I was wrong. The sword was enormous, at least five feet long from tip of blade to hilt. It glittered, made completely of the crystal from which the Crystin, and Crystallia itself, get their name.
(The knights aren’t terribly original with names. Crystin, Crystallia, crystals. One time when I was allowed into Crystallia, I jokingly dubbed my potato a ‘Potatin potato, grown and crafted in the Fields of Potatallia.’ The knights were not amused. Maybe I should have used my carrot instead.)
Draulin stepped across the head of our flying dragon, her armored boots clinking against the glass. Somehow, she managed to retain a sure footing despite the wind and the shaking vehicle.
The jet fired a beam from its Frostbringer’s glass, aiming for another wing. Bastille’s mother jumped, leaping through the air, cloak flapping. She landed on the wing itself, raising her crystalline sword. The beam of frost hit the sword and disappeared in a puff. Bastille’s mother barely even bent beneath the blow. She stood powerfully, her armored visor obscuring her face.
The cockpit fell silent. It seemed impossible to me that Draulin had managed such a feat. Yet, as I waited, the jet fired again, and once again Bastille’s mother managed to get in front of the beam and destroy it.
‘She’s . . . standing on top of the Dragonaut,’ I said as I watched through the glass.
‘Yes,’ Bastille said.
‘We appear to be going several hundred miles an hour.’
‘About that.’
‘She’s blocking laser beams fired by a jet airplane.’
‘Yes.’
‘Using nothing but her sword.’
‘She’s a Knight of Crystallia,’ Bastille said, looking away. ‘That’s the sort of thing they do.’
I fell silent, watching Bastille’s mother run the entire length of the Dragonaut in the space of a couple seconds, then block an ice beam fired at us from behind.
Kaz shook his head. ‘Those Crystin,’ he said. ‘They take the fun out of everything.’ He smiled toothily.
To this day, I haven’t been able to tell if Kaz genuinely has a death wish, or if he just likes to act that way. Either way, he’s a loon. But, then, he’s a Smedry. That’s virtually a synonym for ‘insane, foolhardy lunatic.’
I glanced at Bastille. She watched her mother move above, and seemed longing, yet ashamed at the same time.
That’s the sort of thing they expect her to be able to do, I thought. That’s why they took her knighthood from her – because they thought she wasn’t up to their standards.
‘Um, trouble!’ Australia said. She’d opened her eyes, but looked very frazzled as she sat with her hand on the glowing panel. Up ahead, the fighter jet was charging its glass again – and it had just released another missile.
‘Grab on!’ Bastille said, getting ahold of a chair. I did the same, for all the good it did. I was again tossed to the side as Australia dodged. Up above, Draulin managed to block the Frostbringer’s ray, but it looked close.
The missile exploded just a short distance from the body of the Dragonaut.
We can’t keep doing this, I thought. Australia looks like she can barely hold on, and Bastille’s mother will get tired eventually. We’re in serious trouble.
I picked myself up, rubbing my arm, blinking away the afterimage of the missile explosion. I could feel something as the jet shot past us. A dark twisting in my stomach, just like the feeling I’d felt on the runway. It felt a little like the sense that told me when an Oculator nearby was using one of their Lenses. Yet, this was different. Tainted somehow.
The creature from the airport was in that jet. Before, it had shot the Lens out of my hand. Now it used a jet that could fire on me without exploding. Somehow, it seemed to understand how to use both Free Kingdoms technology and Hushlands technology together.
And that seemed a very, very dangerous combination.
‘Do we have any weapons on board the ship?’ I asked.
Bastille shrugged. ‘I have a dagger.’
‘That’s it?’
‘We’ve got you, cousin,’ Australia said. ‘You’re an Oculator and a Smedry of the pure line. You’re better than any regular weapons.’
Great, I thought. I glanced up at Bastille’s mother, who stood on the nose of the dragon. ‘How can she stand there like that?’
‘Grappler’s Glass,’ Bastille said. ‘It sticks to other kinds of glass, and she’s got some plates of it on the bottom of her boots.’
‘Do we have any more?’
Bastille paused, then – without questioning me – she rushed over to a side of the cockpit, searching through a glass trunk on the floor. She came up a few moments later with a pair of boots.
‘These will do the same thing,’ she said, handing them to me. They looked far too large for my feet.
The ship rocked as Australia dodged another missile. I didn’t know how many of those the jet had, but it seemed like it could carry far more than it should be able to. I slumped back against the wall as the Dragonaut shook, then I pulled the first boot on over my own shoe and tied the laces tight.
‘What are you doing?’ Bastille asked. ‘You’re not planning to go up there, are you?’
I pulled on the other boot. My heart was beginning to beat faster.
‘What do you expect to do, Alcatraz?’ Bastille asked quietly. ‘My mother is a full Knight of Crystallia. What help could you possibly be to her?’
I hesitated, and Bastille flushed slightly at how harsh the words had sounded, though it wasn’t really in her nature to retract things like that. Besides, she was right.
