by Anne Zoelle
“I would have totally made it with a minute to spare,” I said, walking down the front steps while trying to still my racing heart. “I'm awesome at being just on time.”
He pushed away from the wall and looked me over. “You ate. I had wondered if I'd find you half-dead here.”
“I think I actively offended the table next to ours in the cafeteria with the amount of food I consumed. And thank you for that kick in the jugular experienced soon afterward that made them think that not only was I gluttonous, but demented as well.”
I still had a little extra energy running through me and it was doing funny things to my stomach. Had he tracked me down to make sure I was okay?
That made me think preposterous thoughts.
I shoved the little papered creation toward him, transferring ownership as I did. “Here. I made the magic in this one safe for you.”
I could feel Guard Rock and Guard Friend watching through the little floor-level window the building had created for them—assessing whether Dare was a threat. How had Dare concealed himself from the three of us before I'd exited? Guard Rock would have seen Dare if he'd truly just been standing out in the open.
Dare examined the small phoenix resting in his hand. He stroked a tail feather and touched the crest feathers and beak. Unlike its slightly crinkly counterparts, the phoenix's parchment had smoothed into a nearly seamless design.
It was one of my best creations. Kinsky's paper was exceptional. I wondered how old he had been—and how long he'd been a mage—when he'd created it. Should I be working harder?
Dare continued to examine it and said nothing. It was excruciating.
“You, uh, you shouldn't use him outside of the Midlands,” I said, then chewed on an already chewed fingernail. “You said to keep the paper hidden, and well, ta-da! One piece hidden.”
Dare's wasp and dragon swooped down to see their new sibling. My God, I was making him a menagerie. It was beyond mortifying, if I let myself think about it.
“I assigned each a task during their creation,” I said, trying to outrun the thought that I was giving him pets in some weird courting ritual. “Sort of like embedding instincts. They can do other things, but their primary instinct will be to complete their task. And I made sure none of them will leave the Midlands without your express permission.”
The wasp and dragon were chaotic little beings—and occasionally they absorbed and overdosed on the Chaos Magic around them. I had seen them being mischievous and spiteful to other people traversing the levels, but they always listened to Dare when he spoke, and they followed their embedded directives to a T.
“And the phoenix? What is his task?”
I felt my cheeks heat. Seriously, what had I been thinking? “He, uh, he will follow you.” I busied myself with my bag so that I didn't have to look at him. “If you die here, he will immediately alert me.”
It should also pull Okai's tile toward him, attaching to whatever tile he was on for a short period of time, making it possible for me to find him if I dropped everything and sprinted to the Midlands. Perhaps the effort of imbuing that magic had made it possible for him to be here right now—that it had somehow tugged him the way that I had accidentally tugged Raphael twice now. I'd have to think about that.
Dare's eyes were unreadable, but he put the phoenix carefully on his shoulder. “We will work on your anxiety after the competition, as I said earlier. But thank you. He's exquisite.”
He had said that earlier—that we'd work after the competition. I'd been more concerned with the death aspect of our conversation at the time.
“We, uh... You won't need me to help after the competition.”
The tiles slid and a family of goblins and a couple of large ostrich-lion-scorpion hybrids appeared on either side of us.
“Maybe I'll want you to help,” he said as he stepped toward the hybrids and left me to talk the goblins down from attacking.
The goblins finally lurched away, and I turned to see Dare give me a calculated sideways glance while the standing hybrid roared over its downed compatriot. Magic was heavy in the air, and the phoenix was spiraling up toward the Midlands' sky. The phoenix had obviously just done something unusual while my attention had been engaged elsewhere.
Which brought us back to things unspoken. I had used Sergei Kinsky's paper to make the phoenix and some of the tasks required in its creation had clearly required rare magic.
“So, you...you know,” I said inanely.
“Know what?” He casually knocked the other eight-foot hybrid off its clawed feet with a sweep of his staff. Maroon magic seeped from the end of the staff and made both creatures completely inert.
I fluttered a hand absently. “About...”
“Things? Stuff?”
“You are being deliberately obtuse. I kind of appreciate it.” Some of the tight tension in my shoulders drained away. “Why did you give me those papers?”
“Because I thought you would be able to use them.” He headed left, and I followed him, catching up quickly. Tiles slid around us, but as usual, he had somehow tethered us together.
“Why did you think that?”
“The puzzle isn't hard to figure out when one studies you. And I had clues that others do not.”
I dearly wanted to know what other clues he had, but more importantly I wanted to know… “Why aren't you scared?”
He looked at me, entirely unimpressed with my question. “Why should I be?”
“I don't know. The very notion scares everyone else.”
Though that wasn't entirely true. None of the people who knew I could manipulate Origin Magic and who mattered to me were scared. And their attitudes kept me from drowning in the fear of what could be, if I was exposed. External affection suffused me, making me dance a little in place with the extra energy that wanted to do or make something for each one of those people right now.
“My mother is Sera McEllian.” Dare said it as if it explained everything.
