‘Giant robots,’ I said. ‘They have giant robots.’
‘Er, yes,’ Kaz said. ‘That’s what threw the rock at us.’
‘Why didn’t anyone shattering tell me they had giant robots!’
The others shrugged.
‘Maybe we’re fighting for the wrong side,’ I said.
‘We’re fighting for what is right,’ Kaz said.
‘Yeah, without giant robots.’
‘They’re not so tough,’ Bastille said, eyes narrowed. ‘They’re nearly useless in battle. Always tripping over things.’
‘But they’re great at throwing rocks,’ Kaz added.
‘All right,’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘Grandpa needs us to sneak into the palace and call from inside, using the queen’s Communicator’s Glass. Any ideas?’
‘Well,’ Kaz said, ‘I could use my Talent to—’
‘No!’ Bastille and I both said at the same time. I still hadn’t gotten all of the dragon stomach snot out of my hair.
‘You tall people,’ Kaz said with a sigh. ‘Always so paranoid.’
‘We could steal one of those six robots,’ Aydee said, thoughtful. ‘I might be able to pilot one. My training includes Librarian technology.’
‘That’s an idea,’ I said. ‘Maybe . . . Wait, six robots?’
I looked again, and indeed, where three of the enormous machines had stood, there were now six. A group of Librarians stood around the robot’s feet, looking up, seeming confused at where the extra three had come from.
Aydee’s Talent, it appeared, could be a hindrance.
‘Great,’ I said flatly. ‘Let’s ignore the robots for now.’
‘How are we going to get in, then?’ Kaz asked.
I bit my lip in thought. At that point, something deeply profound occurred to me. A majestic plan of beauty and power, a plan that would save us all and Mokia as well.
But, being stoopid, I forgot it immediately. So we did something ridiculous instead.
144
For my plan to work, we had to wait until it grew dark. It was a cold night, chill, and I stood a lone sentry atop a stone shelf, lost inside my mind. The ghosts of my past seemed, in that caliginous night, to crawl up from the bowels of the earth and whisper to me. At their forefront was the image that I’d once had of my father, my dreams of what he would be when I finally discovered him. A brave man, a man forced to abandon me because of circumstances, not lack of affection. A person I’d be proud to have as my sire.
That man was just illusion. Dead. Killed by the truth that was Attica Smedry. But the ghost whispered at me for vengeance. Whispered at me to . . .
. . . stop being so pretentious.
The above paragraphs are what we authors like to call literary allusion. That’s what we do when we don’t know what else to write, so we go and read some other story, looking for great ideas we can steal. However, to avoid looking like we’re stealing, we leave just enough clues so that someone who is curious can discover the original source. That way, instead of looking like thieves, we instead appear very clever because of the secret meaning we’ve hidden in our text.
Authors are the only people who get in trouble if they steal from others and try to hide it but get praised for stealing when they do it in the open. Remember that. It’ll help you a lot in college.
So, to repeat the previous phrase without the literary allusion: I sat on a rock, waiting for it to get dark, thinking about my stoopid father and how he didn’t live up to my expectations. It wasn’t actually cold out – Mokia is in the tropics, unlike Denmark. My stomach rumbled; the others were eating some bread and cheese that Kaz had brought, but I didn’t feel like eating.
A rustling sound came from behind, and Bastille walked up to my rock, Warrior’s Lenses tucked into her jacket pocket. Below, the besieging army was getting ready to camp for the night. I was wearing my Oculator’s Lenses – which were also called ‘Primary Lenses,’ I’d come to learn. They had a reddish tint, and allowed an Oculator to do some very basic things: See auras around types of glass and fight off other Oculators. Sometimes they let you see other kinds of auras as well, little hints about the world. I wasn’t good at using them for that sort of thing yet, though.
Right now, they showed me that the dome around Tuki Tuki was made of a very powerful type of glass. It was in even worse shape than it looked; my Lenses let me see that the aura was wavering. It pulsed with an almost sickly glow. Whatever the Librarians were doing to break down the dome, it was working.