Tournament of Ruses

by Kate Stradling

  Any lurking creatures must have sensed as much, for she arrived at her doorstep unmolested. She swept inside with regal bearing, answered Mrs. Finch’s query about her evening with an appropriately civil response, and then went straight up the stairs to her room.

  “Asked for it,” Flora muttered as she stripped her gloves from her hands. “As if anyone would ask for any of this!” Unfortunately, even in her limited experience with the world she knew that there existed people who would. She could name half a dozen girls from back home that probably would have switched places with her in a heartbeat. The thought only made Flora that much angrier, for obviously such imbeciles had no idea what a switch like that would entail.

  Well, fine, she decided. If the only way to alleviate her situation was to take control, then take control she would. It had worked well enough tonight, hadn’t it?

  Chapter Fourteen: All Bets are Final

  As much as I want to play by my own rules, doing so would be completely reckless and a sure way to get myself into a whole lot of trouble. I cannot cut off ties with the palace, for example, because that leaves me vulnerable to any monsters seeking to prey upon a weak little guardian. Neither can I relinquish guardianship over that well. For one thing, it would be like admitting defeat, and at this point, I’m not willing to do something like that. For another, it would break Dad’s influence with the Prince and thus with Parliament. I’m not yet ready to cut off my nose to spite my face.

  No, any assertion I exert must be within the framework of rules in the society around me. That means that if I want Georgiana off my back, I have to make her want to avoid me (and preferably make her fear me enough that she won’t totally ruin my reputation with her poisoned tongue). It also means that if I’m serious about refusing any further help from the future Prime Minister, I must make an appeal to the present one.

  Courage, don’t fail me. He’s never seemed like a person I wanted to cross.

  Flora’s resolve did not dissipate with sleep. Morning dawned, and her determination rose with it. Most members of Parliament worked a half-day on Saturdays, and her father was no different. She coerced him into leaving for the palace earlier than usual and found herself in front of the secretary of the Prime Minister at a quarter to nine. Mr. Sterling looked up curiously.

  “I need to speak with the Prime Minister,” said Flora.

  His brows shot up, but he immediately flipped open his appointment book. “I can get you in sometime next week—” he started.

  “That’s not soon enough,” she interrupted. “I need to speak with him now.” If she dared wait another day her resolve might falter.

  “He’s not here yet,” said Mr. Sterling.

  “Then I’ll wait,” she replied, and she rigidly sat. Mr. Sterling looked as though he might protest, but she directed such an arch look upon him that he immediately shut his mouth and resumed his work.

  Five minutes passed in absolute silence.

  “And what have we here?” asked Prime Minister Moreland, his coat over one arm. (Did he not live at the palace, Flora wondered. Why on earth did he carry a coat?) “Good morning, Miss Dalton.”

  “Good morning, Prime Minister,” she replied, and she stood resolutely. “I’d like a word with you. It won’t take long.”

  Mr. Sterling pretended not to watch this interchange, but the tilt of his head gave him away. Prime Minister Moreland, more than aware of his secretary’s presence, immediately motioned Flora into his office.

  “I need a new tutor,” she said the moment he shut the door.

  He spoke with careful control in his voice. “Has Charles not been performing the job well enough?”

  “I’ve received more help from Edmund,” Flora replied. “I understand that this is just as unusual a circumstance for you as it is for me, but it’s my life at risk. I can’t sit passively by trying to glean the knowledge I need while depending on others to protect me. Or is that what you’d prefer?”

  Prime Minister Moreland kept an impassive expression, as usual. “Me? I assure you, Miss Dalton, the last thing I want is a guardian who must always depend upon others.”

  “No, you wanted someone else entirely for the job,” said Flora.

  “That’s true.” He moved past her to sit at his desk.

  Flora remained standing. “As long as it’s mine, I think I should have proper instruction.”

  “That’s also true. I’m sorry Charles has been less than sufficient in that respect. Are you really prepared to learn everything that being a magician entails?” he asked then, and he raised critical eyes to her.

  “If it’s what I have to do, then I’ll do it.”

  “Even if it means hours of study every day?”

  “Time I have plenty of.”

  He nodded thoughtfully and wrote something on a slip of paper. This he proffered to Flora.

  She eyed it suspiciously. “What is it?”

  “Your office,” he answered. “I’ll make a deal with you, Miss Dalton. You study everything you can about magic for the next month, and I will administer an assessment at the end of it. If you pass, I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that you become a full-fledged magician, recognized by the Eternal Prince himself. If you fail, you will relinquish guardianship of that well immediately.”

  Flora’s fingers were already outstretched to take the paper, but she hesitated.

  “Did you not just say you wished to be independent in your guardianship?” Prime Minister Moreland inquired. “My own daughter studied magic for seven years before I put her in charge of the old well, and even then she didn’t assume full guardianship over it until last summer. You have absolutely no foundation whatsoever in magic, and if you cannot build one quickly, I cannot support your keeping that position.”

  In a rush of determination, Flora snatched the paper from him. “Is it even possible for me to pass your assessment in a month’s time? If you’re determined to be rid of me, can’t you just frame it to be impossible? As a novice I’d never be the wiser.”

