Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Probably,” Emily agreed. “I’ll escort you to your room, just in case...”

  “Charming,” Alassa said, dryly. “Leaving me to my fate all alone.”

  She shook her head before Emily could say a word. “Don’t worry about it,” she added. “I’ll be fine, if unhappy. You make sure that Imaiqah gets back all right.”

  “I’m not that badly injured,” Imaiqah insisted. “I just need a rest.”

  “Which you will get, as ordered by your team captain,” Alassa said, firmly. “I need you ready to go back into the arena tomorrow evening...”

  There was a loud scream from the direction of the changing rooms. Heads snapped around to see a pale-skinned girl staggering out of the building. Emily didn’t recognize her at all, but she looked to be on the verge of panic. Sergeant Miles pushed his way through the crowd towards her, too late.

  “It’s Danielle,” the girl screamed. “She’s dead!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  EVERYONE, BE QUIET,” SERGEANT MILES BELLOWED, his voice somehow effortlessly drowning everyone else out. “Be quiet!”

  A wave of magic silenced the growing panic. Emily stared at the girl who’d found the body, shocked and terrified. If Travis was dead...and then his girlfriend, what did it mean?

  “Start making your way back to your rooms,” Sergeant Miles ordered. He caught sight of a handful of boys making their way towards the changing rooms. “Don’t go peep at the body, just go to your rooms. Now.”

  The students obeyed. Emily caught Imaiqah’s arm as the crowd pressed in around them, pushing them towards the entrance to the school. Everyone was glancing around nervously, many of them looking at Emily as if they expected her to do something. At least few of them seemed suspicious of her, although she was sure that would come in time. How could they blame her when she hadn’t been alone since the game had begun?

  She pushed the thought to one side as they made their way up the stairs and into the dorms. Alassa tugged at her sleeve, indicating that they should go into Imaiqah’s room instead of either of theirs. Emily nodded; Imaiqah still looked tired, even though she insisted she was fine. Imaiqah could lie down, as Lady Barb had ordered, while her friends could sit next to her and chat.

  Madame Razz looked deeply worried as she counted the female students back into their rooms. Master Tor, standing nearby, shot Emily an unreadable glance, but he didn’t seem inclined to throw any more wild accusations at her. Emily allowed herself a moment of relief as Imaiqah’s door opened, allowing them into her room. There were students who would take such accusations seriously merely because they were made by a tutor.

  “Danielle is dead,” Alassa said, as soon as the door closed. “Why?”

  Emily scowled. “It’s a pattern,” she said, trying to recall what little crime fiction she had read. Serial killers had patterns...and if they were identified, their next target could be predicted and protected. “That doesn’t bode well for the other girl.”

  “You mean Kay,” Alassa said. She smiled at Emily’s surprised expression. “Her father is related to King Jorlem of Alluvia—you will remember Prince Hedrick, won’t you?”

  Emily snorted. Alassa might have problems memorizing the thousands of different types of alchemical ingredients, but she knew everyone who had even a trace of aristocratic blood by heart. If she’d married Hedrick, Kay would probably have wound up as part of Alassa’s court, even if she’d sought to decline the honor. Or, perhaps, one of her confidants who could never be fully trusted without oaths, oaths that could never be asked for or granted.

  She shook her head, tired. “Travis may have been the first person to find the Warden’s body,” she said. “He’s the next person to die. Danielle finds his body—and then she’s the next person to die. Kay may be the next target.”

  “Except it was you who found the Warden’s body,” Imaiqah pointed out, softly. She looked very pale. “You weren’t targeted.”

  Alassa nodded. “And if Travis was the first to actually see the body, not you, why didn’t he raise the alarm himself?”

  Emily scowled. If Travis had raised the alarm, she wouldn’t have been blamed...but looking back at how he’d acted when she’d reported to the Hall of Shame, there had been no sense that he’d known what she would find. He’d seemed genuinely shocked when Emily had called him and told him that the Warden was dead. Besides, he had been interrogated under truth spells.

