We Give a Squid a Wedgie (5 page)

“The Orange Lords,” muttered Chris Stickles as they waited for the ambulance to come. “Seek the Orange Lords.”

THE NEW YEAR’S EVE
party at the Gentlemen’s Adventuring Society had been a smashing success.

Edmund S. Titheltorpe-Schmidt III—or Sir Edmund, as he insisted everyone call him—could not have been more pleased. The last guests had stumbled out into limousines waiting to take them home. Servants scurried about cleaning up champagne glasses and vacuuming up spilled whale fritters off the Persian carpets. The exotic animals Sir Edmund had displayed all evening for his guests’ enjoyment—white tigers, bald eagles, and even a rare Congolese okapi, sometimes called the African unicorn—were packed back into shipping crates to be returned to his private zoo in Fiji.

His guests had been some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world—industrialists,
politicians, dictators, warlords, and a few dozen explorers who had remained loyal to Sir Edmund when he left the Explorers Club. They had all donated generously to his new society, and they supported his work without question. Even if most of them didn’t know what his work really was.

He smoothed his extravagant red mustache with his fingers and rested his feet on the back of a stuffed warthog he used as an ottoman. He had poached it himself in East Africa some years ago. Sir Edmund took great pride in his hunting abilities, although some in the press criticized him for using automatic weapons and hunting from a helicopter. They just didn’t understand sportsmen such as himself.

He set his cell phone on the ivory table next to him and waited for it to ring. He was expecting important news from his spies in the field.

It had been months since he’d last seen Dr. Claire Navel in the Amazon rain forest, when she and her brats had yet again ruined his plans for the Lost Library. It had always been that way with her. She was an itch that he just couldn’t scratch.

When she first vanished all those years ago to search for the library, Sir Edmund knew it was
trouble. Claire Navel wasn’t merely an explorer like her husband, pursuing science and wisdom and all that nonsense. She was one of the Mnemones, descendants of the ancient scribes of Alexandria.

Sir Edmund really hated the Mnemones. What a stupid name for a secret society! How was a person even supposed to pronounce it? Knee-moan? It sounded more like pneumonia to him.

The Mnemones had destroyed the Great Library back in ancient times, framing Caesar for the job. They wanted to keep the collection out of the Roman general’s hands after he sacked ancient ­Alexandria, so they secreted its contents away and burned it to the ground. Unfortunately, they hid the collection too well. They lost it.

Someone really should have kept better track of where they had put it.

Ever since the library had gone missing, the heirs of the Mnemones had been trying to find it again, a mission now led by Dr. Claire Navel.

Well, Sir Edmund was determined to find it too. His Council, made up of some the most powerful people in the world, would stop at nothing to find it. Where Caesar had failed, Edmund S. Titheltorpe-­Schmidt III would succeed. There was
power in that library beyond the imagining of simple scribes.

Claire Navel was a great explorer, that was undeniable. In fact, she was far better at it than Sir Edmund would ever be. He had decided to use that to his advantage. When Claire Navel did find the library, he intended to be there. It would be the last thing she ever discovered.

Of course, first he had to find her. And that had proved difficult.

He rolled a large gold coin between his knuckles as he waited for his phone to ring. The coin was inscribed with the symbol of the Council, a scroll wrapped in chains. It was an elegant symbol, he thought, free from all the clutter of the Mnemones and their silly key with their silly writing:
Mega Biblion, Mega Kakon
was their motto. Big Book, Big Evil.

He snorted a laugh. They were so afraid of the very library they were after. Big Evil? They had no idea!

But Claire Navel had more allies than Sir Edmund had expected. She had escaped his clutches in Tibet, vanquished his henchman in Fez, and vanished from under his nose in the Malacca Strait.

But he had allies too. Even now he had Ernest as his spy, dressed like a Rajasthani fire dancer, gathering information on the Navels’ next move. It wouldn’t be long. Claire Navel would make contact with her family again soon, somehow, somewhere. She needed her children as badly as
Sir Edmund did. It had been prophesied.

The greatest explorers shall be the least,
the sacred Oracle in Tibet had said.
The old ways shall come to nothing, while new visions reveal everything. All that is known will be unknown and what was lost will be found.

Sir Edmund ground his teeth. It was so cryptic. Oracles never could just speak clearly.

The greatest explorers shall be the least.

Well, if anyone was the least of anything, it was Oliver and Celia Navel. They were the least interesting, least curious, least adventurous, least likable children he had ever known. Not that he had known a lot of children. He preferred the company of warlords or wild animals to the company of kids. They had a smell that disturbed him.

“Has he called?” a woman asked, entering the room.

Sir Edmund didn’t stand when she walked in, which would have been the polite thing to do. He didn’t feel the need to be polite to this particular person. She was a grave robber. She had once been an explorer—in fact, she was known, along with her partner, for discovering the Jade Toothpicks—but the Navel twins had exposed her as a fraud and a thief. They’d fed her partner, Frank, to a yeti in Tibet. They’d nearly drowned her and ­Ernest in the Amazon.

She probably deserved it, thought Sir Edmund, who had never been very fond of her or either of her partners. But she wanted nothing more than revenge on the Navels, and that suited Edmund’s purposes perfectly.

“Janice,” he said. “Where have you been skulking about?”

“I stayed upstairs like you told me to,” she said, running her hand through her short dark hair. “It was a dull way to spend New Year’s Eve. I watched some stupid variety show.
Vuss-Cat’s-Knees
, they called it. Madam Mumu sang some song about a cheese arcade. I think my IQ dropped twenty points by the time it was over.”

