"You really do love her," I said.
Folsom blushed, looking at me. "Is it that obvious?"
It hadn't been to me. But I smiled anyway. "These last six months have been amazing," he said, getting that dreamy, disgusting tone to his voice that lovesick people often use. "I started out just watching to see if she was a spy, but after I determined that she was safe . . . well, I wanted to keep spending time with her. So I offered to coach her on Nalhallan customs."
"Have you told her?" I asked, soldiers bustling around me, carrying stacks of books.
"Oh, I couldn't do that," Folsom said. "I mean, look at her. She's amazing! I'm just a regular guy."
“A regular guy?" I asked. "Folsom, you're a Smedry. You're nobility!"
"Yeah," he said, looking down. "But I mean, that's just a name. I'm a boring person, when you get down to it. Who thinks a critic is interesting?"
I resisted pointing out that Librarians weren't exactly known for being the most exciting people either.
"Look,” I said. "I don't know a lot about things like this, but it seems to me that if you love her, you should say so. I –“
At that moment, Prince Rikers walked up. "Hey, look!" he said, proffering a book. "They have one of my novels in here! Preserved for all of posterity. The music even still works. See!"
He opened the cover.
And so, of course, Folsom punched me in the face.
CHAPTER 16
Now, I would like to make it clear that violence is rarely the best solution to problems.
For instance, the next time you get attacked by a group of angry ninjas, one solution would be to kick the lead ninja, steal his katana, and proceed to slay the rest of the group in an awesome display of authorial fury. While this might be fulfilling – and a little bit fun – it would also be rather messy, and would earn you the ire of an entire ninja clan. They'd send assassins after you for the rest of your life. (Having to fight off a ninja in the middle of a date can be quite embarrassing.)
So instead of fighting, you could bribe the ninjas with soy sauce) and then send them to attack your siblings instead. That way, you can get rid of some unwanted soy sauce. See how easy it is to avoid violence?
Now, there are some occasions when violence is appropriate. Usually, those are occasions when you want to beat the tar out of somebody. Unfortunately, "somebody" at this moment happened to be me. Folsom's punch was completely unexpected, and it hit me full in the face.
Right then, I realized something quite interesting: That was the first time I'd ever been punched. It was a special moment for me. I'd say it was a little like being kicked, only with more knuckles and a hint of lemon.
Maybe the lemon part was just my brain short-circuiting as I was tossed backward onto the chamber's glass floor. The blow left me dazed, and by the time I finally shook myself out of it, the scene in front of me was one of total chaos.
The soldiers were trying to subdue Folsom. They didn't want to hurt him, as he was a nobleman; they were forced to try to grab him and hold him down. It wasn't working very well. Folsom fought with a strange mixture of terrified lack of control and calculated precision. He was like a puppet being controlled by a kung fu master. Or maybe vice versa. A trite melody played in the background – my theme music, apparently.
Folsom moved among the soldiers in a blur of awkward (yet somehow well-placed) kicks, punches, and head-butts. He'd already knocked down a good ten soldiers, and the other ten weren't doing much better.
"It's so exciting!" the prince said. "I hope somebody is taking notes! Why didn't I bring any of my scribes? I should send for some!" Rikers stood a short distance from the center of the fight.
Please punch him, I thought, standing up on shaky knees. Just a little bit.
But it wasn't to be – Folsom was focused on the soldiers. Himalaya was calling for the soldiers to try to get their hands over Folsom's ears. Where was Bastille? She should have come running at the sounds of the fight.
"The Alcatraz Smedry Theme" continued to play its peppy little melody, coming from somewhere near the prince. "Prince Rikers!" I yelled. "The book! Where is it? We have to close it!"
"Oh, what?" He turned. "Um, I think I dropped it when the fight started."
He was standing near a pile of unsorted books. I cursed, scrambling toward the pile. If we could stop the music, Folsom would stop dancing.
At that moment the battle shifted in my direction. Folsom – his eyes wide with worry and displaying a distinct lack of control – spun through a group of soldiers, throwing four of them into the air.
I stood facing him. I didn't think he'd do me any serious harm. I mean, Smedry Talents are unpredictable, but they rarely hurt people too badly.
Except . . . hadn't I used my own Talent to break some arms and cause monsters to topple to their deaths?
Crud, I thought. Folsom raised his fist and prepared to punch directly at my face.
And my Talent engaged.
One of the odd things about Smedry Talents, mine in particular, is how they sometimes act proactively. Mine breaks weapons at a distance if someone tries to kill me.
In this case, something dark and wild seemed to rip from me. I couldn't see it, but I could feel it snapping toward Folsom. His eyes opened wide, and he tripped, his graceful martial-arts power failing him for a brief moment. It was as if he'd suddenly lost his Talent.
He toppled to the ground before me. At that moment, a book in the pile beside me exploded, throwing up scraps of paper and glass. The music stopped.
Folsom groaned. The trip left him kneeling right in front of me, confettilike scraps of paper falling around us.
The beast within me quieted, pulling back inside, and all fell still.
When I'd been young, I'd thought of my Talent as a curse. Now I'd begun thinking of it as a kind of wild super-power. This was the first time, however, that I thought of it as something foreign inside of me.
