by Anne Zoelle
I busied myself, hooking my bag back over my shoulder so that I didn't have to look at Dare.
“You made this in two days?” he asked.
“I made it earlier this afternoon.” Thoughts wildly pinged against emotion in my suddenly scattered brain, and I was too nervous to be able to understand his tone. So I did what came naturally to me with Dare—I spoke quickly and without thought. “Sorry. I'll try harder next time?”
His expression was completely unreadable, so I excessively concentrated on securing my shoulder strap in the perfect position on my shoulder, one repetitive motion at a time.
“But you can send him a little ahead of you,” I said. “If you think you are walking into trouble. Or let him trail a bit behind you, if you are being followed. I mean, it, I guess, not he. But he can develop personality, so...”
Stop talking!
I cleared my throat. “You seem to know how to keep us together so we don't get separated in tile slides. I don't. So he will be subject to slides unless you change that. You shouldn't rely on him completely, though—not that you will anyway—but maybe, he might give you an advantage sometime? And I’m sure you will figure out how to use him your own way. He should take limited commands. Maybe you'll find him useful?”
I cringed. Stop talking!
I wanted to pretend that I didn't wish to impress Dare. I wanted to believe that I didn't have a horribly embarrassing crush on him. I wanted to ignore the fact that even though I barely knew him, due to our initial interaction, he ranked pretty darned high on the list of people I would do anything to protect. But...well, I wasn't all that good at pretending.
Dying for him at the end of last term was a hard data point to ignore.
“Mages aren't supposed to place permanent magic in the Midlands,” he said finally, casually, as the dragon coiled in his palm.
Oh. No. Now that he said it, a visual image generated in my mind’s eye... Page fifty-four of the Midlands guide in the library, in the small diagram on the right side of the page—“Only defensive, transparent, or temporary spells are allowed, with penalty of...”
Heat rushed up and out through my limbs, and sweat broke over my brow.
I hadn't cared last term. I had been willing to do anything. And I had temporarily forgotten that I couldn't afford to show what I was capable of.
“It's...small? And only works when you activate it? You can tote it in and out?” I let my shoulders drop. The four dragons he had already observed had very obviously been permanent residents. “Are you going to report me?”
He looked at me, examining my expression, then his gaze became far more charged, as he threw the dragon in the air and it caught on a breeze and swept around us. “You attract attention.”
I swallowed. I didn't know why I had lost the ability to blend into the shadows. No, that was untrue. It was because I didn't have Christian—my larger than life sibling—to hide behind anymore. Without him I was entirely too exposed.
“I am unfit for this,” I said tiredly. “I tried telling you that. You shouldn't work with someone who attracts negative attention.” There. My public service warning—a community service necessity—had been issued. He could ditch me now, and I could keep my nice long-distance crush intact and inviolate.
His tablet and Justice Toad both rang an alert.
He watched me a moment more, his gorgeous features arranged in a remote expression. Then he tapped under his ear, silently contacting someone while politely allowing me to observe the action. His finger dropped and he continued his silent assessment as I shifted on my feet. Then he smiled.
“Instead of meeting with the others to fight the rabid Pegasus that just started rampaging Six, we are going to check on something else. Come.”
That sounded dire. And Alexander Dare smiling at me? Super dire. And not going to the Sixth Circle to fight a rabid, flying horse that was destroying campus? End of the world dire. But I followed him into a field regardless. Wheatgrass grew taller as we walked and started winding about my legs. I could see the grass swaying against Dare's legs too, but it appeared to be caressing him instead of twining to hold.
He stopped for a moment, and the paper dragon swooped back and looped around his head before continuing its flight path. Dear lord. Made from my mind and activated by my magic, it was already fond of him. My mortification was complete.
Dare's open palm caressed the tops of the stalks that now reached his waist. The stalks twining around my legs immediately unraveled, freeing me.
Dare continued forward and I followed in his path, unsettled. I had seen his abilities here last term, but hadn't realized the true depth of affinity. The stalks weren't caressing and releasing me like they were him, but now they were...tasting, for lack of a better word. Testing and weighing. Sentient life in the Midlands was not always apparent on first glance.
What was apparent was that he had just communicated with the wheatgrass, and either asked or forced it to allow my passage.
Tendrils of fog appeared, swirling inward, signifying that we were once more in a tile at the edge of the Midlands. Likely a tile close to the ninth level, as the swirling fog tended to be erratic when streaming in from the upper levels as opposed to the more controlled nature of the lower third of the mountain where the adults lived. The chaos, experimentation, and magically generated backlashes on the top third of the mountain were enormously high.
Dare moved in a small circle, around a green box that blended with the grass.
Guard Rock had been adamant that I avoid the green boxes that the Department had placed sometime during the night I had been throwing up my guts. He had pantomimed a whole dramatic reenactment of mayhem, destruction, and a throat clenching ending as he had pretended to expire on the floor.
