Fantastic Schools, Volume 3

by Emily Martha Sorensen

  I glared at her, feeling pushed to breaking point. “I came here for an apprenticeship,” I said, sharply. “Shouldn’t I be dressed for the part?”

  “You’re not a real apprentice,” Lilith countered. She held up her palm. A spark of light danced over her skin. It was a trick magicians often used to identify themselves. I tried not to wince as I looked at the reminder I would never be a magician. “All you’re good for is preparing the ingredients. Menial work.”

  She turned and marched down the corridor, then stopped. “Did you even think to have something to eat?”

  “No,” I said. I was used to hunger—my family had never been wealthy enough to be sure of putting food on the table—and I could have gone on for quite some time without making mistakes, but I wanted to irritate her. Just a little. “Is there something to eat?”

  Lilith snorted and turned to walk down a staircase. “Follow me,” she snapped. “And stay a step or two behind me.”

  I ignored the insult as I peered around with interest. Heart’s Eye was big, easily larger than anything I’d seen in Beneficence. The corridors seemed like giant mazes, although someone had helpfully hung signs and markers everywhere. There were no paintings on the walls, save for a handful of strikingly-realistic portraits. I frowned as I ran my eye over the names below the portraits. MISTRESS IRENE, LADY EMILY ... the Emily, I assumed. CALEB. MASTER LANDIS ... I stopped to study his face, wondering just how closely the painting matched reality. He looked very different to Master Pittwater. A pale face, neatly-trimmed goatee, green eyes ... I couldn’t help thinking he reminded me of someone, although I wasn’t sure who.

  “That’s your new boss,” Lilith said. She seemed in no hurry, all of a sudden. “We don’t want people forgetting who runs this place.”

  I gave her a sharp look. “Do you even want to be here?”

  Lilith looked thoroughly displeased. “I have no choice,” she said. “You do. Why don’t you leave?”

  She turned and strode down the corridor before I could think of a reply. I glared at her back as I started to follow her. I didn’t have a choice, not if I wanted to be something more than an apothecary’s assistant. Master Pittwater had made that clear, when he’d told me I could go no further in his employ. I could either accept being a lowly assistant for the rest of my life or take a chance on Heart’s Eye. He hadn’t promised me it would be easy.

  I heard people talking as we reached the bottom of the corridor and stepped into a large hall. It was crammed with people, ranging from students to older men and women wearing worker’s overalls and protective outfits. The tables seemed to be scattered at random, although I could tell there were dozens of groups and subgroups already. I glanced from table to table, noting youngsters who were clearly magicians and men who looked like proud craftsmen. I felt a tinge of envy. I’d thought about becoming a craftsman myself, but I hadn’t been able to get an apprenticeship.

  Lilith pointed to the table at the front of the hall, raising her voice so I could hear over the din. “Take what you want,” she said. “Don’t worry about paying for it.”

  “Really?” It sounded as if she wanted to get me in hot water. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” Lilith said. She walked beside me, the crowd parting in front of her. I couldn’t help noticing that she—and I—were getting wary looks, even from the magicians. “Right now, the food is free.”

  It was also very basic, I decided, as I filled a bowl with porridge and dried fruit. Oats were easy to grow, if I recalled correctly; they were probably shipped in by the ton through the portals. Or something. Heart’s Eye was in the middle of a desert, but I’d been told the land was slowly becoming fertile again. I put the matter aside for later consideration as we sat down, Lilith nursing a mug of Kava. I couldn’t help thinking we were in a bubble. The others gave us a wide berth. Even the magicians seemed wary of her.

  “Eat quickly,” Lilith said. She didn’t seem pleased with her seeming unpopularity. “We don’t have much time.”

  I nodded and tucked into the porridge. It tasted bland, but I knew I should be glad to have it. My stomach growled warningly, suggesting I should go back for seconds. There was dried fish, too, as well as meats I didn’t recognise. I wanted to go for more, but Lilith was clearly impatient. I drank my Kava—stronger than anything I’d had back home—and stood, carrying the plate and bowl to the collection point. It looked as if the staff had a full-time job.

