Graduation Day (Schooled in Magic Book 14)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Emily felt her heart sink. “And he might see Frieda as yet another child.”

  “He might,” Sienna said. “To be fair, he had a point. Bullying can become ugly when one child has magic and the other doesn’t. And mundane parents aren’t trained in handling magical children. But parents rebelled against his concept of policing their children.”

  “I see,” Emily said. She could see Magister Snider’s point, sort of. She’d been able to do a great deal of damage after a few months of training. “What did he do after he lost his post?”

  “Apparently, he stayed in the White City,” Sienna said. “There’s no suggestion that Fulvia offered him a job, or anything else along those lines. My guess is that his family wanted him to stay there and represent their interests, but there’s no actual proof. I’ll follow up on this, of course. We might find something interesting.”

  Emily wasn’t so sure. Fulvia wouldn’t have picked Magister Snider unless she thought he’d vote the way she wanted. And she might well be right.

  “Finally, we have Professor Wyle,” Sienna said. “He was a newborn magician; he attended Stronghold, where he apparently met and befriended Fulvia’s grandson, Melissa’s father. He became an Ashworth client shortly after graduation and did a charms apprenticeship before going to work in Mountaintop. A few years after Melissa’s father died, he transferred to Laughter. That speaks volumes about his competence.”

  “Because Laughter normally only hires women,” Emily said. There were times when the idea of an all-girls school struck her as a great one. “And after that ...?”

  “He’s still there,” Sienna said. “I imagine that Fulvia pulled strings to get him the post, but he would have to be extremely good to keep it. The Headmistress won’t be happy about him leaving midway through term, so I imagine Fulvia found a temporary replacement. Even so ... I’m surprised he agreed to serve. His career will suffer because of it.”

  Emily sighed. “Which means he owes Fulvia a great deal.”

  “Almost certainly,” Sienna agreed. “Laughter is tiny, compared to Whitehall or Mountaintop. They don’t have another Charms Master on staff. The other faculty could cover for a day or two of absence, but not more than a week. Their own classes would suffer.”

  “Ouch,” Emily said. “There was a suggestion that Melissa’s father was murdered. Can’t we use that to drive a wedge between Professor Wyle and Fulvia?”

  “Only if you have solid proof,” Sienna said. “Fulvia is his patron. He isn’t going to desert her without a very good reason.”

  She put the papers on the desk and leaned back in her chair. “Fulvia picked well,” she said, tiredly. “I don’t see any way to convince her jurors to switch sides, with the possible exception of Snider. There is nothing you could offer them, unless you want to put your head on the block for Andor.”

  Emily tried to think of an option, but nothing came to mind. Andor hated her, Wyle was Fulvia’s client and Snider detested irresponsible magic-users. She couldn’t think of anything she could offer them, save herself. And even that might not be enough to save Frieda.

  She cleared her throat. “And the other three?”

  Sienna picked up a third sheet of paper. “Cat of House Radiance, Master ...”

  Emily blinked. “Cat? I know him.”

  “That might be helpful,” Sienna said. “And dangerous, perhaps. Tell me about him.”

  “He was in Fifth Year when I came to Whitehall,” Emily said. She took a moment to gather her thoughts. “He was in my Martial Magic class until he graduated. Then ... he went to apprentice under Master Storm. We fought together in Farrakhan. After that ... he completed his apprenticeship?”

  “He must have done,” Sienna said, dryly. “An apprentice would not be allowed to serve on a jury.”

  She smiled. “But that is good news, if he likes you,” she added. “He might just swing in your direction.”

  “But it will have to be convincing,” Emily said, slowly. “Won’t Fulvia try to challenge him?”

  “Perhaps,” Sienna said. “Hopefully, she won’t know there is a connection between the two of you. But if she does ... yes, expect a challenge.”

  She glanced down at the paper. “Next up, we have Master Highland. Do you know him?”

  Emily swallowed. “Yes, vaguely. I ... I have something he wants.”

