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

by Christopher Nuttall

  “This isn’t anything to do with my joint project,” Emily said. “It’s a personal project of mine.”

  “How curious,” Yodel said. “What would you say, I wonder, if I told you the price wouldn’t be money, but a full explanation of what you intend to achieve?”

  “I would be forced to decline,” Emily said, flatly. It would be nice to have a skilled enchanter working on the batteries, but she was all too aware that the more people who knew, the greater the chance of a leak. “This is too important to risk getting out before it’s ready.”

  “I see,” Yodel said. His dark eyes peered into hers for a long chilling moment. “In that case, the flat fee for producing this is twenty gold coins. You will also have to pay for the materials.”

  Emily blinked. The value of coins tended to be variable, something that caused no end of confusion, but twenty gold coins...she’d paid about the same amount for her first trunk, and a little more for the second. She could afford it, she knew, but it annoyed her to have to pay so much. She’d grown up counting every last coin before carefully buying the cheapest food, drink, and clothes she could.

  “Five gold coins, plus the materials,” Emily said. “How long will it take you to make it?”

  “An hour or two,” Yodel said. “Come back in three and it will be ready for you, barring disaster. But I can’t do it for anything less than fifteen gold, plus the materials.”

  Emily sighed. “Ten gold, plus the materials,” she said. “Or fifteen, counting the materials.”

  “Done,” Yodel said, immediately.

  “Oh,” Emily said. She had the feeling she’d slipped up. “How much are the materials worth?”

  Yodel glanced at the diagram. “Assuming everything works perfectly, one or two gold,” he said. “But I don’t mind the excess.”

  Emily sighed. “Very well done,” she said. “If I return to pick it up in three hours, it will be ready?”

  “Unless there is a complete disaster,” Yodel said. “But I’m afraid I will have to ask for the gold in advance.”

  “I should pay you ten now and the remaining five when I come back,” Emily said. “But I don’t have time to worry about it.”

  She opened her pouch, counted out fifteen gold coins, and waited impatiently for Yodel to check each one individually. Not that she really blamed him for being careful. Fake coins were rare, she’d been told, but gold coins that had been diluted with some other metal were alarmingly common. The sooner someone set up a proper bank, and a proper mint, the better. But there were problems that would have to be solved before either could be made to work.

  Like how to keep noblemen from requesting loans they have no intention of repaying, she thought, sourly. Or all the other problems that the banking class caused the medieval world.

  The thought made her wince. Most of the early money-lenders had been Jews, which had been seen as a neat way to avoid the Church’s prohibition on usury. Unsurprisingly, it hadn’t made the Jews popular; smarter kings had used them as scapegoats, while stupider kings had been happy to allow pogroms from time to time. How much anti-Semitism had been born, she wondered, because working with money was the only avenue open to the Jews?

  “Fifteen gold,” Yodel announced, finally. “I’ll write you a receipt.”

  He picked up a piece of paper and scrawled a note in Old Script, then passed it to her. Emily glanced at it, parsing out the words, and stuck it in her pouch. The charms would keep it from being stolen, she knew; Lady Barb had forced her to charm the pouch again and again until even she hadn’t been able to take it without setting off alarms. She’d rigged similar protective spells around the battery itself.

  “I would be curious to know what you intend to do with this...object,” Yodel said, as Emily rose. “It seems to have no purpose, as far as I can tell.”

  “You’ll be among the first to know,” Emily assured him. She took a breath. “And I am sorry for any problems I may have caused you.”

  Yodel climbed to his feet, moving slowly and carefully. “I should not have given you that book,” he said. “But what is done is done. Unless you can change the past...?”

  “I don’t believe it to be possible,” Emily said. She’d checked the books at Whitehall, when she’d thought about some of the fantasy stories she’d read, but time travel didn’t even seem a workable concept. Most people thought of a time machine as nothing more than a watch. “You can’t undo the past.”

  “No,” Yodel agreed. “All you can do is make the most of what happened to you.”

