Little Witches (Schooled In Magic Book 21)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  At least long enough to get the hell out of the way, Emily thought. The girls were just blasting away at each other, instead of moving and dodging like experienced sorcerers. She supposed they didn’t think they were meant to be evading the hexes. If they ran into someone who really meant them harm, they might be in some trouble.

  She sighed, inwardly. Jade and Cat had been far more capable, when they’d been the same age. They’d not only known more spells, they’d known how to use them. Lady Damia wasn’t training combat sorcerers, Emily supposed, but still... she made a mental note to raise the issue, later. They could move the lessons outside and have fun, as well as learn.

  Dionne cleared her throat. “My ward is unbreakable.”

  Emily smiled. “Haven’t we had this discussion before?”

  “You can overpower it,” Dionne said. She boosted the spell, wrapping herself in a bubble of light. It looked flimsy, yet surprisingly solid. “But you can’t get around it.”

  “We’ll see,” Emily said. She stepped forward, motioning for the other girls to stand back and watch. “Dionne has formed a fairly solid defense charm. It is capable of blocking and absorbing a level four spell. However, it also has a serious weakness. Notably...”

  She shaped a spell in her mind, then cast it. Dionne smirked, then threw up her hands in shock as her body melted into a brown frog. She croaked loudly as giggles ran around the group. Some of the girls looked shocked. Dionne was too advanced a student to be caught by a simple transfiguration spell... wasn’t she? The spell should never have sneaked through the wards. Emily looked down at the frog for a long moment, then snapped her fingers and released the spell. Dionne - disheveled - appeared in front of her.

  “You...” Dionne coughed, gasping for breath. “You cheated!”

  “Not in the sense you mean,” Emily said. She mustered the spell again so Dionne could see the spellwork. “My spell was a layered design, intended to sneak through the weak point in the ward and touch your bare skin. It worked.”

  She stepped back. “But there’s another weak point in your spell. What do you think it might be?”

  Dionne said nothing for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she said, finally. Her voice suggested she was fighting hard to remain calm. “What is it?”

  The bell rang. “Consider that your homework,” Emily said. She’d be curious to know if Dionne - or anyone else - worked out the truth. Most magicians wouldn’t, particularly if they were raised in magical society. “All of you. Remember what Dionne did and think about it. Figure out the second weakness and how to block it, before someone manages to use it to land a punch.”

  She smiled as she dismissed the class. She’d picked her words carefully. There was a hint there, if Dionne had the wit to see it. She watched the class go, then headed for the desk and sat down, resting her head in her hands. She felt as if she’d been put through the wringer. She promised herself, silently, if it didn’t get any better, she was going to drop all thought of being a teacher. Perhaps she could give the occasional guest lecture at Heart’s Eye. She’d promised Caleb and Mistress Irene she’d visit when she had a chance...

  Someone cleared her throat, loudly. “Getting comfortable?”

  Emily opened her eyes and looked up. Lady Damia was standing in front of the desk, studying her. Emily remembered it was her desk and stood, hastily. Magicians rarely liked other people using their stuff, certainly not without permission. And she’d treated it as her own...

  “Feeling tired,” she said. The clock insisted it was midmorning. She was sure it was lying. She felt as if she’d been teaching the entire day. “It was draining.”

  “You did better than I expected, for a first-timer,” Damia said. There was a hint of warmth in her tone. “You missed a few points, and didn’t catch some behavior that merited punishment, but you managed to cover the important parts of the topic without getting too distracted. You probably shouldn’t have given Dionne such a shock, however. She needed to figure out the problem on her own.”

  “She was testing me,” Emily said, curtly.

  “Yes.” Damia shifted, awkwardly. “Dionne and Bernadette have their chores this afternoon. I’m converting their detentions into canings. The gym mistress can handle them after they’ve done their chores.”

  Emily blinked. “I thought I had authority to hand out detentions.”

  “Yes,” Damia said. “But the interests of the school come first. And it is in the best interests of the school that the girls carry out the chores first, rather than waste time in detention. I am therefore overruling you, which will be noted in the punishment book.”

  She shrugged. “I understand your concerns,” she added. “But the interests of the school come first.”

  Emily stood. “If that’s how you feel about it,” she said, making no attempt to hide her displeasure, “then you can handle the situation as you see fit.”

  Damia didn’t show any reaction to her tone. “Overall, you did well. Some problems, which we’ll discuss later. Your lecture was admirably comprehensive, but touched on topics the girls will be exploring later in the year. Your discipline was understandable, yet misplaced. I see no reason you cannot start taking more classes, throughout the rest of the week. I’ll be supervising, at least for a while.”

  “Yes.” Emily let out a breath. Her head was pounding like a drum. “If you don’t mind, I need to eat something before my head explodes.”

  “It gets easier, as you go along,” Damia said. “Just establish yourself as a teacher who won’t take any nonsense and you’ll be fine.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  BY THE END OF THE DAY, Emily was seriously considering throwing in the towel and going back to the tower. Lady Barb would be disappointed, and Laughter would have to redouble its efforts to find a replacement for Scarlett Robyn, but... she cursed under her breath. She’d never shied from a challenge, yet this... she needed to go before she found herself too deeply involved. It wouldn’t be easy to leave if she became attached to the school.

