by Megan Crewe
It took me a moment to find my voice, and then all I managed was a strained, “Oh.”
“Exactly. Why the hell would I let them stop me from keeping my friends back on the base alive? I’ll do what it takes. If you do what you say you can do, you won’t have to worry about my family either, all right?”
I swallowed thickly. “Right. That’s the plan.”
I yanked my attention back to the article I’d been reading. Sam had asked about how we’d get to Zacher. The real question was how I’d make our case once we got there. The more I knew about him, the better I’d be able to shape my argument. At least, that’s how I imagined someone like Finn would’ve approached it. I wished he could’ve been here to do the talking with that silver tongue of his.
Zacher looked like a decent enough guy, as much as you could tell from photographs. He kept his gray-and-white speckled hair cut military-short on top of a long face with a hint of jowls. His eyes were warm brown, and in most of the photos his smile struck me as genuine.
He’d complimented the Confed for their assistance with Dull military efforts here and overseas, once making a wry comment about how it pained him to think of how much more effective he could’ve been in his early years with a talent like ours at his disposal. He must have pictured what it’d be like to be magical once in a while. And he must be keeping track of those National Defense efforts.
I’d bet everyone in the Pentagon was pretty cautious about how much we mages took on, even while they were pushing us for more concrete progress. A couple of Zacher’s colleagues were on record talking about “confirming loyalties” and the need for central leadership rather than the Confed governing their own. From the way Colonel Alcido had barged onto the base, I guessed they were already putting some of those principles into action, whether the Confed liked it or not.
“Hey!” Desmond said, grinning. “I just thought—there’s a ’chantment I can do, probably without anyone noticing, that might help grease the wheels.” His grin turned sheepish. “I used to cast it on teachers when I got in trouble as a kid. It calms the person down a little, makes them feel more, ah, kindly disposed toward you. Not a huge effect—I wasn’t going to risk getting caught—but I think it saved me from suspension a couple times when I couldn’t resist pulling a little prank on the Dull kids.”
“Anything that helps Zacher stay open-minded sounds good to me,” I said.
A digitized voice carried over the speaker, announcing the stop right before ours. We were nearly there. My pulse kicked up a notch.
When the departing passengers had gotten off and the train thrummed into motion again, I walked down the aisle to stretch my legs. The magic seemed to flow with me, tugging at my hair, twining around my wrists. I kept going all the way to the doors, and then I wasn’t sure I wanted to turn around and go back. My gut was listing queasily. I stared at the landscape whipping by outside, not sure whether the sight was making my nausea better or worse.
Sam ambled over. He came to a stop beside me and peered out the window with me for a minute. “You okay?” he asked.
I rubbed my arms. The pleated fabric of the blouse I’d bought for this role didn’t feel any more me than the makeup did. I couldn’t wait to get out of all of it.
“Brandt’s right,” I said. “This is all basically my idea. What if I can’t take it far enough? If this plan doesn’t work, all those other people in our unit could be out there dying tonight.” I’d have failed them. Failed my parents and Finn. Failed the magic. Failed all the people who should be able to reach out to that magic.
“Rocío…” Sam hesitated. He turned to lean against the wall, his mouth going crooked. “I don’t know if this is going to help, but—I’m glad you pushed for this. I’m glad to be here supporting your personal mission. There’s a hell of a lot that’s already screwed up about the unit—about becoming Champion at all and about the Dull government’s involvement. I’ve never liked how it works.”
I blinked at him. “Then why have you gone along with it?”
“Well, I— My best friend and I declared for the Exam together, you know? We made Champion together. We went into the field together.” He sucked in a breath. “Our second year out, he stumbled onto a magical explosive. There wasn’t enough left to even try to save him.”
My throat constricted. “I’m so sorry.”
He made an almost casual gesture as if to say, What can you do?, but his gaze had slid away from me. “I could have stopped it from happening. I hadn’t scanned quite that far. I got distracted by one of the locals I was talking to. I didn’t consider— And then he was gone. I made sure I was a lot more careful after that, but it was impossible to even consider an idea as huge as challenging the whole Confed when I wasn’t sure I could completely trust my own judgment. Like you said, what if I screwed things up even more?”
“So why shouldn’t I worry about that?” I said.
He raised his head again. “Because I regret now that I let those worries hold me back for so long. Maybe there are people I could have saved if I’d been willing to speak up, to do something, or at least try. I don’t know if I can make a good enough case with Zacher, not feeling the magic the way you do, but even if you decide you don’t want that responsibility after all, I’ll take it on. I’m done with doubt. We’ve let this system go on too long.”
I inhaled slowly and realized that my queasiness had eased off. The responsibility wasn’t all on me—I had to keep reminding myself. Maybe I couldn’t do everything; maybe I couldn’t save everyone. No, almost definitely I couldn’t. But I had help to take up the slack where I might falter.
I’d do as much as I could. No one who cared about me would ask more than that.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thank you. That did help.”
