Emily cringed, mentally. She’d looked at the laws the previous Baron had written – and enforced, when he felt like it – and banished all of them to the fiery depths of legal hell. It didn’t take a lawyer to realize that the laws contradicted one another in several places, or that the peasants barely had enough food to survive the winter. In the end, she’d designed a handful of laws and left Bryon to ensure that they were not perverted. It hadn’t taken long for the peasants to start reaping the benefits of some of her changes.
But she wasn’t sure if she wanted to remain Baroness Cockatrice.
“That wouldn’t be difficult,” she said, tartly. “If I only molested ten girls a month I’d still be a net improvement.”
She shook her head, pushing the previous baron out of her mind. How was she supposed to act? A sorceress had sexual freedom, but an aristocratic girl did not. And she fell into both categories. She shook her head again, a moment later. It was hard enough to imagine being touched, let alone going further. Even the memory of Jade kissing her felt like it had happened to someone else. But eventually she would need to give Cockatrice an heir.
“I could adopt someone,” she said. It had worked well enough for the Roman Emperors, at least until Marcus Aurelius had been succeeded by Commodus, his biological son. The more she thought about it, the more she thought she saw advantages. Her adopted son would be an adult by the time she chose him, allowing her to judge his character for herself. If Marcus Aurelius had been able to do that, perhaps Commodus would have been quietly strangled one night and dumped in the river. “Can’t I?”
“The bloodlines would be disrupted,” Lady Barb pointed out. “Unless you used an adoption rite and they can go wrong, if you picked badly.”
Emily rolled her eyes. What was the obsession with aristocratic blood? She was no aristocrat. Maybe, just maybe, it was vaguely possible she was related to an aristocratic family on Earth, but she had to admit it was unlikely. Even if she was, the aristocracy on Earth was hardly acknowledged by the Allied Lands. Or would they recognize an aristocrat from Earth?
“Magic runs in the blood,” Lady Barb reminded her, when she asked. “So do any little...quirks someone might have engineered into their line.”
“I have none,” Emily pointed out, tartly.
“You might have, sooner or later,” Lady Barb added. “Besides, there would be no questioning of a legitimate child – or even one born out of wedlock, as long as you were the mother.”
Emily shook her head. “I don’t think I want to do it,” she said, unsure precisely what she meant. “It’s a terrible mess.”
“If you want to remain baroness, you have to learn to come to terms with its obligations as well as its rewards,” Lady Barb said. She shifted slightly, then lay back on her blanket. “I should say, though, that there are worse things in life than raising children.”
“How would you know?” Emily asked, before she could stop herself. “I...”
It said something about how tired and ill Lady Barb was, she realized mutely, that she didn’t get her head bitten off for cheek. “My father always said I was the best thing in his life,” Lady Barb said, instead. “Even though he would be happier digging through dusty archives than bringing up a child, he still didn’t abandon me to the tender mercies of the servants. He was always there for me.”
Emily felt a flicker of envy. Void might be the closest thing she had to a father in this world, but he showed himself only rarely – and always on his own terms. She didn’t even know how to contact him, short of writing letters. Lady Barb, on the other hand, had been very lucky.
“I need to sleep,” Lady Barb added. “Make sure you keep the fire from burning out. We might need the warmth.”
Emily nodded, banked the fire, and settled down on her own blanket. But it was a long time before she fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Six
SHE AWOKE, UNSURE OF WHAT HAD startled her.
For a moment, she lay still, remembering the day a maid had tried to kill her in Alassa’s bedroom back on the road to Zangaria. An alarm bell yammered in her mind, but it took her a long moment to realize that something was pressing against the wards. She heard the sound of breathing as her eyes snapped open. The moon was descending in the distance and the clearing was wrapped in shadow. But there was no sign of anything outside the wards.
