Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic)

by Christopher Nuttall

  But you spent last year learning the basics, she reminded herself. Now you have to learn all the tedious little background details.

  Imaiqah nudged her. “Did you complete your essay for Master Tor?”

  “I did,” Emily said. It had been fascinating, although most of the books on werewolves had contradicted one another. They seemed to act like pack animals most of the time, even when in human form, but the writers weren’t sure if they were animals or if they were merely taking refuge in animal behavior. Maybe the latter made sense. Werewolves found outside their tribal lands were summarily executed, as if they were wild beasts. “I’ll give it to him later.”

  “Nice of him, giving you an essay so early in the year,” Imaiqah said, sarcastically. “What does he have against you anyway?”

  “Probably wants to establish that he’s not scared of the Necromancer’s Bane,” Alassa said, dryly. “Or maybe he thinks...”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Emily said, seriously. “We survived Shadye. We can certainly survive Master Tor.”

  Alassa grinned, then took a final sip of her kava. “Come on,” she said. “The coach leaves in ten minutes and I don’t want to be late.” She rubbed her hands together with glee. “Clothes shopping!”

  Emily rolled her eyes, but didn’t bother to argue. She’d never been fond of shopping for clothes on Earth, even though most girls her age had been happy to spend hours in the shops, just trying on outfit after outfit. Now, she had enough money to outfit the entire school in the local version of designer brands...and it still seemed like a waste of time. But she did need some new outfits, including working clothes.

  “I have to visit the enchanter,” she reminded them, as she finished her juice. “After that, I’ll meet you in the clothes store.”

  The ride to Dragon’s Den was almost as she remembered, although the carriage seemed to have problems on the icy road, despite all the charms protecting it. Outside, the fields were covered in snow for as far as the eye could see. Some of the townsfolk were building snowmen or having snowball fights; several of them launched snowballs towards the carriages, then fled before the occupants could hurl jinxes or hexes in their direction. Emily waved cheerfully after them, then smiled as the city itself came into view. It looked as if hundreds of people had been clearing snow from the streets.

  “Remember the rules,” Master Tor said. He’d ridden in the lead carriage. “If you need help, signal.”

  Emily smiled. The first time she’d come to Dragon’s Den, she and Alassa had wound up being kidnapped—but that was very much the exception. Normally, the worst danger any student of Whitehall had to face in Dragon’s Den was high prices and shopkeepers who knew more about bargaining than most of the students. Emily had a private suspicion that the presence of Whitehall—with hundreds of rich students—was actually driving prices in Dragon’s Den upwards, although it was hard to be sure. It was possible that the locals got lower prices.

  She removed her old trunk from the carriage, cast a pair of lifting spells on it to make it easier to carry, then turned and followed Alassa as she led the way towards the shops. Hardly anyone noticed her on the streets, she was glad to see. Everyone knew her in Whitehall, even the upper classes who generally had very little to do with the younger students, but in Dragon’s Den she was just another student. She pulled the robe tighter around her as they stepped into a long street crammed with shops and smiled as she saw the hawkers, who were offering everything from food to cheap clothes and alchemical ingredients. Professor Thande had warned them, quite specifically, not to risk buying any of the latter until they were qualified alchemists. It was hard to tell where the ingredients had really come from—or how it had been harvested.

  “That’s Yodel’s store,” she said. “I’ll meet you in the clothes store.”

  Emily stepped into the cluttered store and looked around, remembering everything she’d seen the first time she’d visited. There was a Hand of Glory, a magical device made from a human hand, sitting on one table; another held a shield emblazoned with strange runes. After what she’d learned in Subtle Magic, she had a feeling that the runes were intended to help the shield hold firm, no matter what struck it. A third table was covered with metal arrows, each one charmed to fly directly to its target. The fourth held a silver necklace that glittered under the faint light from high overhead. Emily reached out to touch it, only drawing her hand back when she realized that it was enchanted.

