Little Witches (Schooled In Magic Book 21)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “The decision has been made,” Damia said. “With your permission, I will escort Penelope back to the dorms.”

  “You may,” Duchene said. She looked at Emily as Damia hustled Penelope out of the room. “Emily, I appreciate your feelings, but there are other concerns here.”

  “Because you don’t want to anger her family,” Emily said, “or because you don’t want to worry the White Council?”

  Duchene eyed her blandly. “If I expel her, I will have to give a reason,” she said. “And I will have to explain, to her family and others, why she should be expelled...”

  Emily felt her temper flare. “Attempted rape?”

  “... And that will cast the school into disrepute,” Duchene finished. “We are on thin ice.”

  “Really.” Emily shook her head. “I spoke to Mitch’s parents. They’re planning to leave because your students are becoming unbearable. I’d bet good money they’re not the only ones. How will a mass exodus from the town look to the White Council?”

  She took a breath. “It might be better to keep the girls from visiting Pendle, at least for a while,” she added. “They might learn to appreciate the town a little better.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement,” Duchene said, coldly. It struck Emily, too late, that she’d undermined the headmistress in front of witnesses. Duchene wasn’t going to be pleased. “And I’ll see you at dinner.”

  Emily was tempted to turn and storm out of the school. She’d come to do them a favor... no, she’d come to do Lady Barb a favor. If it had been anyone else, she’d have left at once and to hell with the consequences. She could tell the entire world that Laughter condoned rape - or worse - and let them deal with the fallout. She forced herself to focus, swallowing her anger. Duchene was forced to play politics. She would hardly be the first person to find herself caught between two parties, unable to appease one without angering the other.

  She stood and stepped through the door. Mistress Jens followed her. “Lady Emily? A word?”

  “Now?” Emily wanted to go to a spellchamber and blast some dummies into atoms, not talk to another teacher. “I have work to do...”

  “It won’t take long,” Jens said. She walked past Emily and headed down the corridor to her room. “Please, join me.”

  Emily shrugged and followed her into the bedroom. It was larger than hers, with a private bathtub in the washroom. Emily felt a stab of envy as she looked around. The shelves were crammed with books, magical devices and a tiny figurine that sent unpleasant tingles down her spine when she looked at it. She reached out gingerly with her mind and recoiled as she realized the room was practically blanketed in privacy wards. It felt as if she’d stuck her head into cotton wool.

  “Please, take a seat,” Jens said. She indicated a stuffed armchair that looked as if it wasn’t used that often. “I have a question for you?”

  “Go ahead,” Emily said. The armchair felt soft. Too soft. “What do you want to know?”

  Jens studied her for a long moment. Emily studied her back. She’d thought Jens was one of the Old Guard when they’d first met and she hadn’t seen anything to force her to change her first impressions. The Charms Tutor had shown no interest in the New Learning, flatly refusing to allow her charges to purchase the cheaper textbooks and insisting they bought or borrowed copies of the older versions. Emily wasn’t sure what was driving her. She should understand the value of the printing press even if she disapproved of it.

  And she considered Dionne one of her prize pupils, Emily thought, making a mental note to look into the older woman’s life. That doesn’t say anything good about her.

  “I was wondering,” Jens said. “Why do you care?”

  “About what?” Emily had a feeling she knew where Jens was going. “Mitch and Penelope?”

  “Yes.” Jens sat back in her chair. “Why do you care about a simple townsman?”

  Emily said nothing for a long moment. “Because trying to rape someone is wrong,” she said, finally. It was hard to believe that anyone - male or female - could disagree with that. Even aristocratic marriages were hedged around with a fig leaf of consent, although no one really believed it. “It doesn’t matter who it happens to. It’s still wrong.”

  “We are superior,” Jens said, placidly. “Whatever we do is right by definition.”

  Emily blinked. “Did you say that to Dionne?”

  Jens ignored the question. “We have within us a trace of the divine spark,” she said, clicking her fingers. A flicker of light darted above her palm for a second, then vanished. “We are superior to mundanes, to people who wallow in the dirt, to people who could not even begin to understand how our world works. The least of us can stop a mundane in his tracks with a simple spell. We are superior. That is beyond dispute.”

  “I’ve heard people insist that men are superior to women because men are stronger than women,” Emily said. “I’ve yet to see any proof that men are inherently smarter than women or vice versa.”

  “The proof is in the spark itself,” Jens said. Another flicker of light appeared above her palm. “We can do anything to them and they cannot stop us. The strongest king or the merest peasant, wrapped in armor or patchwork clothes... we can make them our slaves or turn them into slugs and step on them or anything. What can they do to us? They could not hope to win unless we chose to let them. We are the descendants of gods. We have the power.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re worthless,” Emily said.

  “Whatever they are,” Jens said, “why are we so much more?”

  Emily shivered. Jens didn’t sound angry or fearful. She sounded calm, as if she were discussing something as harmless as the weather. There was a certainty to her tone that scared Emily to the bone.

  “We have power,” Jens said. “The least of us are still greater than the best of them. We have magic. When we are hurt, we heal quicker. We are stronger and smarter and prettier than them. We fly through the sky when they wallow in the mud. Why should we not rule?”