“Well, I couldn’t have you wandering around down here. You’ve been disgraced out of polite ­society.”

Janice snorted back at Sir Edmund. But she didn’t deny it.

“Anyway,” Sir Edmund said. “Your new partner hasn’t called. He better not have messed this up.”

“Ernest is a first-rate spy,” Janice said.

“He’s a terrible celebrity impersonator.”

“He fooled you in the Amazon, didn’t he?”

“As I remember it, I had to pull both of you from a sinkhole in El Dorado. And now that you are working for me, I think a little more respect is in order.”

“We are working
with
you now,” Janice snapped. “Not for you.”

“If it suits you to think of it that way, fine,” said Sir Edmund. “But if Ernest messes this up, I will make sure you both are eaten by yaks.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that yaks don’t eat meat?” said Janice.

Sir Edmund ignored her. He poured himself a glass of crystal-clear plum brandy from a bottle labeled with a skull and crossbones. He savored a sip.

Suddenly there was loud knocking on the door.
Sir Edmund heard his butler open it and object loudly as someone clattered into the mansion.

Janice pulled a switchblade from her pocket. Sir Edmund pulled out a silver revolver and set it on his lap. The doors to the lounge burst open and in came Ernest, dressed as a fire dancer from the waist up and a knight from the waist down. He was being chased by the butler, and was trying to catch his breath.

“What are you doing here, you fool?” Sir Edmund demanded. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“Stuck . . .” Ernest panted. “Underpants stuck. Terrible armor wedgie. Had to hide. Had to run . . . they . . . saw . . . me.” He put his head between his legs, trying to catch his breath.

“They saw you?” Sir Edmund sighed, setting down his glass. “I knew you would mess this up.”

“Stickles . . .” he panted. “He told them . . . about the map and the . . . the kraken. He told them about the Orang Laut.”

“Of course he did.” Sir Edmund nodded.

“I silenced him . . . before he could say . . . too much.” Ernest grabbed the glass that Sir Edmund had set on the side table. He gulped it, thinking it was water.

“BWAH!” He gasped, spitting the burning brandy all over Sir Edmund’s face.

Sir Edmund’s nostrils flared.

“Sorry,” Ernest choked out.

Sir Edmund’s butler rushed over and began wiping the little man’s face. Sir Edmund waved his servant off and squeezed the liquid out of his mustache himself. “You should not have silenced him,” he said. “We want them to know about that place!”

“We do?” Janice asked.

“We do?” Ernest asked.

“As for you two”—he gave them both a withering look, ignoring their questions—“you will continue to keep an eye on the Navels. Track their every move, wherever they go.”

“Explain yourself,” Janice demanded. “Why do we want them to know about the kraken? What if they find the island before we do? What if they get their hands on Plato’s map?”

“If?” Sir Edmund laughed. “There is no if. I’m counting on it. The question is when.”

AFTER THE AMBULANCE
took Chris Stickles away, the Navels gathered back in the great hall to discuss their plans for the expedition to find the island of the kraken and, hopefully, their mother.

Oliver and Celia sat on a hard sofa just underneath the glowering portrait of Colonel Percy Fawcett himself. They were too anxious to fall asleep and now that their television was broken, they had nothing else to do but watch Corey Brandt plan an expedition with their father.

“
Beast Busters
says the kraken doesn’t exist,” Oliver muttered. “And we’re going to believe some crazy explorer over
Beast Busters
?”

“I guess so,” said Celia.

“But the kraken is just made up!
Beast Busters
uses science!”

“Oliver.”
Dr. Navel sighed. He had heard every word of Oliver’s complaint. “You should know that a myth comes from somewhere. It might not be a kraken that took your mother, but it could be something that made people believe in the kraken. The monster behind the myth. Understand?”

“Whatever,” muttered Oliver.

“We’ll need a crew.” Dr. Navel turned back to Corey and Professor Rasmali-Greenberg. Oliver pouted.

“I’ll start hiring the crew as soon as I get back to Los Angeles,” Corey said.

“If we take a small boat through the Malacca Strait, we should be able to avoid attracting the ­attention of pirates,” said Dr. Navel. “We can find an Orang Laut flotilla and see if they can tell us about this island where fishermen fear to go. If my wife—” He glanced back at Oliver and Celia and dropped his voice. “If my wife is alive, she’ll no doubt be there, looking for Plato’s map.”

“Celia,” Oliver whispered to his sister. “Do you think this is another one of Mom’s plots to get us to find the Lost Library?”

“Probably.” Celia yawned. She was getting very tired. It was almost one o’clock in the morning.

“So, why … you know … why did you tell Corey we would go?” Oliver asked. “Every time we go on one of these adventures, it’s horrible.”

“It’s like the prophecy said,” Celia told him. “Maybe it’s our destiny. We’ll end up having an adventure even if we try to avoid it.”

“It’s like changing the channel from commercials, but every other channel’s on commercials too,” said Oliver.

“Right,” said Celia.

“But you don’t believe in destiny,” Oliver told her.

Celia pursed her lips. He was right of course. She didn’t believe in that destiny nonsense. She didn’t want to tell Oliver that she was just trying to impress Corey Brandt. Oliver would make fun of her. And after their last adventure in the Amazon with the fake Corey Brandt, he wasn’t likely to go happily on another adventure.