Lessons in Etiquette (Schooled in Magic series)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Imaiqah shook her head. “It’s not that easy to escape a life on the streets,” she pointed out. “The street children are always seen as thieves and murderers–or worse. Not many people would give them a chance.”

  Emily shook her head in dismay, but said nothing. Instead, she allowed Imaiqah to buy a handful of oddly-shaped fruits from a stall and pass her a couple to eat. It was hard to figure out how to eat them–the skin was leathery and looked inedible–until she saw Imaiqah use her fingernails to tear one open, revealing a juicy white mass inside. The fruit tasted unfamiliar, but nice.

  One of the later stalls was selling abacuses, ranging from very crude designs to one that had been decorated by the craftsman who’d produced it. The stall next to it was offering lessons in using an abacus, with a handful of young men and women signing up for tuition. Emily looked up and saw a lesson in the alleyway, with one young man showing the others how best to use the devices. It didn’t take long to master the basics, Emily knew, and then they could advance on their own.

  She picked up the decorated abacus and studied it. Back home, it would probably have been mass-produced, but here it would have been designed and produced by a master craftsman. It was covered in a numbers motif, suggesting the triumph of Arabic numerals over the old system. Emily couldn’t help admiring the skill and dedication that had gone into the work. What would happen to the craftsmen, she asked herself, when the techniques for assembly-line production were worked out? Somehow, she knew it would be almost as disruptive as the new numerals had been for the accounting profession.

  “I think I’d like to buy this,” she decided, suddenly. A quick glance revealed that the seller wanted one gold piece for the abacus. “Maybe…”

  “Let me do the bargaining,” Imaiqah said, quickly. “I’ve seen you try to bargain.”

  Emily flushed. Bargaining wasn’t a skill she had managed to acquire; she always wound up paying more than strictly necessary for almost everything. Imaiqah stepped forward and sweetly pointed out that one gold piece was excessive unless the gold piece was very small; surely the seller could see that no one would buy it at that price. Twenty minutes later, they finally came to an agreement; Emily could buy the abacus for three silver pieces. She produced the coins from her pouch, watched the shopkeeper check them carefully, then picked up the abacus. Imaiqah had to remind her that it needed to be wrapped up first.

  “I can deliver it,” the seller offered. “Where do you want it to go?”

  “My home,” Imaiqah said, before Emily could mention the castle. She gave him her address and accepted a receipt, then turned back to Emily. “You can pick it up when you next come to visit me, although if there really is a cockatrice in your luggage…”

  Emily snorted as they walked onwards, passing several other stalls offering various forms of tuition, including one–run by an elderly lady–who offered various alchemical potions for young women. Several of them looked to be comparable to the ones she’d been given at Whitehall, others seemed to be love potions–and one promised a healthy baby boy to the girl who took it before conception. Love potions were banned at Whitehall, even the ones that only lasted long enough to do no real harm. But then, the effects might wear off, but the embarrassment would be eternal.

  “The strongest of fixation potions, of which love potions are a prime example, can cause permanent effects,” Professor Thande had said. “Anyone who drinks one may become permanently fixated on a person, whatever their prior feelings. The only way to deal with such permanent effects is to redirect the fixation to something harmless, which can cause its own problems. A victim may never be the same again afterwards. If any of you experiment with them while you study here, you will wish that you had merely been expelled.”

  “Those never work,” Imaiqah said, following Emily’s gaze. “If they did, that woman would have to explain herself to the Court Wizard. All they really do is give someone the courage to make the first move, confident that it will not be rejected.”

  Emily gave her a sharp look. “How do you know that?”

  “I… one of my friends, before I came into magic, wanted to use one,” Imaiqah said. “She had a boy she fancied. My father yelled at me for being stupid when he heard about it, then told me that the potions were useless and that we had wasted our money. And then everyone else found out about it and they laughed at us.”

