Love's Labor's Won (Schooled in Magic Book 6)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Yes, please,” Emily said. “We will need to sit down tomorrow and have a long talk.”

  Bryon looked relieved. “Thank you, my lady,” he said. He nodded briefly to Lady Barb as she climbed out of the coach. “The servants will bring in your bags.”

  “I’ll go down to the Faire and see who’s there,” Lady Barb muttered to Emily. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Emily nodded, and allowed Bryon to lead her through the wooden doors and into the castle. It was not just her home, but the administrative center for the entire barony. Even so, it still surprised her to see so many people in the building, ranging from a handful of ceremonial guards to dozens of servants, maids and bureaucrats. The Scribes’ Guild might have had problems adapting to the brave new world, but many of the scribes had managed to master English letters and find themselves work. After all, just because someone could do their own records didn’t mean they wanted to do them.

  The wards grew stronger as they walked up two flights of stone stairs into the level set aside for Emily and her personal guests. Emily made a mental note to work on them once she’d had a chat with Bryon, but stopped as Bryon opened a wooden door. Inside, there was a roaring fire, a bed easily large enough for four people and a large window, peering out over the growing Faire.

  “Your room, Lady Frieda,” Bryon announced.

  Frieda stared into the room, then at Emily. “This is for me?”

  “As long as you want it,” Emily promised. As far as the castle was concerned, Frieda would always be an inhabitant. “Welcome home...”

  She broke off as Frieda wrapped her arms around her and squeezed, tightly. Emily gasped for air before hugging the younger girl back. She understood, better than she cared to admit, what it was like to have a place of your own, somewhere where you belonged. Frieda might never have seen such luxury in her life, but it was hers now.

  “My apartment is just down the corridor,” Emily said. She yawned, suddenly. The coach ride hadn’t been bad, but she wanted a long soak in a bath. “We’ll eat dinner later, once Lady Barb returns.”

  She looked at Frieda. “Just be careful when you heat the bathwater,” she said. “You don’t want to scald yourself.”

  “There’s only cold water on tap,” Bryon confirmed.

  Emily hid her amusement. It had been hard enough explaining why she wanted running water in the first place, not when the castle kept a dozen servants gainfully employed ferrying water up to the higher levels. But, in the end, she’d got what she wanted.

  “We’ll talk in the morning,” she said. “Until then, thank you.”

  Bryon recognized it as a dismissal. He bowed, then retired, leaving them alone.

  “Thank you,” Frieda said, again. “I...no one has ever done this for me.”

  “It’s nothing,” Emily said. “I’ll key you into the wards properly tomorrow, but until then...”

  She gave Frieda a gentler hug, then glanced at her watch. There would be an hour until dinner, then they could go to bed and rise early, with the sun. And then...she would have to have a long chat with Bryon. She needed to know what had been done in her name.

  Chapter Nine

  Someone was in her room.

  EMILY STIRRED, WOKEN BY A SENSE she’d had beaten into her by Sergeant Miles. She’d rarely slept deeply, not since her mother had remarried; she’d always been nervous about someone coming into her room when she was asleep. It had been hard to share a room with two people — and then a dorm, at Mountaintop — and she’d welcomed the chance to sleep alone. But now, someone was in her room.

  She braced herself, listening carefully. The newcomer was trying very hard to remain quiet, which set off alarm bells in her head. Two years ago, a maid had tried to assassinate Alassa — or Emily — in Alluvia, before the attempted coup. Gritting her teeth, she slipped her fingers out of the bedding and cast a spell. There was a flash of light; the sound of someone moving stopped abruptly.

  Emily sat upright, conjuring a light globe into existence. A maid stood by the fire, frozen in place. Emily winced inwardly as she realized dawn was breaking over the mountaintops and the maid had been attempting to build up the fire. Feeling like a fool, she hastily cast the counter-spell. The maid jerked violently, dropped several pieces of wood to the floor, and spun around. Her eyes were wide with fear.

