Ruthless Magic

  The effort dragged at me. An ache spread down my spine, and my fingernails prickled. Prisha called out another line, Finn’s voice twining with hers, and the wiry guy stiffened too.

  Desmond finished murmuring over Leonie. As she gasped in apparent relief, a different kind of tremor tickled through the magic. A sense of eagerness or reviving. It wound around me, strengthening my focus.

  Wait. I’d felt that rejuvenation in it before. When we’d cast healing ’chantments at other times. Maybe the effects of our castings didn’t just work one way. If forcing the magic to destroy weakened it, then being used to heal and create should restore it.

  We couldn’t use that knowledge now, but it meant something for the world outside the arena. It meant that no matter how much damage any mage did, we had hope of compensating.

  I pinned the hulking guy and the girl with the hatchet even more firmly in place. Our current castings didn’t seem to be affecting the magic we were using one way or another, neither strengthening nor weakening it, but they affected us. The ache was creeping across my back.

  A tremor ran through Finn’s body beside mine. All the others must be getting tired too. Even if Desmond and Leonie took over one of my two, I wasn’t sure I could make it a full hour, let alone the entire day, keeping my focus that exact.

  The cut on my shoulder throbbed. With each blink, my eyes felt hotter. Sooner or later—probably sooner—one of us was going to crack again, and our opponents had to be forming the most horrific castings they could think of as they stood locked there.

  I’d gotten us into this mess. I needed to find a better solution than this, one we could hold until evening fell. Somehow.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Finn

  No doubt there were many lessons the examiners hoped we novices would learn over the course of the Exam: lessons about our capabilities and our limitations, about how ruthless an enemy could be, about where we truly stood in the world, about the Confed’s absolute authority. The biggest lesson I’d come away with, though, was to always assume that even an utterly wretched situation would get worse.

  The fabricated sun was scorching my face, searing across my forehead to combine forces with my headache. My ribs were throbbing again. The strain of my casting gnawed at me like a thorn digging under every fingernail. My voice rasped even at a murmur.

  I drew out the verse, keeping as stable and slow a tempo as I could manage. My eyes stayed trained on the curly-haired boy’s limbs, while Prisha focused her intent on the more delicate work around his face and throat.

  Stop him moving and hold him in place—that was my sole responsibility.

  The quiver of magic twitched by my ears, and the boy’s hand slipped away from me. He clapped it against his hip, launching into a wordless casting.

  My lungs clenched. I blurted out the Greek verse louder and caught him before more than a spark glinted in the air around him. The ache in my head pierced straight through the center of my brain. My dry lips prickled against each other as I continued chanting.

  Prisha was mumbling to herself where she knelt beside me. A tremor ran down her back. How fatigued was she?

  “I’ve got her, Rocío,” Desmond said.

  The girl at my other side let out a sigh. She’d been holding two—two—of our attackers, utterly on her own.

  “I suppose I’m backup, then,” Leonie said behind us.

  I couldn’t tell how much Desmond had been able to do for her shoulder, but she sounded steady enough. If we’d had three or four of her, I might have felt more hopeful. Rocío might be able to hang in there, but the rest of us were going to need to tap out soon.

  The boy’s murderous fury thrummed through the tension in his muscles. Rocío was trying to save the three of them, and yet their deepest desire was to murder us.

  The thought had scarcely passed through my head when an explosive boom shook the air, and the ground beneath us pitched. Rocío clutched the spire, her chin knocking the ivory stone. I fell back on my rear, and Prisha toppled over next to me. With a startled grunt, Desmond stumbled to the side, into Leonie. All our castings shattered.

  A cry echoed across the open ground from the spire where our would-be assailants had stationed themselves. Their platform perch had split. One half tipped and plummeted to the ground, the hatchet girl and the curly-haired boy falling with it. The hulking guy stumbled to the side and nearly fell over the opposite edge, but he managed to grab on to the stalk. The ground gave another lurch and sent him tumbling into a heap by the others.

