Chapter 6
Kindly pretend that you own a mousetrap factory.
Now, I realize that some of this narrative still might feel a little far-fetched to you. For instance, you might wonder why the Librarians haven’t captured Grandpa Smedry and his little team of spies long before they attempted this particular infiltration. My friends do – as you have undoubtedly noticed – stand out, with their self-driving cars, odd disguises and near-lethal handbags.
This brings us back to your mousetrap factory. How is it doing? Are profits up? Ah, that’s very pleasant.
A mousetrap factory – as you well know, since you own one – creates mousetraps. These mousetraps are used to kill mice. However, you factory is in a very nice, clean part of town. That area itself has never had a problem with mice – your mousetraps are sold to people who live near fields, where mice are far more common.
So, do you set mousetraps in your own factory? Of course not. You’ve never seen any mice there. And yet, because of this, if a small family of mice did somehow sneak into your factory, they might have a very nice time living there, as there are no traps to kill them.
This, friends, is called irony. Your mousetrap factory could itself become infested with mice. In a similar way, the Librarians are very good at patrolling the borders of their lands, keeping out enemy Oculators like Grandpa Smedry. Yet they don’t expect to find mice like Grandpa Smedry hiding in the centers of their cities.
And that is why two men in tuxedos, one very large Mokian in sunglasses and a kimono, one young girl with a soldier’s grace, and a very confused young Oculator in a green jacket could walk right up to the downtown library without drawing too much Librarian attention.
Besides, you’ve seen the kinds of people who walk around downtown, haven’t you?
“All right, Smedry,” Bastille said to Grandpa. “What’s the plan?”
“Well, first I’ll take an Oculatory reading of the building,” Grandpa Smedry said.
“Done,” Bastille said tersely. “Low Librarian population, high Oculatory magic content, and a very nasty fellow on the third floor.”
Grandpa Smedry squinted at the library through his reddish glasses. “Why, yes. How did you know?”
Basille nodded to me.
Grandpa Smedry smiled broadly. “Getting used to the Lenses this quickly! You show quite a bit of promise, lad. Quite a bit indeed!”
I shrugged “Bastille did the interpreting. I just described what I saw.”
“Was this before or after she smacked you with her purse?” Quentin asked. The short man watched the conversation with amusement, while Sing poked around in the gutter. Sing had, fortunately, put away his weapons – and was now carrying them in a large gym bag, which clashed horribly with his kimono.
“Well,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Well, well. Sneaking into the downtown library at last! I think our base infiltration plan should work, wouldn’t you say, Quentin?”
The wiry man nodded. “Cantaloupe, fluttering paper makes a duck.”
I frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t mind him,” Bastille said. “He says things that don’t make sense.”
His Talent, I thought. Right.
“And what, exactly,” Bastille said to Grandpa Smedry, “is your base infiltration plan?”
“Quentin takes a few minutes scouting and watching the lobby, just to make sure all’s clear,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Then Sing makes a distraction and we all sneak into the employee access corridors. There, we split up – one Oculator per team – and search out powerful sources of Oculation. Those sands should glow like nothing else!”
“And if we find the sands?” I asked.
“Take them and get out. Sneakily, of course.”
“Huh.” Bastille paused. “Why, that actually sounds like a good plan.” She seem surprised.
“Of course it is,” Grandpa Smedry said. “We spent long enough working on it! I’ve worried for years that someday we might have to infiltrate this place.”
Worried? I thought. The fact that even Grandpa Smedry found the infiltration a bit unnerving made it seem even more dangerous than it had before.
“Anyway,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Quentin, be off! We’re late already!”
The short man nodded, adjusted the carnation on his lapel, then took a deep breath and ducked through the building’s broad glass doors.
“Grandfather,” I said, glancing at Grandpa Smedry. “These people want to kill me, right?”
“Don’t feel bad,” he said, removing his Lenses. “They undoubtedly want to kill all of us.”
“Right”, I said. “So, shouldn’t we be… hiding or something? Not just standing in plain sight?”
“Well, answer me this,” he said. “That man with the gun – had you seen him before?”
“No.”
“Did he recognize you?”
“No, actually,” I said. “He asked who I was before he tried to shoot me.”
“Exactly,” Grandpa Smedry said, strolling over to glance in the library window. “You are a very special person, Alcatraz – and because of that, I suspect that those who watch over you didn’t want their peers knowing where you were. You may be surprised to hear this, but there are a lot of factions inside the Librarian ranks. The Dark Oculators, the Order of the Shattered Lens, the Scrivener’s Bones… though they all work together, there’s quite a bit of rivalry between them.