  “My lady,” she said. “I...”

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said. The maid was so young that Emily couldn’t help feeling like a bully, picking on a child who looked at least five years younger than her. It wasn’t uncommon for girls to go into service as soon as they entered their teens, she knew from bitter experience, but she’d never had a personal maid. “I didn’t know who you were.”

  The maid hastily prostrated herself on the floor. “I am Janice, Daughter of Lanark,” she said. “I only meant to light the fire...”

  “Get up,” Emily ordered, embarrassed. She didn’t like people bowing and scraping to her, let alone falling on the floor whenever she passed. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” Janice said, as she rose. She kept her eyes downcast at all times. “I...”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Emily said, firmly. She couldn’t help noticing that the maid wore a uniform that showed off her assets, a legacy from the previous baron. She’d have to have them changed, she resolved. He’d probably insisted his maids prostrate themselves too. “I need to rise soon, anyway.”

  Emily watched as Janice hastily laid the fire with shaky hands, and felt another wave of bitter guilt. Janice had probably known her mistress was a magician, but there was a difference between knowing something and actually believing it. Now she would probably be scared of Emily, no matter what Emily said or did. She’d seen that reaction before, once or twice, during the walk through the Cairngorms. And if Hodge had had that reaction, it might have been a very different trip.

  “Thank you, my lady,” Janice said, when she had lit the fire. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “I know,” Emily said, patiently. She didn’t blame Janice for being scared. A word from Emily could have her sent back to her family — or worse. In hindsight, she told herself again, she should have rejected the barony. “What is it like to work here?”

  “I really couldn’t say, my lady,” Janice said.

  Emily sighed, inwardly. She wouldn’t get a straight answer out of any of the staff, with the possible exception of Bryon. They knew better than to complain, even if their superiors were making their lives intolerable. It was no wonder, Emily knew, that so many of the former staff had decamped when Emily had taken over. They’d only been kept at the castle through threats and blackmail.

  She watched the girl curtsey, then back out of the door, careful never to turn her back to Emily. Emily had to bite down the impulse to tell the maid that it hardly mattered if she did walk out the door properly, knowing it wouldn’t matter. The maid was probably old enough to have worked for Baron Holyoake, who would have taken sadistic delight in punishing each and every mistake. It would be a long time before they became comfortable with Emily instead...

  And even if they did, they might recall a few royal brats and decide it would be better not to call attention to themselves, Emily thought, as the door closed. What would I do, if I was in such a place?

  Pushing the thought aside, she stood and walked into the bathroom, where an enormous bathtub waited for her. It wasn’t quite large enough to qualify as a small swimming pool, but it was certainly larger than anything she’d seen on Earth. She twisted the tap and watched as cold water cascaded into the tub, then carefully cast a warming spell. The water started to bubble furiously, but cooled as more water fell from the tap. Emily removed her nightgown, climbed into the tub and washed herself, hastily. It was tempting, very tempting, to just cast a spell to allow her to breathe underwater and just relax into the warm water. But she knew she couldn’t allow herself to relax.

  She used a spell to wash her hair, climbed out of
the tub and cast another spell to dry herself. A new dress waited her in the wardrobe; she pulled her underclothes on, then the dress itself. Red didn’t suit her as well as blue, she decided as she looked at herself in the mirror, but she couldn’t wear blue all the time. Alassa would have had a fit. Shaking her head, she cast a handful of spells to protect the room and walked out the door. She would need to have a word with Bryon about keeping the maids out of her room, even to light the fire. Some of the items she had brought from Whitehall were dangerous.

  Or just seal the room with magic, she reminded herself. But I was too tired to think of it.

  “Emily,” Frieda called, as she stepped into the small dining room. It was larger than anywhere she’d eaten on Earth, even a fast food restaurant. There was a single table in the center of the room, with three places laid. “Did you sleep well?”

