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

by Christopher Nuttall

  “It’s your choice, Emily,” Lady Barb said. Her voice was flat, but Emily could tell she was displeased. “But you should be prepared for the consequences.”

  I should walk away from Cockatrice, Emily thought, angrily. She hadn’t known what she was getting into...or what was going to be done in her name, merely because she hadn’t been paying attention. Leave the lands to someone else and just go.

  But that wasn’t an option, not now.

  “If we hold the Faire as planned, we risk them starting a fight,” she said. “But, if we cancel the Faire, we definitely upset hundreds of people.”

  “Thousands of people,” Master Grey corrected. “Your reputation would not recover.”

  “Not to mention causing problems for everyone who bought a ticket in good faith,” Emily continued. “It would not be easy to compensate them all.”

  “No,” Master Grey agreed. “You wouldn’t even be able to calculate what you owed.”

  Emily nodded. It would be simple enough to reimburse everyone who had bought a ticket, but what about everything else? How many profits might be lost because someone had thought they would be going to Cockatrice? Master Grey, as much as she hated to admit it, was right. The legal wrangling over who owed what could take years to resolve. And it would be far too expensive. She was a wealthy woman, by the standards of the Allied Lands, but was she wealthy enough to cover everything?

  “We hold the Faire,” she said. “And you sit on anyone who feels like causing trouble.”

  “That might be hard if most of the families show up,” Lady Barb said. “I hope this is the right decision, Emily.”

  “Yeah,” Emily said. She had a feeling she would have regretted it no matter what choice she made. “I hope so, too.”

  Chapter Twelve

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS PASSED QUIETLY, quietly enough for Emily to start becoming nervous. She worked with Lady Barb on the wards, watched as the older woman hired a dozen experienced magicians to assist with security and tried to study the barony’s record books. The latter were both extensively detailed and incredibly confusing, leaving her feeling as if she couldn’t make head or tail of them. Bryon, it seemed, had kept good records, but the system didn’t make sense to her.

  “Everything has to be logged,” he said, as they sat together in the records room. “You can track everything by going through the records.”

  Emily groaned. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to merely log the essentials?”

  “If the king asks for information,” Bryon countered earnestly, “you have to give him everything, or he will think you’re hiding something.”

  There was a tap on the door. Lady Barb stood there, looking amused.

  “I hate to interrupt,” she said, “but you have a visitor.”

  Emily blinked, then remembered. “He’s here?”

  “He’s here,” Lady Barb confirmed. “Would you like me to show him into the hall?”

  “No,” Emily said, suddenly flustered. It was hard enough using the Great Hall to pass judgement, when she was clearly in charge. She didn’t want to meet Caleb somewhere where they wouldn’t meet as equals. “Um...can you show him into my study? I’ll be there in a moment.”

  She stood, brushed dust off her dress, then hurried back to her rooms. The maids had agreed after the first day not to enter without Emily’s permission, even early in the morning. There were spells, after all, to ensure the room remained warm and comfortable, rendering a fire unnecessary. Besides, it was easier to find things when the maids hadn’t tried to help by tidying up the room. She hastily dug out the proposal paperwork, pulled her hair back into a long ponytail, and headed down to her study. There was barely any time to sit down before there was a tap on the door. Emily rose to her feet as it opened, revealing Lady Barb and a young man.

  “Lady Emily,” Lady Barb said, with tight formality. “Please allow me to introduce Caleb, of House Waterfall.”

  “I thank you,” Caleb said. His voice held the same accent as King Randor’s, but lighter, as if he’d grown up in a place where several accents blurred together. “Lady Emily, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said. She held out a hand. “I’ve heard a great deal about you too.”

  Caleb took her hand and shook it, gently. Emily found herself studying him as he released her hand, his brown eyes looking back at her. He was tall and gangly, with short brown hair, a lightly-scarred face and damaged hands. The black shirt and trousers he wore were unmarked, but she couldn’t help being reminded of a military uniform. There was something about the way he wore it that reminded her of Sergeant Harkin, who had dominated a field of magicians through sheer personality.

  And yet, she was sure that he wasn’t a military man.

  “Please, sit,” she said, waving to one of the chairs. “I can have food and drinks brought in, if you like.”

  “Thank you,” Caleb said. He sat, resting his hands on his lap. “It was good of you to agree to work with me.”

  “I think I should be thanking you,” Emily said. “You had every right to restart your project and search for someone new, from the year below.”

  “Too much like hard work,” Caleb said. He gave her a smile that reminded her, suddenly, of Rory Williams. “Besides, I still qualify for Fourth Year. I didn’t want to repeat Third Year if it could be avoided.”

  “I know the feeling,” Emily said.

  “I will have food and drinks sent to you,” Lady Barb said. “Until then, behave.”

  Emily found herself flushing as Lady Barb bowed and retreated from the room. She glanced up at Caleb and saw that he was flushing too, his cheeks a dull red. She gaped, then started to giggle, despite herself. Caleb laughed a moment later, breaking the ice. By the time Janice entered with a tray of food and drink, they were laughing together like loons.