Bracing herself, Emily sat up, one hand reaching for her staff before remembering that it was hidden in Lady Barb’s pockets. The wards shivered again and her head snapped round, but she still saw nothing unusual. Carefully, she cast a night vision spell over her eyes, casting the clearing into eerie light, but still saw nothing, apart from a faint disturbance in the ground. It looked as though a giant invisible creature was prowling the edge of the wards.
Emily hastily tested the wards, just as they shivered for the third time. They didn’t look as if they were going to break. Even so...she stood upright, staring towards where she knew the creature had to be. Faint clouds of dirt rose up from where it placed its feet, suggesting that it was the size of a lion, perhaps bigger. The sound of deep, heavy breathing grew louder as Emily carefully added a pair of extra wards. If the first set collapsed, they wouldn’t be left defenseless.
An invisible creature...she’d never heard of anything like it from the factual stories reported in class. But there were quite a few stories of people encountering monsters and never managing to report back, although she hadn’t been able to avoid asking how they knew that monsters were involved, if no one had escaped to report. What if their missing explorers had run into an invisible monster, too? But the creature didn’t seem that dangerous, not compared to a Mimic or a Werewolf.
Could it be a Werewolf? Werewolves could use magic – could one of them have cast an invisibility spell on himself before transforming? It seemed unlikely, but she prepared a cancellation spell before hastily dismissing the thought. Without clear eye contact with her target, it was quite possible that she would accidentally disarm her wards instead. She rose to her feet and crossed the gap to the edge of the wards.
Warm breath touched her face. She stumbled backwards, breathing in the stench of rotting meat. The giant dogs she’d played with, back when she was looking for a familiar, smelled nicer. And she’d hated them.
“A Night Walker,” Lady Barb’s voice said.
Emily jumped. She hadn’t realized that the older woman had awakened. Grimly, she turned away from the wards and looked at Lady Barb. Her face looked paler than ever due to the night-sight, a thin sheen of sweat covered her face – and her hand was trembling slightly.
Emily felt a cold shiver running down her spine. Before now, she would never have imagined that Lady Barb could tremble.
“He can’t get through the wards,” Lady Barb added. “But he wouldn’t hesitate to attack if he could.”
Emily sighed. “What do I do with him?”
“Nothing,” Lady Barb said. “Just sit still and wait for him to lose interest.”
The sound of breathing grew louder as the wards shimmered. Emily watched the interplay of magic around the creature, shuddering inwardly. If the creature was completely invisible – and none of her spells showed her anything but its footsteps – it would be deadly dangerous, even to a sorcerer. She suspected she wouldn’t sleep a wink all night – and would be terrified when she walked through the forest, the following day. How would she know there wasn’t a creature after her?
“They sleep during the day,” Lady Barb said, when she asked. “I think it’s part of their magic.”
Emily scowled. Another Faerie-created monster, then, just like almost every other magical creature. She could imagine what use they’d had for an invisible creature. If nothing else, it would be a very effective terror weapon. Maybe it was meant to discourage people from visiting the Faerie ruins in the mountains. But hardly anyone would go visit unless they were compelled.
She settled back on the ground, resting her hands in her lap, and felt the wards shimmer as the
creature paced the edge of the field. Time and time again, it brushed up against the wards, then retreated, apparently balked. Lady Barb closed her eyes and returned to sleep, but Emily couldn’t force herself to relax. Just knowing the creature was there...she kept trying to see it, even though it was definitely futile. All she could see were the signs of its passage.
Maybe there was a captured Night Walker at Whitehall and I just couldn’t see it, she thought, with morbid amusement. Mistress Kirdáne would love a new pet.
Sergeant Miles had taught his students that invisibility was only as good as the sorcerer who cast the spell. It was easy to turn invisible, harder to hide the tracks of one’s passage. Emily had watched him point out how they still disturbed the world around them – and how a simple spell could reveal their location, even if it didn’t break the invisibility spell itself. And besides, there was no such thing as a perfect invisibility cloak. A properly constructed set of wards could rip it to shreds.
