The Scholomance

by R. Lee Smith

  He snarled out some sort of acknowledgement at a short distance, probably standing over her.

  “I’m willing to forgive and forget the horny indiscretions of someone perhaps too far out of touch to realize what he did was wrong, but now you know. The next time you try something like this, I’m going to do my best to make you very, very sorry. Please. Let’s keep this pleasant.”

  He grunted. The door bumped hard against her legs as he opened it (and how had she not noticed that on his entry?) and slammed shut again.

  In the Panic Room, Mara shook her head and turned her attention back to her dreams, already smudging out into something new. In her cell, Mara’s body rolled onto its side and found a way to cushion her head on her arm without too much discomfort, then stretched out her legs. She saw no reason to wake up, but did wonder how best to retaliate.

  Well, they said absence made the heart grow fonder. She’d try that for a while, and see.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The second day waking up on a stone floor was, if possible, even worse than the first, despite the trifling benefit of a second robe to pad her bed. Mara limped most of the way to the ephebeum, which was entirely empty this morning (evening, she corrected herself mentally, and thought of the open wall in Kazuul’s chamber, the fresh air blowing through the curtains, a sky filled with white stars. It was oddly difficult to shake). Her stomach cramped hungrily at the thought of food, but doing battle with the other students for a few handfuls of mystery meat did not appeal to her. Baths, Horuseps had said. Time to find them.

  She’d hoped for hot springs—as long as one was dreaming, why not dream big?—but was not exactly devastated when she came to a large, plain cavern where water rained heavily out of the ceiling into a single wide pool. Overflow vents kept the depth no higher than her knees. A thick, mineral sediment clouded the water to the color of thin milk. The temperature, it went without saying, was just this side of ice.

  But there were sachets of soap and pungent herbs hanging from juts of rock on the wall, and there were even rough towels made of woven grass that might be marginally better than just dripping dry. It was better than nothing.

  She was not alone, unfortunately. A woman sat against the far wall, naked, her knees drawn up and her head bent, silent. A tap at her unguarded mind told Mara it was her warden, Desdemona. She looked up when Mara stripped and splashed into the pool (she’d had the foresight to drop into the Panic Room first, so as not to embarrass herself with a lot of undignified hopping and squealing, but even there, watching the yellow light of alarm flare in her body’s health monitor, Mara could not resist a mild, “Sweet fiddling fuck, that’s cold.”) and gave out a pulse of weary blame that proved the recognition was not one-sided. Her face, Mara noticed, had swollen around the bisecting scar left by Malavan’s claw until her lips were the size of thumbs…all four of them.

  She stood there for a while, wondering what this made her feel, then decided she didn’t have to feel anything at all about it. She hadn’t done the injury and certainly hadn’t enjoyed seeing it done. Mara dunked her soap sachet and started scrubbing. She needed it. Badly.

  Desdemona said something unintelligible through the drumming of water and the mangled petals of her mouth. Mara tapped at her mind again. Apparently, they kept shampoo on a shelf nearby.

  And so they did. Mara slogged over and got some. It lathered poorly and stung at her scalp, but her hair felt infinitely better once it had rinsed clean. “Thanks,” she said.

  “A’a ba ob.”

  Tap.

  I have a comb, she’d said, and was holding it out when Mara looked her way: a crude, metal-worked thing with two rows of rounded teeth, not much wider than her hand. Mara accepted it with another word of thanks and found a wet ledge out of the worst of the rain to sit and work her snarls out. Desdemona watched her, miserable.

  “Can anything be done for that?” Mara asked finally, still combing.

  Desdemona nodded painfully. “A urgee a’ih.” I’m working on it, she’d said, but in her mind were not thoughts of bandages or ointment, but of what she would have to do to get someone called Shaitan to heal her, to draw out the infection, and reshape her ruined face. There were others who could do it, but she knew Shaitan…and knew him well enough to know what he would demand in return. It would be Nathaniel all over again. It would be worse.

  “If you had a needle and thread, I could try stitching it up for you,” Mara said.

