The Gordian Knot (Schooled in Magic Book 13)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “They’re in the lower corridor, by the statue of Terrance the Tamer,” Jacqui added. “You’d better go before they manage to escape.”

  Emily gave her a sharp look and then strode out of the study room. She could feel Jacqui’s eyes on her back as she walked through the door and down the stairs, heading straight for the statue. Ice was starting to congeal in her chest, a presentiment of disaster. The wards were flickering alerts, trying to summon the nearest tutor. Emily wondered, sourly, why someone hadn’t beaten her to the scene. Jacqui must have run to the library, just to find Emily. And yet, she hadn’t looked to be out of breath ...

  Emily rounded the corner and stopped, dead. Frieda stood there, frozen by magic. Two younger students—both Second Years, judging by their robes—were also frozen. Emily felt a flicker of relief as she realized that neither of them were her mentees, then winced as she saw the frogs—also frozen—on the floor. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to sense the different magical signatures. Jacqui had laid down an impressively comprehensive freezing spell, but it was Frieda who’d cast the other spells. And she’d cast them on Second Years ...

  Shit, Emily thought, numbly.

  Jacqui’s spell snapped. Frieda stumbled forward, then collapsed to the floor as her muscles cramped violently. The others fell too, gasping in pain. Jacqui had used a cruel spell, part of Emily’s mind noted. She’d locked up their muscles rather than simply freezing them in place. It wasn’t an easy spell to break, but still ... Frieda should have been able to break it before Emily arrived. Unless ...

  “She turned them into frogs,” one of the younger students cried. “She ...”

  Emily glanced at Frieda, who was pulling herself up into a sitting position, then looked at the frogs. They stared back at her, beseechingly. Emily sighed as she cast the counterspell, wondering if she was doing them any favors. But Frieda had used a transfiguration spell that was cunningly designed to be hard to remove, from the inside. It wasn’t quite fixed in place—something that would have landed Frieda in real trouble—but neither of the victims could escape. Emily groaned as they returned to human form. They, too, were Second Years.

  She gazed at Frieda, who looked back at her defiantly. What had happened?

  “Go back to your dorms,” Emily ordered the Second Years. She glanced at her watch. “Stay there until dinner, then go eat.”

  “But ...”

  “Go,” she repeated. “Now.”

  She looked at Frieda. “Come with me.”

  The wards pulsed against her mind as she led Frieda into a nearby classroom. They hadn’t recorded everything that had happened, merely the brief exchange of magic. Emily was torn between relief—the staff couldn’t monitor their words—and concern. Whatever had happened, it looked bad for Frieda. She was a Fourth Year. Picking on Second Years was beneath her. It would also land her in hot water if anyone else found out.

  Jacqui did find out, Emily thought. What happened?

  She cast a handful of privacy wards, then met Frieda’s eyes. “What happened?”

  “They were talking about you,” Frieda said. “One of them said ...”

  Emily winced as Frieda’s voice trailed off. Of course one of them had mouthed off. Frieda wasn’t the sort of person to let an insult go by, not given her upbringing. And it hadn’t even been an insult about Frieda herself.

  Frieda looked down. “They deserved it.”

  “You’re two years older than them,” Emily pointed out, carefully. It was hard to reprimand Frieda. She was a friend. “They shouldn’t stand a chance against you.”

  “They’re all in the dueling club,” Frieda said, tartly.

  “Which is meaningless,” Emily countered. “You know as well as I do that the older students dominate the arena.”

  “I kicked what’s-his-name’s ass,” Frieda snapped.

  “That’s because he got careless.” Emily cleared her throat. “Playing freeze tag with younger students is one thing. Hexing them in the corridors is quite another.”

  “They insulted you,” Frieda insisted, stubbornly. “I taught them a lesson.”

  “Perhaps not the right lesson.” Emily gritted her teeth. There had been times, back on Earth, when she would have sold her soul for the power to silence her critics. The rational side of her mind pointed out that it wouldn’t have gained her anything, but she had to admit that it would have felt good. “Frieda, you can’t go picking on younger students. You know that!”

