Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

I stared in shock. That really was my mother, Shasta Smedry. She’d ditched the wig she’d been wearing at the party and wore her usual blonde hair up in a bun, along with standard-issue horn-rimmed glasses. Her face was so hard. Emotionless. Even more so than what I’d seen from other Librarians.

My heart twisted. Other than the faint glimpses of her I’d caught earlier in the day, this was the first time I’d seen her since the library in my hometown. The first time I’d seen her since … learning that she was my mother.

Shasta was accompanied by a dangerously large group of Librarian thugs—oversized, muscle-bound types that wore bow ties and glasses. (Kind of like a genetic mutant created by mixing nerd DNA with linebacker DNA. I’ll bet they spend their free time giving themselves wedgies, then stuffing themselves in lockers.)

Also with her was a young, freckled man about twenty years old. He wore a sweater vest and slacks (Librarian-type clothing) and had on glasses. Tinted ones.

A Dark Oculator, I thought. So I was right. He would be there to use the Translator’s Lenses for her, but this guy didn’t seem nearly as dangerous as Blackburn had been. Of course, my mother more than made up for the difference.

But how had they gotten past the soldiers on the stairs? It looked like Sing had been right, and they’d been tunneling into the stairwell. Shouldn’t we have heard sounds of fighting? What of the two knights on duty? I itched to rush out and see what had happened.

The group of Librarians stopped at the front of the room. I remained hidden behind my wall of books. Bastille had successfully pulled the prince and Folsom behind another wall of books, and I could just barely see her peeking around the corner. She and I met each other’s eyes, and I saw the questions in her face.

Something very odd was going on. Why hadn’t we heard any sounds of fighting from the stairwell?

“Something very odd is going on here,” my mother said, her voice echoing in the quiet room. “Why are all these books stacked like this?”

The freckled Oculator adjusted his spectacles. Fortunately, they weren’t red-tinted Oculator’s Lenses—which would have let him notice me—but were instead tinted with orange-and-blue stripes. I didn’t recognize that type.

“The scholars I interviewed said the place was messy, Shasta,” he said in a kind of nasal voice, “but who knows what they consider clean or messy? These stacks look like they were arranged and organized by a buffoon!”

Himalaya huffed in outrage, and Sing had to grab her by the arm to keep her from marching out to defend her cataloging abilities.

“All right,” Shasta said. “I don’t know how long it will be before someone notices what we’ve done. I want to find that book and get out of here as soon as possible.”

I frowned. That made it seem like they had gotten into the room by stealth. It was a good plan; if a book disappeared from the Royal-Archives-Not-a-LibraryTM, then it would probably be centuries before anyone realized it was gone. If they even realized it at all.

But that meant my mother and a group of about thirty Librarians had managed to sneak past the archives’ defenses. That seemed impossible.

Either way, we were in trouble. I didn’t have any offensive Lenses, and Bastille’s severing had her on the brink of collapse. That left us with Folsom. I’d just seen him do some serious damage, but I hated trusting a Smedry Talent as unpredictable as his.

It seemed a far, far better idea to get out and grab our army, then come back for a fight. I liked that idea a whole lot, particularly since we’d probably be able to send to the palace for Grandpa Smedry. (And maybe the Free Kingdomer version of a Sherman tank or two.)

But how to get out? The Librarians were beginning to move through the stacks. We were near the middle of the room, our position shadowed by a lack of lamplight, but we obviously couldn’t remain hidden for long.

“All right,” I whispered to Sing and Himalaya, “we need to get out of here! Any ideas?”

“Maybe we could sneak around the outside of the room,” Himalaya said, pointing at the mazelike corridors.

I didn’t like the idea of risking running into one of those thugs. I shook my head.

“We could hide in the back,” Sing whispered. “Hope they get frustrated and leave.…”

“Sing, this is a whole group of Librarians,” I said. “They’ll all be able to do what Himalaya did. They’ll sort through this room in minutes!”

Himalaya snorted quietly. “I doubt it,” she said. “I was one of the Wardens of the Standard—the best sorters in all the world. Most of those are just basic acolytes. They’ll barely be able to alphabetize, let alone sort based on the Sticky Hamstring methodology.”

“Either way,” I whispered, “I doubt they’re going to leave without this.” I glanced down at the volume I still carried, then looked across the central aisle to Bastille. She looked tense, poised. She was getting ready to fight—which tended to be her solution to a lot of things.