Chapter One
April 7, 10:45 P.M., Lake Neusiedler, Austria
Count Joseph Eugene Savoy sat in his library, holding a glass of Kék Bor, contemplating the future. His years of planning, scheming and waiting were coming to an end.
Sitting next to a roaring fire, he scratched his pet coyote, Justice, behind the ears as it gnawed on a bone. The Count nervously arranged and rearranged a stack of books on his desk, obsessed with making sure everything was in perfect order. The night wind howled with a vengeance off Lake Neusiedler, the massive serpentine lake straddling the border between Hungary and Austria. The Count’s castle, Windstorm, sat on the Austrian side.
His estate was mammoth, with stables for 50 horses, forests stocked with wild game, and a retinue of cooks, groundskeepers, scullery maids, gardeners, butlers, and more.
And he hated it all. For the Count longed for only one thing on Earth: to rule the island of Lylian.
He knew everything about Lylian. Its mountains and valleys. The names and street addresses of every shop, store and business on the island. He knew of its extensive system of caves and how one could get almost anywhere underground. He even knew last week’s specials at the Café Blue Cat.
Most important, he knew his father had ruled Lylian, almost 40 years ago.
The Count’s only problem—he was one of The Banished, and could never set foot on the island again. Not that he alone had been banished. His family had been sent away, 38 years earlier. But there was no way back into the island country once a family was forced to leave.
Now he was the leader of those Lylians who had been forced off the island, and he was determined to avenge his family’s disgrace.
He sipped his Kék Bor, the blue wine of Lylian, and chuckled at the thought that the wine was so hard to steal from the island and sneak into Austria that every sip cost him a thousand dollars. He didn’t care. He was rich beyond belief. But all that money couldn’t buy him Lylian.
That was about to change. For decades his family had been plotting to retake control of the island. It all started when the Count’s father hired scientists to create a disease that—over a few generations—would permanently wipe out a certain sector of the island’s population. Sadly, 40 years ago his father’s plan was discovered and he was executed and the rest of his family banished. But the virus had already been introduced and could not be stopped. The Count had waited years for what was about to happen in the next few days. Everything had been meticulously planned, every contingency taken into account, and the final stage was under way.
All was in perfect order when just hours ago he learned through his spies on Lylian that a 13-year-old American girl could ruin everything. Somehow she had stumbled onto a possible cure for the disease with some blasted serum she had created. The island was going to make her a very generous offer for it.
“I’ll make her a better offer,” he said to no one. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll simply have her killed.”
Chapter TWO
April 8, 3:17 P.M., Minneapolis
“This is the worst day of my life,” Lucia said to herself walking home from school. “Third place in the science fair. I may as well have not entered.”
Lucia had such high hopes for her bee sting serum. But Ethan Oscarson won second place with a stupid robotic arm (okay, it was awesome) and Kathy Johnson (hate her) won first prize with a smartphone app that translates English into a dozen languages. Hate her.
Lucia was something of an inventor. All her life, she had been making things in her family’s basement that, to be kind, were simply goofy.
There was the time she tried fitting bird collars for robins, thinking they might make great pets and would be easy to feed. The robins felt otherwise.
Another time she built a fuel converter for the family car so it would run on carrot juice (there being an excessive number of carrots grown that year in the family garden) only for the car to belch orange smoke every time it turned a corner.
A few years ago, she invented a new color, somewhere between purple and orange, that she called porange. For two weeks Lucia wore porange clothes to school to help create a demand for it. The only demand it created came from the principal requesting her to stop wearing that ridiculous color.
Still, she kept at it and even wrote her own Blog, Lucia Boyd, Girl Genius. She posted all her inventions there in the hopes of finding a buyer. Still waiting.
And still feeling gloomy from defeat, Lucia reached home. As she walked in, she found her mom and dad sitting at the kitchen table holding a letter and talking quietly.
“Peanut, could you come here?” her dad, Leo, said. “Your mom and I have something rather important to discuss.”
Lucia did a quick mental list of what she might be in trouble for but came up blank. Her room was clean, mostly. She was doing well in school, and with the exception of the un-emptied wastebaskets, she was up to date on her chores. Besides, her father used her nickname. He wouldn’t have if she were in trouble. Still, she entered the kitchen with a nervous smile.
“Hello, parental units. What’s up?” she said, trying to read the letter over her mom’s shoulder.
“Well, we received a very curious letter today,” Leo said. His voice had a somber tone that surprised Lucia.
Lucia’s father was tall and rail thin. He had huge, constantly moving hands; a thick shock of hair that refused combing; and intense but darting eyes that seemed to take in everything but whom he was talking to.
Lucia had inherited the inventing bug from her father. He worked as a substitute instructor at a small college in Minneapolis. Leo knew a little bit about everything, so he could easily talk his way through any class for a day or two. This gave him plenty of time for his own inventing. Lucia knew what was coming. Dad must have received another rejection letter for one of his ideas and he and mom were trying to figure out what to do next. Money was tight, since Dad had put every spare dime into his last invention. She figured there would be no vacation this year. And as far as even thinking about getting a laptop, forget it. Lucia did her best to put a smile on her face.
Lucia grabbed the letter from the table. “Oh, Dad, it doesn’t matter what this stupid letter says. They’re just a bunch of idiots. I think your idea is great, well, even though I don’t really know what it is, but, well, I just know it’s great.”
Looking at each other , Lucia’s parents shook their heads. “Peanut, you’ve got it all wrong, this isn’t about me, it’s about you. Someone is interested in your bee sting serum. But you’re a minor, only 13. They felt best writing to us.”
“Somebody thinks my idea is great?”
“Funny, that’s just what they say right here. ‘After considered review, we think your idea is just great.’ How ’bout that? You finally sold one.” Her dad swept Lucia into his arms. “Peanut, you sold an idea!”
With that, both her mom and dad started yelling and whooping and pretty much carrying on like crazy people—a recurring behavior in this house—with Lucia joining in. There might be a laptop in her future yet, she thought, as they danced around the kitchen.
After they had so thoroughly hooted and celebrated that they were all quite winded and hoarse, Lucia casually asked––as an afterthought, really––who wanted her serum.
Once again, both her mom and dad got the same weird expression as when she first walked into the room.
“Well, Peanut, the thing of it is,” Leo said, “it’s a government that’s interested, and they want us to send samples to see if your serum can be modified for a special use.”
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” she screamed jumping on her father once again. Someone wanted something she invented. And a foreign country at that. She could hardly wait to tell her friends. In the excitement of the news she didn’t hear exactly what country was interested.
“Dad, what country?”
“Well, here’s the amazing thing, Peanut. It’s Lylian Island.”
Lucia sat very still on her father’s lap. Then she came up with the best inspiration of her life.
