“There’s a spell that turns the lower half of the dress to dust,” Alassa explained, when Emily asked. “It shouldn’t be used except in case of absolute need, when modesty is no longer a pressing concern. The dagger itself is rather special.”
Charmed, Emily guessed. It would be much easier to set a spell to pop the dagger into Alassa’s hand. But if the blade was charmed, the spell would be unreliable.
Alassa turned back to face Emily, holding up a long cream-colored garment. “What do you think of this?”
Emily shook her head slowly. “I think you won’t be able to get into it without help,” she said, finally. “How are you going to tie up the back?”
“Bet you I can,” Alassa said. She lifted the garment over her head, then allowed it to fall down. A moment later, her head emerged from the top, while her hands came out of the sleeves. She muttered a handful of charms and then caught her breath as the inbuilt corset squeezed tightly. Clearly, the royal family had yet to embrace the bras Emily had introduced several months ago. Or maybe they were just impractical. “How do I look?”
“Dancing is going to be difficult,” Emily said. The dress fanned out so far that any partner would be unable to do more than hold hands with Alassa. It was also surprisingly loose around the chest, concealing her breasts, while tightening around her abdomen. Emily couldn’t help thinking of an exaggerated hourglass. “What is the dress actually for?”
“It preserves one’s dignity,” Alassa said, stiffly. It couldn’t be easy to breathe while wearing that corset. “I will be meeting potential husbands on the journey home and a dress like this helps ensure a lack of scandal.”
“Oh,” Emily said. It shouldn’t have surprised her, not after what Void had said, but it still left her feeling uncomfortable. “Because they can’t reach anything more delicate than your hands?”
“That’s the idea,” Alassa said. She lifted up the hem and showed Emily the additional layers of cloth below. “Even the most ardent lover would have difficulty gaining access to my hidden jewel.”
“Oh,” Emily said. She shook her head. “Do you think I should start wearing one?”
Alassa threw her a sharp glance. “Why do you think you might need one?”
Emily hadn’t meant to tell her about Jade, but somehow the whole story came tumbling out of her lips. She needed to talk to someone and Void, whatever his other attributes, couldn’t really offer proper advice.
Alassa smirked. “I was wondering when he’d have the courage to approach you,” she said. “It isn’t as if dealing with your guardian would be easy.”
“You knew?” Emily demanded. “You knew he liked me?”
“Of course,” Alassa said. “Was it not obvious?”
“I missed it,” Emily admitted. “Was I the only person to miss it?”
Alassa looked oddly apologetic. “You really are from someplace different,” she said, as if she were reminding herself of that fact. “I should have pointed it out to you.”
She muttered a charm and the dress jumped up, allowing her to pull it off her body and return it to the chest. “He always spent time with you,” she reminded Emily. “When I was there, he still paid attention to you. How did you miss it?”
“By being an idiot,” Emily sighed. But then, it wasn’t as if Jade could have taken her out to dinner, or to a movie. “But what do I do about it?”
Alassa considered it as she produced the third dress. “Well, Jade’s family isn’t very prominent, so you wouldn’t gain much advantage from being allied with them,” she said. “On the other hand, his relations wouldn’t have a strong motive to betray you later on. And they are tied to the Allied Lands as a whole, rather than to a specific kingdom. It could be quite advantageous to you to remain independent of the various monarchs.”
“Oh,” Emily said.
“Jade himself is a handsome young man, without blemishes or defects of character,” Alassa continued. “He’s a capable magician, with excellent prospects; he could become a combat sorcerer, or stay at Whitehall as a tutor. Maybe not particularly wealthy, but that isn’t really a problem for you, is it?”
Emily nodded. Thanks to her innovations, she was actually reasonably wealthy by the standards of the Allied Lands. She wasn’t anything like as rich as one of the royal families, or the long-established trading houses, but she was getting there. And besides, it wasn’t as if she needed more money than she already had.
