Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,18
come along to the lounge to get acquainted. They were like a wave that washed her along with them, where she sat in a big comfortable chair next to a fireplace and listened to the others talk. A bunch of the other kids from the dining room had followed them to introduce themselves and find out who they were, but names and faces were kind of a blur. There was Seth Morris—who Muirin seemed to know well—and Nick and Marc and Andrew and Troy. Everyone’s names and faces seemed to run together—she couldn’t for the life of her remember whether Camilla or Jenny had the short curly hair, and if it was Claire or Kristi who had the long braids and carried the sketchbook. She just curled up in the chair and listened to Muirin and Loch and Burke talk. Now that she wasn’t running interference between Muirin and Spirit, Addie didn’t talk much, but she listened so intently you felt as if she was saying more than she did.
Loch wanted to know what sorts of magic they all did, and Muirin demonstrated again, this time with a larger illusion, a copy of herself that she made do some gymnastic flips. Addie poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the sideboard and made a fountain in it. One of the other boys took the glass when she was done—Spirit wasn’t sure whether it was Nick or Troy—and the clear glass turned opaque and sort of grayish brown.
“Transmutation,” Muirin said, and he grinned and tossed it at her.
Some of the others had kinds of magic that you couldn’t show off easily or safely—one of the girls said she was learning Transformation, which apparently wasn’t the same as Transmutation, and one of the other boys said he was a Fire Witch. Burke just shrugged.
“Combat magic,” he said, with the smallest of grimaces. “Give me a weapon and I can use it right away; give me a couple weeks with it, and I’m an expert. Takes me about two months to get pretty good at about any martial art. Already got a black belt in three. Right now I’m learning sword stuff.”
Spirit’s jaw dropped. “That’s—amazing!” she blurted.
Burke snorted dismissively, but his smile was kind. “Yeah, but it’s not like I can compete at it. It’d be cheating. It’s the magic doing it, not me.”
Muirin laughed up at him. “You and your ethics!” she said mockingly. “No one would ever know!”
“I’d know,” Burke said stubbornly. “And it’d be cheating people who worked for years and years out of the reward they earned.”
Muirin made a face when she saw Addie, Loch, Spirit, and a couple of the other kids nodding in agreement with him. “Doctor Ambrosius says that it’s no different than a genius competing with ordinary people in college, or in business,” she answered, sounding certain of her ground. “Really, why should it be? For that matter, we’ll be using our magic to compete with them in things like business. So how is that any different?”
Burke set his jaw. He seemed to struggle for a moment for words, then said, “It just is.”
“I’m not all that impressed with Doctor Ambrosius anyway,” Spirit said softly, and winced a little when half a dozen people turned to stare at her, including all four of her new friends. Then she decided to stand her ground. “I’m not,” she repeated more firmly. “Especially not if he says things like that.” She held Loch’s gaze and spoke directly to him. “I think he could have showed us that magic was real today without attacking us and hurting me. That’s just bullying, and just because he owns this school and has magic powers, it doesn’t make it less like bullying. And how about all of you? Don’t you think you should have been allowed a choice in whether you came here or not? Was that fair?”
Muirin laughed sharply. “Since when is life fair?”
“The only people that say that are people who don’t want it to be.” It was Spirit’s turn to set her chin stubbornly. “And I don’t think that because we can do things, it always means we should.”
Muirin rolled her eyes, but Addie smiled, Burke beamed at her with approval, and Loch winked at her. She immediately felt better.
“I suppose you’ll all tell me we should all rush out to save the world or something,” Muirin said, and wiggled her fingers. “Buh-bye! You do that, kids. I’ll be over here, trying to pass algebra.”