by Megan Crewe
I’d read every book in existence on defensive magic strategies back when I’d still hoped I might join National Defense someday. Perhaps I couldn’t hearken the magic anymore, but I could sense the technique they were about to implement with every particle in my being.
“Luis!” I said. “Get everyone moving. Find a rhythm—stomping feet, pumping arms, twisting from side to side—as much as you all can. Now!”
“What the hell?” Ary said, but Luis’s voice echoed through the phone as he hollered my instructions to the people around him.
The security force had already launched into the main thrust of their casting. The mages at the front of their team sliced their hands through the air in time with the lyrics they must have been chanting, and several stragglers jerked away from the edge of the crowd on their own two feet. They stumbled and swiveled like puppets guided by an unsteady puppeteer.
The rest of the mass on the street had begun moving with a ripple that spread from the point where Luis was standing. Hands waved, heads bobbed, and signs flapped. Even though many of the people down there couldn’t reach out to the magic directly, a large enough clamor could still interfere with the reach of a complex casting.
The security force must have been aiming to part a path through the crowd with that one effort, but the magic couldn’t catch hold when so many of the protesters were thumping out their own clashing rhythms. No one else budged. The mages’ postures stiffened as they drew themselves up to try again.
“Keep at it,” I said. “As long as you can. Don’t give them a chance to grab you with the ’chantment.”
“People are going to start getting tired,” Tamara added. “As long as Security is working on us, we should get a rotation going—people who are stronger or fresher moving to the outer edge, letting others come toward the middle when they need a break. The commotion should stop the casting from reaching the center.”
“Putting that idea into action now,” Luis said.
The crowd churned like dancers in a huge street party. When a second casting had no effect, the security force huddled to confer. A smile crossed my lips even as a twinge ran through me that I wasn’t down there in the midst of that mass of motion.
“How did you know that would work, Finn?” Ary said. Did she sound… suspicious?
It wasn’t as if it hurt me to be honest with her. “I’ve wanted to go into National Defense since I was a kid,” I said. “I studied up on their techniques, everything I could get access to, because I thought that would improve my chances. I’ve read about that casting before.”
It wouldn’t have mattered to me that I was a mediocre mage in general if I’d managed to be good at that one thing. Of course, now I wasn’t a mage in practice at all.
For the first time, that thought didn’t arrive with a mournful twinge of its own. Non omnia possumus omnest. None of the ancient lines I’d memorized in my Academy days could have rung more true, but I’d done something useful here today without any magic at all. No one had been harmed. I hadn’t compromised my family beyond what was required for the protest to succeed.
Looking down at all those people who’d risen up in support of this cause, I couldn’t help thinking we might fix the horrors within the Confed sooner than I’d dared to imagine.
If only Rocío could have been here with me to witness it.
“And here’s to Finn!” someone shouted in the crowded rec center room, and everyone raised their pop cans and water bottles—since Luis had a strict “No Alcohol” policy—with another cheer. Warmth crept across my face, but I raised my own cola with a grin.
Voices rang loud and merry all through the space where we’d convened after the protest had broken up. Nothing definite had changed yet, but the energy resonating between us reverberated with hope.
“I can’t believe we managed to hold them off for eight hours,” Mark was saying with a grin of his own, unexpected on his usually stern face.
“Next time we’ll have to set a new record and make it a whole day!” Noemi said. “What’s coming up on the agenda, Finn?” She shot an amused smile my way.
“I think it’s Luis you’ll have to be asking,” I said. “I just offer support when I can.”
“Yeah, yeah. Says the guy who got us in the right place and saved the day.”
“I can’t wait to hear the Confed’s official response.” Mark chuckled. “Let’s see them try to downplay this.” He paused, and in place of both his usual gruffness and his current cheerful enthusiasm, his expression softened. “You know, when I woke up burned out and knew I hadn’t made it, I was really scared I’d lost my one chance to take on the Confed. My brother—if he sees this… Even if he doesn’t, we’ll force some answers out of them.”
That was the first time he’d mentioned his brother to me at all, that he remembered. I didn’t want him to regret the brief openness. “More than that,” I said firmly. “We’ll force them to give us better ones.”
“Yeah,” he said, his grin coming back.
“Hey, who’s hungry?” someone called from the direction of the kitchen area. “The first batch of burgers is done!”
My mouth watered at the smell trickling through the air, but I hung back as Mark headed over. I’d ordered hotel room service from my lookout spot—some people here hadn’t eaten much all day.
“That new book you lent me is awesome,” Noemi said. “Is it okay if I keep it for another week?”
“Sure,” I said. It was the third I’d passed on to her from the assortment I’d been keeping in my room. If my parents hadn’t worried about them being missing from the family library this long, they weren’t likely to come hunting for them any time soon. “But I want to hear all about what you’re making of that material at some point.”
“Oh, I’m coming up with all kinds of theories I’ll want to share.” She made a face. “You must think I’m a total dork. It’s okay. Pretty much everyone who knows me does. There’s a reason the League stuff is basically my entire social life.”