“So you could do worse,” Alassa concluded. “But then, you could also do better. There are quite a few prominent families with strong magical bloodlines. I’d be expecting them to make Imaiqah an offer soon–she’s newblood, with magic they’d like to add to their own. You would gain access to a whole strata of connections and influence in exchange for marrying one of their sons and bearing his children…”
She looked up, meeting Emily’s eyes. “And then there’s the whole Child of Destiny aspect,” she added. “You have proved yourself. Lots of families would want you.”
Emily stared at her. The whole process struck her as rather cold-blooded. She knew, intellectually, that marriage had meant different things throughout the years, but she had never realized that such considerations might affect her marriage. But then, she’d never really considered getting married at all. It certainly hadn’t worked out for her mother.
She shook her head, dismissing the memories. “How did you become so good at evaluating marriage prospects?”
“My mother insisted that I should be able to understand the advantages and disadvantages of any proposed union,” Alassa said. “Do you know how many people have tried to get my parents to promise me to them since I was a child?”
She shrugged. “My father may offer to arrange a match for you. For a young girl without a real family, that would be a very tempting prospect.”
“And bind me to Zangaria,” Emily said. Alassa’s parents had told her to stay close to the Child of Destiny. “Do you think I should accept Jade’s proposal?”
“I’d suggest waiting to see what other offers you received,” Alassa said. She scowled down at the dress, then put it back in the chest without trying it on. “Of course, Jade may believe that he is doing you a favor. If you happened to be married, or engaged, people couldn’t try to court you–at least, not so blatantly.”
“And now I’m confused,” Emily admitted. “Why can’t these things be simple?”
Alassa took the question seriously. “Because marriage is more than just the union of husband and wife,” she said. “It is also the union of two families, of combining their resources and building something greater. When a kingdom is concerned, marriage may decide the fates of thousands upon thousands of people. Such things should never be entered into lightly.”
She shrugged. “Consider yourself lucky,” she added. “The kingdoms we will be visiting each have a prince who may wind up marrying me. And I have to dance with them all, showing respect to all, but favor to none. That won’t be easy.”
Her lips twisted into a mischievous smile. “And by the way, my mother sent some dresses for you. Why don’t we try them on right now?”
Emily groaned.
Chapter Four
THE GRAND HALL OF WHITEHALL, ILLUMINATED by globes of light hovering in the air, was large enough to accommodate a small army. Emily sucked in her breath sharply as she stepped through the main doors and walked down the stairs into the throng, admiring the hundreds of portraits the servants had hung on the walls. Once, they had been covered with delicate carvings that had represented the many magical disciplines, but Shadye’s horde of monsters had ripped the room apart, searching for hidden students. Emily privately felt that the portraits offered more than the carvings, an opinion she kept to herself.
“You look nice,” Alassa muttered in her ear. “You don’t need to worry at all.”
Emily winced. She’d never really worn dresses on Earth, so she’d had problems learning to move in the robes worn by all students. The dress Alassa’s mother had sent for her, however, wa
s something different. It was tight around the bust and thighs, showing off the shape of her body without actually revealing any bare flesh below her neck. Moving in it was difficult and she couldn’t help feeling that it was going to split open the moment she sat down, no matter how many protective charms were woven into the material. On the other hand, it was one of the more modest dresses in the hall.
The leaving dance was one of the few occasions where students were allowed to wear something apart from robes and they’d taken full advantage of it. Some of the male students wore courtly outfits–one of them had come dressed up in a robe that changed color every ten seconds–while their female counterparts wore everything from dresses to tight trousers that left almost nothing to the imagination. Emily caught sight of one girl who was wearing nothing more than a wire bikini and thong before looking away, embarrassed. Few of the guys seemed to have any compunction about staring.
“She’s going to be a sorceress,” Alassa pointed out. “What does she care if they stare at her?”
“They’re going to be sorcerers,” Emily countered.
“They still wouldn’t want to make an enemy of her,” Alassa said. “A sorceress is not someone to alienate.”
