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A few minutes of rest had done him some good, and the twinkle was back in his eyes as he stood up, dusting off his soggy tuxedo. "Of course we do, lad! We're Smedrys!"
Smedrys. I still didn't really understand what that meant. For your information, it meant . . . well, I'll explain it in the next chapter. I'm feeling too lazy right now.
One of the servants, a doctor of some sort, began to prod at Grandpa Smedry, looking into his eyes, asking him to count backward. Grandpa looked as if he wanted to escape the treatment, but then noticed Bastille and Draulin standing side by side, arms folded, similarly determined expressions on their faces. Their postures indicated that my grandfather and I would be checked over, even if our knights had to string us up by our heels to make it happen.
I sighed, leaning back against the rim of the tower. "Hey, Bastille," I said as some servants brought me and Grandpa Smedry towels.
"What?" she asked, walking over.
"How'd you get down?" I said, nodding to the broken Hawkwind. "Everyone else was trapped inside when I woke up."
"l . . .”
"She jumped free!" Australia exclaimed. "Draulin said the glass was precarious and that we should test it, but Bastille jumped right on out!"
Bastille shot Australia a glare, but the Mokian girl kept on talking, oblivious. "She must have been really worried about you, Alcatraz. She ran right over to your side. I –“
Bastille tried, subtly, to stomp on Australia's foot.
"Oh!" Australia said. "We squishing ants?"
Remarkably, Bastille blushed. Was she embarrassed for disobeying her mother? Bastille tried so hard to please the woman, but I was certain that pleasing Draulin was pretty much impossible. I mean, it couldn't have been concern for me that made her jump out of the vehicle. I was well aware of how infuriating she found me.
But . . . what if she was worried about me? What did that mean? Suddenly, I found myself blushing too.
And now I am going to do everything in my power to distract you from that last paragraph. I really shouldn't have written it. I should have been smart enough to clam up. I should have flexed my mental muscles and stopped thinking at a snail's pace.
Have I mentioned how shellfish I can be sometimes?
At that moment, Sing burst up the stairs, saving Bastille and me from our awkward moment. Sing Sing Smedry, my cousin and Australia's older brother, was an enormous titan of a man. Well over six feet tall, he was rather full-figured. (Which is a nice way of saying he was kinda fat.) The Mokian man had the Smedry Talent for tripping and falling to the ground – which he did the moment he reached the top of the tower.
I swear, I felt the stones themselves shake. Every one of us ducked, looking for danger. Sing's Talent tends to activate when something is about to hurt him. That moment, however, no danger appeared. Sing looked around, then climbed to his feet and rushed over to grab me out of my nervous crouch and give me a suffocating hug.
"Alcatraz!" he exclaimed. He reached out an arm and grabbed Australia, giving her a hug as well. "You guys have to read the paper I wrote about Hushlander bartering techniques and advertising methodology! It's so exciting!"
Sing, you see, was an anthropologist. His expertise was Hushland cultures and weaponry, though, fortunately, this time he didn't appear to have any guns strapped to his body. The sad thing is, most people I've met in the Free Kingdoms – particularly my family – would consider reading an anthropological study to be exciting. Somebody really needs to introduce them to video games.
Sing finally released us, then turned to Grandpa Smedry and gave a quick bow. "Lord Smedry," he said. "We need to talk. There has been trouble in your absence."
"There's always trouble in my absence," Grandpa Smedry said. "And a fair lot of it when I'm here too. What's it this time?"
"The Librarians have sent an ambassador to the Council of Kings," Sing explained.
"Well," Grandpa Smedry said lightly, "I hope the ambassador’s posterior didn’t get hurt too much when Brig tossed him out of the city.”
“The High King didn’t banish the ambassador, my lord,” Sing said softly. "In fact, I think they're going to sign a treaty.”
“That’s impossible!” Bastille cut in. “The High King would never ally with the Librarians!”
“Squire Bastille,” Draulin snapped, standing stiffly with her hands behind her back. “Hold your place and do not contradict your betters.”
Bastille blushed, looking down.
“Sing,” Grandpa Smedry said urgently. “This treaty, what does it say about the fighting in Mokia?”
Sing glanced aside. “I . . . well, the treaty would hand Mokia over to the Librarians in exchange for an end to the war.”
“Debating Dashners!” Grandpa Smedry exclaimed. “We’re late! We need to do something!” He immediately dashed across the rooftop and scrambled down the stairwell.
The rest of glanced at one another.
“We’ll have to act with daring recklessness and an intense vibrato!" Grandpa Smedry's voice echoed out of the stairwell. "But that's the Smedry way!"
"We should probably follow him," I said.
"Yeah,” Sing said, glancing about. "He just gets so excited. Where's Lord Kazan?"
"Isn't he here?" Australia said. "He sent the Hawkwind back for us."
Sing shook his head. "Kaz left a few days ago, claiming he'd meet back up with you."
"His Talent must have lost him," Australia said, sighing. "There's no telling where he might be."
"Uh, hello?" Grandpa Smedry's head popped out of the stairwell. "Jabbering Joneses, people! We've got a disaster to avert! Let's get moving!"
"Yes, Lord Smedry," Sing said, waddling over. "But where are we going?"
"Send for a crawly!" the elderly Oculator said. “We need to get to the Council of Kings!"
"But . . . they're in session!"
“All the better,” Grandpa Smedry said, raising a hand dramatically. "Our entrance will be much more interesting that way!"
CHAPTER 3
Having royal blood is a really big pain. Trust me, I have some very good sources on this. They all agree: Being a king stinks. Royally.
First off, there are the hours. Kings work all of them. If there's an emergency at night, be ready to get up, because you're king. Inconvenient war starting in the middle of the play-offs? Tough. Kings don't get to have vacations, potty breaks, or weekends.
Instead, they get something else: responsibility.
Of all the
things in the world that come close to being crapaflapnasti, responsibility is the most terrible. It makes people eat salads instead of candy bars, and makes them go to bed early of their own free choice. When you're about to launch yourself into the air strapped to the back of a rocket-propelled penguin, it's that blasted responsibility that warns you that the flight might not be good for your insurance premiums.
I'm convinced that responsibility is some kind of psychological disease. What else but a brain malfunction would cause someone to go jogging? The problem is, kings need to have responsibility like nothing else. Kings are like deep, never-ending wells of responsibility – and if you don't watch out, you may get tainted by them.
The Smedry clan, fortunately, realized this a number of years back. And so they did something about it.
"We did what?" I asked.
"Gave up our kingdom," Grandpa Smedry said happily. "Poof. Gone. Abdicated."
"Why did we do that?"
"For the good of candy bars everywhere," Grandpa Smedry said, eyes twinkling. "They need to be eaten, you see."
"Huh?" I asked. We stood on a large castle balcony, waiting for a "crawly," whatever that was. Sing was with us, along with Bastille and her mother. Australia had stayed behind to run an errand for Grandpa Smedry, and my father had disappeared into his rooms. Apparently, he couldn't be bothered by something as simple as the impending fall of Mokia as a sovereign kingdom.
"Well, let me explain it this way,” Grandpa Smedry said, hands behind his back as he looked out over the city. “A number of centuries ago, the people realized that there were just too many kingdoms. Most were only the size of a city, and you could barely go for an afternoon stroll without passing through three or four of them!"
"I hear it was a real pain," Sing agreed. "Every kingdom had its own rules, its own culture, its own laws."
"Then the Librarians started conquering," Grandpa Smedry explained. "The kings realized that they were too easy to pick off. So they began to band together, joining their kingdoms into one, making alliances."