I waved off her remarks. “Noemi, I spent my whole life practically obsessed with getting as close to the magic as I could. Believe me, I have no trouble understanding wanting to be a part of it.”
She’d been speaking in a joking tone, but her eyes brightened at my response as if she’d needed to hear something like that. Then her gaze slid toward the other end of the room, and her smile turned a bit sly. “I think I’m going to go see if Luis could use any help with... anything.”
I laughed. “Go for it.”
She gave me a thumbs-up before moving off through the crowd.
I turned, feeling buoyant on my feet, just as the guy who usually acted as a bouncer for our meetings appeared in the doorway. “I’ve got some newbies looking to join in,” he called over to Luis. “They check out.”
A few figures trickled in from behind him at his gesture: a young woman who looked about my sister Margo’s age, a slightly grizzled man with a pair of oval glasses—and a gangly guy sporting a shock of ruddy hair.
My whole body froze. Callum Geary—my neighbor, my former classmate, and the guy who’d gleefully tried to kill us all during the Exam—glanced around the room with a hesitant expression. The Burnout mark stood out starkly against his pale, freckled skin. He looked skinnier than before, his over-wide shoulders more angular.
I hadn’t seen him since the last day of the Exam, when I’d stopped him from leading an assault on me and Rocío and the rest of our little group. I’d stopped him by disintegrating a large portion of his thigh with a magical weapon. He shouldn’t remember that, not if the examiners had done their job successfully. He’d sure as Hades know who I was, though, and he’d never been any friend of mine.
I stepped back, ready to duck away. In that moment, his eyes caught mine and narrowed.
Chapter Seventeen
Rocío
A shake of my arm wrenched me out of sleep. Someone was bending over me in the dorm room, gripping my shoulder.
“Lopez
,” the someone said in a low voice, and my still half-asleep brain registered her as one of the senior operatives who’d led a couple of the missions I’d been on. “You’re needed. Suit up and let’s go.”
She waited with her arms folded over her chest as I fumbled my way into my current uniform of cargo pants, thermal long-sleeved tee, ballistic vest, and hooded jacket. Prisha stirred on the neighboring bed. Her gaze caught mine in the darkness with a questioning glint.
I gave a nod to say that I was okay, even though I didn’t really know that—but it wasn’t as if she could’ve done anything to help if I hadn’t been. Prisha tipped her head in return and burrowed it back into her pillow. Knowing she’d noticed my leaving and cared made me feel a little more okay, somehow.
The woman who’d come to collect me ushered me through the dim halls of the base to the operations room. Even a few weeks after we’d moved here, the place still didn’t feel broken in. Dust lingered on the baseboards, and a stale smell hung in the air as if at least a few of the filters needed changing. I’d take this over staying somewhere the insurgents had painted a target on, though.
The bright fluorescents of the operations room stung my eyes as I walked in. I blinked hard, taking in the long rectangular table where we planned our missions. Commander Revett, Tonya Sekibo, and Colonel Alcido were standing there. Alcido, the sharp-jawed Dull military representative who’d turned up when Hamlin had been booted out, had his thin lips twisted into an expression even more sour than his usual one. I guessed this late-night meeting hadn’t been his idea.
“Operative Lopez,” Commander Revett said. “It seems we need you in the field.”
“Right now?” I said. I hadn’t been scheduled for a mission tonight—if I had, I never would’ve gone to bed. And this was way later in the night than missions usually left. I rubbed my temple, still feeling groggy from my interrupted sleep.
“One of tonight’s squads encountered a young woman who appears to have some sort of information. She’s saying there’s only one person she’ll talk to, and from what she’s said and the fact that she matches the description of the local who gave you that recorder, we have to assume she means you.”
The girl who’d given us that tip—she was asking for me, somewhere out there? My mind snapped more alert in an instant.
“Did you instruct her to come specifically to you?” Alcido asked, his nasal voice even more abrupt than Revett’s.
What? “No,” I said. “I didn’t instruct her to do anything.”
“Colonel,” Revett said.
Alcido ignored her like he usually did. He seemed to think he got to call the shots now… and from the way the senior Confed officials acted, maybe he was right.
“So you don’t know what this is about?” he said.
I stared at him. Did I look like I’d been expecting this wake-up call? “I didn’t even know anything was happening until a minute ago.”
“The squad is waiting,” Revett said, her tone annoyed but resigned.
Alcido made a humming sound, but he turned away from me. “The mission leader knows I expect this entire interview to be recorded?”
“Of course,” Revett said. “I’ve already relayed that order.” She motioned to me. “You’ll fly out with Officer Sekibo, who’ll fill you in on what we know so far. The less time we dally on this, the better.”
Tonya was already striding toward the door. I nodded to the commander and the colonel and hustled after the senior operative.
A helicopter was waiting in the yard, the blades just starting to whir as we emerged from the building. We jumped in, and it took off with a lurch.
Tonya sat down in her usual spot at the communications array. “Here’s the story,” she said in a tight voice. I got the impression she wasn’t too happy about her interrupted sleep either. “Rojanwan had a mission to one of the border towns. This girl approached him but then tried to take off, I guess because she saw you weren’t with him. The squad restrained her, but she insisted she’d only talk with you. So here we are.”