  Frieda wilted. “Are you really that angry at me?”

  Emily sighed. “What’s the problem? What’s the real problem?”

  “I don’t understand it.” Frieda stamped her foot on the floor, suddenly looking younger. Much younger. “Everything he says. I don’t understand it!”

  “Celadon,” Emily realized. The frustration in her friend’s tone was striking. “Is he not trying to explain things to you?”

  “He says he’s trying.” Frieda started to pace, one hand playing with the bracelet on her wrist. “But I don’t understand!”

  She spun around, her plaits dancing through the air. “I don’t understand and we’re running out of time and ...”

  Emily forced herself to think. Frieda and Celadon would be required to make a presentation to the staff, either during or after half-term. If Frieda really didn’t understand what she was talking about, it would become obvious very quickly. Was Celadon deliberately sabotaging his own project? That would be insane. He’d lose marks too ... at best, he’d scrape through the year. And at worst, he’d be denied the chance to repeat the year.

  She held up a hand. “Tell you what,” she said. “Half-term is in two weeks. I should have some free time over the holidays. We’ll sit down together and go through the project together. If I can’t make head or tails of it, we’ll go to your supervisor and request that you be assigned a new partner.”

  Frieda shot her a worshipful look. “That would be great!”

  “Maybe,” Emily said, dryly. Professor Lombardi would not be pleased. There was a fine line between assisting and doing the work and she had a feeling she might be about to cross it. “But you can’t go around assaulting younger students.”

  “They deserved it,” Frieda said. “Emily, they said ...”

  “It doesn’t matter what they said,” Emily told her, knowing that Frieda wouldn’t understand. She’d grown up in a society where insults had to be punished. “I don’t want you to hex them anymore.”

  “Oh.” Frieda looked down. Her voice was suddenly very quiet. “Are you going to punish me?”

  Emily hesitated. “No,” she said. Frieda was going through a bad patch. And Jacqui knew Frieda had been hexing younger students. “But you should probably keep that to yourself.”

  “I’ll scream every time I sit down,” Frieda promised.

  “I think that might be overdoing it,” Emily said. “Just try to look a little subdued.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “IT’S BEEN AN INTERESTING SIX WEEKS.” Gordian sipped his Kava, thoughtfully. “Would you not agree?”

  Emily kept her face expressionless. Gordian had summoned her two days after the incident with Frieda, inviting her to his private chambers and offering her a drink. She supposed that meant she wasn’t in trouble, although she had no idea what it did mean. Gordian could hardly be blind to the rumors flowing around the school. He might choose to consider them beneath his dignity, but he’d still be aware of them.

  Aloha didn’t have these problems, Emily thought, resentfully. The badge on her chest felt heavy. She wondered, tiredly, just how bad it would be if she resigned. Cirroc was clever, handsome and popular. She was sure he’d be chosen in her place. If I’d known I was going to be elected ...

  “Yes,” she said, finally. “I’ve been very busy with my studies.”

  Gordian nodded, slowly. “And running the dueling club and everything else a Head Girl has to do. I trust you’ve been finding it an interesting insight into life as a tutor?”


  Emily tried, hard, not to show any reaction. “Do tutors have to do everything?”

  “No,” Gordian said. “But they do have to mark essays as well as patrol the corridors, supervise detentions and whatever other duties I see fit to assign.”

  He leaned back in his chair, lifting his head until he was peering down his nose at her. “Which leads neatly to another point,” he added, dryly. “Why didn’t you punish Frieda for bullying younger students?”

  Emily blinked in surprise. She hadn’t expected that question. “I told her off,” she said, carefully. She wondered, suddenly, if Jacqui had tattled on her. Or if Gordian had been monitoring Frieda for reasons of his own. Or ... maybe she was just being paranoid. But someone had started a smear campaign against her. Gordian might be trying to keep an eye on Emily as well as her closest friends. “I believed that was enough punishment.”