  “Who does the cooking?” I asked, as Lilith led me out of the hall. “And everything else?”

  “Depends,” Lilith said. “The cooks do the cooking” —she wasn’t looking at me, but I could hear the sneer— “assisted by students who are working their way through the university courses. They do the labour and, in exchange, are allowed to attend courses. It is quite the arrangement.”

  I stared at her back. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “They cannot use it,” Lilith said. “What’s the point?”

  I couldn’t put my feelings into words. Lilith didn’t seem to notice as she walked down two flights of stairs and along a long corridor. I felt a tingle passing through me, my hair threatening to stand on end, as we crossed the wards. Silence fell, noticeably. I hadn’t really been aware of the background noise until it was gone. A pair of young girls walked past, going in the other direction. They both gave Lilith a wide berth. I frowned. Lilith wasn’t that bad, was she? I’d met people who were worse.

  “This is the lab,” Lilith said, as she pushed open a door. “Master Landis will key you into the wards, once you prove yourself.”

  “I proved myself to Master Pittwater,” I protested. “I know ...”

  “An apothecary,” Lilith said, in a tone that suggested Master Pittwater was one step above a gutter rat. “This is an alchemical lab. The rules are different.”

  She muttered a word as she stepped inside. The air glowed with light. I felt a thrill, despite myself, as I looked around. The chamber was massive, a dozen wooden tables—neatly spaced, in line with the rules Master Pittwater had drummed into me—dominating the room. The walls were lined with shelves upon shelves of potion ingredients, alchemical textbooks and everything an alchemist needed, from cauldrons to glass vials, jars and bottles. I stepped closer, admiring the collection of ingredients. A number were so expensive that Master Pittwater had rarely, if ever, used them. I couldn’t help shuddering as I saw a pickled frog in a jar.

  “That was a boy who tried to kiss me,” Lilith said. I couldn’t tell if she was joking. “I turned him into a frog and pickled him.”

  I felt sick. “Do you think that’s funny?”

  Lilith shrugged. “There’s a washroom through there,” she said. “I take it you know how to wash your hands and put on a proper apron?”

  I didn’t bother to dignify that stupid question with a stupid answer. I hadn’t worked a day in the shop before I’d learnt the dangers of cross-contamination and injury. It was very easy to get seriously hurt, even if one couldn’t brew the more dangerous potions. I’d helped Master Pittwater clean the wounds, after one of his previous apprentices had splashed himself with cockatrice blood. It wasn’t as lethal as basilisk or manticore venom, but it had still done enough damage to terminate the poor man’s career. I had no idea what had happened to him afterwards. I hoped he wasn’t starving on the streets somewhere.

  Lilith rattled around in the lab as I washed and dried my hands, then donned an apron. It wouldn’t provide much protection, if a cauldron exploded, but it might give me a few seconds to tear it off before the boiling liquid burned my skin. I tested it lightly, making sure I could pull it free, then headed back into the lab. Lilith had laid out a set of ingredients, and a small collection of tools. I felt a thrill when I looked at them. I knew how to use them all.

  “To work,” Lilith ordered. She jabbed a finger at the pile. “Ready these for use.”

  I frowned as I stared at the pile. Some were common, so common a child could prepare them properly. A couple required
almost no preparation. The remainder were tricky. I couldn’t prepare them unless I knew what we were going to brew. The Darkle Roots needed to be sliced one way for a sleeping potion and quite another way for a purgative. The Candy Seeds needed to be left intact for a shape-change potion and crushed for a healing potion. And the daisies ... Master Pittwater had joked about a vile old witch who found daisies soothing, but—as far as I knew—they had no real magical applications. They were useless.

  “Interesting,” I said, as neutrally as I could. “What are we going to brew?”

  Lilith sniffed. “A simple painkilling potion,” she said. She hadn’t said which one. There were over fifty different recipes, with varying levels of potency. “Prepare the ingredients.”

