Emily nodded, silently kicking herself for not having thought to bring sandwiches. Or something. It wouldn’t have been hard to get something if she’d thought to ask. She could have easily made them herself if half the kitchen staff had been sleeping in. She snorted at the thought, then headed for the ruined track as Nadine rose into the air and flew back to the castle. It felt torn and broken under her feet, forcing her to pick her way down. The woods seemed to envelop her as she reached the bottom of the mountain.
The silence nagged at her. She hadn’t realized how far they’d flown, or how long it would take to walk back to Laughter. The woods had looked tiny from above... she mentally kicked herself for that mistake, too. It was easy to forget that there was such a thing as distance, when one could teleport. She should have known better. She’d walked to the town, and then up to the school. Lady Barb would have scolded her for that mistake.
And I’ll have to write to her, to tell her what little I’ve found, Emily thought. It might be more accurate to say she’d found nothing. The teachers didn’t seem to take the threat seriously. It was hard to tell if they didn’t believe in it or if they were desperate to see the conference held at their school. She might have some ideas.
She sighed, allowing herself to enjoy the walk as the path wove its way through the woods. She thought she saw hints of old villages, long-since overgrown and absorbed by the forest; her eyes sharpened, just a little, as she spotted a mound in the clearing. No one would go near it at midnight, for fear the Other Folk might be there. She was surprised it was so close to Laughter. The Unseelie nest she’d seen near Whitehall had been a good several days from the school.
Which didn’t stop them reaching out to touch me, she thought. The oath she’d sworn to the Unseelie was gone. She still didn’t know precisely what they’d wanted from her, or why they’d pushed her into reigniting the nexus points. They came a lot closer to human settlement then...
The mound looked harmless. It would have gone unnoticed on Earth, little more than a grass-covered pile of soil, a tiny hump in the ground. She gave it a wide berth anyway, just in case, and kept walking through the trees. The air was clear and fresh, with just a hint of pollen. She took a long breath, taking a moment to clear her mind. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her it had been too long since breakfast. Nadine had been right. She really had used a lot of magic. Emily picked up speed, bracing herself as the track started to rise again. She had a feeling that, short of flying, there were only two ways in and out of the woods...
... And then she heard the shouting.
Chapter Sixteen
THE PANICKY SHOUTING GREW LOUDER AS Emily ran through the woods, her imagination providing all sorts of suggestions about what might be happening. A flying girl could have fallen out of the sky and gotten tangled in a tree, a girl out for a stroll could have walked into a bog or something she couldn’t handle, something that had panicked her so badly she couldn’t even cast a spell to signal for help. Emily pushed through bushes, readying an emergency teleport spell. She couldn’t teleport into the school itself, but she could teleport someone into the courtyard and carry them into the building from there. Trees slashed at her face, a particularly nasty branch cutting into her skin as she brushed it aside. There was no time to stop and deal with the blood. She had to move.
She pushed through the bushes, straight into a clearing, then stopped dead. Two girls were floating upside down, trying desperately to hold their dresses in place; three more were cringing, doing their level best to defend themselves against a steady rain of hexes from Dionne, Bernadette and Hannalore. The groupies stood at the edge of the clearing, watching with eager eyes as the younger girls started to droop. Emily felt sick. The girls were younger. Third years, not...
Emily unmasked her magic. “Stop!”
The floating girls fell. Emily had a glimpse of pale, scarred legs as she hastily snapped out a levitation spell, catching them before they hit the ground. Common-born? Magical children tended to have wounds healed completely, unless there was dark magic residue within the scar. Commoners or not, they were unable to defend themselves against a trio of older students, let alone the small army of groupies. Emily saw the shame in their eyes as they collected their wits, pulling down their dresses to cover their legs. She saw red. It was practically sexual assault!
It was all she could do not to scream at them. “What the” - she bit off the next word - “do you think you are doing?”
Dionne straightened. Emily would have admired her nerve if she hadn’t known Dionne was sure Emily couldn’t really hurt her. The headmistress would take a dim view of a teacher who put a student in a hospital bed, let alone in the grave. There were limits... Emily was tempted, just for a second, to break the rules. Perhaps the problem would be solved if she smashed Dionne and her friends like bugs. Perhaps... she put firm controls on her temper. She couldn’t let herself be kicked out of the school, not yet.
“Well?” Emily speared Dionne with her eyes. “What do you think you are doing?”
Dionne managed to look back at her, evenly. “We’re training them in defense.”
Emily cocked an eyebrow. “By hammering them so hard they cannot hope to defend themselves?”
“They’ll learn,” Dionne assured her. She sounded almost as if she expected Emily to agree with her. “They need to learn how to cope when they’re under attack...”
“You might as well throw someone into the deep end and expect them to learn how to swim before they drown,” Emily said. It was all she could do not to reach out and shake the younger girl. “And, unless I miss my guess, you are not authorized to teach them anything.”
“You faced far stronger opponents when you were younger,” Dionne pointed out. “You killed Shadye in single combat. You killed a dozen necromancers before you turned twenty.”
No, I didn’t, Emily thought. She’d killed two, Shadye and Mother Holly, and she’d cheated both times. And I was allowed to kill the necromancers.
