The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  Will brightened, his eyes behind his glasses reflecting his feverish creative thinking along these new lines, and we discussed seriously geeky things all the way back to the dorms.

  ~*~

  I brought Olivia up to date on everything as we carefully scanned for any newly placed calming spells in the room, strengthened our dream wards, and readied for bed.

  “You spent four hours on that pouch?” She asked grimly.

  I dimmed the lights on her equally grim expression.

  “Ren, you worry too much about other people and too little about yourself.”

  “Oh, hush. You love me.” I feathered a hand over the ward threads connecting to her. They bloomed brightly in the darkness for a moment before fading to their normal luminescence. I hadn't yet convinced Olivia about adding a glowing night sky canvas to the ceiling, but in the meantime, I could brighten our room in other ways.

  Olivia sighed—a resigned sound in the softly lit night—ending her heavy momentary silence. “Good night, Ren.”

  Protection of friends: +2

  Failures: 0

  Chapter Sixteen: The Politics of Class

  Olivia answered a knock at our door the next morning while I scrolled news reports.

  Whoever was on the other side said nothing and the door clicked back shut. I forked a piece of pancake absently and looked up to see why Olivia was still standing. She stared stone-faced at a letter in her hand.

  “First day of class pep talk? You getting a security detail? What is it?” I popped the pancake piece into my mouth and stabbed another.

  There was an expression on her face that I couldn't immediately interpret.

  “A response to my name in the campus news feeds,” she said. Tight-lipped, she slit the seal on the note, but hesitated before opening it.

  I shuffled my reader with the hand that wasn't holding a fork full of pancake, and my magic flowed into the news feeds, using Olivia's name as my search term. News articles folded up and out into spread-out holograms that mimicked splayed newspaper pages.

  Olivia Price, who has had five roommates already in her short time at Excelsine, was severely punished for engaging in a magical duel with upstanding legal student Inessa Norrissing. Receiving a Level Three Offense, Price was the first to fire an enchantment. When questioned about the incident, Norrissing confirmed that she had been acting in self-defense and stated, “Price is a danger to fair-minded students and should be—”

  I swept the articles together, then slammed them back into the reader and turned it off. “The nerve of her. Don't give it a second thought.”

  Olivia didn't answer, so I looked up. Mist was rising from the open note in her hand. Before I could even formulate a question, the mist dropped, coating her skin and sinking inside. Thin veins of magic pushed outward, then suddenly constricted, choking her throat and squeezing her sides. I threw myself forward—my reader and fork clattering on the ground—grabbed her arm, and pushed her toward her bed before her legs gave out. Olivia sat hard on the mattress, the paper naught but ash in her hand.

  With quick fingers, I swiped the ashes from her hand, fully expecting to be hit by the same malicious magic just by touching it. But whatever curse had been used, it had either passed, or was specifically made to strike Olivia. “What was that?” I demanded.

  “A warning.”

  “From whom?” The administration? That was what the Justice Magic was for.

  She didn't answer, so while I sent healing vibes—again—through the room wards and our skin contact, I broke down what I knew.

  One, Olivia wasn't darkly threatening anyone with vicious retribution. Two, Olivia had hesitated in opening the letter, but had done so nonetheless. Something so foul could not have made it through the delivery system, according to what she had said before, so a letter sent by courier should have made Olivia at least cast basic spells to check the contents. But, three, she had accepted the letter, and four, judging by her facial expression immediately before she had opened it, she had known something of what it contained.

  She had known who sent it.

  I replayed her strange expression in my mind. It had been halfway between broken and resigned.

  My hand involuntarily gripped her arm harder. “Your mother sent that to you?”

  “I was warned.”

  “Warned?” White-hot fury scorched me and I released her before any of it transferred accidentally. “I'll show her warned.” I marched over to my dropped reader. “We are going to—”

  “Ren.”

  “—put up a three-powered ward on anything crossing the threshold to—”

  “I need to respond.”