  Emily nodded as he opened the flap, allowing her to step back into the real world. The noise of the Faire crashed down on her — it had been quiet inside the wigwam — and she nearly stumbled. But she regained her composure and calmly walked out of the tent. Yodel’s two apprentices — she wondered, absently, what had happened to the other two — both looked down at the ground. Clearly, the one who had recognized her had filled in the other while she’d been in the tent.

  She caught up with Frieda at the railway, and they walked together to the zoo. The lion looked more aggressive than the first time she’d seen it, roaring and snarling at anyone who got too close, despite the protective spells. Beside it, in the next cage, a sleeping tiger-like creature snored loudly. Emily couldn’t help wondering just what it actually was; if she’d seen it outside the cage, she might have mistaken it for a stuffed toy. But, judging by the teeth and claws, it might have been the last mistake she’d ever made.

  “Eva was telling me that the old Baron used to kill these creatures,” Frieda said. “They said he’d even killed a Mimic.”

  “I doubt it,” Emily said. No one apart from a handful of people at Whitehall, including herself, knew the true nature of the Mimics. A man without both magic and understanding would be rapidly consumed, then replaced, if he tried to fight a Mimic. “Maybe he got replaced instead.”

  Frieda looked up at her. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “I don’t think so,” Emily said. “He was hung, drawn, and quartered, then buried in several unmarked graves. I don’t think a Mimic could have endured that without returning to its natural form.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Frieda said, suddenly serious. “Mimics have always scared me.”

  “They scare everyone,” Emily said. She’d had nightmares about being replaced...and Imaiqah had confided in her that she’d had them, too. “But you don’t have to worry about them.”

  Frieda gave her a worshipful look. “Because you’ll protect me?”

  Because it’s pointless, Emily thought. The Mimic would be indistinguishable from its target...and even it, when it was buried behind the duplicated personality, wouldn’t know what it was. You could be a Mimic and never know it.

  “I’ll do my best,” she promised, instead. There was no point in giving Frieda nightmares too. “We did see one destroyed at Whitehall.”

  They moved on, past dozens of animals in cages. A handful of surprisingly mundane horses seemed to be very popular with the children, who were lining up to take short rides around the Faire. Emily puzzled over it for a long moment — she’d never been fond of horses, although Sergeant Miles and Alassa had taught her to ride — and then realized that the children would probably never have another chance to ride. Zangaria had strict rules covering horse ownership, banning anyone from owning a horse without good reason. Or the willingness to pay a fairly considerable bribe.

  She rubbed the bracelet at her wrist as they stopped outside a glass case containing dozens of tiny snakes. None of them were Death Vipers, but she knew from Martial Magic that they were almost as dangerous. They could be eaten, Sergeant Miles had said, yet it was only as a last resort. Preparing them to be eaten was difficult and dangerous.

  “If I were to look for a familiar,” Frieda said, “could I start here?”

  “Start at Whitehall,” Emily said. She sometimes wondered what it said about her that she’d chosen a lethal snake as her familiar, but she really hadn’t
had a choice. “And perhaps with something less dangerous.”

  “I could choose a tiger,” Frieda said, looking back towards the roaring lion. “Or a lion.”

  “You don’t get to choose,” Emily said. “You cast the spell and see if the creature responds to you. If it doesn’t, you move on to the next one and try again.”

  Frieda frowned. “Didn’t you try?”

  “I did,” Emily said. “But I found nothing willing to bond with me until I reached the Cairngorms.”

  She smiled, ruefully. Jade had told her that some boys refused to try to bond with creatures they considered unmanly, even if they’d been rejected by everything else. But then, what sort of combat sorcerer would want to walk around with a mouse or a hamster on their shoulders?

  “You’ll have your chance next year,” she said. “And I’m sure you’ll find something you like...”

  She broke off as she sensed a surge of magic.

  “What’s that?” Frieda asked.

