by Chloe Garner
There was an odd hesitation, then Lady Harrington shook her head.
“Her magic is tied up in this, but I can’t be sure how. She was the one to shut it down. There is other magic involved, as well.”
Valerie raised her eyebrows.
“You can actually tell that?” she asked.
“Are you accusing me of bluffing, young lady?” Lady Harrington answered. “You ought to go back to you room now.”
“My stuff is in the library,” Valerie said. “And I’m trying to get caught up.”
Lady Harrington shook her head.
“We’ve been attacked,” she said. “Tonight, you stay in your room. No wandering around, no getting yourself into trouble until we’ve figured this out.”
Valerie frowned.
“Miss Livingston is going to be angry at me for leaving a mess,” she said.
Lady Harrington raised her eyebrows.
“Then you can go get it before class in the morning. If she says anything to you about it, you may direct her to me.”
Valerie twisted her mouth, wanting to argue that she had a hard enough time making it to class on time as it was, but it didn’t seem like the wisest thing to say, and she ultimately managed to contain it.
She glanced at Mr. Jamison, a bit stung as she considered that he seemed to have actually been questioning whether she had done… whatever that thing was out in the hallway… but he had already moved on and so had Lady Harrington. Mr. Benson caught up to them, and Valerie turned, finding Sasha watching her from the door to their room.
“You can’t get it open, can you?” Valerie asked.
Sasha shook her head.
“Not right now.”
Valerie went and twisted the handle, then watched as the hallway continued to empty into the rooms. She closed her door behind her and went to sit at her desk.
“All of my books are in the library,” she said. “I’m going to lose a night of studying.”
Who was she?
“What did you do?” Sasha asked.
“I left them there when you came and dragged me out,” Valerie said.
“No. To the cast in the hallway. I recognized the roseburn, but the way it was blooming…”
“You saw it too?” Valerie asked. “That’s exactly what it was doing. Blooming.”
“It’s a technical term,” Sasha said. “A roseburn should create a path for any number of magical elements to make their way through an otherwise hostile magic field, but I’ve never seen one that complex before.”
“Hostile magical field,” Valerie said. “First, you sound like a textbook. Second, what does that mean? The cast was meant to get around the school’s security?”
“Warding,” Sasha corrected. “The silverthorn couldn’t have even survived if it hadn’t been completely blocked from the school’s warding by… whatever that stuff was. I wish I’d gotten to look at it more closely before you shut it down.”
“Seriously?” Valerie asked. “Why is everyone on my case about that? I didn’t mean to.”
“Who was on your case?” Sasha asked. “I wish you’d shut it down minutes earlier. There’s a hole in the warding big enough to grow a silverthorn in, and it’s going to take weeks to repair, if they can find the time at all. They’re all so busy with prepping war supplies.”
“You noticed, too,” Valerie said, feeling glum once more. “No one will even talk to me, anymore. They just send me away.”
“And to just leave it like that,” Sasha said. “With just Mrs. Gold to try to repair it? They should have made Mr. Tannis come down and look at it, at least. Maybe Mr. Pevins and Mrs. Lang.” Valerie didn’t know who they were. “At least. But to walk away? I’m half-tempted to go out there and try to repair it myself, and I’m a freshman.”
“Why?” Valerie asked.
“Because someone has to,” Sasha started, but Valerie waved at her.
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. Why would someone do that? Lady Harrington said they thought it was a prank, but what does it accomplish? She said they might have been trying to get into one of the rooms, but… That’s a really elaborate setup to go in and shortsheet someone’s bed.”
“And you’re going to get caught,” Sasha said. “The alarms went off, like they’re supposed to.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Valerie said.
“You weren’t here,” Sasha answered. “And it wasn’t something you could hear. It was just, like, suddenly I couldn’t focus on anything else. I had to figure out what was going on.”
“That’s what happens when the alarms go off?” Valerie asked. “Everyone goes running out into the hallway to see what’s happening? Genius.”
Sasha snorted.
“I expect it’s supposed to be different, but that’s what everyone did. And there it was, that great big red flame going up the wall… I thought it was going to try to burn the building down, but it went out really fast.”
“So it was impossible to miss,” Valerie said. “Why would you do that?”
“To put a hole in the defenses, I guess,” Sasha said. “I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t know the alarms would go off?”
“If it was a student, I buy that,” Valerie said.
“It had to be a student,” Sasha said. “No one else can get in here.”
Valerie looked back at her, then turned her chair to face the room.
“Okay,” she said. “Prove it.”
“I don’t understand,” Sasha told her.
“Prove that only students can get in here. That no one else could have been here.”
“They’d have to come up the driveway,” Sasha said slowly, shifting and holding out her fingers to tick them off. “They’d have to get up to the school. They’d have to come in the front doors. They’d have to make it to the dorm wing. And then they’d have to get past Mrs. Gold. I don’t think any of those are possible.”
“The driveway?” Valerie asked.
