Page 3 of The Tribes of Magic (Paragons #3)
DIVISIONS
B reakfast was a mixed affair, my attention divided between devouring my scrambled eggs, changing out my soggy clothes for fresh ones, and watching the morning news.
“The Gaians are, quite frankly, completely out of control,” Prince Fenris said with silky, slimy grace on the Many Realms News Network. “But that’s nothing new. I have been issuing warnings about these primitive humans for quite some time.”
Fenris said humans like it was a swear word.
He continued his condescending speech as video clips from the fight in the Park played on the screen.
“Yesterday’s debacle at the Spirit Tree was inexcusable.
Gaia threatens all of the Many Realms, and I’m confident my sage peers on the Court will come to the same conclusion and vote no to accepting these heathens into our ranks. ”
I made a disgusted noise in my throat, then changed the channel. There was only so much of the arrogant vampire prince that I could take before I had to vomit.
“Yesterday’s victory at the Spirit Tree was hard-won.” The General was on the Gaian News Network.
His victory was a far cry from Fenris’s debacle . Our local news was telling a very different story from the one circulating across the greater Many Realms.
“Thanks to the hard work of our valiant soldiers, the Brotherhood of Earth was thwarted in their plan to poison the Spirit Trees,” the General said as I took a bite of my eggs. “Our soldiers also apprehended the Brotherhood’s leader and four of her fighters.”
I almost spat out my breakfast. “That is so not what happened!” I shouted at the General’s image on the TV screen.
I would know. I’d been there. And the General’s soldiers—the Watchers—hadn’t. All they’d done was show up long after the battle to collect the prisoners that Conner, Kato, and I had gift-wrapped for them.
“Our brave soldiers were assisted by the star of the Castle, our very own White Knight,” said the General.
He didn’t mention me or Conner. Shocker. According to the General, we were agents of anarchy.
“General, the Brotherhood is a worldwide organization with dozens of members in every major settlement on Gaia. What is being done to apprehend them?”
The General sank his teeth into the news reporter’s question like he’d been waiting for it.
“Our soldiers have worked tirelessly through the night, interrogating the prisoners captured yesterday. Those interrogations have proven fruitful. We are already acting on the acquired information to root out the Brothers still in hiding.”
“The Brothers stand accused of treason. What will the Government do to them?”
The General’s locked jaw loosened into a mockery of a smile. “The Gaian Government is strict, but it is also merciful. The Brothers will be rehabilitated into productive, contributing members of society.”
Translation: they’d be tortured for information, then be rebranded as Scavengers and sent beyond the wall to salvage the relics of humanity from the Wilderness, where the Cursed Ones roamed. Scavengers had the most dangerous job on Gaia. Very few of them survived more than a year.
A knock sounded on the door of my cottage. I turned off the TV, hastily shoveled the rest of my breakfast into my mouth, grabbed my backpack, and crossed the room to the door. It didn’t take more than a few steps. My cottage was small; in its former life, it had been a garden shed.
I opened the door. I found Bronte, my teammate and friend, on the other side. She stood on my welcome mat with the poise of a ballet dancer.
“Hey, Bronte.”
“Are you ready to go?”
“All ready! Let’s go.” I swung my backpack over my shoulders.
We followed the stone path across the back garden and around the main house.
Mrs. Edwards, my host, stood on the front lawn, watering her roses.
She adjusted her grip on the hose to give us a little wave, which we returned before heading down the driveway and through the forest that blanketed the Apprentice Village.
We’d just made it to the end of the street when Bronte broke the silence. “Are you all right, Savannah?”
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
She held my gaze. “You just look tired, that’s all.”
“Yeah, I guess I am. Yesterday was a rough day.”
“Yes, it was.” Bronte swallowed. “I miss Kylie and Asher too.”
“We’re going to get them back.”
“I thought…” She swallowed again. “…I thought Kylie was dead. In the video playing on the news, her mother said she was dead. And that’s why she tried to poison the Spirit Tree.”
“Kylie is not dead. The Templars have her.”
Bronte’s eyes narrowed, drawing together. “How do you know?”
I didn’t tell her about the video Conner had stolen from the Watchers, the video that clearly showed Kylie’s magic mark hadn’t faded after her supposed death. The mark that meant she was still alive.