“It’s for their own good,” Dionne said, sanctimoniously. “They have to learn...”
“I killed two necromancers before I turned twenty,” Emily said, flatly. “Do you want them to kill you?”
Dionne scoffed. “We’re helping to build up their magic,” she said. “They’re not going to kill us.”
“Shadye thought the same,” Emily pointed out. “He was wrong.”
She scowled. Dionne wasn’t listening. She wasn’t really interested in teaching anyone anything. She just wanted to have fun... Nadine’s words echoed through her head. People didn’t need outside forces to turn them into bastards. Give them a taste of power and human nature would do the rest.
“We have a duty,” Dionne insisted. “We have to help them...”
Emily froze her with a glare, then looked at the victims. “Go to the infirmary and get checked over,” she ordered. The girls who’d been trying to defend themselves might be completely drained. “And do whatever the healers tell you.”
The girls looked at her, shame clearly visible within their eyes, then turned and ran. Emily knew just how they felt. They’d been unable to defend themselves, unable to do more than take it... she wondered, suddenly, if the floating girls had been pushed through the bushes by their tormentors. Emily’s cheek was hurting from where she’d been cut. It had to be worse for the poor girls...
She switched her attention back to Dionne. “You believe you have an obligation to them?”
“Yes,” Dionne said. “They’re new to magic. They have to be taught how to develop their skills. I... we have an obligation to help them.”
“Indeed?” Emily looked at the three girls, then at their groupies... the latter looking as if they would rather be somewhere, anywhere, else. “You think you are helping them?”
She sighed, inwardly. She’d met a lot of noblemen who claimed to believe in noblesse oblige, but - somehow - managed to see their duty to others in a way that promoted their superiority, rather than actually helping. They p
referred to be paternalistic, rather than allow their inferiors the freedom to make choices for themselves. They’d never dare imagine that the best thing to do was to step back, for fear of losing their power. Noblesse oblige was nothing more than a justification for power, an attempt to convince the inferiors that their superiors had duties as well as rights. She’d never met anyone outside the aristocracy who’d actually believed it.
“If you have a duty to help people,” she said, “you have a duty to do something that actually helps. You have a duty to listen to them, to find out what they actually need, and provide it... if, of course, you really want to help. And, sometimes, what they want is for you to butt the hell out and leave them alone!”
She felt her voice start to rise. “You could be helping them practice their spells - properly practice their spells,” she said. “Or you could be steering them towards the right books and documents in the library, or even offering to help them learn and practice the older tongues and unspoken languages. There’s a lot of things you could do, if you really want to help. But all of those require you to actually think about what you’re doing.”
“You help us, by testing our spells,” Dionne pointed out, sullenly. “Don’t you?”
“I know what I’m doing,” Emily said. “When I break your spells, I don’t use anything you can’t match. I don’t smash your shields with an overpowered force punch that would smash you against the wall hard enough to turn you into paste. I don’t use advanced spells to hack into your spellware and turn it against you. I deal with you on your level. You’re crushing them” - she waved a hand in the direction the younger girls had gone - “and teaching them nothing, beyond hatred for you.”
She looked from girl to girl. “If you genuinely want to help, then meet them on their level,” she said. “Be fair. Play Freeze Tag or something with them. But if they don’t want anything to do with you, after this, then leave them alone.”
“The world is not fair,” Dionne said.
“No,” Emily agreed. She’d said much the same herself, to Lillian. She was almost painfully glad the younger girl was nowhere to be seen. “But you don’t have to make it even more unfair. People don’t learn anything useful if you crush them.”
She shook her head. “And report for detention,” she said. “You can spend the next week there.”
“Lady Emily!” Hannalore gasped. “We have games!”
“No, you have detention,” Emily said. “All of you. Go.”
She watched the girls hurry off, feeling old. She’d never been like that... of course, she hadn’t been raised to consider herself the center of the universe either. She shuddered, remembering just how much bullying she’d seen at Whitehall and Mountaintop. She hadn’t been targeted too badly - enough students knew what she’d done to keep their distance - but there’d been times when it had nearly beaten her. It would have been worse, she was sure, if the older students had joined in. She’d had enough problems testing herself against Jade and Cat in Martial Magic.
I didn’t want to be there, she reminded herself, as she started to walk towards the castle. And it took them a while to warm up to me.
Her fingers touched her cheek as the path grew steeper. The castle’s outer wards flickered and flared around her, welcoming her home. She was amused to note that the rear wards weren’t designed to alert the staff, if someone brought a man around the school and down into the woods. Her lips twitched. The woods were big enough to ensure privacy, if someone wanted to meet their boyfriend outside Pendle. She wasn’t sure that was entirely a good thing.
She scowled as she felt sweat trickling down her back. It was hard to believe that it was nearly noon. It felt as if she’d been awake for hours. She reached the top of the path, walked around the swimming pool, and headed for the rear entrance. A handful of girls were swimming, completely naked. She shook her head in disbelief. Whitehall insisted that students, male and female alike, had to wear bathing costumes if they wanted to swim. She supposed it was easier if boys weren’t allowed in the school.