  “Maybe they didn’t regard the Warden’s death as murder,” she growled. It was hard for her to think of the Warden as anything other than human, but someone raised in the Allied Lands might take a different view. “In that case, the pattern is that Travis was murdered first, followed by the person who found the body.”

  She gritted her teeth, wishing that she knew more about forensic magic. Master Tor’s lectures had been long on minutiae and short on any useful detail. The only thing she knew for sure was that it was impossible to raise the dead to ask questions—and that the very thought was regarded as taboo throughout the Allied Lands. Did they even know about fingerprints?

  “It could still be Master Tor,” Alassa pointed out. “He was the last known person to see the Warden alive.”

  Emily nodded. Assuming that Travis hadn’t entered the Warden’s office since Master Tor had left, it was possible that the Warden had been dead for some time prior to Emily’s arrival and the whole scheme was just a clumsy frame. And yet both Travis and Danielle were well-connected pupils. Killing them would be certain to draw an angry reaction from the Allied Lands. Unless, of course, that was the plan.

  “If the Grandmaster lost his job,” she said, slowly, “who would take it up?”

  “It would have to be decided by the White Council,” Alassa said. “But the post would need to be held by a very powerful and disciplined magician. Master Tor probably wouldn’t count.”

  “Unless he’s a necromancer,” Imaiqah said. “He’d have enough raw power to rip the building apart after one or two murders.”

  “Maybe,” Emily said, “but surely he would also be showing signs of instability?”

  She’d watched Master Tor during his classes, after Travis’s death, but there had been no signs of madness lurking in his eyes. He still seemed to dislike her, yet that wasn’t really a sign of insanity. After what she’d unknowingly done, it would be hard to blame him for feeling that she’d escaped being expelled through powerful connections, rather than simple ignorance.

  “He does slip into boring lectures,” Alassa said, lightly. “Perhaps that helps him to cope.”

  Emily snorted. All jokes aside, she doubted it would be that easy.

  She scowled a moment later as a thought struck her. “How do we know the bodies were real?”

  Alassa blinked at her. “You mean they might be homunculi too?”

  “Or one half of someone who had used a bilocation spell to split themselves in half,” Emily said, slowly. “Maybe Travis faked his own death.”

  Imaiqah shook her head. “He’d be sacrificing half his mind in the process,” she pointed out. “The other half wouldn’t be able to carry on, I think.”

  “And then he would still have to kill his girlfriend without someone else noticing,” Alassa added. “They did search the school thoroughly after his death.”

  Emily had her doubts. Not counting the servants, there were fifty tutors on staff, nowhere near enough to search the entire building, not if their prey was moving around at the same time. Sergeant Miles might know how to catch a moving target, but the remainder of the staff wouldn’t have that training. And besides, she had difficulty in understanding why someone would sacrifice half of their mind.

  “Fingerprints,” she mused. Maybe the killer had worn gloves, but it wouldn’t hurt them to try. Come to think of it, how hard would it be to create a magical fingerprint test? If there wasn’t anything like it already, she was sure Professor Lombardi could compose one overnight, if necessary. “We should ask them to check.”

  Alassa stood.
“We’ll go tell them,” she said, firmly. She looked at the empty beds, then back at Imaiqah. “What happened to your roommates?”

  “They went hiking,” Imaiqah explained. “I’ll be fine, if you want to go talk to Lady Barb.”

  “Well, she did tell me to report to her,” Alassa said. “Emily?”

  “We should probably check with Madame Razz first,” Emily said. “I don’t think we want to get caught outside the dorms.”

  Madame Razz glowered at them as soon as they emerged from Imaiqah’s room. “Why,” she demanded, “are you not in your rooms, waiting for permission to leave?”

  “I have to report to Lady Barb,” Alassa said, quickly. “And my friend here has some insights into the killer’s pattern.”

  The housemother eyed them, suspiciously. “Wait in my office,” she said, finally. “I will call her.”

  Emily and Alassa exchanged glances, but obeyed.

  “Useless biddy,” Alassa muttered, as soon as they were alone. “You want to bet she’ll tattle to Master Tor?”

