Alassa looked up at her, meeting her eyes. “Where do you come from, really?”
“Somewhere else,” Emily said, discarding the thought of lying outright. “Why does it matter?”
“My parents sent me a letter,” Alassa said. She took another sip of her drink. “Their Man-At-Arms has told them that a merchant in their city has introduced his horsemen to something called stirrups. This same merchant has also introduced a new system for counting numbers that has pushed the Accounting Guild into demanding action. And all of these innovations already have names. Duncan tells me that the accounting system is mature.”
She didn’t take her eyes off Emily’s face. “Even I know that a new spell, one created from scratch, needs time and effort before it is workable. Your accounting system seems perfect, too perfect to be true.”
Emily blinked. “My accounting system?”
“The merchant who introduced it is Imaiqah’s father,” Alassa said tartly. “How many different ideas can one man have?”
Benjamin Franklin had thousands of ideas, Emily thought. But Franklin–or even his son–wouldn’t have been considered a suitable influence in this world. And he, too, had stood on the shoulders of giants.
“You gave your friend these ideas and she gave them to her father,” Alassa said. Her voice held no doubt at all. “And now they’re already upsetting the world.”
She tapped the table. “And my parents have told me, they ordered me, to get close to the Child of Destiny. They said that I was to encourage you to help us without causing further disruptions in the Kingdom ... They said I was to help you, to learn from you ... I told them that you were tutoring me and they were proud! My father said that I could even invite you home for the holidays!”
Emily stared at her in absolute disbelief, and then found her voice. “You have to be kidding. Me? Visit a King and Queen?”
“You’re a Child of Destiny,” Alassa said. “Anointed by a dragon. What am I to you?”
“I - I don’t know,” Emily admitted. She wasn’t a Child of Destiny. And yet she’d already upset the world. Did Alassa’s parents believe that Emily could be used to secure their Kingdom, if they made nice with her, or did they think they could use her to keep control as the ripples of change grew stronger? If they had known–or suspected–some of the other concepts that Emily had suggested to Imaiqah’s father, they would have fainted. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“I looked in a book,” Alassa said. “No Child of Destiny has ever wanted to be a Child of Destiny. That doesn’t stop them from changing the world.”
Emily suspected they’d read the same book. Children of Destiny was thin, barely passing for genuine scholarship. It was really nothing more than a list of Children and their exploits, some rather extraordinary. The one factor that almost all of them had had in common was that they had been declared Children of Destiny after they had already changed the world. Hindsight, it seemed, allowed them to be identified easily.
Curious, Emily had tried to determine if magic could be used to see the future. The books had been quite vague on the subject, which suggested to her that it wasn’t really possible, at least not in any useful way. That fitted in with what Emily knew of the many-worlds theory, along with simple common sense. If she were told that doing something would kill her, she’d do something else, which would invalidate the prophecy.
But Shadye had clearly believed that he could identify a Child of Destiny–and failed spectacularly.
Yet Emily was changing the world.
And if you believe that you’re infallible, a little voice whispered at the back of her mind, you’ll fall down hard for sure.
“I didn’t mean to do that either,” Emily admitted. “And I am sorry for whatever I have done to you.”
“You’re sorry?” Alassa demanded. She swept the glass off the table and watched as it crashed to the ground. “You’re sorry?”
Her voice hardened, as if she was trying hard not to cry. “I’m the laughing stock of the school. I can’t even cast a simple spell properly. A girl with barely a week’s experience in magic almost kills me. The Warden whips me and then leaves me to stand, in the corridor, as I cry. My friends snigger at me behind my back. No one takes me seriously any longer.”
Emily saw real tears in Alassa’s eyes as she raged on. “And now my parents tell me that I should cuddle up to you, the girl who shattered everything I ever had, and convince you to be my friend. I’d rather die! Do you know what it’s like to have everyone laughing at you behind your back?”
“Yes,” Emily said flatly. She knew what it was like to be alone, and friendless ... and Alassa hadn’t had any real friends. Maybe no one would dare touch her, or pick on her, but being alone was enough of a torment for a growing teenage girl. Or maybe, now that Emily had escaped serious punishment for almost killing her, others would be emboldened to strike back at their former tormentor. “I used to be very alone.”
She hesitated, looking for the right words. “You’re still the Crown Princess, aren’t you?”
Alassa looked up, through tears. “Yes, but what does that matter?”
“So you haven’t lost everything at all,” Emily pointed out, in a calm and reasonable voice. “You will pass Basic Charms and start mastering more complex spells. Over time, you will mature and become a Queen your subjects can respect and follow. All that you have really lost is the delusion that your cronies were actually your friends.”
She hesitated, then gambled. “Maybe my task as a Child of Destiny is to steer you into becoming the best Queen of all time. You would have needed that lesson to grow up.”
Alassa coughed, Emily could tell that Alassa was trying not to cry outright. “And you are so wise because you’re a Child of Destiny?”
“No,” Emily admitted. “I just went through something similar myself.”
