Wounded Magic

by Megan Crewe

  “When is Ary going to set it up?” I asked.

  “They’re out there now,” Mark said. “That’s how I know. I saw them—overheard them talking—I assumed she must have at least taken it up with Luis.”

  I wouldn’t count on that—and I didn’t care if she’d taken the matter up with Zeus himself. Half of my immediate family was going to be at that building tomorrow.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, spinning on my heel, and dashed off toward the ceremony building before Mark could say another word.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Rocío

  The old man outside the clothing shop gave me a sour look as he muttered something in Uzbek to my translator. The other guy turned to me, his tone apologetic. “He says he has no idea about any of this.”

  “All right,” I said. “That’s fine.” I bobbed my head to the man. “Thank you for answering my questions.”

  Not that he really had. So far everyone we’d talked to in this strip of Qarshi had been wary and tight-lipped. I couldn’t really blame them, though. I didn’t love going up to the locals and badgering them when they were just going about their business in this little shopping area.

  A couple times, I didn’t think their hesitation had been only about me. I’d seen gazes dart to bits of paint on a wall or a telephone pole. The Bonded Worthy had left their mark—a red sigil designed with stylized script that I knew from our special ops training said, Prove you are worthy. They changed the writing to fit the dominant language of each country they branched out into, just like they adapted their call to arms to the culture of every small terrorist group they absorbed, but the design was always recognizable.

  The BOW, as they liked to shorten their English name, had a habit of brutally murdering those they considered unworthy. Even if one of the locals had seen something and wanted the militants stopped, would they take that risk with a bunch of foreigners?

  With each frown and tensed stance as I approached, I wondered what right we even had to be here as representatives of the Confed. To blend in, we’d dressed in civilian clothes rather than our usual uniforms, but anyone could tell where I was from as soon as I opened my mouth. One of our targets had been spotted on this street yesterday. We were hoping one of the storekeepers or their regular customers might give us a lead.

  A consultant from the Uzbekistan government had joined our briefing this morning, along with representatives from Iran and Thailand, two of the countries with the most experience tackling the various groups that had merged into the Bonded Worthy. All three had talked about the value of our support in rooting out the terrorists, but at the same time, the Uzbek consultant had given off an uneasy vibe that had sent the magic twitching against my skin.

  If he and his colleagues really wanted us to go home and let them take care of their own, would they have felt comfortable saying that?

  “Hey!” With a wave, Sam called the translator over to where he’d been exchanging a few basic formalities with a couple of younger locals. I wandered toward them with another scan of the street. A thick, tangy smell drifted from a street food stand where meat was sizzling on a grill. All around me, people were chattering or calling out in a language I wasn’t even passingly familiar with.

  In Estonia, I’d made some headway. I’d connected with people like Polina at least a little. Here, despite the time I’d spent talking to people, I still felt completely out of place.

  And in the week since we’d gotten Polina’s tip, we hadn’t managed to catch the meeting she’d told us about. With each day we didn’t turn up any new information, the threat loomed larger over me, made up of too many pieces I couldn’t control.

  No. Thinking that way wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I paused by the food stand and took a moment to simply breathe.

  The haze overhead made the buildings around me look as gray as the sky, but it was nice to be out during the day for once anyway. This was the first time in a month I’d been outside and not cold. I soaked in the atmosphere, shoring up my confidence.

  I could do this. International politics aside, we were all in trouble if the negotiating insurgent groups launched a joint magical attack on the scale they seemed to be planning. I didn’t know how it might affect the magic if we didn’t stop them… so we just had to stop them.

  I had managed to connect with locals in Estonia. Maybe if I could offer to help someone here, to show my intentions were good…

  A woman was limping along on the other side of the street. I was about to go to her when Desmond’s voice leapt from my earpiece.

  “I’m seeing some strange activity here. It looks like there’s a bunch of people heading toward the chopper, using magic to conceal themselves… I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  I caught Sam’s eye between the passersby. He motioned to me and the other two operatives in our squad, pressing the button on his mic with his other hand. “We’re heading back. Keep me updated and initiate defensive strategies.”

  “Already on it,” Desmond said.

  The four of us hustled through the streets toward the vacant lot where we’d touched down. Desmond and our pilot had cast a concealing ’chantment and a conjured shield around the helicopter. No one should’ve noticed it—unless they’d been seeking it out by magic. If they had it shouldn’t have been an easy target.

  Any insurgents still active in the area might have noticed us asking questions today or on an earlier intel-gathering mission and been on the lookout for our arrival. How worried were they that we’d tracked their movements all the way here? How far would they go to strike back? My stomach balled as I picked up my pace to come up beside Sam.

  We rounded the corner to the lot—and a blaze of magical fire seared across the dimpled asphalt toward the helicopter.

  Desmond’s shout blared through my earpiece. The magic jerked and clenched around me as I bolted forward with the squad. Several figures shimmered into view around the chopper, a few of them wearing the ghostly masks of the Borci, a couple with blood-red cloth tied across their faces—members of the Bonded Worthy. More magic warbled across the shield our colleagues inside would be reinforcing. For now, it held.

