The Rise of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  “Con.”

  “I think your line is, 'It's lovely to have you back.'” His eyes glinted, amused, and there was something genuine in his devilish smile for a moment.

  I reached out and touched his hand. “It is.”

  Dare chose that moment to exit his workroom. He looked between us, then at the wards, expression going grim. “Ren.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your tablet is beeping,” Dare said.

  “Crap.” I fished it out. The first thing I saw was that it was noon. The next was that I had thirty messages of increasing panic from my friends, and last, but definitely not least was that a mandatory Justice Squad meeting had been scheduled by Isaiah Gellis.

  I stared at the blinking magic, then swiped a finger through it. A message from Isaiah popped up and swirled into my brain. Comfort and friendship and a clear directive of, “We are waiting. Get to this room, Crown, or the contract magic is going to penalize you.”

  An image of a room in Dorm Eight flashed.

  I stared blankly at my tablet. “I have... I have to report to the Justice Squad. Everyone was put on the roster for duty today,” I said out loud.

  I still had Justice Magic responsibilities. Unbelievable.

  Marsgrove was out there somewhere—rescuing Olivia or dead. Raphael and Kaine were waging war across the Third Layer. Stavros and Helen Price were somewhere, plotting my doom. And I was stuck here, in the Magiaduct, captive with everyone else, and responsible for campus lawfulness.

  “Only you, Crown,” Constantine said, his tone pretty uninterested again, and his eyes still closed. “Would be surprised by this.”

  “But—”

  Dare dropped a sandwich and a piece of fruit into my free hand and pulled me upright. He magicked my day bag crosswise over my body and pushed me out the door.

  In the hall, Justice Toad beeped for an entire minute while I stared in stupefaction at the tablet in one hand and the food in my other.

  I gained myself an additional hour of service time in not answering the beep promptly enough.

  Chapter Twenty-three: Justice Squad

  Every gaze followed me as I swallowed the last bite of my sandwich and slipped into the only seat left—front and center, unfortunately—of the dormitory common room we were using as a temporary meeting spot.

  On the way here, I had tried to eat, catch up on what had happened while I'd been out cold, answer the questions of the people who were brave enough to accost me in the hall, and reassure all of my panicking friends that I was alive. But I had too little time to process any of it, especially while apologizing profusely to the entire armband alliance for turning off my comm again. I was going to have to catch up on everything on the fly. Hopefully I didn't get caught wrong footed right from the get go.

  Isaiah clapped his hands together, bringing audience attention back to him. “Okay, people. We had quite a day yesterday. A brutal one. The media is, unfortunately, labeling it Bloody Tuesday—I think we have one of our regular offenders to thank for that moniker, so make sure to give O'Leary an extra fun punishment next time you answer his call. But Bloody Tuesday, or not, we weathered the events and we succeeded.”

  A fierce surge of Community Magic pride swept through the room. It was not unlike what I'd experienced inside of Patrick and Asafa's room, and it was a powerful reminder that my community was larger than I sometimes realized.

  “I'd like to single out a few outstanding efforts,” Isaiah continued. “Prime support personnel took care of everything that came through the system during curfew hours last night with the help of Professor Wellingham, and with Provost Johnson granting exceptions.”

  Exceptions could be made to curfew magic? Interesting...

  “And as most of you already know, last night and this morning we had thousands of calls,” Isaiah said. “Thank you, to everyone on prime support who went above and beyond the call of justice duty.”

  I shuddered. I could only imagine the type of calls that had been fielded.

  “Rewinding back to the events of yesterday,” he said, “Travers, excellent work on the Justice Magic Negative Field. For all of you who are unaware, when the Administration Magic came back online yesterday, Travers managed to switch the flow of Justice Magic to attack anyone who was not a resident of campus proper. The praetorians were able to overcome the magic, but most of the rest, even members of the Legion, were put out of commission for a full minute, allowing us to identify those who didn't belong on campus. I heard some of the officials who journeyed in at the tail end of things got a right shock.”