What was I thinking?
Kaz moved over to us. ‘This is bad, Bastille.’
‘Oh, you finally noticed that, did you?’ she snapped.
‘Don’t get touchy,’ he said. ‘I may like a good ride, but I hate sudden stops as much as the next Smedry. We need an escape plan.’
Bastille fell silent for a moment. ‘How many of us can you use your Talent to transport?’
‘Up here, in the sky?’ he asked. ‘Without any place to flee? I’m not sure, honestly. I doubt I’d be able to get all of us.’
‘Take Alcatraz,’ Bastille said. ‘Go now.’
My stomach twisted. ‘No,’ I said, standing. My feet immediately locked on to the glass floor of the cockpit. When I tried to take a step, however, my foot came free. When I put it down again, it locked into place.
Nice, I thought, trying not to focus on what I was about to do.
‘Chestnuts, kid!’ Kaz swore. ‘You might not be the brightest torch in the row, but I don’t want to see you get killed. I owe your father that much. Come with me – we’ll get lost, then head to Nalhalla.’
‘And leave the others to die?’
‘We’ll be just fine,’ Bastille said quickly. Too quickly.
The thing is, I paused. It may not seem very heroic, but a large part of me wanted to go with Kaz. My hands were sweating, my heart thumping. The ship rocked as another missile nearly hit us. I saw a spiderweb of cracks appear on the right side of the cockpit.
I could run. Escape. Nobody would blame me. I wanted so badly to do just that.
I didn’t. This might look like bravery, but I assure you that I’m a coward at heart. I’ll prove that at another time. For now, simply believe that it wasn’t bravery that spurred me on, it was pride.
I was the Oculator. Australia had said I was their main weapon. I determined to see what I could do. ‘I’m going up,’ I said. ‘How do I get there?’
‘Hatch on the ceiling,’ Bastille finally said. ‘In the same room where you came up on the rope. Come on, I’ll show you.’
Kaz caught her arm as she moved. ‘Bastille, you’re actually going to let him do this?’
She shrugged. ‘If he wants to get himself killed, what business is it of mine? It just means one less person we have to worry about saving.’
I smiled wanly. I knew Bastille well enough to hear the concern in her voice. She was actually worried about me. Or, perhaps, just angry at me. With her, the difference is difficult to judge.
She took off down the corridor, and I followed, quickly getting the rhythm of walking with the boots. As soon as they touched glass, they locked on, making me stable – something I appreciated when the ship rocked from anther blast. I moved a little more slowly than normal in them, but they were worth it.
I caught up to Bastille in the room, and she threw a lever, opening a hatch in the ceiling. ‘Why are you letting me do this?’ I asked. ‘Usually you complain when I try to get myself killed.’
‘Yeah, well, at least this time I won’t be the one who looks bad if you die. My mother’s the knight in charge of protecting you.’
I raised an eyebrow.
‘Plus,’ she said. ‘Maybe you’ll be able to do something. Who knows. You’ve gotten lucky in the past.’
I smiled, and somehow the vote of confidence – such that it was – bolstered me. I glanced up. ‘How do I get out there?’
‘Your feet stick to the walls, stupid.’
‘Oh, right,’ I said. Taking a deep breath, I stepped up onto the side of the wall. It was easier than I’d thought it would be – silimatic technicians say that Grappler’s Glass works to hold your entire body in place, not just your feet. Either way, I found it rather easy (if a little disorienting) to walk up the side of the wall and out onto the top of the Dragonaut.
Let’s talk about air. You see, air is a really nifty thing. It lets us make cool sounds with our mouths, it carries smells from one person to another, and without it nobody would be able to play air guitar. Oh, and there is that other thing it does: It lets us breathe, allowing all animal life to exist on the planet. Great stuff, air.
The thing about air is, you don’t really think about it until (a) you don’t have enough or (b) you have way too much of it. That second one is particularly nasty when you get hit in the face by a bunch of it going somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred miles an hour.
The wind buffeted me backward, and only the Grappler’s Glass on my feet kept me upright. Even with it, I bent backward precariously, like some gravity-defying dancer in a music video. I’d have felt kind of cool about that if I hadn’t been terrified for my life.
Bastille must have seen my predicament, for she rushed toward the cockpit. I’m still not sure how she persuaded Australia to slow the ship – by all accounts, that should have been a very stupid thing to do. Still, the wind lessened to a slightly manageable speed, and I was able to clomp my way across the top of the ship toward Draulin.
Massive wings beat beside me, and the dragon’s snake body rolled. Each step was sure, though. I passed beneath stars and moon, the cloud cover glowing beneath us. I arrived near the front of the vehicle just as Draulin blocked another blast of Frostbringer’s ray. As I grew closer, she spun toward me.
‘Lord Smedry?’ she asked, voice muffled by both wind and her helmet. ‘What in the name of the first sands are you doing here?’