The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  He looked resigned, as if he expected me to object. But always interested in the goings-on around the rule-breaking circuit, I nodded. “Sure. Mind if I come in?”

  Justice Toad would either heat up if we overextended the appropriate preliminary call time or turn someone into an amphibian. My tablet had a quick draw, but at this point, I was pretty used to catching rogue hoppers and turning them back into people.

  Clover-green eyes examined me, then lit up. “The new gal! Lucky day for us, Saf. Come in, my gal. Name's Patrick, or Trick, if you are going to be around a lot. Asafa's over there. We're almost finished.”

  It never took long for anyone to identify me as a community service worker. Something about me obviously screamed my illegitimacy as a policewoman.

  “Gaming system test run. You don't mind if we finish copying down the notes and schematics on how we put it together, do you?”

  I furrowed my brow and looked at Justice Toad. “Gaming systems are legal,” I said, scrolling down the log to find information on the offense.

  “Er, yes. But ones that use compulsive magic, not so much.”

  “You make people want to continue gaming? Are you finding that people are playing too little?” I asked in astonishment, unable to comprehend such a thing. There were more or less permanent gaming tables set up on the main floor of the library—tables with elaborate holograms and students with magical sensors at their temples and palms playing the games at all hours of the night. I saw them every visit I made to the library. And I was in the library a lot.

  The cafeteria boy with the truly spectacular, height-defying hair emerged from underneath the large desk in the center of the room. “Just testing human limits. All done, Trick, but it's going to take increased power, a better art render, and the implementation of our upgraded controller specs.”

  I looked at the game controller in his hand—a thin headband that wrapped horizontally around the user's head—and all sorts of ideas jumped fully formed into my mind. A controller that used compulsion and could work at a distance...

  I couldn't stop a smile as I cocked my head to look at the controller from another angle. The club worked insanely well on the barter system. “What kind of art rendering?”

  Both boys looked at me, looked down at the doodle-covered notebook peeking out of my bag, then grinned.

  Chapter Eighteen: Hidden Sides

  I won Mike twenty munits when Will and I jammed in the architecture class feed before midnight. It was mostly syllabus and intro, but exciting nevertheless. Class was going to be fantastic.

  Will and I had also gotten in a quick visit to Constantine together, who'd smiled at the hologram of the controller in my palm, then interrogated Will to within an inch of his life. I was just happy Constantine had stopped his questioning before Will admitted who it was who held the other side of the leash we were fighting against. I could see in Constantine's calculating gaze that he knew Will was aware of the leash holder's identity, but, strangely, Constantine never pressed. Then again, it wouldn't shock me if he already knew. Constantine could assemble a thousand piece emotional puzzle from the tiniest social and emotional clues.

  With Constantine's consent to include Will in the project, the three of us brainstormed past the edge of sanity. One thing the three of us had in common was an absence of imaginative limitations.

  Despite the many shadowy threats surrounding me, and an uncertain clock ticking down to when Raphael could use my magic again, studying at Excelsine was awesome. If there was one thing that I had learned in the last six months, it was that I had to balance uncertainty and fear with other, more positive actions and thoughts in order to maintain a creative peak.

  So I let a grin pull to my face whenever I thought about the gaming specs Asafa and Patrick had shown me. Christian would have loved so many things in this world. I loved so many things in this world.

  Keeping a mental balance was a continuous struggle that I was determined to win. And when I defeated Raphael, I could... I would be able to do anything.

  At four in the morning, I tripped into my room and face-planted on my bed.

  ~*~

  Olivia was gone when I woke to rising sunlight, a slowly lifting mattress, and the heavy, rising beat of the room's alarm clock spell.

  I rolled out of bed and hurried to the shower. Warding class with Mbozi was at ten and I didn't want to miss a word.