Her fingers itched, ready to cast a spell that would create a mist or something else that would show the creature’s rough location and form, but she held the impulse under control. Instead, she toyed with the bracelet around her wrist. She could release the Death Viper, send it out after the creature, and then...she shuddered, unable to contemplate the prospect of seeing the lethal snake crushed under the creature’s feet. The bond had tightened around her mind, as the books had warned. But she hadn’t paid close enough attention at the time.
She looked over at Lady Barb, sleeping peacefully, then returned her gaze to the creature, trying to gauge its size and shape. Her first impression had been correct, she decided; it definitely walked on four legs. Other than that...it was hard to estimate anything else about the creature. The way it walked suggested it was large, but was it really as big as she’d thought? Or was it just playing games with her mind?
A shiver ran down her spine as the wards shimmered again, right in front of her. She peered into the darkness, unable to escape the feeling that the creature was looking right back at her, but saw nothing. High overhead, she heard something hooting and glanced up, just in time to see an enormous Snowy Owl fly through the darkness. A wriggling shape was caught in its talons, desperately trying to escape. When she looked back down, the creature was gone.
Or was it? Emily slowly rose to her feet and paced over to stand at the edge of the wards. As long as the creature stayed still, it wouldn’t reveal anything to show where it was hiding. It could be crouched right in front of her and she would never see it. She listened, carefully, but all she heard was the faint sounds of rustling from the undergrowth and owls hooting in the distance. A faint glow flickered in the forest, then faded into nothingness.
Emily peered into the darkness for a long chilling moment, then turned and walked back to her blanket. If the creature was lurking outside the wards, it could wait until doomsday. She had no intention of crossing the wards until the sun rose and she had to find water and perhaps another rabbit. A motion caught her eye, at the edge of the clearing, and she looked over sharply, just in time to see...something moving through the air. For a long second, her mind refused to process what she was seeing. It looked like a blanket hanging in the air, yet the way it flapped told her it was a living creature. She wasn’t even sure how it flew.
They used to prove that bumblebees couldn’t fly, she reminded herself. She’d ridden on a dragon and she had no idea how it managed to fly, save by magic. But then, Alassa hadn’t believed Emily when she’d tried to explain about jumbo jets. It sounded absurd, completely impossible, to someone raised in Zangaria. And yet she could turn someone into a frog with a wave of her hand.
The newcomer seemed to hesitate, then flapped its way into the clearing. Emily stared, fascinated, as several others joined it, spinning through the air like dishcloths as they moved. She’d never seen anything like them on Earth, or in classes at Whitehall. Had they even been discovered officially? They didn’t look dangerous, merely absurd.
A low growl echoed through the air. Emily started, realizing that she’d been right and the first creature had been hiding near the wards, hoping she’d be stupid enough to step outside and be eaten. The dishcloths – as she couldn’t help thinking of them – stopped their flapping and advanced towards where the first creature had to be. There was a rustle of motion, but it was already too late. Powerful jaws savaged the first dishcloth, but its companions fell on the creature and attacked it. Emily saw hints of giant teeth – she had no idea where they’d been hiding – before the brief bloody battle came to an end. Victorious, the dishcloths retreated, carrying their prey with them. She couldn’t help noticing that, enfolded by the dishcloths, the invisible creature was actually larger than a lion.
Shaken, unable to sleep, Emily watched as the nightlife flowed through the forest. Some wildlife was mundane enough to have come from Earth, others were strange and wonderful creatures, including several others she hadn’t seen at Whitehall. Foxes sniffed at the edge of the wards, then ran off; tiny spiders scuttled along the edge of the clearing, moving in large groups. Emily remembered the warped spiders near the Dark City and shivered, feeling sorry for whatever creature the spiders overwhelmed. Individually, the spiders were largely harmless, their poison insufficient to kill a grown human. Collectively, they were absolutely lethal. And, unlike spiders on Earth, they preferred to move in groups.