As Dare crouched next to it, I stepped forward to warn him. His head tilted toward me, and he motioned to a tree a few feet over. I stared at him for a second, wondering if he was actually indicating to me that I should climb a tree, but he put a quick finger to his lips, then motioned harder.
Okay. I secured my pack and caught a branch, swinging myself up. Every time I stopped at a branch, he motioned me higher. When I was halfway up, he looked back down at the green box and slipped something carefully underneath.
Straightening, he swung up the tree easily, in less than a third of the time it had taken me. Magic swirled through the small clearing and a boom resonated, shocking me so hard I almost lost my grip. Dare motioned me to follow as he climbed twenty feet higher.
I settled like an awkward leopard, mirroring his more natural pose on the long branch next to me. It was beyond unsettling to be in such a position with him—I had used the treetops here many times to observe and avoid him last term before I had successfully anchored Okai.
Glancing nervously in his direction, I really hoped he hadn't put any past data points together and guessed at that in relation to the avoidance spell. But his gaze was turned downward, his expression one tick shy of smug, as he looked at the crater surrounding the still-intact box.
Two minutes later, a small group that included the reedy mage who had been watching us before ran into view and knelt next to the crater. A hologram rose from the box and images flashed rapidly.
That was a Department box, which made my guess of these students being the “Junior Department” seem more than hypothetically accurate. Department minions in training.
Sweat trailed down my spine. I grabbed for my bag, but Dare's hand stilled mine, his gaze never leaving the mages below.
The images from the box came faster and faster, then exploded. The magical kickback knocked the reedy boy off his feet, and he slid across the ground, hitting a tree on the other side.
The boy swore aloud and two of the others ran to help him. He shook off their hands and rose, shouting. A girl removed another box from her bag, and fiddled with it.
While the girl was fiddling, a slip of green floated up toward us like a leaf swept up by the wind. Dare released my hand and caught
it, then slipped the leaf into his pocket.
I tucked my tingling fingers against my branch and stared between Dare and the group on the ground.
The girl completed her tinkering and put the new device in place, then she and the others ran after the reedy boy who was stomping through the mist.
I was bursting with questions. I held them in with difficulty as Dare stared at something, waiting. We stayed silently perched until the tiles slid apart, taking us through the middle of the mountain—always a trippy ride—and clear to the other side.
As soon as I caught my breath, I furiously whispered, “You blew up that device.”
He lifted a brow in response and started climbing down. “No.” He dismounted confidently, landing easily on the ground. “I baited them into checking the device, then recorded what happened when they did.”
I climbed down less gracefully and straightened my clothes. He held the leaf in his palm and it bloomed into a holographic recording. The captured images showed a stream of haphazard broken happenings—creatures running past, magic swirling, spooked mages stalking. Nothing was seamless and little was understandable. But neither of our faces showed at all, even though Dare had been crouched in front of the device there at the end. The last image showed the device blowing up and the stooge's feet being propelled off the ground.
“They still haven't figured out how to stabilize a recording of the Chaos Magic here.” He looked darkly pleased. “The chaos professors have been trying forever; I don't know why the Department thought they could breeze in and do so in a few weeks.”
“They haven't tried before?” That seemed odd, though it jibed with a thousand other pieces of data haphazardly collected.
“Campus is closed to anyone who isn't enrolled or actively affiliated. That's the way it has always been. Only the directives in the last month have altered that.”
“But the Department—”
“Is an agency without provincial interest. The Department serves the security of the Second Layer as a whole and those in the Department are an entity with and without boundaries. Excelsine is its own municipality—its own small nation nestled within greater Europa. The Department is not part of Excelsine, Europa, or any other nation in the Second Layer. They serve all and none. Command all and none. Their influence is dependent on the length and sharpness of each hook they are able to place.”
Shady.
And he was telling me simple facts that I should already know as a magic user. I swallowed at the implication and the potential consequences. We hadn't addressed the topic directly, but this pretty well confirmed that he knew I was feral. Anyone who spent extended time with me eventually guessed that I was new to this world. I was an alien sucking up knowledge as fast as I could, but still deficient in the things most mages took for granted.
I shrugged, making a last ditch effort to play off my ignorance like I was an inept teenager who couldn't name the President of the United States. “I sleep during class a lot.”
Perhaps I needed to cultivate the mad scientist stereotype a little more—not caring about anything except the project I was working on at the moment. I was pretty sure I could carry that off with little effort.
“Mmmmm.” He closed up the leaf and looked at me. His eyes were heavy-lidded, but the gaze beneath was piercing. “Do you plan to report me?”
I startled. “For what?”
“For baiting them into blowing the device.”
“No, of course not.”
His expression was jaded, but there was far too much confidence in his posture for him to be truly threatened by the idea of me tattling. The dichotomy put me on guard and I silently watched him for clues as to what I needed to do.
He lifted a perfect brow. “You could blackmail me into doing something for you in exchange for keeping the information secret. It is in your best interest.”
