Sacrifices

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Should—?” Loch asked.

  Spirit shook her head mutely.

  “If he’s going to tell, there’s nothing we can do about it,” Addie said.

  The five of them looked at each other. What now?

  “Doctor A—he lied to us,” Burke said blankly.

  An instant later Muirin began to giggle. Addie joined her, hand clapped over her mouth to muffle the sounds. Burke stared at them for an instant and began to laugh—a deep rich belly laugh. Then they were all laughing—his remark had been so ridiculous after everything that had led up to it there wasn’t anything else to do. Each time Spirit started to get control of herself, she’d look at one of the others and that would set her off again.

  At last, too winded to go on, they wound down. Every few seconds Muirin would make another fizzing sound, like laughter under pressure, and Addie was making chimp-faces to try to keep from grinning.

  “I guess in comparison to finding out about this, being outed for being gay doesn’t matter that much,” Loch said, sitting up and taking a deep breath.

  “I guess it doesn’t,” Burke said easily. “It’s not like they really need an excuse for killing you.”

  “Oh, but there are telephones,” Addie said. “And— And— And computers!”

  That set them all off again, until they finally ran down for good. Spirit leaned weakly against Burke’s shoulder. “Oh my god…” she moaned. Then she tightened her hand on Burke’s arm. “Doctor A isn’t Merlin. I mean, he really is not Merlin. He was Kenny, but whatever came out of that oak tree got him, and there’s nothing left of Kenny in there. Is there?”

  “Yeah, no,” Burke said softly. “Don’t think so.” Then his voice hardened. “Okay. Now we know Doctor Ambrosius is the enemy. He’s Mordred. And we know what his plan is. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to pray,” he finished, completely seriously.

  “I’m going to write a letter,” Muirin said. Spirit stared at her. “Hey, the Bad Guys are even more all over Oakhurst’s servers than the teachers were, and that goes double for Radial’s Internet node. Most voice and data lines share resources, so you can just bet the phones are being tapped, too.”

  “Who’d have the time to listen to all those conversations?” Addie asked in disbelief.

  “You don’t need to,” Loch said. “There are keyword-sampling systems like Echelon to do that. They don’t even need to build their own if they piggyback onto the Echelon network.”

  “Right. But dead tree communication is still secure,” Muirin said. “And I’ve got the run of Radial. I figure if I write to the President, the FBI, The New York Times, Truthout, BuzzFlash, boingboing, Daily Kos, and Rolling Stone, one of them’s gonna take notice of a ‘terrorist plot’ to hack into the missile control software and launch a bunch of nukes.”

  Spirit shuddered. It seemed more horrible every time she heard about it.

  “Maybe,” Loch said doubtfully.

  “And maybe not,” Burke agreed grimly. “But we need to cover every base we can, toss out a lot of stones and hope one hits something. It’s a good idea, Murr-cat, and I think you should go for it. But I think we need to do other things, too.”

  “I can—” Addie began, and stopped. “Now I’m wondering if Oakhurst ever wrote to my trustees at all,” she finished in a small confused voice.

  “Addie, you asked Mordred to send you somewhere safe,” Loch said gently. “If they’re planning to bomb the world back to the Stone Age somewhere in the next few months, they probably aren’t too worried about you or your trustees making trouble for them. And the last thing that Doctor A wants to do is let go of an asset like a Water Witch.”

  There was a moment of silence. Spirit could see Addie struggling not to cry. She knew how scared Addie was, and she knew Addie had been relying on her trustees being able to protect her. Now that hope had been taken away from her.

  “Okay,” Addie finally said, her voice a whisper. “And that raises the question: when are they going to do this?”

  “Beltane,” Spirit said suddenly.

  “What?” Loch said blankly. “Why Beltane? May First is almost two months from now. Wouldn’t he—?”