  That startled an unwitting laugh out of a few people.

  “Poor Travers suffered three thousand hours of community service for implementing the spell, but I've been assured those hours will be cleared before lockdown ends.”

  There was a large round of applause. I joined in, and visually identified Travers, a gangly brunette with large ears and pink cheeks who was ducking his head. I was very interested in what he had done to achieve that spell.

  The list of mages who had performed outstanding actions in the service of the day was lengthy, but Isaiah wielded each recognition with aplomb.

  Until the end.

  “And lastly, Ren Crown.”

  Silence.

  “Without whom,” Isaiah said, without breaking stride. “We would have been blind to what was happening within the Troop.”

  More silence. All gazes on me.

  “Furthermore, her actions allowed us to work together with all possible hands and resources to break free of the Magiaduct's dome and to protect campus.”

  I swallowed and looked at my hands, unwilling to meet all of the gazes staring at me. I was kind of hoping Isaiah would stop speaking. But no such luck.

  “Actions that are directly prompting an immediate debate on how we can coordinate efforts further, and better, in response to large-scale attacks. All thanks to one of ours.” He brandished a hand at me.

  I cleared my throat in the face of the dead silence.

  “There were a number of mages involved in keeping communications open,” I said, shaking hands gripping Justice Toad tightly against my chest. “Mages who are, ironically, routinely punished for such actions. You might want to go easy on Patrick O'Leary for a few calls, even though, Bloody Tuesday? Yeah, I can't believe he named it that either. But if you want to thank anyone, Olivia Price was integral in every facet of yesterday, not least of which was making sure that we all remained connected to each other.”

  I took a breath and looked around. “Do not credit me. We were all, as a community, involved.”

  Silence.

  Isaiah gave me an amused glance. “I know said community has many questions—” Hands and magic shot into the air. “Which will be answered during the strict fact based question and answer session at the end of this meeting.”

  The hands reluctantly lowered. Thank Magic, for Isaiah.

  “First things first. We need to discuss, going forward, what we can do to aid the new forces on campus—” More new forces, was somewhat heavily implied, but not said. “And Justice Magic itself.”

  I settled in for a long meeting. Usually I had fourteen projects flying through my brain, and untangled magic slotting everything into neat mental piles to work on. Today I had one mission, and magic still too burnt to freely flow past all the knots.

  That meant I was stuck...listening.

  “We will need to account for mages acting out from stress and grief,” Isaiah said. “Those on prime support have already been dealing with it, and there will be increased counts of vandalism, fighting, and provocation over the next few days. The mental health and well-being mages are working with the Administration to tailor the next two weeks of Justice Magic to include a trigger in the magic to identify magic tinged with a rota of emotional occurrences.

  “If someone acts out of grief directly, they will receive particular sentencing. Sentences designed to help them, while at the same time not rewarding their initial ou
tbursts. We are trying to help students get back in the pool and off the diving board.”

  I stared straight forward, unable to stop the thought spiral of how I had acted my first eight weeks on campus. Of how many charges I had racked up searching for a way to bring Christian back.

  “We will coordinate grief counseling with large picture trauma. This is more than just our monster of the day, or out-of-control beast of the week.”

  “The combat mages will still be gone tonight when the top levels of campus reopen,” someone in the audience said.

  “But part of the Legion will remain here,” Isaiah responded. “I think we can all concur that they can handle any surprises that occur.”

  Surprisingly, that seemed to bring no ease to the people in the room. They had been gung-ho at the Peacekeepers' Troop coming in to help. Either the idea of outside help had lost its shine or the Legion was outside their point of acceptance.

  When Isaiah finally reached the end of what we'd be doing during the next week, it was question and answer time.

  Unsurprisingly, I got the first one.

  “Miss Crown, what happened?”

