“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”
She looked up, meeting my eyes. “I have an idea.”
“Should I be frightened?” I asked.
“Probably,” she said. “The idea’s a little bit strange. Like one you might have come up with, actually.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Get out those Lenses,” she said, throwing her pack over her shoulder.
I did so.
“Now, break the frames.”
I paused, eyeing her.
“Just do it,” she said.
I shrugged, then activated my Talent. The frames fell apart easily.
“Double up the Lenses,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, sliding one over the other.
“Can you do to those Lenses what you did to the boots? Put extra power through them?”
“I should be able to,” I said. “But…”
I trailed off, suddenly coming to understand. If I blew a huge blast of air out of the Lenses, then I would be forced upward—like a fighter jet, with the Lenses being my engine. I looked up at Bastille. “Bastille! That’s absolutely insane.”
“I know,” she said, grimacing. “I’ve been spending way too much time with you Smedrys. But my mother is probably only a few minutes away from death. Are you willing to give it a try?”
I smiled. “Of course I am! It sounds awesome!”
Inclined toward leadership or not, thoughtful or not, uncertain of myself or not, I was still a teenage boy. And you have to admit it really did sound awesome.
Bastille stepped up close to me, putting one arm around my waist, then holding on to my shoulder with the other. “Then I’m going with you,” she said. “Hang on to my waist.”
I nodded, feeling a bit distracted having her so close. For the first time in my life, I realized something.
Girls smell weird.
I started to feel nervous. If I blew with the Lenses too softly, we’d fall back down into the pit. If I blasted too hard, we’d end up smashing into the ceiling. It seemed like a very fine balance.
I lowered my arm, pointing the Lenses straight down by my side, my other arm held tentatively around Bastille’s waist. I took a breath, preparing myself.
“Smedry,” Bastille said, her face inches from mine.
I blinked. Having her right there was suddenly really, really distracting. Plus, she was hanging on rather tightly, with the grip of a person whose strength has been enhanced by a Crystin Fleshstone.
I fumbled for a response, my mind fuzzy. (Girls, you might have noticed, can do things like this to guys. It’s a result of their powerful pheromones. They evolved that way, gaining the ability to make us men fuzzy-headed, so that it would be easier for them to hit us on the heads with hardback fantasy novels and steal our cheese sticks.)
“You okay?” she asked.
“Uh … yeah,” I managed to get out. “What did you want?”
“I just wanted to say thanks.”
“For what?”
“For provoking me,” she said. “For making me think that someone had set me up to fail on purpose. It’s probably not true, but it’s what I needed. If there’s a chance that someone stuck me in that situation intentionally, then I want to figure out who it was and why they did it. It’s a challenge.”
I nodded. That’s Bastille for you. Tell her that she’s wonderful, and she’d sit there and sulk. But hint that she might have a hidden enemy somewhere, and she’d jump to her feet, full of energy.
“You ready?” I asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
I focused on the Lenses—trying to ignore how close Bastille was—and built up Oculatory energy.
Then, holding my breath, I released the power.
We shot from the ground in a lurching burst of wind. Dust and chips of stone blew out beneath us, puffing up the sides of the shaft. We blasted upward, wind tousling my hair, the opening to the pit approaching far too quickly. I cried out, deactivating the Lenses, but we had too much momentum.
We passed the lip of the hole and continued on. I threw up my hands in front of my face as we approached the ceiling. With the Lenses no longer jetting, gravity slowed us. We crested the blast a few inches from the ceiling, then began to plummet downward again.
“Now, kick!” Bastille said, twisting and putting both of her feet against my chest.
“Wha—” I began, but Bastille kicked, throwing me backward and pushing herself the other direction.
We hit the ground on either side of the pit. I rolled, then came to a rest, staring upward. The room spun around me.
We were free. I sat up, holding my head. Across the pit, Bastille was smiling as she jumped to her feet. “I can’t believe that actually worked!”
“You kicked me!” I said with a groan.
“Well, I owed it to you,” she said. “Remember, you kicked me back in Dragonaut. I didn’t want you to feel like I didn’t return the feeling.”
I grimaced. This, by the way, is a pretty good metaphor for my entire relationship with Bastille. I’m thinking of writing a book on the concept. Kicking Your Friends for Fun and Profit.
Suddenly, something occurred to me. “My Lenses!” They lay in shattered pieces on the ground beside the pit. I’d dropped them as I hit. I stood up and rushed over, but it was no use. There wasn’t enough of them left to use.
“Gather up the pieces,” Bastille said. “They can be reforged.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I suppose. This means we’re going to have to face Kiliman without them.”
Bastille fell silent.
I don’t have any offensive Lenses, and Bastille’s only got a close-to-broken dagger. How are we going to fight that creature?
I brushed the pieces of glass into a pouch, then put it into one of my Lens pockets.
“We’re free,” Bastille said, “but we still don’t really know what to do. In fact, we don’t even know how to get to Kiliman.”
“We’ll find a way,” I said, standing up.
She looked at me, then—surprisingly—nodded. “All right then, what do we do?”
“We—”
Suddenly, Australia rushed back into the room. She was puffing from exertion. “All right, I found your rope!”
She held up an empty hand.
“Uh, thanks,” I said. “Is the rope imaginary?”
“No, silly,” she said, laughing. She picked something up between two fingers. “Look!”
“Tripwire,” Bastille said.
“Is that what it is?” Australia said. “I just found it on the ground over there.”
“And how exactly were you going to use that to get us out of the pit?” I asked. “I doubt it’s long enough, and even if it is, it would never have held our weight.”
Australia cocked her head. “That’s why you wanted rope?”
“Sure,” I said. “So that we could climb out of the pit.”
“But you’re already out of the pit.”
“We are now,” I said with exasperation. “But we weren’t at the time. I wanted you to find rope so that we could climb it.”
“Oh!” Australia said. “Well, you should have said so then!”
I stood, stupefied. “You know what, never mind,” I said, taking the length of tripwire. I was about to stuff it in my pocket, then paused, looking at it.
“What?” Bastille asked.
I smiled.
“You have an idea?”
I nodded.
“What is it?”
“Tell you in a minute,” I said. “First, we have to figure out how to get to the center of the library.”
We all looked at one another.
“I’ve been wandering through the hallways all day,” Australia said. “With those ghost things offering me books at every turn. I keep explaining that I hate reading, but they don’t listen. If I hadn’t run across your footprints, Alcatraz, I’d still be lost!”