Clearly, a test. And one that might be won with an answer either way. Constantine and Olivia would know how to use this to their advantage by asking for a favor or feigning trustworthiness. But I was not the girl who moved chess pieces in this world. I was the defective piece that shot around the board without realizing I shouldn’t be able to move in those directions.
I shook my head. “Why aren't you threatening me about the dragons?”
The piercing look softened and a small, devastating smile worked his lips as he rose. “Why indeed? Come.”
But...he'd already possessed the knowledge of the dragons. He hadn't needed to show me a secret in return.
I hurried to keep up with his far longer legs, my mind working. Warlords and plans... “You want someone shadowing you who can stay quiet and isn't afraid of getting her hands dirty. That is why you picked the community service girl.”
He didn't say anything, just kept walking.
“I can see why you wouldn't want someone like Peters. He sucks. He sucks by the book. But Isaiah is great—trustworthy, and there’s a bit of the joker in him. And he's experienced and doesn't attract unwanted attention. I say this without an ounce of feigned humility—he'd be a far better choice.”
“Choice? It was an absolute gift, you being stuck on the squad this term.”
I didn't possess a response that wasn't potentially embarrassing, so I stayed quiet for a moment, thinking hard. He had wanted me to help last term after the Bone Beast. But he was under the misapprehension that I had done something special rather than the fact that I was the person who had caused the problem in the first place and then figured out how to reverse it.
“Um, I have to repeat. I am a lot of trouble.”
“Yes.”
I blinked at his response, not expecting him to agree quite so readily.
He glanced at me, amused. “I don't think you realize quite how much.”
There was something noticeably more relaxed about him. It was a little unnerving. I wondered if I had passed some other, unknown test.
The Midlands were quieter today, and I noticed that many animals and objects that we passed didn't attack. Lots of things still did—and Dare quickly and ruthlessly took them down—but several beasts that I was used to seeing attack, held their ground. They all watched Dare as we walked.
I thought of the grasses that stroked him instead of fighting.
“We passed two giant centipedes.” Giant centipedes. “One attacked, and the other didn't. Why?”
“There are two kinds of beasts here,” he said. “Those that live here permanently and those created in the magic or absorbed from somewhere else for a period of time. The permanent creatures recognize frequent visitors and react accordingly. The temporary beasts are usually ripped from their homes or created from chaos, so they treat everything as a threat. If there were only permanent creatures here, the Midlands would have been tamed long ago. The temporary beasts and chaotic magic will make it so that the Midlands are never tamed.”
“Chaos mages can't tame Chaos Magic?”
“The nature of a chaos mage is to swirl with the magic, not control it.”
“So the devices that are being planted? They just have recording enchantments?”
“For now. But never assume anything is as it appears with the Department or those trying to gain their favor.” His voice was dark.
“You don't like the Department? Doesn't your uncle work for them?”
“What do you know of my uncle?” His tone became unreadable.
“Nothing? He's some kind of hunter?”
Dare laughed.
My uncertainty increased.
He held up a hand and the paper dragon landed in his palm. With a twist of his wrist, the dragon disappeared from view. A half-smile remained on his face as he tucked his empty hands into his pockets. The dark silver of his control cuff flirted with the edge of the black pocket. “Thank you for him.”
“You're welcome,” I said softly, slightly embarrassed still. I liked making things for friends and watching their resulting smiles. But before this I had never given something to someone who
made my heart race.
As we emerged from the Midlands, the group of Junior Department stooges were standing near Kratos. Ever since I had identified the posture and watchful gazes of the group, I had noticed at least one “watcher” near the Battle Building. It made it harder to practice in the simulation rooms with Draeger. Anything that made me noticeable at this point could have grave repercussions.
But this time, all their gazes focused on a single point, all on Dare. One stooge nodded to another with no words exchanged. They weren't the open, companion-like gazes of people hoping to recruit an extremely powerful mage when he graduated. They were sharklike—circling.
I gripped my bag tensely. Warlords and plans. “They watch you.”
“Always.” He looked at me, and there was something devilish in his gaze, inviting me in. “That's part of the fun. Meet here at sunup.” He walked toward the Battle Building with all of the Junior Department gazes following his every step.
Floored, I watched him too, and the carefully constructed view of Alexander Dare that I had carried with me last term shattered.
Chapter Nineteen: Rumblings
Meeting at sunrise was not my forte, but my anticipation for rounds with Dare took on a new edge, and a different sort of excitement.
Dare's personal group of five—Dare, Lox, Ramirez, Straught, and Greene—and each of the five of us shadowing them, spent two hours at sunrise tromping around campus, examining everything from the perimeter wards the Department had placed on the Eighteenth Circle to the popular henges on Top Campus. Whereas Dare had assigned me to watching ports and paying attention to how the magic activated, the others were placed in charge of different tasks.
We were then to teach our assigned task to the group.
That went a little less well. Peters, in particular, was irritating about the whole thing, trying his best not to address me at all, or to patronizingly offer me his information on reporting protocol. In return, I tried not to feel satisfaction when he jumped at every small movement in his peripheral vision.