“Thank you,” Emily said. “I’ll see you there later.”
Caleb eyed her curiously as Lady Barb closed the door behind her. “What was that about?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Emily said. She didn’t want to discuss Jade and Alassa with Caleb, or anyone else for that matter. “I was looking at the proposal notes...”
She walked over to the bookshelves and picked up the notes. “I was thinking we could draw out flow diagrams first,” she said, as she put the papers on the table and motioned for him to sit down facing her. “It’s quite similar to spell incants, but it would allow us to plot out the magic without those pesky start points and end points.”
“Or accidentally triggering a spell,” Caleb said, thoughtfully. He raised his eyebrows. “Flow diagrams?”
“Because the magic flows through the spell mosaic,” Emily said. She tapped one of the sets of notes, feeling an odd burst of pleasure at how quickly he was catching on. “We build each component out of pieces of mosaic, then bigger sets to represent the entire spell, and finally start magic flowing through them as you planned. If we fiddle a little here, we might even be able to ensure the spell changes, depending on the feedback.”
“It still leaves us with the main problem,” Caleb said, after a moment. “Each piece of mosaic has to be charmed individually.”
“Maybe,” Emily said. She’d pulled one thing out of her memory from Aurelius’s books. “But if you used subtle magic, you could produce a number of components at the same time, if you didn’t mind waiting a few hours. You could even enhance the ambient magical field if you used a ritual...”
Caleb gave her a sharp look. “How do you know about rituals?”
Emily cursed, inwardly. Lady Barb was going to kill her.
“It’s something I was encouraged to study by my father,” she lied, finally. She didn’t want to lie to Caleb, yet she saw no choice. Lady Barb might have taught her the basics, but Whitehall’s students were rarely shown how to use rituals until they entered Fifth Year. “He thought there were ways to use rituals to power runes without burning them out.”
“You would burn them out,” Caleb said, although he still looked doubtful. How did he know about rituals? But then, his mother was an experienced sorcerer. “It just wouldn’t last...”
“It would if you made them out of iron,” Emily said. “Have a team of ordinary blacksmiths make them for you according to a plan you devise. You could hire quite a few in Dragon’s Den for a handful of pieces of gold. Then just keep repairing or replacing them, as necessary. I think if you raise the level of magic in the compartment by a fraction, the results would definitely be better than you expect.”
“Or it might explode in our faces, again,” Caleb said. He tapped the diagram thoughtfully. “I never thought of combining the different sets of magic like this.”
“I only saw it recently,” Emily admitted. There was another possible use for the technique, she suspected, if it happened to be combined with a battery. But that would have to wait until she actually had a moment to sit down and work through it herself. “We might need to get special permission to use a ritual.”
“It’s brilliant,” Caleb said. “They might not let us do it in Whitehall itself, of course, but they should definitely let us take it out of the school. There’s quite a few outbuildings that could easily serve as a base.”
Emily grinned. “I made a few additions to the proposal,” she said. “But we’ll have to redraft it for the Grandmaster.”
“Give me a moment,” Caleb said, as he scanned the sheet of paper. “You seem to have altered the variable search incants too.”
“I was getting to those,” Emily said. “If we poke and prod at it, the entire system might actually start learning from experience.”
“You’d need one hell of a source of power,” Caleb said. “I think it wouldn’t be possible to use such a capable system without a nexus point. Even Whitehall has had problems with developing self-learning wards.”
Emily nodded, slowly. The nexus provided a vast source of power — Mountaintop had never been able to match it, even with the sacrifice of thousands of students — but the wards weren’t self-aware. There were so many layers of complexity written into the system that she had a private suspicion there were more cracks in the defenses than anyone cared to admit. Shadye might have been reduced to trickery to get through the wards, but Void had been able to walk in and out of the school as he pleased.
“We might be able to find a nexus point,” she mused. There had to be some in the Blighted Lands, although it was possible the necromancers had destroyed them...if, of course, they could be destroyed. But then, Shadye had gone for Whitehall, not for one of his fellow necromancers. “Or perhaps find another source of power.”
“There isn’t one,” Caleb said. “Even necromancy wouldn’t be enough.”