  “Then be prepared to bargain,” Sienna told her. She studied her fingers for a long moment, thoughtfully. “I knew him at Stronghold - he spent a year or two serving as one of the regimental sergeants.” Her face twisted. “Come to think of it, Fulvia might spot a connection between him and me - I was one of his charges, after all. I hated his guts, naturally, but that probably won’t be enough to deter her from challenging him.”

  “Maybe we should challenge him,” Emily said. “Shuffle the deck again.”

  “He’s not a bad choice, on the face of it,” Sienna said. “It’s fairly common to hate the regimental sergeants and ... he wasn’t bad, just intense.”

  She shrugged. “He studied at Heart’s Eye, as you know, before taking an apprenticeship in combat sorcery. Since then, he’s moved from battlefield to battlefield, fighting necromancers and training new apprentices. There’s no suggestion that he ever took a break and there are no publications to his name. He’s one of the co-chairs of the Heart’s Eye Association, but apart from that he doesn’t seem to have any interests beyond fighting.”

  “He wants Heart’s Eye,” Emily muttered.

  “You have leverage,” Sienna advised. “Use it.”

  Emily looked down at her hands. Heart’s Eye was literally priceless - and it was hers, won by right of conquest. Caleb and she had planned their university there, once they graduated and completed their apprenticeships. She had no intention of handing the nexus point over to anyone, even its former owners. And yet, she could make Master Highland jump through hoops if she offered him the prospect of reclaiming his former school.

  “Maybe,” she muttered.

  “You may have to decide what’s more important to you,” Sienna said, bluntly. “A ruined school or your friend’s life.”

  She cleared her throat, loudly. “Master Grimhold is largely an unknown,” she added. “He studied at Whitehall, completed an apprenticeship in enchantment and then opened a shop in Chester. No real politics, as far as I can tell; no patrons or clients. There’s no record of him ever taking an apprentice himself. He was apparently a bastard son, so it’s possible he was paid off by his father’s family to stay out of the public eye. There’s no way to tell which way he’ll jump.”

  “He might vote against Fulvia,” Emily mused. “If he was rejected by a powerful household ...”

  “Perhaps,” Sienna said. “Don’t count on it, though. I haven’t been able to uncover anything that might tell us which family rejected him, if indeed they rejected him at all. There is a possibility he spread that story himself, in hopes of concealing a more mundane origin. And Fulvia will have leverage too. Grimhold is certainly old enough to start thinking about the next generation in earnest.”

  Emily scowled. “You mean she could find him a bride.”

  “Correct,” Sienna said. “And while he shouldn’t have any trouble finding someone willing to bear his children, it might be harder to find someone with a pedigree that would obscure any ... weaknesses ... in his own family line. Fulvia will have no difficulty drawing up a list of potential candidates.”

  And I can’t do that, Emily thought. Unless I offer to marry him myself.

  Sienna was still speaking. “It might be something simpler,” she added. “Perhaps he wants money or a place in the White City or ... Fulvia is better placed to find out what he wants and offer it to him. I’ll certainly work to see what he might want, but ... there’s no guarantee of anything.”

  She met Emily’s eyes. “Do you want to reshuffle the deck?”

  Emily considered it, carefully. Cat would probably take her side. At the very least, she had no reason to believe that he�
��d vote against her. Master Highland was a harder case, but Sienna was right. She did have leverage and she’d use it too, if things looked bad. And Grimhold ...

  “I don’t think so,” she said, slowly. “Will Fulvia want to try?”

  “It depends,” Sienna said. “She could offer Cat a great deal - or try to bring pressure to bear on him through his family. I’ll have to look into that, just in case. And she could find something Grimhold wants and offer it to him. Master Highland is perhaps the least vulnerable to outside pressure, at least from her. But she may not realize that you have something he wants.”

  Emily felt a surge of hope. “So we could win?”

  “Perhaps,” Sienna said.

