“If I hadn’t frozen her,” Alassa pointed out, after Emily had made a halting attempt at such an explanation, “we would be explaining ourselves to Madame Strictly right now. And I doubt she would be happy with us.”
Emily scowled. She was right, of course, which didn’t make her morally correct. Imaiqah might have objected more–she was from the lower classes, after all–but she said nothing. Emily couldn’t tell if her friend didn’t want to pick a fight with Alassa, or if she agreed with the Princess. People on the wrong side of the social divide, but still not right at the bottom, might take it more seriously than those right at the top. It validated their position, or so Emily had read. But it seemed absurd.
“People are not objects,” Emily snapped. An idea occurred to her and she smiled. “Do you know what...what a very ancient civilization used to call their slaves?”
Alassa blinked. “Slaves?”
Emily snorted. “They used to call them Tools That Thought,” she said. The Romans had been smarter than the slave-owners of Dixie, or the Ottoman Empire. They’d known that slaves could become productive citizens and had worked hard to integrate them into Roman society once they were manumitted. “They knew that slaves could be dangerous.”
“They didn’t know any charms for keeping them in their place?” Alassa asked. Emily remembered Void’s servants and shuddered, inwardly. “Or didn’t they know better than to let them take liberties?”
Emily pushed her thoughts aside and glared at her friend. “Melissa was weak while you were supported by your friends,” she snapped. The nagging guilt pushed her onwards. “And when you were weak, she attacked and humiliated you. How much more humiliated are the slaves? Be careful which toes you tread on today, because you might be kissing those feet tomorrow!”
Alassa started to speak, but Emily spoke over her. “People think, they have feelings; if you hurt those feelings, they’re going to want revenge. What do you expect will happen if you create a mass of angry people under your throne? You might not live long enough to pass it down to your daughter!”
“A maid can’t hurt me,” Alassa protested.
Emily laughed humorlessly. “And you don’t think that what we just did shows exactly how she can hurt you? You don’t need magic to make someone’s life a misery.”
And then she shook her head. “Learn that lesson before it’s too late. Your kingdom might depend on it.”
She watched Alassa furrow her brow in thought, considering. It was too much to hope that Alassa would change at once, but at least thinking about it was a step in the right direction. She hadn’t planned to be born a Royal Princess, after all. Unless that was possible in this world ... Emily considered it for a long moment, and then dismissed the thought. Everyone would be doing it if it were possible.
Changing the subject, she opened up a Basic Charms textbook and started to read and work through the sample exam questions at the rear of the book. Alassa joined her a moment later. They’d been told that they would be tested in a week, and Emily suspected that she wouldn’t be allowed to progress until Alassa passed the test, too. Some of the Basic questions were surprisingly easy, while others were treacherously complicated. Unlike the exams she remembered from back home, she–they–were being tested on what they’d learned and how they could apply it, not just regurgitating memorized facts and figures.
It might work differently here, she thought, as she answered one question and then glanced at the answer page. I’ll be using these skills for the rest of my life.
One particular charm seemed impossible to dismantle until Alassa pointed out that it was actually a set of hexes, all of which had to be cancelled in the right order. Looking at it, Emily suspected that the writer had deliberately created one to make students think on their feet, because when it was cast in real life the results of an unsuccessful attempt to dismantle it were likely to be unpleasant. He’d included a great many spell components that didn’t seem to do anything at all; it took Emily several minutes to realize that they didn’t do anything, apart from confusing the unwary student. But she would have to check each component carefully, just in case. Some of them seemed to be woven into the active spell components.
Feeling hungry after an hour of study, they left the library and headed down to the dining hall. A small number of students were already there, eating their way through large plates of food before going to their weekend classes. Emily had been warned that she would have to learn courtly etiquette from a tutor before they risked sending her to any Royal Court, except perhaps for Alassa’s own Court. The Grandmaster had told Emily that the King and Queen were relieved she’d helped save their daughter from kidnapping, or worse.
A crash made them all jump. Melissa and her friends had entered the dining hall to pick up plates of food for themselves, but there was definitely something wrong with Melissa. She’d just dropped a plateful of food on the ground and was giggling, rather like a dumb bimbo. Her friends were gathered around her, trying to either clean up the mess or figure out what was wrong; judging from their comments, Melissa had been out of sorts all morning. She had to be wearing the charmed shirt under her robes.
Emily caught sight of Melissa’s eyes and shuddered, wishing that she’d never heard of the Idiot Ball curse. Melissa looked ... vapid, almost completely stupid. Her expression seemed to change at terrifying speed, as if her mood was swinging madly from sheer delight to outright fear. The giggling was becoming increasingly hysterical as she tried, and failed, to clean up the mess she’d created. What had they done to her?
“A stronger curse than I intended,” Alassa muttered. “Now someone will discover it before she goes into classes.”
