Ruthless Magic

by Megan Crewe

  None of the structures appeared to have shifted, and no new terrors had emerged to meet us—but it was only a matter of time.

  After the meal and the rest, my headache had retreated. Rocío’s ’chantments held steady on my hand and side. Whatever the examiners threw at us, I had to be ready.

  Rocío prodded our food sack and made a face when nothing but a fine dust spilled from the opening. “It all disintegrated,” she said.

  A pang shot through my stomach. Several more bags hung around the edge of the tall platform. They looked as lumpy and full as before.

  “They’re making it harder for us,” I said. “Forcing us to put in an effort to get more.”

  “We’d better go do that before they launch whatever else they’ve got planned at us.”

  “Wait.” The second we left this platform, it wouldn’t be just the two of us anymore. We might never have this intimacy again.

  I tugged her to me and kissed her until I had to stop to breathe. She stayed there with me, cheek to cheek.

  “Let’s make it through,” I said. “All the way to the end.”

  She smiled a little tightly. “I will if you will.”

  We climbed down, and Prisha and Desmond walked over to join us. I hesitated, but I couldn’t just turn Prisha away. She was my best friend. We could discover whether our friendship had survived after the Exam was over.

  Desmond was carrying a white box about the size of a textbook. “We found a prize,” he said with half a smile. “There was a first aid kit in that shed.” A blue bandage swathed his foot and ankle: a ’chanted numbing wrap.

  “I guess we’ve got another climb ahead of us,” Prisha said with a nod to the central spire.

  “Looks that way,” I agreed. “Come on, before everyone else has the same bright idea.”

  Desmond sat by the pool in the same place he had yesterday, but I eyeballed the spire and decided I was sound enough now to make it. I wanted the chance to survey the entire clearing from up there to get a stronger sense of what tricks I might rely on in a pinch.

  Rocío shot me a concerned look, but my expression must have been unyielding enough that she opted against protesting.

  I hauled myself up after her, bracing my left wrist against the holds instead of my numb, mangled hand. I was sweating when I heaved myself through the rectangular opening onto the platform, but I felt a certain sense of accomplishment.

  The feeling lasted until I caught sight of Callum bent over a sack several feet away.

  He offered me a sharkish grin that held about as much warmth as a sheet of ice. Then he went back to tearing into the sandwich he’d grabbed.

  Prisha ignored him and strode to the edge, where the sacks dangled. She moved over when the first hook she checked proved empty. Rocío headed in the opposite direction.

  Callum eyed her and then Prisha. “You know,” he said to me as he straightened up, jerking the drawstring of his bag tight, “there are still too many of us. The examiner before said they’d be picking fewer than half.”

  My skin crawled, but I kept my voice even. “I’m sure they’ll find some method of further narrowing us down.”

  He kicked aside the sandwich’s plastic wrapper. “I think we’re better off speeding up the process,” he said, and barged toward Prisha without another word.

  “Pree!” I wrenched out.

  Callum hurled his sack at her before she could straighten up from grasping the bag she’d found. His projectile hit her square in the back, and with a gasp, she tumbled over the platform’s edge.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Rocío

  The wind hissed as Prisha disappeared over the side of the platform. I was already running. Words tumbled over my lips: a cradlesong, a cradling song.

  The magic rippled with me as I dropped to my knees, whipping my intent down over the rim.

  Prisha smacked into a cushion of air a couple feet from the ground. The impact sounded painful but less so than the ground would have been. She coughed as she rolled over, but she was alive.

  As I pulled back from the edge, a thump sounded behind me. I spun. Callum sprawled a few feet from me with Finn on top of him, struggling to pin him down. Callum elbowed him in the face.

  A wordless cry escaped my lips. Finn’s hand. His ribs. Why was he fighting? He was going to hurt himself worse.

  Then it hit me. Callum had been going to shove me off after Prisha. Would have, if Finn hadn’t stopped him.