  She leaned back in her chair. “I studied the diagrams you recovered from Celeste, then ran them past Professor Lombardi. He agrees with me that the charm, if cast properly, could easily start influencing the wearer’s mind, simply by amplifying strong emotion. However, it will be difficult to prove that someone else tricked her into casting the charm, then wearing the enchanted bracelet. Fulvia could easily argue that Frieda either made a serious mistake or added bells and whistles to the protective charm without realizing what they actually did.”

  Emily scowled. “Shit.”

  “Worse, Frieda doesn’t seem to have developed an active style of her own,” Sienna added. “I can’t point to anything that proves she didn’t write the spell because the style doesn’t match hers. Everything she did was a mishmash of basic spells from her textbooks. Frankly, if I was looking at the evidence from an outside perspective, I wouldn’t be convinced.”

  “But you do have my memories,” Emily pointed out. “Samra looked at them ...”

  “Yes, but you can’t prove that Daze was working for Fulvia,” Sienna said. “I think we should probably concentrate on clearing Frieda’s name, rather than trying to tackle Fulvia directly. Right now, she can easily dismiss the charges against her ... and use them to paint you as a hysterical fool. Remember, the inquest must look fair as well as be fair.”

  Emily scowled. She wanted Fulvia to pay. But Sienna was probably right. Daze was dead ... and no one, not even Lady Barb, had been able to trace his lodgings in Celeste. There were supposed to be rituals for calling up the spirits of the dead, but they were taboo. The mere suggestion would be enough to get her in very hot water indeed.

  “Very well,” she said, reluctantly. She could find a way to get Fulvia later, if she couldn’t dig up evidence before the inquest reached its conclusion. “When do we start?”

  “Gordian wished to start proceedings next weekend,” Sienna said. “I don’t see any advantage in asking for a postponement.”

  Emily nodded. She was already fretting over the coming inquest. There was nothing to be gained by trying to delay matters still further, save - perhaps - for digging up evidence linking Daze to Fulvia. But nothing had surfaced. Fulvia was far too good at covering her tracks.

  Emily rose to her feet. “Thank you. I’ll see you then.”

  “Try to relax,” Sienna advised. “We do have a good chance to win.”

  Emily snorted. “I can’t relax. I just keep worrying.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE LIQUID IN THE CAULDRON SHOULD have been bright green. Instead, it was sickly yellow.

  Emily glared at it, suspiciously. Something had clearly gone wrong, but what? Had she added too many dragon scales? Or too few drops of manticore eye fluid? Sweat dripped down her back as she checked the instructions, muttering curses under her breath. Perhaps she hadn’t stirred it enough before she’d added the last pair of ingredients.

  And it might be beyond recovery, she thought, as the liquid began to bubble. She took a sniff and regretted it, instantly. It smelt worse than a latrine pit in an army camp. What did I do wrong?

  She looked down at the list of ingredients. She’d done everything perfectly, she thought, but something was definitely wrong. Magic sparkled around the cauldron, growing stronger and stronger. And yet, it wasn’t right. The potion was meant to be a healing brew, one fed to badly-wounded men to force their internal organs to regenerate. Instead, it was starting to smell lethal ...

  A loud hissing erupted from the cauldron. Emily took one look and jumped back sharply, a moment before the bottom of the heavy metal pot melted. The potion ate through the table a second later, sending it crashing down in ruins. Gasps echoed around the classroom as the yellow liquid hit the floor, splashing in all directions. Wards flashed into existence, trying to confine the spill to Emily’s table. The potion - whatever it was - was so strong that it took three layers of wards to keep it from spreading further.

  Emily looked up. The entire class was staring at her.

  “Well,” Professor Thande said, coldly. He was fond of experimenting, but there were limits on what could be done in the classroom. “What - exactly - did you do?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Emily admitted.

  She resisted the childish urge to kick the table as Professor Thande picked up a charmed bottle and strode towards her. Alchemy had never been one of her better subjects. There were so many counterintuitive aspects to the whole wretched process that it made her head hurt just to think about them. And yet, she hadn’t had a cauldron melt quite so spectacularly for years. The magic cascade must have started long before she’d noticed anything was wrong.

