GOING AFTER PAPA AND LAN WASN’T QUITE THAT SIMPLE, OF COURSE, but it turned out to be a lot easier than it could have been. Mostly, this was because Wash and William both believed me right off. Rennie and Mr. Harrison argued, though as soon as she realized that Mr. Harrison didn’t want me to go, Rennie stopped arguing and just glared at everybody. It would have been funny if I’d had an inclination to be amused right then. Mr. Harrison just couldn’t get on anybody’s right side.
I just kept walking toward the gate, while Mr. Harrison said there was no point in jumping to conclusions because of a few bugs. It was getting late, he told us, and there’d be time to send a messenger in the morning. We collected quite an audience as we went up the street, on account of Mr. Harrison not bothering to keep his voice down. Finally, just as we got to the corral, Mr. Harrison yelled, “You aren’t going anywhere, any of you! I forbid it.”
I stopped and looked at him.
“In the absence of Professor Rothmer, I am in charge of this expedition,” Mr. Harrison said in a slightly more normal tone. “And I will not allow—”
“Mr. Harrison.” I kept my tone as polite as I could manage, which I fear wasn’t too much because Mr. Harrison’s eyes went wide and he stopped in mid-sentence. “Papa told you before that this was a family trip. You aren’t my family by a good long ways.”
“That was a ruse to get into this place, and you know it!” Mr. Harrison said. A lot of the Rationalists who’d gathered murmured angrily and glowered at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. “This expedition is vital to the protection of the settlements, and I won’t allow your whims to jeopardize it.”
“Whims?” William said. “Eff’s the least whimsical girl I know. And she’s Lan’s twin sister, in case you’ve forgotten. Of course she’d know if anything happened to him.”
There wasn’t any “of course” about it; I’d never before gotten a sliver of a notion when anything was wrong with Lan. But Mr. Harrison wasn’t to know that, and he’d surely heard the stories about twins who could do such things. Besides, something was pulling at me, sure enough, and it wasn’t any whim of mine. I kept my mouth shut and let Mr. Harrison sputter.
After a minute, Mr. Harrison glared at William and me and said, “Even if something is wrong, you can’t do anything to help. It’s better to take these things slowly—to find out what the problem is, if there is one. Then I can go back and send out the right people to handle it.”
I looked at him, getting madder by the minute. Ever since he first found out Lan was a double-seventh son, he’d been trying to get at him, or at Papa, but now that they were both in danger, he wasn’t in any hurry to help. Ever since…I remembered Mama threatening to haul Lan and me back East. All the anger settled down, and I smiled, knowing just what to say.
“That’s as may be, Mr. Harrison,” I told him. “But I’m not an employee of the college, nor of the Settlement Office, nor of anyone else in Mill City, and you’ve no authority over me. Papa hired the cart horses that brought us here. One of them will do for me to ride, and if I can’t borrow a saddle from Brant, I can manage bareback. There’s nothing you can say that will keep me in Oak River, and I can’t see you laying hands on me to stop me.”
“Just let him try,” William muttered.
“So I’m going,” I finished. “And that’s my last word, and I’m wasting no more time on you.”
As I started turning toward the corral, Mr. Harrison said, “You can’t go off to this other settlement without a magician to do the protection spells for you!”
“Why not?” I said. “The Rationalists do it all the time.”
There was a murmur of approval from the people standing around, and Mr. Harrison seemed to notice them for the first time. “You’re hardly more than a girl!”
“I turned eighteen last month,” I said.
“And I believe there’s a good deal more to Miss Rothmer than you’re allowing for,” Wash’s voice said behind me. I turned to find him leading three horses. “I took the liberty of saddling up our horses,” he said to me and William. “Seeing that there may be reason for hurry.”
“You can’t go with them!” Mr. Harrison shouted. “You work for the North Plains Territory Homestead Claim and Settlement Office, and I’ll fire you if you do!”
“Well, now, I don’t believe you can rightly do that,” Wash drawled. “My contract is with the Frontier Management Department in Washington, not with the North Plains Territory branch office. Still, if you want to write them a note of complaint, I’m sure they’ll take as much notice as ever they do.”
William choked on a laugh. “You want help mounting, Eff?”
I nodded. I hiked my skirts up, thanking my lucky stars that I’d worn full ones, and stepped into his cupped hands. An instant later, I was in the saddle. Wash held the horse while I tucked my petticoats in around my legs to keep from chaffing too much against the saddle. As he and William went to mount, Mr. Harrison yelled, “You can’t just leave me here!”