  Desdemona only shook her head. There were no needles, and thread pulled from the robes surely could not be clean. It would only get infected and she would end up begging Shaitan after all.

  Mara shrugged. She’d made the effort. Even if she didn’t consider herself responsible for the woman’s plight, she wasn’t heartless. “Thanks for the comb,” she said, holding it out.

  “Eeb ih,” Desdemona said, not moving. Keep it. It would mean a nightmare to earn another, of course, but what was one more nightmare in this place? What did a few nights more on her knees really matter, if she made a friend in Mara, who had the favor of the Masters, if only for a little while. She wouldn’t be pretty and new forever. She’d learn. Even if she did everything right, she would never be completely safe.

  Mara waded out of the pool and put on her robe, tucking her new comb into the pocket of one sleeve. She started to leave, then sighed and came back. “I’m looking for someone,” she said bluntly. “A young woman about my age, a little taller than me, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. She came here two years ago. She was calling herself Faith. Do you remember her at all?”

  “Ai?” Desdemona’s frown split her wounds open. Her lips poured discolored blood thickly onto her chest, where it was washed away by drops of rain. “Ai ood’oo ah ee?”

  Why, was the gist of that, Mara knew it without even tapping. Why would you come here, why would you ask me, why would it even matter? Desdemona’s eyes above the open petals of her weeping face were only puzzled, tired. Just for kicks, Mara told the truth: “I came to get her out of here.”

  The woman stared without comprehension. “Oo and.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see, I guess. Have you seen her or not?”

  Desdemona shook her head. A tap at her mind confirmed it—her fellow students were only robes and teeth to her, predators and prey. There was no escape, only the door, only the demons and the ringing of their bells.

  “I’m sorry he went after you like that,” Mara said finally. “I didn’t know he would.”

  Desdemona only shrugged. The Masters did what they did. No one could predict them. She still hated Mara in a dry, distracted way, but not because she really blamed her. She hated her for being beautiful, for catching the collective eye of the Masters and holding it so easily, for being fearless upon the library steps and fearless under the hand of Horuseps. She hated her for being everything, in short, that she herself was not, either as Desdemona, acolyte in the Devil’s School, or as Lynn Wynwick, free woman of London. Life inside the mountain was no different than outside. The cup never held better than bitter wine for woman like Lynn, while every hand reached to pour pink champagne for the Maras of the world.

  Mara scowled, looking down at her, thinking.

  It would be a small enough diversion to haul this miserable creature up and march her out to find this Shaitan, to force him to do whatever he was capable of doing to see her repaired. And what would it get her but another one like Devlin, stapled to her damn shadow and useless in her search? She wasn’t here to start a Student’s Union in the Scholomance.

  In the end, she turned around and left her. She wasn’t heartless, but she wasn’t a hero, either. She was here for Connie. That was all.

  * * *

  The first meal of the day was gruel. Great big buckets of it, the color and consistency of wet cement, served without bowls or spoons. The students dove in, burning their hands and their mouths as they fought each other for swallows. Mara was by now hungry enough that she could not lose her appetite simply becaus
e she wanted to, but this was truly revolting.

  At the Master’s table, the demons ate off silver platters with knives and hooked skewers. Bread and cheese, fruit and meat, hot tea and wine. Mara found herself a seat with the animals at the center table and contemplated walking up as bold as Oliver and asking for something else. The only thing that kept her from doing so was the certainty that she would be refused, and would then have to walk back empty-handed in front of everyone.

  A stray elbow slammed into Mara’s back unexpectedly, knocking her into someone else, who actually grabbed her by the robe and tried to topple her off the bench. She resisted, shoving not just against him but against everyone, the entire crowd like a single suffocating organism all around, and just as she’d managed to straighten up, a thick gobbet of gruel went flying, landing like bird shit directly in Mara’s left eye.

  She lost her temper and slapped.

  Not with her hand, but with her mind, Mara struck out in all directions, indiscriminately flattening the squabbling students who jostled her. The ease of it inflamed her. Before she knew she was doing it, she tore through defenses, broke open pain centers, and got every last one of them to leap spastically away. Since most of them were still sitting at the time, the result was a rather comical shockwave of black and white robes tumbling backwards onto the floor.

