Wedding Hells (Schooled in Magic Book 8)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Jade will know to remove the blood from Alassa’s sheets, she told herself. Students at Whitehall were taught to be careful with their blood from the day they first entered the school. Or Alassa will do it herself once she recovers completely.

  Turning, she walked back into the bedroom, washed the blood from her hands and then lay down on the bed without bothering to don a nightgown. Her eyes closed as soon as she lay down, but visions of Lord Hans and Paren haunted her, no matter how desperately she tried to meditate. It felt like hours before she finally fell asleep...

  ...And, while she was sleeping, the nightmares began once again.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  THE NEXT TWO DAYS PASSED VERY slowly. King Randor was nowhere to be seen, while Alassa and Jade were wrapped up in one another. Emily spent her time with Imaiqah, trying to give what little comfort she could, and Frieda and Caleb, chatting to them about nothing in particular. The castle was slowly recovering from the assassination attempt, but a strange depression had settled over the wards. Guards blocked every major passageway, demanding proof of identity before they let the servants proceed, while the servants themselves were jumpy, glancing over their shoulders every so often as if they expected the blow to fall at any moment. Emily was quietly sick of it before the end of the first day.

  “My father wants me to go with him this afternoon,” Caleb said, as they ate lunch together in Emily’s rooms. “He has to report to the White Council.”

  “About the muskets,” Emily guessed. Caleb nodded in agreement. “That secret is out and spreading.”

  She winced, inwardly. The Nameless World was hardly unaware of projectile weapons - they had bows, arrows and slingshots, after all - but guns were something new. A complete novice could learn to shoot within hours; a master craftsman could put together a handful of flintlocks and muskets within days. And she had a nasty feeling the formula for gunpowder was out and spreading too. Even if Nanette hadn’t seen fit to spread the word, Paren’s former apprentices would have made sure of it.

  And the king won’t let us go down to the city, she thought. God alone knows what’s happening there.

  “I wish you could stay,” she said. “Don’t forget your chat parchment.”

  “I won’t,” Caleb promised. It had taken them three tries to duplicate Aloha’s work, using the original parchment as a guide, but they could now talk to one another from hundreds of miles apart. “But father won’t let me stay alone.”

  Emily nodded, ruefully. General Pollack had given them all the freedom they could reasonably ask for and more, under the rules of a formal Courtship, yet he couldn’t leave Caleb and her alone in the castle. It made little sense to her - it wasn’t as if they had the castle completely to themselves - but she knew there was no point in arguing.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said, leaning forward for a kiss. “Try and make it to Dragon’s Den before school resumes, please.”

  “If my father will let me,” Caleb said. “He’s very enthused about the new weapons.”

  “And determined to do things properly,” Emily finished. Watching the assassination attempt had clearly been enough to change the General’s mind. “I’ll see you soon, I promise.”

  She watched Caleb leave the castle an hour later, then walked slowly back to her rooms, feeling alone. Frieda was with Imaiqah, she knew; Alassa and Jade were still in Alassa’s private chambers. Magic crackled below her skin, reminding her that she hadn’t been to the spellchamber since the battle with Nanette. She’d need to go soon or risk developing another headache from trying to contain the magic within her wards.

  “Lady Emily,” Nightingale said. “The king requests the pleasure of your company in his private chambers.”

  Emily jumped. Where the hell had he come from?

  “It will be my pleasure,” she lied. She had been half-expecting the king to summon her ever since the wedding disaster. Randor was no fool. He might well have put the pieces together and figured out that Paren had betrayed him. And if he did, Imaiqah and her family were likely to be executed. “You may lead me there.”

  She followed him, thinking hard. If Alassa owed her a debt, she could try to trade on it...but the rules governing soul magic might not allow someone else to repay the debt on Alassa’s behalf. And even if she did, even if she used the debt to convince Randor to pardon Imaiqah and her family for being related to a traitor, it wouldn’t be enough to save the friendship Alassa and Imaiqah shared.

  They’ll expect me to take sides, she thought, feeling ice falling down her spine. And whichever one I side with, the other will accuse me of betrayal.

  Nightingale led her straight into the War Room, then bowed and retreated, closing the door behind him. Emily could sense wards humming around the chamber, some new and designed to counter magical threats, others old and crafted to prevent long-distance spying. Jade must have either emplaced them or reworked them, she decided. The wards were normally not so blatant in announcing their presence.

  But Randor showed them to me before, she remembered. It hadn’t been that long since she’d visited Zangaria for the first time. Is he trying to show off his power?

  King Randor stood at the far side of the room, peering down at a large map. Emily waited to be acknowledged, then walked forward and went down on her knees when Randor looked up at her. He studied her for a long moment, before motioning for her to rise and jabbing a finger at the map. It was remarkably detailed, showing a castle, hundreds of houses and a number of fortifications, but she couldn’t place it at all. There was no name on the map, merely notes in Old Script.

  “Lady Regina is dead,” King Randor said, without preamble.

  Emily blinked in surprise. Lady Regina, dead? She took a closer look at the map, trying to visualize the streets she’d driven through with Lady Barb. Yes, that was Swanhaven City. It was easy enough to mark out the buildings she’d seen, and where the dead bodies had been left to rot in the town square. And if Lady Regina was dead...