  I scrambled away from the treacherous edge. “Stop it!” I shouted.

  Callum rammed his fist at Finn’s eye, but Finn jerked his head to the side, and then flinched as the other boy kneed him in the gut.

  I circled them, my hands clenched, trying to figure out how to intervene without accidentally giving Callum an opening. Finn wasn’t much of a fighter to begin with, but now he was working around major injuries.

  Callum kicked out, sending Finn tumbling backward. I dashed over and grabbed Finn’s arms as Callum heaved himself to his feet. With a rough laugh, he charged at us.

  The lyric that had transported me from my living room to the shoreline nearly a week ago slipped to the front of my mind. I sang it out and pulled Finn closer, wrapping the strands of magic around us with the cadence of the words, picturing the spot near the fountain below us where Desmond was waiting. Energy whipped through the air around us.

  My last glimpse of the platform before I squeezed my eyes shut was Callum staggering backward. The magic grabbed us with a lurch and a drop. We hit the ground I’d been picturing still on our feet.

  Finn was breathing so harshly I suspected he was suppressing a sob. “Prisha,” he said, clutching my shoulder. “He tossed her right over.”

  “Prisha’s okay. I caught her.”

  He raised his head to see Prisha walking over to us. Relief flashed across his face, followed by another shudder. His gaze slid back to me. “He was going to— He was coming at you—”

  “It’s okay.” I hugged him tight, as much for my reassurance as his, burying my face in his shoulder. Callum hadn’t hurt him. I’d gotten him out of there. “I’m okay. You made sure of that.”

  “For now,” Prisha said, coming to a stop beside Desmond.

  A shriek carried from the platform high above us, and my back tensed. Prisha grimaced. “Fates only know what havoc Callum’s wreaking on the rest of them up there.”

  As Finn let me go, the hum of magic condensed around me. It clung to me even more urgently than before. Almost... desperately. As if it were a small child begging for help.

  The impression unnerved me, but I didn’t have time to puzzle it out. We had to help ourselves.

  “This seems like a good time to head for cover,” Desmond said.

  “Right,” Finn said. He rubbed his hand over his face as if to ground himself. “Let’s go.”

  We’d just started for the nearest of the small black shacks when another cry rang out behind us. I whirled to see a girl falling from the platform. She flung out a strand of magic to catch herself. It smacked into the side of the stone spire and brought her swinging after it, and she slammed into the stalk hard enough that I heard bone crack. I winced.

  “Come on,” Prisha said.

  We ran the rest of the way, as fast as we could with Desmond hobbling at Prisha’s side. I peered into the shadowy interior of the shed. It was empty except for a long, flat object lying near the back. The light in the sky was intensifying with a sunlike glare, and I could already feel heat wafting from the black walls.

  “I don’t think we’d want to hide out in here,” I said. It didn’t even look big enough to hold all four of us, at least not if we wanted room to maneuver.

  But that object might be something useful. I ducked in and grabbed it. As I held it up in the light, my stomach sank.

  It was a slim, curved knife in a leather sheath.

  “Is it ’chanted?” Finn asked.

  “I don’t think so.” I couldn’t hearken any whisper of magic in its sur
face.

  A thud carried to our ears, and we all looked to the central spire. The girl who’d fallen partway had jumped to the ground. She didn’t glance our way, just limped off toward one of the other shacks. Then the air shuddered.

  With a sizzle, a line of magical fire seared across the ground and smashed into the girl. She screamed, dropping and rolling, and the flames immediately sputtered out. A familiar pale figure stepped out from behind one of the smaller spires.

  Lacey had made it here after all. She was holding a dark rope in her hand. She swung it, casting a flame along its length, and I recognized it as a whip.

  When had she gotten herself a whip?

  “What in Hades’s name is she doing now?” Finn said, with a wince as the flame sizzled toward its target. “I’d say I’m glad she’s here, but… I guess they’ll be distracted from fighting when the next stage starts. The examiners know how to occupy us well.”