  “—reflect Armageddon back on anyone who dares—”

  “I need you to leave, Ren.”

  “—to try something like that again. In fact—”

  “Go.”

  “What?” I asked, derailed. “Go?”

  She took a deep breath. “I need to respond.”

  “Fantastic,” I said with relish. With a flick of my wrist, I flipped my reader to display Juleston's warding tome in all its humongous glory and started to flick pertinent pages and illustrations out into the air in front of me and to my sides, gathering a series of thick images and text around me that I could work with and combine. “Just give me a second to devise an appropriate response.”

  There were some very edge-of-legal wards I could work with. I flipped to the next page. Like this one. I snapped it out to join the others and let a trickle of magic paint the air with a note from my mind on how I could enhance it. Manipulating wards was firmly in my skill set at this point, and Helen Price was going to regret her actions when I was finished. Olivia was my roommate.

  “You can't do anything, Ren. And you can't be in here while I respond. The magic will know.”

  “Good.” I flicked out another image.

  “No. Not good. She doesn't know about you. She didn't even ask any questions about my roommate when she was here. Verisetti's magic works that well. But if you put something deliberate on the returned magic—”

  “Oh, I'll give her deliberate.” I smiled at my reader and flicked a power graph a foot out from its top and combined it with two of the images already in that space.

  “No. You don’t understand. She'll get rid of you. She'll really get rid of you.”

  “She can tr—”

  “Please.”

  I froze. Surrounded by a collage of potential vengeance, my hands shook as I choked on unsatisfied fury. Olivia never begged.

  I gave a short, tense nod. “I'll go.” But that didn't mean I'd do nothing. I carefully saved my research cloud and magical mind map, and folded them back into my reader.

  She was silent as I cleaned up my dropped pancakes, gathered my things together, then ran my fingers along the healing ward—draining part of my magic in order to power hers faster.

  “I have politics at ten, then a squad thing at one. Lunch in between?”

  “Yes.”

  “Write if you need anything,” I said, deliberately softening my tone. “I'll skip politics.”

  “Thank you.” There was fierce warmth to her tight words.

  But the tension that had coiled within me wouldn't leave.

  Protection of friends: -1

  Failures: +1

  I didn't like the new scoreboard.

  I headed directly to the Midlands. I had an hour before class, and I was going to use it well. The rocks greeted me happily and I told them what a good job they were doing. Their bellies protruded proudly.

  “You are good protectors,” I whispered, patting them.

  I looked around the workshop, not gazing at anything in particular as concept and design formed in my head. I released the research and mind map into the air over my work bench. My hands and magic gathered supplies—paper that I had made with pulp and mixed magic, a pencil I had created while concentrating on warding and protecting my brother's soul, and the lavender paint that had been produced in my Awakeni
ng event. Then I focused on the exact enchantments I needed to wield, and to will, into existence.

  First I sketched an egg—drawn inside a caterpillar, inside a pupa, in the wing of a butterfly—and layered wards and screens throughout in intricate designs that whirled along the edges of the embedded designs.

  Four drops of precious paint activated it. The life stages slowly bent, morphed, and furled together as they rolled into the three-dimensional egg that would incubate the magic inside until it was provoked.

  I very carefully made sure not to get any of the paint near my brand new cuff. I'd been doing well at keeping my magic usage deliberately conscious and controlled, and I couldn't afford for anyone with enhanced sight to see a ratty half-eaten cuff on my wrist.

  Guard Rock and Guard Friend watched attentively from their post, their rocks tipped toward me, ultra-focused like they always were when I used Awakening paint. The lavender paint had been used in their conception, and they seemed to be connected to the magic of creation.

  I was shaking by the end, but finally, balanced in my palm, was a small paper egg that would be indestructible until its magic was called forth. I slipped it into my bag and took a deep breath, surveying my dwindling supplies.

