Free Sacrifices by Mercedes Lackey, Rosemary Edghill Page A

far beyond his skill here! Greetings, leaders of tomorrow! I am Beckett Green—and I promise, I will make you all cry and bleed!” He roared with laughter—as if this was a great joke.
    Beckett Green was at least six-four, muscled like … Spirit wasn’t sure what to compare him to. She’d never seen anyone who looked like him before in her life. Well, not in real life. On the TV, in movies, maybe. Cartoons, video games were even closer. He didn’t look real, he looked like a special effect. He reached down to pick up Ovcharenko as if the man weighed nothing at all. He held him out at arm’s length and shook him as if he was trying to beat the dust out of him. When Ovcharenko began to stir, Beckett dropped him abruptly. Ovcharenko staggered and sat down hard.
    Burke was just getting to his feet. Beckett strode across the gym toward him. Burke wiped his face with the back of his hand—wincing—and regarded Beckett warily. Beckett reached him and clapped Burke on the shoulder, then pulled him into a warm embrace.
    “Another Combat Mage! My brother—I had despaired of finding another like myself in all this wide world! We will have great fun together, you’ll see!” He stepped back, hands on Burke’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length and smiling at him. The smile looked honestly joyful. “You are wary. I understand. But I swear to you there will never be any tricks between us. It is unworthy between brothers and soldiers. I promise you this, my brother.”
    Spirit saw Burke relax and smile back. It was impossible not to believe Beckett was telling the truth—but that only made everything worse.
    Had Oakhurst—had the Shadow Knights—finally found the one thing that could tempt Burke?

 
    FOUR
    In the middle of a ragged mob of her fellow sufferers, Spirit trudged wearily in the direction of the stables. With Systema right after breakfast—or whatever might be replacing it with Mr. Green as the new teacher—and Endurance Riding right after lunch, she was probably going to starve to death, because only an idiot would eat before either class. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Mia Singleton—the Breakthrough riding instructor—had announced at lunch that they now had enough horses for twenty kids to ride at a time. That meant Endurance Riding was going to be every other day now, instead of every third day. And worst of all, she’d also said that from now on, certain Oakhurst courses were going to be open to Radial students.
    “Looks like glasnost has come to McBride County,” Loch said, so low she and Addie were the only ones who heard. “Do we call it the Montanan Spring?”
    Burke was in the other Endurance Class, and of course Muirin hadn’t shown up for any of the Endurance Classes for weeks. It was (just barely) safe for the three of them to talk to each other: during this class everyone was moving around so much it was likely they’d be overlooked. And a lot of it took place out of sight of the teachers.
    “If they’re letting the Townies in it’s because Oakhurst wants more cannon fodder,” Loch added. “You can bet on that.”
    But is that the real reason? Spirit wondered morbidly. Or all of it? It didn’t make sense—at least if the point of Oakhurst was to train magicians to fight a wizard war. But on the other hand … If you wanted to take over an entire town … how would you do that? Wouldn’t you start by getting rid of the people who’d fight you?
    Sure you would. But you’d have to find them first. And what better way to do that than by convincing all their kids that Breakthrough was the best thing that ever happened to Radial? Once people like Brett and Juliette and Kennedy decided they wanted Breakthrough here, they’d complain long and loud about anyone who disagreed. Breakthrough would have its spies—and the spies wouldn’t even know they were doing it.
    Yeah, and if I tried to explain it to them, guess who’d be at the top of their Enemies List?
    When she and