Alcatraz versus the Scrivener's Bones (21 page)

"Having a tea party," I yelled back.
"What do you think?
We're trapped!"

"Silly," she said.
“
Why'd you go and get trapped?"

I glanced at Bastille.
She just rolled her eyes.
That's
Australia for you.

"We didn't exactly have a choice," I called back.

"I climbed a tree once and couldn't get back down,"
Australia said.
"I guess it's kind of the same, right?"

"Sure," I said.
"Look, I need you to find some rope."

“Uh,” she said. “Where exactly
am
I going to find something like that?”

“I don’t know!”

“All right then.” She sighed loudly and disappeared.

“She’s hopeless,” Bastille said.

"I'm realizing that.
At least she's still got her soul.
I was
half afraid that she'd end up in serious trouble."

"Like getting captured by a member of the Scrivener's
Bones, or perhaps falling down a pit?"

"Something like that," I said, kneeling down.
I wasn't
about to count on Australia to get us out.
I'd already been
around her long enough to realize that she probably wasn't
going to be of much help.

(Which, incidentally, was why you shouldn't have been
all that excited to see her show up.
You still turned the
page, didn't you?)

I opened Bastille's pack and pulled out the boots with
the Grappler's Glass on the bottom.
I activated the glass,
then stuck a boot to the side of the wall.
As expected, it
didn't stick.
They only worked on glass.

"So . . . maybe we should have you try to break the walls
down," Bastille said
s
peculatively.
"
You’ll
probably bury us
in stone, but that would be
better than sitting around talk
ing about our feelings and that nonsense."

I glanced over, smiling.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said. "
J
ust good to have you back."

She snorted.
"Well? Breaking? Can you do it?"

"I can try,”
I said speculatively.
"But, well, it seems like
a long shot."

"We've never had to depend on one of those before,"
she said.

"Good point." I rested my hands against the wall.

The Dark Talent . . . beware it. . . .

The words from the tomb wall returned to my mind.
The paper with the inscription sat in my pocket, but I tried
not to think about it.
Now that I'd begun to understand
what my
Ta
lent was, it didn't seem a good time to start
second-guessing its nature.

There would be time enough for that later.

I tentatively sent a wave of breaking power into the wall.
Cracks twisted away from my palms, moving through the
stone.
Bits of dust and chips began to fall in on us, but I
kept going.
The wall groaned.

“
Alcatraz!" Bastille said, grabbing my arm and pulling
me back.

I stumbled back, dazed, away from the wall as a large
chunk of stone toppled inward and hit the floor where I
had been standing. The soft, springy ground gave way
beneath the stone.
Kind of like my head would have, had it
been in the way.
Only that would have involved a lot more
blood and a lot more screaming.

I stared at the chunk of stone.
Then, I glanced
,
u
p at the
wall.
It was cracked and
b
roken, and other bits of it seemed
ready to fall off too.

"Okay, that was expected," Bastille said, "but still kind
of dumb of us, eh?"

I nodded, stooping over to pick u
p
a Grappler's boot.
If
only I could get it to work.
I put it up against the wall again,
but it refused to stick.

"That's not going to do anything, Smedry," Bastille said.

"There's silicon in the rock.
That's the same thing as
glass."

"T
r
ue," Bastille said.
"But there isn't enough to make
the Grappler's Glass stick."

I tried anyway.
I focused on the glass, closi
n
g my eyes,
treating it like it was a pair of Lenses.

During the months Grandpa Smedry had been training
me, I'd learned how to activate stubborn Lenses. There was
a trick to it. You had to give them energy. Pour part of
yourself into them to make them function.

C
ome on
!
I
thought to the boot, pressing it to the wall.
There's glass in the wall.
Little bits of it.
Y
ou can stick.
Y
ou
have
to stick
.

I'd contacted Grandpa
S
med
ry at a much greater dis
tance than I was supposed to be able to. I'd done that by
focusing hard on my
C
ourier's Lenses, somehow giving
them an extra boost of power.
C
ould I somehow do the
same to this boot?

I thought
I
felt somet
hing.
The boot, pulling slightly
toward the wall.
I focused harder,
s
training, feeling myself
grow tired.
Yet, I didn't give up.
I continued to push, open
ing my eyes and staring intently.

The glass on the bottom of the boot began to glow
softly.
Bastille looked over, shocked.

C
ome on
,
I
thought agai
n. I felt the boot drawing some
thing from me, taking it out, feeding on it.

W
hen I carefully pulled
m
y hand away,
the boot stayed
where it was.

"Impossible," Bastille whispered, walking over.

I wiped my brow, smiling triumphantly.

Bastille reached out with a careful touch, poking the
boot.
Then, she easily pulled it off the wall.

"Hey!" I said.
"Did you see what I had to go through to
get that to stick?"

She snorted.
"It came off easily, Smedry.
Do you hon
estly expect that you'd be able to walk up the wall with it?"

I felt my sense of triumph deflate.
She was right.
If I
had to work
that
hard to get one boot to stay in one place,
there was no way I'd be able to summon enough effort to
get all the way to the top.

"Still," Bastille said.
"That's pretty amazing.
How did
you do it?"

I shrugged.
"I just shoved a little extra power into the
glass."

Bastille didn't reply.
She stared at the boot, then looked
at me.
"This is silimatic," she said. "Technology, n
o
t
m
agic.
You shouldn't be able to push it like that.
Technology has
limits."