  Her eyes hardened. “The Emperors were magicians,” she added. “There’s very little in the history books that everyone agrees on, as you might expect, but they all agree that the Emperors were magicians themselves. They ruled through divine blessings. Why should we not rule?”

  Emily’s mouth was dry. King Randor had been a magician too. His daughter was a magician. But... there were aristocrats and even monarchs who weren’t. And...

  “We have power,” Emily said. Her thoughts were a tangled mess. “That doesn’t make us superior.”

  “We cannot be beaten by the mundanes, no matter what they do,” Jens said. “They exist on our sufferance. They exist to serve us, however we desire.”

  Emily looked her in the eye. “Would you use love spells to make one of them fuck you?”

  She’d hoped the crudity would get a reaction, but Jens didn’t seem to hear the word. “I can do whatever I like to them,” Jens said. “And so can you.”

  “Being stronger doesn’t make us superior,” Emily said, again. She rubbed her bruised cheek. Mitch could have knocked her out - or killed her - if he’d focused on the blow. “And being stronger doesn’t make us more intelligent.”

  “No?” Jens cocked an eyebrow. “And how do you account for us being better than them?”

  “You live in a castle filled with magic,” Emily said, slowly. “You have showers, with hot and cold running water; you have enough food to eat and enough... enough of everything else you need. You don’t have to spend your days in the field, trying to raise a crop that you might not even be allowed to keep. You and yours have the time to develop your minds and magic, to build on what has gone before so your successors can take your work and improve upon it. You’re no smarter than any of them. You’re just luckier.”

  She waved a hand at the wall. “If you ensured that everyone in Pendle had enough to eat and didn’t have to work all day just to survive,” she added, “I am sure some of them would turn out to be great minds.”
>
  “I doubt it,” Jens said. “How could they comprehend magic?”

  “The artificers and craftsmen in Cockatrice took my ideas,” Emily said, “and they improved upon them in ways I never anticipated. They’re the ones who built the steam engines and iron mills and printing presses and everything else. Every month, they put out something new, something better. And they do that because they have the time and freedom to experiment!”

  “But they learnt from you,” Jens said. “And what would happen if I crashed a single fireball into one of those steam engines?”

  “It would prove you were stronger in magic,” Emily said. “It wouldn’t prove anything else.”

  “I could do much worse,” Jens said. “Those steam engines wouldn’t even exist if you hadn’t come up with the first idea.”

  “Perhaps,” Emily said. “Someone else could have easily come up with the idea too.”

  She felt a flicker of dismay as she studied the older woman. Jens sounded calm and reasonable and... she was saying something the younger witches would want to believe. They’d want to think they were superior, they’d want to think they were a breed apart... because if they started to think otherwise, they might start thinking they were doing something wrong. Emily felt a stab of pity for anyone who had to spend their lessons in her classroom. They’d pick up a superiority complex that would justify everything they did.

  You went looking for traces of magical influence, she thought, and perhaps you should have been looking for something that didn’t rely on magic to influence people.

  “The world is changing,” Jens said, calmly. “The necromancers are gone. We can rethink our place in the world.”

  Emily made a face. “By putting magicians on top?”

  “We’re already on top,” Jens said. “Perhaps we should make it official.”

  She smiled. “You have changed the world more than anyone since Pendle, Lady Emily,” she said. “There are some amongst us who think you might be her reincarnation.”

  “Nadine said the same,” Emily said. “And I told her I’m not.”

  “I agree,” Jens said. “Pendle was prepared to do whatever had to be done to ensure magical society had a chance to grow and develop without interference from the mundanes. You are not.”

  Emily shook her head. “I don’t have the right to...”

  “You made things better for countless people, magical and mundane alike,” Jens said. “What gave you the right to do that?”

  She leaned forward. “Power. That gave you the right. And it’s what gives us the right, too.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Emily said. “I didn’t take the barony...”

  “If you didn’t have magic,” Jens said, “would you have been able to keep the barony? Or would you have been forcibly married to someone else, who would have run the barony in your name while you churned out his babies? Would you have been able to innovate so freely if you weren’t able to enforce your will?”

  “Having magic gives us power,” Emily said. The questions discomfited her. “It doesn’t make us objectively superior.”

  “It does,” Jens said. “Pendle put a king to flight. What could we do now?”

  Emily stared at her. “Do you really believe Pendle will come back to reshape the world?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Jens said. She shrugged, dismissively. “And now that the necromantic wars are over, there’ll be no better time.”

  “If you say so,” Emily said. She knew Jens was wrong, but she also knew there was no way to convince her otherwise. It would take years, perhaps centuries, before the magical side of the world got over its superiority complex. It didn’t help that they had reason to feel superior. Anyone who entered Whitehall from a mountain village would feel as though they’d stepped into paradise. “But it won’t be as easy as you think.”

  “The conference will agree that it is time we magicians took the reins of the world,” Jens said, calmly. There was no doubt in her voice. “And everyone else will agree, too.”

