Bookworm III

by Christopher Nuttall

  “And you didn’t know this would work before you tried it?” Daria demanded. She snatched her robe out of Johan’s hands and pulled it over her head, her voice becoming slightly muffled as she ranted on. “You could have gotten us all killed!”

  “This is the easiest passage to reach,” Cass said. She smirked at Daria, then turned to lead the way up the passageway. “And, as there is no one in the building, we can make as much noise as we like.”

  She looked back at Johan and winked. “Shall we go?”

  Chapter Twelve

  It had been centuries since anyone had used the Parade Grounds for their proper purpose, Charity knew, as a grim-faced servitor showed her into the review box. Successive Grand Sorcerers hadn’t needed armies, not when they had powerful magic and the Inquisitors to maintain their rule. They’d chosen to allow the Parade Grounds to host graduation ceremonies for sorcerers from the Peerless School instead, which had at least kept the grounds looking nice. And they’d warded it carefully against the weather, even though the Golden City was almost always temperate. The snow was brushed away by the wards, allowing the soldiers to march freely, illuminated by glowing balls of light that floated in the air.

  The Emperor was seated in his chair, watching the lines of soldiers forming up and marching out onto the streets. Charity honestly couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to smuggle so many men into the city before making his bid for the Golden Throne, although the planned conference had probably made it easier. A number of sorcerers stood nearby, wearing the red and gold colours of the Emperor’s homeland. Maybe they’d turned the soldiers into small objects and simply carried them into the city. It was a very old dodge and hellishly difficult to guard against.

  “Your Majesty,” Charity said, as she went down on her knees. “The Great Houses have agreed to provide hostages.”

  “Good, good,” the Emperor said. He sounded distracted, as if he was listening to a voice only he could here. “Have them moved to proper holding chambers when they arrive, then keep them there.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Charity said. “Should I be providing for their education as well?”

  The Emperor looked up at her. “Why?”

  Charity hesitated, feeling a sudden flicker of terror. “Because ... because we are responsible for them while they remain as hostages,” she said. “We have to see to their schooling as well as keeping them alive.”

  “No need to worry about that,” the Emperor said, dismissively. “They will not remain hostages for long.”

  He turned his attention back to the marching soldiers, leaving Charity to worry. She knew the conventions as well as anyone else, thanks to her father. Hostages effectively became part of the family holding them, at least until they were returned to their true families. It often led to friendships ... and heartbreak, if there was a pressing need to actually kill the hostage. She knew boys at the Peerless School who had been regular semi-willing guests of some of the Great House and had made friends with their captor’s children. But the Emperor was practically talking as though his hostages wouldn’t be hostages for more than a few days.

  “Their families will be concerned,” she warned. “The children require schooling ...”

  “Their families will do as they are told,” the Emperor said, without looking away from the soldiers. “And so will you.”

  He waved a hand towards the marching men. “What do you think of them?”

  Charity looked at the men, puzzled. They didn’t look very impressive, not to her. The armour they wore would stave off swords and spears, but a child with a single spell could turn the soldiers into toads or freeze them in their tracks. There were limits to just how many protections could be layered over a single mundane, no matter how many sorcerers were involved. And what use was a sword against a fireball or a lightning strike?

  “They’re men, doing what men should,” the Emperor said. “They’re preparing themselves to confront the enemy, to place their lives on the line to win glory and fame ever-lasting.”

  “And death,” Charity said, before she could stop herself.

  “To die gloriously is the highest of all aspirations,” the Emperor said. “They are men.”

  He smiled as he turned to face her. “Or perhaps you do not agree?”

  “They will still be dead,” Charity said. “I know a hundred spells that could kill them, directly or indirectly, without letting them lay a finger on me. Their deaths would be utterly pointless.”

  The Emperor smirked. “And yet you’re the slave,” he said. “Are you better off than a dead man?”

  Charity felt herself flush, then spoke before she could think better of it. “Are you saying I should have died?”

  “A man would have told me to go to one of the many hells rather than accept my binding willingly,” the Emperor said. He leered at her, sending chills running down her spine. “But you ... you took my binding, rather than forcing me to break your mind or simply to kill you outright. You live now in a world where you are my puppet. Would you not sooner have died?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Charity said. “I ... I needed to stay alive.”

  “And that’s the difference between a man and a woman,” the Emperor said. “A true man will accept death with a smile on his face, while a woman will do whatever it takes to stay alive.”

  Charity shuddered. “The Head Librarian defied you to your face,” she risked reminding him. “She won’t break.”

  “Like you?” The Emperor asked. “She will be broken soon enough, once the spell has finished burning through her mind. I doubt she has the nerve to kill herself.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Charity repeated. “Without me, the family crumbles into dust.”

  “But with you here,” the Emperor said, “what happens to your family?”

  He smirked, again. “You’re making excuses to cover up the fact you were prepared to abandon your chance of dying bravely, or at least forcing me to bind you against your will,” he told her. “Come up with all the excuses you like, my dear. It won’t make any difference to the final outcome.”

