Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Sleep refused to come, no matter how tightly she closed her eyes or tried to count sheep. The bed was uncomfortable, as if it were rejecting her despite Madame Razz carefully removing the handful of hexes and wards the previous occupant had left behind. Emily sat upright, wiping at her sweaty brow, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She was surprised to discover, when she glanced at her watch, that it was nearly seven bells. The nightmares had lasted longer than she’d realized.

  She stepped into the shower and washed, thoroughly. Her body still refused to feel clean, even if the water did help wake her up. But then...what was the point of leaving the room when there were no classes? Even the strictest tutors had reluctantly cancelled their classes in the wake of the Mimic’s discovery.

  Her face looked back at her as she peered into the mirror, shocking her with its gaunt appearance and grim expression. She looked almost as pale and waiflike as Imaiqah or Lin, she realized; her eyes looked almost as though she had been roughhousing with the boys in Martial Magic. Bruises and more serious injuries were not uncommon after Martial Magic, but normally they were healed instantly. These black eyes looked as though she had been fighting in the corridors.

  “Emily,” Imaiqah groaned, as Emily stepped back into the room. “What time is it?”

  “Seven bells,” Emily said. “Breakfast time.”

  Imaiqah didn’t look any better than Emily herself, even after a brief shower. Emily watched as she dressed, then headed towards the door...and hesitated. It was easy to understand why; no one knew for sure what might be lurking outside their rooms. Normally, they would have been safe, but now...there was no way to be sure that the Mimic wasn’t wearing a friend’s face. Emily pushed the door open and stepped into the corridor, hearing the sound of Madame Razz berating a student echoing down from her office.

  “You know you’re not supposed to bring boys into your room,” Madame Razz was thundering. “Did you think about the possible consequences?”

  Emily and Imaiqah shared a smile. One of Whitehall’s other purposes was to introduce children from the great magical families—or even lesser aristocrats—to one another and see if they fell in love. She’d been astonished by how many marriage proposals had arrived for her after the end of first year, although they’d dried up after King Randor had made her a baroness. Most of them, she’d been told, had assumed she was a new magician, just like Imaiqah, someone who might be tempted into a marriage contract. They would have been happy to share their status in exchange for her having children who would be part of the family.

  Her smile grew wider as they slipped down the corridor. Aristocrats like Alassa were expected to remain virgins until they were actually married, despite the existence of both contraception spells and magical parental tests. The others...the rules were relaxed for female magicians, particularly the ones who were young and fertile. But they were still expected to maintain a certain decorum when in public. Madame Razz had good reason to be annoyed.

  And boys aren’t meant to be in the dorms in any case, Emily thought. It had been hard enough undressing in front of her roommates and they were both girls. The thought of a boy accidentally walking into the room chilled her to the bone.

  There were hardly any students in the dining hall when they walked inside, apart from several older pupils who were staring at a map and arguing angrily over which way they should take to reach their destination. Emily recognized Cat, who gave her a nod when he saw her, but the others were strangers. She couldn’t decide if they were idiots for thinking about what they could do after leaving the school or merely optimists.

  “Take a seat,” Emily muttered to Imaiqah. “I need to ask Cat a question.”

  Cat smiled at her as she walked up to his table, but some of his friends seemed much less welcoming. Emily couldn’t decide if they were on Cat’s Ken team or if they merely hated the thought of talking to a mere second-year student. Either was possible, she supposed. There was a rule that any romantic relationships between students could only involve one year above and one year below the student involved, but there was a much bigger social gulf between second year and sixth year students.

  “Go away,” one of the students ordered, shortly.

  “I wouldn’t say that to her,” Cat said, quickly. “The sergeant is on the warpath right now, remember?”

  Emily ignored the byplay. “I need to ask you a question,” she said. “You knew Travis, didn’t you?”

  Cat glared at her. “Yes, I knew him,” he said, crossly. “Is there a point to this?”

