Page 19 of The Tribes of Magic (Paragons #3)

THE FALL

I t was right in front of me in big, bold text, but I still couldn’t believe it. Even as I stared at the names on the Scoreboard, my mind couldn’t process what I was seeing—and what I wasn’t seeing. A name that was not on the list but should have been. A name no one had ever doubted would be there.

Bronte Vance.

I glanced at Bronte, who was still gripping my right arm like she was drowning.

“We’re already down two teammates. We can’t lose another.” Dutch was so stunned, his lips were hardly moving at all. “Something is wrong. It can’t be. Bronte was in first place. If they can kick her out of the Program, they can kick out anyone.” His eyes met mine. “Savannah, you have to fix this.”

If only I knew how. But none of this made any sense at all.

Bronte’s words echoed my thoughts. “I don’t understand how this happened,” she muttered.

Zoe’s face glowed with delight. A big smirk was painted on her face. “It’s justice. Bronte Vance—the star student, the perfect princess, her high-and-mighty highness—has been kicked off the Scoreboard. You’re not there.” Zoe shoved her finger in Bronte’s face. “But I am.”

Sure enough, Zoe was still there. Everyone was, except Bronte. How could Zoe be there and not Bronte? It just wasn’t right.

“How is this even possible?” Bronte wondered.

Some of the Apprentices in the crowd were asking the very same thing.

Ms. Featherdale had the answer. “Bronte Vance has been disqualified.”

“Disqualified?” Bronte muttered weakly. “How?”

Zoe chomped down on that bit of news like a tiger on a fat chunk of steak. “Ooh, it looks like I was talking to the wrong cheater, Bronte.” She laughed. “You must have done something really bad if they disqualified you. Maybe you’ll even be exiled.”

She looked delighted by the idea.

“Exiled.” Bronte’s legs collapsed, and she sank like a dead weight.

Dutch and I could barely hold her up.

The word ‘disqualified’ slithered through the shocked crowd. All eyes were on Bronte. The whole thing was unthinkable. Bronte had dominated the top spot on the Scoreboard since day one.

Whispers of ‘the cheater’ bubbled up from the crowd, followed by ‘finally punished’. And then what was left of Bronte’s composure finally crumbled. She slouched over and tried to make herself very small. It didn’t work of course. Everyone was looking at her.

A tall and bony woman swept through the crowd, her head held high. She was far stronger than she looked. She lifted Bronte into her arms as though she weighed nothing.

Then she looked at me. “You must be Savannah Winters.”

“How did you?—”

“I’m Isla Vance,” she said. “Bronte’s mother.”

“Mrs. Vance?” I looked at Dutch, who shrugged like he didn’t know what was going on here either. “What are you doing here?”

“Please come with me. Bring your teammate.”

Mrs. Vance carried Bronte through the sea of snickering Apprentices. Dutch and I followed her down the street and entered the Interchange. We took the escalator to a level that overlooked the train tracks. Soon we came to a small office building, an anomaly among the tall skyscrapers.

A man was waiting inside the office, his large hands stuffed into the too-small pockets of his fancy black pants. As soon as he saw me, he freed his hands and rushed forward to greet me. “Savannah Winters! So glad to see you, so glad to see you.” He gave me a long and rigorous handshake.

“Uh, nice to see you too,” I said. “But who are you?”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Winters. I forgot to introduce myself. I am Gregory Vance, Mayor of Killfield.”

“You’re Bronte’s dad?”

“Indeed.”

“But this isn’t your office.”

His grin was practiced, like he was used to standing in front of a camera. “How did you guess?”

“We aren’t in Killfield.”

“Yes, I borrowed my friend Angus’s office. Angus Black, the Mayor of the Interchange.”

The Interchange was hardly larger than the train station, which itself consisted of only a few platforms, several shops, and the Spirit Tree.

“Small district,” I commented.

Mayor Vance nodded, still smiling. “Indeed it is. So, shall we get down to business? I suppose you know why Mrs. Vance and I have asked you here?”

“I take it this has something to do with Bronte?”

“Yes, of course.” He paced a few times in front of me, then stopped to look at his daughter, who was hiding under the desk, gripping one of the legs so hard that her knuckles had gone snow white. “Savannah, you’re quite famous in the Fortress for your ability to solve big problems.”

That was a nice way of putting it. Most people, in particular my fellow Apprentices, would have called my talent for solving mysteries infamous .

And so would the mayor himself, just a few minutes ago, I was willing to bet.

The Vances seemed like good, decent folks, the sort of people who believed the law was infallible, and all you had to do was follow it and everything would turn out perfectly for you.

I guess they’d changed their minds.

“We need you to use your skills to help Bronte,” said Mayor Vance.

“I don’t see what I can do,” I replied honestly. “Once the General makes a decision, there’s nothing anyone can do to change it.” I shook my head. “Especially not a mere Apprentice.”

The General did not like teenagers. He thought we were all ticking time bombs, just waiting to go off. He must have really hated that the Government needed us.

“It wasn’t the General who removed Bronte from the Program. He hasn’t even been to the Black Obelisk today. He’s been caught up in Government meetings all day. Someone else did this to our daughter, a senator. He’s filling in for the General today. Senator Gaines.”