  Two and a half hours later, I was brimming with awesome ideas for shoring up the dream wards even further. Class was going to be great. I had a serious professor crush on Mbozi. A crush that withstood every strange look and resigned sigh he cast my way. Last term I'd helped him rebuild the art vault, art complex, and protection wards I'd destroyed and I had been overjoyed to do the work, pestering him relentlessly with questions.

  Normal people probably weren't usually so giddy over speculative engineering, but the work with Mbozi had been key to setting the wards in Okai—the only place other than the vault where I could safely use paint on campus.

  I was finally in one of his classes legitimately, and out of an intro class of two hundred, Mbozi had spotted me in the crowd almost immediately. Awesome! I pretended the small sigh he had given immediately after recognizing me was because he was just as excited to do some magical science as I was.

  I didn't have time to go to the cafeteria, so I grabbed a hot Magi Mart burrito from our food box—which held individual temperature spells for each food item inside—and plugged the small chip I had gotten from Patrick and Asafa into my reader. I scrolled their game specs as I munched my food. Robots and monsters dominated. No problems there. I had been drawing robots and sword and sorcery imagery for Christian since pre-school, and through the years the designs had only gotten more complicated.

  Once I got something set in my mind, it would be easy to repeat the work. But doing quality work on new projects took time. Setting to mind was the time consuming part.

  My two-hour work session with Stevens started in thirty minutes and I had to meet Dare immediately thereafter, so I quickly ran to the Midlands to sketch out a dragon for Dare and a small Midlands' map projection. I wasn't going to be able to tie a map to him in the same way I had tied one to me—not without touching him with Awakening paint, which was a giant no—but I could make something he could use.

  Unlike the new designs for Asafa and Patrick, it took me barely any time to sketch a repeat of a previous design. And repeating magic was easy as well. If I had done it once, my memory logged it in a physical way. I activated the dragon with a drop of glorious paint, and fought the ever present urge to use more, more, more.

  The dragon curled around my palm. I had told Dare that making them required magical sacrifice. The sacrifice was not the effort or my personal magic; the sacrifice was the drop of paint. The dwindling Awakening paint in my last non-orange tube.

  As I entered the all-glass interior of the building that housed the offices and labs for the Material Magics and Sciences professors, a yawn overtook me before I could stifle it. Constantine was working in a lab off to the side and raised a perfect, mocking brow at my drooping eyes and post-lunch-without-enough-sleep stupor.

  I gave him a wave and pushed into Stevens' work office. In her kickass magical stilettos and designer skirt, Stevens was moving her hands in the air, as if she was writing equations on the wind, using magic that was invisible to my eyes, even now.

  “Pulp pressing,” she said before I'd even stepped fully in the door. “Ten perfect iterations on my desk before the end of the day.”

  She didn't take her eyes off the air she was manipulating in front of her.

  How do you know Raphael, Professor Stevens? I wanted to ask, but instead my lips said, “We are making paper?”

  “Didn't I just say so?”

  Before I could stop the words I blurted out, “I'd like to focus fully on paint-making this term.”

  Stevens’ fingers stilled in the air, glued there momentarily. “I don't remember asking for your opinion
on what I would teach you when I took you on.”

  “You didn't. You also weren't completely upfront as to why you were taking me on.” That last bit was uttered without conscious determination, and I immediately knew it was a mistake.

  She turned. Her gaze upon me was cool and impersonal as her hands dropped to her sides. “Are you challenging me?” She was studying me as if examining a bad slide sample.

  “I'm challenging our syllabus.”

  “Independent study parameters are at the sole discretion of the professor. You are challenging me.”

  Professor Stevens was a magical and intellectual giant. She was the top of her field, a scientist I highly respected, and a mentor—but I didn't know if I could trust her outside the classroom.

  How do you know Raphael Verisetti, professor?

  But asking questions aloud about one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world would be stupid.

  The question didn't form on my lips, but it hovered in the air between us. It had hovered ever since she had taken a look at the shield set around me—a complete stranger—then initiated a devious introduction between us, trapped me inside of a truth spell, and interrogated me about my loyalties.