  “No,” Charity agreed, mournfully. He was right. Maybe he was wrong about women in general – the Head Librarian was definitely a woman, and she had resisted – but he wasn’t too far wrong about Charity herself. She had submitted to him willingly and now she was his slave. “It won’t.”

  The Emperor turned back to the soldiers. “These men will fight a war for me,” he said. “And many of them will die, but they will die bravely.”

  “A war,” Charity repeated. “A war against whom?”

  “There are states in our little empire that harbour dreams of independence,” the Emperor reminded her. “Their Court Wizards, alas, have been failing in their duties. Even now, they are mustering their troops for the coming struggle.”

  “But surely you have done the same, Your Majesty?” Charity asked. “This army wasn’t built from nothing.”

  The Emperor smiled. “I had a feeling it might come in handy,” he said. “And with the limitless manpower resources of the Empire at my disposal, who knows what will happen?”

  Charity knew next to nothing about fighting a war, but she had a sudden vision of just what the Emperor’s philosophy of warfare meant in the real world. His troops would fight to the bitter end, disdaining retreat as unmanly, only to be slaughtered for nothing. He would spend their lives freely, replenishing the dead troops with men from the rest of the Empire, then go on and on until he won the war or ran out of soldiers. And such men would be brutal, when they occupied rebellious states. The first rebellion’s repression would lead inevitably to the next.

  But was that what he wanted, she asked herself. Whatever else could be said about the Grand Sorcerers, they had kept the peace for over a thousand years. Until Kane had threatened the Golden City itself, the only real threat had been Dark Wizards causing havoc in the outskirts of the Empire. There had been no fighting and no glory ... but who had wanted glory when the human c
ost was so high? She glanced at the Emperor and knew the answer.

  “Tomorrow, we will continue preparations for the Conference,” the Emperor informed her. “You will handle it personally.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Charity said. Light Spinner had been planning to discuss reforms in the Empire with the Court Wizards, but she dreaded to think what the Emperor would have to say to them. “Can I see the agenda?”

  “It will be made available in due course,” the Emperor said. “Have them assemble in the Arena, as planned. I will address them there.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Charity said. “What else would you have me do?”

  “I could come up with a list, but perhaps later,” the Emperor said. He tossed her a smirk, then returned his gaze to the soldiers. “We will need to start recruiting more soldiers soon enough, I think. The men of the Golden City are weak, used to being ruled by a woman, but we will toughen them up. Organise a conscription drive for unemployed men in the right age bracket. Make sure they know that the first to qualify as soldiers will receive all kinds of perks. Your brother would be so jealous.”

  He snickered. Charity shuddered. She knew more than she cared to know about Jamal’s activities, including advances on women that might as well be rape. It was quite possible, she had thought, that Jamal might have killed himself since losing his powers ... or that he had been hunted down and killed by one of his former victims. But if the Emperor was planning to use Jamal’s idea of fun as a reward ... she shuddered again, helplessly. What sort of men would he unleash on the Empire?

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, helplessly. “When do you want the drive to start?”

  “Tomorrow will be fine,” the Emperor said, casually. “I will provide training officers, of course.”

  Charity sighed, inwardly. She now had two tasks for the following day. And, thanks to her oaths, she couldn’t skip either of them. The oaths would force her to work indefinitely until they were both completed. Unless, of course, she could convince herself that the oaths were better served by delay ... she felt another flicker of sympathy for the maids in her house, back home. She had never really understood how they must feel, when they were at the mercy of anyone who wished to issue orders.

  She turned as she heard someone hurrying into the review box. “Your Majesty,” one of the red-coated soldiers said. “The hostages have begun to arrive.”

  “I will escort them to their chambers,” Charity said, quickly. It might just get her away from the Emperor, at least for a few hours. “They’ll be expecting an aristocratic escort.”

  “Of course, of course,” the Emperor said. “Get some sleep afterwards, my dear. You’ll need your rest before you start work tomorrow.”

  Charity felt her cheeks heat again as she rose, then walked back towards the antechamber. It had been a long time since she’d studied the different states in the Empire, but from what she recalled the Emperor’s homeland expected men to take care of women, as well as leading them. He wasn’t being considerate to her, not really; he was merely doing what he thought was expected of him, treating her as if she were a pet. How could anyone endure such treatment indefinitely? Perhaps his viewpoints made sense, at least to him. He poured on the bad treatment and his women still stayed with him.

  But they don’t have a choice, Charity thought, bitterly. The local law won’t allow them to leave their husbands.

  It wasn’t something that had ever occurred to her before. She had known her marriage would be arranged for her, but she had also known that her husband wouldn’t be able to hurt her. The marriage contract would include terms of protection ... and besides, she had her magic. A man who laid a finger on her against her will would lose everything, even if he was her husband. But how could she fight a man without magic? She had never been taught to fight without magic – it was seen as unseemly for magicians to learn hand-to-hand combat – and she doubted she could fend off a man. Men were generally stronger than women ...