“Now that’s a true thing.” Out of the crowd of Rationalists came Mr. Lewis and Brant, leading another riding horse. Mr. Harrison stared at them. Brant walked over and handed him the reins. “You’re not welcome in Oak River any longer, Mr. Harrison,” Mr. Lewis went on sternly. “We’ll see you on your way.”
“You can’t do this!” Mr. Harrison said. “I’m the head of the North Plains Territory—”
“—Homestead Claim and Settlement Office,” Mr. Lewis finished for him. “So you’ve been saying these last few days. But we’ve been here five years and earned out our settlement claim.”
“The only thing you have to offer us is the service of your magicians,” Brant said. “And we’ve no interest in them.”
“Which is a thing you seem to have a mite of trouble comprehending,” Mr. Lewis said, and I couldn’t help wondering what Mr. Harrison had been doing in Oak River while everyone else had been working on finding out about the beetles. “So be on your way, before we’re moved to be less polite.”
Mr. Harrison just stood there staring like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Looks as if you’d best come with us, Mr. Harrison,” Wash said.
“He can come if he likes,” I said, “but I’m not waiting for him.” I nudged my horse with my heels to get him walking toward the gate. I had a tense feeling in my chest and a growing urge for hurry, and I could see that if we let him, Mr. Harrison would talk nonstop for the next two days to keep from having to leave. “Thank you for your hospitality,” I called over my shoulder to Brant and Mr. Lewis. Then we were out of the gate.
Mr. Harrison didn’t take long catching up, and of course he had plenty more to say. First he wanted Wash to cast the protective spells for traveling right then, even though we were still on the Rationalists’ land. Then he wanted us to stick to the areas that had been cleared and planted, so as to be able to see any wildlife at a good long distance, even though that would have meant going far out of our way. He kept on complaining about this and that until William told him that if he didn’t shut up his mouth, he, William, was going to test out some of the silencing spells Lan had been telling him about.
Wash already knew where Papa and Lan had gone from the discussion in the morning, and he was familiar enough with that part of the territory to know the quickest route there. He thought that since we were in long-settled territory and moving fast, it’d be safe enough to travel without protection spells, even though Mr. Harrison objected bitterly. We alternated galloping and walking the horses—Mr. Harrison complained about that, too—so it only took us a couple of hours to cover the distance. By late afternoon, we came over the last hill to within sight of the settlement.
We pulled our horses to a halt and stared. A huge, sparkling cloud of mirror bugs hid the hilltop where the settlement was supposed to be. Some of the bugs were flying, but most of them were heaped up over the walls and the top of the settlement in a huge pile. They looked as if someone had taken an enormous ball and stuck mirrors all over it. The sun glittered and flashed on their wings as they flew and crawled, making it seem like the air was on fire and the ground around the settlement was moving.
Then I realized that the ground really was moving. Or rather, thousands of dark green beetles were crawling across it toward the settlement and the shiny pile of mirror bugs. If you looked in the right place, you could see little flashes of light as the crawling beetles popped into mirror bugs and joined the swarm around the settlement. It would have been real pretty, if I hadn’t known there were a lot of people inside somewhere, and Papa and Lan among them.
Mr. Harrison turned white as a sun-bleached sheet. Wash’s face went all stony and grim. William’s eyes widened. “Where’d they all come from?”
“Anywhere near,” Wash said. He nodded toward the ground, and we all looked down. There were beetles crawling past our horses’ hooves toward the settlement. We were far enough away that they didn’t make a solid layer over the ground, but there were still plenty of them. Mr. Harrison jerked, pulling his reins, and his horse danced sideways.
“There’s no point in going farther,” he said when he got his horse under control. “There’s nothing we can do here.”
He’d been saying things like that since before we left Oak River, but looking at the moving carpet of beetles I wondered for a minute if he was right. But William shook his head. “We have to try something. If we don’t, what’ll happen to the people inside the settlement?”
“It’s just a lot of bugs!” Mr. Harrison shouted. “It’s not as if they’ll eat everyone!”
“No,” Wash said. “They’ll absorb all the magic from the settlement spells—which I’m near certain are currently being held by a double-seventh son—and then they’ll spread farther east. Toward the Great Barrier.”
William’s head whipped around to stare at Wash, and I’m sure I looked just as bug-eyed as he did. I hadn’t ever thought of that, but now that Wash had said it, it was obvious. If the beetles could absorb enough magic to make the settlement spells collapse, enough of them might do the same to the Great Barrier Spell. And looking at the mass of beetles around this one settlement, I had to think there’d be enough, sooner or later.
