Hello? she asked. Is someone there? Can you talk louder or something?
“Not really,” I hissed, glancing out at the Librarians. Most of them had moved out the door, but a small group of men had apparently been assigned to search the hangar. Mostly security guards.
Um… okay, the voice said. Uh, who is this?
“Who do you think it is?” I asked in annoyance. “I’m Alcatraz. Who are you?”
Oh, I – the image, and voice, fuzzed for a moment – sent to pick you up. Sorry! Uh, where are you?
“In a hangar,” I said. One of the guards perked up, then pulled out a gun, pointing it in my direction. He’d heard me.
“Shattering Glass!” I hissed, ducking back down.
You really shouldn’t swear like that, you know…, the girl said.
”Thanks,” I hissed as quietly as possible. “Who are you, and how are you going to get me out of this?”
There was a pause. A dreadful, terrible, long, annoying, frustrating, deadly, nerve-racking, incredibly wordy pause.
I… don’t really know, the girl said. I – wait just a second. Bastille says that you should run out somewhere in the open then signal us. It’s too foggy down here. We can’t really see much.
Down there? I thought. Still, if Bastille was with this girl, that seemed like a good sign. Although Bastille would probably chastise me for getting myself into so much trouble, she did have a habit of being very effective at what she did. Hopefully that would include rescuing me.
“Hey!” a voice said. I turned to the side staring out at one of the guards. “I found someone!”
Time to break some things, I thought, taking a deep breath. Then I sent a burst of breaking power into the wheel of the airplane.
I ducked away, leaping to my feet as lug nuts popped free from the airplane wheel. The guard raised his gun but didn’t fire.
“Shoot him!” said a man in a black suit, the Librarian who stood directing things from the side of the room.
“I’m not shooting a kid,” the guard said. “Where are these terrorists you were talking about?”
Good man, I thought as I dashed toward the front of the hangar. At that moment, the wheel of the airplane fell completely off, and the entire front of the vehicle crashed down against the pavement. Men cried out in surprise, and the security guards dived for cover.
The Librarian in black grabbed a handgun from one of the confused guards and pointed it at me. I just smiled.
The gun, of course, fell apart as soon as the Librarian pulled the trigger. My Talent protects me when it can – and the more moving parts a weapon has, the easier it is to break. I rammed my shoulder into the massive hangar doors and sent a shock of breaking power into them. Screws and nut and bolts fell like rain around me, hitting the ground. Several guards peeked out from behind boxes.
The entire front of the hangar came off, falling away from me and hitting the ground outside with a reverberating crash. I hesitated, shocked, even though that was exactly what I’d wanted to happen. Swirling fog began to creep into the hangar around me.
It seemed that my Talent was getting even more powerful. Before, I’d broken things like pots and dishes, with the very rare exception of something larger like the concrete I had broken when I was seven. That was nothing like what I’d been doing lately: taking the wheels off of airplanes and making entire hangar doors fall off. Not for the first time, I wondered just how much I could break if I really needed to.
And how much the Talent could break if it decided that it wanted to.
There wasn’t much time to contemplate that, as the Librarians outside had noticed the ruckus. They stood, black upon the noonday fog, looking back at me. Most of them had spread out to the sides, and so the only way for me to go was straight ahead.
I dashed out onto the wet tarmac, running for all I was worth. The Librarians began to yell, and several tried – completely ineffectively – to fire guns at me. They should have known better. In their defense, few people – even Librarians – are accustomed to dealing with a Smedry as powerful as I was. Against the others, they might have been able to get off a few shots before something went wrong. Firearms aren’t completely useless in the Free Kingdoms, they’re just much less powerful.
The shooting – or lack thereof – bought me just a few seconds of time. Unfortunately, there were a pair of Librarians in my path.
“Get ready!” I yelled into my Courier’s Lenses. Then I whipped them off and put on the Windstormer’s Lenses. I focused as hard as I could, blowing forth a burst of wind from my eyes. Both Librarians were knocked to the ground, and I leaped over them.
Other Librarians cried out from behind, chasing me as I moved out onto a runway. Puffing, I reached into a pocket and pulled free my Firebringer’s Lens. I spun and activated the Lens.
It started to glow. The group of Librarians pulled to a halt. They knew enough to recognize that Lens. I held it out, then pointed it up into the air. It shot a line of red firelight upward, piercing the fog.
That had better be enough of a signal, I thought. The Librarians gathered together, obviously preparing to rush at me. Lens or no Lens. I prepared my Windstormer’s Lenses, hoping I could use them to blow the Librarians back long enough for Bastille to save me.
The Librarians, however, did not charge. I stood, anxious, the Firebringer’s Lens still firing into the air. What were they waiting for?
The Librarians parted, and a dark figure – silhouetted in the muggy fog – moved through them. I couldn’t seem much, but something about this figure was wrong. It was a head taller than the others, and one of its arms was several feet longer than the other. Its head was misshapen. Perhaps inhuman. Most definitely dangerous.
I shivered, taking an involuntary step backward. The dark figure raised its bony arm, as if pointing a gun.
I’ll be all right, I told myself. Guns are useless against me.
