Behind me, Sing’s shotgun began to click, out of ammunition.
I lowered my hand, staring at the hilt. My Talent, unpredictable as always, had broken the sword. I stood for a long moment—far longer, undoubtedly, than I should have in those circumstances. I gripped the broken hilt.
And began to grow angry.
All my life, my Talent had ruled me. I’d pretended to go along with it, pretended that I was the one in control, but that had been a sham. I’d purposely driven my foster families away because I’d known that sooner or later, the Talent would do it for me—no matter what I wanted.
It was my master. It defined who I was. I couldn’t be myself—whoever that was—because I was too busy getting into trouble for breaking things.
Grandpa Smedry and the others called my Talent a blessing. Yet I had trouble seeing that. Even during the infiltration, it seemed like the Talent had been only accidentally useful. Power was nothing without control.
The Alivened stepped forward, and I looked up, teeth clenched in frustration. I gripped the sword hilt tightly.
I don’t want this, I thought. I never wanted any of this! Bastille wanted to be an Oculator … well, I just wanted one thing.
To be normal!
The hilt began to break in my hand, the carefully welded bits of steel falling free and clinking to the ground. “You want breaking?” I yelled at the Alivened. “You want destruction?”
The creature swung at me and I screamed, slamming my hand palm-forward to the floor. A surge of Talent electrified my body, focusing through my chest and then down my arm. It was a jolt of power like I’d never summoned before.
The floor broke. Or perhaps shattered would be a more appropriate word. Exploded would have worked, except that I used that one a bit earlier.
The stone blocks shook violently. The Alivened stumbled, the floor beneath it surging like waves on an ocean. Then the blocks dropped. They fell away before me, tumbling toward the level beneath. Bookshelves in the massive library room below were smashed as blocks of stone rained down, accompanied by an enormous paper monster.
The Alivened hit the ground, and there was a distinct shattering noise. It did not rise.
I spun wildly, dropping the last bits of the sword hilt. Sing was furiously reloading the shotgun. I brushed by him, charging the second Alivened. I reached to touch the ground, but the massive beast jumped, moving quickly out of the way. It was obviously smart enough to see what I had just done to its companion.
I raised a hand, slamming it into the jumping creature’s chest. Then I released my Talent.
There was a strange, instant backlash—like hitting something solid with a baseball bat. I was thrown backward, my arm blazing with sudden pain.
The Alivened landed in a stumble. It stood for a moment, teetering. Then it exploded with a whooshing sound, a thousand crumpled sheets of paper erupting in an enormous, confetti-like burst.
I sat for a moment, staring. I blinked a few times, then lifted my hurt arm, wincing. Paper filled the corridor, bits fluttering around us.
“Wow,” Sing said, standing up. He turned around, looking at the massive pit I had created. “Wow.”
“I … didn’t really do that intentionally,” I said. “I just kind of let my power go, and that’s what happened.”
“I’ll take it, either way,” Sing said, resting the shotgun on his shoulder.
I climbed to my feet, shaking my arm. It didn’t seem broken. “Bastille,” I said, staggering over to her. She was moving, fortunately, and as I arrived she groaned, then managed to sit up. Her jacket looked … shattered. Like the windshield of a car after it collides with a giant penguin.
Blasted giant penguins.
I tried to help Bastille to her feet, but she shook off my hands with annoyance. She wobbled a bit as she stood, then pulled off her jacket, looking at the spiderweb of lines. “Well, I guess that’s useless now.”
“Probably saved your life, Bastille,” Sing said.
She shrugged, dropping it to the floor. It crackled like glass as it hit the stones.
“Your jacket was made of glass?” I asked, frowning.
“Of course,” Bastille said. “Glassweave. Yours isn’t?”
“Uh … no,” I said.
“Then why wear something so atrocious?” she said, stumbling to the hole in the floor. “You did this?” she asked, looking over at me.
I nodded.
“And … is that my sword down there, broken and shattered in a pile of books?”
“Afraid so,” I said.
“Lovely,” she grumbled.
“I was trying to save your life, Bastille,” I said. “Which, I might point out, I succeeded in doing.”
“Yeah, well, next time try not to bring down half the building when you do.”
But I detected the barest hint of a smile on her lips when she said it.
Chapter
15
Moron.
It has been my experience that most problems in life are caused by a lack of information. Many people just don’t know the things they need to know. Some ignore the truth; others never understand it.
When two friends get mad at each other, they usually do it because they lack information about each other’s feelings. Americans lack information about Librarian control of their government. The people who pass this book on the shelf and don’t buy it lack information about how wonderful, exciting, and useful it is.
Take, for instance, the word that started this chapter. You lacked information when you read it. You likely assumed that I was calling you an insulting name. You assumed wrong. Moron is actually a village in Switzerland located near the Jura mountain range. It’s a nice place to live if you hate Librarians, for there is a well-hidden underground rebellion there.
Information. Perhaps you Hushlanders have read about Bastille and the others referring to guns as “primitive,” and have been offended. Or perhaps you simply thought the text was being silly. In either case, maybe you should reevaluate.
The Free Kingdoms moved beyond the use of guns many centuries ago. The weapons became impractical for several reasons—some of which should be growing apparent from this narrative. Smedry Talents and Oculator abilities are not the only strange powers in the Free Kingdoms—and most of these abilities work better on items with large numbers of moving parts or breakable circuits. Using a gun against a Smedry, or one similarly talented, is usually a bad idea.
(This comes down to simple probability. The more that can go wrong with an
item, the more that will. My computer—when I used to use one—was always about one click away from serious meltdown. My pencil, however, remains to this day remarkably virus-free.)
And so, many of the world’s soldiers and warriors have moved on from guns, instead choosing weapons and armor created from Oculatory sands or silimatic technology. They don’t often associate these items with their ancient counterparts—the people of the Free Kingdoms never got much beyond muskets before they moved on to using sand-based weapons—and so they think that guns are the primitive weapons. It makes sense, if you look at it from their perspective.
And anyone who’s not willing to do that … well, they might just be a moron. Whether or not they live there.
“Sing, put those primitive guns away!” Bastille snapped, stepping away from the hole in the floor. “Those shattering things are so loud that half the library must have heard your racket!”
“They’re effective though,” Sing said happily, changing the clips in a pair of his pistols. “They stopped that Alivened long enough for Alcatraz to take it down. I didn’t see your sword doing half as well.”
Bastille grumbled something, then paused, frowning. “Why is it so hot in here?”
I cursed, turning toward the glowing, smoking stones around the Firebringer’s Lens. The floor looked dangerously close to becoming molten.
“I still can’t believe old Smedry gave you a Firebringer’s Lens,” Bastille said. “That’s like…”
“Giving a bazooka to a four-year-old?” I asked. I edged as close to the heated stones as I could stand. “That’s kind of what I feel like when I pick the thing up.”
“Well, turn it off!” Bastille said. “Quickly! You think Sing’s guns were loud—using an Oculatory Lens that powerful will draw Blackburn’s attention for certain. The longer you leave it on, the more loud it will seem!”
The reference to loudness probably doesn’t make much sense to non-Oculators. After all, the Lens didn’t make any noise. However, as I tried to figure out a way to turn off the Firebringer’s Lens, I realized that I could feel it. Even though I’d only been aware of my Oculatory abilities for a short time, I was already getting in synch with them enough to sense when a powerful Lens was being used nearby.