Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

  We’re in serious trouble.

  I picked myself up, rubbing my arm, blinking away the afterimage of the missile explosion. I could feel something as the jet shot past us. A dark twisting in my stomach, just like the feeling I’d felt on the runway. It felt a little like the sense that told me when an Oculator nearby was using one of their Lenses. Yet, this was different. Tainted somehow.

  The creature from the airport was in that jet. Before, it had shot the Lens out of my hand. Now it used a jet that could fire on me without exploding. Somehow, it seemed to understand how to use both Free Kingdoms technology and Hushlands technology together.

  And that seemed a very, very dangerous combination.

  “Do we have any weapons on board the ship?” I asked.

  Bastille shrugged. “I have a dagger.”

  “That’s it?”

  “We’ve got you, cousin,” Australia said. “You’re an Oculator and a Smedry of the pure line. You’re better than any regular weapons.”

  Great, I thought. I glanced up at Bastille’s mother, who stood on the nose of the dragon. “How can she stand there like that?”

  “Grappler’s Glass,” Bastille said. “It sticks to other kinds of glass, and she’s got some plates of it on the bottom of her boots.”

  “Do we have any more?”

  Bastille paused, then – without questioning me – she rushed over to a side of the cockpit, searching through a glass trunk on the floor. She came up a few moments later with a pair of boots.

  “These will do the same thing,” she said, handing them to me. They looked far too large for my feet.

  The ship rocked as Australia dodged another missile. I didn’t know how many of those the jet had, but it seemed like it could carry far more than it should be able to. I slumped back against the wall as the Dragonaut shook, then I pulled the first boot on over my own shoe and tied the laces tight.

  “What are you doing?” Bastille asked. “You’re not planning to go up there, are you?”

  I pulled on the other boot. My heart was beginning to beat faster.

  “What do you expect to do, Alcatraz?” Bastille asked quietly. “My mother is a full Knight of Crystallia. What help could you possibly be to her?”

  I hesitated, and Bastille flushed slightly at how harsh the words had sounded, though it wasn’t really in her nature to retract things like that. Besides, she was right.

  What was I thinking?

  Kaz moved over to us. “This is bad, Bastille.”

  “Oh, you finally noticed that, did you?” she snapped.

  “Don’t get touchy,” he said. “I may like a good ride, but I hate sudden stops as much as the next Smedry. We need an escape plan.”

  Bastille fell silent for a moment. “How many of us can you use your Talent to transport?”

  “Up here, in the sky?” he asked. “Without any place to flee? I’m not sure, honestly. I doubt I’d be able to get all of us.”

  “Take Alcatraz,” Bastille said. “Go now.”

  My stomach twisted. “No,” I said, standing. My feet immediately locked on to the glass floor of the cockpit. When I tried to take a step, however, my foot came free. When I put it down again, it locked into place.

  Nice, I thought, trying not to focus on what I was about to do.

  “Chestnuts, kid!” Kaz swore. “You might not be the brightest torch in the row, but I don’t want to see you get killed. I owe your father that much. Come with me – we’ll get lost, then head to Nalhalla.”

  “And leave the others to die?”

  “We’ll be just fine,” Bastille said quickly. Too quickly.

  The thing is, I paused. It may not seem very heroic, but a large part of me wanted to go with Kaz. My hands were sweating, my heart thumping. The ship rocked as another missile nearly hit us. I saw a spiderweb of cracks appear on the right side of the cockpit.

  I could run. Escape. Nobody would blame me. I wanted so badly to do just that.

  I didn’t. This might look like bravery, but I assure you that I’m a coward at heart. I’ll prove that at another time. For now, simply believe that it wasn’t bravery that spurred me on, it was pride.

  I was the Oculator. Australia had said I was their main weapon. I determined to see what I could do. “I’m going up,” I said. “How do I get there?”

  “Hatch on the ceiling,” Bastille finally said. “In the same room where you came up on the rope. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Kaz caught her arm as she moved. “Bastille, you’re actually going to let him do this?”