Emily swallowed the response that came to mind, picked up her plate and dumped it–and the remaining food–through the hatch. She didn’t feel like eating any longer. If she could have removed the hex without revealing what they’d done, she would have done so without a second thought. As it was ... she took one last look at Melissa, who was starting to drool like a kid who thought it was funny to pretend to be dumb, and left the hall. The urge to be violently sick was almost overpowering.
And they’d considered it a prank!
“We are not going to do that again,” Emily snapped. She’d been humiliated when Melissa had frozen her, but their response had been utterly over the top. “We went too far.”
Alassa gave her an odd look, but didn’t argue. It was almost a relief when they entered the hallway and almost walked right into Madame Razz, who practically dragged them into her office. It was a barren room with a sofa, a desk and a small crystal ball standing in one corner.
“You have some explaining to do,” Madame Razz said sharply. “Why did you enter the laundry room?”
Emily hesitated. Alassa spoke first, quickly. “I wanted to recover some of my clothes for today. I thought that that was permitted.”
“It might be permitted,” Madame Razz said. Her eyes narrowed. “But why did you freeze the maid?”
Alassa gulped. “Because I panicked,” she said. Emily found herself wondering how Madame Razz had known what they’d done. She clearly didn’t know about the Idiot Ball, or ... what would she do, if she knew? Whitehall seemed to turn a blind eye to pranks as long as they weren’t likely to cause serious injury or death. “I reacted instinctively.”
“I don’t think I believe you,” Madame Razz said. Her voice hardened. “It is quite hard to convince anyone to work at a school for young magicians. I have to make all kinds of promises to prospective maids, including a promise that they won’t be charmed by every magician who thinks she has a sense of humor. I am going to have to offer them a raise just to prevent them from walking out.”
She opened a drawer in the desk and produced something that looked like a shoe - no, a slipper. “And I also have to deal with you,” she added. She tapped the slipper against her palm meaningfully. “All three of you, bend over the sofa. Now.”
Afterwards, when they were commiserating with each oth
er, Emily felt a moment of relief despite the pain. The maids weren’t slaves after all. They were paid, treated reasonably decently and allowed to leave if they wanted to go.
But how had Madame Razz known what they’d done?
“Stop complaining,” she said to Alassa. “We both know that we all deserved that.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“I BELIEVE THAT, FOR SOME OF YOU, this is your first exam,” Professor Lombardi said. “The procedure is quite simple.”
He looked around the room, his bright eyes glinting with suppressed amusement. “Once you are finished preparing–and I hope you brought everything you were told to bring–I will escort you into a small exam room. You will be given a sheaf of parchments with the first set of exam questions; the exam starts the moment you open the first piece of parchment. For the theory questions, write down your answers on the parchment below the question, fold it up again and seal it with your karmic signature. Bear in mind that you cannot reopen the parchment after it has been sealed.
“You have two hours to answer as many questions as possible. I suggest that you spend the last ten minutes rechecking your answers and then sealing the parchments, as an unsealed parchment is considered invalid. Should you leave the exam room, you will be considered to have completed the exam and you will not be allowed to re-enter the chamber. Do not leave the room unless you are certain that you have finished, or in case of desperate need.
“Once the exam is completed, you may return to this classroom to wait for the tutor who will give you the practical part of the exam. Do not attempt to enter any other exam room for whatever reason. It may mean automatic failure for both students involved, as well as a certain caning for the student who tried to open the door. So don’t do it. You may leave this classroom to find food and drink while you’re waiting, but being late for the second part of the exam will count against you. Are there any questions?”
There were none.
“Good,” Lombardi said. “There are a pair of reference books in the exam rooms, if you need them, along with quills and parchment. You are not allowed to take anything but drink and a snack into the chamber. I suggest that you empty out your robes here and leave everything in the classroom. It won’t be touched while you’re busy.”
Emily and Alassa exchanged glances as they slowly emptied their pockets of everything they’d been carrying. The Professor hadn’t mentioned anything about how that rule was enforced, but after they’d been caught in the laundry room Emily had realized that they were under far tighter scrutiny than she’d assumed. Chances were there were wards around the exam chamber to catch anyone who tried to smuggle something in with them. Not that she intended to try. Passing this exam on the first attempt had become an obsession after she’d started tutoring Alassa.
“Drink and food,” Lombardi repeated as they stood up. “Follow me.”
There was yet another corridor behind the charms classroom, one leading to an endless series of solid doors. The students waited nervously as, one by one, Lombardi took them into a chamber, explained how to use it and then left, closing the door behind him. Emily’s room was a barren chamber, little different from the study rooms in the library. The only real difference was a small toilet compartment and a set of folded parchments on the table.
I should have finished devising the word processor, she thought, as Lombardi motioned for her to sit down. The exam chamber was infused with wards, each one keyed to preventing someone from slipping information into the room. She was surprised that they weren’t keyed to keep unwanted intruders out, or perhaps they were and Lombardi had merely issued his warning to keep their minds focused on avoiding even the appearance of cheating.
