Or his family did, she reminded herself. The Empire had encouraged trade and resettlement before its fall and, because everyone spoke the same language, fitting in hadn’t been too difficult. No wonder racism had barely existed in the Empire, at least racism against human beings. The racism against magical creatures seemed just as illogical.
“Not too bad,” Alassa concluded, as they finished the meal. “I’ll have to see about importing this into Zangaria.”
Emily snorted. The meals in Zangaria had been even less imaginative than the meals in Whitehall...at least at the formal receptions. She’d heard that private parties were much more imaginative, but she’d never been invited to any. Rumor had it that hostesses, desperate to keep themselves in the public eye, kept pushing the limits of what they could decently serve to their guests. Stuffed dormice and roast cat were the least of it.
“I received a request to immigrate today,” she said, and outlined briefly what Yodel had said. “Why would he want to move?”
“Could be that he expects great things from you,” Alassa said. “You’ve already reshaped the tax laws in your territory. What else might you do in the future?”
Emily scowled. The tax laws the previous baron had written—or enforced—seemed designed to spark off an eventual uprising and civil war. It wasn’t a question of what the baron would take, but what he would let the peasants keep. A single bad harvest could wipe out an entire village, particularly if the baron didn’t let them off their taxes. And it hadn’t taken long to realize that part of the reason takings were so low was because the baron’s henchmen all took their share—and more. Removing them had been necessary, just to ensure that she gained something from her holdings.
“I have no idea,” she said, tiredly. She looked down at her empty plate and smiled. “Perhaps I’ll introduce the burger or pizza to the world. Or fries.”
Alassa nodded and stood, leaving a handful of coins on the table. “Time to get back to school,” she said. “We have another practice session this evening.”
“Oh,” Emily said. “And how are you doing?”
“We’re learning,” Alassa assured her. “And we’re evolving our tactics.”
Imaiqah caught her arm. “You will come to our first game, won’t you?”
Emily hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. She didn’t want to waste her time watching a game when she could be reading or studying, but both of her friends deserved her support. Besides, it might give her a chance to relax.
“I’ll come,” she said. “Who are you playing?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Alassa admitted. “One of the older teams is having difficulty recruiting new players, so they’re trying to convince the tutors to give them additional time. If they don’t, the first set of games should be played in a week or so.”
Emily nodded. She hadn’t been interested, but she’d picked up a great deal of information about scoring anyway, enough to know that each team would play the others, then the scores would be somehow tabulated and a winner announced at the end of the year. It seemed confusing to her, but the simple solution—eliminate each team that lost a game—was probably cruel and unnecessary.
“Good luck,” she said. “I’ll be there.”
The drive back to Whitehall was hair-raising; more snow had fallen on the road, making it very hazardous. Emily couldn’t help wishing that they’d decided to walk instead—she’d walked further for Martial Magic—but neither Alassa nor Imaiqah took the class. By the time they pulled up in the courtyard and saw the line of animated snowmen forming up in front of the door, she was very relieved to be back.
“Look out,” Alassa snapped, as the snowmen started to throw snowballs towards the carriages. “Who made those?”
Emily ducked as a snowball thudded into the carriage, just above her head. “I don’t know,” she said, concentrating on raising a shield. The lecture on Construction had mentioned animation, but the tutor had explained that they wouldn’t touch on it until fifth year. “How do you get rid of them...?”
There was a flash of red light from Master Tor’s carriage and the snowmen started to melt with terrifying speed. Emily thought she heard groans as they faded into puddles and drifted away, even though she knew that they weren’t truly alive. Master Tor stepped over the water and led the way into the school, then stopped just inside. He caught Emily as soon as she entered the building herself.
“I’ll review your essay tonight at seven bells,” he informed her. “I hope you have it ready.”
“Yes, sir,” Emily said, shortly. She didn’t need to eat dinner after eating in Dragon’s Den, which would give her time to review the essay before she took it down to him. She knew from experience what happened if the punishment essays were unsatisfactory. “I’ll be there.”
Alassa squeezed her shoulder as they made their way past him and up the stairs to the dorms. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re much better at writing essays than I am.”
Emily shrugged. It had taken her far too long to master the techniques she needed to use at Whitehall, even though she’d written essays on Earth. There were no computers, no spellcheckers...and a single mistake could force her to rewrite the whole sheet of parchment out again and again. It did teach precision, she had to admit, but it was also very frustrating—and torturous. Writing with a pencil for so long left her hands feeling numb.
“Let’s hope so,” she said. “But you probably know more than I do.”
She waved goodbye and stepped into her room. The Gorgon was absent—Emily hadn’t seen her in Dragon’s Den, which might not have been surprising—but Lin was lying on her bed, reading a large textbook on law. Emily wondered absently if Master Tor had written textbooks too. He certainly looked the type of professor who would force his students to buy books he’d written.
But he should know what he’s talking about, she thought, as she sat down at her desk. You can’t fake competence here.
