She kept her face impassive as she led her charges past the soldiers, who stared at her with dark calculating eyes. Charity was used to being ogled – she knew, without false modesty, that her face was beautiful – but there was something different about the stares. It wasn’t lust, it wasn’t a desire powerful enough to overwhelm common sense; it was something different, something darker. And then it struck her. Jamal had looked at their family’s maids in the exact same way. They hadn’t been people, not to him. They’d been things, things he could use. Charity shuddered at the memory, then forced herself to keep walking normally, rather than either breaking into a run or drawing her wand and firing off hexes at the men. The Emperor would not have been pleased.
A handful of slaves carrying heavy boxes walked past her as she entered the building, leading the children down towards the Throne Room. Charity glanced at the label on one of the boxes and almost froze with shock. Crystals could store magic, she knew, but why would the Emperor want so many perfectly-cut crystals. The guilds who controlled the crystal trade kept the prices high, even for the Grand Sorceress ... or the Emperor. How much of the city’s budget had the Emperor just spent on crystals? There were more in a single box than the Peerless School used in a year!
But there was no point in asking the slaves. She stepped to one side and motioned for the children to follow her, to allow the slaves to walk past, and then led the children into the Throne Room. The Emperor was alone, thankfully, reading a book that fairly reeked of dark magic. Charity shivered, unable even to look at the book without feeling sick, then hastily prostrated herself in front of the Emperor. The children seemed confused – she heard a couple giggle quietly – then copied her. There was a long pause, then the Emperor looked up and cast his gaze over the children.
“You have done well,” he said, firmly. “And I welcome these children to my home.”
Charity cringed, inwardly. The children had been brought to the palace like lambs to the slaughter ... and she was their betrayer, the traitor who’d bought them there. There was no hope for forgiveness from the household gods, not now. She was damned beyond any hope of redemption for what she had done. And yet, she knew she couldn’t leave. There wasn’t even the option of surrendering her magic in breaking the oaths. She’d sworn to him willingly, after all. All she could do was pray he would free her, one day.
But he won’t, she thought. Why should he?
The Emperor clapped his hands. There was a low rustle, then the curtains behind the Golden Throne parted, revealing a number of young women wearing gauzy outfits that made Charity think of dancers in the night. The outfits concealed nothing; she found herself staring at one young women in particular, her breasts clearly visible despite the material covering them. Behind her, the children tittered as the newcomers dropped to their knees, staring down at the marble floor as if they were unworthy to gaze upon the Emperor. It would have been comical, part of her mind noted, if it hadn’t been so serious.
They’re slaves, she realised, numbly. She looked at the women closely and realised what was missing. But they’re not bound by magic. They’re willing slaves.
The Emperor smirked. “You will take these children to their rooms and you will prepare them,” he ordered. “They are to be treated well, but kept safe and secure.”
He looked at the children. “Place your wands on the ground, then go with my ... servants,” he said. “This is not a place for you to practice your magic.”
One of the boys, braver or stupider than the others, was moved to protest. “We were told never to let go of our wands ...”
The Emperor’s face darkened. He snapped his fingers, without bothering with further argument, and the boy became a tiny statue of himself, his wand clattering down to the marble floor. One of the servant women stepped forward, picked up the statue and carried it out of the room. The other children stared in horror, then dropped their own wands practically in unison. Charity watched, helpless, as they were escorted away by the servant women.
“I wonder what they’re teaching students these days,” the Emperor mused. “Clearly, obedience wasn’t on the syllabus for the year.”
“I was taught never to be without my wand,” Charity offered, as she straightened up. “They must have been told the same thing.”
“That was at school, where anyone could prank you at any moment,” the Emperor reminded her, dryly. “Or were you in the habit of practicing magic without a wand?”
Charity shook her head. The wand she carried had been specifically chosen for her by her father, who had had it made specially. She would sooner have cut off her own arm than surrender her wand, even though her father had tried to insist that she learnt to use magic without it. The wand was practically part of her. But then, the Emperor was right. Anyone could prank a fellow student at any time and, without a wand, cancelling the prank might be difficult.
And if you were late to class because someone had turned you into a toad or fixed your feet to the spot, she thought, it was always your fault.
“I thank you for your service,” the Emperor added. “Pick up their wands, then take them down to the ritual chamber. The masters will be glad of them.”
Charity hesitated, then did as she was told. None of the wands were anything more than pieces of wood, probably crafted by woodcarvers rather than magicians. Not that it really mattered, her tutors had told her. The wands served as focus tools for magicians; they weren’t magic in their own right. As long as there was no iron in the wands, anything would serve. But it still felt strange to be holding someone else’s wand.
Because there are few taboos as strong as those against destroying a wand, she thought, morbidly. You could practice nasty pranks on a younger student and no one would care, but break a wand and the tutors would have you in detention for the rest of the year.
A nasty thought struck her. The Emperor had mentioned a ritual ... and masters, who had to be ritual masters. Rituals were common, but if they involved wands and children ...