  “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” Yodel said. He stepped out of the shadows and bowed politely to her. This time, he was wearing protective gear that kept his face and hands thoroughly covered. “That necklace is charmed.”

  Emily frowned. “To do what?”

  “Private commission,” Yodel said, bluntly. He looked her up and down, then removed his mask, giving her a moment to realize that he hadn’t changed at all since their first meeting. “You have become someone interesting since we last met.”

  “Yes,” Emily said, flushing. She’d been new to Whitehall when she’d first visited Dragon’s Den. Since then, she’d beaten Shadye and been ennobled by King Randor. “And I may have broken my trunk.”

  Yodel lifted an eyebrow, then stepped past her to examine the trunk floating in the air. “And what, exactly, did you do to it?”

  Emily felt her flush grow brighter. “I put a Cockatrice in it,” she said, and explained briefly. “There was no other choice.”

  “I am...reassured to hear it,” Yodel said. He tapped the trunk with one finger. “Is the beast still in there?”

  “No,” Emily said, feeling a stab of guilt. She hadn’t gone to see the Cockatrice since it had been decanted from the trunk and installed in Whitehall’s zoo. It had already become the star attraction for Mistress Kirdáne’s Magical Creatures class. “It had to be removed.”

  “A good thing too,” Yodel said, dryly. He started to cast spells Emily didn’t recognize over the trunk. “You did pretty shoddy work. You’re lucky that the safety features weren’t triggered, throwing everything you stored in the trunk out into the open.”

  Emily nodded. She knew, better than most, what happened if a pocket dimension snapped out of existence. Trunks and other dimensionally transcendent artefacts were designed to expel their contents if the dimensions were on the verge of collapse, which would have been disastrous if the trunk had still been holding a very angry cockatrice. Thankfully, the spells had held long enough to get the beast back to Whitehall, rather than forcing her to kill it and use the body for alchemical ingredients.

  “If you were my apprentice, I’d sack you for this,” Yodel added. “You really were incredibly lucky. I don’t think the trunk could have lasted much longer, not the way the spells were slowly starting to unravel. If I hadn’t anchored them so firmly...”

  “I know,” Emily said. “Can you fix it?”

  “You might be better off buying a new trunk,” Yodel advised. “The spells have been warped, making it difficult to be sure that they were completely fixed. I don’t know anyone with the kind of precision required to inspect each and every one of the charms worked into the trunk, let alone ensure that they work together properly. Most of the more advanced features would be disabled in any case. They simply couldn’t be trusted.”

  Emily winced. The trunk was the first item she had bought with money she had earned, rather than cajoled from her mother or stepfather. And it was where she had hidden her books, including Void’s spellbook. It held a special place in her heart.

  But if it broke down completely, she risked losing everything.

  It crossed her mind that Yodel might be lying, that he might want to sell her a new trunk rather than go to all the effort of repairing the first one, but she knew that he was probably telling the truth. She’d had to improvise desperately when she’d turned the trunk into a trap and she’d almost certainly damaged the trunk quite badly in the process. In hindsight, she might have done better if she’d sent it directly to Whitehall, rather than keep
ing it with her.

  But then I wouldn’t have had a secret weapon, she thought, remembering the crow-sorcerer and how close he had come to killing her and enslaving Alassa. I was very lucky.

  “I think I’d better buy a new one,” she said, reluctantly. “Do you have one like this one?”

  “I have two in stock, both just as good,” Yodel assured her. “And I am currently putting a third together that includes extra space for books. The reading lists at Whitehall seem to have tripled since last year and students want more space for books.”

  It took Emily a moment to realize why. Producing books had been difficult and expensive...until she’d introduced the printing press, along with a number of other concepts from Earth. It hadn’t taken long for the printers to start copying as many books as they could, including spellbooks and educational textbooks. In the long run, literacy was going to skyrocket...