  “Travis was consumed by the Mimic,” Emily said, simply. “It must have happened during the Battle of Whitehall, I think. Tell me—did you ever see him being transfigured in the months after the battle?”

  “It’s one of the tests for Martial Magic,” Cat said, sarcastically. “Yes, I saw him being transfigured—he once spent an hour as a toad after upsetting Danielle over something...”

  “He was staring at another girl’s butt,” the student who had first spoken to her said. “You’d think he’d know better than to do that around her.”

  Emily blushed bright red at the mere thought. “Thank you,” she said, embarrassed. “I just needed to know that.”

  She gritted her teeth at the sniggers following her as she walked back to Imaiqah and took the bowl of porridge her friend had brought for her. “No luck,” she said. “I thought we had another way to track and trap the Mimic.”

  The thought gnawed at her as she ate her breakfast. There had to be another way to detect the Mimic, one that didn’t involve blood samples or something else that would be considered taboo. Body wastes? The thought made her feel sick and she almost gagged on her porridge. That was truly an unspeakable possibility.

  Other students filtered into the room, driven by hunger. They looked no better than anyone else; their eyes flickered around the dining hall, as if they expected the Mimic to reveal itself and lunge forward, intent on consuming them all. Emily looked away as several suspicious glances were directed her way, even though there were dozens of witnesses that the Mimic hadn’t been wearing Emily’s form. But who knew what had happened overnight?

  Sergeant Miles strode into the room and marched over to where Emily was sitting. “I need you to come with me,” he said, brusquely. He drew a small knife from his belt, cut his own skin enough to let several drops of blood fall onto the table and then stepped backwards, allowing her to observe that the blood didn’t change to mist. “Now, if you please.”

  Emily looked over her shoulder at Imaiqah, then hesitated. She didn’t want her friend to walk back to her room alone.

  The sergeant seemed to read her thoughts. “Cat,” he bellowed, loudly enough to shake the table, “escort Imaiqah wherever she wants to go, once she has finished breakfast. And no funny business.”

  Cat looked...irked, but nodded in agreement. Very few people would dare to defy Sergeant Miles...and no one did it twice. The sergeants had far broader authority to punish than the regular tutors, if only because of the dangers of Martial Magic. And he had a nasty sense of humor.

  “Come with me,” the Sergeant ordered, wiping up the blood. “Now.”

  Emily nodded and stood up. Maybe, just maybe, the sergeant had had an idea of his own.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  WE COULDN’T IDENTIFY YOUR ATTACKER,” THE Sergeant said, once they were outside the dining hall and walking towards the armory. “That is...worrying.”

  Emily blinked in surprise. There was a Mimic on the loose, hunting down students and consuming them...and he was worried about the mystery attacker? But it was a problem that had to be solved. The attacker could have killed both Imaiqah and herself if they hadn’t fled.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Sergeant...what are we doing here?”

  “You’re going to practice your spells,” the sergeant said. “And I am going to teach you some other spells that work at a higher level.”

  He caught her arm as they stepped into the armory. “I sho
uld warn you,” he added, “that all the normal rules about Martial Magic spells will apply to most of these, too.”

  Emily flushed. No one knew, she realized, that she’d used one such spell on Melissa. She’d been caught by the Mimic, not the real Sergeant Bane. The real sergeant would probably have dragged her to the Grandmaster’s office and demanded that she be immediately expelled, or at least barred from taking Martial Magic for the rest of the year. She wondered, idly, what she should do about it. Confess and take her punishment...or keep her mouth closed?

  “I understand,” she said, finally.

  She watched as the sergeant picked up a wooden staff and passed it to her. It was heavier than she’d expected, heavy enough to utterly crack someone’s skull if it were brought down on their head. A quick glance at the head of the staff revealed that someone had wrapped the wood around a metal core that tingled, faintly, with magic.