  Students at the other tables swung around to gape. Demons at the far end of the room erupted in laughter. Mara righted herself, knuckled gruel out of her eye, and made herself stop there. She had to be cool. She had to stay calm.

  “What the…What the fuck just happened?” One of the black-robed acolytes got up, flushed and bleeding, hunting for his attacker. He saw Mara and homed in at once.

  “Let it go,” someone muttered.

  “Did you just hit me?” the acolyte demanded, not even angry as much as just stunned. Very much as Mara would be, she supposed, if their positions were reversed.

  “To be fair, I hit everyone,” she replied, flexing her mental muscles. “I don’t care for crowds.”

  “You don’t care for—” He lunged forward, was restrained by two of his cohorts, and stood shaking in their grasp, filling the Mindstorm with the colors of his fury. “I ought to turn you inside-out for that, you cunt!”

  “I don’t care to be shouted at, either.”

  “Fucking cunt!” he shouted.

  She didn’t lose her temper twice, not really, but all at once, she had to wonder just why she had to stay cool? To a Master, yes, but why to this man? Why to this screaming, swearing fool in his magic black robe? She could see inside him as easily as if he were made of glass and like glass, by God, she could shatter him. This was not the Outside, it was the Scholomance, and it was perfectly okay if people knew about her, it was just as fine as fresh paint, and just maybe she’d been cool long enough.

  “Apologize to me,” Mara said softly.

  Somewhere in the room, Loki’s laughter honked out, shared and expanded upon by students at the other four tables. Where the Masters sat, Zyera also laughed, the sound like tinkling bells, stilled when Horuseps put his hand on her arm. Mara saw all of this, saw none of it. She stared into the acolyte’s fury-dark face and was ready for his outburst. More than merely ready. She wanted him to come.

  “Apologize?” Disbelief cracked his voice, took away twenty years, and left him just as reckless and foolhardy as he’d been the day he’d first read of this place. He pushed back his murmuring friends and advanced on her, screaming, “I’ll pound your brains out with my dick, you shit-faced stinking cow-cunt! That’s my apology!”

  He lunged.

  Mara, without moving, threw out a needle of thought and jabbed it precisely into his brain, but for just a moment, it didn’t want to be a needle at all. Just for a moment, she could feel her own mind flexing, wanting to take that power that nestled so quietly in the calm heart of her and draw it out big, not a needle but a spear. Just for a moment, she could see herself throwing that at him, and not sending him crashing to floor in a sound sleep as he was doing now, but flinging him back in one last spectacular convulsion, snapping his spine with the strength of his spasm, spraying bloody froth like a fountain and bursting the eyes out of his head.

  The urge left her, but it didn’t leave her as shaken as it should have, and that bothered her. She wasn’t a killer.

  ‘You don’t make friends easily, do you?’ Horuseps thought loudly, as the rest of the room began to return to its normal level of activity and noise.

  **I already have a friend,** she answered, watching as the unconscious acolyte was rolled impersonally away from the tables and his place usurped. The two who had tried so hard to pull him away from the conflict were going through his sleeves, removing what they found as deftly as any back-alley thief. **I don’t think I want to make new ones here anyway.**

  ‘It isn’t all bad.’

  There was no polite way to answer that, so she stayed silent and turned her attention back to breakfast. Against her better judgment, she dipped one finger in the closest bucket of gruel and brought it to her lips for a taste. Salty, greasy, with the lingering tang of rancid fat. Mara spat the bitter swallow out and got up.

  ‘Oh dearest, you really must do better than that. You’re wasting away before my eyes.’

  **This is disgusting, Horuseps.**

  ‘Yes, it is. More’s the pity, because it’s all you’re going to get…unless you ingratiate yourself to one with the means to provide better. Kazuul takes his meals early, but the kitchens are never closed to him.’

  **Subtlety isn’t your strong suit, Horuseps.**

  ‘It is. It would simply be wasted on you, dearest.’

  No doubt he was correct, she thought, and even let him hear her admit it. She knew she’d come here with a single purpose, and she didn’t handle distractions well. As evidenced by the man lying half-stripped on the floor.