There was a crack in the air, then the Firebringer’s Lens exploded in my fingers, hit square on by the creature’s bullet. I yelled, pulling my hand down.
Shoot my lens rather than me. This one is more clever than the others.
The dark figure walked forward, and part of me wanted to wait to see just what it was that made this creature’s arm and head so misshapen. The rest of me was just plain horrified. The figure started to run, and that was enough. I did the smart thing (I’m capable of that on occasion) and dashed away as quickly as I could.
Instantly, I seemed to be pulled backward. The wind whistled in my ears oddly, and each step felt far more difficult that it should have. I began to sweat, and soon it was tough to even walk.
Something was very, very wrong. As I continued to move, forcing myself on despite the strange force towing me backward, I began to think I could feel the dark thing behind me. I could sense it, twisted and vile, getting closer and closer.
I could barely move. Each. Step. Got. Tougher.
A rope ladder slapped down against the tarmac a short distance in front of me. I cried out and lunged for it, grabbing ahold. My weight must have told those above that I was on board, because the ladder suddenly jerked upward, towing me with it and ripping me free from whatever force had been holding me back. I felt the pressure lighten and glancing down, I let out a relieved breath.
The figure still stood there, indistinct in the fog, only a few feet from where I’d been. It stared up as I was lifted to safety, until the ground and the creature disappeared into the fog.
I let out a sigh of relief, relaxing against the wood and rope. A few minutes later, my ladder and I were pulled free from the fog, bursting out into open air.
I looked up and saw perhaps the most awesome sight I’d ever seen in my entire life.
CHAPTER 2
This is the second book of the series. Those of you who have read the first book can skip this introduction and move on. The rest of you, stay put.
I’d like to congratulate you on finding this book. I’m
glad you’re reading a serious work about real world politics, rather than wasting your time on something silly like a fantasy book about a fictional character like Napoleon. (Either Napoleon, actually. They both have something to do, in their own way, with being Blownapart.)
Now, I do have to admit something. I find it very disturbing that you readers have decided to begin with the second book in the series. That’s a very bad habit to have – worse, even than wearing mismatched socks. In fact, on the bad-habit scale, it ranks somewhere between chewing with your mouth open and making quacking noises when your friends are trying to study. (Try that one sometime – it’s really fun.)
It’s because of people like you that we authors have to clog our second books with all kinds of explanations. We have to, essentially, invent the wheel again – or at least renew our patent.
You should already know who I am, and you should understand Oculatory Lenses and Smedry Talents. With all of that knowledge, you could easily understand the events that led me to the point where I hung dangling from a rope ladder, staring up at something awesome that I haven’t yet described.
Why don’t I just describe it now? Well, by asking that question, you prove that you haven’t read the first book. Let me explain by using a brief object lesson.
Do you remember the first chapter of this book? (I certainly hope that you do, since it was only a few pages back.) What did I promise you there? I promised that I was going to stop using cliff-hangers and other frustrating storytelling practices. Now, what did I do at the end of the very same chapter? I left you with a frustrating cliff-hanger, of course.
That was intended to teach you something: That I’m completely trustworthy and would never dare lie to you. At least not more than, oh, half a dozen times per chapter.
I dangled from the rope ladder, wind whipping at my jacket, heart still pounding from my escape. Flying above me was an enormous glass dragon. Perhaps you’ve seen a dragon depicted in art or cinema. I certainly have. However, looking up at the thing above me in the air, I knew that the images I’d seen in films were only approximations. Those movies tended to make dragons – even the threatening ones – seem bulbous, with large stomachs and awkward wingspans.
The reptilian form above me was nothing like that. There was an incredible sleekness to it, snakelike but at the same time powerful. It had three sets of wings running down the length of its body, and they flapped in harmony. I could see six legs as well – all tucked up underneath the slender body – and it had a long glass tail whipping behind it in the air.
Its triangular head twisted about – translucent glass sparking – and looked at me. It was angular, with sharp lines, like an arrowhead. And there were people standing in its eyeball.
This isn’t a creature at all, I realized, hanging desperately to the ladder. But a vehicle. One crafted completely from glass!
“Alcatraz!” a voice called from above, barely audible over the sound of the wind.
I glanced up. The ladder led into an open section of the dragon’s stomach. A familiar face was poking out of the hole, looking down at me. The same age as I am, Bastille had long, silver hair that whipped in the wind. The last time I’d seen her, she’d gone with two of my cousins into hiding. Grandpa Smedry had worried that keeping us all together was making us easier to track.
She said something, but it was lost in the wind.
“What?” I yelled.
“I said,” she yelled, “are you going to climb up here, or do you intend to hang there looking stupid for the entire trip?”
That’s Bastille for you. She did kind of have a point, though. I climbed up the swinging ladder – which was much harder and much more nerve-racking than you might think.
I forced myself onward. It would have been a pretty stupid end to get lifted to safety at the last moment, then drop off the ladder and squish against the ground below. When I got close enough, Bastille gave me a hand and helped me up into the dragon’s belly. She pulled a glass lever on the wall, and the ladder began to retract.