The school felt louder, now most of the students were awake. Emily walked past a pair of joggers and headed up to the dining hall, noting just how many students were still eating breakfast. She took a tray of food for herself and inhaled it, doing her best to ignore what looked like a food fight at the other end of the hall. The food tasted very bland - the students were allowed to spend weekends in Pendle, if they wished - but she didn’t care. All that mattered was eating enough to recharge.
“Lady Emily,” a gruff voice said. She looked up to see Mistress Greenstone. “A word, if you please?”
Emily looked at her plate, briefly considering arguing. She hadn’t eaten enough. Not yet. But there was no point. She’d been warned the staff needed to keep a united front. Whatever their disagreements in private, in public they were expected to pretend to be friends. She doubted there was any real risk of the students rising in rebellion - Laughter wasn’t Mountaintop, where the lower-class students had been genuinely oppressed - but she saw the logic. A gap in the staff’s unity could easily be exploited by a student from the right background.
She took a pair of sandwiches for later, then followed Mistress Greenstone down to her office. The gym mistress was the most heavily-muscled woman Emily had ever seen, her dress carefully cut to display her muscles to best advantage. Emily suspected it was for intimidation more than anything else. She wasn’t particularly impressed. The gym mistress was no necromancer. No matter how many muscles someone had, a simple spell would stop him in his tracks. She wondered, suddenly, if the gym mistress was a mundane. It wasn’t impossible. Sergeant Harkin had been a mundane and he’d thrived.
The office was larger than Emily had expected. One wall was covered with gold and silver cups, another with certified parchments commemorating the successes of school sports teams over the years. Emily had never cared much for organized sports, or for those who played them, but she had to admit the gym mistress had done well. She’d trained teams that had played everything from polo to ken. A third wall was covered in filing cabinets, all heavily charmed to protect the contents; a fourth was bare, save for a single cane.
“I am meant to be training a team for the ken championships,” Mistress Greenstone said, as she sat behind her desk. “And I cannot do that if a chunk of my best players are in detention.”
Emily tried not to roll her eyes. She was no naughty student, summoned for a lecture. The gym mistress might outrank her, technically, but not by that much. The intimidation and manipulation were childish, compared to King Randor or Master Grey. It helped, she supposed, that both of them had been older and considerably more cunning. The gym mistress looked to be in her late forties, although it was hard to be sure.
“You came to us from Whitehall,” Mistress Greenstone snapped. “Do you have orders to sabotage us?”
“No.” Emily snorted at the thought. Grandmaster Gordian would sooner see Whitehall lose the championship than ask her for a favor. And she would certainly not sabotage the host school. “I have better things to do with my time.”
“You should stick to mastering the fine art of defense and leave discipline to those older and wiser than you,” Mistress Greenstone said. “I will not lose the championships because you’re too kind to the students.”
“Your students would not be in detention,” Emily said sharply, “if they weren’t bullying other students. Younger students. Do you really want bullies representing the school?”
“I don’t care what they’ve been doing,” Mistress Greenstone said. “I want winners! I want to put forward the best teams I can. And I can’t do that if they’re in detention!”
Emily wondered why she was surprised. It was practically a law of nature that jerk jocks and cheerleaders could get away with anything, as long as they delivered the goods. It hadn’t been so bad at Whitehall - the Martial Magic students had been considered more important, given how close the school was to the Blighted Lands - but... that might change, now
the war was over. God knew the magicians feted their duelists and the nobility praised men who went to tournament in place of war...
“Lady Emily,” Mistress Greenstone thundered. “Do you have any idea how important this is?”
“Yes,” Emily said. “I know precisely how important this is.”
Mistress Greenstone eyed her nastily, perhaps catching the unspoken implication. “I’ll let the weekend detentions stand,” she said, finally. “No doubt the townsfolk will be glad to have that bunch locked up in the castle, scrubbing floors instead of haunting the shops. But I’ll cancel the weekday detentions. There is nothing more important than the school’s reputation amongst the other schools, and sports are a vital part of it. I will not have that lost because of you.”
“And please could you explain,” Emily said icily, “precisely how their bullying is my fault?”
“You have a duty to keep the school’s interests in mind,” Mistress Greenstone said, evading the question. “And whatever punishments you hand out have to keep that in mind, too. The school comes first. Always.”
She sat back and cleared her throat. “I’ll advise Lady Damia that I am cancelling the detentions,” she added. “I’m sure she will agree with me.”
“No doubt,” Emily agreed, dryly.
“And if you issue detentions like that again, without checking with me first, I’ll ensure you are never promoted to senior staff,” Mistress Greenstone added. “Get out.”
Emily tried not to laugh as she left the room, closing the door firmly behind her. The threat was useless. She had no intention of spending the rest of her life at Laughter, not when she had an apprenticeship to complete and a university to build and... she’d see what happened after the fallout from the end of the war had settled down. Perhaps she’d go back to Heart’s Eye for a while, or... she wanted to see her friends. Cat had invited her to visit Kuching, pointing out she was something of a hero to the settlers. She’d be more than welcome there.
Little Witches (Schooled In Magic Book 21) Page 16