  My fingers clenched the sheath of the knife. A cold certainty settled over me.

  “I think this is the next stage,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Desmond said, scanning the clearing. His fingers jittered softly against his thigh. I guessed he hadn’t hearkened anything that told him more than I could see.

  I raised the knife. “The examiners are giving us weapons,” I said. “They’ve left us here with no instructions, just the knowledge that they’re taking no more than nine of us. They want us to fight each other. They want to see who’s willing to go the farthest to make Champion.”

  Finn went rigid beside me. Prisha’s expression was dark, but she didn’t look surprised by my suggestion. I wondered again what had passed between the two of them so that Finn hadn’t felt safe staying with her last night.

  “The last test,” she said, her voice hollow. “Why wouldn’t it be that? Total chaos.”

  The memory of Sean swam up in my mind: his gaunt face and haunted eyes, the tremor that had passed through him when he’d talked about the Exam. He might have failed during one of the early tests, but suddenly I had the feeling he’d lived through this final stage. Lived through it and still been discarded.

  I was so close...

  The girl Lacey had blasted was struggling onto her hands and knees. Lacey walked a few steps closer. She spoke words too low for me to hear and raised the whip.

  “No!” I couldn’t help yelling.

  Lacey snapped the whip with a crack against the other girl’s head. The girl slumped limply on the ground.

  Lacey looked up, and her cool eyes fixed on us.

  We braced ourselves instinctively, and Prisha stepped closer to the shack. I murmured a shield into being around us. The presence in the magic was still wrenching at me, but with a sense of helplessness that was new. The energy around us felt almost limp as I pulled strands of it into my barrier.

  I frowned, singing the words again, reaching more firmly. Why was the magic so weak? The hum was faltering, dipping here and there to a quaver.

  “Rocío,” Finn said, grasping my forearm.

  Lacey took a step toward us. A guy sprang from behind a shack to her left and charged at her, another boy racing at her from the right at the same moment. I thought I remembered both of them from Group One. The wiry one with black hair and brown skin appeared mostly unharmed, but his taller, fairer companion wore a vicious red welt across his face where his right eye had once been. An image flashed through my mind of one of those vines squeezing around his head, and I shivered.

  Lacey darted back to her spire, and both of the boys hollered castings after her. She managed to shatter a surge of crackling energy with a swing of her whip, but the ground bucked under her, and she tripped onto her knees. The one-eyed boy stalked forward, hefting what looked like a medieval mace.

  Even though I hated what Lacey had done to the other girl, I didn’t want to see her battered to a pulp. The urge to act gripped me, but uncertainty glued me in place. Attacking the boys instead wouldn’t be any better.

  Finn’s words from last night about making my own choices came back to me. But carving my own path didn’t work. I hadn’t been able to save Mark or Judith. The examiners had gotten what they wanted in the end anyway.

  Finn’s fingers slid down to squeeze my hand. I glanced at him, and the ache around my heart softened. I’d saved him more than once, and Prisha, just now.

  If this test was to see how vicious we could be to each other, then we could beat it. We had another choice. If we all refused to play—

  Finn read the shift in me before I’d finished putting it into words in my own head. “No more deaths?” he said.

  “Not if I can help it.” I pushed away from the shack.

  “Stop!” I raised my voice, hoping everyone across the whole clearing could hear me. “We all need to stop attacking each other! Is that really how you want to make Champion? If we just wait, we’ll all be alive, and the examiners can choose the people who’ve proven themselves already.”

  “Says someone who’s not afraid she won’t be picked,” the wiry boy snapped, and slashed his hand toward Lacey.

  She dodged a slap of energy that left a dent in the ground and rattled off a verse right back at him, fumbling with her whip.

  The bolt she cast flew wild, but the boy managed to smack it toward his supposed ally. The one-eyed boy yelped as it caught him in the belly.