  Emily stood, nodded curtly and left the room. Outside, she leaned against the wall, sweat running down her back. Jens had scared her, even though she’d made no threat. She was no fascist or communist or theocrat ranting in the streets, but something calm and reasonable and far more dangerous. Emily wondered, sourly, just how many witches had been influenced by their teachers. There was no way to detect magical influence if there was nothing to detect.

  Fuck, she thought, numbly. She felt tired, tired and drained. She’d introduced ideas into the world... it wasn’t possible, no matter how one tried, to kill an idea. Repression would merely make it worse. How does someone fight something like that?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “PENDLE WILL RISE AGAIN...”

  Emily gritted her teeth as she heard one of the girls whispering the phrase to her friends, her tone deadly serious. She’d heard it too much over the last few days, ever since Penelope had been allowed to get away with attempted rape. She might be grounded, but... it wasn’t enough. The magical community had always had a sense of its own superiority, yet... she cursed under her breath as she dismissed the class. Too many girls honestly didn’t think Penelope had done anything wrong.

  They either buy her excuse or simply don’t care, Emily thought, sourly. It was never like this at Whitehall.

  The thought mocked her. It might have been like that at Whitehall. She’d never been a powerless shopkeeper - or anything - in Dragon’s Den. For all she knew, harassment and sexual assault was more common than anyone cared to admit. Hell, Alassa and her fellow aristocrats had been pretty snappy with the shopkeepers, even though they’d also paid through the nose. The shopkeepers probably thought it was worth it. And they knew the Grandmaster - the former Grandmaster - would drop a ton of bricks on anyone who stepped too far out of line.

  Emily sighed as she stood and headed through the door, closing and locking it behind her. She was disappointed in the headmistress, even though she knew there were political issues. It was hardly the first time she’d seen an overprivileged and entitled brat get away with something, but... Duchene should have known better. She should have expelled Penelope on the spot. It had been attempted rape, plain and simple. There was no moral difference between casting a compulsion charm and using naked force. Her skin crawled as she remembered Viscount Hansel’s attempt to rape her. Poor Mitch hadn’t had a hope of defending himself.

  Her legs took her on a winding course through the building, trying to gauge the mood. It wasn’t easy. The students stopped talking whenever they saw her, as if they expected her to give them detention - or worse - for chattering in the corridors. They probably did, she realized bitterly. She was no longer one of them. In a sense, she’d never been one of them. They’d never known her as a student of magic, just as a teacher... she felt her heart clench as she spotted the writing on the wall. PENDLE WILL RISE AGAIN. There was no point in trying to remove it. Someone would replace it within the day.

  She shook her head. How did one fight an ideology?

  Her thoughts raced. Nazism had been thoroughly discredited, on Earth, but plenty of other ideologies remained strong despite a track record of failure. Communism had killed more people than Nazism, or fascism in general, but it was still socially acceptable to be a communist. She snorted at the thought. The people who praised the concept of communism had never had to live under it. And the people who liked the idea of magicians being superior to mundanes had never had to live their lives without magic.

  The thought tormented her. She - and she alone - was perhaps the only student who’d seen her living standards drop when she entered Whitehall. Everyone else... even Alassa hadn’t had hot and cold running water in her castle. Not at first. Frieda’s family would have been forced to share their bathing water, when they were able to bathe at all. There would have been no privacy, no sense of personal space... she shuddered. It was hard to deny that magical society had many advantages over the mundane world. And tha
t would remain true for years to come.

  Having superior power doesn’t make you better, she thought. But how do you convince people of that?

  “Emily!” Brier waved to her as she reached the top of the stairs. “Care to join me for a drink?”

  Emily hesitated, then nodded. “Why not?”

  She smiled as Brier led her into her office. The room was crammed with books and manuscripts, ranging from locked bookcases packed with ancient tomes to new printed books piled on desks and chairs. The chamber was large, but there was barely any room for a lone occupant, let alone two. A handful of scrolls lay on a table, a note on top marking them as fake. Emily raised an eyebrow as she read the warnings, then stepped aside as Brier moved a pile of books so she could sit down. The chair was surprisingly comfortable. She was tempted to just close her eyes and go to sleep.

  “It’s been a long day,” Brier said. She passed Emily a cup of warm soup. “I find this helps me stay awake.”

  “Chicken soup?” Emily tested the drink, then took a sip. It tasted stronger than she’d expected. “Does it really help?”

  “I think so,” Brier said. “Things have been pretty hectic over the last few days.”

  “Yeah,” Emily said. She stared into the mug. “The headmistress could have done more.”

  Brier shrugged. “The Old Woman is in a delicate place right now,” she said. “She’s expected to retire shortly. The general feeling is that Damia will take her place, but... both Jens and Allworth have been playing politics, trying to either unseat Damia or take her place.”

  “Crap,” Emily said. The thought of Jens running the school was terrifying. She looked up at Brier. “Why is this happening?”

  “Where do I even begin?” Brier smiled as she sipped her own drink. “Did your father not teach you about politics?”

  “No,” Emily said. Brier meant Void, not her real father. “He prefers to keep politics well away from him.”

  “Some people have all the luck,” Brier said. “Where do I even begin?”

  Emily smiled. “The beginning?”