Frieda nodded and obeyed.
“I think we’ll go over other subjects as well,” Emily added, as Frieda ate. “I’ve never heard of Chanting. You might have something useful to teach me, too.”
“It’s not very common beyond Second Year,” Helen said. She had been listening to their conversation in silence. Beside her, Ten looked a little betrayed. “I didn’t take it at all.”
Somehow, Emily wasn’t surprised.
“Tell me what you did take,” she said, trying to be friendly. Helen might be a useful source of information too. “And what it was like growing up in a Great House.”
Helen smiled and started to talk.
Chapter Twenty
“YOU SHOULD KNOW SOME OF THE basics of magical etiquette,” Robyn said, as she cast the privacy ward around the two chairs. She was a Fourth Year girl, freakishly tall even by Earthly standards. Claudia had recommended Robyn when Emily had asked for lessons in magical etiquette, then suggested they talked about it in the quarrel’s clubhouse. Their oaths would keep the group from gossiping about it behind Emily’s back afterwards. “I’m actually surprised your father taught you nothing.”
“I was sixteen before I met another magician,” Emily said, truthfully. She sat down and tried to look attentive despite her exhaustion. Classes had been growing harder over the last week. “I lived a very isolated life.”
“Being in that Tower can’t have been fun,” Robyn said. She smiled. “I wonder if that should make you my Shadow.”
Emily eyed her, darkly. If Robyn thought that Emily was going to be fetching and carrying for her, she was going to be rather disappointed.
“But never mind that,” Robyn added, when Emily failed to rise to the bait. “My grandfather used to be a historian. Studying societies is second nature to me.”
Emily leaned forward, interested. The Allied Lands had no real historians, apart from the History Monks, and they took vows of silence. There didn’t seem to be any real historical method, certainly not outside some very specialised areas, and kings like Alassa’s father seemed willing and able to rewrite history at will. She had a private suspicion that most of what the Allied Lands took for granted hadn’t quite happened in the way they thought, if it had happened at all. For example, the current version of the coup in Zangaria boosted Alassa’s involvement while minimizing Imaiqah’s.
Robyn smiled in placation. “The principal difference between us and mundanes is that we wield power,” she continued. “Each of us is far more formidable than any mundane army, even one armed with weapons designed to counter magic. The merest magician, even a simple student, can kill a mundane with a thought. We have power.”
She paused, waiting for Emily to comment. Emily herself wasn’t sure what to make of it. She’d been raised in a society where there was an accepted level of equality, but even that was a fairly new innovation by earthly standards–and there was no magic on Earth. Conversely, there was no real concept of true democracy in the Allied Lands. Even the most democratic city-state didn’t offer the vote to all of its citizens.
And it would be hard for the mundanes to keep a magician in line, she knew. Emily had had no experience of magic at all when she’d come to the Nameless World, but she’d been able to turn people into animals or objects, freeze them in their tracks or even control them directly within six months. Someone like Void might as well be Superman as far as the locals were concerned, while Shadye would be more of a force of nature than anything merely human.
“But this gives us pride,” Robyn said, after the pause had gone on too long. She made a show of glancing in both directions, then lowered her voice. “We act more like those strutting swordsmen we despise than we care to admit, with more dangerous weapons. Our society has evolved to control our pride and direct it in more useful directions.”
She paused. “And so the core tenets of our society are honor, obligation and respect.”
Emily drew in her breath sharply. Her stepfather had been fond of the word respect. He seemed to demand it from everyone, without good reason. King Randor also liked the word, although Emily knew he was far more deserving of respect. Someone who stayed on his throne in the midst of a snake pit of ambitious noblemen deserved admiration. But she also knew he’d tried to use her in the past and would continue to do so in the future.
“It isn’t that bad,” Robyn said. “But we do try to remember the concepts, no matter who we’re dealing with.”
She grinned. “When you are born, you assume an obligation to your parents and your family; when someone does you a favor, you assume an obligation to repay the favor at some later date. And thus we have obligation, the endless links between magicians that bind us together into a society. It would be a crime against obligation for you to act against your father, or me to act against my family. There isn’t a magician alive who wouldn’t understand your reluctance to swear oaths. Your father commanded it.”
Emily nodded. She’d been surprised the quarrel had been satisfied with a gentleman’s agreement, of sorts, rather than a sworn oath. But if they thought Emily had prior obligations, they wouldn’t ask her to break them.
“It’s considered very bad form to ask someone to deny an obligation,” Robyn continued, warming to her subject. It was clear she rarely had a chance to discuss her personal field of study with anyone. “You wouldn’t be asked to betray your family, no matter the situation, or turn against someone to whom you owe a debt.”
“So no one would ever ask me to turn against... against my father,” Emily said. “Because he is my father...”
“And the ties of blood are strong,” Robyn said. She smiled, mischievously. “You may discover that, the more powerful the magician, the more reluctant he is to assume any form of obligation. I believe that most of the Lone Powers started out by deciding they no longer wanted to be woven into the warp and weft of our society. Your father cut himself off from his family and retreated to his Tower, only to start a new family of his own.”