  She looked up. “What happened?”

  “Many of my agents were killed,” King Randor said. “From what I have been able to put together from the survivors, a handful of servants and guards within the castle overwhelmed the loyalists and opened the gates. A mob swarmed into the building, killing everyone who wasn’t already a rebel. Lady Regina was stripped naked, then placed in the stocks and stoned to death.”

  Emily shuddered. Lady Regina - and Lord Hans - had spent their time in Swanhaven making sure that everyone hated them. The mob had probably wanted to make sure her death was horrifying as well as thoroughly unpleasant, just to send shivers down the spines of the remaining aristocrats. Despite herself, despite her awareness that Lady Regina had been a monster, Emily couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

  And Nanette freed Lord Hans, she thought. The more she thought about it, the more she suspected it didn’t quite make sense. And that probably meant she was missing something. Did she intend to take him back to the rebels, or did she just intend to use him to add to the chaos?

  “Swanhaven has declared itself a free state,” King Randor added. “The regiment I sent with Lady Regina was caught by surprise and pinned down in its barracks. By now, the commander may have tried to break out, but the terrain doesn’t favor them. The outcome is as yet undetermined.”

  He took a long breath. “And several other cities are restless. I believe the only barony that has avoided patches of unrest is Cockatrice.”

  “Because I haven’t been grinding the faces of the poor,” Emily said, before she could stop herself. The nasty part of her mind insisted that Randor and his aristocrats had brought the unrest upon themselves. “Once they started asking questions, you needed to come up with some good answers.”

  Randor ignored her. “Apparently, several of Lord Paren’s apprentices were deeply embroiled in the plot,” he added. “Backed by several Assemblymen, who provided the funds, they stole muskets, flintlocks and gunpowder from the factories and used them to set up their own p
rivate fighting force.”

  Emily allowed herself a moment of relief. Paren’s treachery remained undiscovered.

  “Something must be done,” King Randor said. He looked back down at the map, his voice cold. “An example must be made.

  “I have two other regiments within a couple days’ march of Swanhaven,” he added. “However, the rebels have been throwing up barricades and clearly preparing for a long siege. They may have been planning this for quite some time. I may have to devastate the countryside if attacking the city seems a costly option.”

  Emily swallowed. “If you devastate the countryside,” she said, “you’ll sentence most of the population to starve, the innocent along with the guilty.”

  “It may lure the rebels into battle,” King Randor said. “And outside the city, my troops will have the advantage. The rebels will be slaughtered.”

  He might well be right, Emily knew. Trying to fight in a confined space hampered trained troops, but in open countryside they would be almost unstoppable. The rebels would have to choose between risking an open battle, which they would probably lose, or allowing the soldiers to burn the croplands, cart off the farmers - if they hadn’t already fled-- and eventually let starvation do their dirty work for them.

  But they might have muskets, she thought. The odds might be a great deal more even than the king thinks.

  She scowled at the thought. If Nanette had intended to hand Lord Hans over to the rebels in Swanhaven, and it was the only logical reason Emily could imagine why she hadn’t killed Lord Hans herself, there had clearly been a great deal of collaboration between the two sets of rebels. Hell, Paren would have understood that a single rebellious city could be isolated and eventually starved into submission. Chances were, Swanhaven was only the first city to explode into revolution.

  “If it doesn’t, however, we may be in for some trouble,” Randor added. “A prolonged period of instability will attract attack from outside the kingdom. My neighbors will see opportunity to take some land for themselves.”

  “Particularly if your troops turn mutinous,” Emily said. King Randor wasn’t asking them to march on a rebellious baron, but on commoners who weren’t that different from the king’s soldiers. How far had seditious thinking spread through the army? “You should consider trying to make peace with the rebels.”

  Randor shook his head, his expression unyielding. “I cannot make concessions under duress.”

  “You should have made the concessions before it came to this,” Emily pointed out. Was there a single aristocrat capable of looking beyond the tip of his nose? Even Alassa hadn’t got on that well with Imaiqah until Imaiqah had been ennobled. “They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.”

  She tapped the map. “If you attack the city and win, you will still be badly weakened; if you wait for them to starve, unrest will spread and your neighbors will scent weakness.”

  “Correct,” Randor said. “There is, however, another option.”

  Emily felt her blood run cold. What did Randor have in mind?

  “I want you to stop them,” Randor said. He fixed her with his gaze. “You can deal with the rebels.”

  Horror ran through Emily’s mind. Randor knew about the nuke-spell. He had to know about the nuke-spell. There was nothing else that would stop a rebellion in its tracks. An entire city, blasted to burning ashes in the blink of an eye...the remaining rebels would surrender rather than see themselves wiped out in an instant. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of men, women and children killed; the land poisoned for hundreds of years to come...

  He knows, she thought. How does he know?