  “As well as I ever do,” Emily said. She would definitely need to do something to make it up to Janice. “And yourself?”

  “It felt strange to sleep alone,” Frieda confessed. “But I made it, eventually.”

  Emily had to smile. She liked her privacy, but Frieda had grown up in a tiny hovel and then moved to the dorms of Mountaintop. Frieda had never known true privacy from the day she’d been born until the day Emily had taken her to Whitehall. Even then, she’d shared a room with Emily rather than one of her own.

  “I’m sure you did,” she said, softly. A maid — not Janice — appeared with a menu, which she placed in front of Emily. It was written using English letters, but half of the dishes still made no sense to her. “I’ll just have scrambled eggs, please.”

  The maid looked astonished, either at the simplicity or the politeness, but merely curtseyed and departed, leaving the menus behind. Emily sighed inwardly, then looked at Frieda’s plate. It was crammed with bacon, eggs and pieces of unidentifiable vegetables. After a moment, she decided she didn’t want to know.

  Frieda leaned forward. “What are we going to be doing today?”

  “I’m going to have a long chat with Bryon,” Emily said. She cursed under her breath. It hadn’t occurred to her that she should have organized something for Frieda. “I think Lady Barb might be willing to show you around the city.”

  Frieda looked doubtful. “I don’t think she likes me that much.”

  Emily snorted. “I think that was because you and your friends managed to catch her and two other tutors in the crossfire,” she said. “Why were you playing Freeze Tag near the tutor’s lounge when there’s no shortage of empty floors in Whitehall?”

  “It’s more exciting down there,” Frieda said.

  “I bet it was,” Emily said, dryly. It was hard to blame the tutors for being annoyed, even though they hadn’t banned the students from playing. “But it wasn’t a very clever place to play.”

  “I suppose not,” Frieda said unrepentantly. “We had detentions for months afterwards.”

  Emily opened her mouth to point out that she obviously hadn’t suffered that much, but closed it when her breakfast arrived. There was more on her plate than she could have eaten, even after a day of casting spells at school. She sighed, made a mental note to ask for a smaller portion later, and started to dig into the eggs. It wasn’t easy to estimate just how many eggs had been broken to make her breakfast, but she would have bet it was somewhere around six or seven.

  Lady Barb entered the room, looking disgustingly fresh and cheerful. “There’s a couple of people I know down there,” she said, nodding in the vague direction of the Faire. “I’d like to see them after breakfast, if you don’t mind.”

  “Can you take Frieda with you?” Emily asked. “She really needs an escort.”

  Lady Barb gave her a knowing look. “You need an escort,” she said. “But you can’t hide behind me here, not during the Faire. You’re their host.”

  “I know,” Emily said.

  She finished her breakfast, shaking her head at the waste, then rose. “I have to see Bryon,” she said. “But I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Lady Barb smiled. “Don’t let him get away with anything,” she said. “You have to watch people carefully when you give them power.”

  Emily swallowed the comment that came to mind — she’d been granted power, which suggested King Randor would keep an eye on her — and then walked out of the door, down towards the office that had been set aside for her. It was a chilly room, despite the roaring fire; Emily had a private suspicion, from the number of stuffed heads mounted on the wall, that Baron Holyoake had used it for something other than actual work. The desk, made out of stone, looked laughable to her. If she ever came back permanently, she promised herself, she would have the whole room turned into a proper workroom.

  “My lady,” Bryon said, as he entered the room. “You wished to see me?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. Several questions rose to the top of her mind as they sat down, but she focused on the most important one. “How large is the Faire going to be?”

  “It grew,” Bryon admitted. “We had the first request, the one you signed, last year. And then we had more requests from several magical families. And then Viscount Steam made his own request, followed by several others. Right now, we are looking at hundreds of stalls, thousands of exhibits and hundreds of thousands of guests.”

  Emily fought down the urge to put her head in her hands. “And you have this under control?”