  That I had forced her to give me a session of her time—and that she had taken me on as a student thereafter—still left the unasked and unanswered question between us: Why had she gone to such lengths to interrogate me in the first place?

  Screw it. “How do you—?”

  “Your stupid combination of personality traits raises its head again,” she cut over me, voice hard as steel. “Intuitive, determined, loyal, chaotic, and reckless. I'd advise a little less of the last, Miss Crown. Learn better as to what questions you should ask, and where to ask them.”

  My gaze sought out Constantine through the series of large windows that made up the independent labs in the professors' personal territory. He was not looking our way, ignoring us in a too deliberate manner, locks of hair falling over his face, half hiding his expression. But as his gaze finally rose to meet mine through all the layers of glass, his eyes were narrowed and speculative.

  Stevens, a strict and demanding professor, mentored only five students from a population of fifteen thousand. I didn't know the other three students personally, but Constantine was her prized pupil. Stevens had previously given me her spiel on the qualities that attracted her attention, and had muttered some of what she thought of Constantine and his extreme brilliance wrapped in an immensely troublesome package. Loyalty wasn't likely one of the qualities she would attribute to him, but it was well known that she had taken him on as a student almost immediately upon his entrance to Excelsine at sixteen.

  Stevens was used to managing brilliant and difficult people. I twisted that thought in my head. Raphael could easily be included in the same mathematical set. How did she know him?

  “May I meet with you somewhere else to speak then?” I asked, forcing my voice to be polite. “The vault, perhaps?”

  Stevens raised her hands to the air in front of her, visually ignoring me again. “No. And reckless questions or those unrelated to your lab work will be met with consequences that you will not enjoy. Your request to focus solely on making paint is faulty and is denied. Systematic steps in different mediums will gain you the experience you need to progress in other mediums. The schedule is set. ”

  “I'll put in extra hours.”

  “No. The schedule you need to be on is set.” Her jaw clenched, as if she had said too much. “Or you can remove yourself from my lab. Understood?” Her fingers moved in the air.

  I needed Stevens, and she knew it. I couldn't produce the quality of materials I needed on my own, not yet, and I didn't have independent access to the art vault and its inimitable equipment. Furthermore, Stevens was a resource I needed to keep in my corner. Even Constantine, who had a reputation for being an absolute horror in class if he found the professor “dull,” was careful never to truly alienate Stevens.

  I clenched my jaw. “Understood.”

  I started ripping paper with my fingers and magic, dunking the pieces in the solution that Stevens and I had created previously, and infusing each piece as I assembled them. I pressed them into something new and mine that would key automatically to additional magic of the same type when the magic touched the surface of the page. When one of my pencils touched this paper, the magic in both would more than double in strength.

  But the problem of paint remained a blockage in my mind, and I shot thoughts in ten directions, wrapping around the unmoving rock in my mind, seeking paths and alternatives. There had to be another solution for me—one that didn't rely on Stevens or on revealing my nature to someone else—and I'd find it.

  ~*~

  Sprinting across an entire quarter of the Ninth Circle, I arrived at Dare's meeting point in front of the Kratos Battle Building with one minute to spare. Dare stared at me, clearly unimpressed by my dashing arrival.

  I bent over, hands on my knees, breathing hard. Damn mountain. I sent the Battle Building a longing glance and touched the mentor chip in my pocket. My Tuesday had been brutal already, and I still hadn't had my chat with Draeger.

  My plan was to finish with Dare, then complete the game conceptualizations for Asafa and Patrick in a simulation room while visiting with my simulated mentor. I just needed to get through the next two hours.

  “Hi,” I said to Dare, when I was finally capable of speech. I wiped my brow, and tried not to think about warlords and undiplomatic marriages as I cataloged his charcoal and black clothing.

  Dare lifted his chin in a brief greeting. “Earlier next time.”

  “I'm on time,” I said. “I still have, like, a whole twenty seconds before I'm late.”