  She nodded towards one of the temples as they drifted back into the upper parts of the city. “My father worships there; he donated a large chunk of money to the priests in exchange for the favor the gods had showered upon him,” she said. Her face twisted into a droll smile. “But the priests favored him in future; they backed his candidacy to the council and offered him support among the holy orders. They wanted more money, you see.”

  Emily nodded. It wasn’t an uncommon racket; bribing the priests convinced them to support you, whatever their gods were supposed to have said. If the gods were actually real…this world had had the Faerie, vastly powerful entities composed of raw magic. Why not gods? Or demons? Certainly, there were people who claimed to have visions of the gods, or pick up messages from the higher realms, but she’d always assumed that they were just deluding themselves. But here, who knew what might be true?

  She listened politely as Imaiqah told her about the major gods. Most of them seemed to represent a single aspect of existence, although there were actually several different gods of war. Emily enquired if they were actually different names for the same entity and Imaiqah shook her head. They were apparently separate gods. Emily decided that there must have been a great deal of cross-contamination when the Empire was at its height, but there was no way to know. The History Monks didn’t seem to touch on religion.

  “There’s a shortcut back this way,” Imaiqah said, leading Emily through a tight alleyway and down to a flight of stairs that headed back towards the docks. “Father insisted that I explore this part of town thoroughly. One day we’re going to be living here.”

  “Then you won’t be very wealthy for long,” Emily pointed out, dryly. The higher addresses might be a symbol of wealth, but it was clear that the junior nobility couldn’t maintain them indefinitely. Only the barons–and the Royal Family–could maintain themselves permanently in the upper reaches of the city. “Or does he think he can parley it into something more permanent?”

  “I’ve said as much to him,” Imaiqah said. “But he wants to make it…”

  Emily held up a hand. Something was wrong…she glanced around in puzzlement, then saw a single shadowy form advancing towards them from out of a darkened alleyway. She wondered, for a moment, if it could be Void…and then realized that the figure was not alone. Cold ice ran down her spine as she glanced back up the steps and saw two more figures blocking their line of escape. Emily reached for her magic and felt it, shimmering just below her skin. If they were ordinary footpads, they were in for a nasty surprise.

  One of the men drew a sword as he advanced. Emily noted, absently, that he’d obviously had some training. Sergeant Harkin had taught his class how to use a blade and he’d pointed out a number of the more common mistakes made by amateurs. Standing up and striking a dramatic pose was a good way to have a knife shoved between your ribs while you were posing, or so he’d said. The other men were drawing their own weapons. They didn’t need to threaten two harmless girls with swords.

  And she’d let them get too close. She shaped a spell in her mind, one that Sergeant Miles had hammered into her head, and cast it towards the men. There was a blinding flash of light–Imaiqah yelped in shock–and their armor glowed, but they didn’t stop. Emily blinked in surprise–the spell should have sent them all tumbling to the ground–and threw a second spell at the first man. His armor glowed again, absorbing the magic harmlessly. It had been enchanted to provide some protection for the man inside.

  Emily’s hesitation almost killed her. She was only vaguely aware of the man behind her until there was a crash and he hit the ground, his sword jangling as
it fell down beside him. A half-seen form advanced forward and slammed into the second footpad, knocking him down with ease. Magic flared out of nowhere and blazed over two more forms; Emily saw their armor glow with bright light before it failed. The two men let out horrific screams before their skin caught fire and they vanished in towering flames.

  Pushing her fear aside, she scooped up the fallen sword and used it to block a swing from one of the remaining men. The sword was heavier than the one she was used to using and she winced as his blow sent the weapon twisting in her hand, but she managed to use it to hold him off long enough for the shadowy figure to cut in from the side. There was another blast of magic, causing the man to drop his sword and raise his hands in surrender. The newcomer cracked him on the head with the flat of their sword and he fell to the ground, stunned.

  And then the shimmer faded away completely, revealing Lady Barb.