  “You will know, of course, that students are not supposed to use wands,” the Sergeant said, with a hint of his old friendly grin. “Using one of them to shape and direct one’s magic is a good way to wind up crippled. Indeed, the simplest way to render a wand-wielder harmless is simply to take the wand. They are rarely able to cast spells without it.”

  Emily nodded. Alassa had used a wand, which was why she had never been able to pass Basic Charms...at least until she’d wound up working with Emily. Without the sense for magic that magicians picked up through casting the spells themselves, she had simply been unable to advance further towards becoming a sorceress. Emily might well have saved far more than just her life.

  “This is a combat staff,” the Sergeant explained. He took it from Emily and hefted it in one hand. “I rarely issue them to students who have not already completed the third year of Martial Magic—or haven’t gone on to apprenticeships. Your friend Jade, among others, will have a staff—and his Master will not hesitate to punish him severely if he starts threatening to become dependent upon it. He runs the risk of crippling his magic.”

  “I see,” Emily said, slowly. “If that’s the case, why do people use them?”

  “Because, under the right circumstances, a staff can help direct and focus immensely powerful spells,” Sergeant Miles said. “Each staff is individually bonded to a specific user, who channels magic through it to bring it to life. No one else can use your staff once it is yours. It simply won’t work for them. However...”

  He placed the tip of the staff against the floor and leaned on it. “I do not have the time to provide constant supervision,” he added. “This staff, once bonded to you, will be stored in my personal quarters, under a set of very powerful wards. You are not to use it without my direct supervision. We will practice once a week, no more. Do you understand me?”

  Emily nodded, but said nothing.

  “The staff can easily become addictive,” the Sergeant warned, “and when it does you have taken the first step towards restricting your magic. Ultimately, the person who will suffer if you lose your independence will be yourself. Do not attempt to take the staff or to beg me for more sessions. I will not take it lightly.”

  He passed her the staff and smiled, suddenly. “You’ll notice that the tip of the staff is made of pure iron, which can dampen or cancel certain types of wild magic,” he added. “The core is also made of iron, which makes the staff a formidable weapon if you happen to be deprived of everything else. If worst comes to worst and you poke a deadly trap with the staff, it will shatter rather than allowing the curse to strike you. But you must not grow dependent upon it.”

  Emily hefted the staff, trying to get used to the weight. “Should I be learning how to use them at all?”

  “You need to advance quickly,” Sergeant Miles said. “And besides, you have definite potential.”

  He tapped the tip of the staff. “I want you to focus your magic through the staff,” he ordered. “It should bond with you at once.”

  Emily hesitated, then carefully pushed raw magic out of her fingertips, imagining it flowing through the staff. There was a sudden rush of energy, a sense that she had suddenly developed an extra hand or leg...and then the staff felt alive in her hand. It was thrumming with power. Holding it made her feel powerful.

  “Well done,” the Sergeant said. “Now...follow me.”

  He led her into the warded chamber and closed the door firmly behind them. A second later, an illusion—Emily couldn’t help thinking of it as a hologram—appeared in front of her. It was a trio of battle-ready orcs, each one over two meters tall and carrying swords almost as big as Emily herself. There was none of the stench she remembered from the attack on Whitehall, thankfully. The illusion was far from perfect.

  “There is a spell already embedded in the staff,” Sergeant Miles said. “I want you to trigger the spell.”

  Emily concentrated, remembering the first set of lessons she’d had with Mistress Irene, when the tutor had taught her how to draw the magic out of her body. She smiled in sudden delight as it flowed into the staff, suddenly feeling the spell’s presence embedded inside the wood, ready to be triggered. Magic flowed into the spell and...

  Fire billowed out of the staff, roaring towards the orcs. They bellowed and lifted their swords, but it was already too late. The flames consumed them and raged onwards, burning at the wards and the walls and the...

  Emily gasped in pain as the sergeant slapped her bottom, hard. She had been lost in the magic and the spell had just kept going. It would have burned until she drained herself dry if he hadn’t stopped her.

