The Protection of Ren Crown (28 page)

Eventually
was really the keyword. “There are gazillions of tiles.”

“Well, I haven't numbered them. Unbelievable,” he muttered. His back was tight, as he came to a stop near a red stream under the current, unnaturally lime sky of the Midlands.

“It seemed to be the best way of keeping track,” I said, feeling the need to defend myself. “I come here sometimes. I find it comforting.” I looked over to see a gnarled shrub on the bank eating the remnants of its neighbor.

Dare seemed to be looking for something in the shrubs. “Comforting?” His attention focused on the cannibalistic plant that was now licking and cleaning its thorny chops with a leafed branch. “Most mages are terrified here. And the ones who
do
frequent these levels like to think them full of spiritual chaos.”

I had been unafraid of dying when I began traversing the chaotic, gorgeous, and terrifying levels last term, and by the time I had stopped chasing my brother into death, I had already hooked myself into Okai. If I bypassed Okai for some reason, I had enough experience to know what to expect in the Midlands, but I was walking meat here and I knew it.

I never just
strolled
the Midlands—skipping through brilliantly flowering meadows and frolicking in the sun. I ducked, dove, climbed, ran, and crept with Guard Rock and his super guardian senses at my back.

Dare had taken care of at least twenty beasts that would have eaten me when I was concentrating on the map dragons' magic.

He was still looking at me for a response on why I wasn't terrified. “Well, at your side is the best place to be, right? Wouldn't being afraid question your manliness or something?”

He stared at me for a long moment, and I could feel the heat creeping up my body. Stupid mouth. Stupid crush.

Thankfully, he concentrated on the area around us again. I could feel hidden eyes tracking and watching us—there was always something watching in the Midlands. Dare crouched down near the feral bush and nudged it to the side. His fingers grazed the dirt beneath and dug inside. When he pulled them out, a singed wing of a paper dragon was cradled in his palm. Crouched on the ground, he looked up through the dark hair falling across one eye, and extended it toward me.

I numbly took it from him. Fear finally crept into my emotions.

Doing magic around Dare was dangerous. It would have taken me a vast amount of effort to find the remnants of the dragons—and they were
mine
—but he had tracked this one in less than twenty minutes.

“How...?”

“Traces. Everything leaves them.”

He had found us the night of Christian's death because I had broadcast some sort of trace with my not-yet-Awakened magic. He had tracked me even in the non-magic world.

I edged away from him before I consciously realized what I was doing.

The corners of his eyes tightened and he rose abruptly. “You will need to figure out how to follow traces in order to be effective at this job.” He pointed at the dragon and the stilled map. “Can you do that anywhere?”

“The tracking? Not for a sustained amount of time. And setting up a map requires...sacrifice.”

“What kind of sacrifice?”

Precious paint drops. “Magical sacrifice.”

Sarcasm overcame his features and he opened his mouth. “Specif—”

“Axer.” Lox strode out of a tile slide, Peters trailing him like a spooked Chihuahua. I stuffed the dragon wing into my pocket. “It's Pisces Rising. We still on for the factory hunt and processor check?” Lox asked.

“Yes. As soon as the shadows are out.”

With the way Lox immediately looked at me, I realized that Peters and I were the “shadows.” Lox examined me slowly, then dismissed me and nodded to Dare. The two combat mages started forward, and Peters followed immediately behind them. I trailed, gripping the paper remnant in my pocket and wondering how I was going to keep the secrets I needed to keep.

A sudden shot of tangerine jarred me from my thoughts, and a crash followed. Dare and Lox were still walking, as if nothing had happened, though Dare was lowering his hand.

Looking to my side, I was dully surprised to see a small trollish creature splayed on the ground. A tangerine mist floated away from its body. I checked all of my limbs and sighed.

“Thanks,” I muttered, not bothering to yell it up to Dare. He probably had freaky magical hearing in addition to his other supercharged powers.

