The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  My overactive and completely alarmed imagination was getting away from me again.

  “Satisfies a requirement.” Delia's facial expression was friendly enough, but her eyeliner grew heavier, tapering to sharper points. “Our surprise is mutual—I thought your schedule precluded assistantships.”

  “Triple focuses are a trial, but due to what is happening, I couldn't let current events be moderated by someone with less intensity and passion.”

  Intensity? She certainly had that. For sure. I wondered what her three majors were. Politics, obviously. Communications, likely, with her family being in the media business. Business maybe?

  “Speaking of moderation...” Her eyes focused on the rest of us. “My name is Bellacia Bailey. I'm a third-year student with a focus in politics, and I'll be one of your teaching assistants this term. And you are?”

  We introduced ourselves in turn, but her eyes lingered on me. “I don't believe that I've seen you around campus before this year.”

  Delia's lips pursed, Mike's gaze narrowed, Will's eyes widened, and the two unknown students in our group seemed mystified, as their gazes flipped between us.

  “I'm not very noticeable.” I laughed uncomfortably. “I transferred this year.”

  “Mmmm. Don't be unkind to yourself, dear. You are fairly lit from the inside.” Her smile was friendly and welcoming, and her words flowed graciously over me. I could tell her anything. I couldn't look away from her mouth as she formed her words. “From where did you transfer?” she asked.

  I transferred from nowhere, I wanted to confide.

  A sharp stab to my leg registered, and the sudden pain made me look down. Will's pencil tip retreated to a notebook open in his lap. A box sketch—my design—was detailed on the page. My mind sharpened on it.

  “Four Corners,” I said, blinking at the design.

  “Oh! I have a very good friend there.” Bellacia's voice made me look back up at her. Her smile was kind. “Charlotte Gregorferi. Do you know her?”

  The image of the box sketch rotated in my mind, pushing against...something. “No.”

  “What about Beresil Abutnot?”

  “No.”

  When I had chosen Four Corners Academy from Marsgrove's administrative packet as my first-year alibi, I had done so deliberately. Student population was thirty thousand. Located on top of the western United States, I had a better feel for the general vibe of the changed world there. And students—even the sixteen-year-olds—were able to live off campus, if they chose, as long as they were inside the perimeter ley lines that existed around the town.

  “Mmmm. Alas. But their news frequency is a wonderful thing. Do you enjoy the Sounding Patrons or Cipri Cataclysm more?” A graceful hand waved through the air and I could hear a thread of magic like the tinkling of a bell.

  Mike briskly leaned his arms on the table. “Do we need to sureifeit a cresching sheet?”

  I stared at Mike, whose language was suddenly riddled with foreign words. Crap. I had forgotten to tell Will about my faulty translation spell. I subtly tapped Will's chair and motioned to my wrist. His eyes widened, and a second later, his fingers crept around my bracelet and wrist under the table. Mike's words rearranged in my head—‘Do we need to download a discussion sheet?’

  “Oh, dear. Have I extended introductions too long? I am always so pleased to meet transfer students. Please do forgive me. To business then.” She smiled at Mike and he relaxed a measure. “A discussion packet will be pushed to your student panel, along with class notes. Professor Harrow believes in full disclosure—in everything it seems, even when there is no need.” She laughed pleasantly. “So every detail of lecture and discussion will be included, using the Recording Enchantment. That includes any student whispering as well, so do remember to keep entertainments outside. We will be having an exciting term discussing the current political landscape and how each of us can be a model citizen.”

  She rose. “And with that, I bid you farewell for the morning. My contact information and assistant frequency are all included in the push.”

  I looked to the far corner to see Neph looking upset and concerned as she watched us over her shoulder. She obviously felt the tension, even from far across the room.

  There were many reasons for concern. Like the idea that anything I said would be recorded for anyone in the class to see or hear. That terrified me so much that my lips didn't unseal during the group “discussion” where we were supposed to express our current positions.

  “What happened in there?” I hissed to Will, when we were well away from the building, my lingering fear preventing me from raising my voice. I waved to the others, who had gotten separated by the crowd behind us.

  “Bailey spread an enchantment. Two actually. You threw off the first when you concentrated on the sketch. The second only affected mages who hadn't completely integrated a translation spell.”

  I closed my eyes. “She knows I'm feral.”

  “Definitely,” he said.

  After all of that Origin Mage talk by Professor Harrow, there wasn't a calming spell in existence that could work on me now.

  “But think of her like Olivia, just a year older,” Will said. “She doesn't randomly make claims. She gathers facts. She is a journalist. And even though the Baileys skate the edge of sensationalism in some of their rags, they are still bound to certain standards. She will have to gather proof, if she's going to reveal your circumstance or do anything about it.”

  It wouldn’t be hard for her to collect proof. I tended to do magic loudly without realizing it.

  Will frowned. “And being feral isn't a crime. People are just scared of those who have power they might not be able to control. But you wear a cuff. And feral magic bursts settle within three years of one’s Awakening, then you are just an underage mage like everyone else here.”

  Except I wasn't a mage like everyone else.