  “Trouble,” Emily said. There was another surge of magic, stronger than the first. “Come on!”

  Chapter Thirty

  EVEN IF SHE HADN’T BEEN ABLE to sense the surges of magic, Emily discovered as she ran, it would have been easy to find the source of the trouble. Commoners were running in all directions, while magicians were hastily casting protective wards to protect their merchandise or allow them to watch the show in something resembling safety. Emily gritted her teeth as she ran past a pair of screaming teenagers, and came to a halt as she saw two groups of magicians facing each other.

  For a moment, her heart almost stopped. Markus was standing at the head of one group, flanked by Steven and another boy she vaguely recognized from Mountaintop, facing Gaius and a small army of Ashworths. Had Gaius realized that Markus had been making love to Melissa? Or had something else happened? She glanced from side to side, seeing magic crackling over their palms, and realized that all hell was about to break loose.

  “Get out of our way,” Gaius bellowed. “We have the right to proceed!”

  “We were here first,” Markus shouted back. “The law is on our side!”

  Emily gaped as Frieda ran up behind her. Had they just started to bicker like a gang of street thugs? Or was it nothing more than an excuse for a brawl? She could easily have believed both possibilities

  “Go find Master Grey,” she snapped, catching Frieda’s arm. Where was he? If Emily could sense the magic, so could a fully-trained magician. “Hurry!”

  “You murderous scum,” a man shouted from the Ashworth side. Emily didn’t know him, suggesting he was from a cadet branch. “You murdered my uncle!”

  “You killed my brother,” an Ashfall shouted back. “You killed him!”

  Emily wanted to cover her ears as the two parties kept shouting, hurling out charges and counter-charges and accusations of acts she would have thought anatomically impossible. Both sides were buying time, the tactical side of her mind noted; they were both hastily preparing their spells for a fight, while summoning reinforcements. She looked around for Master Grey, or anyone else who might be able to help, but saw no one. Was he on the other side of the Faire? Or had he simply decided he couldn’t get involved?

  Markus raised his hand and shot a bolt of light towards one of the Ashworths. The target deflected it, with an effort, and threw back a fireball of his own. Steven caught it on his wards, absorbing the flames without noticeable effort. Other spells glimmered on the air, on the very verge of being cast.... Emily gritted her teeth, said a silent prayer and ran forward, placing herself between the two parties. Magic crackled around her, but faded as they realized they would catch her in their spells.

  “The law is not on your side,” she said, as loudly as she could without actually shouting. “And this isn’t a place to fight!”

  “Get out of the way,” Gaius snapped. “We’re going to teach those thugs a lesson.”

  “Not here you’re not,” Emily snapped back. “Fight them somewhere else, if you like, but not here. There are too many others who could get caught up in the fighting.”

  She tried to think of something she could do with the battery, if they started hurling spells at each other again, but everything she could think of required prior preparation. If Yodel had built her the valve...she shook her head, mentally, and concentrated on keeping the two sides from fighting. She didn’t have the ability to separate them by force.

  “They were blocking our way,” Gaius insisted. “We have every right to remove them.”

  “We were here first,” Markus snarled back. “You demanded we move!”

  Emily wondered if she could knock their heads together. She hadn’t liked Gaius from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, but she hadn’t thought he was stupid enough to pick a fight in the middle of the Faire. Had someone goaded him into starting a pointless fight? Or was he merely trying to burnish his credentials before the wedding? Perhaps he thought that having experience of fighting the Ashfalls would be good for his future. Or perhaps he thought it would impress Melissa.

  “Look around you,” she said. “Do you really want to draw hundreds of others into your fight?”

  Gaius hesitated, noticeably. “I...”

  “He most certainly does not,” a stern voice said. Fulvia was standing to the edge of the crowd, glaring at the Ashworths. Melissa was standing next to her, looking pale. “This is not a place to fight, Gaius.”

  “Nor should you let yourself be lured into a fight,” Marcellus added. The Patriarch of House Ashfall looked tired. “Put down your spells and step back.”