  She shrugged. “If he wants to get himself killed, what business is it of mine? It just means one less person we have to worry about saving.”

  I smiled wanly. I knew Bastille well enough to hear the concern in her voice. She was actually worried about me. Or, perhaps, just angry at me. With her, the difference is difficult to judge.

  She took off down the corridor, and I followed, quickly getting the rhythm of walking with the boots. As soon as they touched glass, they locked on, making me stable – something I appreciated when the ship rocked from anther blast. I moved a little more slowly than normal in them, but they were worth it.

  I caught up to Bastille in the room, and she threw a lever, opening a hatch in the ceiling.

  “Why are you letting me do this?” I asked. “Usually you complain when I try to get myself killed.”

  “Yeah, well, at least this time I won’t be the one who looks bad if you die. My mother’s the knight in charge of protecting you.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Plus,” she said. “Maybe you’ll be able to do something. Who knows. You’ve gotten lucky in the past.”

  I smiled, and somehow the vote of confidence – such that it was – bolstered me. I glanced up. “How do I get out there?”

  “Your feet stick to the walls, stupid.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. Taking a deep breath, I stepped up onto the side of the wall. It was easier than I’d thought it would be – silimatic technicians say that Grappler’s Glass works to hold your entire body in place, not just your feet. Either way, I found it rather easy (if a little disorienting) to walk up the side of the wall and out onto the top of the Dragonaut.

  Let’s talk about air. You see, air is a really nifty thing. It lets us make cool sounds with our mouths, it carries smells from one person to another, and without it nobody would be able to play air guitar. Oh, and there is that other thing it does: It lets us breathe, allowing all animal life to exist on the planet. Great stuff, air.

  The thing about air is, you don’t really think about it until (a) you don’t have enough or (b) you have way too much of it. That second one is particularly nasty when you get hit in the face by a bunch of it going somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred miles an hour.

  The wind buffeted me backward, and only the Grappler’s Glass on my feet kept me upright. Even with it, I bent backward precariously, like some gravity-defying dancer in a music video. I’d have felt kind of cool about that if I hadn’t been terrified for my life.

  Bastille must have seen my predicament, for she rushed toward the cockpit. I’m still not sure how she persuaded Australia to slow the ship – by all accounts, that should have been a very stupid thing to do. Still, the wind lessened to a slightly manageable speed, and I was able to clomp my way across the top of the ship toward Draulin.

  Massive wings beat beside me, and the dragon’s snake body rolled. Each step was sure, though. I passed beneath stars and moon, the cloud cover glowing beneath us. I arrived near the front of the vehicle just as Draulin blocked another blast of Frostbringer’s ray. As I grew closer, she spun toward me.

  “Lord Smedry?” she asked, voice muffled by both wind and her helmet. “What in the name of the first sands are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to help!” I yelled above the howl of the wind.

  She seemed dumbfounded. The jet shot past in the night sky, r
ounding for another attack.

  “Go back!” she said, waving with an armored hand.

  “I’m an Oculator,” I said, pointing to my Lenses. “I can stop the Frostbringer’s ray.”

  It was true. An Oculator can use his Oculator’s Lenses to counter and enemy’s attack. I’d seen my grandfather do it when dueling Blackburn. I’d never tried it myself, but, I figured it couldn’t be that hard.

  I was completely wrong, of course. It happens to the best of us at times.

  Draulin cursed, running across the dragon’s back to block another blast. The ship rolled, nearly making me sick, and I was suddenly struck by just how high up I was. I crouched down, holding my stomach, waiting for the world to orient itself again. When it did, Draulin was standing beside me.

  “Go back down!” she yelled. “You can be of no help here!”

  “I – “

  “Idiot!” she yelled. “You’re going to get us killed!”

  I fell silent, the wind tussling my hair. I felt shocked to be treated so, but it was probably no more than I deserved. I turned away, clomping back toward the hatch, embarrassed.