She looked up, just in time to see something large flying high overhead, blotting out the stars as it moved. The magic field seemed to shift around her as she realized she was staring up at a dragon, the first she’d seen since her passage to Whitehall. Dragons weren’t exactly rare, but the ones old enough to be intelligent stayed away from humanity. She still had no idea what Void had done to earn a favor from a dragon, let alone one that had been expended so casually. Void could easily have teleported her to Whitehall if he hadn’t wanted to use his favor. But she had to admit that being flown by a dragon had allowed her to make one hell of an entrance.
Golden eyes glinted, peering down at her. Emily stared back, wondering if it was the dragon she’d met, years ago. But the dragon made no move towards the clearing. It merely flapped its wings and flew away, into the darkness. She was sure it had noticed her...
Feeling an odd sense of loss, Emily lay down on the blanket and stared up at the night sky. The moon was rising now, casting rays of silver light over the ground. Magic seemed to dance in response, now they were well away from human settlement. She remembered all the tales about people warped and twisted by wild magic and, suddenly, believed them all. There was something eerie about being outside in the forest, with the moon calling to the magic in her blood. If she’d been a werewolf, she realized, she would have transformed by now.
The lunar magic gives them a boost, she thought, as she tried to relax. Their curse is charged up by the moon, allowing them to transform. Like most transfigured people, they lose themselves in the transformation – and, even when the spell snaps, they still carry the mental scars.
She must have dozed off, despite the danger, for the next thing she knew was warm sunlight playing across her body. Her eyes opened and she hastily scanned the clearing for danger, but saw nothing, apart from a handful of splashes of blood and scales where the Night Walker had been killed. She stood up, brushing down her shirt, and walked over to the edge of the wards, looking for any hints that they were being watched. But there was nothing there, as far as she could tell.
Carefully, she checked the cauldron and discovered that there was enough water left to make two mugs of Kava. The fire had dimmed low, but it was still alight. She pushed pieces of wood into the fire, built up a blaze and then started to boil the water. Lady Barb moaned slightly, then opened her eyes. Emily shivered, deeply worried. Every day, Lady Barb had awoken first and left Emily to sleep. But now...
“I’m making Kava,” she said, as she poured the water into the first mug and added the ground powder. It reminded her of instant coffee, save for the taste. She’d grown
used to it, but she doubted she would ever like the flavor. “Are you...are you all right?”
“I’ve been better,” Lady Barb grated. She managed to sit upright, crossing her legs. “You may have to entertain yourself today.”
Emily looked at her, stung. She might be inexperienced – perhaps even naive – compared to the older sorceress, but she didn’t know she was being babysat. Or perhaps she was. There were dangers in the countryside she wouldn’t even have noticed, if Lady Barb hadn’t pointed them out to her.
She finished making the cup of Kava and passed it to Lady Barb, who took it and drank carefully. Every movement she made looked precisely calculated, rather like Professor Lombardi; it took Emily a moment to realize that Lady Barb was carefully controlling herself, trying not to lose control of her body. She had to be dangerously ill.
“I need to know,” she said, quietly. “What is happening to you?”
“I told you,” Lady Barb snapped. She took a breath, then continued in a quieter tone. “I spent a great deal of magic to repair the damage Lord Gorham suffered, under the influence of the runes. In doing so, I weakened my life force and became vulnerable to backlash shock.”
She finished her mug and passed it back to Emily. “This is manifesting as a disease,” she added, darkly. “Don’t worry. You can’t catch it from me.”
Emily winced. She hadn’t even considered the possibility. But she should have, considering this world didn’t have vaccines or even a proper theory of medicine. Or at least not a non-magical one. Emily knew she was unprepared for diseases that had been wiped out on Earth decades ago, diseases that would eat her up as soon as they infected her body if she hadn’t had access to magic or magical healing. What might she catch, simply by not having the immunities that were conferred by being born in the Allied Lands, if she hadn’t had magic herself?
“I was hoping that it would fade today, but no such luck,” Lady Barb added. “That means it has yet to reach its peak. When it does...just keep giving me water, when I ask for it. Don’t try any magic, whatever happens.”
Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) Page 25