“We’ll need to do something about that dome,” Shasta said. “How do we get through?”
I reached into my pocket and fingered the Shamefiller’s Lens. “Can you open these windows for me?”
“Sure,” Kaz said. “Might get a little windy in here though.”
“Let’s try it.”
Kaz nodded, dodging us out of the way of a firing gun emplacement, then hit a button on the glass dashboard. One of the penguin’s eye-windows retracted.
My ears popped and a rush of wind hit me in the face. It’s shocking how hard it is to breathe with so much air coming so quickly. It’s like trying to eat popcorn fired at you by a bazooka. Still, I was able to raise the Shamefiller’s Lens and point it at the dome. My hair whipping about on my head, my bow tie fluttering, I focused a blast of energy into the Lens and let loose a concentrated beam of humiliation at the dome.
“I can’t believe I stopped those three Librarians at the perimeter,” said a loud, deep voice in my head, “all because they were carrying confiscated bits of glass. The entire army went on alert, and everyone thought they were double agents! I could have just crumbled upon myself with shame. I should have seen, shouldn’t have stopped them.”
I waited, listening, but nothing was happening.
“The dome’s too strong!” Kaz said. “Should I turn us away? We’re heading straight for it!”
“Hold steady!” I said, driving more power into the Lens. It started to get warm in my fingers.
“And the shame of not being able to keep the rain off people! I’m a dome. I should be able to keep things dry. At least provide shade? But nobody can even see me! All I do is scan for glass Lenses that almost never come this way. What good am I really? Then there was the moment with the Scrivener.…”
What?
“Alcatraz?” Kaz said, urgent.
“Keep going!” I shouted, pumping more energy. The Lens was getting hot, like the glass I’d melted earlier. That seemed very dangerous.
“I stopped him, of all people,” the dome’s voice said, “just because he had a Lens on him. Everyone saw it. I can’t believe—”
The Lens burned my fingers. I cried out as a section of the dome exploded, opening a hole the size of a large building.
I dropped the Lens, wagging my fingers. I’d burned them good, but the Lens—fortunately—hadn’t melted. It hit the floor with a plink and rolled to the side. Kaz let out a whoop and steered us right through the hole, then pushed a button to close the window. Many of the other Free Kingdomer ships followed us through immediately.
I sucked on my fingers.
“Nice work,” Kaz said.
I nodded absently. The dome had mentioned the Scrivener. I could only assume that an inanimate object wasn’t going to lie in its own thoughts.* Someone really was calling himself the Scrivener. An ominous title.
“Hey, what’s that column of smoke?” I said.
Kaz followed my gesture. Near the center of DC—not a great distance from the towering Washington Monument and the Mall—a line of smoke rose between some of the buildings.
“A crash perhaps?” Kaz said. “Or a stray missile?”
“Could be,” Shasta replied, “but the dome would have stopped most missiles and a lot of debris.”
“I think someone else is fighting back,” I said. “That smoke is from three or four different buildings, all burning. And … is that a barricade?”
We were past too quickly to make out more.
“You guys should go get ready for the drop,” Kaz said, steering us over the center of DC.
“Try to keep it level, if you can,” Shasta said.
“Tall order,” Kaz said. “And I, by definition, am not particularly good at those. I’ll see what I can do.”
Shasta rose to leave, but Kaz reached out and took her by the arm. “What are you going to do when you find him?” he asked her. “Have you thought about that?”
“Of course I have,” she said. “I’m going to stop him.”
“Will you kill him?” Kaz asked, meeting her eyes.
“I love him, Kaz,” my mother said.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
She pulled her arm away. “I’ll do what I have to. If that means pulling the trigger, then so be it.”
She stalked away. I recovered my Shamefiller’s Lens, which had cooled enough to handle, and followed. Their conversation left me feeling a little out of place in my own story, which should never happen. So let’s talk some more about me.