  “He’ll want to do it on the anniversary of his original defeat,” Spirit said. She didn’t know whether it was reading Ms. Groves’s book, or just because she’d been thinking about the problem even before she knew how big a problem it was, but she was absolutely certain. “To— To— To erase it, right? Okay. To become King, Arthur fought what are called The Twelve Great Battles: the first was at Glein, the second through fifth were at Dublas, the sixth was at Bassas, the seventh at Cat Coit Celidon. The eight was at Guinnion Castle, the ninth at Caer Londinum, the tenth at Tribruit—another river side—the eleventh at Mount Agned, and the twelfth and greatest at Badon Hill. Camlann is the thirteenth, where he dies fighting Mordred. A lot of the old stories say he had to cross the English Channel to come back to England for the Battle of Camlann. You couldn’t cross the English Channel with an army in those days except in good sailing weather. The crossing season was mid-March to mid-September, so Arthur must have gotten back to England sometime in April. But nobody—even Mordred—would have fought during Lent, the forty days before Easter—he might not have cared, but his army would. Easter is at the end of April, and the next big holiday—and the next School Dance after this one—is May First. Beltane.”

  “Wow,” Loch said quietly.

  Spirit blushed. She hadn’t meant to geek out on them. It had all just come pouring out.

  “And in Celtic folklore, Beltane is one of the important Ancient Holy Days, when the dark half of the year ends and the light half begins,” Addie said.

  “Only this year, the light half won’t begin, if Mordred and Breakthrough get their way,” Burke finished grimly. “We have to stop them.”

  It kept coming back to that, Spirit realized. They had to stop the Shadow Knights. They had to stop Mordred and the Shadow Knights. And she didn’t think anybody else had any more idea of how to do that than she did.

  “If it’s up to us to save the world, the world’s in big trouble,” Muirin said. “But I think you’re missing the small picture here, Burkesy. Forget the apocalypse for a moment—we’ve got to keep Loch and Spirit alive. And I’m not sure that’s going to be easy.”

  Spirit wanted to say her life wasn’t important compared to the lives of everyone else on Earth. And maybe it wasn’t. But if they couldn’t stop the Shadow Knights from killing the two of them—how were they ever going to stop them from doing everything else?

  They talked about it until Muirin (of all people) reminded them of the time. It was almost lights out; they’d all had a lot of practice in sneaking around the school by now, but by unspoken agreement, nobody really wanted to push their luck any farther than they had to.

  Not when demerits made you disappear.

  All of them hugged each other before they split up. No matter what their past disagreements—and mutual distrust—the things they’d learned in the past two days had united them again. For better or worse, the time of doubting each other and their own motives was at an end.

  The stakes were too high.

  * * *

  Muirin gave Spirit and Addie the “all clear” and the three of them entered the Young Ladies’ Wing. Spirit whispered a last good night to the other two as they headed to their second-floor rooms.

  She knew just how Addie felt. She kept wanting to just pretend none of this had ever happened. She didn’t even know how to think about the things she’d learned—and she kept finding herself thinking: Maybe they really won’t start a war. Maybe if they do, nobody will really be hurt. It was shock, she knew—she’d caught herself thinking the same way in the weeks after the accident: Maybe my family really isn’t dead. Maybe it’s all just some kind of really horrible mistake.

  But it hadn’t been a mistake. And neither was this.

  Mom always said three people can keep a secret if two of them don’t know it.
And Breakthrough employs hundreds of people. Even if all of them don’t know what Mark and Mordred are planning, the ones hacking the missile launch codes have to. Won’t they tell? Or sabotage it? Or … something?

  It wasn’t something any of them could count on. It would be too much like hoping. Maybe QUERCUS will have a suggestion. Him telling me not to trust Doctor Ambrosius makes so much sense now—but how did he know? Why didn’t he tell me what he knew? It doesn’t matter as much as the fact I can still trust him.…

  Then she opened the door to her room.

  The door to her fridge hung open. The bed had been torn apart. Books and papers were scattered all over the floor. Someone had searched her room—and they really didn’t care whether she noticed or not.

  QUERCUS!

  She ran to her desk. Both drawers had been yanked out and they—and their contents—had been tossed on the floor. She knelt in the mess and scrabbled through it with shaking hands. She sobbed with relief when her fingers closed on the Ironkey.