  I kept my face under tight control as I considered the recipes I’d memorised. There were only four that involved all but one of the ingredients. The daisies were a mystery. I shrugged, resisting the urge to ask about them as I started to work. I chopped up the Darkle Roots, being very careful to avoid mixing them with the Hawthorne Thistles. They didn’t go well together unless they were blended in a cauldron. The Jigger Stems were of too poor quality for two of the four recipes, so I angled my work towards the remaining two. Lilith watched, occasionally tossing in a question. I was almost insulted. I’d covered most of them within the first two months of my time in the shop.

  “I’ve done everything, but the daisies,” I said, finally. “What are we going to brew?”

  Lilith snorted. “We? I’m going to brew ...”

  I felt my temper snap. “I just prepared the ingredients for you,” I said, sharply. A thought struck me. “Did I just help you with your work?”

  “It’s your job,” Lilith snapped. “You prepare the ingredients. I turn them into potions!”

  “I came here for an apprenticeship, not to be a servant,” I snapped back. I didn’t mind preparing ingredients. It was part of the job. But I didn’t want to be just a preparer. “I need to learn to brew and ...”

  “With what?” Lilith turned to face me. “You have no magic. You can toss this lot into a cauldron and get what? Sludge! You cannot do anything with this. All you’re good for is preparing the ingredients!”

  “I can learn,” I said. “I can ...”

  Lilith jabbed a finger at me. My entire body froze. I could neither move nor speak.

  “I learnt that spell before I went to school,” Lilith said. She tapped me on the head. It sounded as if she’d rapped her knuckles against solid metal. “You are powerless against it. You cannot defend yourself against even the merest touch of magic. You have no place here, save as a servant to your betters. And the sooner you learn it, the better.”

  I struggled to move, but I couldn’t. My entire body was locked solid. I couldn’t even move my eyes. I watched, helplessly, as Lilith took the ingredients I’d lovingly prepared and started to turn them into a potion. She was good, I admitted grudgingly; she was far better than the other apprentices I’d met. Her fingers moved with easy skill, her magic sparking with life as she worked. And yet she thought of me as a servant ...

  My heart sank. How the hell did I get into this mess?

  Chapter Two

  A week ago, Master Pittwater had asked me to come into his office after I’d finished clearing up for the day.

  “You’re in trouble,” Matt said. My fellow apprentice carefully emptied the cauldrons as he spoke. “What did you do?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t done anything. Nothing worth mentioning, anyway. I’d gotten involved in a big apprentice fight two weeks ago and had to refuse service to a customer who was clearly too inebriated to make good decisions, but neither one would have landed me in real trouble. Matt and I had a habit of bickering, yet that had been resolved months ago. We might never be friends—he had magic, I didn’t—but at least we’d come to a mutual understanding.

  “Nothing,” I said. I wiped the tables, then discarded the cloths. “Maybe it was something you did.”

  Matt smirked. “He wouldn’t be summoning you if I was the one in trouble.”

  That was a good point. I decided to ignore it as I straightened up and looked around the shop. It had been a reasonably peaceful day, all things considered. I’d spent the morning assisting our master to prepare his potions, then the afternoon tending to customers. Nothing had gone particularly wrong. I certainly wasn’t even planning for it. My friends had invited me out for drinks, after work, but I wasn’t sure I’d be going. I intended to catch up on my reading as soon as I had a free moment. I’d borrowed a handful of books on magic theory from the local library, and I planned to read them before we started work on a new selection of brews for the shop.

  “I’ll see you later,” Matt said. He lived in one of the apartment blocks on the far side of the city, rather than above the shop. I’d often wondered if he preferred a little space between him and his master, or if he was just unwilling to share a garret with me. It wasn’t as if there was enough room for two young men. “Good luck. Try not to make it worse.”

  I made a rude gesture as he donned his cloak and left the shop. I wasn’t in trouble and yet ... my stomach was churning anyway. Master Pittwater wouldn’t have asked me to see him after hours unless ... I shook my head. My master wasn’t the sort of person to wait if he wanted to bawl me out for something. He’d certainly shown no hesitation in scolding his apprentices in front of the other apprentices. I finished sweeping the floor, directed the dust into a bag for disposal and washed my hands before heading to the office. The door was firmly closed. I raised my hand to knock, then hesitated. What if I was in trouble?

