The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  Neph rejoined us. “The flags are all set. The community was split between Dorm Thirty-six and the battle field stands for crowd control purposes when the bubbles were erected. When they are freed, they will be called here en masse.”

  I wondered what the muses would then do.

  Olivia gave her a swift nod, then looked at me. “Ready?”

  “Ready.” My heart clenched as I looked around the group.

  Olivia turned to Delia. “I know you can get us to Eighteen in less than a minute without using any arches.”

  Delia and Olivia exchanged a long, charged look.

  “You are going to trust me to be on your side, Price?”

  “You are on this team. I put you on this team,” Olivia said curtly. “What do you think?”

  Delia stared at her for a moment longer, then gave a curt nod. She turned, waved her hands in opposing figure eights, and flicked her fingers toward the Blarjack. It made a bleating noise and fell sideways. I patted Justice Toad through my bag. When the Administrative Magic caught back up, that would be another croak.

  Traveling through the Blarjack swamp for the second time was only a tenth as traumatizing as the first time had been. The tree roots shot us out onto the Sixth Circle and we jogged into the flipping petals of the perisim trees. They enveloped us and spun us onto the Fifteenth Circle.

  A pinch on my skin made me pull up my sleeve. Constantine’s familiar black script appeared along my forearm. Perimeter ward will be eaten through in twenty-five minutes.

  “Constantine will have the perimeter ward down in twenty-five,” I said. I decided against mentioning how. People sometimes got a little weirded out by what his chemical concoctions could do.

  I touched the skin beneath his writing and thought back at him—We need you at the Administration Building. With the leash.

  Everything was happening far too quickly. If only I could have thought things through before he'd taken the scarf and left. Constantine could take down the Administration dome using me while I was on the Seventeenth Circle.

  The words—Deliciously tempting, maybe later. Busy now—came back.

  Constantine!

  There was a caress against my skin, then his words disappeared. His threads still pulsed with healthy life, though, so he hadn't died.

  “If we can stall things until the perimeter ward goes down, maybe...?” Mike said, echoing many thoughts—maybe we could all be saved.

  My scarf shivered against my skin.

  “Price, everyone,” the voice of Kita, one of the members of Beta Team, sounded in my head via the scarf's enchantment. “Dagfinn says Roald Bailey just answered the call, so all initial parties have been contacted. But they've initiated a general call as well—and it looks like it's a hijack feed for the entire Second Layer.”

  Godfrey was planning a show. That wasn't good news.

  “Concerning our assignment,” Kita continued. “Students started skulking around the Administration Building. And not in the 'we are attempting to free anyone' type of way. More in the 'secure the building' sort.”

  A visual of the referenced students seeped through the scarves and showed wispy images of each person in my mind's eye.

  “Three of those are students I've seen Emrys speak to,” I said. I took a deep breath and pulled the visual memory of all the students I had seen him with and sent the images back through the scarves. “These are all the students I've seen him with. Watch for any of them. You can't let them alert anyone down here.”

  “We'll take care of it,” said Asafa grimly.

  I wiped a shaky hand along my forehead. There were so many things that could go wrong. So many intangibles over which we had no control.

  Delia couldn't quite hide her apprehension and fear as she led us to a large stump. She paused, then vaulted up and disappeared inside. The rest of us followed.

  When we emerged in a small silver, gold, and rose-colored grove east of the battle field on the Seventeenth Circle, I turned to her and whispered, “You made that trickster map you gave me my first day on campus, didn't you?”

  “I come from a long line of nature, fiber, and timber mages.” She gave me a shaky wink, and squeezed my wrist, but then looked at the men—the terrorists—in the distance, pacing in front of the dome. Her expression was torn. She looked at me, then Olivia, who was watching us. “I do have sympathies and connection to the restoration movement,” Delia said to her. “But not for this. This is not the way. And this is my home too. I will defend it.”