  To the side, the jet fired a missile. The glass on its cockpit fired another Frostbringer’s ray.

  And the Dragonaut didn’t dodge.

  I spun toward the cockpit and could just barely see Australia slumped over her control panel, dazed. Bastille was trying to slap her awake – she’s particularly good at anything that requires slapping – and Kaz was furiously trying to make the ship respond.

  We lurched, but the wrong way. Draulin cried out, barely slicing her sword through the icy beam as she stumbled. She vaporized it, but the missile continued on, directly toward us.

  Directly toward me.

  I’ve talked about the uneasy truce my Talent and I have. Neither of us is really ever in control. I can usually break things if I really want to, but rarely in exactly the way I want. And, my Talent often breaks things when I don’t want it to.

  What I lack in control, I make up for in power. I watched that missile coming, saw its glass length reflect the starlight, and saw the trail of smoke leading back to the fighter behind.

  I stared at my reflection in oncoming death. Then I raised my hand and released my Talent.

  The missile shattered, shards of glass spraying from it, twinkling and spinning into the midnight air. Then, those shards exploded, vaporizing to powdered dust, which sprayed around me, missing me by several inches on each side.

  The smoke from the missile’s engine was still blowing forward, and it licked my fingers. Immediately, the line of smoke quivered. I screamed and a wave of power shot from my chest, pulsing up the line of smoke like water in a tube, moving toward the fighter, which was screaming along in the same path its missile had taken.

  The wave of power hit the jet. All was silent for a moment.

  Then, the fighter just… fell apart. It didn’t explode, like one might see in an action movie. Its separate pieces simply departed one from another. Screws fell out, panels of metal were thrown free, pieces of glass separated from wing and cockpit. In seconds, the entire machine looked like a box of spare parts that had been carelessly tossed into the air.

  The mess shot over the top of the Dragonaut, then fell toward the clouds below. As the pieces disbursed, I caught a glimpse of an angry face in the midst of the metal. It was the pilot, twisting among the discarded parts. In an oddly surreal moment, his eyes met mine, and I saw cold hatred in them.

  The face was not all human. Half looked normal, the other half was an amalgamation of screws, springs, nuts, and bolts – not unlike the pieces of the jet falling around it. One of his eyes was of the deepest, blackest glass.

  He disappeared into the darkness.

  I gasped suddenly, feeling incredibly weak. Bastille’s mother crouched, one hand steadying herself against the roof, watching me with an expression I couldn’t see through her knightly faceplate.

  Only then did I notice the cracks in the top of the Dragonaut. They spread out from me in a spiral pattern, as if my feet had been the source of some great impact. Looking desperately, I saw that most of the giant flying dragon now bore flaws or cracks of some kind. My Talent – unpredictable as always – had shattered the glass beneath me as I’d used it to destroy the jet. Slowly, terribly, the massive dragon began to droop. Another of the wings fell free, the glass cracking and breaking. The Dragonaut lurched.

  I’d saved the ship… but I’d also destroyed it.

  We began to plummet downward.

  CHAPTER 5

  Now, there are several things you should consider doing if you were plummeting to your death atop a glass dragon in the middle of the ocean. Those things do not, mind you, include getting into an extended discussion of classical philosophy.

  Leave that to professionals like me.

  I want you to think about a ship. No, not a flying dragon ship like the one that was falling apart beneath me as I fell to my death. Focus. I obviously survived the crash, since this book is written in the first person.

  I want you to think of a regular ship. The wooden kind, meant for sailing on the ocean. A ship owned by a man named Theseus, a Greek king immortalized by the writer Plutarch.

  Plutarch was a silly little Greek historian best known for being born about three centuries too late, for having a great fascination with dead people, and for being way too long-winded. (he produced well over 800,000 words’ worth of writing. The Honorable Council of Fantasy Writers Whose Books Are Way Too Long – good old THCoFWWBAWTL – is considering making him an honorary member.)

  Plutarch wrote a metaphor about the Ship of Theseus. You see, once the great king Theseus died, the people wanted to remember him. They decided to preserve his ship for future generations.

