Firebreak, p.8
Firebreak, page 8
“It makes a lot of sense when you think about it,” Gecka offered.
“Uh, no, it actually makes no sense whatsoever. My introduction to the Blades was a fistfight in the showers my first week here.”
Gecka snickered, revealing sharp little teeth. “Yeah, you totally messed Tullo’s foot up. He was limping for a week.”
Behind her, Tullo silently glowered, his gaze fixed on the floor at his feet.
“You’re the biggest bullies in this school.”
“We prefer to think of it as winnowing out the weak,” Gecka said. “Separating the wheat from the chaff.”
“Actions mean a lot more than words, as far as I’m concerned. And your actions suck.”
“Only because you don’t see the big picture yet. But you could. We’re not tapping anyone else in the second-year class, just so ya know. Jellica wants you. Just you.”
Vail’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Lemme count a few ways. One, you survived your first year. Proves you’ve got potential.”
“Literally everyone in this school right now survived their first year. That doesn’t make me special.”
Gecka put one hand on her hip. “You can actually throw down. You can’t say that about everyone here, and don’t make me laugh by trying. Most of these kids are creampuffs.”
“Dalton’s tougher than I am.”
“Yeah, true, but that’s just part of the big picture. Dalton’s got some solid moves, and he’s a cutie, which is a plus in my book, but magic-wise he’s…fine? You, on the other hand, have some fire in you. Literally. Heard how you blew up Elmer’s hopper when he tried to escape.”
“That wasn’t all me,” Vail said. “I just taught him a lesson about the proper storage of propane tanks.”
“Battlefield conjuration, in a first-year student. That’s remarkable. Did no one tell you that?” Gecka tilted her head, studying Vail’s face. “Did nobody tell you how rare that is? I guess that makes sense.”
“Totally,” Tullo said.
Vail looked between them, not following. “How so?”
“Well, just that human nature is human nature, no matter what world you come from. Sometimes folks see a supposed friend excel, somebody they should celebrate, and they just…don’t. Because lifting you up means standing in your shadow, and they can’t deal with that.”
“Some people can’t handle a little friendly competition,” Tullo added.
“I’m gonna bet,” Gecka said, “that when you were back home, you played sports in school. Am I right?”
Vail nodded. “Track and field, and puckslam. I mean, obviously amateur puckslam, without the barbed wire and explosives.”
Gecka stared at her. “I have no idea what that is, yet I am suddenly possessed with a ferocious need to play it. Okay though — point being, you know the difference between a self-centered superstar and a team, right? A solo artist doesn’t care about anything but themselves. Their rise, their shine. A good team is a collection of athletes who train together, fight together, and win or lose together. It doesn’t matter who scored the winning point. The whole team shares one trophy. I look at you, and you know what I see?”
“Do tell.”
“A girl who belongs on a team, because she understands the power in it. But you’re surrounded by wannabe solo superstars. The Sept of Blades is a team. We work hard, we play hard, and we do it together, so that we can lift each other to new heights. Nobody gets left behind, everybody gets pushed to their limit. After all, that’s the only way to learn what you’re really capable of.”
“You also terrorize people,” Vail said, her voice flat.
Gecka shrugged. “You’ve seen what happens around here. I heard you were in the classroom when Erik died last year. Watched him melt like ice cream on a summer afternoon.”
Vail fought to keep her face a mask of stone.
“Jellica thinks, this school sometimes recruits kids who shouldn’t be here. Kids who are just going to get hurt, probably even killed, if they stick around. I bet if Erik still had a mouth to talk with, he’d say he wishes we bullied him out of here before it was too late. But he can’t. Because he’s dead.”
“And you all do whatever Jellica says?”
Gecka snickered. “Nah. Eyes over here now. Look at me. Don’t look at Tullo, he’s a dork. Look at me.”
“Hey,” Tullo snapped.
Gecka ignored him. “Look at me and tell me true: have I ever done anything bad to you? Even said a single nasty word in your direction? And shooting you with a paintball doesn’t count. Professor Chalk told me to do that.”
