Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “And she succeeded,” Emily admitted. “What are you going to do about Mountaintop?”

  “I have not yet decided,” the Grandmaster said. “Spying on one another is not uncommon among magic-users, despite the Sorcerer’s Rule. Everyone hates it—and everyone knows that everyone does it. But this is different.”

  He shook his head, slowly. “And then there’s your guardian to take into account,” he added. “Mountaintop may simply disown her.”

  Emily scowled. She hadn’t given a single thought to the political aspects—but they were there. Lin had effectively tried to kill one of Zangaria’s most powerful nobles, something that King Randor would be entirely justified in considering an act of war. And then Void might be expected to take a dim view of it too. Even if Lin had panicked and overstepped her orders, it was still going to create an unholy mess. The Allied Lands might come apart at the seams if it turned into a general war.

  And then the necromancers would just walk over the mountains and complete the destruction of humanity.

  “She must have hoped that the Gorgon would get the blame,” Emily said, slowly. “If I hadn’t been able to testify...”

  “It would be unlikely that the Allied Lands would believe her,” the Grandmaster admitted. “She would have made a very convincing suspect. And if you both ended up dead...Lin might have vanished completely.”

  “If she really was working for Mountaintop,” Emily mused. “Might she have intended Mountaintop to take the blame?”

  “Perhaps,” the Grandmaster said. “Not everyone likes the Mage Master of Mountaintop. The great magical families are very cutthroat, always trying to squeeze an advantage for themselves out of every little incident. Maybe the true object of the exercise was to embarrass their leader.”

  His face twisted into a grimace. “We will certainly investigate,” he added. “But I have a feeling that the information we were given about Lin will be more than a little misleading.”

  Emily blinked in surprise. “You didn’t check their credentials?”

  “We didn’t check yours either,” the Grandmaster pointed out, rather snidely. “We took Void’s word for it.”

  He stood and paced over to the bare wall, then turned to face her. “There will be investigations,” he said. “The White Council will have to be informed. Steps must be taken—and Void, as far as possible, must be kept uninvolved. We really don’t need a major confrontation between him and Mountaintop right now.”

  Emily stared at him. “You trust him to do your dirty work, but not to avenge an attack on his ward?”

  “Mountaintop provides a quarter of the White Council’s combat sorcerers,” the Grandmaster said. “If this led to open conflict, it could rip the Allied Lands apart. We need to know what is actually happening before we decide what to do about it.”

  “You’ll have to speak to King Randor,” Emily reminded him, wondering just what Alassa’s father would say. He hadn’t been able to do anything about Alassa’s near-death experience; legally, could he involve himself in the affair? “And I need to get back to my friends.”

  The Grandmaster seemed to look right at her. “You do realize that you have...acted foolishly, this term?”

  Emily flushed at his tone, but said nothing.

  “I know; you don’t come from this world and you lack the basic knowledge we teach newborn magicians,” he added. “And we assumed that Void had taught you, as was his duty, and never really checked on it. I would scream at him for his oversight, if I thought it would do any good.

  “But your experiment, whatever it was, could have had disastrous consequences. And it wasn’t the only mistake you made. What would have happened if you had reported Lin to a tutor at once? She might have been caught before she could flee Whitehall. And you came very close to alienating your two best friends.”

  He looked down at the floor. “How much of this was because Lin was using runes to influence your mind?”

  Emily shuddered. The truth was that she didn’t know—but then, she wouldn’t. She really didn’t like wasting time watching sporting events...it was easy to understand why she might want to leave early, certainly before she’d understood just how important it was to Alassa and Imaiqah that she watched. There was no way to know, in the end, how much of her mistakes had come from her own stupidity.

  “It isn’t uncommon,” the Grandmaster said quietly, “for people to react badly to stress, or to make mistakes as they come into their magic. They become so consumed by what they’re doing that it just runs away from them. You, on the other hand, are rather more than just another student. You need to learn faster—and not just magic. You need to learn control and discipline.”

  His unseen eyes seemed to bore into hers. “We punish misbehavior as severely as we do to ensure that you do know the price of messing around with magic,” he added. “But there comes a time when a sore bottom cannot save you from the consequences of your actions. I don’t know how many of your problems this term came from Lin’s runes, but you need to learn to watch yourself. You are not just any pupil.”

  Emily flinched at his tone. He was right—but that didn’t make it any easier for her to hear.

  “Lady Barb has, I have been told, sworn to keep what you tell her to herself,” the Grandmaster said. “I think you should consider confiding in her, now that she is literally unable to share whatever you tell her with anyone else. She is your Advisor—and will be making sure that you learn what you need to know in future. Talk to her if you have any other ideas.”

  “I will,” Emily promised.

  “We are going to have to reset all of the schedules for classes, since we missed so many,” the Grandmaster concluded, walking back to his desk. “Go see your friends, enjoy your time with them...and if you haven’t apologized for acting so badly, I think you should.”

  He smiled. “And maybe you should consider playing games with them too,” he added. “It will help bring you back together.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said, as she stood. Part of her mind insisted that it would be a fate worse than death, but she knew that was being silly. “I will.”