Emily nodded and looked away, towards one of the portraits. It showed a tall man in dark robes, wearing a hood that cast a shadow over his appearance. The only thing she could make out for sure was that he had a very strong chin, almost completely devoid of stubble. Looking at the tiny nameplate underneath, she carefully sounded out the name; JACKCLAW THE STRONG. At least she was learning to speak and read the local language, although her accent was still being mocked by some of her fellow students. Translation spells were so much easier, but they tended to be somewhat unreliable.
“I see boys coming this way,” Alassa muttered. She’d worn a long green dress, almost identical to Emily’s apart from the gold lace that marked her out as a lady of quality. “Do you want to dance with them? It will be good practice.”
“So you said,” Emily said. She’d been warned that there would be a formal ball every night during the journey to Zangaria, where Alassa would be expected to dance with her would-be suitors, but she wasn’t very good at dancing, if only because she hadn’t danced at all until she’d come to Whitehall. “Do I have to?”
“Yep,” Alassa said. She grinned. “Here is a friend of yours.”
“Lady Emily,” Cat said, with a florid bow. He was several years older than her, but they shared the Martial Magic class. “Would you do me the very great honor of taking a turn around the dance floor?”
Emily hesitated, then Alassa gave her a gentle push forward into Cat’s arms. He caught her hands and pulled her out into the dancers, who were lining up for a new dance. Emily found herself staring around in panic–she didn’t know what to do–before realizing that one of the players at the front of the hall was about to give instructions. They sounded awfully complicated, she decided as the music started to play, but as the dancers began to move she realized that it was just a matter of following the music as much as anything else. Besides, Cat made a very tolerant partner.
“I still remember my first dance,” he admitted, as the tune finally came to an end. “I trod on so many toes that fifteen girls threatened to hex me.”
He gave her a second bow. “Would you care for another dance? Or maybe you should let one of your other admirers take you around the hall.”
Emily glanced around, surprised. Several other boys, including two she didn’t recognize, looked to be angling to catch her eye. It puzzled her–surely they couldn’t all think of her as a marriage partner–until she realized that there were more guys than girls in the hall. Every girl had a handful of admirers trailing after her. Emily found herself flushing, then summoned up her courage, winked at Cat, and headed over to one of the guys she didn’t know.
“Thank you,” he stammered, as the music started to play again. “I’ll try not to tread on you.”
Surprisingly, Emily found herself relaxing as she traded partners again and again, feeling that she could actually begin to enjoy the dancing. It wasn’t the same as formal balls, Alassa had warned her, but there were fewer expectations; no one seemed to seriously expect a marriage proposal to be sorted out on the dance floor. And there was no dance card; she could dance with whoever she liked, without needing to worry about offending anyone. Alassa seemed to have no shortage of older males dancing with her either. Most of them Emily vaguely recognized as having some aristocratic ties.
She forced herself to take a breath after the seventh dance and headed over to the buffet tables the staff had placed along the wall. They were piled with food, ranging from dishes and treats that were vaguely familiar to items she had never seen or imagined before coming to Whitehall. It was funny how she never really felt homesick, not even after discovering that magic couldn’t solve everything. But then, she’d never really felt as if she belonged on Earth.
I owe Shadye, she thought. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
He’d kidnapped her, tried to kill her, then manipulated her–and then she’d had to kill him. There had been no choice.
“The grandmaster has put on a decent spread,” a rather snooty voice said, from behind her. “One of the man’s redeeming features, if you ask me.”
Emily turned, to see a tall thin man peering down his nose at her with a practiced smirk. He seemed instantly dislikeable, the kind of person who would happily condemn Emily for not being practically perfect in every way, yet…there was something about him that nagged at her mind. The more she tried to see his features, the more they seemed to slip away from her, as if something was interfering with her perception. And that meant he was hiding under a powerful glamor…
Understanding clicked. “Void?”