Vail thought back. She had to admit, with a weak shrug, that Gecka hadn’t. She had solid beef with a couple of the Blades, but not with her.
“You don’t have to agree with everything the Sept does to be a member. You don’t even have to agree with Jellica as long as you respect her position as our team captain. She likes it when we argue with her. Keeps her on her toes. But we can give you something your classes here can’t. Not even Professor Chalk can, bless his crusty butt.”
“Yeah?” Vail said. “What’s that?”
“I’ve seen your moves, girl.” Gecka fixed her with a hungry smile. “You want to protect people. That’s your nature. Not mine — I’m more of an attack dog — but I respect your game. We can give you a whole team. Better than that, we can make you strong. Because all the power you need is inside you, right now. It just needs a little help to bust out. And if you decide you hate it, you can always quit, so why not—”
Her sales pitch was cut short by a flurry of movement. Jellica, flanked by a pair of fourth-year Blades who Vail hadn’t met yet, strode across the library floor, silver scarves glittering. Jellica looked to Tullo and Gecka and jerked a thumb over her shoulder.
“We ride. Now. I was listening in on the professors. The pickets just triggered in two points at once, by the western and eastern beaches.”
“They’re testing us,” Tullo said.
Jellica nodded, steely. “I hope they are. Let’s see if we can crash the party. If we beat the professors to the punch, maybe we can finish this whole sad mess up before dinnertime.”
“Network boys on the menu,” Gecka said, running the tip of her tongue across her sharp little teeth. “I like. Let’s eat.”
Jellica’s eyes locked onto Vail’s.
“School isn’t going to protect itself. You coming or what?” she said.
Vail thought about it, but not for very long. She closed her notebook.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m in.”
Chapter eleven
Clark and Emile whisked Amy away from the library and led her toward the spiraling central staircase. But as they were about to ascend, Professor Kamaka — lumbering up the hall in the other direction — raised a beefy hand.
“Hold up, pards.” He pointed to Amy. “I need to borrow that one for a minute.”
Clarke’s eyebrows rose. Something in his expression told Amy that he knew exactly what this was about. “Yes, sir.”
“Good man. Go on, I’ll return her when I’m finished.”
Clarke squeezed Amy’s shoulder and nodded at the brass compass insignia on her lapel.
“Come up and find us when you’re done. Now that you’ve got one of our medallions, the stairs should let you up without an escort.”
The older Coins climbed the stairs. Left alone with the professor, Amy forced a nervous smile.
“I’m not already in trouble, am I? I mean, the year just started.”
“Oh, I know what you did.” Kamaka managed a stern expression for all of two seconds before he broke into a big, toothy grin. “Just messin’ with ya! Wow, the look on your face just now. If I didn’t know better, I’d be suspicious.”
Amy sighed. “Just, uh…just a long day.”
“And it’s about to get longer, but in a good way, hopefully. You already had your first back-to-school class with Lanca, right?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, so did he tell you about the opportunities for extra credit—”
He suddenly stopped mid-sentence, winced, and touched his fingers to his temple.
“Professor?”
“I’m fine, just have that warning system tuned way too loud. Hold up a sec, I think we might have to put a pin in this conversation.”
Chen Lan flowed down the hall, slippered feet dangling an inch off the polished floorboards, her long robes billowing behind her. Lanca jogged in her wake. Amy hadn’t seen him run since the showdown at the Night Market, and his eyes looked much the same now as they had that night — stony, ruthless, a glimpse of the killer under the genial professor’s mask.
“Incursion,” the headmistress said.
“Two of ‘em,” Kamaka replied. “Either that, or those pickets are so loud my ears are ringin’.”
“Two,” Lanca agreed. “They’re hitting us from the east and west sides of the island at the same time. It’s coordinated.”
All three went silent for a second, and in that heartbeat Amy felt it too. A rush of air, popping in her ears as the winds of magic shifted hard in one direction, then the other, zigzagging.
“Did they just…leave?” Lanca said.
