The Protection of Ren Crown (29 page)

Okai and the rocks immediately welcomed us. Guard Rock poked Will's shoe twice with his stick in competitive banter.

I quickly located base materials and pulled up the relevant documents on my reader while Will opened his engineering notebook and started asking questions. Dare's magic recharge had given me the idea. I didn't know what he had used, but creating a small bit of container magic for Neph couldn't hurt. A little bit of us to reinvigorate her when she needed a charge. She was always helping us.

“Muses run on the vibes that they send out,” Will said as we tinkered in the creepy, but relaxing atmosphere of Okai. “So the seriously large task of calming campus should be keeping them energized. I don't know why Neph has been so drained. But maybe it's something 'muse-y' that doesn't get publicized.”

Guard Rock stood at attention by the door while Guard Friend groomed him. They had hung their farmhouse portrait on the wall, above where they liked to stand. For a second, I contemplated
how
they had hung it. One rock standing on the other?

I focused back on Will, who was looking at me critically. “You okay?” he asked. “You are not as freaked out as I'd expect with everything going on.”

“Calming spell in our room,” I said. “We just got rid of it, but I've still got the remnants partially riding me.”

Will frowned, then nodded. “And Neph is your muse. Maybe that's it.”

“What? Me being calmed affects
Neph
?”

He shrugged. “If it's preventing her feedback loop from kicking in, maybe? I'll look it up. She looked tired, but not in danger of detonation. We turned off the spells in our room right away. Mike hates them, and they lessen my desire to create. For most people it is easier to control magic when they are focused and calm. Maybe Mike and I need stress and chaos in order to get things done.” He shrugged again. “But Mike does have a 'tracker' on the campus system so that he can tell at what level they are dousing us. He is adamant about keeping track. Says it tells you a lot about the administration's emotional state.”

“But...Neph?”

He frowned. “The relaxing vibes that muses exude work on them in the same way. The release of the magic relaxes their system. If she is helping to calm campus, she should be experiencing a strong Zen kickback. But you are her most important component. If she's not getting feedback from you
,
that might be the problem.”

“Wait. Hold it. Rewind. Are you saying that if muses hold energy in instead of releasing it, they overload on stress, and poof?” I motioned a blast outward with my fingers. “Muse bombs?”

“Yup.”

I looked at him in horror.

He chuckled. “With the campus effort, there is no way
any
of them are holding anything in, including Neph. And it's why they have a community—to take care of all the muses and to make sure each one stays on the level. They regulate some things in a pretty draconian way. Lots of the internal regulations benefit the muses. But some of them...” He shook his head. “She doesn't complain to me either and the community keeps information locked in each muse with magic.”

More determined to succeed, an hour later I examined our half-finished prototype. Will had had the great idea to make the container into a sachet, encompassing the magic in a bundle of comforting smells.

“Maybe we should infuse a little of Neph too?” I asked, turning the soft fabric in my hands. Delia had shown me how to make crudely magicked hook and loop fastenings that when pressed would each activate a little burst of the magic within. “Make it so that she feels the feedback loop of helping us, even if it is a false feeling? Or maybe rather than
false
, it is better to say that it would be a memory of the feeling—feeling like she is helping us, even when we aren't near?”

Will nodded decisively. “Yes. Add that to the list.”

We worked on it together, using Neph's lingering magic on both of us to bind bits of ours inside. My magic was naturally neutral to Will's, but the resonance from his time in my sketch and the use of the sketch sword brimming with Christian's magic combined with mine, had set up a good degree of affinity. And we continually worked to figure out better ways of combining our magic. Will was of the opinion that relying on natural sympathy was lazy and laziness should not be rewarded. Will relished challenges.

But sympathy had bound Olivia to me—we would never have become friends if not for that initial tie that had stopped her from expelling me from the room. Sympathy was merely another component of a relationship.

Talking and creating was easy with Will, and we caught up on recent events while we worked.

