Himalaya turned, blushing. Bastille immediately punched me in the arm.
"Ow!" I said. (My Talent never seemed to work when Bastille is doing the punching. Perhaps it thought I deserved the punishment.) "Why'd you do that?"
Bastille rolled her eyes. "You don't need to be so blunt, Smedry."
"You're blunt all the time!" I complained. "Why's it wrong when I do it?"
"Because you're bad at it, that's why. Now apologize for embarrassing the young woman."
"It's all right," Himalaya said, still blushing. "But, please, don't say such a thing. Folsom is just being kind to me because he knows I feel so lost in Free Kingdoms society. I don't want to burden him with my silliness."
"But, he said – gak!"
"He said 'Gak'?" Himalaya asked, confused. She obviously hadn't seen Bastille step forcefully on my toe in the middle of my sentence.
"Excuse us," Bastille said, smiling at Himalaya, then towing me away. Once we were at a safe distance, she pointed at my face and said, "Don't get involved."
"Why?" I demanded.
"Because they'll work it out on their own, and they don't need you messing things up."
"But I talked to Folsom and he likes her too! I should tell her about it so they can stop acting like lovesick crocodiles."
"Crocodiles?"
"What?" I said defensively. "Crocodiles fall in love. Baby crocodiles come from somewhere. Anyway, that's beside the point. We should talk to those two and settle this misunderstanding so they can get on with things."
Bastille rolled her eyes. "How can you be so clever sometimes, Smedry, but such an idiot other times?"
"That's unfair, and you –" I stopped. "Wait, you think I'm clever?"
"I said you're clever sometimes,” she snapped. "Unfortunately, you're annoying all the time. If you mess this up, I'll . . . I don't know. I'll cut off your thumbs and send them to the crocodiles as a wedding present.
I crinkled my brow. "Wait. What?"
She just stalked away. I watched her go, smiling.
She thought I was clever.
I stood in a happy stupor for a few minutes. Finally, I wandered back over to Sing and Himalaya.
". . . think about it," Himalaya was saying. "It's not the Librarian part that's a problem, it's the evil part. I could start a self-help program. World-dominating Cultists Anonymous or something like that."
"I dunno," Sing said, rubbing his chin. "Sounds like you have an uphill battle."
"You Free Kingdomers need to be educated about this as much as the Librarians do!" She smiled at me as I arrived. “Anyway, I feel that we should organize the rest of these books. You know, for consistency's sake.”
I looked down at the book in my hands. "Do what you want," I said. "I intend to take this someplace safe. We've probably wasted too much time as it is."
"But what if there are other books in here that are important?" Himalaya asked. "Maybe that's not the one your mother wants."
"It is," I said. Somehow I knew.
"But how would she even know it was in here?” Himalaya asked. "We didn't."
"My mother's resourceful," I said. “I’ll bet she –“
At that moment, Sing tripped.
"Oh, dear!" Himalaya said. “Are you all right – gak!"
She said this last part as I grabbed her by the arm and dived for cover behind a stack of books. To the side, I could see Bastille doing the same with the prince and Folsom. Sing himself rolled over to my hiding place, then got to his knees, looking nervous.
"What are you all doing?" Himalaya asked.
I put a finger to my lips, waiting tensely. Sing's Talent, like all of them, couldn't be trusted implicitly - however, he had a good track record of tripping right before dangerous events. His foresight – or, well, his clumsiness – had saved my life back in the Hushlands.
I almost thought that this one was a false alarm. And then I heard it. Voices.
The door to the room opened, and my mother walked in.
Oh, wait. You're still here? I thought that last line was going to end the chapter. It seemed like a nice, dramatic place.
Chapter isn't long enough yet? Really? Hum. Well, guess we'll move on, then. Ahem.
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 blond 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 by 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 could see 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 of 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-Library", 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 hid
den 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.