‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded, stepping up to the Mokian guards, who stood in a ring around the Librarians. I didn’t get too close. My mother isn’t the safest person to be around.
‘Really, Alcatraz, I would have thought you’d be more observant. What am I doing? Obviously, I’m helping to conquer this meaningless, insignificant city.’
I eyed her, and her image wavered slightly. I was shocked by that, but I was currently wearing my Oculator’s Lenses. They read auras of things with Oculatory power, but they could do other, strange things. Things like give me a nudge to notice something I should have seen.
In this case, I realized what I should do. I took the Oculator’s Lenses off and tucked them away. Then I got out my single Truthfinder’s Lens, which was suspended in a set of spectacles that was missing the other Lens. I slipped this on, smiling at my mother.
She shut her mouth, looking dissatisfied. She knew what that Lens was. She wouldn’t be able to lie, at least not without me spotting it.
‘Let me repeat the question,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’
My mother folded her arms. Unfortunately, there was an easy way to defeat the Truthfinder’s Lens: by not talking. But fortunately, keeping my mother from saying snide remarks is like keeping me from saying stoopid ones: theoretically possible, but never observed in the wild.
‘You’re a fool,’ Shasta finally said. Puffs of white smoke came from her mouth, visible only to my single Truthfinder-covered eye. She was telling the truth – or, at least, what she saw as the truth. ‘This city is doomed.’ More white. ‘Why did you come here, Alcatraz? You should have stayed safe in Nalhalla.’
‘Safe? In a city where you kidnapped me and nearly let your Librarian allies slaughter my friends?’
‘That was unfortunate,’ Shasta said. ‘I didn’t wish for it to happen.’ All true, surprisingly.
‘You let it happen anyway. And now you’ve followed me here. Why?’
‘I didn’t follow you here,’ she snapped. ‘I—’ She cut off, as if realizing she’d said too much.
She stopped as I smiled. The first statement had been true. She wasn’t there because of me. She’d come for other reasons. But why? I doubted it was because she simply wanted to see Tuki Tuki captured. When my mother was involved, things were always a whole lot deeper than they seemed.
‘Have you seen my father?’ I asked.
She looked away, obviously determined not to say anything. Above, the rocks kept beating against the dome. A chunk of glass broke free, tumbling down to the city a short distance away. I could hear it shatter, like a thousand icicles falling off a rooftop at once.
There wasn’t time to chat with my mother right now. ‘Throw them in my dungeons,’ I said to Aluki. ‘I . . . er, I do have dungeons, don’t I?’
‘Not really,’ Aluki said. ‘We’ve been keeping prisoners in the university catacombs. They have Expander’s Glass reinforcing the walls, which would make it almost impossible for the Librarians to tunnel in and rescue them.’
‘Very well. Throw them in the university basement and lock them away,’ I said. I pointed at my mother. ‘Except her. Lock her someplace extra safe. And search her. She stole a book from Nalhalla that we will want to recover.’
‘I don’t have that anymore,’ Shasta said. Unfortunately, the Lens said she was telling the truth. She was also smiling slyly, as if she knew something important.
She couldn’t have read it, I thought. Not without a pair of Translator’s Lenses. And she didn’t come here to get my pair; she didn’t know I would be here.
The soldiers led Shasta and the other Librarians away. As they did, I noticed one of them watching me. He was an older man and didn’t look anything like a soldier. He wore a tuxedolike suit with a cravat at the neck, and he had a short, graying beard flecked with black. He had keen, sagacious eyes.
‘Search that one too,’ I said, grabbing Aluki’s arm and pointing the man out. ‘I don’t like how he looks at me.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ Aluki said.
‘You don’t like how he “looked” at you?’ Bastille asked, walking up to me.
‘There’s something about him,’ I said. ‘He’s odd. I mean, the only reason to wear a cravat is to look distinguished and intriguing. It’s kind of like using sagacious in a sentence; it’s less about what it actually means, and more about making you look smart.’
Bastille frowned, but Kaz nodded, as if understanding. Aydee had run over to the bears and was gleefully counting them out into piles of ten. She gave each one a hug and a name before setting it aside. It was kind of cute, if you ignored the fact that each and every one of those bears was a live grenade.
My three counselors stood, speaking quietly next to the large pile of bears.
Bastille followed my gaze. ‘That was dangerous, what you did, Smedry.’
‘What? Multiplying the bears?’ I shrugged. ‘It could have gone the other direction, I suppose, and Aydee’s Talent could have made our stock vanish. But I figured that we only had a few bears left, and that wasn’t enough to do what we needed to. So what did we have to lose?’
‘I’m not worried about what we could have lost,’ Bastille said. ‘I’m worried about what we could have gained.’
‘Wait? Huh?’ (You say stuff like that a lot when you’re as dumb as I am.)
‘Shattering Glass, Smedry! What would have happened if Aydee had said we had fifty thousand bears? What if she’d said four or five million bears! We’d have been buried in them. You could have destroyed the city, smothering everyone inside of it.’
