Page 55 of The Tribes of Magic
He thought the case was as good as solved. I hoped I wouldn’t disappoint him. More importantly, I hoped I wouldn’t fail my friend. Because if I did—if Bronte’s dream of becoming a Knight died—I wasn’t sure she’d ever recover.
She was still hiding under the desk, resisting her parents’ attempts to coax her out of there. She didn’t even seem to notice when Dutch and I left the room.
“Wow, Bronte’s parents sure have a lot of faith in you,” he commented.
We were alone here in a rock garden at the edge of the Interchange. We could hear the other Apprentices, but we couldn’t see them. It sounded like they were still waiting outsidethe Black Obelisk. I could hear a bunch of them discussing Bronte and our disqualified classmates.
“I guess Bronte’s parents think they have no choice but to put faith in me. Bronte’s dad is the mayor of Killfield, Dutch. That means he has a fair amount of power. I bet he already tried to fix this mess on his own and was unsuccessful. I’m his last and only hope of clearing his daughter’s name. He must have heard enough about me to know I would not abandon Bronte.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” he sighed. “You just can’t help yourself.”
“You aren’t abandoning her either.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you? You could have gone back to the other Apprentices, and you didn’t. And do you know what that tells me? Deep down, beneath that tough-guy facade, you are actually a decent person. You care. You want to help Bronte. You know it’s the right thing to do. That’s why you’re here.”
Dutch frowned at me. “So, where do we start?”
“Mayor Vance said the Watchers caught Bronte on video. Clearly, that video is a fake.”
“Is it?”
“Of course! How could you even think Bronte would break the rules? She’s not me, Dutch.”
“No, she’s definitely not.” He rubbed his chin. “But I’ve been thinking about it. Bronte doesreallywant to win. Maybe she had to break a few rules to do it.”
“If that’s what you think, walk away now.”
He stayed exactly where he was.
“That’s what I thought. I knew you weren’t such a pessimist, Dutch.”
Silence descended for a moment, then Dutch said, “Savannah, you realize that by doing this, by helping Bronte, you are risking your own position in the Program.”
“Bronte’s your teammate too, Dutch. We all swim or sink together.”
“If I kick the hornet’s nest, I’ll definitely sink. Senator Gaines is very powerful, Savannah. He had to be in order to remove the top-performing Apprentice. I do not want to make an enemy of the Senator. And neither do you, by the way. This could end very badly for us.”
I was trying hard not to think about that. “I know, Dutch, but whoever framed Bronte, what they did is wrong.”
“If we get kicked out of the Program, that would be wrong too.”
“I can’t sacrifice Bronte because I’m scared. What kind of person would that make me if I let her dream of becoming a Knight die so that mine could live on?”
Dutch set his hands on my shoulders and said with solemn eyes, “It would make you only human, Savannah. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
I shook my head. “No. Being a Knight is about so much more. It’s about being better than ‘only human’.”
“Look, I don’t want to lose Bronte either. I want our team to succeed. We’ve already lost Asher and Kylie. But you need to face the reality that there might not be anything we can do but hurt ourselves.”
“Sure, we could do nothing to protect ourselves, but could you really live with that? Because I sure couldn’t. We might become Knights, but we wouldn’tdeserveto be Knights. Knights are noble, they’re good, and they do the right thing, no matter what.”
I was choking up just thinking about all that I was risking after working so hard for so long. My entire future was at stake. Even so, I knew I was right. Helping Bronte was the right thing to do.
There was a long, heavy silence, then finally Dutch spoke. “Ok, Savannah. I’m with you. But how are we going to prove Bronte’s innocence?”
My mind went back to his heated competition with Bronte earlier. And our run-in with Zoe at the Scoreboard. It was all a competition. Life was a competition. And in a competition, some people had to fail so that others could succeed.