  She turned and touched the ground with Neph, coaxing the trees into hiding us.

  “Alpha is in position,” Olivia whispered through her scarf. “Video feed activated.”

  Beta Team and the others would be able to access video shot through the brooch attached to Olivia's scarf.

  “There is a defensive field around Godfrey and the others,” Will said through his scarf, after speaking softly with Mike and someone on Gamma. “Storm Magic. Secured by wind. Any magic done in or to that field will be noticed.”

  A number of voices offered suggestions and ways to disable it. Our people trapped in the Magiaduct and at the battle fields could still hear us and contribute—and unidentified voices could be heard in the background as people trapped around them sought to help as well. A scuffle heard through multiple Beta scarves said whatever was happening with the campus betrayers was happening now.

  I could almost feel the ghostly echo of Justice Toad vibrating the stream of alerts and offenses as Beta sprung the numerous traps on Top Circle. Other than around the Magiaduct—which was purely due to the convenience of the casters—Top Circle was our most heavily fortified level. An attack had been expected to happen at the top of the mountain, not through the wards the Department had secured below.

  Then again, everyone had been expecting an outside attack, if any, not an expertly executed inside job.

  We crouched together and prayed Beta would triumph.

  The mass of fighters, battle fields, and spectators spread before us. It was both a strangely similar and completely different view than what the six of us had seen a mere two and a half weeks ago at the Combat Qualifier.

  Without announcing our presence, this was as close as we could get to the dome that had ten thousand of our classmates trapped inside. But Godfrey made it easy for us to see what was happening, even at our distance. He was, indeed, preparing a spectacle, and he had made sure that all of the trapped students had bird's eye views.

  The holograms and projections of the combat competition that had been in place for the students to watch had been replaced with eight three-dimensional images. And Godfrey was addressing eight angry, austere faces. Helen Price's image appeared alongside a man who looked like an older and kinder Constantine. The image of a very menacing-looking man stood on her other side. The other five projections were arrayed around them.

  As she stared at the profile of her mother, Olivia was as tightly strung as a violin string the moment before it snapped.

  “Emrys Norr isn't here,” I whispered, touching the back of her shoulder.

  Olivia nodded and her muscles relaxed enough for her to fiddle with her scarf. “Send a picture of him through the channel anyway.”

  I did, along with a visual name tag under his face. Emrys's absence lent credence to my opinion that he had abandoned campus once he'd let the enemy inside.

  “We have your children and the children of your most valued underlings,” Godfrey said, continuing the speech that had been occurring prior to our arrival. “If you want them to perish, please do continue trying to send your special forces across the river below.”

  The flashes of fire from the base of the mountain ceased abruptly.

  “Ah, excellent.” Godfrey smiled at the eight faces. “I think we might have found a bargaining chip finally.”

  “We will not—”

  “Negotiate? No? Let's widen our network.”

  Pictures of Second Layer citizens appeared in image squares on a grid
that grew tighter and tighter, each picture shrinking smaller as fifty more appeared in another square, then fifty more again. Soon the grid montage contained thousands of squares filled with anxious faces.

  The hijacked general feed had been opened.

  “People of the Second Layer, your leaders plan to sacrifice your children. We are offering a simple exchange. An exchange that will be contractually binding between governments. The lives of the students at one of your finest institutions for the immediate replenishment of half the magic you've stolen from the Third Layer.”

  “Only half?” Helen sneered.

  Godfrey put a hand to his chest. “We aren't ogres, Madam Price. We know you've used your ill- gotten gains over the past decades to build things that your society now rests upon. We will grant you three months to remove that infrastructure before seizing the other half of our stolen magic as well.”

  “You say you aren't ogres, and yet you hold children hostage, threatening their mass murder?”

  “Ah, but they are soldier age and grade, are they not? You send just as many soldiers of this same 'child' status to strong arm us. Your pitiful attempt at sympathy is without merit.”