  What were they looking for? What—if it wasn’t this?

  Still kneeling, she picked up her computer. Everything had been swept off the top of her desk. The power cord had come loose and the battery had run down, but when she plugged it in again and rebooted it, her desktop came up as usual. She glanced toward the door to the hall. She’d closed it, but none of the doors in the dormitory wings locked. For a moment she thought about pushing the couch in front of it, but what if one of the Proctors—or the Security staff—tried to open it?

  You’ll just have to be careful.

  She turned the laptop around so she was facing the door over the monitor, and plugged in the Ironkey drive. To her relief, the computer recognized it, just as it always did. It wasn’t broken.

  But that didn’t matter. When she tried to open its browser, nothing happened. The intraweb was down again, and without it, the Ironkey wouldn’t operate. What if it’s going to be down forever? she thought frantically. Then: No. They wouldn’t do that. Having everybody using the chatrooms makes things too easy for them. And the school practically runs on email.

  She had to hope this wasn’t just wishful thinking.

  But leaving the Ironkey in my room is stupid. I got lucky once. I’m not going to make that mistake twice.

  But how could she carry it with her securely? She thought for a moment, then went to her closet. Everything there was a mess, too, but she’d deal with that later. For now, it only took a little digging to find what she was looking for—the sneakers she’d been wearing the day she came to Oakhurst.

  She whipped the laces out of them and knotted them firmly together end to end. The Ironkey had a slot on it so you could put it on a key ring or something; she had to poke a little to get the end of the shoelace through it, but once she had, she could wear it as a necklace—or, better, tie the laces around her waist. Somebody might see a necklace, but they’d never see a belt. She’d even be able to wear it in Systema.

  The thought made her laugh out loud. She’d thought Ovcharenko was the worst thing she had to deal with. But all he could do was beat her to death. Everything is relative, she thought, suppressing a despairing giggle.

  She tied the Ironkey around her waist now just to be sure. She felt better when she had, and with that taken care of, she could spare the attention to really look at her room.

  It was a real wreck.

  If the intraweb had been up she might even have risked asking Muirin to come help her clean up the mess. As it was, she’d have to do it all by herself. She walked over to the fridge and shut it carefully. At least none of the bottles of sports drinks had been smashed—or poured on the carpet.

  It took her hours to get everything cleaned up and put back in order—clothes hung up, papers reorganized and put away, everything in her bathroom picked up and set to rights. At the beginning she’d been puzzled—what could they possibly have been looking for?—but the closer she got to finishing her cleanup, the more she thought she knew. And she was very much afraid they’d found it, too. After she’d tidied her room completely, she searched it herself—probably more thoroughly than Breakthrough had. At last she had to admit the thing she was looking for wasn’t here any longer.

  The book of Arthurian myth Ms. Groves had loaned her was gone.

  She didn’t even bother to try to sleep after that, just sat curled up in a corner of the couch with her laptop, hoping the intraweb would come back up. And thinking—as much as she could anyway. Mostly she just sat and jittered.

  Breakthrough was going to bring all of its people—all of its magicians—to Radial. And then it was going to launch a bunch of nuclear missiles. At who? It hardly mattered, did it? Once anybody fired off a missile, everybody would start shooting at each other. And then everybody would be dead, or really sick, and nobody would believe a computer gaming company had started World War Last.

  And that was the same reason telling the FBI—or anyone else—what was going on wouldn’t work (unless they came up with a really effective lie, and if anyone could do that it was Muirin). What was going on was ridiculous—she believed it, and she still thought it was ridiculous. So what they needed to do was …

  But that was where her mind kept stopping, over and over. Because she didn’t know what they needed to do. All she knew was the end of the world was six weeks away, and there was nothing she could think of to stop it.