“For the faction controlling your movements, the fewer people who knew about you – or recognized you – the better. That way, they could keep better control of the sands when they arrived.” He lowered his voice. “I won’t lie, Alcatraz. This mission will be very dangerous. If the Librarians catch us, they will likely kill us. Now that they have the sands, they have no reason to let you live – and every reason to destroy you. However, we have three things going for us. First, very few people will be able to recognize us. That should let us slip into the library without being stopped. Second – as you have noticed – most of the Librarians are out of the library at the moment. My guess is that they’re actually searching for you and me, perhaps trying to break into our gas station hideout.”
“And the third thing we have going for us?”
Grandpa Smedry smiled. “Nobody would expect us to try something like this! It’s completely insane.”
Great, I thought.
“Now,” he said, “you might want to take off those Oculator’s Lenses – they’re the only thing that makes you distinctive right now.”
I quickly did so.
“Quentin will stay in the lobby and inner stacks for a good five minutes or so – watching for any signs of unusual patterns in Librarian movement or security – meaning we have a little bit of time here. Try to wait without looking suspicious.”
I nodded, and Grandpa Smedry wandered over to peek through another window. I lounged with my back against a lamp pole, trying not to break it. It was hard to remain still, considering my anxiety. As I thought about it, the three things Grandpa said we had going for us didn’t seem to provide much of an advantage at all. I tried to calm my nerves.
A few minutes later, a clink sounded behind me as Sing set down his gym bag of weaponry. I jumped slightly, eyeing the bag – I wasn’t really that fond of the idea of having my toes shot off by an “ancient” weapon.
“Alcatraz,” Sing said. “Your grandfather tells me that you grew up raised by Hushlander parents!”
“Um, yes,” I said slowly.
“Wonderful!” Sing said. “Tell me, tell me. What is the significance of this?” He proffered something small and yellow which he had likely found in the gutter.
“Uh, it’s just a bottle cap,” I said.
“Yes,” Sing said, peering at it through his sunglasses, “I’m aware of your primitive liquid beverage packaging methods. But look, see here. What’s this on the underneath?”
I accepted the bottle cap. On the underside, I could see printed the words YOU ARE NOT A WINNER.
“See what it says?” Sing asked, pointing with a chubby finger. “Is it common for Hushlanders to print insults on their foodstuffs? What is the purpose of this advertising campaign? Is it to make the consumer feel less secure, so they purchase more highly caffeinated drinks?”
“It’s just a contest,” I said. “Some of the bottles are winners, some aren’t.”
Sing frowned. “Why would a bottle want to win a prize? In fact, how do bottles even go about claiming prizes? Have they been Alivened? Don’t your people understand that Alivening things is dark Oculary?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not Oculary, Sing. If you open the bottle and the cap says you’re a winner, then you can claim a prize.”
“Oh.” He seemed a bit disappointed. Still, he carefully tucked the cap inside a pouch at his waist.
“Why do you care about that anyway?” I asked. “Aren’t you an ancient weapons expert?”
“Yes, well,” Sing said, “an ancient weapons expert, and an ancient clothing expert, and an ancient cultures expert.”
“He’s an anthropologist, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said from beside the library window. “One of the most famous ones at the Mokian Royal University. That’s why he’s part of the team.”
“Wait,” I said. “He’s a professor?”
“Of course,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Who else would be able to work those blasted guns? The civilized world hasn’t used such things for centuries! We figured that we should have someone who can use them – swords might be more effective, but nobody carries them in the Hushlands. It’s better to have at least one person on the team who understands and can use local weapons, just to be sure.”
Sing nodded eagerly. “But don’t worry,” he said. “I may not be a soldier, but I’ve practiced with the weapons quite a bit. I’ve… never shot at something moving before, but how difficult can it be?”
I stood quietly, then turned to Grandpa Smedry. “And what about Quentin? Is he a professor too?”
Sing laughed. “No, no. He’s just a graduate student.”
“He’s quite capable, though,” Grandpa Smedry said. He’s a language specialist who focuses on Hushlander dialects.”
“So,” I said, holding up a finger. “Let me get this straight. Our strike team consists of a loony old man, and anthropologist, a grad student, and two kids.”
Grandpa Smedry and Sing nodded happily. Bastille, leaning against the library wall a short distance away, gave me a flat stare. “You see what I have to work with?”
I nodded, beginning to understand where she might have gotten such a grumpy attitude.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Grandpa Smedry said. He walked over, putting his arm around my shoulders and pulling me aside. “Here, lad, I’ve got some things I want to give you.”
Grandpa Smedry pulled open his tuxedo jacket and removed two pairs of spectacles. “You’ll recognize these,” he said, holding up a yellow-tinted pair. “I used them back when I first picked you up from the house. They’re fairly easy Lenses to wield – if you can already do readings like you did on the library building, you should be able to use these.”