Her guardian tapped his lips, mischievously. “The grandmaster doesn’t know I’m here and I would prefer to keep it that way,” he said. “I’m casting a privacy ward, but do try and look a little disgusted. No doubt Sir Dogsbody here”–he gestured to himself–“has been commissioned on behalf of someone high-and-mighty to try to convince you to marry his son. Or something like that.”
Emily found her voice. “What are you doing here?”
“You need a more imaginative question,” Void informed her. He picked up a sausage-like delicacy and popped it into his mouth. “There have been…developments. Are you aware that Alassa’s escort has reached Dragon’s Den?”
Emily shrugged. Whitehall paid lip service to the claim that its students were all equal, even though some of them were definitely more equal than others. Consequently, the small squadron of troops and combat sorcerers who would be escorting Alassa–and Emily–to Zangaria had been ordered to stay in Dragon’s Den overnight, before picking her up in the morning. It struck Emily as a waste of resources, but apparently it was tradition and couldn’t be gainsaid by mere mortals.
“I checked them out at a distance,” Void added. “Their leader is Lady Barb.”
He spoke as though the name should have meant something to Emily, but it meant nothing, nothing at all. “I’ve never heard of her,” Emily admitted finally, when it became clear that Void was not going to elaborate. “Who is she?”
It was hard to tell with the glamor messing up her perception, but Void looked almost…embarrassed. “Lady Barb has heard of you,” he said. “More importantly, she…has a grudge against me. And you’re my ward.”
Emily blinked in surprise. “A grudge against you?”
“Yes,” Void said. “It’s a long story. And it isn’t one I choose to share. But I suggest that you bear in mind that she may dislike and distrust you merely because of me.”
“Why?” Emily asked. “What happened?”
“I do not choose to share the story,” Void said. “All I can do is suggest that you watch your back. She’s too…honorable to stick a knife in it without good cause, but she will distrust you.”
He held up a hand before Emily could say anything. “I would have warned you e
arlier, if I’d known,” he added. “I just suggest that you bear in mind that she hates me. Watch yourself.”
Emily watched as he turned and walked off into the crowd. His glamor seemed to twist slightly; one moment he was there, the next moment she had lost track of him completely. She shook her head in disbelief as the privacy ward fell away, wondering how he’d quite managed to get into the school. It was a droll reminder that she had a very long way to go before she could match Void, or the grandmaster.
And he’s just like Batman, she thought, as she started to eat her food. He vanishes while you are finishing a sentence.
“Good food,” Alassa said, coming up beside Emily. Her small army of admirers watched her from a distance as she piled a plate high with meat patties and vegetable rolls. “Do you have something like it in your homeland?”
Emily winced. Most of the students accepted the unspoken suggestion that Void, Emily’s guardian, was in fact her real father. It certainly seemed to make sense; Void wouldn’t want to advertize that he had a daughter, but he wouldn’t want to abandon her completely either. Alassa, however, had deduced that Emily came from somewhere very different, although she hadn’t worked out the truth. Emily had promised that she would tell her friend on the day she was crowned queen, when she was no longer under her father’s power. It would be a long time, she hoped, before she had to keep that promise.
“Something like it,” she said, vaguely. In fact, she had the distant feeling that Whitehall’s food was considerably healthier. “Are we going to be eating like this every day?”
“Of course not,” Alassa said. She gave Emily a thin smile. “Each of the monarchs will feel the need to actually entertain us. Not like him. You think he’s courting her?”
She nodded towards the grandmaster, who was standing at the head of the room, talking eagerly with Mistress Kirdáne, Head of Magical Creatures. The little man still wore the blindfold–a simple dirty rag–that he’d worn the day Emily had first met him, but there was no mistaking the power flowing through his body. Emily knew he could have cured himself easily–magic could repair damaged eyes–but instead he chose to remain blind. It didn’t seem to slow him down.
Lessons in Etiquette (Schooled in Magic series) Page 4