And . . . that’s not everything either, I thought. My father came in here for a reason. He came searching for something.
Something very important.
I’d found a communication from him several months back – it had come with the package that had contained the Sands of Rashid. My father had sounded tense in his letter. He’d been excited, but worried too.
He’d discovered something dangerous. The Sands of Rashid – the Translator’s Lenses – had only been the beginning. They were a step toward uncovering something much greater. Something that had frightened my father.
He’d spent thirteen years searching for whatever the something was. That trail had ended here, at the Library of Alexandria. Could he really have come because he’d grown frustrated? Had he traded his soul for the answers he sought, just so that he could finally stop searching?
I shivered, glancing at the Curators, who floated behind us. ‘Bastille,’ I said. ‘You said that one of them spoke to you?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Kept trying to get me to borrow a book.’
‘It spoke to you in English?’
‘Well, Nalhallan,’ she said. ‘But it’s pretty much the same thing. Why?’
‘Mine spoke to me in a language I didn’t understand.’
‘Mine did that at first too,’ she said. ‘Several of them surrounded me and searched through my possessions. They grabbed the supply list and several of the labels off of the foodstuffs. Then, they left – all except for that one behind us. It continued to jabber at me in that infuriating language. It was only after I’d been caught that it started speaking Nalhallan.’
I glanced again at the Curators. They use traps, I thought. But not ones that kill – ones that keep people tangled up. They separate everyone who comes in, then they make each one wander the hallways, lost. They talk to us in a language they know we don’t understand when they could easily speak in English instead.
This whole place is all about annoying people. The Curators are trying to make us frustrated. All so that we’ll give up and take one of the books they’re offering.
‘So,’ Bastille said. ‘What’s our plan?’
I shrugged. ‘Why ask me?’
‘Because you’re in charge, Alcatraz,’ she said, sighing. ‘What’s your problem, anyway? Half the time you seem ready to give orders and charge about. The other half of the time, you complain that you don’t want to be the one who has to make the decisions.’
I didn’t answer. To be honest, I hadn’t really figured out my feelings either.
‘Well?’ she asked.
‘First, we find Kaz, Australia, and your mother.’
‘Why would you need to find me?’ Kaz asked. ‘l mean, I’m right here.’
We both jumped. And, of course, there he was. Wearing his bowler and rugged jacket, hands in his pockets, smiling at us impishly.
‘Kaz!’ I said. ‘You found us!’
‘You were lost,’ he said, shrugging. ‘If I’m lost, it’s easier for me to find someone else who is lost – since abstractly, we’re both in the same place.’
I frowned, trying to make sense of that. Kaz looked around, eyeing the pillars and their archways. ‘Not at all like I imagined it.’
‘Really?’ Bastille asked. ‘It looks pretty much like I figured it would.’
‘I expected them to take better care of their scrolls and books,’ Kaz said.
‘Kaz,’ I said. ‘You found us, right?’
‘Uh, what did I just say, kid?’
‘Can you find Australia too?’
He shrugged. ‘I can try. But, we’ll have to be careful. Quite nearly got myself caught in a trap a little ways back. I tripped a wire, and a large hoop swung out of the wall and tried to grab me.’