Sam was leading the squad—at least I’d see one reasonably friendly face out there. “What was the mission for?” I asked. “What do they think she could tell us?”
Tonya shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve only got what Revett reported to me while they were getting you up. You can ask the squad when we get there.”
I leaned my head back against the vibrating wall of the helicopter and suppressed a yawn. “This wasn’t my idea, you know.”
The downward curl of her lips suggested she was blaming me anyway. We hadn’t been on many missions together, so I wasn’t sure why she would dislike me, but I had seen her chatting with Brandt during meals more than once. Maybe he’d been telling her tales about my supposed insubordination too.
“You gave this girl the impression that you’re better than the rest of us,” she said after a moment. “Nicer.” That last word came with a bit of a sneer. “Don’t be too nice. It looks like she’s awfully tangled up with the enemy.”
The girl had helped us. She wasn’t going to keep doing that if we treated her like an enemy. I didn’t think Tonya was interested in hearing any arguments from me, though.
I might have dozed a little despite my best efforts. It felt like way too soon that the helicopter dipped down toward the ground. I braced my feet against the floor as we landed.
Tonya led me through the night, down a short road to a wide, squat brick building lit by a single streetlamp. It looked like some kind of office space—one that hadn’t been used in a while, based on the film on the windows.
Just inside, in a room that might have once been a reception area, a few chairs had been shoved into a jumble by one wall. An electric lantern was perched on one, casting an eerie glow through the space. Sam, Brandt, Joselin, Leonie, and their translator stood around another chair in the middle of the room, where the girl with the scuffed jean jacket was sitting.
Sam nodded to me as we came in, and the girl’s head jerked up. Her fawn-brown hair hung loose today, falling just past her shoulders. She looked younger than I remembered—she might not have been any older than me after all. Her dark blue eyes were stormy. Her pose and the quavering in the magic between us told me she was bound to her seat.
She shifted in the chair against the magical restraints I couldn’t see, and the pained slant of her mouth sent a jab of discomfort through me. I’d arrived too late. They’d already treated her like a criminal. Was she going to talk even to me at this point?
“You were looking for me?” I said, stepping closer.
The girl’s gaze held mine for a long moment. She wet her lips. “I want to help. Not hurt anyone. But I don’t help them.” She spat the last word, with a twitch of her head toward the rest of the squad.
“I can be a go-between,” the translator said. “If she’d be more comfortable speaking in Russian or Estonian.” She repeated the same offer to the girl in another language.
“No,” the girl snapped. “I speak enough English. No one twists my words like you people do so much. Stay away from me. I only want to talk to her.” Her gaze shot back to me.
Sam gestured for the others to back up to the walls. I took another step so I stood just a couple feet from the girl’s chair. The conjured bindings tied her calves to its legs, her shoulders to its back, her wrists together in her lap. The magic around me jittered uneasily.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “They were worried you knew something really important, and that if they didn’t stop you, we wouldn’t find out what.”
Brandt snorted at my apology. The girl glared at me as if she didn’t think much of it either. “You would have done this too?”
“No.” But why the hell would she believe me? I hesitated, feeling the gazes of the squad on me. None of them had anywhere near as strong a connection to the magic as I did. They couldn’t hearken from several feet away how well her bindings were holding. They wouldn’t notice a subtle casting, I didn’t think. I could reassure her
and the magic.
Unless the girl betrayed me. If I’d misjudged her, if she was more dangerous than I thought, who knew how she might lash out after the way the squad had handled her?
I swallowed hard. One more dilemma I had to face alone. They kept piling up.
I balled my hands at my sides and gathered myself. I trusted my instincts. I trusted my skill. If this situation went sideways, I could get it back under control, couldn’t I?
Relaxing the fingers of my right hand, I pattered out a faint rhythm against my thigh where none of our spectators could see it. Casting without words to focus my intent was hard—a wave of respect for Desmond passed through me when I thought of how he managed these wordless castings all the time—but I found a pattern of beats that resonated. With a brief drumming, the bonds around the girl’s limbs relaxed.
They weren’t gone, but now she could slip them in an instant if she wanted to.
The girl’s expression softened. To my relief, she kept herself in exactly the same position, as if she were still clamped to the chair. I bobbed my head slightly in acknowledgment. We were in this together.
What did I say next? Launching straight into a demand for information she wasn’t volunteering didn’t seem like the best way to keep her trust.
How would Finn have talked to her? He was always so good at warming up the atmosphere, making people feel at ease.
My thoughts slipped back to that first evening in the Exam when he’d suggested we all introduce ourselves. Of course. How could I be allies with someone when we didn’t know even the most basic fact about each other?
“I’m Rocío,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“For fu—” Brandt started to mutter. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sam swat him quiet.
“Polina,” the girl said. “This is a strange way to meet.”
I almost laughed. “Yes, it is. Ah, part of the reason my colleagues aren’t sure how to act with you is they’re wondering how you got the recorder you gave me last time. Were you there when those people were talking?”