  “Quick!” Rocío said, rubbing her banged chin with a wince. “We have to stop them before they get back up.”

  Prisha and Leonie were already springing to the fallen spire. “I can take one on my own for a while,” Prisha said to me. “You rest while you can.”

  “Just stay ready to jump back in, you hear?” Leonie added.

  Desmond righted himself as the quakes subsided. He massaged his temple. How was his head faring? The sharpest shards of my headache had smoothed as soon as I’d ceased casting, but my nerves still blazed all across my skull. My empty stomach listed queasily.

  “Was that your classmate?” Desmond said. “The explosion? Is he still running around?”

  “Not running, I wouldn’t think,” I said. “He did have these rocks... They must have been ’chanted. But the other ones didn’t have quite that wide an impact.”

  “It’d take a lot of power to conjure an earthquake.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know if that was him. He’s never been a stellar talent.” I glanced toward the edge of the dunes where I’d left Callum. “It might have been Lacey. She’s still around.”

  “It might be both of them,” Desmond pointed out. “We can always hope they keep each other busy the rest of the day.”

  The ground hiccupped, and I braced my hands against it. A terrible idea occurred to me. “It might not be any of us. It might be another part of this test. The examiners quite enjoy mixing things up to throw us off, I’ve noticed.”

  Desmond grimaced, and Prisha shifted her weight. Yesterday’s confession came back to me like a punch in the gut. In our struggle to stay alive, I’d almost forgotten: She knew the examiners’ modus operandi better than any of us. I guessed she didn’t have anything useful to contribute now. We were on our own, as always.

  I eased onto my wobbly feet and walked to the stump of the spire Leonie had cracked open. The section still standing was as tall as my shoulder at some of its jagged points. Across the way, our trio of opponents sprawled near the chunks of their broken platform, motionless. On our side, Rocío’s face appeared placid for now, but Prisha’s shone with sweat. Leonie’s rounded jaw clenched around each word she rolled out.

  There was no sign of Callum or Lacey by the dunes, but that only made me more wary. If I’d seen them, at least I’d have known where they were.

  Our greatest enemy was time passing far too sluggishly as our castings wore us down. Tempus edax rerum. I didn’t think it could be more than midday. We might have hours to go. Why would the examiners cut this day short?

  “Desmond,” Prisha said through gritted teeth. “Switch?”

  He leaned against the spire next to her. After a few seconds, she sagged backward. “Thank you.”

  A shiver rippled through the ground, as if to remind us that we might have even bigger problems in the next several hours than simply maintaining status quo. I set my hands against the spire’s stump, recalling how simply Leonie had broken it with that mallet and her talent.

  I couldn’t depend on my magical ability in the slightest, but could I find another tool? A couple of hovels stood nearby.

  “They’ll have checked all the shacks on this side,” Prisha said, noticing my look. “I’m sure of it, Finn. We need you here.”

  Did they? Hades only knew what for. I pushed away from the spire, heading toward one of the slanted black shapes. I had to at least attempt to help.

  When I hunched to peer through the hovel’s do
orway, I found the interior empty, as Prisha had predicted.

  As I walked back, splinters of pain tingled up my left arm. The numbing ’chantment on my hand was deteriorating.

  O gods, how laughable was it that I’d once imagined I might take a role in the Confed’s defensive division, protecting the entire nation? I could barely hold myself together. Even Callum, with his leg mangled and his magic drained, was making more of an impact in the battle than I was.

  I’d had a real impact in that muffled, shadowy hall of the house in Iran, when I’d dug in as deep as I could and hurled every particle in me into the magic.

  I halted at the spire’s jagged stump. My gaze shot back to the trio on the ground. I’d summoned that much power once. It had been for a mere moment and at great mental and physical expense, but I’d found it. I didn’t need a wallop quite that expansive to win the day here.