Lombardi jabbed his finger into one corner. A glowing countdown appeared in midair. “The timer will start as soon as you open the first parchment,” he said again. Emily nodded impatiently, feeling the butterflies in her stomach that she’d always felt before an important exam. “Remember, leaving the room for any reason counts as ending the exam. If you need help–and it had better be important–dispel the timer. It will summon a tutor to attend to you at once.”
And if it isn’t important, Emily thought sourly, you’ll be trying to finish the exam standing up.
“Good luck,” Lombardi said.
He walked to the door, stepped through it and was gone. A moment later, Emily felt the remaining locking wards shiver into place. Shaking her head, she put her bottle of juice down on the table and checked the two textbooks on the shelf. They were nothing more than pointers, rather than something that would give her the answer. She would still have to know what she was doing–to comprehend it–to pass.
Placing both books within arm’s reach, she picked up the first piece of parchment and opened it slowly. A chime rang through the room as soon as she looked down at the question. She frowned as she read it twice to be sure that she understood. She had to write down a complex set of components for a spell, several of them only to be activated when–if–certain preconditions were met. Annoyingly, it would have been easy to do the whole thing with several separate spells, but that wouldn’t answer the question.
Carefully, she wrote out what she wanted to do, outlined the various spell components, and then wrote it all up into one spell. At the front, she added–as she had been taught–SP. She had a feeling that adding a real startpoint would have cost her the exam.
Opening up the next sheet of parchment, she was surprised to discover a very different question. It was difficult to use a charm to counteract poison, but it was easy to detect the presence of poison, either through a sample of someone’s blood or through scanning their entire body. The second question wanted to know precisely how the charm worked, and what to do if it produced a negative response.
Emily silently thanked God that she’d read around the topic and encouraged Alassa to do the same. Lombardi had never told them directly that poison could be detected if one keyed the spell to look for something alien in a human body. He’d expected them to learn on their own.
There were ten pieces of parchment in all. Emily worked through them, trying not to sweat as the questions grew harder. One of them discussed how to detect subtle charms and hexes, a reminder of what they’d done to Melissa. Her mind started to wander Someone had to have discovered the Idiot Ball by now, surely. Melissa wasn’t stupid and she’d been acting in a manner that practically screamed that she’d been hexed in some way ...
Emily pushed the thought out of her head and wrote down the answer to the question; a sufficiently careful scan of a person’s body would reveal the presence of a hex, if the caster hadn’t managed to hide it behind a stealth charm. But doing that tended to weaken the hex to the point where it was nearly useless. Emily had once tried to ask if that had something to do with the observer effect and had been greeted by blank looks from her tutors.
Ninety minutes passed before she finished writing out the answers, then she went back to reread what she’d written. She wasn’t very happy with one of the questions, but there just seemed to be too many variables for any charm to cover. Absently, she wrote that after her attempt at an answer and suggested using three separate spells as a potential solution. Perhaps it was a trick question. The tutors seemed willing to force them to think, whatever it took.
Shaking her head, she glanced at the timer, then started to seal up the parchments. Her head felt too thick to continue, even after she took a long swig of water and a bite of chocolate. Once all the parchments were sealed, she stood and walked to the door, unsure what to do with her answers. Eventually, she left them on the desk.
She walked out of the room and headed back to the classroom. She wasn’t surprised to discover four other students sitting at their desks, one of them very upset. But there was no sign of Alassa at all.
The Royal Princess didn’t arrive until the final seconds had ticked away. She looked tired and worn and not at all confident, just like Emily felt. They exchanged brief comments as they rested, before the
first of the tutors–a very thin man Emily had never seen before–arrived to take one of the students to the practical exam. She’d never really realized how many tutors there were until the exam. Whitehall seemed to have hundreds of them.
“My brain feels weak,” Alassa muttered. “I hate exams.”
“Me too,” Emily agreed. She didn’t have a clue how many answers she’d managed to get right. Or even if she had got any of them right. “Do you want to get something to eat?”
“Yeah,” Alassa said. “We’d better hurry.”
They left the classroom and ran to the kitchen, where they discovered the kitchen staff had prepared loaves of bread, ham and cheese. Emily had suggested sandwiches to the staff, only to discover that they had heard of the concept, they just didn’t think it was particularly appropriate for the students. Apparently, only commoners ate sandwiches. Given the story behind the invention of the sandwich in Emily’s world–which might or might not be true–she couldn’t help snorting at the irony. But making her own sandwiches could be fun.
“I hear you’re doing the exam again today,” a voice called. Emily’s blood ran cold as she recognized Melissa’s voice. “Try to fail it again, Princess. It will only spare you the humiliation of advanced class!”
Alassa glared after Melissa as she ran down the corridor, one hand grasping for her wand. “I could ...”
“Don’t,” Emily advised. She was more relieved than she wanted to admit that Melissa was all right. Who knew what prolonged exposure to the Idiot Ball would have done? “We have to finish the exam, remember?”
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