I raised an eyebrow. I hadn’t realized that Bastille was scared of heights. She hadn’t acted like this before. Of course, other times she’d been up high, she’d been in a flying vehicle. Not strapped to three sets of stilts and balancing high in the air.
For all her complaining, she was doing a remarkable job, and she had been the one to suggest taping the stilts together to get her up higher. Besides, she was wearing her glassweave jacket, which would save her if she did fall. Her Crystin abilities allowed her to keep her balance, despite the height and the instability of her position. It was rather remarkable.
Of course, that didn’t stop me from wanting to tease her. ‘You aren’t feeling dizzy, are you?’
‘You aren’t helping.’
‘Man, I think the breeze is picking up . . .’
‘Shut up!’
‘Is that an earthquake?’
‘I’m going to kill you slowly when I get down from here. I’ll do it with a hairpin. I’ll go for your heart, by way of your foot.’
I smiled. I shouldn’t have taunted her. The situation was dire, and there was little cause for laughter in Tuki Tuki. The dome was cracking even further, and my counselors – the two kind of useful ones, at least – said they thought it would last only another fifteen minutes or so.
But seeing Bastille in a situation like she was – where she was uncomfortable and nervous – was very rare. I just . . . well, I had to do it. And that, by the way, is the definition of stoopiderlifluous: being so stoopid as to taunt Bastille while she’s out of arm’s reach, assuming she won’t get revenge very soon after.
As I smirked, Kaz rounded the building and trotted up to me, wearing his dark Warrior’s Lenses. He’d gotten two small pistols somewhere and wore them strapped to his chest. They looked like flint-and-powder models, perhaps taken from the Mokian stores.
‘Everything’s ready,’ he said. ‘Mokians all over the city are climbing atop buildings, looking for the first sign of Librarian holes opening.’ He glanced up at Bastille. ‘I see you found a way to get even higher,’ he called at her. ‘Reason number fifty-six and a half: Short people know when to stay on the ground. We’re closer to it, we appreciate it more. What is it with you tall people and extreme heights?’
‘Kaz, I’m a thirteen-year-old girl,’ Bastille called down. ‘I’m only, like, a couple of inches taller than you are.’
‘It’s the principle of the thing,’ he called back. Then he looked at me. ‘So, are you going to explain this plan of yours, kid?’
‘Well, we’ve got two problems. The rocks hitting the shield and the tunnels digging up. We can’t stop the rocks because there’s an army between us and the robots. But the Librarians are conveniently digging tunnels from their back lines up into our city. So one of the problems presents a solution to the other.’
‘Ah,’ Kaz said thoughtfully. ‘So those fellows . . .’ He nodded to the six Mokian runners Aluki had gotten for me. They stood in a line, ready to dash away, bearing backpacks filled with stuffed bears.
I nodded. ‘Usually, after the Librarians are fought off from the hole they dig, the Mokians collapse the tunnel. But this time, as soon as the hole is spotted, we’ll move everyone out of the area. The emptiness will make the Librarians think that they haven’t been spotted, and they’ll rush out to cause mayhem. These six men will then sneak down the tunnel and run out behind Mokian lines, then take down the robots. A single one of these bears to the leg should make the robot collapse.’
‘Wow,’ Kaz said. ‘That’s actually a good plan.’
‘You sound surprised.’
Kaz shrugged. ‘You’re a Smedry, kid. Half our ideas are insane. The other half are insane but brilliant at the same time. Deciding which is which can be trouble sometimes.’
‘I’ll tell you how to decide,’ Bastille called down. ‘Look and see which one involves me having to climb up a hundred feet in the air and balance on stilts. Shattering Smedrys!’
‘How can she even hear us from up there?’ Kaz muttered.
‘I have very good ears!’ Bastille called.
‘Here,’ I said, picking up a backpack. ‘I made one of these for each of us too. There are two of each kind of bear in there. I figure we should all have some, just in case.’
Kaz nodded, throwing on his backpack. I shrugged mine on as well.
‘You realize,’ Kaz said softly, ‘that the soldiers you send out to stop those robots won’t be coming back.’
‘What? They could run back in the tunnel, and . . .’
And I trailed off, realizing how stoopid it sounded. The Librarians might get surprised by my tricky plan – might – but they’d never let the Mokian soldiers escape back into the tunnel after destroying the robots. Even if all of this worked out exactly as I wanted, those six men and women weren’t returning. At best, they’d get captured. Maybe knocked out by Librarian coma-bullets.
I hadn’t even considered this. Perhaps because I didn’t want to. Go back and read the beginning of this chapter. Maybe now you’ll start to understand what I was saying.
I glanced at the six soldiers. Their faces were grim but determined. They carried their backpacks over their shoulders, and each held a spear. They were younger soldiers, four men and two women, who Aluki had said were their fastest runners. I could see from their eyes that they understood. As I regarded them, they nodded to me one at a time. They were ready to sacrifice for Mokia.