  “You might come to enjoy it,” the Grandmaster said. “Oh, and one other thing?”

  Emily paused, waiting.

  “There are already rumors about you and Lin,” the Grandmaster warned, “but you might want to avoid telling anyone—apart from your friends. The more people who know the full details, the harder it will be to deal with the situation in a calm and reasonable manner.”

  Emily nodded and left the room.

  Chapter Forty

  EMILY DUCKED THE SNOWBALL ALASSA THREW at her, then scooped up a handful of snow and threw it back at her. A moment later, Imaiqah’s snowball narrowly missed her as she ducked, but Emily slipped and fell over backwards. Imaiqah ran up to her and dropped snow on her chest, then winked down at her.

  “I meant to do that,” she said.

  Alassa threw a snowball that caught Imaiqah in the back of the head. She yelped and scooped up more snow to throw back. Emily laughed, then caught Imaiqah’s arm and pulled her down into the snow. Alassa saw the glint in Emily’s eye and jumped backwards, heading towards the frozen lake. Emily used a simple spell to hurl a snowball after her.

  “Missed,” Alassa taunted, from a safe distance.

  Emily had to laugh. Alassa and Imaiqah had dragged her out of the library and insisted that she join them for a snowball fight—and she was enjoying it more than she had expected. The Gorgon had refused to join them—snow didn’t agree with her people, she’d explained—but she had promised to go over their textbooks tonight. Now that everyone was back at Whitehall, the staff was making them work hard to make up for the missing weeks. There was already a rumor going round that the coming holidays would be cancelled if the students weren’t where the staff thought they ought to be by then.

  She looked up at the darkening sky and thought, grimly, about Lin. The rumors going round were far off the mark; half of the students se
emed to believe that she had been the Mimic’s final victim, while the other half believed that the Gorgon had killed her and ground her petrified body into dust. At least no one seemed to be pointing fingers at Emily any longer, not after she’d received full credit for defeating the Mimic. But she’d still made sure to spend time with the Gorgon.

  “Sunset,” Alassa said. “Why don’t you come with us to the Great Hall?”

  Emily would have preferred to find a mug of chocolate—it had been surprisingly hard to introduce the concept of chocolate milk to the cooks—but she knew better than to argue when Alassa was in such a determined mood. Besides, they still weren’t allowed to share a bedroom. The room Emily still shared with the Gorgon had been repaired—the beds, desks and wardrobes had been completely replaced—but there was no room for another roommate.

  Or, rather, someone would have had to have been left out, Emily thought. I wasn’t going to do that to anyone.

  She’d come to the decision that she rather liked the Gorgon, once she’d had a chance to get to know her without Lin’s subtle influence. They were very alike in many ways, both outcasts and strangers in a very strange land, although the Gorgon had been treated with love and affection by her family rather than neglect and abuse. It had been her magic that had set her apart from the other Gorgons, but they had also valued it as a gift. And they appreciated her intelligence.

  They brushed the snow off their coats as they slipped through the door and into Whitehall, then headed to the Great Hall. Emily sensed the waves of magic coruscating through the building as the Grandmaster and Professor Lombardi slowly prepared a new Warden and reformatted the wards to make it harder for the next one to be killed. The monitoring system wasn’t fully in place yet, but there hadn’t been a single hexing since the wards had come down, somewhat to Emily’s surprise. Or perhaps it wasn’t a surprise. The day after the Mimic had been destroyed, she’d been told, the Grandmaster had given the entire school a scathing lecture on their conduct while under siege. He seemed to have cowed everyone.

  She caught Alassa smiling as she stopped outside the doorway to the Great Hall, an odd little smile that puzzled her. Emily hesitated, half-expecting to discover that someone had left a bucket of water on top of the door, then pushed it open firmly. And then she stared in absolute disbelief.

  The Great Hall was completely filled with students, but that wasn’t what caught her eye first. It was a glowing set of words, hanging above their heads, spelling out HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILY. She half-turned to look at Alassa—she had known—and then someone pushed a drink into her hand and pulled her into the crowd. Almost everyone seemed to want to shake her hand.

  “Happy birthday,” Alassa said, from behind her. “You deserve it.”

  Emily stared at her as Cat shook her hand, then went on to chat to Imaiqah. “It isn’t my birthday...”

  “But it is one year since you came...here,” Alassa pointed out. “And besides, no one knows just when your birthday actually is, so...”

  She shrugged. “Besides, it isn’t just for you,” she added. “Everyone needed a party after what happened over the last few weeks.”

  Emily found herself unable to speak. Part of her hated crowds, hated them all pressing in around her...and yet part of her loved the attention. They had come for her...tears threatened to start prickling at the corner of her eyes and she wiped them away, then took a sip of her drink. It tasted vaguely of sunshine and rainbows.

  “A magician’s drink,” Alassa said, as Professor Thande appeared and shook Emily’s hand before wandering off to supervise the punch. “A mundane who drank it would taste nothing more than water.”