  “Most of the magicist fears revolve around ferals being easily indoctrinated into the wrong set of political beliefs,” Will said. “People are dumb.”

  “Why aren't there any other ferals here?” I kept my voice low as my gaze swept the moving crowd.

  “Most get placed in small, private institutions—the better to indoctrinate them with traditional Second Layer standards and beliefs, and to keep their magic under control. Then they slowly matriculate elsewhere when their feral status has passed. So there are likely older students here who were once feral,” he said. “They just don't advertise it.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. That made me feel better. Sort of. I wouldn't be here at Excelsine either if Marsgrove hadn't made the mistake of bringing me to campus, then locking me up in his home at the base of the mountain where the professors lived.

  “But back to Bailey. I didn't see either of the enchantments she cast.” I had gotten pretty used to seeing and anticipating magic and it unnerved me to have that confidence dented.

  “You didn't see them. You heard them. She's a popular, talented vocalist. Sirenic focus. She uses her words and voice.”

  Great. Business wasn't her third major, and I was a sailor without cotton balls. “Politics, communications, and freaky Siren abilities—she's going to rule the world.”

  I'd have to inform Olivia.

  Will laughed. “Probably. Who cares. As with any other mental head-gamer, make her think she has you pegged, then do your own thing. She can rule, as long as she doesn't take away our grants or nitpick our experiments. Midlands tonight?” he asked hopefully, nudging me.

  “Yeah.” I could use some stress relief. And... “Let's work on your portal pad tech.”

  Will brightened.

  We needed an expedited way to get off campus and out of this layer, if or when we had to.

  Delia had another class, but Mike and Neph finally caught up to us when the crowds thinned. We headed to lunch, whispering furiously about what Neph had missed and what we could do about securing discussion seats together. Neph, because she was a muse, had been pu
t into a group that contained only muses.

  The whole muse thing was weird. Before we'd met, Neph had been a ghost on campus. But I had somehow attached myself to her in a burst of magic, and now anyone whose attention I directed to Neph could see and interact with her—and to some extent could see the rest of the community.

  It wasn't like muses were physically transparent. Mages knew the muses were there—but I had seen their gazes glossing over them, like looking over unremarkable people in a crowd—even if there was only a single mage and a single muse in a room, the mage wouldn't pay attention to the muse as an individual. There was some weird thing people were always trying to tell me about magic sharing and controlling ties and the rewards of having one muse or access to all muses.

  So the majority of mages took what the muses yielded, then ignored them, and the muse communities reaped whatever their own benefits were, and that was that.

  And since the magic that hid the muses from normal view on campus apparently worked in classrooms in the same way—in a class discussion, the magic assigned muses together, so they'd be able to actually discuss concepts.

  But Neph didn't want to be in the muse discussion group, and we wanted her to be with us. We just needed to overcome the magic the administration had put in place for the muses.

  Will had explained it in a little more detail to me during our “Neph project” discussion.

  “But we should be able to change the summoning and assignment magic by linking Neph to you, Ren,” Will said adamantly. “We just need to figure out the right administrative thread.”

  As if talking about muse-y things made the rest of the muse community notice, as we entered the enchanted, glass cafeteria, Neph was summarily called over to one of their tables. I couldn't hear what was being said, but I didn't like the way they were pointing fingers and scolding her like an errant child.

  Olivia arrived and pinned the remaining three of us with a probing glare as she regarded the uneasy silence at our table. “What happened? Michael? William? Ren?”

  “Class.” I slouched over my tray. “Muses. Stupid magic world.”

  Olivia looked over at the muse table where Neph was still being berated. There was an unreadable expression on Olivia's face. “They have control over her until she graduates.” She briskly whipped her napkin onto her lap. “But that is for later discussion. Tell me what happened in class.”

  Mike shook his head and gave me a pitying look. “Bailey is one of the teaching assistants. Harrow didn't look pleased with Bailey when I saw him talking to the assistants at the end of class. Bet she got 'assigned' by someone higher up. The professor didn't pick her, that's for sure.”

  A calming spell tried to wrap around my pinkie finger. I shook my hand, throwing the spell off.

  Olivia smoothly opened her magically sealed glass of mixed vegetable and fruit juice. “And?”

  “In a sea of a thousand, Bailey spent fifteen discussion minutes—the first fifteen minutes—with our group,” Mike said.

  Olivia gripped her glass tightly before finally taking a drink. “She knows, or at least suspects, that Ren is a new mage.”

  I forced myself to take deep breaths and smile. Not only new, not only feral...

  “Diseased and deadly.” I joked, making light of my predicament. “Question, though—why didn't Bailey get charged for spreading an enchantment to influence me?” I was used to being brought up on Justice charges fairly quickly.

  Olivia looked sharply at Mike and Will. “What enchantment?”

  Mike shook his head. “Light influence and compliance charm, then she disrupted new translation charms within a twenty-foot radius. With a little assistance, Ren weathered both.”

  Olivia's finger tapped her glass. “Mages are expected to be able to repel spells at a certain level. If she didn't get charged, the enchantments she cast were below the legal proficiency requirement for students entering Excelsine. No one else was affected?”