The digitized voice called down again, warning us of our upcoming stop. My chest constricted, but I felt steadier as I walked back to my seat to grab my purse.
Outside the train station, I led the way, veering apart from the tourists heading for the visitor’s gate. As we approached the nearest employee entrance, I kept my chin high, my strides brisk, and looped the lanyard for Margo’s pass over my neck. The three guys fell into step behind me. I didn’t have to get just myself through but them as my visitors too.
I gave Security the quick spiel we’d decided on, and after a few minutes we had the guys’ visitor badges. One of the officers checked my pass and waved me on while sending the others through a scanner.
A woman in a loose business suit was standing off to the side of the entrance area, her gaze seemingly distant as her fingers drummed against each other. The quiver of magic that passed over my skin made me suspect she was a mage on staff, checking us all over for ’chantments. We’d done no castings that would catch her attention, gracias a Dios.
Then, just like that, we were in.
We came to a stop in a long hallway. The stark white walls gave me an unwelcome flashback to the Exam buildings. I focused on the directions Desmond had found. We were already in the outer ring, so up to the third floor we’d go.
We passed several employees as we hustled along to the office for the Secretary of Defense, but none of them gave us more than a passing glance. Outside the office door, a young man in a military uniform was poised, a gun gleaming in the holster at his hip. My heart beat even faster. I gave him a quick nod that I hoped said, Oh, just another normal workday, as I reached for the door handle. His expression stayed impassive, but he didn’t move to stop us.
I’d known we wouldn’t be able to march straight in to see Zacher. The clatter of keyboards filled the room on the other side where various members of the administrative staff were working away, this one on her computer, that one on his phone. A woman at the desk closest to the inner door got up.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“We’re here to see Secretary Zacher,” I said.
She frowned and tapped her mouse. “I don’t believe he has any appointments scheduled at this time.”<
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“It’s a last-minute addition,” I said, holding my voice as steady as I could. “Not through the usual channels. If you tell him it’s about Võru, Estonia, he’ll confirm.”
She gave me a skeptical look, and I summoned my best haughty air, channeling Prisha. Behind me, Sam crossed his arms and sighed as if impatient with the delay. After another frown at her computer screen, the woman slipped into the inner office.
I wished I could have given a more specific cue, but the silencing ’chantment held me back. I hoped mentioning the town without context would be enough. Võru had been where we’d gotten the recorder from Polina—our first proof, and major proof, that two of the major insurgent groups were moving toward collaboration. If Zacher was paying any attention to mage military affairs, he should recognize the significance.
The secretary emerged a minute later looking even more puzzled. “He says he’ll see you.”
I’d thought my nerves were jittering before, but that was nothing compared to the lurch of my pulse as I stepped into the inner office. There was no mistaking that this workplace belonged to someone incredibly powerful.
When the door clicked shut, not a sound filtered through from outside. John Zacher stood behind his polished desk, which was so broad it could’ve supported a queen-size mattress. Velvet curtains hung by the windows, and an American flag draped from a brass pole beside a stretch of mahogany bookcases. My feet sank into the thick pile of the rug, and for a second, I wasn’t sure I could’ve lifted them if I’d wanted to.
This man’s decisions could make the difference between thousands living or dying.
He looked us up and down, his brown eyes a lot less warm without the smile from the photos. “Who are you?” he said. “And what does this have to do with Võru? You’d better give a good answer quickly, or I’ll have security here in an instant.”
I drew my posture as straight and tall as I could. “Unfortunately, it’s difficult for me to talk very plainly,” I said. “Because of my position. But we know about Võru. And if I mention Kolomna and Livny and Makat, you know what event I’m referring to, don’t you?”
Zacher rested his hands on his desk, but his shoulders had tensed even more. The three locations I’d given him were locations our base had been assigned to strike. No one should have known about those plans except operatives on the base and whoever was in this man’s inner circle.
“You’re part of the Confederation of Mages’ National Defense division,” he said.
I gave him a pained smile. “I can’t talk about that, sir.”
Zacher’s gaze slid from me to the three guys behind me. At my left, Sam bobbed his head. Desmond offered a shaky smile of his own. I couldn’t see Brandt, but that was probably better for my nerves.
“With all the benefits magic has brought us, it does make everything more complicated at the same time.” The Secretary of Defense shook his head. “I assume there’s something you can tell me about why you’re here?”
“We’re on the verge of a disaster,” I said. “One large enough to make it worth the risk of coming here.”
Zacher exhaled sharply. “All right. I’m not going to ignore that. But why are you coming to me and not your own people?”
The idea that the Confed’s leaders were any more “my people” than he was, especially after the recent discoveries we’d made, seemed absurd. A slightly hysterical giggle bubbled in my lungs. I managed to will it away.
“They won’t listen to me,” I said. “I’ve tried. They…” My commanders and the Circle would probably burn me out for telling him this, but they didn’t know, and it was about time someone said it. “They’re scared of you. Of the entire nonmagical community. The mages at the top have had so much power for so long, and they’re worried that if they don’t keep showing off that power by putting it toward the things your government asks for, you’ll all turn on us, and then they’ll have nothing.”
