AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I noted the look of relief in Bastille’s face. She does care, I realized. Despite all the grumbling, despite all the complaints. She really is worried about him.
“What’s going on?” Sing whispered. He was too big to fit beside the door with the two of us.
“Old Smedry is handling the torture with poise,” Bastille said. “But Quentin looks like he’s had a hard time.”
“Is he babbling?” Sing asked.
Bastille nodded.
“Then he’s gone into anti-information mode,” Sing said. “He can engage his Talent so that it translates everything he says into gibberish. He can’t turn it off, even if he wants to—not until it wears off a day later.”
“That’s why he makes such a good spy,” I realized. “He can’t betray secrets—they can’t force him to talk, no matter how hard they try!”
Sing nodded.
Inside the room, Blackburn stomped around the table. He grabbed a knife from a rack of torturing implements, then rammed it toward Grandpa Smedry’s leg.
It missed, sliding just to the side, and Blackburn swore in frustration. He held the knife up, steadied his hand, then carefully plunged it down again.
This time, it hit Grandpa’s leg and jabbed directly into the flesh.
“Shattered Glass,” Bastille cursed. “The knife is too advanced a weapon—it can get past old Smedry’s Talent.”
I stared in shock at the cut in my grandfather’s leg. No blood came out, however.
“It’s a good thing I don’t need to go to the bathroom,” Grandpa Smedry said in a cheerful voice. “That would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?”
“We have to do something,” Bastille said urgently. “He’s powerful, but he can’t hold back the pain—or the wounds—forever.”
“But we can’t fight a Dark Oculator,” Sing said. “Especially not without your sword, Bastille.”
I stood. “Then we’ll have to get him to leave Grandpa alone. Come on!” With that, I rushed down the hallway. Bastille and Sing followed in a dash.
“Alcatraz!” Bastille said as soon as we were a safe distance from the torture room. “What are you planning?”
“We need a distraction,” I said. “Something that will draw Blackburn away long enough for us to get in and rescue Grandpa Smedry. And I think I know of one.”
Bastille was about to object, but at that moment Sing tripped. Bastille and I ducked to the side just as a pair of bow-tied, sword-carrying Librarian soldiers came up out of the stairwell ahead. Bastille cursed, dashing toward them with a sudden burst of Crystin speed.
The stairs they had come up were the very same stairs that we ourselves had come up a few hours before. That meant the door I wanted was—
I threw my weight against it, pushing open the door and stepping into a room filled with caged dinosaurs.
“Good day!” said Charles. “I see that you have not ended up dead. What a pleasant surprise!”
“Did you bring us something to eat?” the tyrannosaurus asked hopefully.
“Better,” I said, then rushed into the room, touching the cage locks as I moved. Each one my fingers brushed against snapped open, the complicated gears inside breaking easily before my Talent.
“Why, what a good chap you are!” Charles said. The group of twenty dinosaurs agreed with eager, loud voices.
“I’ve freed you,” I said. “But I need something in return. Can you cause a disturbance downstairs for me?”
“Of course, my good fellow!” Charles said. “We’re excellent at creating disturbances, aren’t we, George?”
“Indeed, indeed!” said the stegosaurus.
With that I stepped aside, waving eagerly, trying to begin a stampede of undersized dinosaurs. They, of course, filed out of the room in a very gentlemanly manner—for, as everyone knows, all British are refined, calm, and well-mannered. Even if they are a bunch of dinosaurs.
I followed the group out of the room, trying to whip them into a frenzy—or at least a mild agitation.
“That’s your plan?” Bastille asked flatly, standing above two unconscious Librarians.
“They’ll make a disturbance,” I said. “I mean, they’re dinosaurs.”
Bastille and Sing shared a look.
“What?” I said. “Don’t you think it’ll work?”
“You know very little about dinosaurs, Alcatraz,” Bastille said as the dinosaurs went down the stairs to the first floor.
We waited. We waited for painful minutes, hiding in the Forgotten Language room. We heard no cries of panic. No yells for help. No sounds of people being chewed up by rampaging, bloodthirsty reptiles.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” I said, rushing from the room and running over to the hallway with the broken floor. I got on my hands and knees and peered through the opening, hoping to catch a glimpse of chaos below.
Instead, I saw the dinosaurs sitting in a group, several stacks of books settled around them. One of them—the stegosaurus—appeared to be reading to the others.
“Dinosaurs,” Bastille said. “Useless.”
“They are easily distracted by books, Alcatraz,” Sing said. “I don’t think they’re going to help much.”
“Hey!” I called with an annoyed voice. “Charles.”
The little pterodactyl looked up. “Ah, my good friend!”
“What about the chaos?” I demanded.
“Done!” Charles said.
“We each moved six books out of their proper places,” called George the stegosaurus. “It will take them days to find them all and put them back.”
“Though we did put them into place backward,” Charles said. “You know, so they could be seen more easily. We wouldn’t want it to be too hard.”
“Too hard?” I asked, stupefied. “Charles, these are the people who were going to kill you and bury your bones in an archaeological dig!”
“Well, that’s no reason to be uncivilized!” Charles said.
“Indeed!” called a duck-billed dinosaur.
I knelt, blinking.
“Dinosaurs,” Bastille said again. “Useless.”
“Don’t worry, my Oculator friend!” Charles called. “We gave them a little extra kick! We had Douglas eat the science fiction section!”
“Well,” admitted Douglas the T. rex, “I only ate the ‘C’ section. Honestly—claiming that velociraptors were the smartest dinosaurs? I knew a velociraptor in college, and he failed chemistry. Plus, resurrecting a character just because he didn’t die in the movie? Poppycock, I say!”
I sat back. Bastille had the dignity not to say, “I told you so.” Or at least she had the dignity not to say it a third time.
We need another plan. Another plan. Can’t stop to think about the failure. We need to draw the Dark Oculator away. Need to …
I stood, steeling my nerves.
“Another idea?” Sing asked, clearly a little apprehensive.
I took off again. Sing and Bastille followed reluctantly. But they hadn’t come up with anything better. My failure with the dinosaurs had come from relying on misinformation. In most books, two dozen rampaging dinosaurs would have been a distraction worthy of even a Dark Oculator’s attention.
That’s why most books aren’t true. Sorry, kids.
I dashed back toward the torturing room. The guards still lay unconscious in the hallway where Bastille had left them. I checked the knothole—Blackburn was still there inside, and he had apparently decided to rough up Grandpa Smedry with slaps to the face.
“I think I’ll go for a walk.…” Grandpa Smedry said cheerfully.
“Wasing not of wasing is,” Quentin added.
I gritted my teeth. Then I pulled the velvet pouch out of my pocket and looked inside.
“Alcatraz…” Bastille said carefully. “You can’t defeat him. You might have a powerful Lens, but that’s not everything. Blackburn will be able to deflect that Firebringer’s Lens with his Oculator’s Lens.”
“I know,” I said. “Sing, take these two unc
onscious men and hide them—with yourself—in the Forgotten Language room.”
My cousin opened his mouth as if to object, but then paused. Finally he nodded. He easily lifted the two unconscious men, then left down the hallway.