  Emily fought to gather her breath. She’d relied on her magic to protect her–why hadn’t she thought of enchanted armor? And then she’d come too close to panic, freezing up at exactly the wrong moment. Sergeant Harkin would have laid her flat on her back, then made an example of her in front of the entire class. Why not? He hadn’t hesitated to point out everyone else’s failings.

  And she would have deserved it. She could have been killed.

  “You should have seen them from the start,” Lady Barb said. Irritatingly, she didn’t even seem to be breathing heavily. But then, she had ten years of experience–after graduating from Whitehall. “Or did you assume that raw power alone would suffice?”

  “Who… who are you?” Imaiqah asked. “Who were they?”

  “Interesting question,” Lady Barb observed. “Enchanted armor is not cheap. How many rich and powerful men has your father pissed off?”

  She leaned down to examine the stunned men. “The key to beating enchanted armor, Lady Emily, is to keep hitting it with different spells,” she added. “You will no doubt be aware that organic wards can be adapted on instinct, as it were, but material wards are much harder to configure against general threats. Your wide-paralysis spell was insufficiently powerful to overcome them; you needed to hit them with other spells too.”

  “Thank you,” Emily managed. Her body was starting to shake. She was a powerful magician, a potential sorceress…and yet she’d come very close to dying at the hands of men in enchanted armor. “Who sent them?”

  “That is indeed the question,” Lady Barb said, sarcastically. “Let’s see; if you were the target, there’s no shortage of enemies. If Imaiqah was the target…oh, she has no shortage of enemies either. Or at least her father has no shortage of enemies. But we know this wasn’t a random attack; they knew they were facing magicians and they came prepared.”

  She pointed a hand into the sky and muttered a spell Emily didn’t recognize. There were no visible effects, but Emily felt a tingle of magic and saw a flock of birds take flight, no doubt scared by whatever Lady Barb had done. Sergeant Miles had told her that some animals had better senses for magic than humans; dogs, in particular, were often good escorts for soldiers when there was no magician accompanying them. She wondered if some birds had their own sensitivities to magic.

  “And enchanted armor is also quite rare,” Lady Barb added. “I wonder who made it.”

  Several soldiers appeared at one end of the alley, carrying weapons and looking alert. They must have been summoned by the signal, Emily realized. A properly configured spell would have been largely undetectable save by the magicians watching for it.

  “Take these men back to the guardhouse and have the magician freeze them,” Lady Barb ordered. “Take the bodies back too, along with their weapons. I want them held until I arrive. If they’re missing, I’ll turn you all to mice and feed you to the cat!”

  Emily glanced at her, shocked.

  “Whoever did this has connections,” Imaiqah muttered, drawing Emily’s attention back to her. “If they were after me…they might have friends in the castle.”

  “I’ll escort you home, then take Lady Emily back to her rooms,” Lady Barb said. She hesitated, then gave Emily an odd look. “Or do you want to witness the interrogation?”

  “I…” Emily hesitated. She didn’t want to witness anything of the sort, but she knew that she would have to learn how to conduct an interrogation, sooner or later. It would be counted towards her final grade in Martial Magic. “I think I should.”

  Lady Barb frowned, leaving Emily with the odd feeling that she’d failed some kind of test.

  “We’ll take your friend back home,” Lady Barb said. “And then I have to report to King Randor. He is not going to be pleased.”

  That, Emily was sure, was an understatement. One of his guests had just been attacked–and the nature of the attack proved that the attackers knew who they were attacking. The king would be furious.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  EMILY FELT THE WARDS THE MOMENT she walked into the dungeons. They crackled through the air, an invisible web of power that threatened to suffocate her–even though she wasn’t a prisoner. The dark walls, illuminated only by tiny balls of light drifting in the air, were marked with powerful runes, each one channelling magic around the cells. No one could escape without help from the outside.

