to fall!
Though they did knock down a wall or two.’

His attempt at mirth seemed forced.
I opened my mouth to ask more, but the doors to the box opened.
Standing directly outside was Folsom Smedry in his red robes, Himalaya at his side.

‘Lord Smedry!’
Folsom said, looking relieved.
‘Finally!’

‘What?’
Grandpa Smedry said.

‘You’re late,’ Folsom said.

‘Of course I am,’ Grandpa said.
‘Get on with it!’

‘She’s here.’

‘Who?’

‘
Her
,’ Folsom said.
‘She Who Cannot Be Named.
She’s in the keep, and she wants to talk to you.’

12

R
ight now, you should be asking yourself some questions.
Questions like: ‘How is it possible that this book can be
so
awesome?’
and ‘Why did the Librarian slip and fall down?’
and ‘What exactly was it that exploded and made the
Hawkwind
crash in Chapter Two?’

Did you think I’d forgotten that last one?
No, not at all.
(The crash nearly killed me, after all.) I figured that the Librarians might be behind it, as everyone else assumed.
But
why
had they done it?
And, more important,
how
?

There just hadn’t been time to ask those questions, important though they were.
Too much was going on.
We’ll get to it, though.

(Also, the answer to the second question in the first paragraph is obvious.
She fell because she was looking through the library’s nonfriction section.)

We approached Keep Smedry’s audience lounge, where Sing – with his hefty Mokian girth – stood guard.
It was time to confront She Who Cannot Be Named – the most dangerous Librarian in all of the Order of the Wardens of the Standard.
I’d fought Blackburn, Dark Oculator, and felt the pain of his Torturer’s Lens.
I’d fought Kilimanjaro, of the Scrivener’s Bones, with his blood-forged Lenses and terrible half-metal smile.
Librarian hierarchs were not to be trifled with.

I tensed, entering the medium-sized castle chamber with Grandpa Smedry and Folsom, ready for anything.
The Librarian, however, wasn’t there.
The only person in the room was a little old grandmother wearing a shawl and carrying an orange handbag.

‘It’s a trap!’
I said.
‘They sent a grandmother as a decoy!
Quickly, old lady.
You’re in great danger!
Run for safety while we secure the area!’

The old lady met Grandpa Smedry’s eyes.
‘Ah, Leavenworth.
Your family is always such a delight!’

‘Kangchenjunga Sarektjåkkå,’ Grandpa Smedry said, his voice uncharacteristically subdued.
Almost cold.

‘You always
were
the only one out here who could pronounce that correctly!’
said Kagechech .
.
.
Kachenjuaha .
.
.
She Who Cannot Be Named.
Her voice had a decidedly kindly tone to it.
This?
This was She Who Cannot Be Named?
The most dangerous Librarian of all?
I felt a little bit let down.

‘Such a dear you are, Leavenworth,’ she continued.

Grandpa Smedry raised an eyebrow.
‘I can’t say it’s good to see you, Kangchenjunga, so instead – perhaps – I will say that it’s
interesting
to see you.’

‘Does it have to be that way?’
she asked.
‘Why, we’re old friends!’

‘Hardly.
Why have you come here?’

The old grandmother sighed, then walked forward on shaky legs, back bowed with age, using a cane to walk.
The room was carpeted with a large maroon rug, the walls bearing similar tapestries, along with several formal-looking couches for meeting with dignitaries.
She didn’t sit in one of these, however, she just walked up to my grandfather.

‘You never
have
forgiven me for that little incident, have you?’
the Librarian asked, fiddling in her handbag.

‘Incident?’
Grandpa Smedry said.
‘Kangchenjunga, I believe you left me dangling from a frozen mountain cliff, my foot tied to a slowly melting block of ice, my body strapped with bacon and stuck with a sign that read “Free Wolf-chow.”’

She smiled wistfully.
‘Ah, now
that
was a trap.
Kids these days don’t know how to do it correctly.’
She reached into her handbag.
I tensed, and then she pulled out what appeared to be a plate of chocolate chip cookies, wrapped in plastic wrap.
She handed these to me, then patted me on the head.
‘What a pleasant lad,’ she said, then turned to my grandfather.

‘You asked why I had come, Leavenworth,’ she said.
‘Well, we want the kings to know that we are serious about this treaty, and so I have come to speak before the final vote this evening.’

I stared down at the cookies, expecting them to explode or something.
Grandpa Smedry didn’t seem worried – he kept his eyes focused directly on the Librarian.

‘We won’t let this treaty happen,’ Grandpa said.

The Librarian tsked quietly, shaking her head as she shuffled out of the room.
‘So unforgiving, you Smedrys.
What can we do to show that we’re sincere?
What possible solution is there to all of this?’

She hesitated by the door, then turned and winked at us.
‘Oh, and
don’t
get in my way.
If you do, I’ll have to rip out your entrails, dice them into little bits, then feed them to my goldfish.
Toodles!’

I stared in shock.
Everything about her screamed ‘kindly grandmother.’
She even smiled in a cute old-lady sort of way when she mentioned our entrails, as if discussing a favored knitting project.
She exited, and a couple of keep guards followed her.

Grandpa Smedry sat down on one of the couches, exhaling deeply, Folsom sitting next to him.
Sing still stood by the door, looking disturbed.

‘Well, then,’ Grandpa said.
‘My, my.’

‘Grandfather,’ I said, looking down at the cookies.
‘What should we do with these?’

‘We probably shouldn’t eat them,’ he said.

‘Poison?’
I asked.