  Emily shrugged. Madame Razz was strict, but she also genuinely cared for the girls under her care—and she had a heart of gold. Emily still remembered how Madame Razz had been the one to take care of her after the nightmares had started, after she’d killed Shadye. And the housemother also had a sense of justice and integrity. She’d been furious when one of Alassa’s pranks had involved a maid.

  She looked around Madame Razz’s office with some curiosity. It was large, crammed with sofas and a single small bookshelf. Emily herself had never been homesick—there was nothing on Earth she wanted to go back to—but she knew there were other students who did miss their homes and families. Madame Razz comforted them as best as she could; sometimes, she even took them home for a brief visit. The books on the shelves were all moralistic tracts that promoted proper standards of behavior. Emily had been forced to read a couple for etiquette lessons and had been left with the feeling that the writers had intended to create Purity Sues.

  The door opened, revealing a tired-looking Lady Barb. “This had better be important,” she said, shortly. “Right now, we’re searching the school again.”

  Emily nodded, wincing inwardly at the edge in her tutor’s voice. “There’s a pattern in the killings,” she said, and explained. “Kay might be the next target.”

  “We deduced that,” Lady Barb said, with some irritation. “She’s currently under the protection of Sergeant Bane.”

  Emily allowed herself a moment of relief. She didn’t know Sergeant Bane very well, but he seemed to be as tough and fearless as Sergeant Harkin, while possessing the magic his predecessor had lacked. One of the students had tested his defenses and discovered, too late, that they were designed to repel all hexes and jinxes. And then the sergeant had turned him into a pig for ten minutes, before giving the entire class a long lecture on taking all opponents seriously, no matter what they looked like.

  “Good,” she said, instead. “What about fingerprints?”

  Lady Barb looked blank. “Fingerprints?”

  Emily smiled. They hadn’t wasted her time after all. “Each of our fingerprints are unique,” she explained. “If I touch something, I’ll leave a fingerprint behind. You need to check the blades used in the killings for prints...”

  She spoke rapidly, outlining everything she could remember about fingerprints.

  “I’ll suggest it to the Grandmaster,” Lady Barb said, when Emily had finished. “But if the killer used gloves there won’t be anything left.”

  “It’s worth trying,” Emily said. “I couldn’t think of anything else...”

  “That’s not true,” Alassa interrupted. “Are the bodies actually real?”

  “That’s an interesting question,” Lady Barb acknowledged. “The bodies were so completely desiccated that it is hard to be entirely sure. But there’s no reason to think otherwise.”

  Emily frowned. What would Sherlock Holmes do? “Was Danielle killed in the same manner as Travis?”

  “Yes,” Lady Barb said. “And yet it should have been instantly noticeable. It couldn’t have taken place outside a seven-minute span, while there were hundreds of magicians outside the changing rooms. I don’t understand it.”

  “Me neither,” Emily agreed. Two victims...the necromancer must be heading full tilt towards insanity. “There is another possibility.”

  She hesitated, then outlined their suspicions about Master Tor.

  “He was questioned under truth spells, after the Warden’s body was discovered,” Lady Barb said, when she had finished. “And, whatever else can be said about him, he wouldn’t kill students placed under his care.”

  “He left Emily defenseless,” Alassa said, hotly. “Do you know how many hexes I had to take off her?”

  “They didn’t actually kill her,” Lady Barb said, although she seemed pleased rather than surprised at Alassa’s sudden protectiveness. “And there were good reasons for that punishment.”

  She shook her head. “Master Tor is unlikely to be the killer,” she added. “If nothing else, he was tested quite thoroughly after the Warden died and he knew nothing about it.”

  “Unless he was powerful enough to shrug off the truth spell,” Emily said, slowly. She’d read up on cases where the prime suspect had done just that, saving himself from punishment. “Is he that powerful?”

  Lady Barb smiled, a little unkindly. “Master Tor will never be a great sorcerer—and he knows it,” she said. “Nor is he ever likely to enjoy more power and influence than that which comes from teaching at Whitehall. And he wouldn’t risk his position by killing students who have such powerful connections.”

  “Unless he’s hiding his power,” Alassa pressed. “He might be...”