  Lady Barb met her at the bottom of the stairs. “You froze up,” she said, bluntly. “If I hadn’t been there, you and your friend could have been killed.”

  Emily flinched at the cold contempt in her voice. She wanted to object, to fight back–but Lady Barb was right. If they hadn’t had an invisible escort, they might have wound up dead–or kidnapped, again. But she hadn’t expected any form of enchanted armor. Magic should have provided more than enough protection for both of them and yet it had failed. She could have died.

  She forced her hands to stop shaking, drawing on the mental disciplines she’d been taught. There was no time for fear, not now. But her mind kept reminding her that she could have died.

  “You’ve been in Martial Magic,” Lady Barb pointed out, her eyes never leaving Emily’s face. “Don’t you know how to cast Berserker?”

  “We’re not supposed to use it without permission,” Emily mumbled, although she knew that it was a poor excuse. The truth was that she’d simply forgotten she could use it. “And…”

  “And nothing,” Lady Barb snapped. “I think you and I are going to spend the next week practicing both magical and mundane combat. You could have been killed today.”

  Emily winced. The sergeants had been firm believers in the school of hard knocks. Each practice bout had left the students feeling sore, even if there had been no permanent injury. And they’d been good at what they did, to the point that they measured their blows so that they were always just a little ahead of their students. Jade had once asked Sergeant Miles why he held back and Miles had pointed out, after ordering Jade to perform a hundred press-ups, that they wouldn’t learn anything from just being knocked out time and time again. Emily couldn’t help feeling that Lady Barb would be just the same.

  “Thank you,” she said, finally. She did need the experience, she told herself, and besides it would provide an excuse not to attend the endless round of hunting, sporting and suchlike that were giving the princes a chance to show off. Maybe Lady Barb should offer Alassa the same training. “I just…”

  “Don’t make excuses,” Lady Barb said. She turned and strode into the dungeons. “Just learn from your mistakes before the next one kills you.”

  Emily followed her, thinking hard. Why had Lady Barb chosen to follow them invisibly? Had she known that Emily and Imaiqah were likely to attract trouble or had she just wanted to know what they would talk about when they were alone? And she was good at remaining undetected; Emily had never even sensed her presence until she revealed herself. It wasn’t easy to sense an invisible person in the crowds, but still…

  And how long had she been following them?

  The wards around the warehouse-workshop wouldn’t have kept out a hedge wi
zard, let alone a combat sorceress. Lady Barb could have slipped inside behind them and watched as the craftsmen showed off the steam engine and the other long-term projects. What would she make of them all? And what would King Randor make of them, when they were finally revealed? Steam technology would change the world.

  She pushed the thought to one side as Lady Barb stopped in front of a solid metal door. It looked utterly impregnable even without the runes carved into the metal. Lady Barb gave her a sharp glance–she had been rather doubtful about allowing Emily to come with her, even though she hadn’t forbidden it–and then pushed her hand against the door. Emily sensed a brilliant shimmer of magic as the cell unlocked, allowing Lady Barb to pull the door open and step inside. It was as dark and shadowy as the grave.

  Lady Barb created a light ball and directed it forward, into the cell. It was a dark chamber, with a single chair sitting in the exact center of the room. Heavy manacles kept the chair’s occupant almost completely immobile; Emily realized that he was weighed down with so many chains that he would have had problems moving even if they weren’t secured to the metal chair. More runes had been carved into the chair itself, shaping the wards that added an extra layer of security. It struck Emily as rather excessive.

  But Sergeant Miles had lectured them, more than once, on keeping prisoners secure. It was easy to believe that a person without magic would be unable to escape a magical prison, but overconfidence was a gross weakness. Besides, warding each and every cell in a prison would be expensive. Matters only grew worse when the prisoners included actual magicians, who had to be drugged to keep them under control. Most of them, the sergeant had said, were kept in pocket dimensions, where they could remain secure. And a really skilled magician might even be able to escape from there.