  “They didn't sign up to be soldiers.”

  “We, all of us, must battle for our freedom,” Godfrey said, with a mirthless smile. “Isn't that right?”

  “What have you done with the Peacekeepers' Troop?”

  The man spread his arms wide, his smile disturbing. “An interesting question. They were checked and approved to protect your hallowed halls. By you and the rest of the Council and Alliance, Madam Price. You allowed us to be in charge here, and for that I thank you.”

  “The answer is no,” the menacing-looking man at Helen's side said coldly. “We will not negotiate with you.”

  “I'm sure your audience is despondent to hear your decision, Stavros.”

  The parents inside the image squares were yelling and screaming.

  Godfrey shook his head in mock sadness. “You need to listen to the citizens more, Stavros. And spend less time on the questionable projects you oversee in the Department's basement.”

  I had to mute my scarf as everyone on our line was cursing and sending violent mental images. Underneath all of the hostility and aggression coursing through the scarf network, though, was a deep resignation that I understood from taking Layer Politics. The Second Layer could not give up the appropriated magic in the way the terrorists were demanding, and everyone swearing violently knew it. If the governments had planned and implemented a return of the magic before now, then yes, maybe. But in the next ten minutes or even ten hours? Not a chance.

  And the governments didn't want to give up the magic. After a few more attacks and massacres...maybe. It might be demanded of them, if the “might makes right” side of the equation switched to the terrorists' side.

  But there wasn't a thing that could be done to resolve Godfrey's demand.

  People were going to die. Godfrey had raised the dome himself—I could see the same onion peel shade flashing through it that flashed around him—which meant he would be able to manipulate or destroy it using whatever device he had used to raise it. There was no device visible, though, and he was absurdly well protected. Getting the device before he could use it was going to be ridiculously hard.

  Unless...

  Thoughts whirled through my mind as I stared at the dome and thought about containment and traps and all of the other various crazy things I had been doing with Dare. If a magical creature or being was unable to access its magic, it became easy to trap. And on the flipside, if magic was trapped under strong magic, the magic underneath couldn't be accessed until the trap was freed.

  I didn't need to touch the dome or the device. I could trap the dome.

  North, south, east, west, top... In my mind, a grid drew over the dome, along with anchor points.

  I touched my bag and removed my remaining five Kinsky papers. Of the original seven, the one I had turned into Dare's phoenix was out of my reach, as was the “hydra” net I had kept intact and stored in Okai. But I had five to work with. I could create anchors with five. Just like the visual pyramid I used to manipulate the cornerstones of magic.

  I scooted to the far side of the grove, away from the others as Godfrey and the adults continued their verbal warfare. I drew quickly, trying not to let my shaking hands influence the nature of the lines as I let my mind bend the cornerstones. Anchor points. Anchor points for a containment dome of an entirely different variety.

  I looked at Olivia, then pointed sharply to my ear then my scarf.

  As she strode over toward me, Olivia nodded and touched her scarf. “Muted.”

  I held up the finished papers in the folio, gripping them hard to try to stop my shaking. “I can secure the dome. Trap it—put it in stasis—so that Godfrey can't use his dome underneath. We can keep the students completely out of harm's way until this is over. Then we can dismantle Godfrey's dome appropriately and in all the time we need.”

  She didn't say anything for a moment, and indecision chased anger across her face. “Everyone will know, Ren.” She stared at me, demanding that I understand what she meant.

  I understood that Professor Mbozi would pass me so hard in engineering class, if this worked, that maybe I'd even get a rare smile from him before they carted me off to some top secret facility.

  “Are we going to let them die?”

  She said nothing for a long moment then closed her eyes. “No.”

  “What are you two discussing?” Mike asked, crouching closer. Like the rest of us, his face was blanched of healthy color and his expression was drawn.

  I stared at him and a moment of inappropriate elation overcame me. I put the papers down and grabbed his wrist. “Wind. Can you influence the winds without drawing attention to us?”

