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The two Smedrys nodded, hurrying off to do as requested.
"Wait!" Bastille said, turning with a sudden shock. "Kaz, you do the counting. Aydee, you stay away from anything of the sort."
"Good call," Kaz said.
“Right!" Aydee called. "I'll give moral support."
And they left. That, unfortunately, left me alone on the wall with Bastille. I gulped, backing away as she walked toward me. My back eventually hit the wall behind; if I backed up any farther, I'd topple over and fall to my death on the ground outside the city.
I considered it anyway.
Bastille reached me, placing a finger against my chest. “You,” she said, "are not going to fail these people."
“But –”
"I'm tired of you wavering back and forth, Alcatraz,” she said. "Shattering Glass! Half the time, you act like you’re panicked by the idea of being in charge, then the other half the time you just take control!”
"I . . . er . . . well . . .”
"And the other half the time you babble incoherently!”
“I like babbling!" I exclaimed. (I'm not sure why.)
"Besides, that sounds like some Aydee math. Three halves?"
She eyed me.
"Yes, you're right about me," I said. “Sometimes, this all feels like a game. It twists my head in knots to think of the things I've been through, the things that have become part of my life. I get carried away with it all, with what everyone expects of me just because of my name.
"But I've already decided I want to lead. I decided it months ago. I want to be a hero; I want to be a leader. But that doesn't mean I want to be a king! When I actually stop to think about it, I realize how insane it is."
"Then don't stop to think," Bastille said. “I don’t see why it should be so hard. Not thinking seems to be one of your specialties."
I grimaced. "The things you say to me don’t help either, Bastille. Every time I think that I'm starting to do well, I get a faceful of insults from you. And I can never tell if I deserve them or not!"
She narrowed her eyes further, finger pressed my sternum. I cringed, preparing for the storm.
"I like you," she said.
I blinked, righting myself. "What?"
"I. Like. You. So I insult you."
I scratched at my head. ".drawkcab ecnetnes a epyt ot dluow ti sa esnes hcum sa tuoba sekam taht ,ellitsaB"
She scowled at me, lowering her hand. "If you don't understand, I'm not going to explain it to you."
Boys, welcome to the wonderful world of talking to women about their feelings. As a handy primer, here are a few things you should know:
1) Women have feelings.
2) You will spend the next seventy years or so trying to guess what they're feeling and why.
3) You will be wrong most of the time.
4) I like French fries.
That's about all the help I can give you, I'm afraid. If it's any consolation, at least the women in your life don't have anger-management issues and a tendency to carry around five-foot-long magical swords.
"Look," Bastille said. "It's not important. What's important is saving Mokia. If you didn't notice, that was my sister who just got towed away unconscious. I’m not going to let the kingdom fall while she’s out."
"But shouldn't a Mokian be king?”
"You are Mokian," Bastille said. “And Nalhallan, and Fracois, and Unkulu. You're a Smedry - you're considered a citizen of all kingdoms. Besides, you do have Mokian blood in you. The Smedry line and the Mokian royal line has often intermixed. It wasn't odd for your uncle Millhaven to marry a Mokian. His wife is a third cousin of Mallo’s, and your great-great-grandfather was the son of a Mokian prince."
I blinked. Bastille, it should be noted, rarely shows her princessly nature. She has a tendency to rip up anything pink, her singing sounds remarkably like the sound produced when you drop a rock on the tail of a wildebeest, and the last time a sweet flock of forest animals showed up and tried to help her clean, she chased them for the better part of an hour swinging her sword and cursing like a sailor.
But she does think like a king's daughter sometimes. And she was force-fed all kinds of princessly information as a child, including long, boring lists of royal family trees. She knows which prince married which hypercountess and which superduke is cousins with which earl.
Yes. In the Free Kingdoms, we have royal titles like superdukes and hypercountesses. It's complicated.
"So . . . I really am in the royal line," I said, shocked.
"Of course you are. You're a Smedry - you're related to three quarters of the kings and queens out there."
"But not you, right?"
"What? No. Not in any important way. We might be fourteenth, upside-down übercousins or something."
I eyed her, trying to figure out what the gak an "upside-down übercousin" was. Sounded like the kind of drink a kid my age wasn't allowed to order.
It should be stressed that Bastille and I are certainly not directly related. At least, we weren't at that point.
"All right," I said. "But I don't know anything about running a war."
"Fortunately, I do. Troop morale and logistics were part of my training as a princess, and I have practice with battlefield tactics as part of my Crystin training."
"Great! You can take over for me, then!”
She shook her head, eyes going wide, face getting a little white. "Don't be stoopid.”
"Er, why not?"
As I think about it, that was kind of a stoopid answer, which was fitting, if you think about it. Me, I try not to think about anything. Oooh . . . shiny . . .
Bastille grimaced. "You need to ask? I’m not what this people need. I'm not inspiring. You are. You’re a king. I’m a general. They're different, different sets of skills.” She nodded toward the Mokian soldiers standing atop the walls. A lot of them didn't look much like warriors. Oh, they had war paint and spears. But not many of them were muscular.
"Mokia is a kingdom of scholars and craftspeople, Alcatraz,” Bastille said softly. "Why do you think the Librarians attacked here first? They've been besieged for months now, their country at war for years. Many of the trained soldiers have already been knocked unconscious or killed. Do you have any idea what the loss of both the king
and queen could mean? They're demoralized, wounded, and beaten down."
She lifted her finger, tapping me in the chest again. "They need someone to lead them. They need someone spectacular, someone miraculous. Someone who can keep them fighting for just a little longer, until your grandfather arrives with help."
“And, uh, that someone is me?"
"Yes," she said, almost grudgingly. "I told you a few months back that I believed in you. Well, I do. I believe in what you can be when you're confident. Not when you're arrogant, but when you're confident. When you decide to do something, really decide, you do amazing things. I wish you could be that person a little more often."
I scratched my head. "I think that person is a lie, Bastille. I'm not confident. I just get lucky."
"You get lucky a lot. Particularly when we really need it. You saved your father, you got the Sands back, you rescued the kings."
"That last one was mostly you," I said with a grimace.
"The idea that got us free was yours,” she said, "and you spotted Archedis."
I shrugged. "It seems that when I get desperate, my mind works better. I'm not sure if that's something to be proud of or not."
"Well, it's what we've got,” Bastille said, "so we're going to work with it. I'll organize the troops. You be confident, give the Mokians the sense that someone’s in charge. Together, we'll hold this city together until the old Smedry gets here."
"He'll probably be late, you know.”
"Oh, I'm certain he will be," Bastille said...The question isn't, 'Will he be late?' The question is, 'How late is he going to be?’"
I nodded grimly.
"You ready to be a king?” she asked.
I hesitated just briefly. “Yes.”
"Good," she said, spinning as screams erupted from the center of the city. "Because I think another group of Librarians just tunneled in.”
CHAPTER 070706
Don’t yawn.
I shouldn’t have agreed to be king. If you’ve been following these books, you know that my early experiences set me up to fail. Being a celebrity made me think that I was much more important than I really was, and success led me to take more responsibility than I should have. That all meant I fell really far when I did fall.