She found her essay and read it over for the final time, looking for problematic areas. There weren’t any that she could see, but she had a suspicion that there was plenty of common knowledge that had been left out of the books. No one apart from her, the sole immigrant from another world, had questioned the exclusion of werewolves and other magical creatures from human settlements. There had been more antislavery campaigners in the American South than that!
Shaking her head, she pushed the essay to one side and opened Yodel’s book. Unlike most textbooks, it seemed to be written with the completely ignorant in mind; it started with baby steps and went upwards from there. Emily sucked in her breath as she realized why; enchantment was fantastically complex, even when creating a basic pocket dimension. If she hadn’t had Whitehall’s nexus point to draw on, back when she’d fought Shadye, it wouldn’t have worked so well. Raw power had compensated for the shortcomings in her spellwork.
And it wouldn’t even work outside a nexus point, she thought, slowly. Trapping the Cockatrice had been straightforward, if risky, but trapping another necromancer might be much harder. The imitation black hole she’d created might not be practical outside Whitehall...or require so much power that a single magician, even a necromancer, couldn’t duplicate it. And that meant...
Shadye’s lands on the other side of the mountains hadn’t been taken by another necromancer, Emily had heard. That was...odd; despite their madness, they had to believe that Shadye had been killed directly, rather than the more traditional method of poison or trickery. She’d intimidated them all...but she was effectively bluffing. What would happen when they called her bluff?
She muttered a curse under her breath and started to parse out a basic spell for crafting a pocket dimension. It was much harder than she had assumed; there were so many separate sections in the spell that making them all work together would be a nightmare. No wonder, she decided, that Yodel had been so horrified by her makeshift modifications to her trunk—or why they had rendered the trunk almost completely useless. Altering one variable might cau
se the entire spell to collapse.
Lin put down the textbook with a loud thud and headed off to dinner. Emily started, then rolled her eyes. It was easy to forget that Lin was there; the girl seemed to spend her time in classes, the library or the dining hall, nowhere else. Emily had tried to talk to her, but it had gone nowhere. Maybe she just needed more friends.
She stored Yodel’s book in her borrowed trunk, then stood and changed into a clean set of robes. It was a rule—a stupid one, in her opinion—that students visiting their tutors after normal school hours still had to wear their robes, even though the blanket ban on wearing anything else had been rescinded. She picked up her essay and a small bound notebook she’d been sent by Imaiqah’s father, then walked out of the room, feeling her heart starting to pound inside her chest.
Master Tor’s office door opened when she approached, beckoning her inside. Bracing herself, Emily walked into the room and nodded politely to Master Tor, who held out a hand for the essay. Emily kept her face as expressionless as possible as she passed it to him and stood at parade rest, silently grateful that the sergeants had insisted that they spend so much time standing to attention. Before she’d come to Whitehall, she would have been fidgeting within minutes.
“Werewolves become extremely dangerous when the full moon is up,” Master Tor said, when he had finished reading her essay. “If you happen to encounter a werewolf during that time, you will be very lucky to survive—and if you are bitten, you will become a werewolf yourself. There is no cure for lycanthropy, nor is there any way to moderate the hunger and lust of born werewolves. In packs, at least, they turn their aggressive tendencies on each other.”
Emily shuddered. The packs seemed to be dominated by the rule of might making right. An alpha male could never rest, even when in human form; another male could issue his challenge at any time, demanding control of the pack. And such duels were always to the death. The victor would gain power and unrestricted access to the pack’s females, who had their own hierarchy. It made the power struggle in Zangaria looked genteel by comparison.
“In human form, they still act as a pack,” Master Tor added. “When alone, they may seem human, but they are very far from it. You can never trust them completely.”
He put the pieces of parchment down on the desk, then looked up at her. “Did you learn something from this essay?”
“Yes, sir,” Emily said, shortly.
Master Tor studied her for a long moment. “And do you have any questions about this essay?”
Emily hesitated, then nodded. “Why are Gorgons excluded from human settlements too?”
“They do tend to scare people,” Master Tor said. “Do you know that Gorgon petrification is almost impossible to reverse? The Gorgons themselves can do it; human sorcerers can rarely cure someone who has been turned to stone by a Gorgon. They were created by the faerie—and, like all such creatures, they have unpleasant surprises running in their bloodstream. And they worship the faerie.
“A deal was made in the closing days of the Empire,” he added. “If they stayed in their own lands, we wouldn’t try to destroy them. They are not really part of the Allied Lands—your roommate wouldn’t be here at all if she hadn’t developed an independent talent for magic. And when she finishes her education, she may not be able to use it.”
Emily scowled. “But why is that a problem?”
“The Gorgons worship the faerie,” Master Tor reminded her, shortly. “What would happen if they tried to bring them back?”
“I see,” Emily said, slowly.
But she didn’t, not really. The Gorgons could surely have called the faerie back by now, if that were possible—and if that was what they wanted to do. And if they were constantly treated like dirt by the nearby humans, they might well want to upend the balance of power once again. It just didn’t seem right to treat them as animals.