  “That spell is not easy to use without a staff,” Sergeant Miles said. “But it also illustrates the danger of trying to use a staff regularly.”

  “Yes,” Emily said. The sense of powering the spell had been overwhelming. She’d reached a point where she could cast certain spells automatically, but this was different. Whole new vistas of power were opening up in front of her...and would be forever lost, if she became dependent on the staff. “I see what you mean.”

  “You sound sullen,” the sergeant said. He sounded amused rather than annoyed. “That’s a very common reaction.”

  Emily nodded, flushing. “How else would they react?”

  “I’ve known students break their own staffs and then refuse to even touch another one,” Sergeant Miles said. “Others have become addicted almost at once, to the point where I had to make sure they never touched another staff until they had broken the addiction. You need to be careful.”

  He took the staff back and looked down at it, thoughtfully. “With some effort, you will be able to embed spells within the wood yourself for later use,” he said. “There are magicians who have built up an entire armory of spells within their staffs. In a duel, they can just fire them off, one by one or all together. Their opponents have often been surprised and defeated before they could react.”

  His eyes narrowed. “But there are also limits,” he added. “You could not direct the fire you summoned, not like you could if you worked the spell on your own. And you would only have what options you built into the staff yourself. And if you happened to rely on someone else to do the preparation...”

  “You would be utterly helpless without the staff,” Emily finished.

  “Oh, not helpless,” Sergeant Miles said. “But you would be in deep...ah, trouble.”

  Emily nodded, remembering their first lessons. Sergeant Miles and Professor Lombardi had staged a duel, each step intended to demonstrate common mistakes made by magicians who thought a little power and knowledge made them dangerous. Afterwards, they had gone through every step in considerable detail, until Emily could almost recite it backwards. One of the rules was to never assume that a disarmed opponent was a defeated opponent.

  But if I were dependent on the staff, another magician could take it and then freeze me, Emily thought, ruefully. And then I would be trapped.

  “We’ll practice more with the staff next week,” Sergeant Miles said, as he walked back into the armory and put it in a cupboard. “And rem
ember what I said. Do not try to get your hands on the staff without my permission and my presence.”

  Emily flushed. The moment he closed the door, she’d felt an overwhelming sense of grief and loss. It was silly, she knew; it wasn’t as if the staff had been confiscated permanently, not like some of the pictures male students had been caught passing around in class. And yet part of her wanted to sneak into the armory and steal it back before he could remove it to his quarters.

  “I understand the feeling,” Sergeant Miles said. “But it is for your own good.”

  He took a pair of short swords from the rack and passed one of them to Emily. “I understand that one of your tutors is teaching you swordsmanship?”

  Emily nodded. The etiquette teacher had been dubious about teaching young women anything of the sort, but King Randor had apparently insisted. After what had happened in Zangaria over the summer, Emily found it hard to blame him. Alassa and Imaiqah needed as many ways to protect themselves as possible. Magic wasn’t the solution to everything.

  The thought made her shiver. There were potions that deprived someone of their magic, if only for a very short space of time. What would someone utterly dependent on magic do if they lost it?

  “Such teachers are good at making you look good,” Sergeant Miles informed her. “Does he get annoyed with you frequently?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “He says I have no sense of display.”

  “Nor should you,” Sergeant Miles said. He grinned at her. “There are two sorts of soldiers in this world, Emily. The ones who look good and the ones who are good. They are very rarely one and the same. Besides...didn’t you see Sergeant Harkin’s flying kick?”

  Emily winced. Sergeant Harkin had shown them a flying kick that had come straight out of a movie featuring ninjas—or it would have done, on Earth. It had looked hellishly impressive until he’d done it again and Sergeant Miles had knocked him flat on his back. Once he’d picked himself up, Sergeant Harkin had explained that the move was designed to look good—and an opponent who didn’t care about looking good would use it as an opening to smack the kicker down hard.