  And my classmates will kill me if they discover that I expanded their reading lists, Emily thought ruefully. Talk about unintended consequences! Maybe the forbidden tomes wouldn’t be copied, but everything else could be...what would that do to the world?

  She pushed the thought aside for later contemplation and looked up at Yodel. “I think I’d want one of those,” she said. “And I need to ask you for something else.”

  Yodel’s eyes glittered. “As long as it isn’t an apprenticeship,” he said. He tapped the trunk meaningfully. “Maybe you’ll be a capable enchanter in five years, but you have a great deal to unlearn.”

  Emily smiled, weakly. “I was wondering if you had a book on enchantment,” she said. “I couldn’t find one in the library.”

  “That isn’t too surprising,” Yodel said. “Enchantment can be a very rewarding career, if you have the mindset to make it work.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “Is there a reason you want to borrow one of my books?”

  “I could buy it outright,” Emily said, avoiding the question. She certainly didn’t want to tell him the truth. “I do have money...”

  “Books like this are rarely sold,” Yodel said, flatly. “And even if they were, I might not be able to find another copy. I do not know if the printers have started producing books on enchantment yet.”

  He looked down at the trunk. “On the other hand, loaning you the book might stop you from wrecking another trunk in the future,” he added. “But I’d want something in exchange.”

  Emily hesitated, then lifted an eyebrow.

  “Four hundred gold coins,” Yodel said. His voice was still flat, emotionless. “Or a place in your estate.”

  “Four hundred gold coins is a staggeringly high price,” Emily said. “Besides, I don’t carry that much on me.”

  She smiled at the thought. Credit and debit cards allowed someone to draw on their funds while reducing the risk of having the money stolen and spent by someone else, but there was no such thing in the Allied Lands. Yet, at least; she did have a plan to found a bank with something akin to debit cards. It would still take months for it to start working properly.

  “You are a baroness,” Yodel pointed out. “You could easily offer me a place in your estate.”

  Emily frowned. It seemed simple and cheap—which probably meant, in her experience, that there was a sting in the tail. She might have never been the consummate haggler that Imaiqah was, but she had learned a few things about bargaining. Why did Yodel even want to move?

  “The City Fathers are threatening to raise taxes or otherwise conscript magicians into their service,” Yodel explained, when she asked. “Events last year scared the hell out of them.”

  Emily didn’t blame the City Fathers, even if they had seemed a pack of condescending assholes when she’d met them. Shadye’s army had been stopped at Whitehall, but he could easily have left a force behind to keep Whitehall sealed and sent the rest of his monsters to pillage the surrounding lands. Dragon’s Den was walled, but she knew better than to think that would stop a necromancer. Or a force willing to take as many casualties as necessary to win the day. They might pile up their own bodies in front of the walls and scramble over them to break into the city.

  “Besides,” Yodel added, “I might be of more help to you there.”

  That, Emily had to admit, was true, even if her theory didn’t pan out.

  “Very well,” she said, finally. “You loan the book to me; I keep it for the rest of the term and return it to you during the spring holidays. In exchange, you will have my permission to leave Dragon’s Den and immigrate into my lands, provided that you behave yourself. Does that make sense?”

  Yodel smiled, making her wonder just who had gotten the better part of the deal.

  “Perfectly suitable,” he said, simply.

  Emily narrowed her eyes. “In addition, you will give me help and advice when I need it,” she added.

  “While you have the book,” Yodel countered. “And if you should lose the book, you have to pay me the full four hundred gold coins.”

  “Very well,” Emily said. She could afford it, if necessary. “When can I expect my new trunk?”

  “I can have it ready within the week,” Yodel said. He turned and led her into the next room, where a handful of wooden trunks sat on benches. They all looked crude and unfinished, without the varnish and designs—runes, perhaps—that had been carved into her first trunk. “The interior dimensions are largely anchored; I just need to reshape the charms that allow you to remove whatever you want from the trunk, then decorate the exterior. Do you have any particular request? I could do your coat of arms, if you wanted.”