Peters was wide-eyed, his eyes darting everywhere. I had been in the Midlands briefly with Peters and Dare just before the bone monster had appeared last term, and though Peters had been uncomfortable then too, he looked far beyond that now. I wondered what had happened to him in his first shadow session with Lox to make the usually irritating boy look this spooked.

He had to have done this before. Peters' birth had probably been recorded on the Justice Squad's roster, he was so into his duty. I snorted.

Peters jumped at the sound.

I frowned. “What's with you?”

“This is nothing like last year.
Nothing
like I signed up for. Twenty squad members have died and been resurrected
at least
once
in the last hour alone.”

Peters and I weren't friends. At all. But he now had my undivided interest. “Why is that different from last year?”

But Peters clammed up and said nothing further.

We finally reached a tile containing Midlands' mist. The mist clung to the edges of the Midlands and always signified an exit. Stepping through the mist, I was surprised to see a crowd had formed on the edges of the Ninth Circle.

The emerald-eyed girl from Dorm One was in one group, along with a few mages who were not part of either squad. Her gaze took in the four of us, then narrowed in on me. She smiled—a social smile that didn't reach her eyes.

Without even a simple farewell to anyone, Peters made a beeline for an arch that would take him to Top Circle, obviously eager to get as far from the Midlands as quickly as possible. The girl stepped into his path and said something. Peters immediately stood straighter and answered, though his face lost none of the strain.

He was freaking
me
out now. Justice Squad members never went into the Midlands on calls alone, but we
did
enter sometimes in groups. What was different about today?

“Squad training tomorrow.”

At the smoothly voiced statement, I jumped and whipped around, imitating Peters' jitters.

Dare's brow rose sardonically at the action. “Then meet me here the day after. Perhaps, get more sleep before you do. Aries Rising in two days. I have your class schedule, so I know you are free.”

He turned and strode back into the Midlands with Lox and the other combat mages.

It wasn't until they had all fully disappeared from view that I realized two things: In my tired and hyper-aware state working so much magic, I had stopped stuttering around him.

And, in the same state, I had offered to figure out how to port him through the Midlands. Something no normal mage could do.

~*~

At dinner, I glumly told Will, Neph, Mike, and Olivia of my fate.

“You are working with whom? Where?” Mike's jaw was someone near his plate of steak. “You have the worst luck.”

“Yeah,” I said morosely.

Olivia's gaze was less sympathetic. “Working with Axer Dare is power. Learn from him. He doesn't give anyone other than his immediate group the time of day.” She meticulously forked her salad. “Power.”

I frowned. “I've seen him help people. He helps all the time.” He helped lots of people. Like me, and me, and more me, all in different, unknowable incarnations.

“Yeah, he helps everyone,” Mike said. “He's a campus protector,
the
campus protector. But he doesn't give those he helps the time of day. Doesn't talk to anyone more than he has to. Saves you, then he's off. Like Bautermann.”

I did a quick lookup on that. Bautermann was this layer's version of a magic-wielding Superman. But a colder, more ruthless type of Superman.

Dare had helped me beyond rote duty, though. Off campus. A whispered sympathy to a bloody, unrecognizable, ordinary girl.

“Bautermann slaughters anyone who gets in his way, Mike,” Will said, half-laughing. “Dare hardly has that sort of need for vengeance.”

Mike pointed his spoon. “Bautermann's motto is that individually caring for strangers is a liability.”

Olivia stabbed a green. “Vengeance is bred in his bones. He is the grandson of Benedict Dare.”

“Bautermann?” I asked, trying to scroll information on my leather bracelet and listen at the same time.

Will and Mike both laughed until they were holding their sides. Finally, Will looked around, then leaned in. “No. The Dare family owns and lives on the island that holds the lost archives. Very valuable. Waged a full-on war three decades ago against the combined military forces of a number of nations in the Second Layer who were trying to take them. The Dares won. Bloodily. They picked off an entire quarter of the forces like ants in a line, and kept them under an anti-resurrection bubble until the first retreat was called.”

I poked at my bracelet without absorbing more information from it, and thought of Dare's statements to his team in the library. About defending Excelsine against all threats, about maintaining its independence from government supervision. A core family value, obviously.