  “Thank you,” Emily said, as Janice placed the tray in front of them and retreated. “Please, feel free to eat what you want.”

  “I’ve never had cakes like these before,” Caleb said, picking up a honey cake and eyeing it thoughtfully. “Do you eat them all the time?”

  “Not if I can avoid it,” Emily said. She liked sweets, but she’d never had very many of them on Earth. “Tell me about yourself?”

  Caleb shrugged. “There isn’t much to tell,” he said. “I was at Stronghold for the first two years of my education, then transferred to Whitehall for Third Year. My father was less than pleased when the Mimic started killing people; I think he thought I should have killed it personally. Father always was a demanding person.”

  Emily winced. “It wasn’t easy to kill the creature,” she said. Very few people knew about the Mimic’s true nature and she hoped it would stay that way. “You would just have been killed.”

  “That’s my father for you,” Caleb said. “Charge! Death before dishonor! Take no prisoners! Last one in is a rotten egg!”

  “I know the type,” Emily said.

  “And you?” Caleb said. “What was your family like?”

  “There isn’t much to tell either,” Emily said. She knew he was asking about Void. “I didn’t know I had magic until I was sixteen, whereupon I was sent to Whitehall.”

  Caleb frowned, but seemed to sense she didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t ask any further questions. Emily was relieved; they’d worked out a cover story shortly after she’d arrived at Whitehall, but somehow she didn’t want to lie to him. Let him believe, if he wished, that Void had been an absentee father, or one who had been ashamed of his daughter failing to develop magic early. She could always tell him the truth later.

  She took a bite of her cake, then a sip of Kava. “Your project is fascinating,” she said, as she put her mug back on the table. “But can you make it work?”

  “I hope so,” Caleb said.

  He took a breath. “The problem with casting spells is that one has to account for all the variables,” he said. “Most magicians eventual
ly develop the habit of casting spells without thinking through every detail, which allows them to cast the spells quickly, but not to alter the variables. And some magicians never learn how to do more than trigger spells already embedded in wands and staffs.”

  Emily nodded. “I understand,” she said. She had a hundred spells memorized that she could use to turn a person into an animal, or an object, but changing any of the variables would require her to take the spells apart, then rebuild them. “And you plan to change this?”

  “Spell mosaics,” Caleb said. He reached into his pocket and produced a sheet of paper, which he placed on the desk in front of her. “Every magician knows that channeling magic is like channeling water, merely a case of allowing it to flow though the spellwork and produce the defined end result. This...allows the spell to be built up piece by piece, the variables to be changed at will, and then cast with minimum effort.”

  Emily studied the diagram for a long moment. “Each piece of the mosaic represents a different variable,” she said, slowly. “You could change one and the entire spell alters itself.”

  “Yes,” Caleb said.

  He dug into his pocket and produced a small wooden object. Emily took it, when he passed it to her, and turned it over and over in her hand. She couldn’t help being reminded of a bourbon cream; there was a layer of light wood, sandwiched between two layers of darker wood. And, judging by the smell, the glue holding the wood together was Manaskol. Magic would embed itself in wood, given half a chance, but the Manaskol would ensure it fled onwards to its final destination.

  “Clever,” she said. It looked sloppy, but neatness was very much the last problem. “Does it actually work?”

  “The basic concept is sound,” Caleb assured her. “We embed complete spells in wands, after all. But the trick is learning to separate out the components so they can be placed together in the correct order.”

  Emily looked down at the diagram, feeling her thoughts churning. She had a concept for a magical battery — she intended to make the first test version over the summer, if she had time to actually do anything for herself — and, merged with the spell mosaics, it might actually prove more workable than she had thought. It would be risky — Caleb had already managed to injure himself once — but it was doable. And then...

  She looked at Caleb, wishing she dared trust him enough to talk about the batteries. They would make one hell of a project proposal, but they would be literally earthshaking. She didn’t dare discuss them with anyone, save for Lady Barb. And she had taken an oath of secrecy.

  “I would understand if you didn’t want to work with me,” Caleb said, after a moment. “June worked with me and she...she came very close to being hurt.”

  “I know,” Emily said. She looked at Caleb’s twitching hands and shuddered. “How long did it take you to recover?”

  “Six months, more or less,” Caleb said. “Father was most unimpressed. He kept pointing out that I should have stayed at Stronghold, where they would beat the clumsiness out of me.”

  Emily frowned. Caleb moved with an eerie precision, as if he was carefully considering each and every movement before he made it. Or, perhaps, as if he didn’t dare to relax and move naturally. Had he been genuinely clumsy as a child? Or was something else wrong?

  “I don’t think it would have helped,” she said. “Manaskol has a tendency to blow up if you look at it the wrong way.”

  “Tell me about it,” Caleb said. “I had to convince Professor Thande to teach me how to make it a year ahead of schedule, just so I could produce it for the project. Father was not amused when he saw the bill.”

  “I bet he wasn’t,” Emily said. Manaskol was expensive, largely because the ingredients were expensive...and because most magicians would prefer to purchase it from someone else, rather than make it for themselves. “You didn’t actually try to buy it for yourself?”