  He smiled wryly. “You’ll have to take my word on that count. Don’t worry: magic really is very simple once you’ve mastered the fundamentals. Now, that office is here in the administrative wing, and it’s yours for the next month. I’ll send tutors and necessary materials to you there. You may collect the key from Mr. Sterling, and I strongly suggest that you keep the door locked when you’re not there, given the nature of your studies.”

  Flora took this as a dismissal. “Thanks,” she told him grudgingly, unsure of whether he was giving her a fair opportunity or not.

  “The pleasure was all mine, Miss Dalton,” he replied with a bland smile. It was maddening how he could always remain so in control of his expressions.

  She collected the new key from Mr. Sterling as commanded. The secretary looked aghast to hand such a thing over to her and she did not know whether it was her age or gender that caused that reaction—probably both, she reasoned as she traversed the halls to find the appointed room. The women of Lenore did not receive offices in the administrative wing of the palace, and neither did anyone who had not yet achieved a majority of years. Eighteen-year-old Flora Dalton was about to become very much an anomaly, and likely the subject of more rumors than anyone could count.

  She found that she didn’t care. She would have her chance at study. If, after a month, she could not demonstrate a foundational proficiency, then she deserved to get booted as a guardian. What’s more, she was fairly certain that, should she fail, Prime Minister Moreland would gladly help her convince her dad that she belonged back in the countryside. He could claim it was for her safety, if nothing else.

  Her office was devoid of any furnishings except a desk and a chair. A layer of dust lay thick on everything. Flora immediately pulled out her handkerchief to remedy this. There was a nice window that overlooked the snow-covered back gardens of the palace. No sooner had Flora wiped away the layer of dust than she turned her attention there. She could see the forest beyond the palace
walls, and the gray sky that loomed overhead. This was a vast improvement over the basement.

  A knock sounded on the door. “Come in,” Flora called, an edge to her voice. If it was Charles Moreland—

  “H’lo,” said a very cheerful Edmund. He entered with his hands full of books. “Father said I get to be your tutor today!”

  She wondered if she should track down Prime Minister Moreland and wring his neck. Certainly she had said that Edmund was more helpful than Charlie, but she hadn’t meant to imply that he would make a better tutor. Still, “How long have you studied magic?” she asked curiously.

  “Oh, almost four years,” he replied. “Father made both me and Charlie wait until we were nine before we could begin. Viola got to start earlier than that—I think she was seven or eight—but that’s because she’s always been his favorite. Or maybe because she was so bad at it, and Father knew she’d need the extra practice.”

  He deposited his load on the desk and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of one hand.

  “Viola was bad at magic?” asked Flora, hope budding within her. Viola was a guardian as well, so if she was originally bad at magic, maybe Flora had a chance.

  “Oh, sure,” said Edmund. “Up until last summer, everything she tried to cast was weak. She got a lot better after—” He suddenly stopped and eyed Flora suspiciously.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. The Prince took Viola under his wing, I guess. She’s a lot better now, almost as good as Charlie.”

  Flora’s heart sank. “Charlie’s that good?”

  “He’s a genius when it comes to magic,” said Edmund plainly. “Hang on. I’m going to go get another chair.” He slipped out the door, leaving Flora to digest this new piece of information.

  If Charlie was such a good magician, why had Viola been made guardian of the well? If he really was such a genius, why had he never done anything but instruct? Edmund and Will had performed magic around her new well, but Charlie had only observed. Surely, if he was so very good, he could have helped seal the tree-circle at the very least.

  Edmund returned with a chair. “You’re working on the language, aren’t you?” he asked as he placed it on the other side of the desk. “That’s the worst—it’s boring and takes forever to master.”

  “I’m sorry you have to teach me instead of working on your own studies,” said Flora. “Your brother is probably annoyed.”

  He shook his head. “Nah. We weren’t going to have lessons today anyway. Charlie’s holed up with the Prince, getting some bad advice.”

  “Bad advice?” she echoed in confusion.

  “Yeah. Viola says that’s the only kind of advice the Prince knows how to give when it comes to women. She says he thinks it’s funny.”

  “So he’s talking to the Prince about women?” asked Flora, unimpressed with what this said about Charlie’s character. She wondered whether, given their interaction the previous evening, the discussion would include her.

  Edmund snorted. “He went to some party last night, didn’t get home until after midnight. I heard Mother scolding him this morning about leading on more girls—Charlie’s a lady-killer, you know.”

  “I had no idea,” said Flora flatly. As she had been in bed by ten o’clock, she could only assume that Charlie had returned to the festivities at Mrs. Olivette’s. If he had stayed past midnight, he had obviously had a good enough time.

  “Charlie says that all girls are the same: scheming and power-hungry. All any of ’em are interested in is snapping up a rich, important husband. Mother always pinches him when she hears him say that.”

  Flora wanted to pinch him just hearing about it, but she thought she ought to redirect her rising anger. “Can we start studying now? I’m still trying to memorize the five declensions.”

  Edmund sat back in his seat and scrutinized her. “See,” he began slowly, “the thing is, I don’t want to. I hate all that language stuff. And since Father said I could be the tutor, I’d much rather teach the stuff that I like.”