Something alive.
"That was incredible!" said one of the soldiers. I looked up and saw the soldiers regarding me with awe. Himalaya seemed stunned. The prince stood with his arms folded, smiling in contentment at finally getting to witness a battle.
"I saw it," one of the soldiers whispered, "like a wave of power, pulsing out of you, Lord Smedry. It stopped even another Talent."
It felt good to be admired. It made me feel like a leader. Like a hero. "See to your friends," I said, pointing to the fallen soldiers. "Give me a report on the wounded." I reached down, helping Folsom to his feet.
He looked down in shame, as Himalaya walked over to comfort him. “Well, I give myself nine out of ten points for being an idiot," he said. "I can't believe I let that happen. I should be able to control it!"
"I know how hard it is,” I said. "Trust me. It wasn't your fault."
Prince Rikers walked over to join us, his blue robes swishing. "That was wonderful," he said. "Though it's kind of sad how the book turned out."
"I'm heartbroken," I said flatly, glancing about for Bastille. Where was she?
"Oh, it's all right," Rikers said, reaching into his pocket. "They have the sequel here too!" He pulled out a book and moved to open the cover.
"Don't you dare!" I snapped, grabbing his arm.
“Oh," he said. "Yeah, probably a bad idea." He glanced at my grip on his arm. "You know, you remind me a lot of my sister. I thought you'd be a little less uptight."
"I'm not uptight," I snapped. "I'm annoyed. There's a difference. Himalaya, how's the sorting going?"
"Uh, maybe halfway done," she said. Indeed, the mountains of books were quickly becoming large stacks, like walls. A much smaller stack was particularly interesting to me – it contained books in the Forgotten Language.
There were only four so far, but it was amazing to me that we'd even managed to find them among all the other books. I walked over to the stack, fishing in my jacket pocket for my pair of Translator's Lenses.
I swapped them for my Oculator's Lenses. I al
most forgot that I was wearing those. They were starting to feel natural to me, I guess. With the Translator's Lenses on, I could read the titles of the books.
One appeared to be some kind of philosophical work on the nature of laws and justice. Interesting, but I couldn't see it being important enough for my mother to risk so much in order to get.
The other three books were unimpressive. A manual on building chariots, a ledger talking about the number of chickens a particular merchant traded in Athens, and a cookbook. (Hey, I guess even ancient, all-powerful lost societies needed help baking cookies.)
I checked with the soldiers and was relieved to find that none of them was seriously wounded. Folsom had knocked out no fewer than six of them, and some others had broken several limbs. The wounded left for the infirmary and the others returned to helping Himalaya. None of them had seen Bastille.
I wandered through what was quickly becoming a maze of enormous book stacks. Maybe Bastille was looking for signs of the diggers breaking into the room. The scraping sounds had been coming from the southeast corner, but when I neared, I couldn't hear them anymore. Had my mother realized we were on to her? With that sound gone, I could hear something else.
Whispering.
Curious, and a little creeped out, I walked in the direction of the sound. I turned a corner around a wall-like stack of books, and found a little dead-end hollow in the maze.
Bastille lay there, curled up on the cold glass floor whispering to herself and shivering. I cursed, rushing over to kneel beside her. "Bastille?"
She curled up a little bit further. Her Warrior's Lenses were off, clutched in her hand. I could see a haunted cast to her eyes. A sense of loss, of sorrow, of having had something deep and tender ripped from her, never to be returned.
I felt powerless. Had she been hurt? She shivered and moved, then looked up at me, eyes focusing. She seemed to realize for the first time that I was there.
She immediately pushed away from me and sat up. Then she sighed and wrapped her arms around her knees, bowing her head between them. "Why is it that you always see me like this?" she asked quietly. “I’m strong, I really am."
"I know you are,” I said, feeling awkward and embarrassed.
We remained like that for a time, Bastille unresponsive, me feeling like a complete idiot, even though I wasn’t sure what I'd done wrong. (Note to all the young men reading this: Get used to that.)
"So . . ." I said. "Er . . . you're still having trouble with that severing thing?”
She looked up, eyes red like they'd been scratched with sandpaper. "It's like . . ." she said in a quiet voice. “It’s like I used to have memories. Fond ones, of places I loved, of people I knew. Only now they're gone. I can feel the place where they were, and it's a hole, ripped open inside of me.”
"The Mindstone is that important?” I asked. It was a dumb thing to say, but I felt I should say something.
"It connects all of the Knights of Crystallia,” she whispered. "It strengthens us, gives us comfort. By it, we all share a measure of who we are."
"I should have shattered the swords of those idiots who did this to you," I growled.
Bastille shivered, holding her arms close. "I'll get reconnected eventually, so I should probably tell you not to be so angry. They're good people and don't deserve your scorn. But honestly, I'm having trouble feeling sympathy for them right now." She smiled wanly.
I tried to smile back, but it was hard. "Someone wanted this to happen to you, Bastille. They set you up."
"Maybe," Bastille said, sighing. It appeared that her episode was over, though it had left her weakened even further.
"Maybe?" I repeated.
