The Dark Talent Read online

  Politics.

  I hate politics. When I’d first learned about the Free Kingdoms, I’d imagined how wonderful and amazing they’d be. I spent two entire books trying to get there, only to find that—despite their many wonders—the people in them were … well, people.* Free Kingdomers had all the flaws of people in the Hushlands, except with sillier clothing.

  I thought of Bastille, unconscious. She’d be so embarrassed to be seen that way. Those monarchs had abandoned her, and Mokia, for their own petty games. It made me angry. Angry at the monarchs, angry at the Librarians, angry at the world. I sneered, stepping forward, and slapped my hands against the Communicator’s Glass on the wall.

  “Lad?” Grandpa Smedry asked.

  The glass beneath my fingers began to glow.

  Perhaps I should have been wary, considering what I’d done to Janie’s lights. I just wanted to do something. I powered the wall glass. I threw everything I had into those panels, causing them to shine brightly.

  “You can’t call them back,” Kaz said, “not unless they allow you to—”

  I pushed something into that glass, something powerful. I had certain advantages, being raised in the Hushlands. Everyone in the Free Kingdoms had expectations about what was and wasn’t possible.

  I was too stupid to know what they knew, and I was too much a Smedry to let that bother me.

  What I did next defies explanation. But since it’s my job to convey difficult concepts to you, I’m going to try anyway. Imagine jumping off a high building into a sea of marshmallows, then reaching out with a million arms to touch the entire world, while realizing that every emotion you’ve ever had is connected to every other emotion, and they’re really one big emotion, like an emotion-whale that you can’t completely see because you’re up too close to notice anything other than a little bit of leathery emotion-whale skin.

  I let out a deep breath.

  Wow.

  In that moment, the squares of Communicator’s Glass each winked back on. They showed the rooms of the monarchs, most of whom were still there, though they’d stood from their chairs to speak with their attendants. One had gotten a sandwich. Another was playing solitaire.*

  They looked at me, and I somehow knew that my face had appeared on each of their panes of glass, large and dominating.

  “I,” I told them, “am going to the Highbrary.”

  Is that my voice?

  “You are worried I’ve started something dangerous,” I said. “You’re wrong. I’m not starting it, I’m finishing it. The Librarians have terrorized us for far too long. I intend to make certain they are the ones who are frightened and they are the ones, for once, who have to worry about what they’re going to lose.

  “Some of you are scared. Some of you are selfish. The rest of you are downright ignorant. Well, you’re going to have to put those things aside, because you can’t ignore what’s coming. I know something the Librarians don’t. The end is here. You can’t stop this war from progressing. So it’s time for you to stand up, stop whining, and either help or get out of my way.”

  I let go of the glass. The images winked off, the wall turning dark.

  “Now that,” Kaz said from behind, “is how you end a conversation with style!”

  Chapter

  Lilly

  Once upon a time there was a boy.

  This should come as no surprise, as approximately half the world’s population is—or at one time was—boys.

  This boy got into trouble a lot, as should also be no surprise. Everyone gets into a lot of trouble when they are young—well, everyone but that kid Reginald down the street, but nobody likes him anyway.

  Something was different about this boy. Often when he got into trouble, it wasn’t his fault. Like, actually not his fault—rather than “My little brother did it” or “I swear I have no idea why that empty cookie bag is under my bed” or “I really didn’t mean to invade Poland.” No, this kid truly did nothing wrong.

  Things just broke around him.

  Well, a lifetime of being blamed for things he didn’t do beat this kid down pretty hard. He had basically given up on life, until one day something changed.* He became part of a family. He discovered he was famous. He was told that he was special.

  From there, an amazing trend began. He started to succeed. Things started to go right for him. This trend should have worried him, because if he’d learned one lesson in life, it was that when things broke around him, they broke really, really badly.

  He started to live as if he could do anything, no matter how bold, no matter how outrageous. He went on one last adventure, he struggled and had some tough times, but then everything turned out fine in the end. So that’s nice.