“You are certain you want to work with Leandred on developing a leech?” Will asked, voice calm, as we put the finishing touches on the sachet just after midnight. Dangerous projects never fazed Will, but there was something strange in his voice.

“Yes. Olivia is livid about it.”

“You'll be fine,” he said, his tone switching to a reassuring one. “And I'm happy to help, if you need it.”

“Thanks.”

He nodded. “You going to tell him about this place?” And there was that strange note again as his voice suddenly shifted to
too
calm.

I examined him as he concentrated on the pouch in his hands. His gaze didn't rise to meet mine. I looked at the workspace around him. Will's solo projects—like his portal technology—were mostly kept in the room he shared with Mike. No matter Will's scoffing, he reaped rewards doing magic near his highly sympathetic roommate. But the projects that Will and I were working on together that required less...legal...means and ingredients, had all migrated here.

I looked over to the rocks. Guard Friend had finished buffing Guard Rock and they were sitting together near the door, keeping watch. Keeping Okai, which Guard Rock and I had found together, safe and private.

“Well?” Will's voice was calm and his eyes were focused on the magic seeping into the sachet. Neither fooled me.

I bumped his shoulder. “No. It's our secret lab, right? With Neph and Olivia keeping an occasional eye on us so we don't Frankenstein out?”

His fingers relaxed around the pouch. “Okay. Yeah. You sure?”

“I'm sure. And Constantine is a home turf kind of guy. He loves playing host.” Spinning webs from his velveteen chair. “If we need to go somewhere else to do the magic, we will find another location.”

I removed the pouch from Will's fingers and placed it in a fiber bag before giving it back to him. “This needs some absorption time. And I have something else for us to work on. Something occurred to me during the time I spent with Alexander Dare today. What do you think about using chaos magic for
skipping
portal pads across space?”

Will brightened, his eyes behind his glasses reflecting his feverish creative thinking along these new lines, and we discussed seriously geeky things all the way back to the dorms.

~*~

I brought Olivia up to date on everything as we carefully scanned for any newly placed calming spells in the room, strengthened our dream wards, and readied for bed.

“You spent four hours on that pouch?” She asked grimly.

I dimmed the lights on her equally grim expression.

“Ren, you worry too much about other people and too little about yourself.”

“Oh, hush. You love me.” I feathered a hand over the ward threads connecting to her. They bloomed brightly in the darkness for a moment before fading to their normal luminescence. I hadn't yet convinced Olivia about adding a glowing night sky canvas to the ceiling, but in the meantime, I could brighten our room in other ways.

Olivia sighed—a resigned sound in the softly lit night—ending her heavy momentary silence. “Good night, Ren.”

Protection of friends: +2

Failures: 0

Chapter Sixteen: The Politics of Class

Olivia answered a knock at our door the next morning while I scrolled news reports.

Whoever was on the other side said nothing and the door clicked back shut. I forked a piece of pancake absently and looked up to see why Olivia was still standing. She stared stone-faced at a letter in her hand.

“First day of class pep talk? You getting a security detail? What is it?” I popped the pancake piece into my mouth and stabbed another.

There was an expression on her face that I couldn't immediately interpret.

“A response to my name in the campus news feeds,” she said. Tight-lipped, she slit the seal on the note, but hesitated before opening it.

I shuffled my reader with the hand that wasn't holding a fork full of pancake, and my magic flowed into the news feeds, using Olivia's name as my search term. News articles folded up and out into spread-out holograms that mimicked splayed newspaper pages.

Olivia Price, who has had five roommates already in her short time at Excelsine, was severely punished for engaging in a magical duel with upstanding legal student Inessa Norrissing. Receiving a Level Three Offense, Price was the first to fire an enchantment. When questioned about the incident, Norrissing confirmed that she had been acting in self-defense and stated, “Price is a danger to fair-minded students and should be—”

I swept the articles together, then slammed them back into the reader and turned it off. “The nerve of her. Don't give it a second thought.”