  Olivia looked to Mike for confirmation. He shook his head.

  She looked back to me. “You need to work on repelling auditory magic, Ren. Immediately.”

  For all of my powerful explosions of magic, Bellacia's light enchantments were a reminder of how vulnerable I still was.

  “I'll run some simulations with Draeger in the Battle Building,” I said. Even though Draeger was a simulation himself—purchased my first week here so that I could practice and learn the basics of magic without outing myself as feral—he was a hard taskmaster. Needing to lighten the atmosphere, I added, “He'll probably get me to stuff my ears with magic by simulating squirrel tail earplugs or something.”

  I was used to altering Christian's moods by badgering him back to happiness, and Mike easily took the bait and bantered with me about rabid magical varmints taking over the school one eardrum at a time.

  Neph appeared, finally. She looked exhausted. As she sat down next to me, a little of the exhaustion faded, though dark circles still ringed her eyes.

  Will was nearly vibrating as he leaned across the table. “Ren and I have something for you! We didn't get a chance before class to give it to you.”

  She gave him a fond look. “How are you, Will?”

  “I am excellent. And you are going to be excellent too, in but two minutes.” He shoved his hand into his bag, rooting around for the item he sought.

  “I feel better already,” she said softly, smiling at me. The circles were loosening, shade by shade.

  “Rough night of practice?” Mike asked Neph, the echo of ‘and rough run-in with your community five minutes ago?’ also implicit in his words.

  “Yes. But necessary training, so they claim.” Her expression tightened.

  “Can you tell us about it?” I gently shifted some magic her way. The dark circles under her eyes faded.

  She shook her head, an apologetic and somewhat lost expression gracing her features. “Muses take an oath every time we leave our communes. Especially in a scholastic environment, our elders worry over what might be revealed.”

  “The muse conspiracy,” Will whispered conspiratorially to me with a wink.

  Neph looked sad. “Yes.” Her eyes drifted toward specific tables dotted around the tiers. Tables full of energy that was flowing outward to the normal tables surrounding them. Tables full of muses chatting serenely with each other. Each day I saw the energy a little more fully—likely a by-product of being near Neph so often.

  The muse tables were epicenters of magical energy. The muse community was closed to outsiders and they banded together as a force—mostly overlooked and unseen. But when I had met Neph, she had been sitting alone. She had been sitting alone every meal that I had seen her. At that point, I had just thought it was because she was new to campus like I was.

  “Well, Neph, this product, made especially for you by the geniuses at this table, will help,” Will said, and offered her a box in a hodgepodge mix of movements combining professional showmanship and amateur jazz hands.

  Mike and I exchanged glances, both trying not to laugh. Olivia gave a full-bodied sigh and continued to methodically eat her salad, though she watched keenly to see what Will and I had made.

  Neph carefully took the pouch from Will, her eyes shifting between us. “What have you two created?”

  I gestured for her to open it. Christian had always taken an agonizingly long time to open things I made for him, knowing I found the waiting torturous.

  Neph gracefully opened the box and lifted the sachet nestled within.

  Mike leaned toward her and whistled. “Nice. Now I know why you were rifling through my atmospheric compendium, Will. A keepsake spell to keep the elements from fading?”

  Will nodded and he and Mike started talking weather enchantments and the ways in which they could be used outside of their most obvious aspects.

  Neph, on the other hand, remained silent. Her fingers moved over the silk bag. A waterfall of dark hair hid most of her expression, but one finger shook slightly as she pulled it along the
outside of the silk. The threads that connected to her touched the bag, then pulsed out toward both of us.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, clutching the sachet to her chest, her expression still hidden from view.

  “It was our pleasure,” I said, my tone deliberately casual. Will piped in his supportive response as well.

  Neph looked like she needed another minute to compose herself, so I engaged Mike on weather-related enchantments as well, keeping the talk easy and casual. Neph tucked the sachet into the inside crook of her elbow as she ate with her other hand, and even Olivia joined the easy conversation.

  Oddly, by the end of lunch, I felt strangely euphoric. Will looked almost high too as he and Mike waved good-bye and headed to their next classes and labs.

  Neph gave me a long hug powered with the smell of the sachet. When she pulled back, the smile on her face was happier than I had seen since our return to campus. My euphoria increased.

  As soon as Neph left, though, Olivia stared at me with a look that said she was going to pierce said euphoria with a verbal knife. Even though she had participated in the conversations, she wasn't as easily swayed by conversational turns. And she had definitely not been swayed by the one I had used to divert the subject of my feral unveiling. She pinned me with a look that said as much.

  I quickly reached into my bag. “I have something for you too.”

  I put the paper egg on the table between us.

  She narrowed her eyes at my obvious diversion. “Your gift to Nephthys was not what I was going to discuss first.” But her fingers automatically reached for the egg and its embedded magic. She stopped herself just shy of grabbing it, her training deeply ingrained. Olivia didn't usually touch magic from others without weaving ten different revelation spells first.

  I said nothing as she hesitated, but when she lifted it into her hand a moment later, it was all I could do to withhold the fierce smile that threatened to overtake me at her implicit statement of trust.