  She sat in the classroom, rubbing her forehead and thinking wistfully about a painkilling potion. She had some in her room, only a few minutes away... it felt as if the room was on the other side of the world. Damia had spoken briefly to her, after the firsties had hurried back to their dorms, then left Emily alone. Emily almost wished the older woman was still there. She could ask if headaches were a permanent part of a teacher’s life.

  No wonder they’re all so grouchy all the time, she thought. They must see their students as little pains in the butt.

  She snorted at the thought. The younger students seemed more inclined to look up to her - or at least to respect her - than the older ones. That was something of a relief, she supposed, although they’d bombarded her with stupid questions. They’d even asked if she could fly and been disappointed when she’d told them no. Emily wasn’t sure if she should have told them the truth. They needed to know their teachers didn’t know everything, but... she shook her head. Right now, she didn’t care if the mistake - if it was one - came back to bite her, as long as it waited until the weekend. Damia had insisted Emily would get used to teaching, but...

  There was a soft knock on the door. Emily looked up. Lillian stood there, eying her warily. The girl was slighter than Emily had realized, although nowhere near as thin as Frieda had been... she was twenty, more or less, if Emily recalled correctly. Probably common-born, almost certainly from a mundane family. The mundanes didn’t always keep track of age, preferring to rate their children by maturity instead. Emily had never liked the reasoning, but she understood it. She’d met her fair share of adult magicians who were best described as strikingly immature.

  “Come in,” Emily said, as warmly as she could. “What can I do for you?”

  “The spell doesn’t block a punch,” Lillian said. “That’s the second weakness.”

  Emily needed a moment to realize what she meant. “Yes,” she said, simply. “A dark wizard - or a mundane - could put his fist
right through the defensive charm and punch Dionne’s lights out.”

  Lillian looked as if she wanted to giggle, but didn’t quite dare. “Why doesn’t the spell stop the punch?”

  “Because it’s designed to block, deflect or break up the spellwork,” Emily told her. She was impressed Lillian had figured it out. Most magicians had a blind spot when it came to physical threats. “A fist doesn’t have magic worked into it, so the wards don’t even know it’s there.”

  “So someone could just walk right through them,” Lillian said. She sounded disturbed. “They won’t stop someone from punching you.”

  “There are other spells for that,” Emily said. “You just have to realize what you’re doing, what you’re trying to defend against, before you shape your spells to stop it. You can put up a ward designed to block a fist, or a thrown object, if you realize it might be a threat.”

  Lillian looked down at her hands. “I hit someone, back in first year,” she said. “And I was told witches don’t solve their problems with their fists.”

  “There are no rules outside the walls,” Emily said, with the private thought there were few rules inside, too. “You can’t rely on someone who genuinely wants to hurt you playing fair. If they’re stronger than you, they’ll beat you down; if they’re more cunning than you, they’ll find a way to get through your defenses. If you play fair, you might as well have one hand tied behind your back.”

  “It can’t be that bad,” Lillian said.

  “It is,” Emily said. She hesitated, then took the plunge. “I took Martial Magic when I was a firstie. I worked hard to build up my strength. I am strong, compared to most of the girls I knew at Whitehall. But the boys? They rarely had any trouble pinning me, when we fought without magic. One of them even pulled me over his knee! You cannot play fair when the other guy might be stronger and nastier than you.”

  Her lips quirked. “And I’m sure there are a lot of duelists who cursed the Dueling League with their last breaths, when they faced an opponent who wasn’t bound by the rules.”

  Lillian smiled, wanly. “Someone beat you?”

  “Know your enemy and know yourself and you won’t lose,” Emily misquoted. “Trying to pretend that someone isn’t strong enough to lay you out with a single punch, or overpower you with magic, is just asking for trouble.”

  “She is strong,” Lillian said. “Dionne... she’s so strong...”

  “That doesn’t make her unbeatable,” Emily said. “I hate to admit it, but I’ve been beaten before.”

  She studied Lillian for a long moment. The girl was smart. Smart enough to do good work, smart enough to think outside the box... smart enough, Emily thought, to make a name for herself if she had a chance. Dionne wouldn’t let her... perhaps. Emily’s eyes narrowed. If she could do something about that...

  “I have to ask,” Lillian said. “Have you been here before?”

  Emily blinked. Penny had asked her the same question, months ago. And Penny hadn’t believed the answer. “No,” Emily said. She forced herself to remember what Penny had said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I was a firstie,” Lillian said. “I was... I wasn’t doing very well. The other girls were picking on me. They just wouldn’t let me learn.”

  And it sounds as if little has changed, Emily thought, sourly. They’re still picking on you.

  “Nadine saved me,” Lillian said. “She saved me and... I thought she liked me. I thought she was a friend. And then it turned out she wasn’t Nadine after all. She was... she was an intruder, and I helped her to escape.”

  “Ouch,” Emily said. Penny had said much the same thing. “And that was... what? Four years ago?”