“Nonsense,” Mr. Harrison said, but he sounded more scared than certain. “They’re just bugs!”
A line of beetles a foot wide suddenly popped into mirror bugs, starting at the edge of the pile and heading straight as an arrow for us. It petered out halfway across the dead fields, but I still felt a tug, much stronger than I had at Oak River. This close, I could tell it for one of Lan’s spells, only the beetles were soaking up most of it before it could get to me. “Lan’s trying to do something,” I said. “I have to get closer.”
I kicked my horse into motion and headed down the hill toward the settlement. I kept trying to think of something I could do. My horse squashed beetles with every step, but with so many around and more on the way, the few he killed were nothing like enough to make a difference. Burning them might work, but I couldn’t see how to get them away from the settlement first. And anything magic, they’d just soak up.
I was getting too worried to think straight, and I knew it. So I took a deep breath, then another, and started counting out the Hijero–Cathayan concentration technique. Mr. Harrison’s whining faded into the drone of insect wings, and my mind settled some. I still didn’t have any idea what to do, but I just knew there had to be something, if I could only figure out the right way to look at the problem. The beetles and the mirror bugs absorbed magic. The magic turned the beetles into mirror bugs, but what happened to the power the mirror bugs absorbed?
My horse slowed and shook his mane uneasily. We had almost reached the cloud of mirror bugs. Sunlight flashed on their wings as they darted in and out of the center, making my horse even more nervous. He pranced sideways, trying to run. As I brought him under control, I felt a surge of magic from the direction of the settlement.
It was Lan, trying again to reach me. Mirror bugs exploded into the air from around my horse’s hooves as the crawling beetles absorbed the magic and changed. My horse reared, and I slid sideways. I had just enough presence of mind to kick my feet free of the stirrups before I fell completely off.
I landed in a pile of beetles and my horse ripped the reins from my hands and bolted. The fall and the beetles had broken that brief contact with Lan’s spell. I didn’t think he could get through the beetles, and I knew I couldn’t reach him myself. I didn’t have his power, and anyway my spells always went wrong.
A dark green beetle crawled over my boot. I didn’t even have the energy to squash it. Behind me, I heard Mr. Harrison shouting for someone to come back at once. A second later, William pulled his horse up next to me and flung himself out of the saddle. “Eff! Are you all right?”
“It almost worked,” I told him. “Whatever Lan was trying to do, it almost worked. But not quite.”
“Come on,” he said, dragging me to my feet. “We have to get away.”
“Away?” I said, puzzled, and then I looked at him properly. His face was pale and he was sweating. Around his feet, several beetles popped into mirror bugs, and he swayed slightly. “The beetles!” I said. “They’re absorbing your magic!”
“Yes, I know; now come on,” he repeated.
“But they’re not bothering me,” I said. “And Lan—”
“We can’t get in,” he said doggedly. “And I can’t think this close. Come on, Eff.”
“Leave the da—dratted girl and get out of there!” Mr. Harrison yelled, and suddenly I was furious.
This time, though, the anger didn’t go pouring out the way it had with Uncle Earn, and it didn’t settle back down the way it had earlier at the Oak River settlement. It buzzed all through me like the sound the mirror bugs made, clearing my head. I turned toward the settlement, and the charm Wash gave me swung on its leather cord and thumped gently against my chest.
A familiar floaty feeling came over me, very like the combination of the Hijero–Cathayan technique and the Aphrikan world-sensing that I’d felt the night I’d tried to study the spells on the charm. Only this time, I wasn’t sensing the spells on the charm. This time, I was feeling the beetles and the mirror bugs and the settlement spells.
I could see the spells Lan was pouring his magic into, and the way he was reaching out for me. I could see the way the beetles pulled at the magic all around them, even the magic of the mirror bugs. And I could see the little twist in the magic of the mirror bugs that kept the beetles from taking it along with all the other magic. It was a lot like the slippery twist in the magic of the charm Wash had given me, only not so old or complicated.
I stared into the cloud of mirror bugs, trying to hold on to everything I was sensing. If there was a way to include that twist in the settlement spells, the twist that kept the beetles from absorbing the mirror bugs’ magic, then maybe the beetles wouldn’t be able to absorb magic from the settlement spells, either. But I didn’t know enough magic to do that, and anyway I couldn’t get at the settlement spells. Papa and Professor Jeffries would know, but I couldn’t get to them, either. I couldn’t even get to Lan.
But I could get at the mirror bugs.
I smiled, and reached out.