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Who loved her.
My Lenses were gone. My Talent was gone. I only had one thing left.
I was a Smedry.
"Folsom!" I screamed. "Do you love her?"
"What?" he asked.
"Do you love Himalaya?"
"Of course I do! Please, don't let him kill her!"
"Himalaya,” I demanded, "do you love him?"
She nodded as the knife began to cut. It was enough.
"Then I pronounce you married,” I said.
Everyone froze for a moment. A short distance away, my mother turned and looked at us, suddenly alarmed. Fitzroy raised an eyebrow, his knife slightly bloodied. My theme music played faintly from the little book on the floor.
"Well, that's touching,” Fitzroy said. "Now you can die as a married woman! I –“
At that moment, Himalaya's fist took him in the face.
The ropes that bound her fell to the ground, snapped and broken, as she leaped into the air and kicked the two thugs beside her. The men went down, unconscious, and Himalaya spun like a dancer toward the group standing behind. She cleared them all with a sweeping kick, delivered precisely, despite the fact that she seemed to have no idea what she was doing.
Her face was determined, her eyes wide with rage; a little trickle of blood ran down her throat. She twisted and spun, fighting with a beautiful, uncoordinated rage, fully under the control of her brand-new Talent.
She was now Himalaya Smedry. And, as everyone knows (and I believe I've pointed out to you), when you marry a Smedry, you get their Talent.
I rolled to where Fitzroy had fallen. More important, where his knife had fallen. I kicked it across the floor to Bastille, who – being Bastille – caught it even though her hands (literally) were tied behind her back. In a second, she'd cut herself free. In another second, both Sing and I were free.
Fitzroy sat up, holding his cheek, dazed. I grabbed the Disguiser's Lenses off his face, and he immediately shrank back to being spindly and freckled. "Sing, grab him and make for the archives room!"
The hefty Mokian didn't need to hear that again. He easily tucked the squirming Fitzroy under his arm while Bastille attacked the thugs who were holding Folsom down, defeating them both. But then she wavered nauseously.
"Get to the room, everyone!" I yelled as Himalaya kept the thugs at bay. Bastille nodded, wobbling as she helped the prince to his feet. Shasta watched from the side, yelling for the thugs to attack – but they were wary of engaging a Smedry Talent.
After struggling for a second to get that band of glass off my arm – it wouldn't budge – I pulled open the drawer of the table and snatched the book my mother had stowed there.
That left us with one major problem. We were right back where we'd been when I'd made us surrender. Retreating into the archives room wouldn't help if we remained surrounded by Librarians. We had to activate the swap. Unfortunately, there was no way I'd be able to reach those terminals. I figured I only had one chance.
Folsom rushed past, grabbing the still-playing music book off the ground and snapping it closed so Himalaya could come out of her super-kung-fu-Librarian-chick trance. She froze midkick, looking dazed. She had dropped all the thugs around her. Folsom grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her into a kiss. Then he pulled her after the others.
That only left me. I looked across the room at my mother, who met my eyes. She seemed rather self-confident, considering what had happened, and I figured that she figured that I couldn't escape. Go figure.
I grabbed the pile of electrical cords off the ground and – pulling as hard as I could – yanked them out of their sockets in the machinery. Then I raced after my friends.
Bastille waited at the door that led into the archives room. "What's that?" she said, pointing at the cords.
"Our only chance," I replied, ducking into the room. She followed, then slammed the door – or, at least, what was left of it. It was pitch dark inside. I'd broken the lamps.
I heard the breathing of my little group, shallow worried.
"What now?" Sing whispered.
I held the cords in my hands. I touched the tips with my fingers, then closed my eyes. This was a big gamble. Sure, I'd been able to make the music box work, but this was something completely different.
I didn't have time to doubt myself. The Librarians would be upon us in a few moments. I held those cords, held my breath, and activated them like I would a pair of Oculator's Lenses.
Immediately, something drained from me. My strength was sapped away, and I felt a shock of exhaustion – as if my body had decided to run a marathon when I wasn't looking. I dropped the cords, wobbling, and reached out to steady myself against Sing.
"You're all dead, you know," Fitzroy sputtered in the darkness; he was still held – I assumed – under Sing's arm. "They'll burst in here in a second and then you're dead. What did you think? You're trapped! Sandless idiots!"
I took a deep breath, righting myself. Then I pushed the door open.
The blond Knight of Crystallia standing guard was still outside. "You all right?" she asked, peeking in. "What happened?" Behind her, I could see the stone stairwell of the Royal Archives, still packed with soldiers.
"We're back!" Sing said. "How . . . ?"
"You powered the glass," Bastille said, looking at me. "Like you did with Rikers's silimatic music box. You initiated a swap!"
I nodded. At my feet, the cords to the Librarian machinery lay cut at the ends. Our swap had severed them where they'd poked through the door.
"Shattering Glass, Smedry!" Bastille said. "How in the name of the first Sands did you do that?”
"I don't know," I said, rushing out the doorway. “We can worry about it later. Right now, we've got to save Mokia.”
CHAPTER 20
Questions.
We're at the end, and you probably have a few of them. If you've been paying attention closely, you probably have more than just "a few."
You should probably have more than you do.
I've tried to be honest, as honest as I can be. I haven't lied about anything important.
But some of the people in the story . . . well, they're lying for certain.
No matter how much you think you know, there is always more to learn. It all has to do with Librarians, knights, and, of course, fish sticks. Enjoy this next part. I'll see you in the Epilogue.
“Aha!" I said, pulling not one but two pairs of Translator's Lenses from Fitzroy's jacket. The Dark Oculator himself lay tied up on the floor as we rode in the prince's giant glass pig. I'd told my soldiers to get some sort of equipment and dig to the corner of the archives room and remove the glass there, so that the Librarians couldn't swap the room back and steal any of the other books.
"I still don't understand what happened," Sing said, sitting nervously as our vehicle plodded toward the palace.
"Oculators can power glass," I said. "Like Lenses.”
"Lenses are magic," Sing said. "That Transporter's Glass was technology."
"The two are more similar than you think, Sing. In fact, I think all of these powers are connected. Do you remember what you said when you and I were hiding down there a few moments ago? The thing about your sister?”
"Sure," Sing said. "I mentioned that I wished she'd been there, because she could have imitated one of the Librarians."
"Which I could do with these," I said, holding up the pair of Disguiser's Lenses, which we'd retrieved from Fitzroy. "Sing, these work just like Australia's Talent does. If she falls asleep thinking about somebody, she wakes up looking just like them. Well, if I wear these and concentrate, I can do the same thing."
"What are you saying, Alcatraz?" Folsom asked.
"I'm not sure," I admitted. "It just seems suspicious to me. I mean, look at your Talent. It makes you a better warrior when you hear music, right?"
He nodded.
"Well, what do Bastille's Warrior's Lenses do?" I said. "They make her a better fighter. My uncle Kaz's Talent lets him tra
nsport people across great distances, which sounds an awful lot like what that Transporter's Glass did."
"Yes," Sing said. "But what about your grandfather's Talent? It lets him arrive late to things, and there aren't Lenses that do that.”
"There are lots of types of glass we don't know about," I said. I picked up one of the rings of Inhibitor's Glass, which we'd managed to get off our arms using a set of keys in Fitzroy's pocket. "You thought these were mythical."
Sing fell silent, and I turned, watching through the translucent walls as we approached the palace. "I think this is all related," I said more softly. "The Smedry Talents, silimatic technology, Oculators . . . and whatever it is my mother is trying to accomplish. It's all connected."
