Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

I still haven’t figured out how they make clothing out of glass. It’s apparently very expensive but worth the cost. A glassweave jacket could take quite a beating, protecting its wearer almost as well as a suit of armor. Back in the library infiltration we’d done, Bastille had survived a blow that really should have killed her.

“All right,” I said. “What about this thing we’re flying in? I assume it’s some sort of vehicle and not really a living creature.”

Bastille gave me one of her barely tolerant looks. I keep telling her she should trademark those. She could sell photos of herself making the face so that people could use them to scare children, turn milk into curds, or frighten terrorists into surrendering.

She doesn’t find comments like that very funny.

“Of course it’s not alive,” she said. “Alivening things is Dark Oculary, as I believe you’ve been told.”

“Okay, but why make it in the shape of a dragon?”

“What should we do?” Bastille said. “Build our aircraft in the shapes of … long tubey contraptions, or whatever it is those airplanes look like? I can’t believe they stay in the air. Their wings can’t even flap!”

“They don’t need to flap. They have jet engines!”

“Oh, and then why do they have wings?”

I paused. “Something about lift and physics and stuff like that.”

Bastille snorted again. “Physics,” she muttered. “A Librarian scam.”

“Physics isn’t a scam, Bastille. It’s very logical.”

“Librarian logic.”

“Facts.”

“Oh?” she asked. “And if they’re facts, then why are they so complicated? Shouldn’t explanations about the natural world be simple? Why is there all of that needless math and complexity?” She shook her head, turning away from me. “All of that is intended to confuse people. If the Hushlanders think that science is too complicated to understand, then they’ll be too afraid to ask questions.”

She eyed me, obviously watching to see if I would continue the argument. I did not. That was one thing about hanging around with Bastille—it was teaching me when to hold my tongue. Even if I didn’t hold my brain.

How does she know so much about what the Librarians teach in their schools? I thought. She knows an awful lot about my people.

Bastille was still an enigma to me. She’d wanted to be an Oculator when she was younger, so she knew quite a bit about Lenses. However, I couldn’t quite figure out why she’d even wanted to be one so badly in the first place. Everyone—or, well, everyone outside the Hushlands—knows that Oculatory powers are hereditary. One can’t just “become” an Oculator in the same way one can choose to become a lawyer, an accountant, or a potted plant.

Either way, I was finding it increasingly disconcerting to be able to see through the floor, particularly when we were so high up. The motions of the giant vehicle didn’t help either. Now that I was inside of it, I could see that the dragon was made of glass plates that slid together such that the entire thing could move and twist. Each flap of the wings made the body undulate around me.

We reached the head, which I assumed was the dragon’s version of a cockpit. The glass door slid open. I stepped up onto a maroon carpet—thankfully obscuring my view of the ground—and was met by two people.

Neither of them was my grandfather. Where is he? I wondered with growing annoyance. Bastille, strangely, took up position next to the doorway, with a stiff back and staring straight ahead.

One of the people turned toward me. “Lord Smedry,” the woman said, standing with arms straight at her sides. She had on a suit of steel plate armor, like what I’d seen in museums. Except this armor seemed a lot better fitting. The pieces bent together in a more flexible manner, and the metal appeared to be thinner.

The woman bowed her head to me, helmet under her arm, her hair a vivid metallic silver. The face seemed familiar. I glanced at Bastille, then back at the woman.

“You’re Bastille’s mother?” I asked.

“I am indeed, Lord Smedry,” the woman said, the tone of her voice as stiff as her armor. “I am—”

“Oh, Alcatraz!” the other person said, interrupting the woman. This girl sat in the chair beside the dash of the cockpit, and she wore a pink tunic with brown trousers. She had the face I’d seen through the Courier’s Lenses—long black hair, a little bit curly, with dark skin and slightly plump features.

“I’m so glad you made it,” the girl exclaimed. “For a while, I thought we’d lost you! Then Bastille saw that light shooting into the air, and we figured it was from you. It seems that we were right!”

“And you are…?” I asked.

“Australia Smedry!” she said, hopping out of her chair and rushing over to give me a hug. “Your cousin, silly! Sing’s sister.”

“Gak!” I said, nearly being crushed by the powerful hug. Bastille’s mother looked on, arms crossed behind her back in a kind of parade rest sort of pose.