  Emily shook her head. “Nothing that should tell someone who owns the trunk,” she said, flatly. “Just like the other one, basically.”

  “I’ll copy the permissions from the old trunk to the new one,” Yodel said, “and have the new one shipped up to Whitehall. If there are problems, bring it to me on your next weekend here and I’ll fix it for you.”

  He pushed a curtain aside, revealing a small bookshelf. “This is the standard introduction to enchantment,” he said, picking up a small book bound in black leather. “My master used to say that if you couldn’t handle everything in this book, you had no business pretending to be an enchanter. It took me six months before I could perform everything to his standards.”

  Emily took the book, pressing her fingers against the cover. “Thank you,” she said. “I won’t lose it.”

  “See that you don’t,” Yodel said. “It may be a long time before the printers start producing copies.”

  Chapter Twelve

  EMILY WOULD HAVE PREFERRED TO GO back to Whitehall at once and start reading the book, but there was no point in even trying. Both Alassa and Imaiqah were determined to find new outfits for themselves—and Emily—and she reluctantly allowed them to suggest several new outfits for her. Two pairs of light trousers that reminded her of jeans, although they were a little tighter than she would have preferred, would come in handy when she was jogging, while a simple dress would suffice for etiquette lessons and the promised dances later in the year.

  “They’ll all be staring at you,” Alassa assured her, as Emily studied her reflection in the mirror. The white dress set off her brown hair nicely. “And all you need is a pretty necklace to direct their gaze to your face.”

  “They already stare at me,” Emily reminded her, tartly. “And they stare at you.”

  “So they should,” Alassa said, unrepentantly. “It’s just something you have to get used to as a baroness. Everyone who is lower on the social scale—which is just about everyone—will be taking their cue from you.”

  “So if I went into the library instead of hosting dances,” Emily said, “they’d go into the library too?”

  Alassa giggled, then sobered. “Or they’d think you weren’t keeping your eye on the ball,” she warned. “That’s a good way to get booted out of the arena.”

  Emily nodded. Alassa might have wanted to found her own Ken team because it would give her a chance to lead, but it w
ould also help prepare her for life as queen, where taking her eyes off the wrong ball might lead to worse than a few minutes in the penalty box. The ever-shifting patterns of allegiance and loyalty in court were exactly like the arena, where a wall might be there one moment and gone the next. It took more than physical skill to play Ken and win.

  “Come on,” she said, as they paid for their purchases. “It’s time to go have something to eat.”

  Dragon’s Den, like most of the city-states, had food stalls that included cuisines from all over the Allied Lands. Emily enjoyed eating at Whitehall, but the food rarely strayed from what the cooks thought enterprising young students should be eating to maintain their health and happiness. Eating in Dragon’s Den, on the other hand, allowed her to try foodstuffs that were never served at Whitehall. She didn’t always like it—one place had nearly made her throw up, after serving something that had smelt like rotting fish—but it was definitely an adventure.

  They found a small grill and sat down. There were no printed menus yet; instead, the menu was written on a blackboard with chalk. Emily selected the mixed grill, while Imaiqah and Alassa ordered two different meals. They could share them so they all had a taste.

  “I was looking for an outfit for the team,” Alassa said. “Maybe just something to mark us. But there wasn’t anything suitable.”

  “It might not be legal either,” Emily reminded her. “Aren’t you supposed to draw your equipment from the stores?”

  “Yes, but we are allowed to design our own uniforms,” Alassa said. “But I couldn’t find anything original.”

  The food arrived before Emily could say anything else. It smelt spicy; she was relieved to see the small jugs of yogurt and other condiments, as well as the bread. The food seemed almost Indian, but the waiter seemed so pale as to be almost translucent. That, she vaguely recalled from her studies of geography, suggested that he came from the Ice Kingdom to the far north.