  I could still make Champion. If I cast a wave of fire or electricity at our enemies, if I destroyed three more lives, I’d prove myself exactly the sort of soldier the Exam committee appeared to be seeking. I might even end the Exam. Only seven of us would remain. The examiners would step in and call a halt then, surely?

  Whatever else might be said about him, Callum’s logic was sound: They wouldn’t want to lose all of their prospective special ops team.

  The solution felt so clear and simple—and as if it weighed a thousand pounds. I swallowed thickly.

  Maybe if our three opponents had been charging at us in an attack, if I were saving our lives in a more immediate manner, I could have pulled it off. But while they lay there helpless? No. I was looking at three defenseless novices no older than I was, novices who’d stood in the courtyard four days ago as unknowing and unprepared as I’d been. They’d likely ended up here not because they had some fondness for ghastly trials but because it had seemed like the best of bad choices.

  The magic wouldn’t bend to an intent I couldn’t commit to.

  I wasn’t the sort of soldier the examiners wanted. I never had been, and I never would be. Even if I’d appreciated the prospect of spending the rest of my life in that type of service, I wasn’t meant to be Champion.

  Leonie exhaled sharply, and the curly-haired boy kicked out a leg. I stiffened, groping for a casting, but he stilled again.

  She shook her head. “I’m all right,” she said. “I can keep at it a little while longer.”

  Prisha scanned the ruin we’d made of the arena. “No wonder the Dulls are afraid of mages,” she muttered. “If we’re capable of doing this to each other...”

  “True,” I said with a hoarse laugh. If the magicless ever caught an inkling that the Confed encouraged their own kids to slaughter each other, they’d never trust any mage again. The examiners would never have set up a test like this without that shield over the arena to eliminate any risk of the truth seeping out—

  I froze, my good hand closing so tightly around one of the stump’s sharp points that the stone stung my palm.

  If the shield were no longer over the arena, they’d stop the Exam. A conjuring that immense, that powerful, must have required hours to build. If it were demolished, there’d be no hasty reconstruction.

  It’d take more of a mage than I was to break their conjuring, of course... but I didn’t actually need to break it, did I? I merely needed them to believe I was going to. I had my tools: I had tricks and my “silver” tongue. I had my words.

  I had exactly the right person to say them to.

  I drew myself tall and sucked in a breath. “That’s it,” I said as if to the entire rest of the group. “I think I can end the Exam now—at least, I’m going to attempt to. I’ll break the shield they built around the arena, and then I’ll project what’s happening here up over the island, so everyone in the city can see what the examiners are making us do. They’ll have to put a stop to this madness then.”

  Desmond’s eyebrows rose. Rocío gave me a little nod without removing her focus from her target, as if she had faith I could pull all that off if I said I could. My throat constricted at that gesture, but it was Prisha’s reaction I was most interested in.

  She stared at me, her shoulders rigid. “Finn,” she said, “they’ll burn you out.”

  “I know.” Suggesting insurrection on this scale wouldn’t go unpunished regardless of my success. “They probably will anyway.”

  She pushed herself upright and pulled me toward the hedge. “You can’t,” she said, pitching her voice low. “They’ll see it as an act of rebellion.”

  “It is an act of rebellion,” I said. “It’s what I need to do.”

  “There has to be something else we can try,” Prisha protested. “You can’t just throw your chances away.”

  I’m not, I thought. I’m taking a chance.

  “This is the best strategy I can think of. I have to contribute somehow. But don’t worry about me. They’ll find out what I’m up to as soon as the shield is down anyway. So you do what you have to do too.”

  They must have given her some way to communicate with them even in here, one that didn’t require magic passing through the barrier. Why else would they have informed her of that detail in the first place?

  I hadn’t anticipated the lift of her chin and the flash of her eyes.

  “No,” she said with a quaver. “I can’t turn you in. I won’t. I shouldn’t have reported on anyone before, and I’m done with it.”