  The above is what we call a fairy tale, and it’s a modern one, not one from the past. How do we know the difference?

  Because in this one, the ending is a lie.

  “So…” Kaz said from the back of the room. “Infiltrating the Highbrary, eh? The Library of Congress?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I replied.

  “And telling everyone about it,” Kaz continued, “including the Librarian sympathizers on the Council of Kings—who are sure to tell their allies we’re coming.”

  “Er, exactly.”

  “Bold,” Kaz said. “Almost stupid.”

  “The Smedry way?” I said.

  Kaz stood up, pulling on his hat. “Close enough.”

  “Think of it like this, Son,” Grandpa said to Kaz. “Attica is on his way to the Highbrary too. What young Alcatraz has done is make it far more difficult for his father to get in, giving us more time.”

  “Besides,” I said, trying to sort through why I’d said what I had, “if there’s an antidote for the coma that Bastille and the Mokians are in, we should be able to find it at the Highbrary.”

  “Sounds almost rational when you two put it that way,” Kaz said. “Well, don’t worry. It shouldn’t matter if the Librarians know we’re coming, as I can simply use my Talent to sneak us into…” He trailed off. For a moment, he’d obviously forgotten that I’d broken the Talents. His face fell. “Right. Slipped my mind. So how are we going to get in?”

  “Well,” Grandpa said, “first we engage in a complex campaign of political misdirection. I’ll put forward a motion in the Nalhallan chamber of politics, for discussion by the Council of Kings, with the goal of invoking extended sanctions against Librarian sympathizers.”

  “Oh, economic sanctions!” Kaz said. “Fun stuff!”

  “Then we will institute a lengthy but determined campaign of political propaganda inside the Hushlands, brewing discontent among the general populace so that we can eventually recruit some of the guards who watch the defenses around Washington, DC.”

  “Wow, political propaganda! Just the kind of exciting stuff people want from an action-adventure story.”

  “Precisely,” Grandpa said. “Then, after years of toil and effort, we will convince one of the Hushlander malcontents to post a note on the head Librarian’s door, condemning him and creating an international incident. In the chaos that follows, we can get ourselves assigned as ambassadors and move into the city, thereby completing step one of a seventeen-step process of getting into the place unseen!”

  “Fantastic!” Kaz said.

  We all stood around for a moment looking at each other. The silence in the city was pervasive, at least until something very loud detonated nearby, throwing debris against the outside walls and shaking us all with the blast.

  “Huh,” Grandpa said. “I guess, alternatively, we could run away from the unexplained explosion, steal a ship, and fly into the Hushlands with guns blazing.”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” I said. “I’m going to be writing my autobiography someday, and all that stuff you described sounds like it would be really boring to write.”

  We scrambled out of the room and into the hallway beyond, which was suddenly bustling with activity. The explosion, it seemed, had shocked the life into people.* We pushed through
the rushing Mokians before being confronted by a ring of guards with face paint and spears. In their center stood Queen Kamali, a tall Mokian woman in her late teens.

  “We didn’t do it!” Kaz said immediately.

  “I didn’t assume you had, Lord Kazan,” the queen replied. “This is a Librarian missile strike. We suffered them periodically during the years before the actual invasion.” She eyed me. “Of course, there’s a chance that something provoked them into sending this particular attack.”

  “Uh…” I said. “How do you know…?”

  “About your ultimatum? It was displayed on every piece of glass in the palace, Lord Alcatraz.”

  It was? Seems I went a little overboard with powering that Communicator’s Glass.

  “In the past,” the queen said, “these attacks were merely an annoyance, for we had our protective dome. Without it, the attack could be devastating. I’m ordering everyone into the shelters.” She hesitated. “I don’t suppose you’ll come?”

  “Are there snacks?” Kaz asked.

  Another explosion shook the city. Aluki, of the royal guard, grabbed the queen by the shoulder. “We must go. Leave the Smedrys to do what they do best.”