“Your Majesty,” she said, as she picked up the last wand, “what are you going to do with the children?”
“Wait and see,” the Emperor said. He smirked, again. “Wait and see.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I made some food,” Johan said, as he stepped into the workroom. “Are you coming to eat?”
“Cass isn’t back yet,” Elaine said. She turned to look at her apprentice. “I thought I told Daria to send you to me when you awoke.”
“The brats needed something to eat,” Johan said. “I’m sorry.”
“Good thing you’re not working for Miss Prim,” Elaine said. “She would have sent you to be flogged for daring to be late.”
Johan smiled. “And will you have me flogged?”
Elaine shook her head. “Not unless you burned the food,” she said. “What did you make?”
“I’m afraid it’s only cold chicken, bread and butter,” Johan said. “I don’t think the servants will be back anytime soon.”
Elaine shrugged. She didn’t blame the servants for fleeing, after Johan had attacked Conidian House. The only real question was how Charity Conidian had managed to keep her siblings fed, at the same time as handling the affairs of the house and trying to salvage something – anything – from the disaster. Maybe the servants had left some food in storage before leaving ... or, more likely, she’d hired workers who couldn’t come back to the house after Deferens had ordered a curfew.
“We can’t stay here indefinitely in any case,” she said. “Did your father ever let you spend time in his workshop?”
“More time than I wanted,” Johan said. “They used to do all kinds of tests on me.”
Elaine shuddered. Johan probably viewed the workroom as a place of horror, just as she viewed the isolation box from the orphanage. Bringing him back here had been unkind, yet she knew there was no choice. Half of the tools in the room were charmed to prevent them being taken out of the room, save by the master of the house. The re
mainder were so commonplace they could have been purchased anywhere, with enough gold.
“Your father had quite an impressive collection,” she said, waving her hand at the iron workbench, the tools placed in wooden cupboards and the small collection of potions’ ingredients in a large cabinet. “But I don’t think he ever did much with it.”
Johan snorted, rudely. “Father liked to think of himself as a tinkerer, but all he ever really did was play politics,” he said. “I don’t think he cared enough to try to carry out research of his own, even on me. The only person I ever saw use this place was that rat-arsed druid.”
“Not everyone has the inclination to do research,” Elaine said. She was honest enough to admit she wouldn’t have known what half the tools were, without the knowledge decanted into her head. “Can we do one final experiment?”
Johan eyed her, doubtfully. “Is it important?”
“I believe so,” Elaine said.
She took a long breath. “The bond that formed between us only worked properly when boosted by another magician,” she said. “But we did the ritual correctly, so it should have worked perfectly. Why didn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Johan said. “Why didn’t it?”
“Your magic seems to be ... well, tamed wild magic,” Elaine said. “Children having their first bouts of accidental magic can produce stunning effects, which they can’t always duplicate until much later. We teach children to channel their magic properly to avoid causing mental problems as their magic sparks and flickers. You, on the other hand, don’t seem to need to channel your magic to keep doing interesting feats.”
Johan frowned. “So what does that mean?”
“My scans show that you have a flicker of magic, nothing more,” Elaine said. “You shouldn’t be able to do half the things you do. But if you’re ... well, using accidental magic all the time, you can do astonishing things.”
“Except it isn’t an accident,” Johan said, slowly. “I can make things happen by wanting them to happen.”
“I think you produce the same effect,” Elaine said. “There are some other tests we can run – and we will, once we’re out of the city – but I think that explains your manifold oddities. You keep keying into the level of power that caused accidental flashes of magic; indeed, to some extent, you have learnt to master it deliberately.”
“I see,” Johan said. “I think ... is this dangerous?”
“I’m not sure,” Elaine admitted.
She shrugged. “But I think that explains why the bond refused to form properly,” she added. “Your magic isn’t tamed to the point where it can hold up its side of the bond, so my magic has been doing all the work. And mine isn’t strong enough to maintain the bond indefinitely, hence my inability to sense you. I should have reworked the ritual to channel additional magic into the bond, rather than relying on the standard form. But we did need a legal claim to being mistress and apprentice.”
“Or my father might have challenged it,” Johan said. He looked up at her, alarmed. “But what does this actually mean? Can we fix the bond?”
“I believe so,” Elaine said. “Are you willing to work with me to repair it?”
Johan had another question. “And the other Powerless? Are they simply denied access to their powers?”
“I don’t know,” Elaine said. “It’s possible that you were merely intended to develop powers later in life and your father’s ... treatments actually buried the magic deeper. Or ...”
“Or I’m a freak accident,” Johan said. “Why wasn’t I born into a normal family?”
“You should have grown up in an orphanage,” Elaine said, quietly. “I would have killed to have the advantages you and your siblings were offered.”
“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Johan said. “Really. It couldn’t have been as bad as having Jamal as an older brother.”
“Being alone is unpleasant enough,” Elaine said. “And there were worse things out there than merely being alone.”