“But you’re not afraid.”
My mouth twitched. “I never expected to have much power in the first place. I’ve got a lot more to lose if I stay quiet than if I speak up.”
Desmond adjusted his hand at his side. I didn’t dare look at him directly to see if I could notice him pattering out the subtle casting that he’d said would encourage Zacher’s sympathies.
“And what is the nature of this disaster?” the Secretary of Defense asked.
“I’ve come to realize over the last few months that magic is more than just aimless energy we can conduct,” I said. “It has its own intentions. It can get stronger or weaker. It shows distress when it’s harmed… and conducting it for destructive purposes harms it. The more it’s twisted to those ends, the more it falters. When you take that into account, and what’s meant to happen at the places I mentioned earlier, I hope you can see why we’re concerned. I don’t know if the magic could ever recover from a blow that hard. Is it really worth getting the upper hand for who knows how long if we could lose something so precious?”
I was prepared for the skeptical expression he gave me. At least he didn’t laugh in my face. “None of the officials in National Defense have said anything about this to me,” he said. “Why is it only a concern now?”
“They don’t want you to know,” I said. “They don’t want to reveal any weaknesses or limitations to your people. And why wouldn’t it be happening now? Up until a few decades ago, mages only used magic in secret. We weren’t out fighting massive wars. In those few decades, we’ve been warping it in more and more destructive ways. We’ve pushed it to the breaking point.”
“What is it you’re asking me to do, then?”
I fixed him with my coolest stare. “After tonight, it might be too late. National Defense answers to you. You can make decisions. You can change your mind.”
A sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh escaped Zacher. His jaw worked. “That’s a big ask, Miss…”
“Lopez,” I said. “Rocío Lopez.” It wasn’t as if the Confed wouldn’t know I’d been here soon enough anyway.
“Now, I haven’t been on the ground out there, but I get all the reports. I know that a lot of strategy went into the plan for tonight, and a lot of time and dedicated effort went into gathering the necessary intel to get there in the first place. If what you’re saying is true, then I can see why you came here, but I can’t reverse a decision that big on one small group’s say-so. It could be disastrous if we don’t act.”
I held out my hands in a plea. “I don’t know all the answers,” I said. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t act at all. Just not like this. Hold off and insist on re-strategizing taking what I’ve told you into consideration. I don’t think anyone’s aware of any impending action on our enemies’ end yet. We have time. If something has to be done… shouldn’t we do it as right as we can?”
“We can’t trust these people to stay put,” Zacher said. “We can’t trust them not to have something up their sleeve we aren’t aware of. We’ve already got a sure thing ready to go. I’m sorry.”
He was pulling back from us, retreating into the familiar pattern of warfare and conflict. I hadn’t been able to say enough. But I still hadn’t done more than talk.
“Look,” Brandt started with an edge in his voice.
I cut in before he could screw this up. “What if I told you there’s more that the Confederation has been hiding from everyone, even from most of us mages—things that affect everyone in this country, including you? What if I could prove it? Would that make a difference?”
Zacher considered me. “It depends on what you’re talking about, but proof will always matter.”
I braced myself. This would be the first time Brandt heard the news too. “There aren’t really magical and nonmagical people. Everyone has at least a tiny ability to conduct magic. You could, with the proper training. All of the officers and soldiers under you could. The assessments the Confederation does don’t split apart two totally different groups of people; they just have a cut-off line where they de
cide you don’t have enough natural talent that they need to address it. The whole division between mages and ‘Dulls’ is a lie.”
“What?” Brandt snapped behind me, and Sam moved to quiet him. As he yanked the other guy to the side, I tuned out their voices. Zacher was staring at me. The Secretary of Defense was the only one I had to get through to right now.
“That’s quite a claim,” he said. “How do you intend to prove it?”
His voice held a note I thought I recognized—a lot like the faint thread of longing that colored my parents’ tones when they talked about the few years that they’d had full use of their talent, before they’d been Dampered.
I gave him a smile I hoped looked confident. “I can teach you to conduct magic right now if you’ll let me. You won’t be able to produce much of an effect yet, but it should be enough for you to confirm what I said.”
The offer was a gamble. If Zacher’s innate magical capacity was too low, I might not be able to get him to produce any effect in our limited time. But it was all I had. The hum in the air around us quivered as if in anticipation. As if the magic were eager for the chance to interact with someone new.
Zacher couldn’t quite disguise his own eagerness. “What would I have to do?” he asked, transfixed.
I’d spent a good part of last night poring over Finn’s instructional books with him, memorizing the exercises he’d said had most helped the Dull friends he’d taught.
“It’ll be easier if you sit down,” I said. “You’ll want to be able to give this all your concentration. The exercises use meditation, music, and patterning, just to learn how to hearken the magic in the first place. It could take a little while before you’re ready to try to conduct it.”
Zacher paused. He looked at Sam and Brandt, who were still arguing in hushed but harsh voices in the corner.