I accepted the glasses, then covertly tried them on. At first, nothing changed – but then I thought I saw something. Footsteps, in various colors, fading slowly on the ground around me.
“Tracks,” I said with surprise, watching as Sing wandered over to another gutter, leaving a trail of blue footprints on the concrete behind him.
“Indeed, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said. “The better you know a person, the longer the footprints will remain visible. Once we get inside, we’ll split up – you and I are the only Oculators in the group, and so we’re the only ones who will be able to sense where the sands are. But the inside of a library can be deceptively large. Sometimes the stacks form mazes, and it’s easy to get lost. If you lose your way, you can use these Tracker’s Lenses to retrace our footprints. Also, you can probably track me down, if necessary.”
I glanced down. Grandpa Smedry’s footprints glowed a blazing white, like little bursts of flame on the ground. I could easily see the trail of white back to Grandpa Smedry’s black car, still parked across the street.
“Thanks,” I said, still feeling a little apprehensive as I removed and pocket the Tracker’s Lenses.
“You’ll do fine, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said, picking up a second pair of glasses. “Remember, this is your inheritance we’re searching for. You lost it, and you’ll have to get it back. I can’t hold your hand forever.”
I felt like noting that I had seen very little hand-holding in this adventure so far. I didn’t really know what was going on, didn’t quite trust my sanity anymore, and wasn’t even convinced that I wanted my inheritance back. Grandpa Smedry, however, didn’t give me an opportunity to complain. He held up the second pair of glasses – they had mostly clear Lenses, with a little dot of red at the center of each one.
“These,” he said, handing the Lenses to me, “are one of the most powerful pairs of Oculatory Lenses I possess. However, they’re also one of the easiest to use, which is why I’m loaning them to you.”
I eyed the glasses. “What do they do?”
“You can use them for many purposes,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Once you switch them on – you just have to concentrate a bit to do that – they’ll begin gathering the light around you, then direct it out in concentrated beams.”
“You mean, like a laser?” I asked.
“Yes,” Grandpa Smedry said. “These are very dangerous, Alcatraz. I don’t carry many offensive Lenses, but I’ve found these too useful to leave behind. However, let me warn you – if there really is a Dark Oculator in there, he’ll be able to sense when you activate these. Only use the Firebringer’s Lenses in an emergency!”
Don’t get too worried – this isn’t the sort of story in which emergencies occur. Yes, it is highly unlikely that you will ever see those Firebringer’s Lenses activated. So don’t get your hopes up.
I accepted the Firebringer’s Lenses from my grandfather and they immediately started glowing.
“Cavorting Cards!” Grandpa Smedry yelped, dodging to the side as the Lenses blasted a pair of intensely hot beams into the ground just in front of my feet. I hopped backward in shock, nearly dropping the Lenses in surprise.
Grandpa Smedry grabbed the Lenses from behind, deactivating them. The scent of melted tar rose in the air, and I blinked, my vision marked by two bright afterimages of light.
“Well, well,” Grandpa Smedry said. “I told you they were easy to use.” He glanced up at the building. “We should be too far away for that to have been sensed….”
Great, I thought. As my vision cleared, I could see Bastille rolling her eyes.
Sing waddled over, raising his sunglasses and inspecting the three-foot-wide disk of blackened, half-melted concrete. “Nice shot,” he noted. “I think it’s dead now.”
I blushed, but Grandpa Smedry just laughed. “Here,” he said, slipping a small velvet bag around the Firebringer’s Lenses. He pulled the drawstring tight at the top. “This should keep them safe. Now, with these Lenses and your Talent, you should be able to handle pretty much anything the Librarians throw at you!”
I accepted the glasses back, and fortunately they didn’t go off. Now, as I was telling you previously, these Lenses will probably never get used in this story. You’ll be lucky if you ever get to see them fired. Again.
“Grandfather,” I said quietly, eyeing Bastille, then stepping aside again with Grandpa Smedry. “I’m not sure that I can do this.”
“Nonsense, lad! You’re a Smedry!”
“But I didn’t even know I was until earlier today,” I said. “Or… well, I didn’t know what being a Smedry meant. I don’t think… well, I’m just not ready.”
“What makes you say that?” Grandpa Smedry asked.
“I tried to use my Talent earlier,” I said. “To stop Bastille from smacking me with her purse. It didn’t work. And that wasn’t the first time – sometimes I just can’t make things break. And when I don’t want them to break, they usually do anyway.”
“Your Talent is still wild,” Grandpa Smedry said. “You haven’t practiced it enough. Being a Smedry isn’t just about having a Talent, it’s about finding out how to use that Talent. A clever person can make anything turn to his advantage, no matter how much a disadvantage it may seem at first.