  It was a question I had been asked at least six times on my way to the meeting. I gave a rote recitation of the events. The same litany I had given every stranger so far. Stripped down and to the point.

  But at least here, everyone knew what working with Alexander Dare entailed. No one questioned my statement that I'd felt like I needed to save campus when he left for the competition.

  It was a nice change.

  Unfortunately, there were more difficult questions to answer.

  “Why didn't you use us? Why weren't we privy to this plan of yours?” an upper year girl asked, expression pinched.

  “There was a good system already in place, which usually worked.” I shrugged. “This was really more of a...panic response to being teamed with, er, Axer.”

  People kept giving me weird looks when I referred to him as Dare. Like only strangers did that. It was hard to change, though. He was Dare in my head.

  Even though he'd made me a peanut butter sandwich an hour ago.

  I was still processing that.

  “But you could have set up that panic response with us,” someone blurted out.

  Deliberately and slowly, I looked around the room, meeting all of the gazes staring back at me. “Could I have?”

  A few gazes turned away.

  “Let's face it. I don't belong on this squad,” I said frankly. “And many of you have felt that way about me from the beginning. It's not a secret.”

  “You've been a very productive member of the squad, Ren,” Isaiah said, voice slightly chastising.

  I gave him a strained smile.

  “Listen up, everyone. I won't tolerate any breakdown in the squad or rotations,” Isaiah said, expression grave. “If there is anything that yesterday has taught us, it's that we need to work together as a community.”

  No one said anything, but I could feel the enormous weight of their gazes on me.

  “Schedules are on your feeds or tablets. Go forth and bring peace.”

  Chapter Twenty-four: Dog Day Afternoon

  Leaving the meeting, I was able to take a better look at my surroundings, since I wasn't juggling five things. Gazes peered back everywhere I went—solemn and questioning. It was worse than it had been last night.

  “Did you see that spell she shot through the roots?” one murmured. “What was it? Who was the boy?”

  Everyone had seen the firework—the recording of me fighting “Christian” under the dome. I hadn't reviewed the footage. How much of the fight had been recorded? How much had Saf and Trick shown?

  “Just the beginning.” Trick's mental voice was reserved. “And there was no sound. Sorry, Princess. It was the only thing that would grab everyone's attention.”

  I swallowed. “It's okay,” I murmured. It was going to have to be, at this point. “Are we still meeting?”

  A meeting time had been thrown out in the flurry of communications I had been fielding on the way to the Justice Squad meeting.

  “Yes. Come over any time.”

  Trick and Saf's room was unofficial headquarters at this point.

  Most of the members were already inside. They caught me up on what I'd missed.

  “The crowd went crazy after the firework, yeah, but Nephthys was brilliant with your double's physical responses and we herded around you. Even watched the rest of the memorial in full view of Bailey and her ilk. Eight thumbs up, on our end. Had a little trouble when we didn't think you'd make it back, but, luckily, we held off on Plan B.”

  They'd waited. They should have dumped my double and all the trackers and markers attached to it, erased their memories, and disavowed further involvement. But, now that we were back safely, I couldn't say that I wasn't relieved they hadn't.

  I couldn't tell them exactly what had happened on our midnight trip, or what had happened with my dream and Kaine, but I let them know that Marsgrove had Olivia's location and that he was chasing after her at this exact moment.

  Trick turned on a feed.

  “Violence continues in the Third Layer, as the Legion, praetorians, and terrorists engage in active warfare.”

  Most of the news outlets were reporting on the Third Layer violence that had been occurring all day. Many speculated that the attacks were direct retaliations to Bloody Tuesday.

  “Some of the attacks have to be simple retaliation without deeper meaning,” Dagfinn said. “Plenty of Second Layer folks are foaming at the mouth with the desire to dirty their hands in some vengeance. But if even some of those I've identified in the wires are Marsgrove and Verisetti and the praetorians—they are jumping all over the Third Layer in a mad version of a child's game.”