Alcatraz was a silly Oculator boy who had a proclivity for stopping a story at a stoopid point to start an additional story. On occasion, Alcatraz put words such as “cockapoo” into his books. That word in particular brought him vast humiliation on two occasions. Sadly, his boss didn’t spot said words, for both cockapoos hid in a long paragraph about Alcatraz’s most amazing points—and rational folk usually skip such things. Alcatraz is guilty of casually ripping apart causality to find a sandwich, is guilty of occasionally imitating a fish, and is guilty of hating baby cats. Also, writing full paragraphs without any Es is hard.
“Would you really kill him?” I asked my mother, catching up to her in the glass hallway.
“Yes. And you? If the fate of the world hinged on your answer, could you kill your father, Alcatraz?”
“I…” I swallowed.
“You’d better be able to,” she said. “I spent your entire life trying to make a hard man out of you. If the time comes, child, you stop him. Whatever it takes.”
Such a cold response. I didn’t want to think about what she’d said. There would be another way to stop my father. We could talk some sense into him. Right?
Shasta didn’t seem to think so. She’d always been like that—so knowing, so certain, so smug. She didn’t so much as stumble as Kaz swerved Penguinator; she merely leaned against the wall with one hand and remained in place.
It made me want to do something to disturb her calm.
“Is the Scrivener really still alive?” I asked.
Shasta spun on me. “Where did you hear that?”
“I reversed one of the Librarian bugs we found,” I said. “We overheard She Who Cannot Be Named talking about the Scrivener. Biblioden. He can’t possibly still be alive.”
Shasta studied me. “There are … rumors. I never gave them much credence, but recently talk has grown. Some claim to have spoken with him, to have been given orders by him. If Kangchenjunga has joined the believers … well, she’s not one to be easily taken in. Either she’s playing along for some reason, or something convinced her.”
Shasta seemed troubled. That was a welcome departure from smugness, but I hadn’t provoked the reaction I’d wanted. I considered doing something really upsetting, like telling her I’d decided to write fantasy novels for a living, but there was no call to be so extreme. Even I need to have some standards.
We again reached the room with the exit bay, and I pulled off my Grappler’s Glass boots and stowed them. Beneath, through the glass floor, I could see the city passing in a blur. We were lower than before, but still way too high to survive a jump. “So … um,” I said to my mother, “how do you think we’re going to—”
Cousin Dif burst into the room, wearing a backpack and bunny slippers. They were an odd match to his plaid shirt and bow tie, and he’d swapped his pants for a pair of very pink shorts.
“Hushlander disguise in place!” he proclaimed.
“I thought they said you’d lived over here,” I said.
“I have! I did an extended internship in San Francisco.”
“What sort of internship?” I asked, skeptical.
“On a wilderness preserve,” Dif said. “With tents, and animal trainers, and lots of people in bleachers.”
“A … circus?”
“Yes! That’s what it was called. I worked among them for years, observing how to dress and act around Hushlanders until my skills for infiltration were perfected.” He paused. “Oh, I almost forgot!
No wonder you’re skeptical.” He reached into his backpack and took out a top hat and put it on his head. “There. Perfect Hushlander costume!”
I was speechless. Sometimes being confronted by monumental stupidity does that to me.* Before I could recover, Draulin joined us.
She wore a sleek blue evening gown with sequins and a slit up the side, her hair done up as if for prom, her lips bright red. Long gloves covered her arms almost all the way up to her shoulders.
My eyes bulged almost out of my skull.
Draulin was a woman?
Okay, so maybe I’m not one to be making wisecracks about other people’s monumental stupidity. I mean, I knew that Draulin was Bastille’s mother, wife of the king of Nalhalla. But … you know, I’d kind of always imagined that she slept in her armor.
“Great costume,” Dif said.
“Thank you, Lord D’if,” Draulin said, fiddling in her handbag—which, if it was like Bastille’s, held her sword in a mildly impossible pocket of space-time. “Lord Kazan, is your line still open?”
“Yup.”