Emily could understand it. The more she considered the social networks, some visible, some hidden, running through Mountaintop, the more she realized the school was a microcosm of the entire magical side of the Nameless World. There were webs of obligations binding students and tutors together, with deals being made in the background to organize events long before they came into the open. Even the Shadow network made a strange kind of sense; it both prepared the newcomers for their role in society and ensured they couldn’t really become a threat in their own right.
But it also seemed counterproductive. The Necromancers weren’t that far from Mountaintop–and Shadye had almost punched through Whitehall and swept down into the Allied Lands. Shouldn’t they be trying to muster as many fully-trained magicians as possible? It made very little sense.
She pushed the thought aside for later contemplation. Robyn was still talking.
“The next aspect of our society is respect,” Robyn said. She smiled. “What do you imagine respect means?”
Emily had to think about it. Respect was one of the words she understood, but had difficulty putting into words. She respected the Grandmaster and many of her teachers at Whitehall–and Mountaintop, for that matter–yet she had never respected her parents or her stepfather.
“A feeling of understanding that someone is important,” she hazarded, finally. She’d never make a writer. “Or... or respecting their ability to do something? Or...”
“Close enough,” Robyn said. “We tend to consider it a form of acceptance that each and every magician, no matter how powerful, has feelings that should be taken into consideration. The basic rule against entering a magician’s house without his permission is a form of respect. So, too, is honoring a master’s right to teach his apprentice in any way he sees fit. Respect.”
She paused. “Even the least of magicians can do very real harm, if provoked,” she added. “It is generally considered unwise to fail to show the proper respect, even if he can barely light a fire with his magic. This
doesn’t stop magicians from fighting, unfortunately, but it does tend to limit our internal conflicts.”
Emily nodded, slowly. “But respect isn’t extended to mundanes?”
“Of course not,” Robyn said. “They’re not magicians.”
She grinned, showing sharp teeth. “Is there a mundane alive who could beat a magician?”
Batman, Emily thought snidely. But Batman wasn’t real.
“When you are awake, you will have wards that protect you from swords and spears, charms that protect you from poisons and spells that ensure your servants remain loyal to you,” Robyn said, answering her own question. “When you are asleep, you have wards to keep out mundanes who might wish to do you harm. If you happened to die at mundane hands, you would die of your own carelessness, not because the mundane had the ability to kill you.
“And mundanes are weak, defenseless,” she added. “Even the strongest of them could not fight off the least of control spells. You could make them do whatever you wanted.”
Emily shuddered. It sounded like a nightmare... and yet it was also hellishly tempting. To go back to Earth, to show her stepfather exactly what it had been like growing up, how she’d felt helpless and utterly defenseless... part of her thought that was a very good idea. She could tear him to pieces, even without magic, after two years of the sergeants giving her personal combat training. Or she could...
No, she told herself, firmly. Doing anything like that would be giving in to madness and starting the fall towards becoming a dark wizard. Or worse, a Necromancer. Besides, there’s no way to Earth from here.
“You will have seen how the quarrel discusses matters,” Robyn said, unaware of Emily’s thoughts. “That’s a miniature version of how most of the Great Houses work. An adult magician, a trained magician, has a voice in the family council. The consensus will determine what the family does.”
“So it’s a form of democracy,” Emily mused. But, in its own way, it was as restrictive as some of the others. “What would happen if someone was born to the family, but had no magic?”
“It doesn’t happen,” Robyn said. “If you have two magicians as parents, their children will certainly be magicians. Having one parent as a magician would be enough to ensure that the children were almost certainly magicians in their own right.”
She eyed Emily speculatively. “Is that how you survived your early years? Your mother was a mundane?”
Emily shrugged. “My father never spoke of it to me,” she said, which was true enough. She knew Void had servants in his Tower. No one seemed to have any problems accepting that he might have managed to get one of them pregnant. “I didn’t develop magic until I was sixteen.”
“Interesting,” Robyn said. “I would have expected a Lone Power to try to encourage you to develop magic earlier and see if you could be nursed through puberty.”
“I think he cared more about me than about his experiments,” Emily said, a little tartly. It was well known that magicians who developed magic before puberty rarely survived growing into adulthood. Their magic was just too closely tied to their emotions, or so she’d heard, although she suspected the explanation was a little darker. “He wouldn’t have wanted to risk my life.”
“Good for him,” Robyn said. “Do you understand respect now?”
“I think I do,” Emily said.
“Your dorm mates have shown you quite a bit of respect,” Robyn said. “But they’re also bound to treat you as a normal student, as much as possible. They’d appreciate it if you treated them the same way.”
She settled back in her chair and rolled her eyes as a shouting match broke out on the other side of the room. “Hang on,” she said. “I may have to deal with that... discussion.”