“You can’t see it if you don’t know it’s there,” Sasha said. “And there are a bunch of defensive wards on it, beyond that. The closer you get to the school, the harder it is to be there if you aren’t supposed to be. We’re really, really well defended. They say that they inscribed the sides of the bricks as they mortared them together, magic facing against magic, every single brick throughout the entire building. And then the war came and things really went crazy.”
“Yeah, that’s when they went crazy,” Valerie said, looking at the externally-facing wall of the dorm room with new appreciation.
“It’s just… it had to be a student. It had to be a prank, or, you know, like a fight between students. It was Trina’s room that the fire was right next to.”
“Is Trina in a fight with anyone?” Valerie asked. Sasha thought hard, then shook her head.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Who else was there at the very beginning?” Valerie asked.
“Lady Harrington and Mrs. Gold will figure it out,” Sasha said. “This isn’t our problem.”
“My mom sent me here because I’d be safe,” Valerie said. “If I’m not going to be safe, I need to figure out how to send her word, and then find a safer place to be.”
“There isn’t a safer place,” Sasha said after a moment. “The schools are closed. I mean, maybe one of the back rooms of the Council, where they go to talk or whatever, but people come to the schools and they don’t come or go. It’s potent, having doors that close behind you like that. You can’t find that kind of a defense just anywhere.”
“Well, food has to come in and out,” Valerie said. “And trash. And mail. There have to be weak points in the magic.”
“Valerie,” Sasha said. “That’s so far over our heads. People who are really good at magic came up with these. We’re freshmen and you…”
“I know, I’m beyond worthless,” Valerie said. “I know. It’s just… Why? I can’t come up with a reason to do it.”
Sasha shook her head.
“To create chaos and watch?” Sasha asked. “Practicing a cast that got out of hand? Because Trina said something mean that I haven’t heard about yet? I don’t know. But it couldn’t have been someone else. It had to be one of us.”
She remembered the feeling of breaking the magic, making it die. It had been satisfying. Like winning a game of chess, almost. The magic in the spell hadn’t been… It hadn’t been malicious, the way it had felt. It had just been against her. She had needed to destroy it, and it had had no defense against her, once she realized it.
Prank?
It hadn’t seemed like a prank.
It had felt more like a test.
“Lady Harrington says she can find the person who cast it,” Valerie said after a minute.
“I’m glad,” Sasha said. “I don’t like people using dark magic this close to where I sleep.”
“Dark magic?” Valerie asked, and Sasha nodded.
“All of it was dark. Couldn’t you tell? Couldn’t you feel it?”
Valerie shook her head.
“What did it feel like?”
Sasha shook her head, shifting uncomfortably in her chair.
“I don’t know. Like a shadow or cold or… Like a cave that you can’t see into, and there might be something big and mean and full of teeth and claws watching you from inside.”
Valerie shuddered, and Sasha nodded.
“You didn’t feel it?” the redhead asked her again.
“No,” Valerie answered. “No. It was just… there.”
There was a knock on the door and Valerie startled. Sasha got up and opened it, finding Lady Harrington standing outside.
“You may go to dinner,” the woman said, putting her hand on Sasha’s shoulder for a moment. Sasha waited, then Lady Harrington motioned her on. The woman looked at Valerie with suspicion, but didn’t get in her way as Valerie left the room.
“Classes are canceled tomorrow,” Lady Harrington said. “You will be expected to continue to make progress at the topics you have been studying, and homework packets will be delivered sometime before lunch.”
Sasha looked back, and Valerie could tell that something very important was afoot, but Lady Harrington moved on down the hallway, knocking at the next door. Valerie moved her feet quickly to catch up with Sasha, trying not to make extra noise or draw extra attention.
“What does that mean?” Valerie asked.
“It means that something bad happened,” Sasha said. “And I don’t think it was the cast.”
“What could be worse than the cast?” Valerie asked. Sasha glanced at her.
Pity.
Oh.
“The war,” Valerie said. “Something bad happened. Will they tell us?”
Sasha shrugged.
“None of the people who were in charge during the last war are even here,” she said. “I don’t know what to expect any more than you do.”
Valerie thought that hard to believe, but she let it go.
They went to the cafeteria and ate together quietly. Ethan went past with the rest of the Council brats, but he didn’t do anything more than meet her eye. The entire cafeteria was subdued, passing information along at a whisper.
Valerie felt like leaving, so that Sasha could at least capture the gist of what everyone else knew, but she was actually hungry, and one of the upper school teachers was standing guard at the doorway indicated there wasn’t anywhere else they were going to let her be.
So.
They ate.
That cast.
The spellwork there.
Sasha knew so much about it, and Valerie knew nothing, and yet she had known how to stop it. Intuitively.
“English,” Sasha said after a moment. “You did it in English.”
They were both thinking about the same thing. Valerie shouldn’t have been surprised.
“So?” Valerie asked. “Is it more mystical to use a foreign language?”