  “Whoa!” Finn said. “We could at least come up with a contest that’s less fatal. Long jump? Capture the flag?”

  The three ignored us. Lacey scrambled behind her spire. The wiry boy glanced between her and his companion, who was doubled over with an arm around his belly. He hesitated for a second—only a second—and then he strode toward the one-eyed boy, his lips forming another casting as he narrowed in on the easier target.

  Every nerve in my body resisted the sight. I called out the same words I’d used to summon our shield and cast it toward the one-eyed boy.

  The wiry boy’s slice of magic bounced off the magical barrier. He swore. His former ally swayed upright and fled for a nearby shack.

  The wiry boy turned with a glare so sharp, I flinched. “If you want attention that badly, you can have it,” he said.

  Finn pulled me around the side of the shack with the others. The boy’s voice rang through the air, and a wind filled with razor edges blasted around us. My shield shuddered and cracked, and Prisha yelped. We all ducked down, Prisha clutching her shoulder. Blood bubbled up beneath her fingers.

  “I’m not sure I want to keep playing the pacifist,” she said.

  The boy was rapping out another casting. I conjured a new shield, my tongue tripping over the words. Then there was a sizzle and a gasp and a thudding of receding footsteps. Lacey must have gone after him while he was distracted, or the one-eyed boy had.

  This was the wheat the examiners had cut us down to over the last four days: a few of us who’d supported each other and everyone daring and brutal enough to make it through all the tests alone.

  “Do you want help with that?” Desmond motioned to the red seeping down the sleeve of Prisha’s shirt.

  “Thanks,” Prisha said.

  As Desmond muttered a verse to seal the cut, the magic in the air vibrated. The presence loosened its hold on my shoulders. I could almost picture it drawing in a breath of relief. What was that?

  “If they want to see who survives and how we survive, why don’t we just get out?” Desmond looked at me. “Could you teleport us the way you did with Finn from the platform, to… someplace other than here?”

  My body stiffened. The thought of leaving the rest of our fellow examinees to slaughter each other made me feel sick. Maybe a few of them, like Callum, were enjoying throwing around their power, but the rest were probably just desperate.

  Prisha shook her head. “It won’t work,” she said. “There’s a... a shell, I suppose you could say, around the arena. It doesn’t let any magic in or out. The examiners would never risk anything we do here leaking out and being noticed.”
r />   She meant by the Dulls and the unknowing mages in the vast city that surrounded Rikers Island. I’d forgotten how close we were to civilization. A big enough blast of magic, uncontained, could easily raise questions the Confed’s leaders wouldn’t want to answer.

  “How do you know?” I said. Her phrasing—the way she’d called this space an “arena”—rubbed me oddly.

  Finn’s jaw clenched.

  Prisha looked at her feet. “I’d rather not get into it right now,” she said, but in that instant I had enough of an idea that I no longer needed her answer.

  She’d gotten information from the examiners somehow. She knew more than the rest of us. And Finn had found out. He thought she could have prevented Judith’s death.

  No wonder he’d been upset.

  Something twisted in my chest, but I couldn’t let my horror distract me. I closed my eyes and extended my awareness out through the hum around us.

  Yes. There. I hearkened it, faintly but clearly, along the circle of the walls: an arched barrier I couldn’t penetrate with the press of my intent. The magic tremored against it, crawling along its surface as if searching for a crack.

  As if it were as desperate to escape as we were.

  “She’s right,” I said. “I can’t do it. But maybe—”

  I pressed my hand to the ground, hearkening downward now. If the tunnels like the one where Finn and I had waited out the storm extended this far...

  No. All I felt below was a cold mass of rock.

  I peeked around our shack. Lacey and the wiry boy were taking shots at each other. He was warding her off, but he’d ended up slouched on the ground. His hand shook as he held it in front of him. He’d had the power for a few big castings, but he was draining himself.

  To their left, the one-eyed boy was racing toward us. I scrambled for words for a protective casting.