‘The non-stoopidalicious kind!’ Bastille said. ‘Who puts passages inside the walls? Isn’t that a little ridiculous?’
‘Not when you need to sneak out!’
‘Why would I need to sneak out of my own home?’
‘Because Knights of Crystallia are chasing you!’
‘This sort of thing doesn’t happen to me very often!’ Bastille snapped. ‘In fact, it only seems to happen when you’re involved!’
‘I can’t help the fact that people like to chase me. We need to—’
I froze in the middle of the hallway. ‘Kaz!’ I exclaimed, pointing at him.
‘Me!’ he exclaimed back.
‘Idiots!’ Bastille said, pointing at both of us.
‘When did you get here?’ I demanded of my short uncle.
‘A few moments ago,’ he said. ‘Everything’s packed back at Keep Smedry, ready for takeoff. I borrowed a vehicle from the Mokian embassy, as I didn’t want to alert the king of what we were doing.’
‘We have a pilot?’ I asked.
‘Sure do,’ he replied. ‘Aydee Ecks.’
‘Who?’
‘Your cousin,’ he said. ‘Sister to Sing and Australia. She was delivering a message to the embassy from Mokia.’
‘Sounds good,’ I said. It was always nice to have another Smedry along on a mission. Well, nice and catastrophic at the same time. But when you’re a Smedry, you learn to make the catastrophes work for you.
A distant clanking preceded a group of knights, who stormed out of a side hallway a moment later. They spotted us and began running in our direction.
‘Kaz!’ I said. ‘Get us out of here!’
‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘My Talent has been—’
‘Now, Kaz!’ I said.
‘All right,’ he said with a sigh, walking over and pulling open a door. We’d used Kaz’s Talent of getting lost to transport us before. Like all Smedry Talents, it was unpredictable – but it was fairly safe to use across short distances.
Besides, we didn’t have time to try anything else. I raced through the doorway, Bastille behind me. Kaz pulled the door closed behind us.
The room smelled musty and wet inside, like mold or fungus, but it was too dark to see anything.
‘Activate your Talent!’ I told Kaz.
‘I already did,’ he replied.
There was a scraping noise. Like something very large being pulled across the stone floor. I blinked as Bastille unsheathed her sword, the crystalline weapon shedding a cool, blue light across our surroundings. We were in a cave. And standing before us, looking very confused, was an enormous black dragon. It cocked its head at us, smoke trailing from its nostrils.
‘Well,’ I said, relieved. ‘It’s just a dragon. For a moment, I was frightened!’ We’d met a dragon before, and it had quite nicely not eaten us. In fact, it had carried us on its back.
The dragon inhaled deeply.
‘Kaz!’ Bastille said, panicked.
‘Put away that light!’ he said. ‘It’s hard to get lost if I can see where I’m going!’