  “Earlier.”

  “You got it, commander.” Wow, working resentfully alongside Stevens for two hours had made me mouthy. “I'll tell Professor Stevens that you said I have to leave ahead of time in order to be earlier for you.”

  “You left there twenty minutes ago.” His highly attractive eyes narrowed. “Perhaps Stevens will draw you a map instead.”

  Okay, so I had made a small detour to the library to blitz the fourth floor looking for a book on paint mentorship, instead of coming straight here. My mind sucked when it came to ignoring to-do tasks actively pressing against my thoughts.

  “I detoured. In the future, you should probably schedule me five minutes earlier than you want me. I'm terminally on time. Early is a five letter word—which is far worse than a four.”

  A brief flicker of amusement flashed on his face, but a spike of magic from the direction of the Battle Building redirected my attention to a student near the front door. A reedy boy, who looked out of place in front of a building dedicated to physical combat was scribbling something on his thigh, his gaze piercing me as he did. My heart picked up speed. He was one of the boys who orbited Bellacia Bailey and her triple-ring-wearing group—mages who hunted people like me. The ones I had taken to calling the Junior Department in my mind.

  Dare narrowed his gaze on the boy, then turned and strode through the foggy barrier that separated the Midlands from the Ninth Circle. I followed quickly behind.

  “Ignore them,” he said brusquely over his shoulder while navigating the fog. “Their lives hold so little interest, that in order to survive they are forced to try and absorb the spark of others.”

  I didn't know how to respond to that unanticipated bit of reassurance. Warmth curled in my midsection.

  We stepped into a flatland that stretched as far as my eye could see. The sky and grounds gave no indication that we were on a mountain anymore, but I was used to that with the Midlands. Nothing was normal in these levels.

  I fit right in.

  The familiar spark lit, having barely been extinguished from my visit a few hours past. Okai slid into view with Guard Rock welcoming me back. With a shaky wave of my hand and a push against the thread, its tile slid away. Magic was always bright and effortless in the hours after I worked with
even the tiniest drop of Awakening paint.

  Dare was staring hard at the space where Okai had been. Not good. Its appearance the first time we'd been here probably meant nothing to him. Appearing twice in a row in this level of chaos?

  He looked at me, his expression unreadable. I flashed my most brilliant smile, one that strained my lips.

  He stared at me silently for another long moment. “What did you see, when we were in here last term?”

  Of all the questions I could have anticipated, that was not one of them.

  I thought of the mirror shard. Seeing my reflection and knowing that I was the one who had been slowly, unwittingly destroying campus.

  “I saw green mist.” Truth, just not all of it.

  His gaze was even, but I could almost feel disappointment pulsing through the thread that connected us. My stomach tightened in response. A sliver of the craziness that had infected me last term did so again. I had to work harder. Raphael, the Department, leeches, protection, Olivia, Helen Price, Neph, Constantine, Dare, Origin Mages, weapons...

  I had to work harder.

  His eyes narrowed and the feel of his disappointment muted to something less readable. I really, really hoped he didn't possess Constantine's alarming ability to read my mind.

  “I have something for you,” I blurted out.

  One brow lifted, but an anticipatory tenseness gripped his body—a tension that hadn't been there before.

  I pulled the new dragon and map out of my bag, and held them out to him. As they touched both of us, I transferred ownership to him.

  He looked at me sharply, obviously not expecting such a transfer. His gaze shifted back to his palm as he carefully lifted the dragon, gently touching a delicate, thin, papered wing. Black lines drew on the accompanying paper, mimicking the topography of the twenty feet surrounding us.

  “It's, uh, limited in range for now,” I said. “I don't know how to power one for the entire space of the Midlands and transfer it to someone else yet. I will learn, though.” I'd figure out everything. Of that I was certain. “But he'll—” I waved my hands at the dragon sinuously sliding along his palm and between his fingers. “He'll give you a visual snapshot of what he sees wherever he is flying.”