  Markus hesitated. “But...”

  “Do as he tells you,” Emily said, meeting his eyes and trying to convey a message. Do you think she would like it if you killed her kinsmen? “You don’t want to start a fight here.”

  “We offer our most sincere apologies for the disruption,” Fulvia added, speaking to the entire crowd. “Ashworths, with me.”

  She turned and started to march back towards the castle. Gaius shot Emily a look that suggested murder, then strode after the Matriarch, followed by the other youngsters. Melissa remained behind, her eyes flickering nervously between Gaius and Markus, until Fulvia barked a command for her to come, too.

  Emily felt a stab of sympathy for the girl. It couldn’t have been easy to watch her secret lover prepare to fight her family. But why had it all blown up so quickly?

  Idiots, she thought. It would have been safer if they’d picked the fight in Whitehall.

  “I offer my apologies, too,” Marcellus said. “Markus, you and I will discuss this matter once we are back in our rooms.”

  Markus colored. Emily felt a flicker of sympathy, knowing that Marcellus would not be kind or understanding. How could he be, when he didn’t know that Gaius was more than just a potential Ashworth? Marcellus had no idea that his son was dating Melissa, or that Gaius was his rival. All he saw was a dispute between two hotheads that had nearly resulted in utter disaster.

  And worse, perhaps, she thought, if they had managed to kill me.

  “Markus,” she said. “I would like to invite you to breakfast with me tomorrow morning.”

  Marcellus turned to face her. “My son will be busy,” he said. “I will find him something unpleasant to do.”

  “Father,” Markus said. Something unspoken seemed to pass between them. “I...”

  “Very well,” Marcellus said. “You may join Lady Emily for breakfast. But you will not be attending dinner tonight.”

  Emily blinked. He had changed his mind that quickly?

  “Lady Emily, with your permission, I will keep everyone away from the dinner and dancing tonight,” Marcellus added. “I do not feel it would be a good idea for my family to meet them when tempers are still running high.”

  “I understand,” Emily said. If nothing else, an evening without dinner and dancing would be a relief. “I will cancel the dance altogether to let tempers cool.”

  She looked at Markus. “I will see you tomorrow.” />
  Markus nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You can discuss the nature of the favor you owe her,” Marcellus added, as he turned away. “All hell could have broken loose today.”

  Emily nodded, once.

  Markus bowed to her. “It will be my honor to perform one favor for you,” he said. “And I thank you for saving us from our darker impulses.”

  He turned and followed his father before Emily could think of a response. Markus owed her more than one favor...and both of them had to sit uneasily on him. The magical community insisted that favors had to be repaid, one way or another, and few liked the thought of remaining in debt permanently. He would need to find a way to repay her, she suspected, before he took over as Patriarch. His family would not like him owing a favor to anyone.

  She watched the rest of the crowd disperse slowly, muttering amongst themselves. The Ashworths and Ashfalls might be the largest parties here, but they weren’t the only ones. A fight in the Faire would have drawn in other families, eventually ripping the magical society apart into open war. Could the Ashworths and Ashfalls, even combined, resist the remainder of the magical families? Or would the battle at Cockatrice merely be the start of a war with only one possible outcome?

  But the necromancers would have laughed, she thought. So many magicians killed in a pointless civil dispute.

  “Lady Emily,” Master Grey said. He cast a privacy ward with effortless ease. “I was in the city.”

  Emily eyed him, suspiciously. “You were in the city?”

  “One of the Ashfall bitches cast a particularly nasty spell on a young man,” Master Grey said. He sounded annoyed at the question. “I had no choice but to go after him and provide assistance. It was not an easy task.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t,” Emily said, tartly. “We nearly saw the start of a fight here.”

  “Putting Ashworths and Ashfalls together is like mixing Basilisk Blood with powdered Dragon Scales,” Master Grey reminded her. “I told you that, didn’t I?”