"I don't know, Smedry," she said. "Maybe nobody set me up. Maybe I really did just get promoted too quickly, and really did just fail on my own. Maybe . . . maybe there is no grand conspiracy against me."
"I guess you could be right," I said.
You, of course, don't believe that. I mean, when is there not some grand conspiracy? This entire series is about a secret cult of evil Librarians who rule the world, for Sands' sake.
"Alcatraz?" a voice called. Sing wandered around the corner a moment later. "Himalaya found another book in the Forgotten Language. Figured you would want to look at it."
I glanced at Bastille; she waved me away. "What, you think I need to be babied?" she snapped. "Go. I'll be there in a moment."
I hesitated, but followed Sing around a few walls of books to the center of the room. The prince sat, looking bored, on what appeared to be a throne made of books. (I'm still not sure who he got to make it for him.) Folsom was directing the moving of stacks; Himalaya was still sorting, with no sign of slowing down.
Sing handed me the book. Like all of the others in the Forgotten Language, the text on it looked like crazy scribbles. Before he had died, Alcatraz the First – my ultimate ancestor – had used the Talent to break the language of his people so that nobody could read it.
Nobody, except for someone with a pair of Translator's Lenses. I put mine on and flipped to the first page, hoping it wasn't another cookbook.
Observations on the Talents of the Smedry people, the title page read, and an explanation of what led up to their fate. As written by Fenilious K. Wandersnag, scribe to His Majesty, Alcatraz Smedry.
I blinked, then read the words again.
"Guys?" I said, turning. "Guys!"
The group of soldiers hesitated, and Himalaya glanced toward me. I held the book up.
"I think we just found what we've been looking for."
CHAPTER 17
Things are about to go very wrong.
Oh, didn't you know that already? I should think that it would be obvious. We're almost to the end of the book, and we just had a very encouraging victory. Everything looks good. So, of course, it's all going to go wrong. You should pay better attention to plot archetypes.
I'd like to promise you that everything will turn out all right, but I think there's something you should understand.
This is the middle book of the series. And, as everyone knows, the heroes always lose in the middle book. It makes the series more tense.
Sorry. But hey, at least my books have awesome endings, right?
I dismissed the soldiers, ordering them to return to their posts. Sing and Folsom joined me, looking at the book, even though they couldn't read it. I suspected that my mother must have an Oculator with her to read the book – to her alone, the Lenses would be useless.
"You're sure this is what we're after?" Sing asked, turning the book over in his fingers.
"It's a history of the fall of Incarna," I said, "told by Alcatraz the First's personal scribe."
Sing whistled. "Wow. What are the chances?"
"Pretty good, I'd say," Bastille said, rounding the corner and joining us. She still looked quite the worse for wear, but at least she was standing. I gave her what I hoped was an encouraging smile.
"Nice leer," she said to me. “Anyway, this is the Royal Archives –“
"Not a –" Folsom began to say.
" – don't interrupt,” Bastille snapped. She appeared to be in rare form – but then, having a piece of your soul cut out tends to do that to people.
"This is the Royal Archives,” Bastille continued. “A lot of these books have passed down through the royal Nalhallan line for centuries – and the collection has been added to by the Smedrys, the Knights of Crystallia, and the other noble lines who have joined with us."
"Yes indeed," Prince Rikers said, taking the book from Sing, looking it over. "People don't just throw away books in the Forgotten Language. A lot of these have been archived here for years and years. They're copies of copies."
"You can copy these scribbles?" I asked with surprise.
"Scribes can be quite meticulous," Sing said. "They're almost as bad as Librarians."
"Excuse me?" Himalaya huffed, walking up to us. She'd finished giving orders to the last couple of soldiers, who were arranging the books she
'd just organized. The room looked kind of strange, with the back half of it still dominated by gargantuan piles of books, the front half filled with neatly organized stacks.
"Oh," Sing said. "Um, I didn't mean you, Himalaya. I meant Librarians who aren't recovering."
"I'm not either," she said, folding her arms, adopting a very deliberate stance as she stood in her Hushlander skirt and blouse. "I meant what I said earlier. I intend to prove that you can be a Librarian without being evil. There has to be a way."
"If you say so . . ." Sing said.
I still kind of agreed with Sing. Librarians were . . . well, Librarians. They'd oppressed me since my childhood. They were trying to conquer Mokia.
"I think you did wonderfully,” Folsom said to Himalaya. "Ten out of ten on a scale of pure, majestic effectiveness."
Prince Rikers sniffed at that. "Excuse me," he said, then handed me the Forgotten Language book and walked away – "What was that about?" Himalaya asked.
"I think Folsom just reminded the prince that he was a book critic," Bastille said.
Folsom sighed. "I don't want to make people mad. I just . . . well, how can people get better if you don't tell them what you honestly think?"
"I don't think everyone wants to hear what you honestly think, Folsom," Himalaya said, laying a hand on his arm.
"Maybe I could go talk to him," Folsom said. "You know, explain myself."
I didn't think the prince would listen, but I didn't say anything as Folsom walked after Rikers. Himalaya was watching after the determined critic with fondness.
"You're in love with him, aren't you?" I asked her.