Chapter 21 #2
Allen drags chairs for him and Xandra to the edge of the pool and she brings the overfilled plates.
Julian calls, pointing at the bedroom to the left, ‘I call dibs on that chamber,’ and Xandra frowns, looking from one bedroom to the other.
‘Only one bed has been slept in,’ she says, with a glare at Mace. ‘Perhaps you were thinking of giving something less for Stella to do when she schedules the cleaning, after we’ve left this place?’
I shoot Mace a panicked look, because I don’t know yet if he’s ready to acknowledge that we’re a thing.
But Allen cuts in, laying his custom-made ART on the ground. ‘I need to show you guys something. I came across it this morning.’ He taps a few commands into the ART and a video starts playing, projected on the wall behind the far side of the pool. ‘Check this out.’
The screen goes dark first, with ‘Team Gold’ in bold, gold – what else?
– letters across it. The image cuts to a view of Julian sneaking in the underbrush with feline grace.
His name is written in bright, blue letters, and in the video, I realise how quietly he can move.
Barely a leave is rustled, and his moves are cat-like and precise.
Then the image cuts to Allen, swinging his two daggers with dexterity, holding off the attacks of the longsword hologram that we battled at the start of our mission.
But that isn’t even Allen’s special power – which is his proficiency with tech, and his empathy, but that’s hard to show on screen, I guess.
‘Sweet,’ says Julian. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s a little video that the PR Team at The Citadel put together,’ Allen says. ‘I think the missions are drawing to a close and you know how the betting gets at this phase.’
The image cuts to Xandra. She’s fighting, in slow-motion, two of the Team Silver members at the same time. Her moves are so graceful and poised, you’d think she was dancing and not trying to inflict violence in cold blood.
‘I’d have my money on us, too,’ Julian says on a sigh. ‘Even if we didn’t draw up as far ahead as we’d have liked.’
‘Someone is trying to make us look good, though,’ Mace says, coming to my side. ‘It certainly sends a message, to show Team Gold beating the crap out of the other teams.’
‘You bet,’ says Allen. ‘Pun intended. I did a bit of sniffing, by the way, and Commander Sellick has a lot of money riding on Team Silver.’
I remember what Stella said the day before about some Commanders losing their trust in Mace. Is this part of it? Is Sellick trying to make Team Gold look good, so as many people as possible bet on us, while he’s planning a move to wreck our ranking in the end?
And have we been anything else but pawns all this time?
‘My head hurts,’ I say.
And then, the image cuts to … me. Though it’s a version of me I don’t recognise. The footage is from the day when the other two teams ambushed us.
I see myself teleport next to Mace, my face contorted in rage, magic pulsing at the tips of my fingers.
The camera zooms out to show the exact moment when I hit three members of Teams Silver and Bronze with a pulse of my power and threw them against a stone wall.
Then, the image cuts to how I viciously sprinted after them, throwing my blasts of magic at them, chasing them away from the spot where they’d cornered the rest of my team.
One of the Team Bronze Warriors is clearly cradling a broken arm as he runs.
I feel like I’m going to be sick. I hate this version of myself, where I’m reduced to swinging punches with my magic, to hurting other Apprentices, just because Central Command thought it was a good idea to make us defend a flag and send not one team, but two, after us, while blinding us to their moves.
There is no reason in the world why I would have ever wanted to do something like that.
I hate this from the bottom of my heart.
‘I think I’m going to throw up,’ I say.
Mace wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me into him. I hold on tight to him, breathe in his lovely, familiar scent, and let the warmth of his body calm me. I don’t want to look anymore.
‘It’s okay, Ellie,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to like it, and you don’t have to do it, if you don’t want to. You wouldn’t be you if you were cut out like the rest of us. And I adore you exactly how you are.’ He deposes a soft kiss on top of my head.
‘Fucking finally,’ Allen says, and I look to him, to see what he’s talking about, but he’s staring at us. He grins. ‘All the supposedly unrequited longing and the emotional pain was giving me headaches,’ he says.
I laugh.
Exactly no one seems surprised, even if Xandra’s expression is pinched.
‘Yup, about time,’ Julian says, drifting on his back in the water.
And those are all the comments about Mace and me being a thing. I’m oddly relieved.
