by Chloe Garner
“Significantly,” Lady Harrington said.
“Significantly,” Mrs. Reynolds agreed. “I haven’t decided if I’m going to mark her down or up for having gone off of the cast directions, but it was an impressive piece of work.”
Lady Harrington glanced at Mr. Tannis, then nodded.
“Thank you, Mrs. Reynolds. That’s all I needed from you. You can release Mr. Jamison back to his own classroom, please.”
Mrs. Reynolds touched Valerie’s shoulder, then left.
“Do you need me?” Mr. Benson asked. “You got your answer. Susan Blake taught her how to do it unintentionally.”
Lady Harrington nodded.
“You’re right. I’m sorry to keep you from your work.”
He held up a hand and left. Lady Harrington looked at Mr. Tannis again.
“Well?” she asked.
He sighed.
“I hate to take help,” he said.
“You need it,” Lady Harrington answered. She turned to address Valerie once more. “Miss Blake, you need to learn to control your magic, and you need to make more prudent decisions. I don’t like rewarding poor behavior, but I don’t feel I have a choice in this matter. You have a gift, and we need to use every tool at our disposal, in the present situation. In addition to him being your academic advisor, you will be reporting to Mr. Tannis after class each day, Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, and you will spend at least two hours of your lab day on Wednesday in his classroom. You will be his research assistant through to the Christmas break. Is that clear?”
“Doing what?” Valerie asked.
“Whatever he asks you to,” Lady Harrington said. “You are endangering the students at my school with your behavior, and I don’t care if your mother is Susan Blake, I will expel you if I decide that continuing to foster your skills is not worth the resources I am spending to keep you and the rest of the students safe from your magic.”
What did that mean?
Was she casting protection spells intentionally for Valerie?
Valerie bit the inside of her lip and nodded.
Lady Harrington gave her an encouraging nod.
“Mr. Tannis is one of our most gifted teachers, magically, and you have no better mentor than him to learn how to control your gifts. What adds even more value is that you will be helping him with very important work. If he needs you cleaning beakers, you’ll clean beakers, but it’s in the interest of saving lives. I’m not putting you to work pushing a broom or digging a ditch. The outcome of his work is of vital importance.”
Valerie nodded.
“Okay,” she said.
Lady Harrington nodded firmly and looked at the desk once more.
“I’m going to have to destroy this,” she said. “I need you to not do it again.”
Valerie felt like she couldn’t make that promise, but she nodded anyway.
“Good,” Lady Harrington said. “Please return to your class. You’ll start working for Mr. Tannis this afternoon.”
“What do you know about thrown casts?” Mr. Tannis asked that afternoon as Valerie walked into his classroom and sat down her backpack.
“Um,” Valerie said. “We haven’t studied them. Do you just, like, throw a handful of stuff or something?”
He sighed, getting up from his desk and coming around it.
She had learned how to throw a cast from her father, but it had been odd… It had felt natural, easy even, but the method of it had always felt like if she thought about it too hard, it wouldn’t work anymore. She certainly couldn’t teach it to someone else, or explain it.
“The ingredients, if there are any, stay with you. It is the magic that you are throwing. Do you understand?”
She hesitated.
No.
“Yes.”
“Very good. I want you to summon a heat energy in your palm.”
Valerie blinked at him.
“Any way I want?” she asked.
“Can be flame, can be literal heat, can be scalding water for all I care,” he said.
She nodded slowly, looking around the room.
Red powder in a glass vial.
That looked good.
She went to get it, opening the vial and smelling it, then checking Mr. Tannis with her eyes, she sprinkled it into her palm.
Words.
Greek ones.
Potent.
An energy circulated above her palm, kicking up just a bit of the red dust in a cyclone pattern, and then it lit off in a bright burgundy red.
“Good,” Mr. Tannis said over the whooshing sound of the flame. “Now. Send it at me.”
She raised her eyebrows, too focused on keeping the flame alive to be able to speak to him.
He sighed.
“I assure you that a freshman is not going to be able to harm me with magic,” he said. “I am able to defend myself.”
Valerie looked hard at him, and he raised his eyebrows.
“Whenever you feel confident enough,” he said, pursing his lips.
She turned her attention back to the storm of fire and rolled her jaw to the side, considering it.
It lived on her palm.
Just like that.
She could kick it up a bunch, maybe add a bunch more powder if she was careful and, I don’t know, shout at it?, and see if she could get it to go big, but that wasn’t throwing it. And she liked her eyebrows, thankyouverymuch.
She needed to find a way to lift it off of her palm and… shift it. Over to him.
Did it have to cross the entire classroom to do it?
No.
No, that didn’t seem to be in the rules he’d given her.
Okay, maybe it was implied by the word ‘throw’, but… Well, if he wanted her to follow rules, he was going to have to be more specific about them.
She put her left hand out, letting it settle level with the cyclone, feeling the magic power of it, then she snapped, jerking her hand down. The flame extinguished and in the same moment, she flung the magic of it at Mr. Tannis, opening her hand.