  “I’m sure Frieda was scared straight by your telling-off,” Gordian said, his tone as dry as dust. “You have an obligation to punish students for breaking the rules. Tell me ... would you have told off another student? Or would you have sent them to the Warden? Or administered the punishment yourself?”

  “I believe I would have handled the matter as I saw fit,” Emily said. She had to fight to keep her hands from shaking. She’d stumbled into ... something. “I don’t believe there’s a single way to handle all such incidents.”

  “And yet you sent a trio of bullies to face the Warden only a few short weeks ago,” Gordian said. His voice suddenly hardened. “Whitehall’s rules work, Lady Emily, because they are enforced evenly. We do not pretend to care if someone comes from the very highest levels in society or if they were born in a pigsty. We treat them all equally. Frieda’s crime was far worse than those idiotic firsties, yet you saw fit to give her a lesser punishment. Why?”

  Emily gritted her teeth as she tried to think of an answer. The hell of it, she suspected, was that there wasn’t a good answer. Frieda had been guilty of a serious offense. There was no way around it. And Emily had barely done anything about it. Gordian was right. Her telling off—which had been nowhere near as unpleasant as the lectures Emily had endured from Lady Barb or Sergeant Miles—wasn’t a real punishment.

  “I believed that other factors were involved,” she said. “I ...”

  “And none of those factors matter,” Gordian said, flatly. “What matters is that you saw fit to let her get away with it.”

  “I didn’t,” Emily said.

  Gordian snorted. “A matter of opinion. And everyone’s opinion is that you showed favor to your friend.”

  Emily felt her temper begin to crack. “What would you have done?”

  “I would have sent her to the Warden,” Gordian said. “And if I had felt unprepared to handle it, I would have turned the matter over to a tutor.”

  “No tutor showed up,” Emily said, icily. She told herself, firmly, to keep her temper under control. “Where were they?”

  “Outside, mostly.” Gordian cocked his head. “You’re making excuses for your failure, Lady Emily.”

  Emily forced herself to stare back at him, as evenly as she could. Was she about to be dismissed from her post? It would be something of a relief. She wouldn’t mourn the office, not when it came with duties she was ill-prepared to handle. Cirroc or Melissa or someone who actually wanted the job could have it. She could finish her studies and graduate in peace.

  Gordian reached into a desk drawer and produced a large scroll. “Have you ever seen one of these before?”

  “No, sir,” Emily said. She felt a flash of disappointment. Was she not being dismissed? “I ... I don’t think so.”

  “It’s a permanent record.” Gordian touched his hand to the wax seal, his lips moving soundlessly as he murmured a charm. Emily couldn’t make out the words, but the wax seal dropped off a second later and fell into Gordian’s hand. “We rarely show them to anyone but the parents or guardians of the student in question. Eventually, they become a matter of public record.”

  Emily frowned. She’d assumed she had a permanent record, but she’d never seen it. Had Void? Or any of the other tutors? A spy in Whitehall might be able to read it ... she shrugged, dismissing the thought. Her permanent record wouldn’t include anything that would make a reader raise their eyebrows. She doubted Gordian had written anything about Emily’s influence over the wards where someone else might see it.

  “This is your friend’s record.” Gordian removed a pair of nasty-looking hexes from the scroll, then held it out to Emily. “Have a look.”

  Emily hesitated. “Am I allowed to look?”

  “I am authorized to share these with anyone, if I see fit,” Gordian said. “And besides, you are listed as one of Frieda’s guardians.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes.” Gordian pushed the scroll towards her. “You’re listed as an unattached guardian.”

  Emily took the scroll and opened it, slowly. She wasn’t sure she wanted to look. It felt as though she was invading Frieda’s privacy, even though she knew Gordian and the other tutors could—and did—read the scroll whenever they liked. Her fingers felt oddly uncertain as she placed the scroll on the table, skimming the first set of lines. Someone—Lady Barb or Grandmaster Hasdrubal—had definitely listed Emily as one of Frieda’s guardians.