  ‘I’m always correct. It’s the curse of my kind.’ His mind tickled at hers, inviting laughter, and when she didn’t oblige him, he blew a psychic sigh and thought, ‘What were you expecting, dormice drizzled in honey? Eels roasted in placenta of porpoise, perhaps?”

  Mara thought that sounded worse than the gruel and told him so, which did surprise him, but also made him laugh.

  “Yes, well, so tastes have changed. My point is this, o precious one, we give our students only what is required to hold the life in their greedy bodies and no more. And yet still they come, every year, expecting marble halls and golden platters laden with—”

  **Dormice?** suggested Mara, taking another fingerful of that awful gruel and grimacing. She had only the vaguest notion of what a dormouse was.

  ‘Sweets of some sort. Oh damn me for a tender touch, come here.’

  Mara got up and went to the Master’s table, careful not to smile or hold out her hand presumptuously. She even bowed, a gesture he waved off with two curt flaps of his black hand before he gave her a long crust of bread, toasted brown and covered first in a mouth-watering onion sauce and then by tart, golden-bubbly cheese.

  It was better than sex.

  “Indeed?” Horuseps said dryly, watching her eat.

  “I suppose that really depends on my partner at the moment, but this is damned good.”

  “You jellyfish,” Zyera murmured, giggling behind her hand.

  Horuseps sighed theatrically, smiting the soft heart that so betrayed him. “Try the wine,” he said next, and offered his cup.

  Mara didn’t take it. “I’ve had the wine, thanks.”

  “Try ours. Ten days in the barrel is enough for the sons of Adam, but for his Masters, ten years or more.”

  Mara had never seen in the appeal in forfeiting one’s self-control to alcohol, and she couldn’t help but think it was tacky to drink at breakfast anyway, but the bread had made her thirsty. She accepted the cup and risked a short swallow, aware of the envious eyes of the students. The taste was crisp and rich and only slightly sweet, not the fermented fruitiness she associated with wine,
but almost more like some unknown blend of tea.

  “Thou woman’s heart,” said a demoness from further down the line. Tall, voluptuous, with oiled-bronze skin shot through with quills, and yet still beautiful. Mara knew her, sort of, had spied her once through an open door in the lyceum. Master Letha, who taught Allure. Now this demoness uttered a melodious sigh and rolled a fruit down the tabletop for Mara to catch. “Thou brooding hen,” she said to Horuseps. “Thou quivering oyster. And yet, aye, who among us can resist so pretty a pet when it standeth upon its hind feet and howls?”

  It was a plum, the soft rind black and speckled with sugary stars, the meat as golden as dawn. Not in season, but fresh and juicy and simply delicious.

  “I hope you realize you’re getting a treat,” said Horuseps. “I don’t care how nicely you howl, you shan’t embarrass me again.”

  “You have always been too good to me,” Mara replied, sucking juice from her fingers. “Thank you.”

  A good many of the Masters laughed or clapped their hands at this, and even Horuseps hooked a wry smile at her. “You’ll be the ruin of me yet. Another crust?”

  “Please.”

  He passed it over, saying, “I suppose the meals we provide here truly are execrable, but we must have our little revenges. You would be surprised how many humans come here expecting their studies to consist of long walks in the golden cities of the Underearth, where they feast at every hour on purple cushions, take peeled grapes from the hands of aether-slaves—”

  “And drink from the cup of Solomon,” Mara agreed distractedly.

  Horuseps looked at her sharply, then laughed, but his laughter had a strained quality and his mind was deeply armored. “Wherever did you hear about that?”

  “From one of the pilgrims who didn’t make it in.” Mara eyed him curiously as he evaded her gaze. “Is there a cup of Solomon?”

  “Oh. Well.” He waved one hand expansively, ending with his arm slung round Zyera’s shoulders as he tried another of his boneless shrugs. “One might as easily ask, ‘Is there a great sphinx of Egypt?’ but what one finds is merely a heap of crumbling stone and not the magical guardian of unlimited arcane power heralded in myth.”