  “Through personal enchantment?” He glanced between us, then nodded slowly. “Yes. But it is weaker magic than what you've seen me use before because I can't use the campus systems. The terrorists shut down the campus weather magic like everything else administrative. All my snow is melting,” he said trying to wanly inject humor before growing horribly sober again. “And I can't do anything to that defensive field. They have three weather mages inside—powerful ones—holding it.”

  “Personal enchantment only. Your smallest and least detectable wind charm. Feather light.” I let go of his wrist and scooted back a foot, then spread out the five papers. “Just enough to fly these into a sloped pyramid formation around the Origin Dome and keep them suspended there until I tell you to release them.”

  Something strange registered in Mike's eyes as he looked at the papers, then at me. Delia, Neph, and Will came closer, huddling together with us too. Delia and Neph were still holding the strands of magic to the ground that were keeping us shielded within the trees. Mike looked at Will, whose eyes were beseeching, then back at me.

  Mike nodded even more slowly, and I could see that he was fighting an innate desire to put more distance between himself and the papers. “I understand.” He understood far more than my need to attach a few papers via a wind charm. “I understand a lot, now. A conversation perhaps best saved for later.”

  I smiled tightly. “I can do that personal wind enchantment you showed me a few weeks ago and encase each paper as a buffer so that your magic won't touch them.” I could only float things an inch or two and not for very long, but it should be enough. It had to be.

  A tug on my scarf indicated someone was about to speak through it.

  “Administration Building perimeter secured,” Patrick was panting and his words were halting. “All those traps we set on Top Circle... Loudon, man, when we get out of this, remind me never to get on your bad side. We're baiting the traps again for the soldier units trekking up the Fourth. About ten minutes.” His voice strained at the last. “We'll get it done.”

  Sixty war-hardened soldiers against the five remaining Betas? I shut my eyes. They might trap half. They'd probably trap ha
lf. And then...

  I opened my eyes, brutally pushed the thoughts aside, and started wrapping each paper in air.

  Another voice chimed in. “This is lone Delta. We are hooking up remote detonations for the Magiaduct. The magic is thinner here than on the Administration Building—they probably had to stretch it too far. So the intention in the magic is focused on restraint only—keeping the mages inside cut off from magic and secured—unlike the explosive nature of the other two domes. I think we can blow it as soon as we get the go-ahead. The Midlands should be able to handle the backlash. And we've gathered dozens of strays. Trick, we are sending them up behind the soldiers, to help you take them out. They are wearing conjured blue scarves. Unconnected to ours, but still something to identify. Ten more minutes here, then hopefully we'll all head up top.”

  I looked down at my wrist. Constantine's scrawl ticked each minute. Twenty minutes until the perimeter ward came down. We could all be dead by then.

  I showed Olivia the time remaining.

  “Crown,” a new voice said. “I split off from the others to check the Midlands boxes, and Holy Magic, I see your—”

  Flashes of color swept my mind as a member of Epsilon tried to send an image, then the color cut off abruptly alongside the gurgle of Tilsia's unfinished statement.

  A flurry of shouts to Tilsia issued via the scarves, especially from her Epsilon teammates.

  “Asafa, identify her position,” Olivia whispered harshly. “Then two members at the Magiaduct, go get her. Approach with extreme caution. We need to know what she saw, but we can not spare anyone else to find and resurrect more of you.”

  Tilsia was dead. Our first. Dead from something she was trying to identify for me. I shut my eyes. We had ten resurrection minutes to find her.

  “Everyone else, hold position and wait for the signal,” Olivia said.

  The voices in the scarves abruptly silenced, people taking to individual threads to yell or grieve.

  Godfrey stepped in front of the dome, smiling at the thousands of students populating the stands inside. “Perhaps if your Alliance had actually made a good faith effort during the fall negotiations, you would be having an unexceptional winter term. Alas.”