  She gritted her teeth. Maybe it had been a mistake to bow the knee to the Emperor. If he had forced her to submit, there would be hope of breaking free, but accepting the oaths willingly rendered that impossible. Her only hope would be being freed by him, yet why would he let her go? She was far too useful to him as a slave.

  The antechamber was crammed with children and their guardians, mostly weeping mothers and a handful of older sisters. They knew, of course, that swapping hostages wasn’t uncommon, but it was rare not to have someone in exchange. The Emperor could kill the hostages and their families would have no one to retaliate against. Forcing the Great Houses to give up hostages was a way of forcing them to submit, although – she noted as her cynical eye matched names to faces – none of the hostages were first or second-born children. Their families could lose them without seriously risking their power and influence.

  And how long would it be, she asked herself, before the Emperor demands more hostages?

  She shrugged, then tapped her lips, using a spell to boost her words. “The hostages are to prepare themselves to go to their chambers,” she said. Thankfully, the building’s staff had already prepared a series of rooms for the children. “Everyone else is to leave as soon as possible.”

  The mothers surrounded Charity, bombarding her with questions about what their children could expect and shoving pieces of paper at her, marked with their dietary requirements, demands for various forms of special treatment and far too much else. She winced at the thought of tending to all of the demands – one child apparently refused to eat mushrooms, while another expected to have a bedtime story read to her every night – and then passed them on to the staff. It had been centuries since the palace staff had catered for children – very few Grand Sorcerers had had young children – but she was sure they could handle it. If not, more help could be drafted in from the outside.

  “Sonia needs to have a special potion each night,” one of the women said, pushing a bottle into Charity’s hand. “Make sure she takes it with her food.”

  Charity eyed the bottle suspiciously, then nodded and passed it to one of the staff. There would be time to sort out who Sonia was later, when the parents were gone and the hostages were on their way to their rooms. She collected four more bottles, several food parcels and a small pile of books, almost all designed to entertain and educate young magical children. She found herself praying that the children wouldn’t torment the staff as she chased the parents out of the chamber, then turned to look at the hostages. They looked ... scared, apart from a couple of boys who looked excited. No doubt they’d heard tales of how great it was to be a hostage ...

  ... And it could be great, if they weren’t killed.

  “All right,” she said. “You will be shown to your rooms now. You will stay in your rooms until we come to fetch you tomorrow morning, so get as much sleep as you can.”

  She sighed, wondering why the Emperor had been so insistent on getting the hostages as soon as possible. The palace was nowhere near ready for thirty small children – the oldest was twelve – and entire levels would have to be warded against them, if only to keep the children from poking their noses into places where they didn’t belong. If they were anything like she’d been at that age – she still cringed at the memory of the hundreds of times she’d tried to sneak into her father’s study – they were going to be everywhere. Her father’s wards had kept her out without hurting her, but she knew that wouldn’t be true of the Emperor’s wards ...

  “This building isn’t safe,” she added. “You could get seriously hurt if you go into the wrong building or touch the wrong object. Stay in your rooms until we have parts of the building cleared for your use.”

  Two of the boys exchanged grins at her words, causing her to swear under her breath and resolve to cast sleep spells on them as soon as they were in their beds. Her mother had admitted she’d done that once or twice with her own children, back when they’d been screaming half the night. It wasn’t advised to make a habit of it, though. The chil
dren soon developed a resistance to the spell that would haunt them in later life.

  “Follow me,” she ordered, and led the way down the corridor until they reached the holding chambers. She glanced at the one she knew to hold the Head Librarian, guarded by a single soldier wearing armour, then walked past it and opened the first door. “These rooms are all the same, so take any room you like.”

  She heard the soldier yelp as one of the little monsters cast a hex on him. Charity cancelled it, then plucked the boy out of the group and pushed him into his room, closing the door as soon as he was inside. The boy started to shout childish insults at her through the door, which she ignored. He didn’t know how lucky he was, she told herself, as she resisted the urge to do something unpleasant to him. Her parents would have turned her into a toad for such insolence.

  Once the rest of the children were in their rooms, Charity closed and warded the doors, then headed back to her own quarters. The Emperor had been right about one thing – she would need her sleep. She stood in front of the guarded door for a long moment, wondering if she should talk to the Head Librarian, then stopped herself. There was no point. What could they possibly say to one another?

  Instead, she turned and kept walking back to her rooms.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Elaine held herself together by sheer force of will as the spell howled and reached for her, attempting to overwhelm her mind. She already knew it was more than just a simple compulsion spell, but she hadn’t realised just how powerful it was until she dropped her defences and embraced the maelstrom. It had absorbed her own defences, her first set of protections, and turned them into weapons against her mind. In a very real sense, she was grimly aware she was fighting herself.

  The chain of incantations unravelled themselves under her mental gaze, even as the spell tried to embrace the core of her mind. It had already mutated, adapting itself to her mind with terrifying speed, sending tendrils deep into her thoughts. Normally, mental influence could be countered by a mind-healer, but few healers would know her mind so intimately that they could remove the contamination without doing colossal damage. The fragments of the spell were practically part of her, impossible for an outsider to separate from her true thoughts. And given enough time, they would be her true thoughts.