"I think your tec
hnology and your magic are more
related than people believe, Bastille," I said.

She nodded slowly.
Then, she moved
q
uickly, putting
the boot back into the pack and zipping it up.
"You still
have those Windstormer's Lenses?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Why?"

She looked up, meet
ing my eyes. ..I have an idea.”

"
Should I be frightened?”
I asked.

"Probably," she said. "The idea's a little bit strange. Like
one you migh
t have come up with, actually.”

I raised an eyebrow.

"Get out those Lenses," she said, throwing her pack over
her shoulder.

I did so.

"No
w, break the frames.”

I paused, eyeing her.

"
J
ust do it,
”
she said.

I shrugged, then activated
m
y T
a
lent.
The frames fell
apart easily.

"Double up the Lenses,
”
she said.

"Okay," I said, sliding one over the other.

"
C
an you do to those Lenses what you did to the boots?
Put extra power through them?”

"I should be able to," I said.
“But . . .”

I trailed off, suddenly coming to understand.
If I blew
a huge blast of air out of the Lenses, then I would be
forced upward
–
like
a fighter jet, with the Lenses being
my engine.
I looked up at Bastille.
“
Bastille!
That
’s abso
lutely insane."

"I know," she said, grimacing.
"I've been spending way
too much time with you
S
medries.
But my mother is prob
ably only a few minutes away from death.
Are you willing
to give it a try?"

I smiled.
"Of course I am!
It sounds awesome!"

Inclined toward leadership or not, thoughtful or not,
uncertain of myself or not, I was still a teenage boy.
And,
you have to admit, it really did sound awesome.

Bastille stepped up close to
m
e, putting one arm
around my waist, then holding on to my shoulder with the
other.
"Then I'm going with you," she said.
"Hang on to my
waist."

I nodded, feeling a bit distracted having her so close.
For the first time in my life, I realized somethi
n
g.

Girls smell weird.

I started to feel nervous.
If I blew with the Lenses too
softl
y
we'd just fall back down into the pit.
If I blasted
too hard, we'd end up smashing into the ceiling.
It seemed
like a very fine balance.

I lowered
my arm,
pointing
the Lenses down straight
by
m
y side, my other arm held tentatively around Bastille's
waist.
I took a breath, preparing myself.

"
S
medry
,”
Bastille said, her face just inches from mine.

I blinked. Having her right there was suddenly really
,
really
distracting.
P
lus, she was hanging on rather tightly,
with the grip of a person whose strength has been enhanced
by
a
Crystin Fleshstone.

I fumbled for a response, my mind fuzzy.
(Girls, you
might have noticed, can do things like this to guys.
It's a
result of their powerful pheromones. They evolved that
way, gaining the ability to make us men fuzzy-headed, so
that it would be easier for them to hit us on the heads
with hardback fantasy novels and steal our cheese sticks.)

"You okay?" she asked.

"Uh . . . yeah," I managed to get out.
“
What did
you want?"

"I just wanted to say thanks.
”

"For what?"

"For provoking me," she said.
"For making me think
that someone had set me up to fail on purpose.
It's proba
bly not true, but it's what I needed.
If there's a chance that
someone stuck
m
e in that situation intentionally, then I
want to figure out who
it was and why they did it. It’
s a
challenge."

I nodded.
That's Bastille for you.
Tell her that she
’
s
wonderful, and she'd just sit there and sulk.
But, hint that
she might have a hidden enemy somewhere, and she'd
j
um
p to her
f
eet, full of energy.

"You r
e
ady?" I asked.

"Ready as I'll ever be."

I focused on the Lenses
–
trying
to ignore how close
Bastille was
–
and
built up
O
culatory energy.

Then, holding my breath, I released the power.

We shot upward in a lurching burst of wind.
Dust and
chips of stone blew out beneath us, puffing up the sides of
the shaft.
We blasted upward, wind tussling my hair, the
opening to the pit approaching far too quickly.
l cried out,
deactivating the Lenses, but we had too much momentum.

We passed the lip of the hole and continued on.
I threw
up my hands in front of my
face as we approached the ceil
ing.
With the Lenses no longer jetting, gravity slowed us.
We crested the blast a few inches from the ceiling, then
began to plummet downward again.

"Now, kick!" Bastille said, twisting and putting both of
her feet against my chest.

"Wha
–“
I began, but Bastille kicked, throwing me to
the side and pushing herself the other direction.

We hit the ground on either side of the pit.
I rolled, then
came to a rest, staring upward.
The room spun around me.

W
e were free. I sat up, holding my head. Across the
pit, Bastille was smiling as she
jumped to her feet. “
I can
’
t
believe that actually worked!"

"You kicked me!" I said with a groan.

"W
ell, I owed it to you," she said.
"Remember, you
kic
ked me back in the
Dragonaut
. I
didn't want you to feel
like I didn't return the feeling."

I grimaced.
This, by the w
ay
,
is a pretty good metaphor
for my entire relationship with Bastille.
I
’
m thinking of
writing a book on the concept
.
K
ic
king
Y
our Friends for Fun
and Profit
.

Sudd
enly, something occurred to me. “My Lenses!”
They lay in shattered pieces on the ground beside the pit.
I'd dropped them as I hit.
I stood up and rushed over, but
it was no use.
There wasn't enough of them left to use.

"Gather up the pieces," Bastille said. "They can be
reforged."

I sighed.
"Yeah, I suppose. This means
we’re going to
have to face Kiliman without
t
hem."