The thought made Emily scowl. Back home, the rich kids had definitely seemed to have an easier time of life. People said that money couldn’t buy happiness, but it could buy a pretty good approximation of it. And yet ... how many friends had been effectively purchased with money, or presents, or merely the hint of rewards to come? Alassa’s family could reward those who took care of their daughter with gifts beyond their wildest dreams.
But Alassa would never have been given true friendship.
Emily looked at the Princess, then produced a handkerchief from her robes. “Here,” she said. “Dry your eyes. Then we can talk properly.”
She looked over into the building and saw ... nothing. “What is this place?”
“A bar,” Alassa said, as she wiped her eyes dry. “A place for students to come and drink when they have finished their shopping.”
Emily frowned, looking at the remains of the bright red liquid on the ground. “What–exactly–were you drinking?”
“Red Rose,” Alassa said. The name meant nothing to Emily. “I just wanted to forget the world and make it go away.”
Something alcoholic, Emily guessed. Of course; this world probably wouldn’t have any compunctions about selling alcohol to minors. They didn’t even have a definition for minor child, let alone child labor laws. Imaiqah had told her that some neighborhood kids had gone to work for merchants for a copper or two per week. Emily suspected that the kids were being badly underpaid.
She looked back into the building and waved at a moving shape. “Bring us some hot Kava,” she ordered as soon as the young girl appeared in the doorway. “And some bread as well.”
Alassa stared at her. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going to talk,” Emily said. “You know–we’re going to talk like friends.”
She waited until the serving girl had brought them two steaming mugs of Kava and a plate of hot bread, then passed the girl a silver coin. From her stare–and Alassa’s chuckle–it was clear that she had massively overpaid, but the girl took the coin and vanished before Emily could take it back. Emily didn’t mind too much; she just hoped that the girl’s mother or fath
er or whoever else she worked for wouldn’t take it for themselves.
“So,” Alassa said, after a long moment. “Where do you come from?”
Emily thought quickly. If she told Alassa the truth ... what would happen? Emily couldn’t see any danger to her own world by letting the secret slip, but there would be danger for Emily herself. The easiest way to prevent a Child of Destiny from actually doing whatever Destiny wanted her to do was to kill her first.
What would Alassa tell her parents and what would they do to keep themselves on top?
“Long story,” she said, after a long pause. “Can you keep a secret from everyone else?”
Alassa hesitated, and then made a visible decision to be honest. “I can’t keep secrets from my parents,” she admitted. “It’s part of the Royal Bloodline.”
Part of Emily’s mind wondered just how literally accurate that statement was. Kings and Queens had justified their behavior throughout the centuries by claiming to rule by Divine Right, but that struck her as little more than the same justification that retrospectively anointed Children of Destiny. If God had given the monarchs the right to rule, why hadn’t He made them good rulers?
“What do you mean?” Emily asked. “The Royal Bloodline?”
Alassa flushed bright red. “The nobles of Zangaria swear loyalty to my father’s bloodline. Those oaths are blurred with ancient magic handed down from monarch to monarch. My father has many strange abilities running through his bloodline; I cannot lie to him. Nor can my mother, or anyone who swore themselves to him permanently.”
Emily considered it. “You mean he always knows when you are lying?”
“I mean I can’t lie,” Alassa said. “If he asks a question, I have to answer truthfully and completely. It’s written into the Royal Bloodline.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Emily protested. “Your mother isn’t a blood relative, is she?”
“She swore to him when they married,” Alassa said. “And when I have children, they won’t be able to lie to me either.”
Emily winced. She wouldn’t have wanted to grow up in a household where she had to answer every question truthfully, although she could see the logic behind the charm. When Queen Elizabeth the First had been a Princess, she’d been caught in a compromising situation that could have easily led to her execution, if only because a Royal Princess had to be above suspicion. If she’d been under a spell that made her speak truthfully, she would have been proclaimed innocent quickly enough ... or condemned, if she had been guilty. It made sense, all right, but it sickened her. There was such a thing as too much truth.
“I’ll tell you when you become Queen,” Emily said, finally.
Alassa looked at her for a long moment, and then nodded reluctantly.
Emily smiled in relief, then asked a question that had been nagging at her for a while. “How were you treated as you grew up?”
Alassa started to talk, sipping her Kava as she spoke. As Emily had expected, Alassa had been treated very well from birth, with a governess who had escorted her everywhere. It had been a dream life, but not one that had prepared her to rule. Emily wondered if her parents had still been trying for a boy, or if they’d thought Alassa would learn how to rule through watching how her father ruled his Kingdom. Unsurprisingly, all of the flattery and praise had gone to her head; it had been a shock to discover that Whitehall didn’t want to treat her with the deference to which she was accustomed.
Emily took a bite of the bread and smiled in enjoyment. Bread wasn’t something she had really appreciated back home, but even the simplest bread at Whitehall was a marvelous taste sensation. It almost made up for all the modern conveniences that Whitehall lacked, things like computers and televisions and air conditioning. Alassa ate with less delight, but at least she was eating. Somewhere under the brat, Emily decided, was a worthwhile human being.
“They hired a tutor to teach me magic,” Alassa explained as they finished the snack. “I never realized that he was crippling me from learning on my own.”