  “Save the world?” Grandpa asked.

  “Get into trouble?” Kaz asked.

  “Run around screaming?” I asked.

  “Draw fire,” Aluki said, towing the queen away, her guards going with them.

  Grandpa grinned, then led the way, finger thrust forward as he ran down the hallway. We joined him, Kaz moving the most quickly since he’d put on his Warrior’s Lenses. My own Lenses were in Grandpa’s care for the moment. Since I’d been resting from my ordeal the day before, he’d taken them to be polished and inspected for chips.

  We charged down one corridor, then another, and eventually spurted out a large doorway and onto a field full of enormous glass animals. Vehicles, after the Free Kingdomer style. A sly raven, a proud griffin, a majestic eagle, and … a penguin.

  “You’re going to pick the penguin, aren’t you?” I said with a sigh as Grandpa started running across the field.

  “Of course, lad! It’s the most elegant of the choices.”

  Right. Well, I’d been looking forward to flying to the Hushlands, but sailing would probably work too.

  Rockets fell from the sky over the collection of retro huts and wooden structures that made up Tuki Tuki. Each rocket trailed a plume of smoke as it roared down past the broken remnants of the city’s protective dome. A nearby explosion shook the ground and I stumbled, angry. First the siege, now this. The Librarians couldn’t even let the people of Tuki Tuki mourn their fallen friends and family. Instead they launched an air strike the day after the siege broke—evidently with the attitude of, “If we can’t have it, we’ll just blow it up.”

  “Wait, Grandpa!” I yelled. “My mother! We’ve got to take her.”

  “I’m not convinced of that!” Grandpa yelled back.

  “We’re bringing her,” I said. Yes, she was a Librarian. Yes, Grandpa was right not to trust her. But my mother was the one who had guessed where my father would go next; she knew him better than even Grandpa did.

  My Truthfinder’s Lens had confirmed she wasn’t lying about my father. She’d been working to stop Attica for years now. My instincts said we’d need her before this infiltration was finished. As a side note,* my life involves some of the strangest lines of dialogue you’ll ever read. Case in point:

  “Fine,” Grandpa said. “You fetch your evil Librarian mother from the jail. I’ll go warm up the giant penguin!”

  “I’ll join you, Al,” Kaz said as I bolted through the town toward the jail—or, well, the improvised jail that we’d set up for my mother.

  Tuki Tuki had once been an idyllic place of flowers, green grass, and smiling faces. Now it was mostly broken-up ground, pieces of fallen glass, and trampled flowers. The missiles added smoldering craters for variety’s sake.

  The evacuation into the shelters seemed to be going well though, as large masses of people were disappearing safely into underground bunkers. Before too long, we were running through an almost empty city. Well, empty save for death missiles dropping down upon us. I was pleased to find that I’d been through so many crazy situations like this that I almost wasn’t panicked by that idea.

  “So,” Kaz said, keeping pace with me easily because of his sunglasses, “any idea when you’ll be able to … you know … bring the Talents back?”

  I shook my head.

  “You sure?”

  “I—”

  I cut off as a missile dropped in our direction. We dove for shelter beside a wall as the missile hit right beyond us, then bounced before coming to a stop. We waited, tense, but no explosion followed.

  “A dud,” Kaz said. “Let’s go.”

  I followed, passing uncomfortably close to the missile. Something odd about it struck me. “The entire back half is made of glass,” I said. “So much for the Librarians avoiding the use of Free Kingdomer technology.”*

  “A lot of them do avoid it,” Kaz said. “But then again, a lot of them think that only they should be able to use stuff like this. Remember, being a Librarian of Biblioden is all about control. They don’t want unworthies to have access to things like glass. Those missiles fly farther and lighter using brightsand to power their engines—but the explosives are probably all Hushlander TNT or some such, which is a lot cheaper than the silimatic equivalent.”

  “Hypocrites.”