  Her mind raced. Alassa couldn’t have told him, because she didn’t know. No one knew what had happened to Mother Holly, save for Emily herself. The official explanation was that the newborn necromancer, unused to handling such vast layers of power, had lost control and released all the energy in a single burst. Only Lady Barb had any reason to doubt the explanation, yet she’d carefully refrained from asking. Emily had almost been relieved. As nice as it was talking to the older woman, the more people who knew, the greater the danger of the secret falling into unfriendly hands...

  ...And a low-power magician could cast the nuke-spell, if they understood the principles behind it.

  She took a step backwards. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t make it happen.

  Her mind scrabbled desperately for something - anything - she could say to dissuade Randor from mass slaughter. He wouldn’t understand, she knew; he believed, sincerely believed, that aristocrats had the right to rule commoners. The idea of letting commoners decide their own affairs was alien to him. No wonder he’d spent years weakening the Assembly even after Paren and his allies had saved Randor’s throne. He was bound to the aristocrats in a way he could never be bound to the commoners. They were nothing to him.

  “You can...”

  “No,” Emily said.

  Randor blinked. “What?”

  “No, Your Majesty,” Emily repeated. “I will not slaughter millions of people so you can keep your crown.”

  Randor’s eyes widened slightly, then narrowed as he clenched his fists. “This crisis is your fault,” he snapped. “You brought ideas from another world into my kingdom!”

  “This crisis was inevitable,” Emily snapped back. “Your system is built on the assumption that aristocrats are invariably superior to commoners. But you’re not! The only difference between you and them is that you are born to wealth and power! Sooner or later, someone would have asked the question of why they had to tolerate you - and once the question was asked, that person would have realized they didn’t have to tolerate you!”

  “I am the descendent of the man who forged this kingdom from the ruins of an empire,” Randor thundered. “My father saved it from traitors who would destroy it!”

  “Your kingdom would vanish without trace in my home country,” Emily said. It wasn’t entirely true - Zangaria wasn’t much larger than Britain - but it hardly mattered. “And you’re also the descendent of the monarch who proved incapable of governing the kingdom and nearly lost everything to the barons.”

  Randor leaned forward, his beard bristling. It was all Emily could do to stand her ground, despite the rage flaring through her mind. She wasn’t his hired killer and she was damned if she was going to slaughter people who wanted a better life and a chance to rule their own affairs.

  “You are a Baroness of Zangaria,” he said. His voice was very composed. “I am your liege lord. You have a duty to serve me. I have tolerated much from you, but no more. You will do as I tell you or I will strip you of your titles, wealth and power.”

  Emily wanted to shrug. She hadn’t wanted Cockatrice in the first place. But something kept her from speaking.

  “Your lands will revert to me,” Randor added, coldly. “The girl you have named as your heir will not inherit them after you.”

  Emily’s temper snapped. “You are an oathbreaker, a monster and a fool,” she said, feeling magic crackling around her. “Your kingdom is doomed because you’re too short-sighted to realize that you need to adapt to the new world. Alassa was wounded, almost killed, because you broke your promises to the men who saved your goddamned throne!”

  She tried to force herself to calm down, but her magic was boiling behind her eyes, making it hard to think. “And you are trying to emotionally blackmail me into pulling your nuts out of the fire rather than coming to terms with the new world. Why should the rebels not fight? What the hell do they have to lose?”

  “That is none of your concern,” Randor snapped.

  “You made me a baroness,” Emily hissed. “That makes it my concern.”

  King Randor raised a hand. Emily felt the wards suddenly grow stronger, pressing down on her with terrifying force. She closed her eyes as panic flared through her mind...Randor knew, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was no one with any real obligation to avenge her death. He wasn’t scared of Void...
her magic flared around her, lashing out at the wards. Their steady pressure slowly faded as she fought back, holding them back from her person. The magic seemed to grow stronger...

  “Emily,” Randor said.

  Emily gritted her teeth in rage, fury lashing through her mind. Randor had gone too far. She wasn’t one of his subjects, she wasn’t a tool for him to pick up and use...and she was certainly not going to obey orders that would result in thousands of deaths. The wards seemed to grow stronger, but her anger gave her magic strength. She felt almost as if she were trapped in the center of a thunderstorm, surrounded by power and lightning, as she pushed. Powerful chains seemed to be surrounding her, binding her to the spot, yet they were shivering, almost dissolving. She was suddenly very aware of the network of wards Jade had built up, layer upon layer of protections, some subtle and very powerful. Her spellwork was fading under their pressure, but they weren’t designed to cope with so much raw magic...

  “Emily,” Randor said. “You have to stop.”

  Emily opened her eyes and saw him. For the first time since they’d met, he sounded a little uncertain. Blood leaked from his nose, staining his armor; it took her a second, in her confused state, to realize that he was linked to the wards. It was a mistake. His paranoia, his refusal to trust anyone apart from himself, had weakened his own defenses. Jade might have been able to steer the raw magic away from the castle and disperse it safely, but Randor couldn’t even begin to try.

  “I am not your puppet,” she shouted. The wards shattered, once by one. Randor stumbled backwards in shock as the castle’s wards fell apart. Jade - and everyone else in the castle with even a hint of magic - would know that something was badly wrong, if they hadn’t sensed it already, but it was far too late. “I am not your tool!”