  The lavender paint tube was nearly empty. I still had the garish orange tube, but it had been created under the mindset of unease and betrayal. Raphael actively wanted me using it. Outside of applying it for destructive purposes, using that tube was out of the question.

  With regret, I thought of the ultramarine paint that I had wantonly wasted months ago. Powerful, protective paint mixed to match the color of Alexander Dare's eyes.

  I needed to do something about my paint situation soon. Somehow, I needed to convince Stevens to help me make another batch in the vault. I still required a guide to tweak my mixing and magical induction, in order to focus the power I needed.

  Professor Stevens...who knew Raphael.

  An evil Stevens in league with Raphael would be just my luck.

  I popped an energy mint from a tin Delia had given me last term. I'd given her a fabric pen I had made especially for her, and she'd been so giddy that she had pressed the tin into my hand the very next moment. The mints didn't replace the naturally beneficial alternatives that sleep and direct magic-sharing provided, but the small energy boost tricked my overexerted magic into thinking it wasn't quite as depleted.

  I chewed the mint and tried not to think about my paint supply options as I walked toward my first real class at Excelsine. The first class in which I was truly and legally enrolled.

  Layer politics was sure to be...interesting. And in a class of a thousand students, I wouldn't stick out. I pasted a smile onto my face and thought cheerful thoughts.

  Upon entering the enormous indoor amphitheater and lecture hall, I stuttered to a stop. The green-eyed girl from Dorm One was standing near the podium and her gaze immediately narrowed on me.

  Right.

  As I carefully navigated the huge auditorium to get to the open seat next to Neph, I learned the green-eyed girl's name and background from the whisperings of the mages milling in the aisles.

  The infamous Bellacia Bailey was leader of the Second Layer Magicists on campus, the daughter of a press mogul, and an all-around intolerant individual. Her eyes followed my movements, even after I sat down. Lovely.

  Beauty mark on her left cheek. Long hair, styled in a multitude of braids and wavy sections. Tasteful, but form-fitting clothing that swirled dramatically between black, green, and gray. It wasn't hard to see why Johnson, the combat mage, was mooning after her—her facial features were perfect and her assets plentiful on a fit, but not-too-thin, frame. Christian would have already been forming a game plan.

  Mike, Delia, and Will were trading quips, and I tried to listen to them instead of awkwardly staring back at the girl whose narrowed gaze was focused on me.

  The rest of our thousand classmates quickly filled the seats and an energetic, medium-sized man strode into the pit of the lecture hall. His cream shirt had one swirling white button loose at the neck and his arms were relaxed and resting in the pockets of his twelve-buckle trousers. “I'm Professor Harrow. And you are in for a ride this season as we observe and discuss what is happening across the layers and how the different policies and politics will drastically affect the lives of many.”

  He introduced the five teaching assistants, of whom Bellacia Bailey was one. Each assistant looked over the audience with a sharp smile.

  “Let's start with our syllabus and an outline of the current conflict.” And with that, opening salvos into the tenseness that would be our term began.

  I took copious and agonizing notes as each bullet point made me slip down further and further in my seat.

  Seventy years ago, an Origin Mage named Flavel Valeris had accidentally blown the majority of the Third Layer to bits along with irreversibly killing the brightest scientific and magithetical minds who had been experimenting with him.

  Every Third Layer citizen in the surrounding one thousand miles—which contained the most populous and enlightened cities in the layer—had also been irreversibly destroyed.

  The blown layer magic had been thrust unequally into the Second and Fourth Layers, with smaller amounts blasting through to the First and Fifth. There had been no one capable of fixing it.

  The Second and Fourth Layer citizens and politicians had steadily appropriated the extra magic surrounding them—taking a little here, a little there. Decades later, when a new Origin Mage Awakened, returning the layers to how they had previously been arranged was no longer...desired by all parties.

  Due to all of the factors above, the new Origin Mage, Sergei Kinsky, had been leashed immediately upon discovery by the Second Layer government and hidden from public and inter-layer knowledge.