“I just know she’s alive, ok?” I said. “Trust me. We’re going to get her back. We’re going to get both of our missing teammates back.”
“I hope you’re right, Savannah.”
Bronte played nervously with her picture-perfect fingernails. She looked so ruffled, so unlike herself. The events of the last few days had definitely taken a bite out of her self-confidence.
“It’s just not the same with two of our teammates gone,” she said quietly.
When the thirty-one Apprentices had arrived at the Fortress, the Program Managers had separated us into six teams, each one with five or six people.
But after our two teammates were kidnapped, Team Gold Getters was down to just three: Bronte, Dutch, and I.
It didn’t seem possible that we’d be winning any gold medals like this, even if Bronte was the star of the Scoreboard and Dutch wasn’t far behind.
I guess that was mainly my fault. I was scraping the bottom of the Scoreboard.
I didn’t score well when people like the General made the rules.
“No, it really isn’t the same without Kylie and Asher,” I agreed.
I really missed Kylie’s nervous chatter and Asher’s jokes. I missed their banter. I even missed their totally mortifying teasing about my ‘boyfriends’.
“But we’ll just have to carry on without them,” I said.
Bronte and I stepped onto the crowded train platform packed with Apprentices. The buzz of their lively conversations rose above the distant cry of the kookaburras in the nearby forest. The lights on the tracks changed color, signaling the train was near.
I turned to Bronte. “In fact, let’s try to win this little Scoreboard competition for them.”
The team with the most points at the end of the Apprentice Program won a boatload of extra resources for their hometowns. That meant more food, more clothing, and more Apprentice spots at next year’s Choosing. We really had to win this.
Too bad we didn’t have a chance.
Bronte was obviously thinking the same thing. “Even before we lost Kylie and Asher, winning the team challenge was looking difficult, Savannah. Now…” She sighed. “Now it’s impossible.”
“Sixteen years ago, we lived in a world without magic, Bronte. And now we have Spirit Trees that can transport us to different realms in the blink of an eye, Knights who can wield powerful spells, and Gaia is about to sit down with a Court whose influence spans more worlds than we ever dreamt existed. Nothing is impossible,” I countered.
“Perhaps,” Bronte replied, frowning. She did not look convinced.
“Today we’re working with Ainsley’s team at the Summit. That is an opportunity.”
“An opportunity for what?” she asked.
“An opportunity to show them—to show everyone —just how special and awesome Team Gold Getters is.”
The train came to a stop. The doors swished open with the ease of butter melting over a hot stone, then we stepped inside, joining our teammate Dutch by the window.
Two stops later, a large cluster of Apprentices departed the train, heading toward the Black Obelisk.
And at the next station, another Apprentice cluster disembarked, then headed east, into town.
My brother Dante and my best friend Nevada were among them.
Today their two teams were working together.
“Whoa, there are a lot of Knights out there!”
Dutch’s announcement sent all the Apprentices still left on the train flocking to the windows. He was right. The whole platform was full of armored Knights.
“They’re taking the train in the other direction,” Bronte said. “Back to the Castle.”
Until a few days ago, most of the Knights had been engaged in Operation: Free Gaia , the General’s rebuke to Fenris’s insistence that Gaia was weak.
The General had sent the Knights to the Park, a nearby district that we’d lost to the Curse.
And after several long, grueling days of battle, the Knights had emerged victorious.
They’d eliminated the Cursed Ones and reclaimed the district for Gaia.
And now they were slowly returning home.
“There are hordes of Fixers too,” I noted.
“The Government wants the district’s infrastructure repaired ASAP.
There was a big piece about the Park on the news yesterday,” said Bronte.
“The Fortress is way over capacity. There isn’t enough space for everyone.
So the Government is sending people to live in the Park as the buildings become ready.
They plan to have the whole district up and running—and filled with people—by the end of the year. ”
“That’s certainly ambitious,” I said. “The Park isn’t small.”
Dutch shrugged. “It’s mostly forest. There aren’t as many buildings as you’d think.”
“The news claims they’re going to build new houses,” Bronte said.
“The Fixers will need a lot of materials to do that. I guess that’s where they’re going.” Dutch pointed out the window, to the mass of Scavengers lined up in front of a fleet of the Watchers’ SUVs parked in a solid line, all the way down the very long road.