“We need to check it out.” Chen Lan turned to Kamaka. “Take the east side. Lanca and I will take the west, and Professor Chalk will coordinate from here. I’ll have Mr. Orris send word to Mallory down at her hut and warn her to keep an eye out.”
“On it, boss.” Kamaka turned to Amy. “C’mon, we can talk on the go.”
She blinked. “Me?”
“Yeah, you. Try to keep up.”
On the way out, they made a detour. Amy felt a familiar chill as she looked into the school’s dusty, cavernous gymnasium. Last year, Professor Chalk had used it as the staging ground for one of their most grueling pass-or-fail tests. Today it was being put to a more mundane use, as a quartet of students in gym shirts and shorts dribbled a ball up and down the faded court. Not quite basketball, she thought, as the player with the ball sent it flying — literally. It changed arc in midair, whipped in a circle around a would-be defender, bounced off the bleachers in a perfect bank-shot, and landed in his partner’s open hands.
“Hey, kids,” Kamaka called out. “I need some muscle and some hustle. You’re drafted, let’s move.”
Like old hands, they fell into step and followed him out to the courtyard. Five minutes later, the pack was jogging through the woods outside the Academy walls, cutting across winding paths and ducking under gnarled tree limbs. Amy quietly wanted to die. Her school uniform was caked with sweat. She’d taken off her jacket to cup it under one arm, and the hem of her long skirt caught on every briar and bramble.
“I’m not really qualified for this,” she gasped.
“Just stay behind me,” the professor told her. His bulk belied his agility. He flowed through the forest like he was part of it, effortlessly clambering over fallen logs and leaping patches of marshy ground in a smooth, constant, rolling gait. “Feels like they already turned around and left, but we gotta check it out anyway. I didn’t bring you out here for a fight. You’ve actually met this Elmer guy twice, and you saw his rat-monster. If they left any clues behind, you might pick up on something that I won’t.”
She couldn’t fault his logic. She just wished it didn’t involve so much running.
Her lungs were burning by the time they reached the picket line. Kamaka pulled up short, held up a hand to wave the students back, and dropped to one knee in the tall grass. Amy and the others followed his lead.
The picket was dead ahead, a hickory staff dripping with silver and copper chains. It didn’t look disturbed. Amy could see two other staffs a little distance to the north and south, forming an invisible wall against the invaders.
A bush rustled. She tensed, reflexively, until a chipmunk darted out and scooted up the nearest tree.
Nothing else moved. The wind rustled through the boughs, making them shiver, and a stray leaf tumbled to the forest bed. All else was silence. Not even birdsong disturbed the stillness.
In that silence, Amy opened her senses. There was something in the air here, a miasma, toxic and rancid. A moral rot. Her mind grasped the latent magic in the air and translated it into symbol. In her mind’s eye, she saw a car, a low, greasy, rusty rattletrap on its last miles, blood splattered across the front bumper, windows tinted black. It rolled across the picket line and then spun around in a donut, tires squealing, blasting smoke into the forest air from a filthy exhaust pipe before it lurched back the way it came, kicking up mud until it vanished.
Symbolic, of course, but she understood the vision. The toxic remnant in the air wasn’t some kind of curse or trap. It was just residue, the ghost of a mind twisted by cruelty and hate. The interloper was gone. Not long gone, though. The trail was too fresh. She felt it fading by the second.
Across the line, on the other side of the picket, nothing moved. But that didn’t change the feeling in her gut.
“He’s watching us,” she whispered.
“Which one?” Kamaka breathed.
“Shaddock, I think. I only saw him the one time, but he had this…” Amy gestured at her head. “Heaviness. Dirtiness. Like he had a cancer in him, but instead of killing him it was making him stronger somehow.”
He nodded. “Checks out. Far as we know, these rat-things evolved by sucking down raw runoff from a leaky magical reactor. Their physiology ain’t what I’d call normal.”
Amy eyed him sidelong. “Things? Plural?”
“Relax. Elmer’s only got the one. Unless he manages to call for help, in which case we could be up to our butts in murder-rodents, so we should probably stop that from happening.”