Emily sighed, then relaxed as two of the older students bore down on the combatants and separated them, allowing Robyn to stay in her chair. Magical society, Emily was starting to realize, was practically the definition of an armed society. Back on Earth, she’d been told that an armed society was a polite society; here, it would be literally true. Insult a magician and you might find yourself hopping on a lily pad–or dead. And even weaker magicians could be dangerous to stronger magicians.
But it isn’t the same, she thought. That only applies to magicians. There’s no Sam Colt to make us all equal here.
Robyn cleared her throat. “The final aspect of our society is honor,” she said. “Unlike the other two, honor is, first and foremost, a deeply personal aspect. You are expected to uphold respect and obligation out of your love for society, but honor is something you are expected to do for yourself. It is only secondarily an aspect for relating to other magicians.”
She paused. “You are expected to do the right thing, to build up a reputation for doing the right thing, because it is the best way to ensure you fit into society,” she added. She nodded towards one of the younger students. “You understand that the Ashworth and Ashfall Families have been at war for the last two hundred years?”
Emily nodded. Markus had said as much, although he hadn’t gone into details.
“They hate each other,” Robyn said. “And yet few of the Ashworth Family would argue that Master Ashfall lacks personal honor. His reputation speaks well of him.”
“I understand, I think,” Emily said. “But doesn’t that mean that he’s merely managed to keep his sins buried?”
“You cynic,” Robyn accused, lightly. “But you’re right. He might well have managed to keep any lapses from getting out into the public eye.”
She took a breath. “There are other aspects to honor,” she added. “A tutor at this school would be quite within the bounds of honor to assign detention or a caning to any student who insulted him to his face. He would not be allowed to challenge that student to a duel, because there would be a colossal imbalance of power. No matter how much Professor Zed hates you, he cannot duel with you. Even if he survived–and you have killed two Necromancers–no one would ever respect him again.”
Emily frowned. “But wouldn’t I be considered an equal...?”
“You’re a student,” Robyn commented, darkly. “You would not be considered his equal. It might not be quite as bad as a twenty-year-old man beating up a six-year-old girl, but it would still be considered quite beyond the pale. I’m actually surprised the Dueling Mistresses have been facing you directly, even in training. Someone could use that against them in later life.”
“I don’t see how,” Emily said. She didn’t like dueling, but she was slowly improving. “It’s just a training session.”
“You’d be astonished at just how easily something innocent can become something else, if handled by the right person,” Robyn said. “Their enemies would be hardly inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
She smiled. “But, on the other hand, you could challenge him,” she added. “That would not be seen as a dishonorable act.”
“But the outcome would be the same,” Emily said. “Wouldn’t it?”
“You would be regarded as having brought it on yourself,” Robyn said. “As a student, you would be expected to understand that he knew much more magic than yourself–and yet you issued the challenge. If you won, well and good; if you lost, everyone will say that you were a stupid idiot who deserved to die.”
And remove my genes from the gene pool, Emily thought. The magical society might not have the concept of genes–Zed’s manipulation of Alassa’s bloodline had been plagued with simple ignorance–but they understood the need to remove idiots, particularly idiots blessed with the local version of deadly weapons. But then, truly stupid magicians simply didn’t last very long in any case.
“Honor is a tricky thing,” Robyn explained. “If you are widely seen as dishonorable, your word will not be respected and you will not be welcome anywhere in society. There are magicians who guard their honor as closely as certain ladies guard their virtue. But all that’s really necessary is to comport yourself in a decent manner and remind yourself, from time to time, of your ow
n honor.”
“What else can you do,” Emily mused, “that is actually dishonorable?”
“Break your word,” Robyn said. “If you fail to keep your word, people will start considering you a dishonorable person. There are quite a few other acts that are borderline permissible, but engaging in them costs you honor. For example, a marriage can legally be consummated as soon as the girl is old enough to bear children, but it is considered dishonorable to do so. It is also considered dishonorable to enter an arranged marriage against the express will of one of the participants.”
Emily’s eyes narrowed. “How does that work?”
“Your father could betroth you to my brother,” Robyn said. She shuddered. “Which is a ghastly thought, really. My brother is twenty and still acts like he’s eight. But your father could make arrangements with my father for you to marry him. If you didn’t want to marry him, which would be quite understandable, you could say no and it would be dishonorable for my brother to marry you.”
“But there would be nothing stopping him from actually doing it,” Emily said, slowly. The whole concept was sickening. She had an awful feeling that her stepfather would have happily sold her for a few bottles of beer if it hadn’t been thoroughly illegal. “No law to forbid it...”
“You’re a powerful magician,” Robyn said. “I would not care to force you into anything against your will.”
She sighed. “Most betrothals are arranged before the children reach puberty,” she added, softly. “If the children, as young adults, feel they shouldn’t be married, they can say no.”
“But there’s no law forbidding it,” Emily said, again. “Why not?”
“Because that would be a lack of respect,” Robyn said. “One magician does not have the right to tell another what he can do with his family.”
Emily shuddered. The more she saw of magical society, the more she understood why Void had wanted to leave it. And why she wanted to stay out of it too.
Schooled in Magic 5 - The School of Hard Knocks Page 20