There was nothing there.
Nothing to see.
Not for the half a second it took to get to him, but then it sprang back to life right at his chest, a ball of flame now rather than a twister. He spoke a word as it smashed into his chest and spread across the flat of it, tendriling out over his shoulders. It died off, but not without tracing a black mark where the hottest of it had been.
He looked down at his shirt, then nodded.
“Good,” he said. “I can work with that. Let’s get to work.”
The next day at lunch, Valerie shook her head.
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk about it,” she said.
“You told Sasha, didn’t you?” Shack asked, indicating the redhead who now sat with them occasionally, down at the end of the table as far away from Ann as she could get.
“Of course I did,” Valerie said. “If they expect me not to tell her something, they should tell me. But everyone else? I mean. What if what he’s doing is secret?”
“But you told Sasha,” Shack said.
“You think it’s for the war,” Ethan said. She twisted her mouth to the side, then nodded.
“I think it might be.”
He frowned, working his jaw for a moment.
“Students aren’t supposed to be involved in the war,” he said. “Elvis is a graduate from Light School, and he’s not allowed, since he’s enrolled here.”
“Would he want to?” Milton asked.
“No,” Ethan said. “No, I think part of the reason he came straight here was to avoid getting involved in the war. But they can’t say to my dad that his son is avoiding it, because he’s literally not allowed. The upper schools got really competitive last time, because there were so many people trying to use that rule.” He looked at Valerie. “They better not have you doing war work.”
“If it saves my mom’s life?” she asked. “I don’t care.”
He pursed his lips at this, then tu
rned his attention to his lunch again.
“I like Mr. Tannis,” Sasha offered after a moment. “He’s really smart, and he’s good at explaining things.”
“Is he?” Valerie asked. “Mostly he just makes demands and expects me to figure it out.”
“That’s your super-power,” Ethan said without looking up, then jerked like he’d said something insulting. Valerie raised her eyebrows.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“I just…” he said. “All of this is against the rules. You’re supposed to go by the book, learn the basics and advance to the harder, more detailed stuff. You don’t just… do magic.”
“Look who cares about the rules,” Ann said.
“What?” Ethan demanded, and she laughed.
“You showed up to school a month late,” she said. “And I guarantee that you weren’t just off on some diplomatic intercontinental trip on behalf of the Council. What did you really do with all your time in Rome, Ethan?”
“Shut up,” he said, as though she knew something.
Valerie wondered what it was.
“Visit weekend next weekend,” Shack said, either oblivious or incredibly kind.
“Hanson is coming, isn’t he?” Sasha asked. “You heard back.”
Valerie nodded, swallowing an unchewed bite of food to speak again.
“Yeah, he said his mom can’t make it, but he’s coming weekend after this one. I can’t wait to see him.”
“You two have a thing?” Ann asked, and Valerie shook her head.
“No, he’s just my best friend going all the way back.”
“You can’t just be friends,” Ann said. “It doesn’t work like that. One or the other of you is always going to get a crush on the other one, and then the friendship is weird and it doesn’t work anymore.”
Valerie stared at her for a moment, then looked at Shack again.
“My birthday is next week, so it’s going to be for my birthday. He said he’d bring cupcakes or something to celebrate.”
Shack grinned.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
“Early, moron,” Milton said. Shack shrugged.
“We celebrate birthdays all month at my house,” he said. “Because one day just can’t fit it all.”
Valerie grinned.
“I like it,” she said. “More presents.”
“You have no idea,” Ann said passively, watching something across the room. “His parents love giving presents.”
Valerie tipped her head at Shack, and he grinned.
“It’s a thing my mom does,” he said. “She likes coming up with stuff that no one else has and no one else has thought of. So she tries everything.”
“Magic stuff?” Valerie asked.
“One year, it was a basketball court in the back yard with a scoreboard and a concession stand.”
Valerie paused, then nodded.
“Wow.”
He grinned.
“Eventually my dad - my dad’s really competitive - he decided he was going to outdo her, and they’ve been competing at presents ever since. Some of it gets kind of crazy.”
“I bet,” Valerie said. “You’re rich, then?”
Basketball court in the backyard. Who would have put that together?
The whole table went still, and Ethan looked at her.
“Magic users usually are,” he said.
“I guess,” Valerie said. “Time and resources to pursue it.”
He shook his head.
“No… It’s that magic is very lucrative. Even if you’re only using it for small stuff…”
“I want to use it to grow flowers for a nursery,” Sasha piped up, and he motioned at her.
“Like that. She would have the best nursery in the region and she could charge whatever she wanted for the plants she was selling, and she’d be one of the richest…”
“Nursery owners,” Sasha supplied, and he nodded again.
“Nursery owners around.”
“Well, I’m not rich,” Valerie said.
“Do you even know how much it costs to go to this school?” Ann asked, on the edge of her seat still as she watched a table in the corner of the lunch room.