  When Kinsky's existence was discovered by the public at large, the people of the Second Layer needed little convincing that their government had done the right thing. The Third Layer's cataclysmic devastation—and new propaganda—had justified Kinsky's leashing. He had been considered a danger to society.

  But politicians in the Third Layer had been up in arms and had immediately shouted about broken treaties. Here was someone who could restore their homeland, and yet the Second Layer was storing up Kinsky's Origin Magic for their own use instead of for equitable magic redistribution.

  At this point a number of students in class began to look mutinous, and disagreeable murmurs traveled through the room.

  The professor sliced his hand through the air to silence the crowd, and I noticed that more swirling buttons appeared on his shirt the more animated he became.

  “We will explore both sides of the conflict this term. If that bothers you or threatens your family's values, you are in the wrong class. Feel free to exit at the back.”

  No one rose.

  Bellacia Bailey's expression remained calm—a politician's smile plastered on her lips. I nervously turned my attention back to the professor.

  “Here in the Second Layer, we have built entrenched infrastructure for the last sixty years using that extra magic...infrastructure that, if lost, would cripple our magical functioning.” Harrow was a man much given to gesturing and he used both his voice and energy to fill the space and keep student attention. “And in the Fourth Layer, creature transformations rely completely on the bubbled spaces that were 'given' to them seventy years ago. Illicitly gained or freely taken, no matter how anyone thinks about it, those living in the two surrounding layers now require that space to continue their way of life. And yet, should the magic space not be returned, as the layer creators designated, and as treaties state? Exploring this very real problem will be one of our challenges this season.”

  He rubbed his hands together and the sleeves of his arms rolled half up his arms. It was obvious he found this all very exciting.

  I, on the other hand, was panicking.

  “Over the term we will discuss Origin Magic and the Origin Mages, the gods and vill
ains of our system.”

  My panic experienced a sharp spike. I skimmed the expanded syllabus, heart pounding.

  “How can we utilize the magic that was leeched from Sergei Kinsky, the last Origin Mage? How do we use the next Origin Mage? Should the Second Layer give its leeched magic to the Third? Should the Third Layer be responsible for dealing with its own mess? Seventy years after the detonation in the Third Layer, which side of the endless debate will you be on?”

  I swallowed.

  Harrow smiled. “If you want to talk about the political system and checks and balances, take Government. This course is titled Layer Politics. We will be exploring political philosophy, ideals, triumphs, and mistakes between and among Layers, with an emphasis on what is happening in the world right now—the failed negotiations, the progress, the terror campaign, the next steps, and possible consequences. If ‘might makes right,’ should the broken Third Layer be collapsed completely and the immensely valuable remaining space be integrated into the others? Do we look to the First Layer to re-distribute that which has been lost? Do we have an intrinsic responsibility to protect the non-magical world? Throughout the course, there will be many ideas and implications for you to consider. Let's begin with free discussion!”

  Free discussion? My seat suddenly shifted, whirling me through space as the humongous lecture hall re-formed into a giant room containing circular discussion tables. Mike, Delia, Will, and I had, thankfully, magically slipped into the same table unit. Neph's seat had gotten separated from us, though. I took stock of the two strangers at our table. We'd need to pinpoint how the room's magic broke us into groups, so that next time we wouldn't be separated. Will nodded at me, obviously thinking the same thing.

  A chair appeared to my right and a figure sat down, legs folded gracefully to the side, a picture of womanly confidence. Out of the hundreds of tables she could have chosen, Bellacia Bailey had chosen ours first.

  “Delia.”

  Delia tilted her head. “Bella.”

  “I'm surprised to see you here.” Her voice was warm and lovely—gracious—but something about it set me on edge. It was practiced and perfect. The perfect tone and volume, just like Olivia at her most polite, but whereas Olivia naturally pushed people away, this girl drew listeners closer. To ensnare them.