  She frowned. That would have been during her third year. She’d gone to Mountaintop, if she recalled correctly. Judging from what Penny had said, the Nadine incident had taken place shortly after she’d left Mountaintop. It hadn’t been her fault. She knew she hadn’t been involved. And yet it had been hard to convince Penny it hadn’t been her who’d made Penny look a fool. The older girl still wanted revenge.

  It might be worth looking into what happened, she thought. Four years... maybe there’s a connection.

  “Yeah,” Lillian said. “That was four years ago.”

  Emily made her go through the details as she tried to put the pieces together. Four years was a long time, in magic. The intruder might have taken something that had somehow gone unnoticed or... the intruder might have been foiled before she could complete her mission. It was easy to draw up a list of things the intruder might have wanted, but none of them were missing. Unless the staff had lied, to Penny and the rest of the school. They might not want to admit they’d lost a priceless artefact.

  “It wasn’t me,” she said, when Lillian had finished. “I was at Whitehall back then.”

  Lillian smiled, shyly. “I owe her,” she admitted. “Whoever she was, I owe her.”

  Whoever she was, she took a page out of my playbook, Emily thought. She’d befriended Frieda at Mountaintop, setting off the chain of events that had ended with the school’s near-collapse. The intruder befriended Lillian and made it work for her, too.

  “Be careful,” Emily said. Magical debts were tricky things, not least because they were so poorly understood. “She could easily use your debt to make you do something else for her.”

  “So I was told,” Lillian said. “Lady Emily...”

  She swallowed, hard. “Lady Emily, can I ask you for some extra tutoring?”

  Emily looked her in the eye. “In defense?”

  “In everything,” Lillian said. “I... I just can’t work properly with the entire dorm banging away at me.”

  “I know the feeling,” Emily said. She’d hated the dorms at Mountaintop. There’d been no privacy and no safety, at least until one mastered the wards to keep one’s bed safe. “Give me a week to get used to teaching, then I’ll see what I can do.”

  And perhaps find an older student to teach you, her thoughts added, silently. It was quite likely that one of the sixth years would be interested, if they were paid in cash or kind. She made a mental note to look into the situation. Lillian might not have much to offer, but... she wasn’t useless. You might be able to trade chores for lessons.

  She leaned forward. “Have things been worse than usual here?”

  Lillian said nothing for a long moment. “It’s hard to say,” she said, finally. “There’s been a lot more talk about magical supremacism, ever since the war ended, but that’s always been the case. A few others want us to be completely isolated... they won’t even go to Pendle for fear of being defiled. I don’t know if things have gotten worse...”

  Her voice trailed off, then steadied. “But things have always been pretty grim for me,” she added. “It might have gotten worse for everyone else.”

  Emily nodded. “Tell me about your classmates.”

  Lillian brightened and started to speak. Emily listened, silently noting where she’d been right and wrong about them. Dionne, Bernadette and Hannalore were all magic-born, all from wealthy and powerful families with a long history of sending their children to Laughter. Their groupies were largely from magical families too, although a couple were common-born and tolerated only because they fetched and carried for the others. The other students were a mixed bag. Lenore was a charmsmith in training, who had no intention of getting involved in petty feuds; Quinn was too independent to bend the knee to the queens; Penelope too interested in boys to pay attention in class. Emily felt adult as she looked at them, remembering when such concerns had actually seemed important. It had been a very long time ago.

  “Interesting,” she said. Like most quiet girls, Lillian had listened and remembered. “And none of them like you?”

  Lillian snorted. “I was made to look a fool by the intruder,” she said. “I was” - she shivered - “they interrogated me, just to make sure I wasn’t an accomplice. It was weeks before they were sure I wasn’t a spy, or a spell-controlled slave, or anything. And by then no
one wanted anything to do with me. It’s been four years and no one still wants anything to do with me. I’ll graduate and no one will hire me or...”

  “Heart’s Eye,” Emily said, simply.

  “Everyone says the university is doomed,” Lillian said. She stopped, suddenly. “I...”

  Emily had to smile. “They said that about Whitehall too,” she said. The poor girl had just realized she’d insulted Emily’s pet project. “A newborn baby might not be able to take care of herself, but - given time - she’ll grow into a young woman. And if you don’t want to go to the university, there are other options.”

  She made a show of considering them. “You could change your name, then move to another country,” she said, simply. “Perhaps go to Kuching - I could put a good word in for you, if you like - or one of the city-states. People won’t ask too many questions, as long as you have the skills to make a living. You don’t have to be a master to make money. Even the simplest potions can earn money if you sell them in the right places.”

  “Everyone will know what I did,” Lillian said. “They’ll want nothing to do with me.”

  Emily grinned. “You remember that painting of me, in the classroom? Does it look anything like me?”

  “No.” Lillian looked doubtful. “I don’t understand.”

  “Pretend someone cares enough to try to ruin your future career,” Emily said. “They tell people to watch for a Lillian... well, it’s not that uncommon a name. And you can change it, so anyone who meets you won’t connect you with the Lillian. So... they put out a description. Black hair, dark eyes, pale skin, female... there can’t be more than a few million girls who fit the description.”