Kamaka dug in his pocket and pulled out a tight fist. He raised his hand to his lips, uncurled his fingers to reveal a small mound of glittering blue-pink dust, and puffed his cheeks. The dust billowed out on a gust of breath. It became an arrow, hunting, seeking between the trees, leaving a shimmer-trail in its wake.
“Everybody stay low,” he murmured. “My seeker-charm will sound off if it finds anything with a heartbeat out there. Figure he’s probably trying to lure us close, then pick us off at range.”
Amy thought about her face-off with Shaddock at the Night Market, how she’d used Mr. Orris’s catspaw rifle to lure him into the woods. She’d known going in that the weapon wouldn’t fire. The Vapor-Lock was a well-known charm that stopped the chemical process of combustion in its tracks, so bringing a gun to a mage-fight was a fool’s choice.
“He laughed at me when I held him at gunpoint,” Amy whispered back. “I mean, he didn’t know I was bluffing, but still. Can’t imagine he’d try to use one against us.”
“Ain’t a gun I’m worried about. They’ve been out here for a while, living off the land. Drop me in these woods, gimme a deer carcass with strong sinew, some branches and a knife to whittle with, and I’ll have a crude but functional bow — plus arrows — in less than an hour. Can make a spear even faster than that. Or, heck, just pick up a nice big rock and give it a throw.”
A tiny pinch squeezed Amy’s sinuses and Kamaka held up his open hand. The glitter-arrow came whining back, smacking into his palm, and he caught the fistful of dust before shoving it back into his hip pocket.
“Huh. Nothin’. If he was watching us, he’s gone now.”
What’s the point, then? Why lure us out here and not set a trap, or attack us, or do anything at all? It was like a kid playing a game of ding-dong ditch, ringing a doorbell and then running away just to annoy the next-door neighbor. Petty. And the stakes out here were life and death. Elmer and Shaddock couldn’t afford to be petty right now.
Plus, they coordinated. Pushed the line on opposite sides of the island at the same time. Why? Come on, Amy. You can figure this out.
The answer, when she saw it, didn’t come from a book of magic or the Academy’s labyrinthine library. It emerged from the memory of a tattered paperback she’d savored in her old one-room small-town library back in Holybrook.
“This might sound silly…” she said.
“Try me.”
“Okay, so, I used to read a ton of fantasy novels. A story I really liked was about this swashbuckling thief—” She snapped her fingers, trying to remember the name but failing. “Anyway, in this one adventure he was trying to break into a king’s castle and steal his crown jewels. Before he could make a plan, he needed to figure out how fast the city guard would respond to trouble. So he started a small fire outside the keep, hid, and waited. Once the guards showed up, he knew exactly how much time he’d have if things went wrong during the burglary.”
Kamaka ran his hand along his sweaty lantern jaw. “You think they’re testin’ us.”
“It makes sense, right? They’re trapped here on the outskirts, and they can’t leave the island without getting through us first. If they’re thinking about invading the school, seeing how we react to a possible attack is the first step.”
“I like it. I mean, I don’t like it, but you get the idea.” He looked back at the four student athletes, crouched and ready in the tall grass. “We’re gonna head on back to the school. You four go first. I’ll hang back a little and make sure nobody sneaks up on you from behind. Amy, stick with me. We still gotta talk.”
Chapter twelve
On the other side of the island, the Blades flowed like a silent tide. They spread out, metallic scarves rippling in the wind and gleaming from the sunlight that peeked through the trees. As they ran, signals flashed between them, keeping the line tight. Vail felt the wind in her curly hair as she loped with the pack, hungry for trouble.
Jellica held up a clenched fist and clicked her tongue twice. As one, the others grabbed cover, going to their bellies in the dirt or diving behind trees. Gecka grabbed Vail’s wrist and yanked her down behind the scorched ruin of a lightning-blasted stump.
She put her fingertip to her lips, but Vail had already gotten the message. She froze, ears perked, ready for anything.