  It turned out it was possible for one’s heart to swell and sink at the same time. Any other moment, I’d have loved my best friend for that conviction, but it was the opposite of what I needed right now. I wasn’t going to break the shield. I doubted I’d make even enough of a dent for the examiners to notice I was trying to unless she tipped them off.

  “Pree…” I said, my voice thick. Maybe it hadn’t been fair anyway, to trick her, to leave whatever became of me on her conscience. She’d never turned her back on me. I set my hand on her arm, leaning close. “I want you to tell them,” I said quickly. “I need you to. That’s the only way this plan works.”

  Prisha held my gaze, her brow knitting—and then relaxing. I’d been afraid she might still argue, but all she said was, “Are you sure about this?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.” She twisted her hand to squeeze my arm in turn, and I knew I’d been right to count on her. Maybe the chasm that had opened between us wasn’t as insurmountable as it had seemed last night.

  She hurried off and ducked into one of the hovels.

  I approached the hedge wall. I had to make my performance convincing if the examiners were going to believe I posed a real threat.

  I rested my hands against the warm metal brambles, avoiding the razor edges. Then I shut my eyes and extended my awareness upward to hearken the hiss of the massive conjured shield.

  My reflex was to turn to my memorized Classical verses for one that matched my intent. The vast spread of the barrier loomed above me, and my headache stabbed through my skull. No, I needed more. I needed words as close to the core of me as I could delve.

  A casting didn’t require ancient Greek or Latin. It merely needed to speak to me so I could speak to the magic through it.

  A tune swam up from my memory, from one of my mother’s favorite albums when I’d been little. She’d mostly played it when Margo and Hugh were out with friends for the evening and Dad was working late. I’d learned the lyrics to every song so I could sing along with it—with her. It had been one bond I’d shared with her that the rest of the family hadn’t, and when I was six years old and my world much smaller, it had never occurred to me I’d want more.

  “And the walls will bend, and the walls will break,” I began. I channeled all my intent into the melody and into propelling the magic up toward the shield with it. My voice rose. Let the whole arena hear it. “And when we look up, there’ll be no mistake.”

  The energy I was conducting vibrated through me, into the hedge and up to the tightly woven
barrier. The shield held firm against my faint pressure, but like Patroclus donning Achilles’s armor, the semblance of greatness was all that mattered.

  I called illusions from the magic, one after another: sparks shooting, fissures gleaming. The examiners had to look down and see their shield cracking. They had to come.

  They didn’t. The throbbing of my headache burrowed down the back of my head to my neck. Sparks danced not only on the shield but behind my eyes. I belted out the lyric again. The shield even trembled as my illusion swam across it. That was the most impact I could manage.

  Where were they? If they didn’t show up soon, I wouldn’t be able to hold even the illusion of power. They’d see through my bluff.

  I’d have failed yet again.

  My hands clenched the brambles. Maybe I had to stop bluffing. I reached down and thrust all the will I had in me upward. “And the walls will bend, and the walls will break,” I sang, my voice shaking with the effort. Every shred of emotion I had in me, I pressed into the shield.

  O Spirit, hear my plea. Let me do this one small thing. Just break. Just break and be done.

  The headache pierced straight down my spine. I swayed on my feet. My next inhale shuddered into my lungs.

  I couldn’t penetrate it.

  A touch tingled across my back, one I hearkened more than felt. Even in my foggy state, I read Rocío in it, her intent like a solid stream of light beaming through the scattered energies around us. She extended herself to me in a question, an offering.

  My entire body balked. No. How could I take more from the girl who’d sacrificed too much for me already? I’d thought I could see through this one act by myself—

  But I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t.

  She was offering because she believed in me, in my plan—and because I needed her. I wasn’t going to be the real hero here. If the best I could contribute was to become a tool to direct her power, at least I could trust I was in good hands.