“I’ve heard of him. So you want me to change his mind? You want me to convince him to reinstate Bronte? I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“We’re not asking you to change the Senator’s mind.” Mrs. Vance smoothed out her perfect blonde bun. Her hair was pulled back so tightly, it stretched her skin. “We’re asking you to prove Bronte’s innocence.”

“I don’t understand.” I exchanged a look with Dutch. “What exactly does Senator Gaines think Bronte did wrong?”

Mayor Vance cleaned his glasses with the corner of his vest. “Bronte was disqualified for suspicious activity.”

“What kind of suspicious activity?”

Mayor Vance kept on cleaning his glasses, even though they were already spotless. “Senator Gaines discovered that Bronte—allegedly—wandered into a restricted area. Apparently, she was caught in the act on video surveillance.”

Bronte wandering into a restricted area? No way. I didn’t care if they caught her on camera. I just couldn’t believe it. That wasn’t Bronte.

A couple weeks ago, during one of our assessments, she’d had a panic attack when she thought her test pencil was a few millimeters too short. She thought she’d lose points if anyone ‘caught’ her with that pencil. Someone like that would rather self-destruct than break the rules.

“I’ll do everything I can to clear Bronte’s name and get to the bottom of this,” I promised her father.

“Thank you.” A tentative smile touched his lips. A smile full of hope.

He thought the case was as good as solved. I hoped I wouldn’t disappoint him. More importantly, I hoped I wouldn’t fail my friend. Because if I did—if Bronte’s dream of becoming a Knight died—I wasn’t sure she’d ever recover.

She was still hiding under the desk, resisting her parents’ attempts to coax her out of there. She didn’t even seem to notice when Dutch and I left the room.

“Wow, Bronte’s parents sure have a lot of faith in you,” he commented.

We were alone here in a rock garden at the edge of the Interchange. We could hear the other Apprentices, but we couldn’t see them. It sounded like they were still waiting outside the Black Obelisk. I could hear a bunch of them discussing Bronte and our disqualified classmates.

“I guess Bronte’s parents think they have no choice but to put faith in me.

Bronte’s dad is the mayor of Killfield, Dutch.

That means he has a fair amount of power.

I bet he already tried to fix this mess on his own and was unsuccessful.

I’m his last and only hope of clearing his daughter’s name.

He must have heard enough about me to know I would not abandon Bronte. ”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” he sighed. “You just can’t help yourself.”

“You aren’t abandoning her either.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you? You could have gone back to the other Apprentices, and you didn’t.

And do you know what that tells me? Deep down, beneath that tough-guy facade, you are actually a decent person.

You care. You want to help Bronte. You know it’s the right thing to do. That’s why you’re here.”

Dutch frowned at me. “So, where do we start?”

“Mayor Vance said the Watchers caught Bronte on video. Clearly, that video is a fake.”

“Is it?”

“Of course! How could you even think Bronte would break the rules? She’s not me, Dutch.”

“No, she’s definitely not.” He rubbed his chin. “But I’ve been thinking about it. Bronte does really want to win. Maybe she had to break a few rules to do it.”

“If that’s what you think, walk away now.”

He stayed exactly where he was.

“That’s what I thought. I knew you weren’t such a pessimist, Dutch.”

Silence descended for a moment, then Dutch said, “Savannah, you realize that by doing this, by helping Bronte, you are risking your own position in the Program.”

“Bronte’s your teammate too, Dutch. We all swim or sink together.”

“If I kick the hornet’s nest, I’ll definitely sink. Senator Gaines is very powerful, Savannah. He had to be in order to remove the top-performing Apprentice. I do not want to make an enemy of the Senator. And neither do you, by the way. This could end very badly for us.”

I was trying hard not to think about that. “I know, Dutch, but whoever framed Bronte, what they did is wrong.”

“If we get kicked out of the Program, that would be wrong too.”

“I can’t sacrifice Bronte because I’m scared. What kind of person would that make me if I let her dream of becoming a Knight die so that mine could live on?”

Dutch set his hands on my shoulders and said with solemn eyes, “It would make you only human, Savannah. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

I shook my head. “No. Being a Knight is about so much more. It’s about being better than ‘only human’.”

“Look, I don’t want to lose Bronte either. I want our team to succeed. We’ve already lost Asher and Kylie. But you need to face the reality that there might not be anything we can do but hurt ourselves.”

“Sure, we could do nothing to protect ourselves, but could you really live with that? Because I sure couldn’t. We might become Knights, but we wouldn’t deserve to be Knights. Knights are noble, they’re good, and they do the right thing, no matter what.”

I was choking up just thinking about all that I was risking after working so hard for so long. My entire future was at stake. Even so, I knew I was right. Helping Bronte was the right thing to do.

There was a long, heavy silence, then finally Dutch spoke. “Ok, Savannah. I’m with you. But how are we going to prove Bronte’s innocence?”

My mind went back to his heated competition with Bronte earlier. And our run-in with Zoe at the Scoreboard. It was all a competition. Life was a competition. And in a competition, some people had to fail so that others could succeed.

That’s what I needed to focus on.

To clear Bronte’s name, first I had to ask myself one thing: who had the most to gain from her fall from grace. Once I had the answer to that question, I’d be one step closer to saving her.