Olivia didn't answer, so I looked up. Mist was rising from the open note in her hand. Before I could even formulate a question, the mist dropped, coating her skin and sinking inside. Thin veins of magic pushed outward, then suddenly constricted, choking her throat and squeezing her sides. I threw myself forward—my reader and fork clattering on the ground—grabbed her arm, and pushed her toward her bed before her legs gave out. Olivia sat hard on the mattress, the paper naught but ash in her hand.

With quick fingers, I swiped the ashes from her hand, fully expecting to be hit by the same malicious magic just by touching it. But whatever curse had been used, it had either passed, or was specifically made to strike Olivia. “What was that?” I demanded.

“A warning.”

“From whom?” The administration? That was what the Justice Magic was for.

She didn't answer, so while I sent healing vibes—again—through the room wards and our skin contact, I broke down what I knew.

One, Olivia wasn't darkly threatening anyone with vicious retribution. Two, Olivia had hesitated in opening the letter, but had done so nonetheless. Something so foul could not have made it through the delivery system, according to what she had said before, so a letter sent by courier should have made Olivia at least cast basic spells to check the contents. But, three, she had
accepted
the letter, and four, judging by her facial expression immediately before she had opened it, she had known something of what it contained.

She had known who sent it.

I replayed her strange expression in my mind. It had been halfway between broken and resigned.

My hand involuntarily gripped her arm harder. “Your mother sent that to you?”

“I was warned.”

“Warned?” White-hot fury scorched me and I released her before any of it transferred accidentally. “I'll show her warned.” I marched over to my dropped reader. “We are going to—”

“Ren.”

“—put up a three-powered ward on anything crossing the threshold to—”

“I need to respond.”

“—reflect Armageddon back on anyone who
dares—”

“I need you to leave, Ren.”

“—to try something like that again. In fact—”

“
Go.”

“What?” I asked, derailed. “
Go
?”

She took a deep breath. “I need to respond.”

“Fantastic,” I said with relish. With a flick of my wrist, I flipped my reader to display Juleston's warding tome in all its humongous glory and started to flick pertinent pages and illustrations out into the air in front of me and to my sides, gathering a series of thick images and text around me that I could work with and combine. “Just give me a second to devise an appropriate response.”

There were some very edge-of-legal wards I could work with. I flipped to the next page. Like
this
one. I snapped it out to join the others and let a trickle of magic paint the air with a note from my mind on how I could enhance it. Manipulating wards was firmly in my skill set at this point, and Helen Price was going to
regret
her actions when I was finished. Olivia was
my
roommate.

“You can't
do
anything, Ren. And you can't be in here while I respond. The magic will know.”

“Good.” I flicked out another image.

“No.
Not
good
.
She doesn't know about you. She didn't even ask any questions about my roommate when she was here. Verisetti's magic works
that well
. But if you put something deliberate on the returned magic—”

“Oh, I'll give her deliberate.” I smiled at my reader and flicked a power graph a foot out from its top and combined it with two of the images already in that space.

“No. You don’t understand. She'll get rid of you. She'll
really
get rid of you.”

“She can tr—”

“
Please
.”

I froze. Surrounded by a collage of potential vengeance, my hands shook as I choked on unsatisfied fury. Olivia never begged.

I gave a short, tense nod. “I'll go.” But that didn't mean I'd do nothing. I carefully saved my research cloud and magical mind map, and folded them back into my reader.

She was silent as I cleaned up my dropped pancakes, gathered my things together, then ran my fingers along the healing ward—draining part of my magic in order to power hers faster.

“I have politics at ten, then a squad thing at one. Lunch in between?”

“Yes.”

“Write if you need anything,” I said, deliberately softening my tone. “I'll skip politics.”

“Thank you.” There was fierce warmth to her tight words.

But the tension that had coiled within me wouldn't leave.

Protection of friends: -1

Failures: +1

I didn't like the new scoreboard.

I headed directly to the Midlands. I had an hour before class, and I was going to use it well. The rocks greeted me happily and I told them what a good job they were doing. Their bellies protruded proudly.