I cringed, an image popping into my head of purple teddy bears washing over the city. Of the Mokians being crushed beneath the weight of a sea of pleasant plushness. A tsunami of teddies doing the Librarians’ work for them. A blitzkrieg of bears, a torrent of toys, an . . . um . . . upheaval of ursines.
Or, in simpler terms, a shattering lot of bears.
‘Gak!’ I said.
‘That’s right,’ Bastille said. She wagged a finger at me. ‘Smedry Talents are dangerous, particularly in the young. I’d have thought that you – of all people – would realize this.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a bubble in the glass, Bastille,’ Kaz said, smacking me on the arm. ‘You did great, kid. That kind of bear firepower is just the kind of thing Tuki Tuki needed.’
‘It was risky,’ Bastille said, folding her arms.
‘Yeah, but I don’t think it was as dangerous as you say. Aydee’s got one of the most powerful Prime Talents around, but I doubt she’d have been able to make millions of bears. Likely, she couldn’t have destroyed the city – at best, she’d have just crushed those of us here in this field.’
‘Very comforting,’ Bastille said dryly.
‘Well, you know what my pop says. “Danger, risks, and lots of fun. The Smedry way!”’
Kaz, as I’ve mentioned, is a scholar of magical forces. He knew more about Talents than anyone else alive. In fact, that’s probably what he’d been doing here when he’d visited Tuki Tuki originally – studying at the university.
‘My lord,’ Mink – the soda-can counselor – said, approaching. ‘This boon of bears is quite timely, but how are we going to use it to destroy those robots? They’re protected by the Librarian army!’
‘And don’t forget the tunnels,’ Dink said.
‘And always wash behind your ears,’ Wink added.
‘I need three things from you,’ I said, thinking quickly. ‘Some backpacks that will hold several of those bears, six of your fastest warriors, and some really long stilts.’
The counselors looked at one another.
‘Go!’ I said, waving. ‘That dome is about to fall!’
The three scattered, scrambling to do as I asked.
Bastille suddenly turned eastward, toward the ocean. Toward Nalhalla. Her eyes opened. ‘Alcatraz, I think the knights are actually coming.’
‘What? You can see them?’ I looked eagerly.
‘I can’t see them,’ Bastille said. ‘I can feel them.’ She tapped the back of her neck, where the Fleshstone was set into her skin, hidden by her silvery hair. It connected her to the Crystin Mindstone, which then connected her to all of the other Knights of Crystallia.
I didn’t see why they were so keen on the thing. I mean, it was because of that very connection that the Knights had all fallen to Archedis’s tricks back in Nalhalla. He’d done something to the Mindstone, and it – connected to all of the Crystin – had knocked them out. Seemed like a liability to me.
Of course, that connection also had the ability to turn thirteen-year-old girls into superknight kung-fu killing machines. So it wasn’t all bad.
‘You can sense the other knights?’ I said frowning.
‘Only in the most general of terms,’ she said. ‘We . . . well, we don’t talk about it. If a lot of them feel the same thing at once, I will notice it. And if a lot of them start moving at once, I can feel it. A large number of knights just left Nalhalla.’
‘They just left Nalhalla,’ I said, groaning inside. ‘The trip here will take hours and hours.’
‘We have to hold out,’ Bastille said fervently. ‘Alcatraz, your plan is working! For once.’
‘Assuming we can survive for a few more hours,’ Kaz said. ‘You have a plan about that, kid?’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Kind of. Bastille, how good are you with stilts?’
‘Um . . . okay, I guess.’ She hesitated. ‘I should be worried, shouldn’t I?’
‘Probably.’
She sighed. ‘Ah well. It can’t possibly be worse than death by teddy-bear avalanche.’ She hesitated. ‘Can it?’
I just smiled.
Four Teens And A Pickle
In March 1225, two years before his death, Genghis Khan sat down to breakfast to dine on a bowl of warm hearts cut from the chests of his enemies. At that time, he was ruler of the largest empire in the history of the world. He reached up, scratched his nose, and said something extremely profound.
‘Zaremdaa, en ajil shall mea baina.’
He knew what he was talking about. As do I. Trust me, I’ve been a king before. (No, really, I have. Sometime, check out volume four of my autobiography, page 669.)
I was only king of one city, really, and only for a short time. But it was ridiculously, insanely, bombastically tough to do the job right. Tougher than trying to get hit in the head with a baseball shot out of a cannon. Tougher than trying to climb a hundred-foot cliff using a rope made of used dental floss. Tougher, even, than trying to figure out where my stoopid metaphors come from.
I’ve never understood one thing: Why do all of these megalomaniac dictators, secret societies, mad scientists, and totalitarian aliens want to rule the world? I mean really? Don’t they know what a pain in the neck it is to be in charge? People are always making unreasonable demands of kings. ‘Please save us from the invading Vandal hordes! Please make sure we have proper sanitation to prevent the spread of disease! Please stop beheading our wives so often; it’s ruining the rugs!’