“No,” Sasha said. “Well, I mean, it is more cool if you can do it in Coptic, but… no. Mr. Jamison explains it so well…” She drew a breath and nodded, glancing around for a moment, then settling over her tray. “English and Mandarin are fine languages for casting, because they’ve been used by a lot of people. The problem with both of them is that they’re always changing. They haven’t got roots. The words that you use and the way that you use them… they’re invoking the power that a billion people put into them, but the way that those people use them are all different. There’s a lot more resonant power in the old languages, the ones that were used for thousands of years, but the problem with those is that you have to use them the way that those people did, which, like with Sumerian, we’ve never heard anyone speak it, and no one alive has ever heard anyone speak it, so there’s no way for us to draw on the historicity of the language…”
“Historicity,” Valerie said.
“It’s a word,” Sasha protested, and Valerie nodded.
“I have no doubt,” she said. “I asked why it was such a big deal I did it in English, and you just used the word historicity in your answer. I think an old person stole your body when you weren’t looking.”
Sasha sighed.
“My point is, it’s hard to get any power into English. There are a bunch of intermediate languages that we use a lot more, because they’re older and at the same time we know how to speak them well enough. I’d have been just as impressed if you’d done it in Sanskrit. Magically, at least. If you suddenly started speaking Sanskrit, I’d have you checked for every kind of magic Lady Harrington could think of.”
Valerie snorted.
“Would you even recognize it?” Valerie asked.
“Sanskrit?” Sasha asked, nodding. “Wouldn’t you?”
Valerie closed her eyes and Sasha laughed.
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” the redhead said. “But I hear that Mr. Jamison reads it.”
Valerie sighed, listening to the quiet around them.
“Dinner is over, ladies and gentlemen,” Lady Harrington said. Valerie looked over at where the headmistress was standing in the doorway. “I need everyone to go straight back to their rooms so that I can let the next shift in to eat. No talking in the hallways, please, and no leaving your rooms for anything other than trips to the bathroom for your evening grooming. Mrs. Gold and Franky Frank will be supervising through the night.”
Valerie looked at Sasha.
Supervising? she mouthed.
Sasha shrugged, and they got up to go throw away the remainders of their meal.
“Library, one AM,” someone whispered, and Valerie jerked, seeing Ethan walking away with Shack and one of the nameless guys.
“What?” Valerie asked.
“What?” Sasha asked her back.
Ethan looked back at Valerie for just a moment and gave her a small nod, then returned his attention to Shack.
“How do I get out?” Valerie asked.
“What do you mean?” Sasha asked. Valerie shook her head, taking everything in, now, that she might have missed under resignation of curfew.
Where was everyone?
How were they watching?
Why would she even meet Ethan?
Curiosity.
Silly question.
How would she get around them?
She scuttled back to the room with Sasha, then sat down on her bed.
“How do I get out of this?” she asked. “If I wanted to get to the library yet tonight.”
“Valerie, I… I’m impressed by how hard you’re working, but you don’t have to study every single night.”
“Not it,” Valerie said. “Ethan told me to meet him there at one.”
“In the morning?” Sasha asked. “We have… oh.”
“Classes are canceled,” Valerie said. “Something big is going on, and they don’t even want us talking about it.”
“They don’t want us speculating about it,” Sasha answered, sounding unsure. “Why would you go? What else did he say?”
&nb
sp; “Just to meet him,” Valerie said. “And I want to go.”
Sasha frowned.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think you should stay here. It’s what Lady Harrington said to do.”
“Do you always do everything everyone tells you to do?” Valerie asked, still trying to work it out. How was Ethan getting there?”
“Mostly,” Sasha said. “What if he’s just trying to get you into trouble?”
Valerie hadn’t considered that.
“Then I’m going to have to be extra clever so that they don’t catch me,” she said.
Sasha threw herself onto her bed and planted her chin on her fists.
“What’s the point?” she asked. “You don’t know what he would tell you, even if he was trying to meet you there for a good reason.”
“Maybe he knows something about the war,” Valerie said. “Maybe he has a cell phone, and his dad texted him something about my mom or something.”
“I have a cell phone,” Sasha said, digging into a bag underneath her bed and getting it out. “They don’t work here.”
Valerie grabbed at it, anyway, resisting for a moment the urge to stand on her bed to see if she got a signal up high, and then doing it anyway.
“How do they do that?” Valerie asked.
Sasha paused.
“Magic,” she said.
“Sasha, there’s something going on. And it’s huge. There was a fire in the hallway and… The teachers won’t talk to us and they’re all busy…”
“It’s called a war,” Sasha said.
Valerie frowned.
It was a valid point.
She sat back down on her bed and gave Sasha the cell phone back again.
“I miss my mom,” Valerie said. “I wasn’t ready for all of this.”
“I wasn’t ready for the war to come back,” Sasha said. “And I knew it was. We all did. But it doesn’t make any of us ready for it. They might make my mom come do healing for the fights, and the Superiors were known for targeting healers. She would write me a letter if it happened, but Merck Trent would sit on it as long as he liked, so that it didn’t have any ‘battle-critical’ secrets in it. She could be out there right now and I wouldn’t know.”
“Out where?” Valerie asked. “I mean… Where are they? What are they doing?”