  The ship got old, and its planks –as wood obstinately insists on doing –began to rot. After that, other pieces got old, and they replaced those too.

  This continued for years. Eventually, every single part on the ship had been replaced. So, Plutarch relates an argument that many philosophers wonder about. Is the ship still the Ship of Theseus? People call it that. Everyone knows it is. Yet, there’s a problem. Not all the pieces are actually from the ship that Theseus used.

  Is it the same ship?

  I think it isn’t. That ship is gone, buried, rotted. The copy everyone then called the Ship of Theseus was really just a… copy. It might have looked the same, but looks can be deceiving.

  Now, what does this have to do with my story? Everything. You see, I’m that ship. Don’t worry. I’ll probably explain it to you eventually.

  The Dragonaut fell into the clouds. The puffs of white passed around me in a furious maelstrom. Then, we were out of them, and I could see something very dark and very vast beneath me.

  The ocean. I had that same feeling as before – the terrible thought that we were all going to die. And this time, it was my fault.

  Stupid mortality.

  The Dragonaut lurched, taking my stomach along with it. The mighty wings continued to beat, reflecting diffuse starlight that shone through the clouds. I’d twisted, looking to the cockpit, and saw Kaz concentrating, hand on the panel. Sweat beaded on his brow, but he managed to keep the ship in the air.

  Something cracked. I looked down, realizing that I was standing in the very center of the broken portion of glass.

  Uh-oh…

  The glass beneath me shattered, but fortunately the ship twisted at that moment, lurching upward. I was thrown down into the body of the vessel. I hit the glass floor, then had the peace of mind to slam one of my feet against the wall – locking it into place – as the ship writhed.

  Kaz was doing an impressive job. The four remaining wings beat furiously, and the ship wasn’t falling as quickly. We’d gone from a plummet of doom into a controlled spiral of doom. I’d twisted, the Grappler’s Glass giving me enough stability to walk back to the cockpit. As I walked, I took off my Lenses and tucked them
into their pocket, feeling lucky that I hadn’t lost them in the chaos.

  Inside, I found Bastille huddled over Australia, who looked very groggy. My cousin was bleeding from a blow to the head – I later learned she’d been thrown sideways into the wall when the ship began to fall.

  I knew exactly what that felt like.

  Bastille managed to strap poor Australia into a harness of some kind. Kaz was still focused on keeping us in the air. “Blasted thing,” he said through gritted teeth, “why do you tall people have to fly up so high?”

  I could just barely see land approaching ahead of us, and I felt a thrill of hope. At that moment, the back half of the dragon broke off, taking two more of the wings with it. We staggered in the air again, spinning, and the wall beside me exploded outward from the pressure.

  Australia screamed, Kaz swore. I fell down on my back, knees bent, feet still planted on the floor.

  And Bastille was sucked out the opening in the wall.

  Now, I’ll tell you time and time again that I’m not a hero. However, sometimes I am a bit quick-witted. As I saw Bastille shoot past me, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to grab her in time.

  I couldn’t grab her, but I could kick her. So I did.

  I slammed my foot into her side as she passed by, as if to shove her out the hole. Fortunately, she stuck to my foot – for, if you will remember, she was wearing a jacket made with glass fibers.

  Bastille whipped out of the Dragonaut, her jacket stuck to the Grappler’s Glass on the bottom of my foot. She twisted about, surprised, but grabbed my ankle to steady herself. This, of course, pulled me up and toward her – though fortunately my other foot was still planted on the glass floor.

  Bastille held on to one foot, as the other stuck to the ship. It was not a pleasant sensation.

  I yelled in pain as Kaz managed to angle the broken machine toward the beach. We crashed into the sand – even more glass breaking –and everything became a jumbled mess of bodies and debris.

  I blinked awake, regaining consciousness a few minutes after the crash. I found myself lying on my back, staring out the broken hole of the ceiling. There was an open patch in the clouds, and I could see the stars.