‘No.
They’ll spoil our dinner.’
He stopped, then shrugged.
‘But that’s the Smedry way!’
He slipped a cookie out and took a bite.
‘Ah, yes.
As good as I remember.
One of the nice things about facing off against Kangchenjunga is the treats.
She’s an excellent baker.’

I noticed a motion to the side, and turned as Himalaya entered the room.
‘Is she gone?’
the dark-haired former Librarian asked.

‘Yes,’ Folsom said, standing up immediately.

‘That woman is
dreadful
,’ Himalaya said, sitting down.

‘Ten out of ten points for evilness,’ Folsom agreed.

I remained suspicious of Himalaya.
She had stayed outside because she didn’t want to face a former colleague.
But that had left her unsupervised.
What had she been doing?
Planting a bomb, like the one that blew up the
Hawkwind
?
(See, I told you I hadn’t forgotten about that.)

‘We need a plan,’ Grandpa Smedry said.
‘We only have a few hours until the treaty vote.
There
has
to be a way to stop this!’

‘Lord Smedry, I’ve been talking to the other nobility,’ Sing said.
‘It .
.
.
doesn’t look good.
They’re all so tired of war.
They want it to end.’

‘I’ll agree the war is terrible,’ Grandpa Smedry said.
‘But, Clustering Campbells, surrendering Mokia isn’t the answer!
We need to show them that.’

Nobody responded.
The five of us sat in the room for a time, thinking.
Grandpa Smedry, Sing, and Folsom enjoyed the cookies, but I held off.
Himalaya wasn’t eating them either.
If they
were
poisoned, then she would know.

A short time later, a servant entered.
‘Lord Smedry,’ the young boy said, ‘Crystallia is requesting a Swap Time.’

‘Approved,’ Grandpa Smedry said.

Himalaya took a cookie and finally ate one.
So much for that theory
, I thought with a sigh.
A short time later, Bastille walked in.

I stood up, shocked.
‘Bastille!
you’re here!’

She appeared dazed, like she’d just suffered a repeated beating to the face.
She looked at me and seemed to have trouble focusing.
‘I .
.
.’
she said.
‘Yes, I am.’

That gave me chills.
Whatever they’d done to her in Crystallia must have been horrible if it left her unable to make sarcastic responses to my dumb comments.
Sing rushed to pull over a chair for her.
Bastille sat, hands in her lap.
She was no longer wearing the uniform of a squire of Crystallia – she had on a generic brown tunic and trousers, like a lot of the people I’d seen in the city.

‘Child,’ Grandpa Smedry said, ‘how do you feel?’

‘Cold,’ she whispered.

‘We’re trying to think of a way to stop the Librarians from conquering Mokia, Bastille,’ I said.
‘Maybe .
.
.
maybe you can help.’

She nodded absently.
How were we going to involve her in helping expose the Librarian plot – and thereby get her knighthood back – if she could barely talk?

Grandpa Smedry glanced at me.
‘What do you think?’

‘I think I’m going to go break some crystal swords,’ I snapped.

‘Not about Bastille, lad,’ Grandpa said.
‘I can assure you, we’re all in agreement about how she’s been treated.
We’ve got larger problems right now.’

I shrugged.
‘Grandpa, I don’t know anything about politics back in the
Hushlands
, let alone the politics here in Nalhalla!
I have no idea what to do.’

‘We can’t just sit here!’
Sing said.
‘My people are dying as we speak.
If the other Free Kingdoms remove their support, Mokia won’t have the supplies to keep fighting.’

‘Maybe .
.
.
maybe I could look at the treaty?’
Himalaya said.
‘If I read it over, perhaps I would see something that you Nalhallans haven’t.
Some trick the Librarians are pulling that we could show to the monarchs?’

‘Excellent!’
Grandpa Smedry said.
‘Folsom?’

‘I’ll take her to the palace,’ he said.
‘There’s a public copy there we can read.’

‘Lord Smedry,’ Sing said, ‘I think that you should speak to the kings again.’

‘I’ve tried that, Sing!’

‘Yes,’ the Mokian said, ‘but maybe you could address them formally in session.
Maybe .
.
.
I don’t know maybe that will embarrass them in front of the crowds.’

Grandpa Smedry frowned.
‘Well, yes.
I’d rather do a daring infiltration, though!’

‘There .
.
.
aren’t many places to infiltrate,’ Sing said.
‘The entire city is friendly toward us.’

‘Except that Librarian embassy,’ Grandpa Smedry said, eyes twinkling.

We sat for a moment, then glanced at Bastille.
She was supposed to be the voice of reason, telling us to avoid doing things that were .
.
.
well, stupid.

She just stared forward, though, stunned from what had been done to her.

‘Blast,’ Grandpa Smedry said.
‘Somebody tell me that infiltrating the embassy is a terrible idea!’

‘It’s a terrible idea,’ I said.
‘I don’t know why, though.’

‘Because there’s not likely to be anything of use there!’
Grandpa Smedry said.
‘They’re too clever for that.
If anything, they have a secret base somewhere in the city.
That’s where we’d need to infiltrate, but we don’t have time to find it!
Somebody tell me that I should just go speak to the kings again.’

‘Uh,’ Sing said, ‘didn’t I just do that?’

‘I need to hear it again, Sing.’
Grandpa Smedry said.
‘I’m old and stubborn!’

‘Then, really, you should speak to the kings.’

‘Spoilsport,’ Grandpa Smedry muttered under his breath.

I sat back, thinking.
Grandpa Smedry was right – there probably
was
a secret Librarian lair in the city.
My bet was that we’d find it somewhere near where my mother vanished when I was trailing her.