“You might want to ask your father why he was chosen,” Emily said. The intrigues that had swarmed through Royal Courts in her world would be nastier in a world with magic. “Perhaps someone intended to cripple you when you assumed the Throne.”
Alassa blanched. “I never considered it,” she said. “Do you think that’s possible?”
“It could be,” Emily said. It was also possible that the tutor had tried to teach Alassa Basic Charms and found it impossible, so he’d simply helped her to memorize a number of spells. But she kept that opinion to herself. “What would happen if you couldn’t understand spells on your own?”
“I’d have to hire a Court Wizard,” Alassa said. Her voice went flat, as if she were remembering something her parents had told her in one of their few parental moments. “They tend to have bad attitudes.”
Emily remembered kingmaker and shivered. “I can imagine,” she said, as she stood up. No doubt the Court Wizards considered themselves the powers behind the thrones. “I have to find Imaiqah. Why don’t you come shopping with us?”
She almost laughed as Alassa gaped at her. “You might try to make proper friends instead of merely summoning cronies,” Emily said. She had to fight down the urge to suggest that it was part of her destiny. That would have been cruel. “Imaiqah is a decent person and she might make a proper friend if you approached her right. And you owe her a few apologies.”
“I ...” Alassa stopped and looked confused. She was growing up, after all. Maybe she could master the concept of respecting people even if they weren’t well-born. “You might be right.”
Emily nodded, then allowed Alassa to proceed her out of the courtyard, into an alleyway.
A figure stood at one end of it, his face hidden by a mask. Emily felt a thrill of alarm; she started to cast a spell, only to see it deflected off a wand the figure carried in one hand.
Seconds later, something stuck both girls and sent them crashing to the ground. There was a flickering burst of pain, and then ... darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“SHE’S WAKING UP,” A SCRATCHY VOICE said. “I can keep her under, if you would prefer.”
“No need to worry,” a deeper voice said. “Besides, we should see what they can offer.”
Emily slowly fought her way to wakefulness. Her head felt as if she’d been hit several times–or, part of her mind offered, as if she’d drunk something she really shouldn’t have considered drinking. There was a foul taste in her mouth, the remnants of something she’d drunk–or someone had forced down her throat. She coughed and felt the remains of herbs and spices and something unidentifiable tickling down her throat.
Something was definitely wrong.
Her arms hurt badly. In her confused state, it took her several moments to realize that the reason she couldn’t move was not paralysis, but restraints binding her to an uncomfortable wooden chair. Her hands were tied behind her back and her feet felt as if they had been lashed to the chair. Movement was almost impossible, no matter how hard she struggled.
Oddly, she found that reassuring. Shadye would have used a spell to paralyze her; he wouldn’t have needed common ropes and knots.
Magic, she thought, and remembered the wand that had been used to stun her. Whoever had captured her–and Alassa, she assumed–wasn’t a very powerful magician, if he was a magician at all. Sergeant Harkin’s endless textbooks on magical warfare had told her that magicians could enchant wands, daggers and other weapons for non-magicians to use, if they were willing to spare the power.
Or she could just have had the ill luck to run into a mage who had never learned to cast spells without his wand. There were just too many possibilities for her to draw any firm conclusions.
A finger touched her cheek; she drew back, reflexively. “You may as well open your eyes,” the deep voice said. “We know you’re awake.”
Emily opened her eyes and found herself staring into a pair of surprisingly warm brown eyes. The
speaker stepped backwards, allowing her to see him properly. It took her a moment to realize that he was actually posing for her. He was a tall man, with more muscles on his arms than anyone else she’d seen apart from the Sergeants, wearing a strange set of armor that covered little more than the average female bathing suit. His chest was covered, as was his neck, but his legs were as naked as they’d been the day he was born. Long dark hair, so black and shiny that she was convinced that he took very good care of it, framed a face that would have been handsome if it hadn’t been so battered. And if he had lacked a moustache that reminded her of Adolf Hitler’s trademark appearance.
“Who ... ?” She swallowed, and tried again. “Who are you?”
The man snorted. “My name is ...”
“That will do,” a third voice said sharply. “I thought even you would know better than to speak your name to a magician.”
“Do not fret,” the scratchy voice said. “I fed her a potion derived from the Durian. She has as little spark and tar as you do, Ambrose.”
Emily looked at the magician and shivered. He was inhumanly tall and thin, so thin that the only thing seeming to keep him upright was magic. A long white beard dangled towards the floor. His eyes, half-hidden within shadow, sparkled with malevolent light. He looked too ... poor to be a necromancer, , but if he’d fed her a potion she doubted that he was a very good wizard. Carefully, she tried to cast a spell and discovered he was right. Her mana seemed drained, almost gone.
The loss shocked her. She’d only known that magic was possible for six weeks and now it was gone.
Or was it? Thande had said nothing about magic-dampening potions, but he had implied that most potions had a very limited lifespan and–eventually–stopped working altogether. If she could hold on until the potion left her bloodstream, her magic should return and she could use it ... and she hadn’t depended on magic before Shadye had accidentally snatched her up. She knew how to live without it.
“Pretty bird,” the third speaker said. “It is almost a shame that we have ... contractors waiting for you, and for the Princess.”
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