  “Come in,” Master Pittwater called.

  I flushed. The door was heavily warded. He’d probably known I was there the moment I walked up. I schooled my face into a calm expression, then pushed the door open and stepped inside. Master Pittwater’s office was smaller than I’d expected, for a man of his status, crammed with books and papers ... some of which he’d let me read. I couldn’t help staring at the titles, wondering if I could convince him to let me see some of the older tomes. There were no copies of them in the local library.

  “Master,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Take a seat,” Master Pittwater said. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  I sat and studied him as he read a parchment scroll. He was old, although I had no idea how old. Rumour had it he’d lived in the city since before we’d freed ourselves from the leech of Zangaria. He was certainly old enough to be my grandfather and looked it, too, with white hair framing a wrinkled face and a body that was slightly heavyset for a magician. I knew very little about his past, save for the fact he’d studied at Heart’s Eye long before the school had fallen to the necromancers. He rarely talked about it. I had the feeling his time there hadn’t been entirely happy.

  It was hard not to feel a twinge of envy. I’d have done anything in my power to attend a magic school. It wasn’t easy to make a career in magic if one didn’t have magic, but I was sure I could do it. I could climb to the very top, if only I could reach the very first stair. Matt and the other magical apprentices didn’t know how lucky they’d been, let alone the opportunities they’d had that had been denied me. It was hard, sometimes, to remember that it had been nothing more than the luck of the draw.

  “Adam,” Master Pittwater said. He straightened up, fixing me with a stare. “We have things to discuss.”

  I nodded, racking my brains. What had I done? I couldn’t think of anything ... unless he’d changed his mind about something and forgotten to tell me until it was too late. No, it couldn’t be something like that. Master Pittwater was quite reasonable, unlike some of the other masters in the city. I’d been told there were masters who beat their apprentices bloody for the slightest mistake, even when it had been the master who’d committed the mistake. If I was in trouble ...

  “There’s no easy way to say this,” Master Pittwater said. His fingers played with the scroll. “I think you’ve gone about
as far as you can with me.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  Master Pittwater looked sympathetic. It didn’t help. “You have mastered reading and writing,” he said. “Both Old Script and the New Learning. You have passed through several levels of theoretical magic, even though you’ve had little formal training. I’d say you actually have more skill at theory than Matt, despite the fact Matt went to Whitehall. If you had the proper training, you could go far.”

  “I ...” I swallowed, hard. This ... this wasn’t what I’d expected. “Master ...”

  “The problem is that you don’t have any magic yourself,” Master Pittwater said. “If you did, I would have no hesitation in taking you as a formal apprentice. If you did” —his eyes met mine— “I think you would have completed your apprenticeship very quickly and moved on to better and brighter things. As it is ... you will never rise any further. You cannot rise any further, not here. The best you can hope for is to remain in the shop, after Matt or a later apprentice takes my place.”

  I felt as if I’d been slapped across the face. “Master, I ... Master, are you dying?”

  Master Pittwater shrugged. “I am old,” he said. If he was offended by my stunned question, he didn’t show it. “We must face facts. As long as my life has been, it won’t last forever. I have already started to slow down and make mistakes, Adam. There’s a very good chance Matt will be my last apprentice. The Guild has already been giving me pointed hints that it’s time to retire and pass the shop to someone new.”

  “I could run it,” I said. I knew I was pleading, but it was hard to care. My world had turned upside down. I’d once dared to dream I’d take his place. Now ... that dream was dust and less than dust. “Master, I could take the shop and ...”

  “You couldn’t,” Master Pittwater said, flatly. “The Guild would never allow it. Even if they did, even if you somehow convinced them to make an exception, you simply couldn’t hope to run the shop successfully. You would need to hire Matt, or someone like him, to make the potions, and very few magicians would agree to work under you. Anyone who did ... they might spend a year or two with you and then petition the Guild to give them the shop. And even if they didn’t ...”