  “Unless he somehow managed to boost his power without going mad,” Lady Barb snapped, “his power level hasn’t increased beyond his recorded level. We are quite good at measuring magical power and potential at this school. Now, unless you have some actual proof...”

  “He could be covering for someone else,” Alassa suggested, sullenly. “If he were trying to frame Emily, he...”

  “Would have needed to know in advance what was going to happen,” Lady Barb said, her patience at an end. “I think it is highly unlikely that he is involved, save by coincidence.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Do you have anything useful to add?”

  Emily swallowed, then asked the question that had been bothering her ever since she’d realized they had to be dealing with a serial killer. “What will happen to this person, when you catch him?”

  Lady Barb scowled. “Depends,” she said. “If he’s a necromancer, we will kill him and destroy the body. You can never trust a necromancer not to try to ensure that he can never truly die. If not, he’ll be sent to face the White Council. They will determine his fate.”

  Emily nodded. “As long as you don’t hand your jailhouse keys to unscrupulous creatures,” she said, “you shouldn’t have a problem.”

  Lady Barb gave her an odd look, then let it pass. “No one has ever been known to escape from the Garden of the Stoned Philosophers,” she said. “Even going there is strongly discouraged.”

  Nothing Emily had ever read—in science fiction or fantasy—allowed her to believe in the concept of the inescapable prison, but there was no point in trying to argue. Instead, she stood and headed for the door.

  “Wait,” Lady Barb said, coldly. “Madame Razz informs me that you intended to make your way through the building to find us.”

  Emily swallowed. “Yes,” she said. “We wanted to help...”

  “That was extremely foolish,” Lady Barb said. “Or has it escaped your attention that you are among the prime suspects? If you happened to be caught outside your rooms, it would be a great deal harder to prove your innocence. You have political enemies who will be happy to take whatever chance they can get to discredit you.”

  She rounded on Alassa. “And you are your father’s sole heir,” she added, tightly. “Did yo
u realize, perhaps, that if you died here Zangaria would slip into civil war? Half of the barons may currently be dead, but the remainder would be unable to avoid making a grab for power. You risked far more than just your life when you wanted to leave the bedrooms, where you are protected.”

  “Didn’t do much for Danielle,” Alassa said, softly. “I...”

  Lady Barb’s eyes glittered with fury. “Your father, I suspect, will be horrified when he hears of your exploits,” she snapped. “And so he should be. He already wasted most of your early life; now, you’re threatening to waste the rest of it.”

  Alassa’s face seemed to darken, very slightly. “I...”

  “Emily,” Lady Barb ordered, “wait outside.”

  Emily hesitated, then obeyed.

  The corridor outside seemed as silent as the grave. There was no sign of Madame Razz or anyone else; she almost felt as if she were alone in the school. Even the lights had been dimmed, although there was no apparent reason. It was hardly night time. She gritted her teeth as she heard a smacking sound, followed by yelps of pain from inside the office. At least Lady Barb had given Alassa some privacy.

  There was a long silent pause, then the door opened. Alassa looked tearful, one hand rubbing her rear as she made her way past Emily and down towards her bedroom. Emily hesitated, unsure of what to do, then gasped in pain as Lady Barb’s hand caught hold of her arm and pulled her into the office. She couldn’t help noticing that Lady Barb was carrying a wooden hairbrush in one hand.

  “What you did was foolish as well as risky,” Lady Barb said. “I shudder to think of what would have happened if you’d been caught.”

  Emily lowered her eyes. Lady Barb was right. It had been foolish.

  “I’ll suggest fingerprint tests to the Grandmaster later tonight,” Lady Barb added. “And I will see to it that Kay remains under guard. The Grandmaster will, I suspect, make a full announcement tomorrow. Until then, I suggest that you keep your mouth closed. There are already hundreds of rumors running around the school.”

  She pulled Emily gently over her knee, tugged down her trousers and went to work. Emily gritted her teeth as the first smack struck her rear, then cried out in pain as Lady Barb smacked her again and again. It felt like hours before she was allowed to stand up again, clutching her bottom in the hope that it would somehow quench the painful fire.