  Sam snapped out a casting that bowled over two of the attackers. Brandt, at his other side, roared a lyric that sent a blast straight into one guy’s head, cracking it open with a burst of blood.

  The magic yanked at my scalp back and forth as erratic as the thud of my pulse. The first words I summoned caught a woman insurgent across the back of her knees. As she stumbled, I hurled one of my conjured vices at her. It slammed her into the ground face-first.

  We had to try to capture at least one of them. Not just for the sake of the magic, but because they might have information we needed to stop whatever their groups had planned. But the energy in the air flailed around me with each new attack. It gripped hold of my chest, squeezing so tightly that for a second I couldn’t breathe. My vision swam.

  Give me space. I can’t think—can’t do anything—when you’re grabbing at me like that.

  I sucked in air, groping for another lyric. Didn’t the magic see? If I screwed up, if I made one misstep and lost whatever support Sam and the others had already given me, who else was there who could fight for it?

  In that moment, as I caught my balance, the two remaining insurgents turned and darted away. One of them yelled a final casting over his shoulder with a jab of his hand behind him. A pulsing spear of light shot straight through the shield, piercing it like a needle, and tossed Desmond back from where he’d been perched by the doorway.

  “Desmond!” I threw myself toward the chopper, dodging a sprawled body. The pilot had scrambled around to help. Desmond sprawled across the floor of the helicopter, a bruise blooming so starkly purple it showed against the dark skin of his forehead. His body shuddered and clenched.

  “Go!” Sam shouted to the pilot. “Get us out of here, back to the base. Tell the magimedics to be ready.” He crouched over Desmond, murmuring a verse he was formin
g into a first aid ’chantment.

  I knelt across from him, grasping my friend’s hand—not that Desmond looked like he could feel that contact right now. A lyric spilled from my lips to test his breathing, his heart, even though Sam was no doubt already doing the same. I had to offer something.

  Desmond’s pulse thumped rapidly but steadily. Other than a slight hitch in his breath, that seemed fine too. But the magic around us shuddered like he had, as if still pained.

  His magic. The bruise was forming right on the same spot where Finn’s Burnout mark was. On an impulse, I sang a lyric under my breath to reach my awareness toward that spot.

  The threads of my casting slipped over Desmond’s head. My body went rigid.

  Nothing resonated inside his skull in reply. The place in his brain where he should have hearkened the magic was seared through, as dulled as in any Burnout.

  The magic still hadn’t settled. After I’d choked down some breakfast, I paced along the dingy hall that held our dorms, the cafeteria, and the training rooms while the energy in the air quaked against my skin. I could almost taste its agitation, a faintly burnt flavor on my tongue.

  We hadn’t gotten any word about Desmond since we’d made it back to the base yesterday evening. Other than a brief and restless sleep, I couldn’t say I’d been able to relax any more than the magic could.

  Commander Revett strode out of one of the rooms farther down the hall. She hesitated when she saw me, with a purse of her lips that might have been sympathetic or just irritated.

  The magic rippled across the space between us. I could’ve sworn I saw it outright tug at the hem of her pant leg.

  “Did you feel that?” I said, stopping dead.

  Revett’s mouth dipped into a frown. “Feel what, Lopez?”

  No, she couldn’t hearken it. I didn’t know how much I was helped by my natural talent, by all the time I’d spent building my awareness of the magic, or by the way it was making a special effort to reach out to me, but no one else here had even half the sense I did that something was wrong.

  Right now, the thought of even trying to explain it, trying to convince her, made me feel like curling up in a ball. “Never mind,” I said, shaking my head.

  “You look like you need to go back to bed,” she said, her voice brisk. “Running yourself ragged doesn’t help Powell, you know.”

  Sam was already out on another mission with Tonya, Brandt, and a couple of the others. I didn’t know if that was how the senior officials had already scheduled us or if they’d decided I’d be too distracted to operate in the field.

  “I know,” I said. “Okay.”

  I made myself walk back to my dorm room. Flopping on my bed didn’t make me feel any less wound up. I pulled my blanket over me and buried my head in my pillow, but after a few minutes, I pushed myself back upright. At least when I was moving around, I could distance myself from a few of my worries.

  As I stood up, Prisha came in, dressed in jeans and a loose silk blouse. I blinked at her for a second before remembering she must be just returning from her leave.

  She looked me over, and her mouth slanted. “How are you doing?” she said. “They told me what happened as soon as I got in.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s Desmond who’s in trouble. The magimedics haven’t updated us on how he’s doing since we got here.”

  Prisha made a face. “Open communication doesn’t seem to be a priority here, does it?”

  “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.” I paced to the other end of the room and back. Prisha was blocking the doorway. She folded her arms over her chest.

  “The magimedics are working on him,” she said. “They patched me up fine after that assault on the base. It doesn’t sound like he was hit very hard.”