“No Smedry Talent is completely controllable. However, if you practice enough, you’ll begin to get a grasp on it. Eventually, you’ll be able to make things break not just when and where you want, by also how you want.”
“I…,” I said, still uncertain.
“This doesn’t sound like you, Alcatraz,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Where’s that spark of spirit – that stubbornness – that you’re always tossing about?”
I frowned. “How do you know what I’m like? You only just met me.”
“Oh? You think I’ve left you in Librarian hands all this time, never checking in on you?”
Of course he checked on me, I thought. Bastille mentioned something about that. “But you don’t know me,” I said. “I mean, you didn’t even know what my Talent was.”
“I suspected, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said. “But I’ll admit – I usually got to your foster homes after you’d moved somewhere else. Still, I’ve been watching over you, in my own way.”
“If that’s the case,” I said, “then why –“
“Why did I leave you to the foster homes?” Grandpa Smedry asked. “I’m not that great a parent. A boy needs somebody who can arrive on time to his birthdays and ball games. Besides, there were… reasons for letting you grow up in this world.”
That didn’t seem like much of an explanation to me, but Grandpa didn’t look like he’d say more. So, I just sighed. “I just can’t help feeling like I won’t be much help in this fight. I don’t know how to use my Talent, or these Lenses. Maybe I should get a gun or a sword or something.”
Grandpa Smedry smiled. “Ah lad. This war we’re fighting – it isn’t about guns, or even about swords.”
“What is it about then? Sand?”
“Information,” Grandpa Smedry said. “That’s the real power in this world. That man who held a gun on us earlier – he had power over you. Why?”
“Because he was going to shoot me,” I said.
“Because you thought he could shoot you,” Grandpa Smedry said, raising a finger. “But he had no power over me, because I knew that he couldn’t hurt me. And when he realized that…”
“He ran away,” I said slowly.
“Information. The Librarians control the information in this city – in this whole country. They control what gets read, what gets seen, and what gets learned. Because of that, they have power. Well, we’re going to break that power, you and I. But first, we need those sands.”
“Grandpa,” I said. “You have to have some kind of idea what the sands do. You came to get them from me, after all. Didn’t you have a plan to use them?”
“Pestering Pullmans, of course I did! I was going to smelt them into Lenses, just like the Librarians are probably doing now. Your father, lad – he was a sandhunter. He spent all his time searching out new and powerful types of sand, gathering the grains together, crafting Lenses like nobody had seen before. The Sands of Rashid were he crowning achievement. His greatest discovery.” Grandpa Smedry’s voice grew even quieter. “He was convinced they had something to do with where the Smedry family gained its Talents in the first place. The Sands of Rashid are a key, somehow, to understanding the power and origin or our entire family. Can you understand, perhaps, why the Librarians might want them?”
I nodded slowly. “The Talents.”
“Indeed, lad. The Talents. If they could find a way to arm their agents with Talents like ours, then the Free Kingdoms could very well be doomed. Smedry powers are a large part of what has kept the Librarians at bay for so long. But we’re losing. The land you call Australia was lost to us only a few decades back – absorbed and added to the Hushlands. Now Sing’s homeland has almost fallen. They’ve already taken some of the outlying Mokian islands – the places you call Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa – and added them to the Hushlands. I fear it will only be a few years before Mokia itself falls.”
He paused, then shook his head, looking just a little bit distant as he continued. “Either the Free Kingdoms are going to fall – and everything will become Hushlands – or we’re going to find a way to break the Librarians’ power. The Smedry Talents, and the secrets these sands will reveal, are key to the next stage of the war. Things are changing… things have to change. We can’t just keep fighting and losing ground. That’s why your father spent so much of his life gathering those sands. He felt it was time to go on the offensive.”
I felt a stab of anxiety, a question surfacing that I wasn’t certain I wanted to know the answer to. Finally, I couldn’t keep it down. “Is he still alive, Grandpa?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking back at me. “I honestly don’t know.”
The comment hung in the air. Grandpa Smedry placed a hand on my shoulder. “Alive or not, Attica Smedry was a great man, Alcatraz. An amazing man. And he, like you, was no warrior. We are Oculators. Our weapon is information. Keep your eyes, and your mind, open. You’ll do just fine.”
I nodded slowly.
“Good lad, good lad. Ah, here’s Quentin.”
The short, tuxedo-wearing man slipped quickly out of the library’s front doors. “Five Librarians in the main lobby,” he said quietly. “Three behind the checkout desk, two in the stacks. Their patterns are right on schedule with what we’ve seen from them before. The entrance to the employee corridors is on the far south side. It isn’t guarded right now, though a Librarian passes to check on it every few minutes or so.”
“All right, then,” Grandpa Smedry said. “In we go!”