‘The palace?’ the prince said, obviously disappointed – for him, at least, that was a fairly mundane location. He called out the order anyway.
The pig started to move again, tromping down the street. The pedestrians apparently knew to stay out of its way, and despite its large size, it made very good time. I sat down on one of the regal red couches, and Bastille sat next to me, exhaling and closing her eyes.
‘Does it hurt?’ I asked.
She shrugged. She’s good at the tough-girl act, but I could tell that the severing still bothered her deeply. ‘Why do we need Folsom?’ she asked, eyes still closed, obviously trying to distract me from asking after her.
‘He’ll be with Himalaya,’ I said, then realized that Bastille had never met the Librarian. ‘She’s a Librarian who supposedly defected to our side six months back. I don’t think she’s to be trusted, though.’
‘Why?’
‘Folsom stays suspiciously close to her,’ I said. ‘He rarely lets her out of his sight – she’s really a Librarian spy.’
‘Great,’ Bastille said. ‘And we’re going to ask her for help?’
‘She’s our best bet,’ I said. ‘She is a fully trained Librarian – if anyone can sort through that mess in the Royal Archives—’
‘Not a library!’ Rikers called distantly from the front of the pig.
‘—it will be a Librarian. Besides, maybe if she is a spy, she’ll know what the Librarians are looking for and we can force it out of her.’
‘So, your brilliant plan is to go to someone you suspect of being our enemy, then bring her into the very place that the Librarians are trying to break into.’
‘Er . . . yes.’
‘Wonderful. Why do I feel that I’m going to end this ridiculous fiasco wishing I’d just given up my knighthood and become an accountant instead?’
I smiled. It felt good to have Bastille back. It was hard for me to feel too impressed by my own fame with her there pointing out the holes in my plans.
‘You don’t really mean that, do you?’ I asked. ‘About quitting the knighthood?’
She sighed, opening her eyes. ‘No. As much as I hate to admit it, my mother was right. I’m not only good at this, but I enjoy it.’
She looked at me, meeting my eyes. ‘Somebody set me up, Alcatraz. I’m convinced of it. They wanted me to fail.’
‘Your . . . mother was the one who voted most harshly against your reinstatement.’
Bastille nodded, and I could see that she was thinking the same thing that I was.
‘We have quite the parents, don’t we?’ I asked. ‘My father ignores me; my mother married him just to get his Talent.’
Marry a Smedry, and you got a Talent. Apparently, it didn’t matter if you were a Smedry by blood or by marriage: A Smedry was a Smedry. The only difference was that in the case of a marriage, the spouse got their husband’s or wife’s same Talent.
‘My parents aren’t like that,’ Bastille said fiercely. ‘They’re good people. My father is one of the most respected and popular kings Nalhalla has ever known.’
‘Even if he is giving up on Mokia,’ Sing said quietly from his seat across from us.
‘He thinks he’s doing the best thing,’ Bastille said. ‘How would you like to have to decide whether to end a war – and save thousands of lives – or keep fighting? He sees a chance for peace, and the people want peace.’
‘My people want peace,’ Sing said. ‘But we want freedom more.’
Bastille fell silent. ‘Anyway,’ she finally said, ‘assuming my mother was the one to set me up, I can see exactly why she’d do it. She worries about showing favoritism toward me. She feels she needs to be extra hard on me, which is why she’d send me on such a difficult mission. To see if I failed, and therefore needed to go back into training. But she does care for me. She just has strange ways of showing it.’
I sat back, thinking about my own parents. Perhaps Bastille could come up with good motives for hers, but they were a noble king and a brave knight. What did I have? An egotistical rock-star scientist and an evil Librarian who even other Librarians didn’t seem to like very much.
Attica and Shasta Smedry were not like Bastille’s parents. My mother didn’t care about me – she’d married only to get the Talent. And my father obviously didn’t want to spend any time with me.
No wonder I turned out like I did. There is a saying in the Free Kingdoms: ‘A cub’s roar is an echo of the bear.’ It’s a little bit like one we use in the Hushlands: ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’ (It figures that the Librarian version would use apples instead of something cool, like bears.)