  “And that is…?”

  “Oh, magic seals. I love them! You get to draw—are you any good at drawing, Flora?”

  She had taken art classes as part of her education, but she couldn’t profess to be anything more than average. Edmund seemed disappointed by this.

  “The seals are as important as the language is,” he told her. “Actually, basic magic is made up of three parts: the word, the seal, and the touch that connects them. There’s more to the complicated stuff—Father can activate a seal without touching it, for example, and the Prince knows how to activate without touch or words—but for basic magic, all you need is the seal, the word, and the touch. Oh! You know, because you’ve already performed a couple of spells. Say,” he added speculatively, “d’you think you could bring some magic so that we could practice for real?”

  “I don’t really think that’s a wise idea,” Flora said instinctively.

  “Wise, no,” Edmund agreed, “but it would be fun. Oh well. We’ll have to stick to plain ink for now. I hope you don’t mind stained fingers.”

  He darted from the room again, and Flora was left to ponder that statement. Edmund had been practicing seals all week, and he’d done so with pencil firmly in hand. From what he’d said now, it was almost as though he expected her to draw the seals with her fingers.

  As it turned out, this was exactly what he expected. When Flora protested, he immediately shook his head. “With magic, you always draw the seal with your fingers.”

  “But you’ve been practicing with a pencil!”

  “I’ve just been memorizing some new patterns. You have to learn how to keep your fingers steady as you draw, though. It’s all in the wrist. Here, we’ll practice.”

  And practice they did, for a solid hour. Flora had no idea what seals she was practicing, but Edmund had brought a huge stack of paper along with his pot of ink, so she had ample space to draw. In the end, the fingers on her right hand were stained blue-black, and she wondered whether the hour had been productive at all, or if Prime Minister Moreland had intentionally tampered with her tutoring.

  “Look how steady you’ve gotten!” Edmund cried, though. “I think you really might have a knack for this!”

  She glanced between the very first seal she had drawn and the last one and had to admit that he was right. The first had hesitation marks all over it, while the last one looked fairly fluid. Her fingers were accustomed enough to tracing that particular seal by now, but she wondered if she would have to practice so much for every seal she wanted to learn.

  “What’s this one do, anyway?” she inquired.

  “It’s the base for combustible spells,” said Edmund proudly. “You can tweak it about twenty different ways, depending on how you want something to blow up.”

  He left her the pot of ink and stack of paper to continue practicing, but Flora thought she’d had enough of that for one day. She turned her attention instead to the grammar she had been studying all week. The ink and paper she used for practicing vocabulary.

  Only a half-hour into her self-study, to her surprise, someone else knocked on her door. She wondered if Edmund had forgotten something.

  “Come in,” she called apprehensively.

  It was not Edmund, nor was it Charlie. Viola Moreland poked her head into the room with a curious frown.

  “You really are here, just as Father said,” she remarked. She entered and primly shut the door behind her.

  Flora said nothing.

  “I’m to tutor you on the ancient tongue,” Viola informed her. “Father said that Charlie wasn’t doing his job properly. Honestly, I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately!”

  This speech jarred something in Flora’s mind, something that Viola had told her back when they very first discovered the well. “I thought you used a different language, like Will.”

  Viola colored. “That’s right. But I learned the ancestral tongue before we discovered that the old language of this la
nd works better for me.”

  “So there’s a chance I might have to learn two languages?” Flora asked with growing dismay.

  “No,” said Viola with utmost certainty. “Your ties to the land are different than mine. Please don’t ask any further about it,” she added when Flora opened her mouth to do just that. “What’s important is that I do know the ancestral tongue, so I can help you learn it. It’s fairly straightforward, you’ll see.”

  Flora had her doubts, but those soon dissipated. Viola focused on one part of speech at a time rather than having her try to memorize them all at once, as she had been doing. After an hour of study, Flora felt like a ray of hope shone down upon her.

  “I brought this for you from the Prince’s library,” Viola said before she left, and she pulled a very small volume from one of her pockets. “You must promise not to let it leave this room, though.”

  “What is it?” asked Flora. The book looked old and worn. No title marked its cover.

  “It’s a book on plants, written in the ancestral tongue. I seem to recall that you rather like gardening, was that correct?”

  Flora’s interest was piqued. “Yes.”

  “Well, I thought you might like to use this as a method of study. That other book there is a dictionary, written by my great-great-something grandfather, so you can translate from the ancestral tongue to the modern one. Just, please, don’t write in the book itself.”

  She received the little book with reverence. “Thank you,” she murmured. Her fingers itched to open it up and begin the translation.

  “I suppose I’ll leave you to it,” said Viola with thinly-veiled amusement.

  “Thank you,” Flora said again, with feeling. “Really, thanks.”

  “You’re probably not coming tomorrow, as it’s Sunday. Try to relax. Let everything you’ve learned so far settle into your brain. We’ll resume again next week.”

  Flora had hardly considered the day of the week, but she supposed it would look strange for her to trek up to the palace on her own. Her father certainly had no reason to come up on his day off.