The video cuts to Mace showing his prowess in battle, that sheer, brute force that leaves me gaping every single time. But he isn’t watching. ‘So, team,’ he says. ‘We came across a few interesting bits of information yesterday. Listen up.’
We gather in a spare bedroom, and I keep the sensors blocked, just to make sure, while Mace tells the team about everything we found out in the hangar.
‘So, what sort of powers did Franka have? Why did Stella choose her as Queen?’ Xandra asks.
‘We don’t know,’ Mace says. ‘Aside from being able to work with the sensors for the entire city, and to craft defence systems in conjunction with them.’
I can feel Allen’s excitement and curiosity through the link. ‘But that’s not unlike the way you can connect to the defence sensors in case of a siege,’ Allen says.
‘We’ll have to assume it’s similar,’ Mace replies. ‘Maybe an added skill, if it’s not directly connected to the raw quality of magical powers.’
It hits me. If Mace ever gets selected for Central Command, would Stella declare him King, because of that ability? There are similarities to what we’ve uncovered in that block of information, when Mace puts it this way.
Xandra shifts. ‘So, by blocking off this sort of information, Central Command blocked Stella’s ability to choose a King or a Queen? And where is the Regalia, anyway?’
‘Stella must keep it stowed away. No one is allowed to access them, as long as there’s no King or Queen. It’s standard protocol for all the AIs,’ Allen says.
‘As for your first question,’ Mace says, ‘royalty can only be chosen from among Central Command.’
Allen gasps. ‘So all that Central Command had to do was to make sure that no one with that power profile ever became a Commander. Stella wouldn’t be able to crown anyone, then.’
I watch the back-and-forth, awed at how well the team works together. This is one of their many strengths. It’s more than them being thrown together in the same Quarter: because of their common training, their common experiences throughout the years, they understand how each other ticks.
But they believed more than anyone else in what Central Command told them: that Warriors are above the others, because of their magic. That they’re superior to the rest of us.
‘So let me get this straight,’ Xandra says. ‘There are people belonging to a Quarter other than the Warriors, that Stella thought were worth choosing as royalty, and Central Command hid that from us.’
‘For obvious reasons,’ Allen mutters.
‘Just like the fact that we don’t have to agree to partnerships that Central Command lays out for us,’ Xandra says.
‘Yes, but even if we objected to a planned partnership, by saying that it isn’t in Stella’s basic programming, the Central Command’s word is law,’ Mace says. ‘How could we change that, by simply objecting to it?’
‘We could start by searching for more information blocks,’ Allen says. ‘Trying to find out if there are more loopholes that Central Command hid from us. Trying to see if we can use that information.’
‘But it amounts to the same.’ Xandra sounds exasperated. ‘We have no real power to defend ourselves against Central Command’s decisions. If they order us to go to war, we have to go to war. You and Ellie just saw that, in the footage you found.’
Mace’s expression pinches.
Julian shakes his head. ‘But why the constant warmongering? We’re just losing Warriors in the field.’
‘If we’re always at war,’ Allen says softly, ‘then Warriors are the most important Quarter. They continue to be so. Because they’re needed. And Central Command can more easily justify choosing their successors among the Warriors’ ranks.’
‘And it all circles back to the fact that there used to be people from other Quarters in Central Command, and now there aren’t.’ My voice is low, but everyone turns to look at me when I speak. ‘We became a city that only represents the interests of the Warriors.’
No other voices are allowed in Central Command, to speak up for their own Quarters. What Franka feared most, came to happen – a long, long time ago.
‘Not only that,’ Mace scoffs. ‘The system makes sure that Central Command has a lot of power – and that they call the shots.’
‘What can you do about it?’ Xandra says.
‘It’s been the same in the almost two hundred years since The Citadel was founded.
The Commanders are being replaced one by one, with other Warriors who represent the same interests.
And the same laws are being carried on, because no one within the leadership has a vested interest to change anything. ’
It’s confusing to realise that Xandra seems to feel as trapped as I am. I’d have thought that there’d be nothing she could have wanted more: she’s one of the most popular Apprentices, the very image of perfection. I wonder about the cracks under that fa?ade.
‘I suppose this is encouraging in a way, though,’ Mace says.
‘How so?’ Xandra says.