  “Yeah. The only things the Librarians haven’t ever been able to steal from us are the Talents.” He hesitated, and then obviously couldn’t help pushing a little further. “So, what exactly did you do, anyway? Maybe we can figure out how to bring them back by looking at the way you broke them.”

  I grimaced. “I don’t know what I did, Kaz. It was like … I grew tired of trying to control the Talent, and I let it go. Let it do what it wanted.”

  “You make it sound alive,” Kaz said, turning down another desolate street.

  “It kind of feels that way.”

  Kaz shook his head. “The Talents aren’t alive—no more than your conscience is alive, or your anger is alive. You may feel like these things have a life to them, but that’s dangerous—it makes them external, Al. Like you don’t have responsibility for them. Your Talent is a piece of you. I have a feeling that if we’re going to get the Talents working again, you’ll need to understand that.”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “Good. Also, missile.”

  I leaped for shelter in a ditch as a missile came spiraling down toward us. This one wasn’t a dud—it blasted into a nearby hut, and the sound of the explosion nearly deafened me. I looked up, dazed, to find Kaz beside me. A large piece of metal had been thrown by the blast directly into the wall of the ditch not an inch above his head. He looked up at it, measured the distance—quite minuscule—and raised an eyebrow behind his sunglasses toward me.

  “Going to tell me how short people are more remarkable than tall people?” I asked, dusting myself off and standing up.

  “That’s a misunderstanding,” Kaz said, leading the way again. “Short people aren’t, on average, any more remarkable than taller people. In fact, I’d say that the remarkability in me is about equivalent to the remarkability in you.”

  “That’s very good of you to admit.”

  “Of course … my remarkability is packed into a smaller container, so it’s more concentrated. Like the difference between lemon juice and citric acid. So my remarkability is more effective, you see.”

  I snorted. “You’re a loon.”

  “Yes, and fortunately my looniness is also more concentrated, like—”

  I held up a hand, stopping him. We’d just turned a corner to look straight at the jail, which was really a small vacation hut with the windows nailed shut and the doors barred from the outside. The Mokians weren’t big on actual prison facilities.

  A missile had hit beside the structure, blasting open the wall.
My mother, if she was still alive, was free.

  Chapter

  Norton

  I wonder why I keep writing these chapter introductions. I spend a lot of time in these stories not actually writing these stories. There must be something to it. Something I don’t want to admit.

  These are another delay. To keep myself from writing the inevitable. As long as I’m waxing fanciful about bunnies and bazookas, I don’t have to make progress toward the ending.

  I don’t want to get there. Despite claiming I’m writing these autobiographies to set the story straight, I don’t actually want to do it. Deep down, I’d rather think of myself as a hero.

  Of course, I’m probably too much of a coward to include this section in the book.

  I took a deep breath, then stepped up to the improvised prison and peeked through the broken wall. My mother, Shasta Smedry, sat inside on a little stool, reading a book. She wore a plaid skirt and tight vest over a white blouse—typical Librarian clothing—with her blonde hair in a bun. She had on horn-rimmed spectacles and seemed completely unconcerned that a missile had ripped this room in half.

  “Ah, there you are,” she said, spotting me. “About time. I hope you aren’t adopting some of your grandfather’s proclivities, Alcatraz.”

  “Why are you just sitting there?” I asked.

  “Where else would I go?”

  “You could have escaped.”

  “I don’t want to escape. You are currently my best bet at reaching Attica before he does anything stupid.” She stood up and tossed the book aside—a callous act for a Librarian. But then again it was merely a fantasy novel, so nothing that important.

  Looking at her felt like getting punched in the gut. I still saw her as Ms. Fletcher—the social worker who had watched over me as a child. She’d been with me through most of my life, and had taken every opportunity to berate me, tear me down, and undermine my every success.

  I’d spent my life feeling abandoned, alone, and worthless—and all the time my mother had been there, never telling me who she was, never offering a moment of comfort. Everything could have gone so differently if this woman had been willing to show me an ounce of kindness.