  “Marsgrove will rescue her,” I said, a little desperately. “I'm so sorry.”

  Looks were exchanged.

  “Princess, you made the right call. We were all in a bit of a tailspin last night after you went off grid with Axer Dare. It really brought it home. Hearing that Marsgrove is getting her back was a massive relief.”

  I closed my eyes. It would have been a solidly served plan, too, if Kaine hadn't used me to muck it all up.

  “Dean Marsgrove is a right prick about a lot of things,” Dagfinn said. “But he's a fighter and tracker. And he's always favored Price.”

  Olivia's familial relationship to Marsgrove wasn't a secret.

  “Dean Marsgrove has a better chance than we do,” Saf said bluntly. “You did the right thing giving him her location.”

  The others murmured their agreement. Their uniform accord that giving Olivia's location to Marsgrove had been the best option was unexpected.

  I couldn't let them think that I was blameless for the current mess, though.

  “Kaine used me to track them too,” I blurted out.

  More looks were exchanged.

  “Ren.” Mike sighed. “Kaine was going to track you to the ends of each layer of the Earth. What do you think was going to happen if you were the one to leave campus?”

  They all exchanged looks again, and I felt very outside the loop.

  “What happened?” I asked, dread coiling.

  “They caught two students leaving last night, Crown,” Saf said. “It was a good plan the two cooked up. We had it on our list.”

  I looked around the table, stomach dropping as I read their solemn expressions. “And?”

  “No one's heard from them since the Legion nabbed them. Not a frequency exchange, not a peep. They took the two of them under the guise of worldwide security.”

  I looked down at my hands.

  “They can't keep them for long. But with you? They'd find a reason,” Mike said grimly. “Easily and quickly.”

  They'd test me. Properly this time. In the basement of the Department where they could manufacture any results they wanted.

  Neph pressed her palm to my skin. Tension dissipated like a balloon freed from its knot.

&n
bsp; The entire room seemed to take a deep, calming breath.

  “Word has it that they are going to open the Magiaduct before dinner—get all of us rotating through the cafeteria,” Lifen said. “Public spaces north of the seventh circle will be open.”

  “I don't know about you, but I'm not all that keen on getting out,” Loudon said, rubbing a hand over his short curls. “The Legion is going to be scanning us at every turn. This isn't like the office stooges and scientists who were here before. The Legion is ruthless. And they have tagged every one of us from recorded feeds—identifying the scarf wearers, if nothing else.”

  Hyped up as we'd all been on the adrenaline from yesterday, today more rational heads were in play.

  “That reminds me, we made this for you this morning.” Will smiled and handed me a small, square jewel. “It doesn't stop people from knowing who you are, but this will absorb all the tracking and marking spells anyone tries to place on you. Like tracking spell flypaper. The jewel inactivates them, but keeps them inside.”

  He shrugged. “The capture allows you to go over them later, if you want, to see who tagged you—there's a brilliant spell decoder that Adrabi put in there. We're all planning to tailor and use them,” he said frankly.

  I examined the flat jewel, then tucked it into my armband—the interior lining had been made for just this type of addition. “It will absorb all the spells?”

  “All the ones that can be scanned for.”

  Not shadows, then. But getting rid of all the spells that random—and not so random—students were placing on me was a boon.

  “People will be scrambling to come up with better trackers before the day's out.” Adrabi smiled, all flashing teeth and bronzed skin that looked far better today than the mottled look he'd sported due to a flaying spell cast on him the day before.

  “Luckily, we know most of the makers on campus personally. We'll be having a challenging time staying a step ahead of the crowd.” Adrabi looked like that suited him very well.

  “Nothing we can do about Administration Magic, but I looked into the Department's permissions on campus. They can't hook into tracking individual students yet through Administration Magic. And their 'mission' here is to secure campus. So they are legally restricted to student help in tracking us.”