“Okay,” I said, without understanding. Mike and Olivia had talked about Dare's mother and the political ramifications of her marriage to his warlord father, but I had no idea what those ramifications were or why any existed.
Dare laughed. It was a full, deep laugh and it made me shiver. He shook his head. “Feral mages...” He said it almost fondly. “You should probably fast feed a few historical and socio-mage classes or get an app for it when you get a frequency. So you know who to woo and who to avoid.” His tone grew darker at the last. “Like the sole known Bridge.”
“What's a Bridge?” Some sort of spirit guide? He obviously didn't mean his mother was a span across a river.
A rock-filled river appeared in front of us, strangely befitting the conversation, and Dare took a moment to choose a path to take us across.
“A Bridge is a mage who can create a connection that takes magic from one source and transfers it easily into another, without asking for permission. A natural leech.”
The word “leech” was full of negative connotations, even without the baggage it personally held for me, and I could see that he had used the term deliberately in order to gauge my reaction.
“Can it be deliberate? Like particular strands of magic bridged and taken?” My mind was already going in five directions using this new information.
He eyed me. “Yes.”
“Like she could remove the extra energy someone has, energy that perhaps makes the person otherwise unable to sleep?”
“Yes.” He sounded exasperated, but a smile tugged the edge of his lips. I added a “+1” to my “Making friends feel better” mental tally.
Besides, that skill really could be useful. I usually needed to work quite hard, especially at night, to rid myself of the excess magical energy that was always bubbling up inside of me. I wondered what it would be like to live with someone who could drain and bottle bits of my magic at will. Dead useful and completely terrifying, depending on what she was like. Strange and powerful, and scary in the unknown.
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Like me.
“It makes her an excellent healer for people who can't make the conscious decision to have their magic used,” he said. “But most people cross to the other side of the street if they see her.”
Likely not the life of the party at Old Magic events, then.
Darkness lit his eyes. “Which is laughable. Such a small distance wouldn't stop her, if she wanted to hurt anyone or take their magic.”
On the other side of the river, Dare “rehabilitated” a crocodile that breathed poisonous gas when it opened its jaws. Then ran a hand over the oddly wobbling croc-goose it had been attacking. It abruptly coughed then began waddling normally again.
The darkness receded from his expression on his next exhale. “Just because a mage has a power, doesn't mean she is that power. Or that she lets it rule her.” He was speaking generically, but his gaze was on me. “Not everyone is frightened by choices not yet made.”
Just because I could use Origin Magic, that didn't mean I was going to end the world.
I swallowed around the heady and heavy sensation of those unspoken words and said, “Okay,” because thank you was too inadequate and anything else was not enough.
“The Department knows there is a rare mage running around. They will never just let that person be. But if that person can avoid them for a long enough time to make plans and gather allies, there are ways to live inside the fish bowl. Not quite freely, but not quite enslaved either.”
“Your mother?”
“Usually stays on our island, quietly away from government eyes and idiotic whispers. Helping as we build our vast armies and make our plans to dominate the world, of course.” There was a twist of dark amusement to the statement. “Everyone knows that the Dares are power mad. And we use everything to our advantage. Smart of them to realize that, really, because it's absolutely true.”
He conjured a blue ball of energy and a hologram burst from it. An attractive, dark-haired woman stripped one long, black glove off her arm and laid bare fingers on the skin of an ailing man. On the edges of the scene, people resembling the sick man—his family, most likely—stared at her in loathing and distrust.
“But she doesn't withhold help from even the crasseetars who need it,” he said.
My throat clenched. I remembered his words so long ago, when he'd been a stranger without a face, and I'd been a girl too bloody to later recognize—that his mother wouldn't have cared that I was ordinary and without magic, and that she would have healed me. Those whispered words and the sentiment behind them were the reasons I was alive today.
He extinguished the hologram in a clenched fist, but his voice was calm. “And one day the fearful will succeed. Someone will finally kill her when she's on some peaceful mission away from home, and the entire Layer will pretend not to be relieved. On the day the world should fear us the most, they will break the dawn with overwhelming relief in their minds, unknowing of what the dark will bring.”
I swallowed. “Everyone is in charge of their own actions?”
He tossed the remnants of magic to the ground. “Yes. We are.”
The tiles reformed around us once more.
“The irony,” he said in a deceptively conversational tone, “is in what people choose to worry about versus what they choose to ignore. While people don't consider how destruction and war can forge creation and health, they also don't stop to think about how healing magic can be used to decimate instead. Knowing the ways to incapacitate or stop parts of the body from functioning? Taking over brain centers—control, perception, memory? Healers take strict oaths. But figuring out how to do such things is the advantage of any mage who can get an entry point into another's magic.”
I wiggled my previously broken toe inside of my boot. Dr. Greyskull had fixed it by magically diving down into my system last term.
“Growing up under the tutelage of a mother who heals and a father who wars was a highly useful experience,” he said.
“Sounds confusing.”
He just laughed. “Come on. We'll go blow the recording devices at the edges of the Midlands one last time before the Troop arrives.”