  “I believe so,” Bryon said. “Only a handful of the guests, the most important ones, will be granted rooms in the castle. The remainder will be staying in the city or traveling through the portal network. They’ve been organizing rooms for the last two months, my lady, and prices have been rising constantly.”

  “I bet they have,” Emily said. Cockatrice City might be large, by local standards, but it wasn’t that big a city. These people would be astonished if they’d ever set eyes on Washington, New York or London. “And have there been problems?”

  “Not many, my lady,” Bryon assured her. “They have all been handled.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Emily said. Lady Barb’s horror stories echoed through her head. “And security...?”

  “They would not dare to cause trouble,” Bryon said. “Not in your lands.”

  Emily shook her head. She knew magicians too well to assume her reputation, both as the Necromancer’s Bane and Void’s supposed daughter, would provide any protection. Some magicians would go out of their way to show they weren’t scared of her, while others would take one look and instantly dismiss her reputation as nothing more than a tissue of lies. Only people like the Grandmaster, or Void, seemed to command the sort of respect that led to instant obedience.

  “Put Lady Barb in charge of security,” Emily ordered, flatly. “Pay her if she wants to be paid. She can muster support, if she thinks we need it.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Bryon said. “Do you expect trouble?”

  Emily shrugged. There hadn’t been any trouble at the last Faire, as far as she knew, but there had been a dozen Mediators there, along with a number of other senior magicians. Here, there would be her and no one else...she cursed herself under her breath. In hindsight, she should have thought harder before agreeing to host the Faire. It might have been a mistake.

  No, she told herself. It was a mistake.

  “Lady Barb can handle security,” she repeated. The older woman wouldn’t be happy, but she would do it, even if she did extract a price afterwards. “Putting that aside for a moment, are there any other issues I should know about?”

  Bryon smiled at her before he started to speak. “Local taxes have been sharply reduced, as you ordered,” he said. “However, there have been enough new taxpayers in your lands to more than compensate for our loss in revenue. Furthermore, scrapping the tax collection policy has actually saved us a considerable sum of money. Currently, we have a surplus of gold and several hundred requests for low-level microloans.”

  Emily nodded. Microloans had been an idea she’d heard about on Earth and introdu
ced to the Nameless World. They had to be paid back, of course, but they made it easier for any would-be entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. In the long run, she knew, some of the businesses would fail, yet she was sure enough would succeed to keep her in the black.

  “However, we have complaints from some of our neighbors,” Bryon continued. “Beneficence hasn’t bothered to register any complaints, but Earl Wycliffe and Baron Gaunt have both filed formal complaints about peasants, slaves and even traders moving from their lands into yours. In addition, my lady, the Temple Master of Solis has filed a complaint of his own.”

  “I see,” Emily said. “Why?”

  “The Word of Solis, the dictates of the god, were meant to remain verbal,” Bryon said. “One of their senior initiates took the word and actually wrote it down, then produced hundreds of copies. The entire country can now look into the heart of their religion.”

  Emily shrugged. “Is that our fault?”

  “They want someone to blame,” Bryon said. “And we do have the largest printing press industry in the world.”

  “True,” Emily said. King Randor had wanted her to watch for subversive printings...and she would have bet good money that most of them came from Cockatrice. She’d never bothered to supervise what was being printed, let alone try to censor it. “Can they actually cause problems for us?”

  “I don’t know,” Bryon admitted. “But it should be watched.”

  He smiled, thinly. “On the other hand, the Temple of Justice has been having its holy texts printed and distributed to the faithful,” he added. “They love the printing press.”

  “It will sort itself out in time,” Emily said. “What else?”

  “Some minor issues,” Bryon said, uncomfortably. “There are a handful of court cases that require you to make a final judgement. I’ve been keeping them frozen in the hopes they would go away, but I can’t delay them any longer now you’re here.”

  “I’ll hear them later today, if they’re urgent,” Emily said. “How serious are they?”