  Start with the small stuff, Mom would say. Enough ants can move a mountain. She didn’t think this situation was what her Mom had in mind, but it was still good advice. The first thing she needed to do was tell Ms. Groves somebody’d stolen her book. Maybe—if Ms. Groves would put up her Warding again—Spirit could tell her the rest of what they’d found out. Even if she didn’t have a plan either, at least she wasn’t a teenager. She could get out of here and figure out something to say that would make people listen, even if it was just that Breakthrough was doing something illegal. Selling drugs, maybe. Something that would get The Fortress searched.

  Something.

  The intraweb wasn’t back up by breakfast time, but at least that meant Spirit wouldn’t have to read the Morning Motivational Message today. She’d already showered—just for something to do—and dressed. And today she’d actually have long enough before the start of Systema to eat something.

  * * *

  She was one of the first people on the serving line. She didn’t see any of the others, and she didn’t see Dylan either. Because there were so few kids there, she stopped to talk to Maddie Harris after she got her food. Maddie hadn’t heard anything about Radial either, and she took the problems with the intraweb as a personal affront.

  “How can they expect us to organize the Spring Fling without email, Spirit? It would be bad enough if it was just us, but adding Radial means we have a thousand percent more work to do! This is going to be the worst dance in the history of Oakhurst, and it’s my last one, and everyone’s going to blame me, and it isn’t fair!”

  Spirit bit her lip. It’s going to be the last dance in the history of Oakhurst, she thought, and barely managed to keep from saying so. But Maddie didn’t know that, so Spirit did her best to say sympathetic things until Maddie went to get on the serving line. She couldn’t decide whether Maddie’s complaints were funny—or made her want to scream. Probably both, she decided.

  All the books always said that when you were facing the apocalypse you didn’t have any appetite, but Spirit was actually hungrier than she could remember being in a long time. She was most of the way through her oatmeal by the time Ms. Corby walked in to the Refectory.

  Ms. Corby stood in front of the door holding a clipboard waiting for everyone to quiet down, but it took Dan yelling for them all to shut up for there to be quiet.

  “As I’m sure you all know, the school intraweb is down, and there are a number of announcements this morning,” Ms. Corby said. Since the first one was apparently the Morning Motivational Message, Spirit mostly tuned her out.

  “Oakhurst is sa
ddened to report the loss of one of its most well-loved colleagues. Ms. Lily Groves was the victim of a savage attack by the escaped tiger that has been reported in the area. It is believed that she had gone for a walk when she was taken unawares by the animal.”

  Spirit set down her spoon and stared at Ms. Corby. Dead? Ms. Groves is dead?

  “Because the animal is apparently hunting on the school grounds, the previous curfew rules are no longer in force. From now on the doors to the outside will be locked at all times, and anyone needing to leave the building must call for an escort from our Security Department. Failure to abide by these regulations will be punished with severe disciplinary action.”

  Spirit looked around until she caught Burke’s eye. He looked grim. And you don’t even know the half of it. They searched my room. They found the book she loaned me. And that’s why they killed her. Spirit wanted to cry, and knew she didn’t dare. She could feel Joe’s eyes on her.

  “That blows,” she forced herself to say, fixing her gaze on her plate. She just hoped the other kids at the table thought she was pissed off by the new rules—and not scared out of her mind.

  “Next, starting tomorrow, students will have their Gifts reassessed in order to rank them for advanced placement opportunities. In the event the email system remains down, the schedule for testing will be posted in the Refectory and the Library and copies will be provided to all teachers. Please make a note of the time of your appointment to avoid delays. Last—and I really should not have to remind any of you of this by this point—Oakhurst requires all students to abide by the Dress Code. Since you seem to have some difficulty with understanding precisely what this entails, for the next two months students will be required to adhere to the strict Dress Code. Uniform blazers will be worn at all times, trousers are not acceptable for female students at any time, and you will be expected to wear all items of school jewelry in your possession every day. Ms. Shae, do feel free to return to your room and change before class.”

  * * *

  When Muirin got up to change—looking as if she was going to do her best to make trouble for somebody—the first students were already getting up to leave. Spirit got up as well, and hurried to catch up with her—it was hard to feel it mattered now—and she wasn’t surprised Addie did too.