  Third in line, after Lady Barb and Sergeant Miles, she mused. Lady Barb had never mentioned being Frieda’s guardian. Emily had never considered the possibility. But someone would have had to take on the role, after Frieda left Mountaintop. It was more of a surprise that Emily had been included on the list. Baroness of Cockatrice or not, the magical community wouldn’t see her as an adult until she left school. That will make life interesting, if I ever have to use the title.

  She looked up. “Sir ... what do you want me to see?”

  “The records for her Fourth Year,” Gordian said. “You might find them ... interesting.”

  Emily eyed him suspiciously, then opened the scroll still further. Frieda had done well in her third year, she noted, but she’d been marked down repeatedly for her theoretical work. Her Fourth Year—only six weeks into the year—was marred by over thirty disciplinary notes, including nine trips to the Warden. Emily swallowed, hard, as the meaning dawned on her.

  “Frieda’s behavior has gone downhill,” Gordian said, putting it into words. “Sharply downhill, I might add. There is no record of someone else earning quite so many thrashings in such a short space of time. The vast majority of students don’t earn so many thrashings in all six years. Not handing in her homework, talking back to her tutors, fighting with her classmates ... she’s really gone downhill.”

  Emily felt her heart sink. “I ...”

  “There is a very good chance that her marks will fall below acceptable levels by the time we reach the second half-term,” Gordian said, his voice carefully controlled. “I have reviewed some of her work personally. It has a number of mistakes that she should have been able to avoid, even as a younger student. I am not impressed.”

  “I didn’t know.” Emily swallowed, hard. “What ... what happens if her marks stay low?”

  “It would depend,” Gordian said. “If there was a good chance that she wouldn’t be able to complete the year, regardless of her performance on the exams, she would normally be offered a chance to retake the year. But her behavior has been so poor over the last few weeks that I would hesitate to allow it.”

  “She ... she wasn’t that bad with me,” Emily said. “I ...”

  But Frieda hexed a pair of younger students, her thoughts pointed out. And she’s still unable to come to grips with her joint project.

  “That is not my concern,” Gordian said. “What should be your concern is that you are ... associated ... with Frieda.”

  “She’s my friend,” Emily snapped.

  “And people judge you by the friends you keep.” Gordian tapped the scroll, meaningfully. “This friend is on a rapid course towards expulsion, Lady Emily. And she might bring you do
wn too. You do not want people thinking you treat her any differently from anyone else.”

  “Because that would be so uncommon here,” Emily snarled. She took a long breath, forcing herself to calm down. “I don’t know how to handle it.”

  “I suggest that you tell her to shape up before it’s too late,” Gordian said. “And if she doesn’t, I would advise you to dump her. Her behavior reflects on you. If she’s bad, she’ll make you look bad too.”

  “I’m not going to dump her,” Emily said.

  “Then she might bring you down with her too.” Gordian took the scroll and started to roll it up. “We generally discourage friendships between students in different years, Lady Emily. This is why.”

  Emily fought down a couple of nasty responses. She and Caleb were friends—and they’d been lovers—but they’d been in the same year, when they’d met. Frieda was two years younger than Emily, a gap that the vast majority of the student body would consider insurmountable. And yet, no one had said anything when Emily had spent time with Jade, back in her first year ...

  We were in Martial Magic together, she reminded herself. And the sergeants would have taken a dim view of any hanky-panky.

  “I’ll talk to her about it,” she said. “But ...”

  “It isn’t uncommon for the less ... academically-inclined students to have problems as they move up in years,” Gordian said. “That is understandable. Sometimes, repeating a year is the best thing for them. But I cannot tolerate bad behavior on this scale. Frieda is not just hurting herself, Emily. She’s hurting others.”

  “I understand,” Emily said.

  “I would advise you to have nothing more to do with her,” Gordian said. “But you wouldn’t listen, would you?”

  Emily felt a hot flash of anger. “Are you always so ... so callous?”

  “I’m old enough to know that some people are beyond help,” Gordian said. “And such people are always going to drag you down, if you let them.”

  He put the scroll back in the drawer, then slammed it closed. “I have heard from the Dueling League,” he added. “They’ll be sending observers to the first round.”