“No,” Valerie said. She’d thought it was free, something the magic community just did.
Shack ducked his head, glancing over at Ann, but Patrick wasn’t nearly so shy, and he told her.
It was a year’s salary, most places in the country.
Valerie’s chin dropped.
“No,” she said. “I’ve got to be on scholarship, then. My mom doesn’t have that kind of money.”
“Scholarship,” Ann scoffed. “You think you have academic merit?”
“I have need,” Valerie said.
“Your parents are rich,” Ethan said softly. “I’m almost certain of it. They may have graduated into the war, but the Council pays really well for the people on the front line, and more for the ones behind the front line, figuratively speaking. And they were both deep in behind what was going on. I wouldn’t be surprised if your mom let all of that money stay where it was, for fear of someone using it to track her down, after she disappeared, but…”
Sasha nodded.
“Two parents with handlers to the Council?” Sasha asked. “You’re probably richer than…”
“No one at this table,” Ann said, standing and walking briskly away. Shack glanced at Valerie.
“If you needed the money, maybe you could talk to someone about getting it,” he said.
“I don’t,” Valerie said, short not at him but at this idea that everyone knew things about her that she’d never even guessed at. “Why would I need money? I’m at boarding school.”
“Better spellcasting ingredients to study with,” Ethan said, not looking directly at her. “Books. A lot of the girls wore magically-inclined jewelry.”
Sasha dug a necklace out of her shirt and held it up.
Valerie gave her an exasperated look and she put it away again.
“I don’t need anything,” Valerie said, standing. “I was happy with my mom the way we were.”
“No one’s saying that you have to be some spoiled rich kid,” Ethan said, looking up at her. “Just… there’s probably money if you want it.”
Valerie shook her head.
“I don’t.”
She threw away the remainder of her lunch and went to sit by herself at the library until her next class.
History
“Don’t think of it as a magic wand,” Mr. Tannis said, stepping away from her. “Think of it as a way of focusing your magic.”
“That would make it a magic wand,” Valerie said dryly, looking at it.
It looked nothing short of twiggy, the appearance of twisted, aged wood and bits of splinter sticking out, but the moment it had hit her palm she’d been able to feel that it was different.
Like a continuation of herself in a way that she’d never known how to measure.
“You got it?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“All right. I’m looking for heat that is invisible that doesn’t have to come from you to me. You just cast it at me, like throwing, and the first I should be aware of it is when it hits me.”
She looked at the onyx twig in her hand and frowned.
“You want me to cook your heart,” she said.
“You overestimate yourself, Miss Blake,” he said. “I want you to try to. Whatever means you choose.”
“And what if I hurt you?” Valerie asked. “Lady Harrington will kick me out. And there are people out there who want to kill me.”
“I think you substantially overestimate your tactical value to anyone,” Mr. Tannis said. “Regardless, Lady Harrington knew what you were going to be doing and she agreed to it. In the impossible case that you managed to incapacitate me, she would be aware and see to it that you did not face consequences.”
“I don’t like being the attacker,” Valerie said. “This is supposed to be sur
vival school.”
For a moment, Mr. Tannis eased, and he came to sit down on one of the broad worktables that his students used as desks.
“That, Miss Blake, is a perfectly reasonable point. And I’ll admit that what I’m asking you to do does not fit into the curriculum anywhere but boot camp.”
“That exists?” Valerie asked, and he tipped his head.
“If you want to hear my earnest point, you will refrain from commentary,” he said. “We teach this type of thing, but not in a focused manner. It is not something that any of the schools wish to adopt as curriculum - the art of taking life. You are specifically correct that this school is concerned with the defense of life. Yours or others. So what I am about to tell you must remain perfectly secret. Your speculation up to this point doesn’t concern me; it isn’t anything but teenagers making the stories of their lives bigger than they are. But you deserve to know this.
“About four weeks ago, there was a major Superior attack. Multiple of the fighters representing the Council died in that attack, and a number of civilians that I don’t have at its latest figure, though it was much larger than a hundred. Normally, our fighters are reasonably evenly-matched against the Superiors, and they retreat quickly, leaving our school’s graduates the time and space to try to help the civilian survivors.
“This time was different. The Superiors stood their ground and fought our people, and they had a new style of cast that our people were unprepared to defend. This is precisely the thing that I have been tasked to develop - a defense against a cast that flash-cooked our fighters as they were going to help injured and dying civilians.”
Valerie thought about Gemma, standing next to a man or a woman giving the order to go kill people, to go hold their ground as people died… And it didn’t make sense.
If they were just trying to separate people from their magic…
“Was my mom involved?” Valerie asked.
“No one knows,” Mr. Tannis said. “But I can tell you for certain that if she had died, they would have notified you within days. If she had died there at the fight.”
“What about going quiet?” Valerie asked. He closed one eye, then shook his head.
“That may be months or a year or more,” he said. “I don’t even know how the Council will treat it, this time. That’s just what I remember from last time.”