“I have checked your timetable,” Master Tor said, changing the subject. “You should have no problems with the rest of the term, although I am obliged to warn you that you only have a month to switch or drop classes without repercussions. I have also reviewed your curriculum for Martial Magic. I would advise you to concentrate heavily on wards, booby traps and other passive defenses. Your expertise in this is shockingly low.”
Emily nodded, surprised that Master Tor was trying to be helpful. Each Martial Magic class drew in students from several different years, but Emily was still the youngest—and least experienced—of them all. Aloha would have mastered Construction and Warding in her second year, while also taking the first year of Martial Magic. Jade would have had five years of experience and education under his belt before joining the first class himself.
“Yes, sir,” she said, finally.
“They will be testing you first, on Monday afternoon,” Master Tor added. An odd little smile played over his lips. “I suggest that you spend the rest of the weekend researching in the library. You’re going to need it.”
Or wind up completely humiliated, Emily thought, ruefully. Just like playing Ken.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, out loud.
Master Tor marked her essay quickly, then passed it back to her. “There are some aspects you need to research more,” he said, “but you can leave that until the end of the month. It doesn’t really need revising.”
The door swung open behind her. Taking it as her cue, Emily nodded to him and turned, walking out of the room. The door swung closed, allowing her to look at the notes he’d written at the bottom of the essay. He insisted that she did more research.
“Fine,” Emily muttered, as she started to walk towards the library. “I’ll do some more bloody research.
Chapter Thirteen
SO,” SERGEANT MILES SAID, ON MONDAY afternoon. “Are you ready for this?”
Emily looked up at Blackhall and shook her head. If anything, the small mansion looked even more sinister in the twilight. Darkness would fall completely, she suspected, before they returned to Whitehall. There were no lights in the darkened windows, suggesting an unfriendly welcome. If anything, the windows seemed to absorb the light.
“Smart answer,” the sergeant said. As Master Tor had warned, he’d pulled her aside as soon as she had changed and taken her to Blackhall, while the others went with Sergeant Bane to jog around the school. “Have you mastered the emergency spell?”
Emily nodded and cast it into the air, careful not to actually move her hands. The instructions for casting the spell had been very clear on that point. All it did, she’d learned while studying the spellbooks, was create a surge of magic, one that could be detected by a trained sorcerer or pre-programmed wards. Sergeant Miles nodded as the spell shimmered into life and then faded away. They’d been warned that it wouldn’t last very long.
“Should you find yourself stuck, cast that spell and I will come to the rescue,” he said, giving her a reassuring smile. “That will, of course, result in you being marked down for the day—should you wind up knocked out or otherwise helpless, you will also be marked down. Don’t use the spell unless there is no other choice.”
Emily nodded, feeling her throat constrict. She’d faced worse than a haunted house, hadn’t she? But two trained combat sorcerers had spent months devising tests for students, all of whom were more experienced than herself, and she knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. Just touching the wrong thing might cost her the whole exercise.
Better than costing you your life if you have to do it for real, she thought, remembering the days of chaos in Zangaria. Sneaking through the castle’s wards had been difficult—and if she hadn’t had a sample of Alassa’s blood, it would have been impossible. She was ruefully aware that a trained sorcerer would probably have done a far better job.
Sergeant Miles reached into his pocket and produced a small glowing orb, barely smaller than Emily’s fist. “Your task is to find this orb’s counterpart in the house and then remove it from the property,” he said. “You may take as long as you believe necessary, but do
bear in mind that the longer you stay inside, the weaker you will become. Next time, you might want to bring water and foodstuffs with you.”
Emily flushed. She hadn’t been told to bring water and food, but she hadn’t been told that it was forbidden either. And if she had, the worst that would happen was that it would get confiscated before she went into the house.
“Good luck,” the Sergeant said, taking a step backwards. “And be careful.”
“Wait,” Emily said. “How should I enter the house?”
“Any way you please,” Sergeant Miles said. “It’s up to you.”
Emily turned back and faced the house, then slowly walked towards it until she was only a meter from the stone wall. She could sense hints of magic crackling through the stone, almost certainly basic protective wards firmly embedded within the rock. Breaking them required more force than any magician had, short of a necromancer. A team effort might work, she knew, but it would certainly alert the person who had put the wards together. She wouldn’t have put it past the sergeants to have someone inside the house, reconfiguring the wards to trap unwary students.
She stopped in front of the main door and cast the basic magic detection spell. The doorknob lit up with an ugly red color, so bright that it took her a moment to realize that the entire door was glowing red. Touching the doorknob would probably mean instant failure. Shaking her head, she walked around the house, checking each of the windows. They were all warded, several quite imaginatively. One of them actually looked unprotected until she was almost close enough to be caught. The rear door was just as heavily protected as the front door.
Picking her way through the wards might be possible, she told herself, but she knew she should look for a simpler solution first. Carefully, she checked the walls themselves; if they weren’t so heavily protected, maybe she could blast her way into the building. She certainly hadn’t been forbidden to do that either. But there were loose traceries of magic running through the stone, grounding the wards. Knocking the wards down might be impossible.
Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) Page 12