Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,34

why would he?” Muirin continued obliviously. “Where would he go? He hasn’t got anyone either! If any of us had any place that wanted us we wouldn’t have gotten dumped here! OK, he didn’t really like it here, but he didn’t hate it enough to make a run!”

Together, Addie and Spirit managed to coax her to sit down and eat something, though not even a PBJ with bacon tempted her much, which just showed how upset she was, since a PBJ was as close as Oakhurst got to allowing junk food most of the time.

On the way out of the Refectory, Spirit cornered Brendan. “You think he did run away,” she said without preamble.

Brendan looked as if he didn’t want to answer her. “You know I won’t tell anything you tell me to Muirin,” she coaxed.

Brendan sighed. “Well, you know, I don’t know for sure, Spirit. But one or two kids always do every semester. They just take off. I figure, we’ve all got magic, right? And I guess they think with a Mage Gift like oh, Healing or Transmutation or Weather, they can make it on the outside. All I know is the deputies come around and go off again and nothing ever happens.” He shrugged. “I’m gonna be late to class.”

Spirit stepped back, and Brendan hurried away. She didn’t think he really believed the e-mail, and she knew Muirin didn’t. But it really didn’t matter what the e-mail said, or how badly it said it. Seth was gone, and there wasn’t anything any of them could do about it.

I said block—you aren’t paying attention!” Mr. Wallis snapped.

Spirit heard the clonk of the bokuto—the wooden kendo practice sword—against the shinai. Bokuto were solid wood and were only supposed to be used to practice kata—not to hit anything—but Mr. Wallis didn’t seem to care. She winced, flinching back, and smiled apologetically at her partner. Kylee smiled back a little nervously.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll do better next time,” Burke answered softly.

It wasn’t fair, Spirit thought. Burke had blocked. If he weren’t a Combat Mage, Mr. Wallis could have broken his arm—or worse. This was supposed to be a sport, not war. But no matter how well Burke did—and he was better than all the rest of them put together—Mr. Wallis never let up on him once. And Burke just took it all without complaint, the way he put up with Mr. Gail and even Ms. Groves.

And if Mr. Wallis seemed to be trying to raise bruises on them, well, Mr. Gail seemed to be trying to get his football teams killed outright. More than once, during the games, Spirit had seen players carried off the field on stretchers. Of course, Oakhurst had an advantage that most schools didn’t: When the stretcher got to the sidelines, there was a Healing Mage waiting there to put the player back together again so Mr. Gail could put him back into the game. But all the Healing Mages were students—healing the players was part of their spell-practice—and sometimes if the game was particularly rough they’d get too tired to keep casting spells, so the players with minor injuries wouldn’t ask for help—they’d just play injured.

There’d been a game yesterday, and Spirit knew that Burke had really taken a beating. Mr. Wallis knew it, too. He ought to lighten up.

“Pay attention,” Kylee hissed, and Spirit nodded, raising her bamboo sword and circling the other girl. They were paired off today to practice forms. Burke, of course, was paired up with Mr. Wallis.

She’d thought several times about dropping her martial arts class and switching to something else. But Mr. Gail coached all the other sports, not just the football—except for fencing—and Spirit honestly couldn’t imagine how Muirin could stand Ms. Groves. And—much to her surprise—Spirit had discovered that she liked both karate and kendo. When she could tune Mr. Wallis out and just concentrate on her practicing, it was actually fun. And she was good at it, too. She’d only been in the class for three weeks, and while she hadn’t caught up to the kids who’d been taking it for three or four semesters, she wasn’t the worst student in the class.

And it wasn’t like she was sluffing off taking only one sport, because Ms. Wood, who gave the riding lessons, said the Riding School (she called it an ecolé, which was French for “school”) would be giving an exhibition in the spring, which would include jumping and precision riding. On the afternoons Spirit wasn’t in