She shook her head. “I think I know how to rework the ritual,” she said, as she motioned for him to sit down on one side of a small table. “Are you ready to allow the link to reform?”
“Yes,” Johan said. “Are you sure this will work?”
“Nothing in life is certain,” Elaine said. She sat down facing him, placing a silver knife in the middle of the table. “But I think this will work.”
She took a long breath. The ritual for bonding a magician to a mundane carried dangerous implications ... and reworking the ritual so those implications were minimised or removed altogether had been difficult, almost impossible. Indeed, she was fairly sure that no one else would have been able to rework the ritual without access to the Great Library and a number of unwilling test subjects. But she thought she had something that would either work perfectly or fail completely, depending on just what happened.
“Hold out your hand,” she said. “I need to make a cut in your left palm. Once you’ve been cut, take the knife from me in your right hand and make a similar cut in my left palm. Do you understand me?”
Johan winced – Powerless or not, he’d grown up in a household where everyone knew to make sure that no one managed to steal a sample of their blood – then he nodded, tersely. Elaine winced inwardly, remembering the first days at the Peerless School, then reached out and cut his palm as lightly as she could. The blade was charmed to minimise the pain, but Johan still grimaced in agony, then took the blade and sliced into Elaine’s palm. Being inexperienced, he cut deep enough to do real damage. She had to fight down the urge to cast a healing spell at once; instead, she gripped his left hand with her left hand and allowed their blood to mingle, then chanted the bonding spell under her breath. There was a sudden stab of pain, then disorientation ... and then she was suddenly looking at her own body from the outside. No, she realised slowly. She was peering through Johan’s eyes.
His memories rose up around her, a blur of nightmare and horror, of abuse and bullying and desperate attempts to coax even a flicker of magic from him. She blushed furiously as she realised he would be seeing her memories, then forced the thought to one side. There were secrets she wished to keep from him, from anyone, but there was no point in trying to hide them. He was her apprentice, bonded to her. Whatever her personal feelings, he had a right to know what she was and what she’d done. The bond would ensure he kept those memories to himself.
She snapped back into her own body and stared at him, feeling her entire body trembling as sweat trickled down her back. His hand was squeezing hers so hard it hurt ... no, she was feeling his pain as well as her own. Her eyesight seemed to flicker; for a moment, she was looking at herself again, then snapped back to normal. Carefully, thinking through every step, she released his hand and waited for him to let go of hers. As soon as she did, she pulled back her palm, now covered in their mingled blood, and cast a healing spell.
Johan coughed. “What ... what is that?”
Elaine stared down at her palm. The cut was gone, although she knew from experience her palm would ache for days. But now, instead of bare skin, there was a single rune carved into her flesh. It wasn’t included in the textbooks she’d seen at the Peerless School, but she knew what it meant. Partner. It was far more than just a simple apprenticeship rune. Slowly, she reached for Johan’s left hand, already knowing what she would see. The blood was gone, leaving the same rune marked on his flesh.
“It means we’re partners,” Elaine said. She hadn’t expected that. Most apprenticeships didn’t bother with runes, but when they did the master always manifested the master rune while his apprentice manifested the apprentice rune. To be partners ... what did it mean? For once, there was nothing in her stockpiled knowledge to tell her. “I think.”
Johan stared at her. “I can feel you now,” he said. “Can you feel me?”
Elaine closed her eyes. Johan’s presence was there, shimmering at the back of her mind. She understood, now, why it wasn’t considered remotely proper f
or a female to apprentice to a male and vice versa. It had been written in the books, but she hadn’t really comprehended what it meant, not really. No one could unless they underwent it for themselves. She was so close to him, so intimate, that it would be easy to take the final step forward and invite him into her bed. Indeed, they shared an intimacy well beyond anything she’d shared with Bee.
“Yes,” she said, irked. She’d have to do something about the bond ... but she already knew she wouldn’t be doing anything of the sort. The whole idea of giving up the bond, even moderating it, was unthinkable. “We’ll have to move out of the building and separate, just to check it works properly. We should be able to talk together at any distance.”
“It feels different,” Johan said. “Firmer too.”
He paused. “What was that dark room?”
Elaine cringed, mentally. “When children were naughty at the orphanage,” she said, trying hard to keep her tone light, “the Orphan Mother would put the brat in the dark box, leaving him completely alone.”
Johan winced. “I’m sorry,” he said. He would have picked up on her horror ... and her memories of being in the box herself. “But at least you weren’t being starved to death.”
Elaine shook her head. “Being sent to bed without supper was another regular punishment,” she said. “And sometimes, we wondered what we’d done wrong.”
“I don’t understand,” Johan said.
“You never had to hunt for food,” Elaine said. “There were days when the orphanage simply didn’t have enough food to feed us all. So we went to bed hungry, wondering what we’d done to be denied food. Some of us even begged to be beaten instead because we were so hungry. But it never worked. None of us understood until we were much older.”
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