I’m convinced that responsibility is some kind of psychological disease. What else but a brain malfunction would cause someone to go jogging? The problem is, kings need to have responsibility like nothing else. Kings are like deep, never-ending wells of responsibility – and if you don’t watch out, you may get tainted by them.
The Smedry clan, fortunately, realized this a number of years back. And so they did something about it.
‘We did what?’ I asked.
‘Gave up our kingdom,’ Grandpa Smedry said happily. ‘Poof. Gone. Abdicated.’
‘Why did we do that?’
‘For the good of candy bars everywhere,’ Grandpa Smedry said, eyes twinkling. ‘They need to be eaten, you see.’
‘Huh?’ I asked. We stood on a large castle balcony, waiting for a ‘crawly,’ whatever that was. Sing was with us, along with Bastille and her mother. Australia had stayed behind to run an errand for Grandpa Smedry, and my father had disappeared into his rooms. Apparently, he couldn’t be bothered by something as simple as the impending fall of Mokia as a sovereign kingdom.
‘Well, let me explain it this way,’ Grandpa Smedry said, hands behind his back as he looked out over the city. ‘A number of centuries ago, the people realized that there were just too many kingdoms. Most were only the size of a city, and you could barely go for an afternoon stroll without passing through three or four of them!’
‘I hear it was a real pain,’ Sing agreed. ‘Every kingdom had its own rules, its own culture, its own laws.’
‘Then the Librarians started conquering,’ Grandpa Smedry explained. ‘The kings realized that they were too easy to pick off. So they began to band together, joining their kingdoms into one, making alliances.’
‘Often, that involved weddings of one sort or another,’ Sing added.
‘That was during the time of our ancestor King Leavenworth Smedry the Sixth,’ Grandpa continued. ‘He decided that it would be better to combine our small kingdom of Smedrious with that of Nalhalla, leaving the Smedrys free of all that bothersome reigning so that we could focus on things that were more important, like fighting the Librarians.’
I wasn’t sure how to react to that. I was the heir of the line. That meant if our ancestor hadn’t given up the kingdom, I’d have been directly in line for the throne. It was a little bit like discovering that your lottery ticket was one number away from winning.
‘We gave it away,’ I said. ‘All of it?’
‘Well, not all of it,’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘Just the boring parts! We retained a seat on the Council of Kings so that we could still have a hand in politics, and as you can see, we have a nice castle and a large fortune to keep us busy. Plus, we’re still nobility.’
‘So what does that get us?’
‘Oh, a number of perks,’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘Call-ahead seating at restaurants, access to the royal stables and the royal silimatic carrier fleet – I believe we’ve managed to wreck two of those in the last month. We’re also peerage – which is a fancy way of saying we can speak in civil disputes, perform marriage ceremonies, arrest criminals, that sort of thing.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I can marry people?’
‘Sure,’ Grandpa Smedry said.
‘But I’m only thirteen!’
‘Well, you couldn’t marry yourself to anyone. But if somebody else asked you, you could perform the ceremony. It wouldn’t do for the king to have to do all of that himself, you know! Ah, here we are.’
I glanced to the side, then jumped as I saw an enormous reptile crawling along the sides of the buildings toward us. Like a spider crawling across the front of a fence.
‘Dragon!’ I yelled, pointing.
‘Brilliant observation, Smedry,’ Bastille noted from beside me.
I was too alarmed to make an amazing comeback. Fortunately, I’m the author of this book, so I can rewrite history as I feel necessary. Let’s try that again.
Ahem.
I glanced to the side, whereupon I noticed a dangerous scaly lizard slithering its way along the sides of the buildings, obviously bent on devouring us all.
‘Behold!’ I bellowed. ‘’Tis a foul beast of the netherhells. Stand behind me and I shall slay it!’
‘Oh, Alcatraz,’ Bastille breathed. ‘Thou art awesomish and manlyish.’
‘Lo, let it be such,’ I said.
‘Don’t be alarmed, lad,’ Grandpa Smedry said, glancing at the reptile. ‘That’s our ride.’
I could see that the wingless, horned creature had a contraption on its back, a little like a gondola. The massive beast defied gravity, clinging to the stone faces of the buildings, kind of like a lizard clinging to a cliff – only this lizard was large enough to swallow a bus. The dragon reached Keep Smedry, then climbed up to our balcony, its claws gripping the stones. I took an involuntary step backward as its enormous serpentine head crested the balcony and looked at us.
‘Smedry,’ it said in a deep voice.
‘Hello, Tzoctinatin,’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘We need a ride to the palace, quickly.’
‘So I have been told. Climb in.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘We use dragons as taxis?’
The dragon eyed me, and in that eye I saw a vastness. A deep, swirling depth, colors upon colors, folds upon folds. It made me feel small and meaningless.
‘I do not do this of my own will, young Smedry,’ the beast rumbled.