Chapter Twenty-seven: The Troop
The Peacekeepers' Troop arrived Monday afternoon.
I had been told by Dare that Excelsine normally used a set alumni roster of exceptional mages who volunteered to return to their alma mater for the same three weeks every year—two weeks to overlap with the student combat mages and one week to take over their duties when the students were at the competition.
As such, usually the first two weeks when the current combat mages and past ones were all on campus was a sort of combat alumni event, complete with playful harassment on both sides and dedicated, mentored practice between the graduates and competitors to prepare the competitors for the competition that would begin two Mondays hence.
The Monday after the qualifier was usually a raucous and cheerful day. And for the Junior Department and most of the Justice Squad, the arrival of the Troop was met with cheery relief.
But for the combat mages... The best that could be said of Dare that morning when we'd met at the goat crack of dawn, was that today was not going to be a good day.
I ducked into the meeting room with a scant two minutes to spare before three p.m.—the time the Troop was scheduled to meet the squads. Isaiah nodded. Peters glared. Camille smiled, coolly civil. Dare looked pointedly at the enchanted clock. I held up two fingers and gave them a little shake, then slipped into a free seat along the right aisle.
I was a little more tolerant of Dare's crazed timekeeping now that I understood it. As each person entered, Dare incorporated them into his schema of the room. The more powerful the person, the more concentration it required for him to adjust the variables into an intuitive pattern that he could quickly convert on.
If he could demand certain people show up ten minutes early to every event, he totally would.
Taken in retrospect, some of the irritation he had shown for me after the Tricorn incident might have been an annoyed realization that there was someone new on campus that he needed to be aware of. Freaky feral power bursts.
Selmarie Senthuss stood tall with Isaiah at the front of the room as they answered questions while everyone settled into seats.
The Troop entered the room on the dot, entering in magical military fashion. Blinks of color flipped shields around them and empty darts of light flashed in ways that demonstrated that such blips could be weapons during battle. Showy.
I stole a glance at Dare and saw his lip curl in derision. I knew his thoughts on the matter. All style and no substance.
There was something weird about the way my eyes traveled over the line-up, though, and it caused me to stop and solve the puzzle presented instead of listening to Isaiah's opening speech. Without individual study, the thirty Troop members seemed indistinguishable from each other in the line-up—even the tall from the short, the men from the women, and the late twenty-year-olds from those at least in their early fifties. Magically encased in flickering lights, a first glance gave the impression of every mage standing straight-shouldered, with slicked-back hair and an androgynous overlay.
But that was not the truth.
I looked closer. Individual features popped out, then retreated into sameness. Some sort of invariance enchantment was in effect to make them appear similar.
All except the last two. The last man, wearing a multitude of stripes and magic dots on his shoulders, was the obvious leader. The second to last man was dressed in the same uniform as the others and stood beside them in the line, but his thick hair was distinctly blond. He was of indeterminate age but there was something oddly lazy about his eyes that blinked from bright green to gray—as if the invariance magic couldn't totally cover him, and his indolence was on display for everyone to see. It was almost a statement saying that he wasn't drinking the same spells as the rest of the line-up.
Once my gaze hit him, it didn't want to let go. There was something—
A polite clap from the audience snapped me out of my study, as the leader stepped forward. I had missed Isaiah's entire speech.
The leader gave a short bow. “We look forward to working with the exceptional students of Excelsine, and hopefully converting this precedence into a storied tradition.”
Dream on, magic man. It had become pretty apparent that no one from the Combat Squad was hoping for the same.
As the leader droned on, my gaze drifted back to the man standing next to him. His lazy gaze was taking in the room, seemingly uninterested and bored, but the minute focus of his leaf-green eyes as his gaze shifted from face to face reminded me of Constantine—projecting an image of disregard, but missing nothing. The man's shifting gaze continued around the room as his leader spoke about glorious opportunities and partnerships.
His build was similar to Christian's and Dare's—athletic and a few inches over six feet. I had never seen this man before, yet there was something so familiar about him.
His gaze met mine and stopped. The color of his eyes flipped from green to gray, and his head cocked to the side. It was hard to breathe and my magic was doing funny things. Flight responses were clashing with a desire to fling my arms around him.
The lazy disregard left his gaze completely as it sharpened on me.
Familiar ultramarine magic instantly tightened around me and shattered the increasingly creepy connection. I swallowed and turned a grateful glance to Dare, who was looking between us with a narrowed gaze.
The leader began to introduce each of the men and women in the line. I heard the names, but the only one that mattered was the last. Emrys Norr, who was still staring at me and had begun to smile.
Isaiah, Selmarie, and the Troop leader shook hands, then Selmarie addressed the room. “We have broken the teams into threesomes and fivesomes based on the original Combat and Justice Squad pairings. Either one pair will have a Troop member join them to make a threesome, or two pairs will add a Troop member to make a fivesome. The Troop member will then work with the Justice Squad partner or partners when the combat mages leave for the competition. This is an excellent opportunity to spread good will and help campus security grow stronger. Assignments are on your tablets.”