How do you know so much about Oculator auras, Bastille? I thought, realizing what was bothering me. There was more to this girl than she liked to let people see.
Some things just weren’t making sense to me. Why was Bastille chosen to protect Grandpa Smedry? Certainly, she seemed like a force to be reckoned with – but she was still just a kid. And for her to know so much about Oculating, when Sing – a professor, and a Smedry to boot – didn’t seem to know much…
Well, it was odd.
You may think those above paragraphs are some kind of foreshadowing. You’re right. Of course those thoughts weren’t foreshadowing when they occurred to me. I couldn’t know that they’d be important.
I tend to have a lot of ridiculous thoughts. I’m having some right now. Most of these certainly aren’t important. And so, I usually only mention the ones that matter. For instance, I could have told you that many of the lanterns in the library looked like types of fruits and vegetables. But that has no real relevance to the plot, so I left it out. Likewise, I could have included the scene where I noticed the roots of Bastille’s hair and wondered why she dyed it silver, rather than letting it grow its natural red. But since that part isn’t relevant to the –
Oh. Wait. Actually, that is relevant. Never mind.
“Ready to go, then?” Bastille asked.
“I’m taking these,” Sing said. He unzipped his duffel bag, tossed aside a spare uzi, then stuffed in the translator’s notes. “Quentin would kill me if I left them behind.”
“Here,” I said, tossing a Forgotten Language book into the bag. “Might as well take one of these for him too.”
“Good idea,” Sing said, zipping up his duffel.
“There just one thing I don’t get,” I said.
“One thing?” Bastille asked with a snort.
“Why do the Librarians work so hard to keep everything quiet?” I asked. “Why go to all that trouble? What’s the point?”
“Do you have to have a point if you’re an evil sect of Librarians?” Bastille asked with annoyance.
I fell silent.
“They do have a point, Bastille,” Sing said. “Everyone has a reason to do what they do. The Librarians, they were founded by a man named Biblioden. Most people just call him The Scrivener. He taught that the world is too strange a place – that it needs to be ordered, organized, and controlled. One of Biblioden’s teachings is the Fire Metaphor. He pointed out that if you let fire burn free, it destroys everything around it. If you contain it, however, it can be very useful. Well, the Librarians think that other things – Oculatory powers, technology, Smedry Talents – need to be contained too. Controlled.”
“Controlled by those who supposedly know better,” Bastille said. “Librarians.”
“So,” I said, “all of this cover-up…”
“It’s to create the world The Scrivener envisioned,” Sing said. “To create a place where information is carefully controlled by a few select people, and where power is in the hands of his followers. A world where nothing strange or abnormal exists. Where magic is derided, and everything can be blissfully ordinary.”
And that’s what we fight, I thought, coming to understand for the first time. That’s what this is all about.
Sing threw his duffel over his shoulder, adjusting his glasses as Bastille went back to the door, cracking it open to make certain nobody was in the hallway. As she did, I noticed the discarded uzi, lying ignored on the floor. Trying to look nonchalant, I wandered over to it, absently reaching down and picking it up.
This is, I would like to note, precisely the same thing any thirteen-year-old boy would do in that situation. A boy who wouldn’t do such a thing probably hasn’t been reading enough books about killer Librarians.
Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t like most thirteen-year-old boys. I was special. And, in this case, my specialness manifested itself by making the gun break the moment I touched it. The weapon made a noise almost like a sigh, then busted into a hundred different pieces. Bullets rolled away like marbles, leaving me sullenly holding a piece of the gun’s grip.
“Oh,” Sing said. “I meant to leave that there, Alcatraz.”
“Yes, well,” I said, dropping scrap of metal. “I thought I should… uh, take care of the gun, just in case. We wouldn’t want anyone to find such a primitive weapon and hurt themselves by accident.”
“Ah, good idea,” Sing said. Bastille held open the door, then we all moved into the hallway.
“Next door,” Bastille said.
I nodded, switching glasses. As soon as the Tracker’s Lenses were on, I noticed something: bright black footprints, burning on the ground.
They were still fresh – I could see the trail disappearing as I watched. And there was a certain… power to the footprints. I instantly knew to whom they belonged.
The footprints passed through the hallway, beside a yellowish-black set, disappearing into the distance. They burned, foreboding and dark, like gasoline dropped to the floor and lit with black fire.