  “You must have missed an earlier checkpoint.” Professor Thande stepped through the wards and carefully bottled a sample of the potion. “I’ll have some fun analyzing it.”

  His voice was lighter, but Emily didn’t relax. She was an older student now, in a classroom that wasn’t heavily warded. Her little accident could have maimed - or killed - the entire class. Professor Thande would be quite within his rights to kick her out of the classroom and flunk her for the rest of the year, if he wished. Carelessness could not be tolerated.

  She studied his face as he dropped the charmed bottle into his pocket, silently noting the number of scars and burns he’d never bothered to remove. Perhaps they couldn’t be removed. Or perhaps he chose to remain scarred, just to show his students how dangerous alchemy could be. Emily pushed the thought aside as he looked at her, bracing herself for the worst. She had been careless. And she had no appeal if he decided to kick her out.

  “Leave the classroom,” he ordered. “And report back to me at the end of the day.”

  Emily forced herself to remain calm as she picked up her bag and headed for the door. It was all she could do to keep from sagging, knowing that everyone was watching her. She was damned if she’d give Jacqui the satisfaction of seeing her break down in front of the entire class. And yet, the moment she was outside, she felt her legs buckle. She’d been careless and it would cost her and ...

  I was fretting too hard, she thought, numbly. She’d met Frieda briefly, but the younger girl had shown no sign of improvement. Emily hadn’t been able to bring herself to discuss the inquest, even though the outcome would determine Frieda’s future ... if she had a future. And I messed up.

  She took a long breath and forced herself to walk down the corridor. Professor Thande was angry ... of course he was angry. He’d kicked a few students out of the classroom in her first four years of schooling, she recalled, but no one had been ordered to leave since she’d entered Fifth Year. Her mind raced, trying to think of a way to make up for what she’d done, but nothing came to mind. She’d be very lucky if she was allowed back in one of the private practice rooms.

  The wards flickered around her as she left the alchemy department and wandered onwards. There was nowhere to go, save perhaps for the library. Everyone she knew would be in class - or busy, preparing for the inquest. Perhaps she could go down to the armory and borrow a private spellchamber. Smashing a couple of practice dummies would probably make her feel better, if she tried. Or ...

  She felt listless, tired and depressed. It wouldn’t make a difference, she knew. Professor Thande hated her now. She wouldn’t be allowed back. And ...

&
nbsp; The sound of footsteps brought her out of her thoughts. A young man she didn’t recognize ran around the corridor and skidded to a halt. He was a Fourth Year, she thought, but he was completely unfamiliar. He wore his robes as if he’d been born to them.

  “Lady Emily,” he said, between gasps. “The Grandmaster requests your urgent presence.”

  Emily glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes. She’d been moping for fifteen minutes. Easily long enough for Professor Thande to send a note to Gordian, informing him that he’d barred Emily from his classrooms. Professor Thande could handle normal disciplinary matters himself, but flunking Emily would require the Grandmaster to sign off on it. Emily doubted he’d hesitate. She had been careless.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m on my way.”

  She wondered if the younger student had been asked to escort her - that would have been humiliating - but he headed off in the other direction as soon as she was underway. The corridors were largely empty as she made her way up the stairs, save for a group of students waiting nervously outside one of the classrooms. They looked oddly relieved to see her ... Emily puzzled over it for a long moment, then decided it didn’t matter. She wasn’t Head Girl any longer.

  Madame Griselda was sitting at her desk, reading a parchment. She nodded to Emily, then pointed at the door. Emily nodded back, then walked through the door into Gordian’s office, making sure to close the door behind her. Gordian looked up at her, then motioned for her to take a seat. Emily blinked in surprise. If he’d wanted to chew her out, surely he would have ordered her to stand.

  Maybe he’s just trying to lull me into a false sense of complacency, she thought, as she sat down. The chair was surprisingly comfortable. Or maybe he hasn’t heard anything yet.

  “I received a disturbing report from Professor Thande,” Gordian said. His voice was soft, but tightly composed. “He says you accidentally brewed a highly-corrosive potion.”