  “I need to modify the recipe in the final moments,” Caleb said. “It’s detailed in the proposal.”

  Emily could have kicked herself. She’d seen it, but she had not remembered.

  “I can make it,” she said, instead. “But I don’t know if I would be any more reliable than you.”

  “I think you’d be doing most of the brewing,” Caleb admitted. He held up his bandaged hands. “My hands twitch like...a recruit facing his sergeant for the first time.”

  Emily nodded. “We can certainly try and make it work,” she said. They would be graded on how well they worked together, rather than what — if anything — they managed to produce. “Do you mind working with a Third Year?”

  “You’re not just any Third Year,” Caleb pointed out. “And besides...we’ll both be in Fourth Year. I barely got through a couple of weeks before I managed to put myself in a bed for the next few months.”

  “It won’t be easy,” Emily warned.

  It was a galling thought. She paid little attention to anyone outside her circle of friends, but she had heard that students who were held back a year rarely had an easy time of it. They were older than their new classmates, yet regarded as suspect because they’d already failed once. It didn’t make sense to her, but magicians regarded incompetence with more than a little fear. Not that they would ever admit to it, of course.

  “It’s that or go back to Stronghold,” Caleb said. “And I don’t think they would want me back.”

  Emily frowned. “What’s it like?”

  “Horrible,” Caleb said. “You’d hate it.”

  “Worse than Mountaintop?”

  “I’ve never been to Mountaintop,” Caleb said. “You walk into the school and you’re instantly assigned to a regiment. That regiment will be your family for the next six years. If you do well, that regiment will be composed of your best friends; if you do badly, the regiment will turn on you. The life of a social outcast at Stronghold isn’t worth living. Oh, and if you make a mistake, everyone in your regiment gets punished.”

  Emily shuddered. “Were you a social outcast?”

  “I might have been, if I hadn’t had an important father and pompous older brother,” Caleb said. “As it was, I got a little leeway...which is what saved me from nearly being expelled, once upon a time. But they wouldn’t take me back now, even if my father pulled strings.”

  “Oh,” Emily said. “What did you do?”

  Caleb looked embarrassed. “I turned one of my regiment into a snail,” he said. “The bastard deserved it, but...they would have expelled me, if my father hadn’t had a few words with them.”

  “That’s it?” Emily asked. She’d lost count of how many times she’d been turned into something small and embarrassing...or done it to someone else, for that matter. “They wanted to expel you for that?”

  “Stronghold isn’t just for magical students,” Caleb explained. “Two-thirds of the regiment were mundanes, without magic. Using magic on one’s fellows is considered a grave offense, no matter how much they deserve it.”

  “I see,” Emily said. She’d always had the impression that magical students were gathered together, at Whitehall and Mountaintop, to keep them from being a threat to the mundanes around them. A little spell, nothing more than a prank, could be devastating if used against a defenseless mundane. “But if you were defending yourself...?”

  “You are expected to defend yourself using your fists,” Caleb said. “Not magic.”

  Emily looked down at her pale hands. She couldn’t help understanding, through bitter experience, what it was like to go through school as an unpopular child. It would be worse, she suspected, if everyone’s marks depended on hers. The staff didn’t need to expend effort in keeping the students in line, not when the regiment would do it for them. And children who were pushed out of the regiment entirely would fall by the wayside, lost forever.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered.

  “Don’t be,” Caleb said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  He sighed. “I understand we will be spending the summer rewriting the proposal,” he said. “Or we
could simply sign your name to the bottom, then send it back to Whitehall.”

  “I think I need to read it first, then understand,” Emily said. She’d signed quite enough papers without reading them. “I’ve had a room prepared for you here, if you want to stay in the castle. I don’t know how much time I will have, though.”

  “We have a couple of months before we’re due back at Whitehall,” Caleb said. “I dare say we will have enough time, if you want to go through it line by line.”

  He reached into his pocket and produced a small bag. It must have been charmed to be larger on the inside, Emily realized, as he produced more spell mosaics from the bag than should have been reasonably possible. Piece by piece, he put them together on the desk, pressing his fingertip against the head piece. There was a flare of magic, and a tiny light globe appeared at the far end.

  “It works,” Emily said.

  “This is something so basic that anyone could do it, with a ward,” Caleb said. “It’s the more complex spells I need to make work, but they don’t hold together so well.”

  “Maybe you need to bind them together,” Emily mused.

  “I tried,” Caleb said, with a hint of irritation. “But anything I use to hold them together would interfere with the magic.”

  “Then use something mundane,” Emily said. She reached for a sheet of paper and drew out a very basic jigsaw pattern. “Something like this, perhaps.”

  Caleb looked at it, then frowned. “It might work,” he said. “But I’d need something very precise to make sure they fit together.”

  Emily smiled, remembering one of her old teachers from Earth. He’d tried to teach his students how to produce chessboards, something so complex that few of the students had managed to master it. But she still recalled the basic idea...

  “You made these small,” she said, picking up one of the spell pieces. “Why not make one big sandwich” — she demonstrated with a piece of paper — “and then carve them out piece by piece. Pile two or three layers on top of one another, and you might have something that would work.”