I watched, curious. At that point in my life, I hadn’t really seen much silimatic technology, and I still considered it all to be “magic.” There was no noise as the ladder came up – no clinking of gears or hum of a motor. The ladder just wound around a turning wheel.
A glass plate slid over the open hole in the floor. Around me, glass walls sparkled in the sunlight, completely transparent. The view was amazing – we’d already moved beyond the fog – and I could see the landscape below, extending in all directions. I almost felt as if I were hovering in the sky, alone, in the beautiful serenity of –
“You done gawking yet?” Bastille snapped, arms folded.
I shot her a glance. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I’m trying to have a beautiful moment here.”
She snorted. “What are you going to do? Write a poem? Come on.” With that, she began to walk along the glass hallway inside the dragon, moving toward the head. I smiled wryly to myself. I hadn’t seen Bastille in over two months, and neither of us had known if the other would even survive long enough to meet up again.
But, where Bastille is concerned, that was actually a nice reception. She didn’t throw anything, or even swear at me. Rather heartwarming.
I rushed to catch up with her. “What happened to your business suit?”
She looked down. Instead of wearing her stylish jacket and slacks, she was dressed in a much more stiff, militaristic costume. Black with silver buttons, it looked kind of like the dress uniforms that military personnel wear on formal occasions. It even had those little metal things on the shoulders that I can never remember how to spell.
“We’re not in the Hushlands anymore, Smedry,” she said. “Or, at least, we soon won’t be. So why wear their clothing?”
“I thought you liked those clothes.”
She shrugged. “It’s my place to wear this now. Besides, I like wearing a glassweave jacket, and this uniform has one.”
I still haven’t figured out how they make clothing out of glass. It’s apparently very expensive but worth the cost. A glassweave jacket could take quite a beating, protecting its wearer almost as well as a suit of armor. Back in the library infiltration we’d done, Bastille had survived a blow that really should have killed her.
“All right,” I said. “What about this thing we’re flying in? I assume it’s some sort of vehicle and not really a living creature?”
Bastille gave me one of her barely tolerant looks. I keep telling her she should trademark those. She could sell photos of herself to scare children, turn milk to curds, or frighten terrorists into surrendering.
She doesn’t find comments like that very funny.
“Of course it’s not alive,” she said. “Alivening things is Dark Oculary, as I believe you’ve been told.”
“Okay, but why make it in the shape of a dragon?”
“What should we do?” Bastille said. “Build our aircraft in the shapes of… long tubey contraptions, or whatever it is those airplanes look like? I can’t believe they stay in the air. Their wings can’t even flap!”
“They don’t need to flap. They have jet engines!”
“Oh, and then why do they have wings?”
I paused. “Something about airlift and physics and stuff like that.”
Bastille snorted again. “Physics,” she muttered. “A Librarian scam.”
“Physics isn’t a scam, Bastille. It’s very logical.”
“Librarian logic.”
“Facts.”
“Oh?” she asked. “And if they’re facts, then why are they so complicated? Shouldn’t explanations about the natural world be simple? Why is there all of that needless math and complexity?” She shook her head, turning away from me. “All of that is just intended to confuse people. If the Hushlanders think that science is too complicated to understand, then they’ll be too afraid to ask questions.”
She eyed me, obviously watching to see if I would cont
inue the argument. I did not. There was one thing about hanging around with Bastille – it was teaching me when to hold my tongue. Even if I didn’t hold my brain.
How does she know so much about what the Librarians teach in their schools? I thought. She knows an awful lot about my people.
Bastille was still an enigma to me. She’d wanted to be an Oculator when she was younger, so she knew quite a bit about Lenses. However, I still couldn’t quite figure out why she’d even wanted to be one so badly in the first place. Everyone – or, well, everyone outside the Hushlands – knows that Oculatory powers are hereditary. One can’t just “become” an Oculator in the same way one can choose to become a lawyer, and accountant, or a potted plant.
Either way, I was finding it increasingly disconcerting to be able to see through the floor, particularly when we were so high up. The motions of the giant vehicle didn’t help either. Now that I was inside of it, I could see that the dragon was made of glass plates that slid together such that the entire thing could move and twist. Each flap of the wings made the body undulate around me.
We reached the head, which I assumed was the dragon’s version of a cockpit. The glass door slid open. I stepped up onto a maroon carpet – thankfully obscuring my view of the ground – and was met by two people.
Neither of them was my grandfather. Where is he? I wondered with growing annoyance. Bastille, strangely, took up position next to the doorway, standing with a stiff back and staring straight ahead.
One of the people turned toward me. “Lord Smedry,” the woman said, standing with arms straight at her sides. She had on a suit of steel plate armor, like what I’d seen in museums. Except this armor seemed a lot better fitting. The pieces bent together in a more flexible manner, and the metal itself was thinner.
The woman bowed her head to me, helmet under her arm, her hair a deep, metallic silver. The face seemed familiar. I glanced at Bastille, then back at the woman.
“You’re Bastille’s mother?” I asked.
“I am indeed, Lord Smedry,” the woman said, the tone of her voice as stiff as her armor. “I am – “