  “You weren’t there,” I muttered. She didn’t know how he’d been hit. I wasn’t sure anyone except the magimedics would’ve realized what the conjured bolt had done to him, but I didn’t feel like revealing my knack for judging other people’s hearkening ability. Prisha had told the examiners things—who was to say she wouldn’t tell the commanders things too, if she thought it would earn her points with them?

  “Maybe not,” she said, “but I know you well enough to be certain you did everything you could to help him.”

  “That doesn’t do him any good if he’s still injured,” I said. Without his magic, Desmond would lose even more than the rest of us would. Not just all the usual castings, but the techniques he’d developed to augment his limited sight. Plenty of nonmagical people were legally blind and got by just fine, but they’d found nonmagical ways to adapt. Desmond would have to start over from scratch.

  “Rocío,” Prisha said, and then sighed. “Would you sit down for a second?”

  My shoulders tensed, but the urgency in her voice got through to me. I dropped onto the edge of the bed, clamping my hands together in front of me to stop them from fidgeting.

  “What?” I said.

  Prisha sank onto her bed across from me. She looked at her own hands and then at me. “I don’t know how much Finn told you about what happened during the Exam. About… the role I was playing.”

  “He hasn’t really told me anything,” I said. “I mean, he can’t now, right? And before—” While we were in the Exam, he’d been grappling with whatever it was Prisha had done, unsure how much it’d be fair to say about his friend, I guessed. “He didn’t want to throw you under the bus,” I said. “And I didn’t push him about it. But I could figure out some from the way you two talked in front of me.”

  “Okay,” she said, her stance relaxing a little. “Well, I can’t talk about it either. But if you’ve got the gist of it… My point is just that what I’m about to say, I’m in a position to know. Because there’s not a single thing Finn could have done to change the choices I made, no matter how much he’d have wanted to.”

  She leaned toward me, her dark eyes intent as she held my gaze. “You can’t control everything, no matter how much you care about people. They’re going to do what they’re going to do, and things will happen to them that you don’t like, and you can’t let yourself feel responsible for any of that.”

  I knit my brow. “What are you talking about?”

  “You really—” She shook her head with a short laugh. “We’ve been working together for three months now. We were—in the Exam—” She let that forbidden topic die. “You’re always trying to look out for everyone, to make sure no one gets hurt, no one goes in the wrong direction. It’s going to wear you down. It already is, from the looks of things.”

  I couldn’t help bristling a little. “So, you’re saying I should just not care and look the other way?” She had no idea—all the people, all the things depending on me…

  “No.” Prisha combed her fingers through her sleek hair. “I’m sorry; I’m making a hash of this. All I mean is that people who stretch themselves too far end up making mistakes. Okay? Not just in situations like this. I’ve seen it in my family’s business dealings, I’ve seen it at the Academy… If you want to keep your own head above water, you’ve got to focus on what you can control and do the best you can with that. When something happens or someone does something that’s not in your plan? You have to roll with it, or you’ll end up getting bowled over. You can’t help anyone if you drown.”

  What she was saying clashed with everything I wanted to believe. I leaned back against the wall, closing my eyes for a second, wishing it didn’t also make a certain kind of sense.

  The thing was, if I didn’t keep going like I was, if I didn’t keep hoping and fighting every way I could, I might get bowled over by this situation anyway. We all might.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” I asked after a minute, with honest curiosity.

  “Well, we have been working together for a while now. I figure it might not be a bad thing to watch out for each other a little more. Feel free to give me a kick in the arse if you ever think I’m missing something important.”

&n
bsp; Before I could decide how to respond to that comment, the door burst open. “Desmond’s out!” Leonie said. “He’s okay.”

  I scrambled to my feet, and the three of us hurried toward the medical rooms. Prisha’s posh civilian shoes clattered against the tiled floor twice as loud as my and Leonie’s sneakers.

  Desmond was just emerging from one of the doorways, a magimedic walking beside him but not supporting him. His steps looked steady, his expression unpained. But that wasn’t what I was really worried about.

  “Hey,” I said as Leonie grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “It’s good to see you up.”

  “They say there’s no permanent damage,” he said with a grin. “I guess waking up as RoboCop was a little too much to hope for.”

  I hesitated. “So, everything is fine? You can—you can cast like usual and everything?”

  His eyebrows rose, but he murmured a quick line and wiggled the fingers of his free hand. A ball of light formed between them in an instant. “I appear to be fully functional,” he said.

  “Operative Powell was stunned by the magical blow and took some superficial damage, but with rest, he shouldn’t see any lingering ill effects,” the magimedic said. She patted his shoulder and ducked back into her workroom.

  I stared after her for a few seconds before turning to follow the others down the hall, my thoughts whirling.

  Desmond had been burned out, or close to it. I’d hearkened the void so clearly. And the magimedics obviously wouldn’t have needed to keep him overnight just to heal some “superficial” damage.

  The woman might not have wanted to reveal it, but they’d restored his connection to the magic somehow. It was possible.

  I’d been hoping I’d find a way to heal what the examiners had done to Finn. Apparently someone right here on this base knew what it was. A way to bring back the magic to him… and to everyone else who’d ever been Dampered or burned out.