‘How long left on your sentence?’ Grandpa Smedry asked.
‘Three hundred years,’ the creature said, turning away. ‘Three hundred years before they will return my wings so that I may fly again.’ With that, the creature climbed up the side of the wall a little farther, bringing the gondola basket into view. A walkway unfolded from it, and the others began to climb in.
‘What’d he do?’ I whispered to Grandpa Smedry.
‘Hum? Oh, first-degree maiden munching, I believe. It happened some four centuries back. Tragic story. Watch that first step.’
I followed the others into the gondola. There was a well-furnished room inside, complete with comfortable-looking couches. Draulin was the last one in, and she closed the door. Immediately, the dragon began to move – I could tell by looking out the window. However, I couldn’t feel the motion. It appeared that no matter which direction the dragon turned or which way was ‘up,’ the gondola occupants always had gravity point the same way.
(I was later to learn that this, like many things in the Free Kingdoms, was due to a type of glass – Orientation Glass – that allows one to set a direction that is ‘down’ when you forge it into a box. Therefore, anything inside the box is pulled in that direction, no matter which way the box turns.)
I stood for a long time, watching out the window, which glowed faintly to my eyes because of my Oculator’s Lenses. After the chaos of the explosion and my near death, I hadn’t really had a chance to contemplate the city. It was amazing. As I’d seen, the entire city was filled with castles. Not just simple brick and stone buildings, but actual castles, with high walls and towers, each one different.
Some had a fairy-tale feel, with archways and slender peaks. Others were brutish and no-nonsense, the type of castles you might imagine were ruled over by evil, blood-thirsty warlords. (It should be noted that the Honorable Guild of Evil Warlords has worked very hard to counter the negative stereotype of its members. After several dozen bake sales and charity auctions, someone suggested that they remove the word evil from the title of their organization. The suggestion was eventually rejected on account of Gurstak the Ruthless having just ordered a full box of embossed business cards.)
The castles lined the streets like skyscrapers might in a large Hushlander city. I could see people moving on the road below – some in horse-drawn carriages – but our dragon continued to crawl lizardlike across the sides of buildings. The castles were close enough that when he came to a gap between buildings, he could simply stretch across.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Bastille asked. I turned, not having realized that she’d joined me at the window.
‘It is,’ I said.
‘It always feels good to get back,’ Bastille said. ‘I love how clean everything is. The sparkling glass, the stonework and the carvings.’
‘I would have thought that coming back would be rough this time,’ I said. ‘I mean, you left as a knight, but have to come back as a squire.’
She grimaced. ‘You really have a way with women, Smedry. Anyone ever told you that?’
I blushed. ‘I just . . . uh . . .’ Dang. You know, when I write my memoirs, I’m totally going to put a better line right there.
(Too bad I forgot to do that. I really need to pay better attention to my notes.)
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Bastille said, leaning against the window and looking down. ‘I guess I’m resigned to my punishment.’
Not this again, I thought, worried. After losing her sword and being reprimanded by her mother, Bastille had gone through a serious funk. The worst part was that it was my fault. She’d lost her sword because I’d broken it while trying to fight off some sentient romance novels. Her mother seemed determined to prove that one mistake made Bastille completely unworthy to be a knight.
‘Oh, don’t look at me like that,’ Bastille snapped. ‘Shattering Glass! Just because I’m resigned to my punishment doesn’t mean I’m giving up completely. I still intend to find out who set me up like this.’
‘You’re sure someone did?’
She nodded, eyes narrowing as she grew decidedly vengeful. I was happy that, for once, her wrath didn’t seem directed at me.
‘The more I’ve thought about it,’ she said, ‘the more the things you said the other week make sense. Why did they assign a freshly knighted girl – on such a dangerous mission? Somebody in Crystallia wanted me to fail – someone was jealous of how fast I’d achieved knighthood, or wanted to embarrass my mother, or simply wanted to prove that I couldn’t succeed.’
‘That doesn’t sound very honorable,’ I noted. ‘A Knight of Crystallia wouldn’t do something like that, would they?’
‘I . . . don’t know,’ Bastille said, glancing toward her mother.
‘I find it hard to believe,’ I said, though I didn’t completely believe that. You see, jealousy is an awful lot like farting. Neither is something you like to imagine a brave knight being involved in, but the truth is, knights are just people. They get jealous, they make mistakes, and – yes – they break wind. (Though, of course, knights never use the term ‘break wind.’ They prefer the term ‘bang the cymbals.’ Guess that’s what they get for wearing so much armor.)
Draulin stood at the back of the room, and – for once – wasn’t standing in a stiff ‘parade rest’ stance. Instead, she was polishing her enormous crystal sword. Bastille suspected her mother had been the one to set her up, as Draulin was one of the knights who gave out assignments. But why would she send her own daughter on a mission that was obviously too hard for her?