“They destabilized two perfectly adequate governments and completely ruined a third as a result of those battles,” Olivia said. “Not to mention the economic and social impact on the others.”

Mike pointed his spoon at her. “If a government is unstable enough to be overthrown, it shouldn't be attacking nations offshore.”

“Provocation breeds stupidity,” Olivia said dismissively. “The archives
should
be shared, but they were simply the excuse. It was obvious what was going to happen when Maximilian Dare married Sera McEllian. A choice that all knew would provoke war. And no matter how quietly they stick to their island or try to put forth their scion as a protector of the realm, the danger to society will always exist. They will never be able to hide the warlord he could be.”

I blinked. A conversation long ago between Dare and his uncle drifted through my head—‘You play too many team sports. We should have raised you as an assassin instead.’

“They made reparations, entirely of their own volition. They didn't have to.” Mike pointed out.

“Benedict and Maximilian Dare understand politics and manipulation. They destroy everything around them in defense of anything they consider theirs, then helpfully hand service to the realm. Make no mistake, anything a Dare does is plotted meticulously.”

I poked at my potatoes and decided against eye contact of any sort.

“And anyone with access to the family scion needs to take it.” Olivia's voice forced my eyes upward and she gave me a look that brooked no opposition. “Caring for strangers individually is a liability for a warrior. Make yourself not a stranger.”

Mike shook his head. “Become a
target
instead.”

“Many muse groups practice a similar philosophy,” Neph said, nearly out of the blue. She looked and sounded tired. “For the group, the good of all. Never get attached to anything, or anyone, outside of that.”

An uneasy silence stole over the table like a broken link in the chain, combating the calming and re-energizing magic that floated freely in the air.

Will shifted in his chair. “Er, Neph—”

“And other groups teach members to attach,” Neph said, forced calm in her voice again. “Every group is different.”

“And some groups are quite split, are they not?” Olivia said, her voice clipped. “Attaching to treasonous causes within?”

Olivia and Neph held a silent battle of wills, one that discouraged outside participation.

Mike forcefully changed the subject to class schedules that went into effect tomorrow, but I watched Neph's graceful form continue to move wearily and automatically through dinner motions.

As we all cleared up to leave, I touched Neph's arm. “Can I come by?”

I had finally figured out how to use our connection to recharge her, and she had never looked so in need of some energy.

She smiled tiredly and magically dumped her dinner remnants into the trash vault. “I do so wish you could. But I have practice and procedures all night. And they—” Her gaze caught something over my head and her expression closed off. “We are implementing a large-scale project to automatically reset unbalanced emotions on campus and to reinitialize a more balanced atmosphere hourly in order to reassure the elders and unseat the need for any outside presence.” She looked down. “Don't come by tonight. Tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

Now that we had limited our room's calming spells, the forced calming of the masses sounded far more...nefarious again. But I trusted Neph. And even if I didn't, the threads that connected us were pure and reassuring.

I watched her gracefully walk to join the other muses, slightly apart, but grudgingly included as they exited en masse.

I felt Will come up to my side. “Will?”

“Ren?” He answered in a cheeky voice, but his voice contained a subdued note beneath it as he too watched Neph leave.

“New project,” I said, watching Neph disappear from view. “Three to four hours. Do you have time?”

I needed to read all of those leech books as quickly as I could, but Neph needed me now and I had something particular in mind to help her.

Will nodded, and I knew that his quick mind understood the minimum of what I was asking, and for whom the project was intended. We had worked together far too frequently—and the essence of my bond with my brother still bound us—for him not to extrapolate from the angle of my gaze and the tone of my voice.

“Of course. Lead the way.”

We skirted by the watchdogs carefully, entering the Midlands by way of a long, stony section of the Ninth Circle that frequently slid into the chaos. Because of the rockslides and ease of injury when entering a place where injured mages could get
eaten
, it was beyond stupid to enter the Midlands in any part of said section. That made it perfect for us.