I pointed ahead, toward a place where the hallway opened into a large room. This diversion was actually quite fortunate for Bastille, for it meant that she didn’t have to explain how silimatic lanterns work – something I now know that she couldn’t have done anyway. Not that I’d point out her ignorance to her directly. She tends to start swinging handbags whenever I do things like that.
Bastille went up the hallway first. Despite myself, I was impressed by her stealth as she crept forward, close to the wall. The room ahead was far better lit than the hallway, and her movements threw shadows back along the walls. After reaching the place where the hallway opened into the room, she waved Sing and me forward. I realized that I could hear voices up ahead.
I approached as quietly as possible, creeping up next to Bastille. There was a quiet clink as Sing huddled beside us, setting down his gym bag. Bastille shot him a harsh look, and he shrugged apologetically.
The room at the end of the corridor was actually a large, three-story entryway. It was circular, and our corridor opened up onto a second-story balcony overlooking the main floor down below. The footprints turned and wound around a set of stairs, leading down. We inched forward to the edge of the balcony and looked down upon the people I had tracked.
One of them was indeed a person I knew. It was I person I had known for my entire life: Ms. Fletcher.
It made sense. After all, Grandpa Smedry had said that she’d been the one to steal the sands from my room. The idea had seemed silly to me at the time, but then a lot of things had been confusing to me back then. I could now see that he must have been right.
And yet, it seemed so odd to see a person from my regular life in the middle of the library. Ms. Fletcher wasn’t a friend, but she was one of the few constants in my life. She had directed my moves from foster family to foster family, always checking in on my, looking after me….
Spying on me?
Ms. Fletcher still wore her unflattering black skirt, tight bun, and horn-rimmed glasses. She stood next to a hefty man in a dark business suit with a black shirt and a red power tie. As he turned, conversing with Ms. Fletcher, I could see that he wore a patch over one eye. The other eye held a red-tinted monocle.
Bastille breathed in sharply.
“What?” I asked quietly.
“He only has one eye,” she said. “I think that’s Radrian Blackburn. He’s a very power Oculator Alcatraz – they say he put out his own eye to increase the power focused through his single remaining one.”
I frowned. “Blackburn?” I whispered. “That’s an interesting name.”
“It’s a mountain,” Bastille said. “I think in the state you call Alaska. Librarians named mountains after themselves – just like they named prisons after us.”
I cocked my head. “I’m pretty sure that Alcatraz Island is older than I am, Bastille.”
“You were named after someone, Alcatraz,” Sing said, crawling up next to us. “A famous Oculator from long ago. Among people from our world – and among our opponents – names tend to get reused. We’re traditional that way.”
I leaned forward. Blackburn didn’t look all that threatening. True, he had an arrogant voice and seemed a bit imposing in his black-on-black suit. Still, I had expected something more dramatic. A cape, maybe?
I was, of course, missing something very important. You’ll see in a moment.
Beside me, Bastille looked very nervous. I could see her pulling her purse up, reaching one hand inside of it. An odd gesture, I thought, since I doubted there was anything inside that purse that could face down a Dark Oculator. Anyway, the voices from below quickly stole my attention. I could just barely hear what Blackburn was saying.
“…you hadn’t scared him off last night,” the Oculator said, “we wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
Ms. Fletcher folded her arms. “I brought you the sands, Radrian. That’s what you wanted.”
Blackburn shook his head. Hands clasped behind his back, he began to stroll in a slow circle, his well-polished shoes clicking on the stones below.
“You were supposed to watch over the boy,” he said, “not just collect the sands. This was sloppy, Shasta. Very sloppy. What possessed you to send a regular thug to go collect the child?”
Ms. Fletcher sent the gunman, I thought with a stab of anger. She really was working for them, all this time.
“That’s what I’ve always done,” Ms. Fletcher snapped. “I send one of my men to move the boy to another foster home.”
Blackburn turned. “Your man drew a gun on a Smedry.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Ms. Fletcher said. “Someone must have bribed him – someone from one of the other factions, I’d guess. The Order of the Shattered Lens, perhaps? We won’t know for certain until the interrogation is complete, but I suspect that they were afraid that you’d manage to recruit the boy.”
Recruit me? That comment made me c**k my head. However, there was something more pressing in that statement. It implied that Ms. Fletcher hadn’t wanted me killed. For some reason, that made me relieved, though I knew it was foolish.
Down below, Blackburn shook his head. “You should have gone yourself to collect him, Shasta.”
“I intended to go along,” Ms. Fletcher said. “But…”