  A band composed of students started to play a dance tune, but several of the players seemed to have different ideas about which tune they were meant to be playing and the sound rapidly became a discordant racket. Mistress Irene marched over to them and, shouting almost as loudly as Sergeant Harkin, pushed them into some semblance of order. Emily had been told that most aristocrats were taught to play something, yet she never seemed to have the time to learn. But listening to the band when they finally started playing together made her think that she should make the time.

  Maybe if I alter the interior of the pocket dimensions, she thought, and then shook her head firmly. She’d gotten into quite enough trouble with that idea already.

  She caught sight of Imaiqah being pulled into the dance by Cat and smiled to herself, although she had no idea if he was genuinely courting Imaiqah or if he was merely looking for a suitable partner. Alassa nudged her and pointed out just how star-struck Imaiqah looked, making Emily roll her eyes. The princess had danced with countless young princes only a few months ago.

  “Lady Emily,” Master Tor said, from behind her. “I was wondering if I could have a word.”

  Emily swallowed the response that came to mind and nodded, allowing him to draw her away from Alassa. She sensed the privacy ward as he cast it and frowned. What did he have to say that was so private her best friend couldn’t hear it?

  “I may have...misjudged you,” Master Tor said, as soon as the privacy ward was in place. “I did not realize that you had such a father. To leave you ignorant of the fundamentals was nothing short of neglect.”

  It took Emily a moment to realize that he meant Void. From his point of view, Void probably did seem like a neglectful father, the kind of person who would teach his children dangerous spells instead of basic safety precautions. On the other hand, there were very few people who would dare to tell Void that to his face.

  “And you risked your life to save all of us,” Master Tor added. “I definitely misjudged you.”

  Emily couldn’t think of anything to say, so she said nothing.

  “I will be heading to the White Council after this year,” he said. “But if I can do you a favor in response, please let me know.”

  He cancelled the privacy ward and walked off, leaving Emily staring after him.

  “Sounds like that went well,” Alassa said, taking hold of Emily’s arm. “How many detentions did he give you this time?”

  “No detentions,” Emily said, still puzzled. “He wanted to apologize.”

  “You did save the school,” Alassa pointed out. “Maybe he thought better of treating you badly after that.”

  “Maybe,” Emily said.

  She caught sight of Melissa on the other side of the room and scowled. No one had realized how badly she’d hurt Melissa, apart from Melissa herself. Emily was surprised that she hadn’t already reported Emily to a tutor, but perhaps Melissa had just decided to keep her mouth shut. Or maybe coming so close to a Mimic, all unknowing, had convinced her that there were more important things in life than playing out a schoolgirl rivalry.

  Or maybe she’s just plotting, Emily thought.

  King Randor hadn’t told her much about being an aristocrat, but he had warned her that it was always a bad sign when people weren’t grumbling. It normally meant that they were plotting something drastic. Emily hadn’t quite dared to ask him what the barons had been saying before they’d launched their coup attempt, but she had a feeling she knew. Some of them had complained loudly to distract the King.

  “You deserve a party,” Lady Barb said, coming up to her. “I’m glad the Grandmaster saw fit to allow it.”

  Emily blinked. “It was your idea?”

  “I thought you deserved something to remind them that you just saved the school—again,” Lady Barb said. “How...quickly they forget.”

  “Most people are sheep,” Alassa commented. There was an edge in her voice that made Emily blink. Was Alassa feeling guilty that she’d been called home? “They were quick to start accusing her of performing necromancy and they threw hexes at her whenever she turned her back.”

  “And then they started blaming the Gorgon,” Emily added, pushing her concerns about Alassa to one side. “What should I do next year?”

  Lady Barb gave her an odd little smile. “People have always been worried when someone has va
stly more power than them,” she said. “You have always attracted envy as well as admiration. And enemies.”

  She took Emily’s arm and steered her towards a corner, leaving Alassa behind. “What do you intend to do during your holidays?”

  “I intended to go back to Zangaria,” Emily said. “I have a great deal of work to do in Cockatrice that I cannot leave in my Castellan’s hands.”

  “It’s traditional for students who want to serve the Allied Lands to spend a month or two working with a qualified sorcerer,” Lady Barb said. “If you want to become a combat sorcerer, you might work with the military; if you wanted to be a Mediator, you might shadow one around, learning by doing. I think that you would benefit from doing it for yourself.”

  Emily hesitated. The chance to learn more was always welcome...if she had the time to take advantage of it.

  “You would be welcome to come shadow me,” Lady Barb said. “It would give you a far wider range of experience than you’d find in Whitehall—or Alexis. There are people out there who have never seen a magician, or who are scared of magic because they live too close to one of the places touched by the faerie. And they wouldn’t talk to Baroness Cockatrice, not to tell you what you need to know.”

  “But they might talk to a roving magician,” Emily said, quietly.

  She could understand the problem. The peasants knew better than to annoy the aristocrats, no matter what laws the aristocrats gaily broke. Superior authority was a long way away, while the local aristocrat was right next door—and was willing to do anything to peasants who stepped out of line. The problems in Zangaria had only grown worse since the barons had launched their attempted coup—and, in failing, crippled their authority. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were moving off the land.