“Probably for the best,” Emily said. Would her battery be enough, if she kept charging it? She briefly considered swearing him to secrecy, but dismissed the thought. As nice as Caleb was, she barely knew him. “But what we have—” she pointed to the first set of proposals “—would be more than enough, right?”
“Probably,” Caleb said.
He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started to write in crisp, even sentences. Emily absently admired his command of Old Script, wondering just when his military father had permitted him to learn to read and write. Even Imaiqah’s father had hesitated over teaching his daughters the basics...and Alassa, who had never been pushed by her parents, had only ever mastered a few basic words. But then, English letters were so much simpler.
“I’ll have to send this back to the school tonight, through the portals,” Caleb said. “Once the Grandmaster approves it, we can start planning our working schedule.”
“Fourth Year is going to be busy,” Emily said. She would have Charms, Alchemy, Healing, Subtle Magic and several other courses to complete, as well as a new Martial Magic program. Aloha had said they were going to get a new tutor...absently, she wondered who it might be. Lady Barb would make a good, if unforgiving, teacher. And it would keep her close to Sergeant Miles. “I think we might have to wait until we know our classes before we start making specific plans.”
“There’s always at least one afternoon a week put aside for joint projects,” Caleb assured her. “If we have to make some special arrangements, we will need to request them before we go back to Whitehall. I was told that if the arrangements weren’t requested at least a week before school reopens, we wouldn’t be getting them.”
“Joy,” Emily said. “A place to work outside the school, if necessary...what else?”
“Whatever else we can make a case for,” Caleb said. He winked at her. “Do you think a solid gold bracelet would be useful for our project?”
Emily smiled, toying with the snake-bracelet on her wrist. “I don’t think so,” she said. “What happens if we can’t justify our requests?”
“I imagine the Grandmaster will mark us down for it,” Caleb said. He shrugged. “But half of the project is working out what we might need, explaining why we might need it...and then explaining afterwards why we didn’t need it.”
“Oh,” Emily said. “And what if we need something we didn’t anticipate beforehand?”
“We get marked down,” Caleb said.
He smiled at her, and finished writing down his notes. “I’ll try and rewrite the entire proposal this afternoon, then pass it to you before I take it to the portals,” he said. “You’ll need to read it carefully, then sign it. At that point—” he shrugged expressively “—the die is cast.”
“Thank you,” Emily said. She would have loved to help, or at least she felt as though she should have helped, but she knew his Old Script was far better than hers. “Will you have time to go to the Faire?”
“I may go tomorrow,” Caleb said. “The Grandmaster won’t get back to us for a few days, even if he starts work at once. He’ll need to run it past my Advisor, th
en the supervisors, who will probably question everything with a gimlet eye.”
He shrugged. “But I do want to go see the railway trains again,” he admitted. “They run without magic!”
“They do,” Emily said. She’d promised to explain them to him, when she had a moment — and she did, now. “Does that surprise you?”
“Oh, yes,” Caleb said. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible.”
There was a tap on the door. Emily rose, and opened it. Lady Barb stood there.
“Emily,” she said. There was a dark tone to her voice. “Caleb, can I borrow Emily for a moment?”
“Of course,” Caleb said. “I have to go rewrite the proposal anyway.”
He bowed to Emily, and walked out of the room.
“I do trust you’re planning to read the entire proposal, once it’s rewritten,” Lady Barb said. “Your grade will depend on his work — and vice versa.”
“I will,” Emily said. She swallowed. “I accidentally told him I knew about rituals.”
Lady Barb pursed her lips. “I’m surprised he knows about rituals,” she said, after a moment. “I was unaware that Stronghold taught them to Second Year students.”
“His mother might have told him, or he might just have read ahead,” Emily said. “There are a handful of references to rituals in the books at Whitehall.”
“But you wouldn’t know what they were talking about without the prior knowledge,” Lady Barb said, curtly. “You know, because I taught you, but how does he know?”
She shrugged. “That’s a problem for another day,” she said, “and we will discuss your...lack of discretion later. I will need someone to help clean the classroom every day next term, perhaps.”
“I’m sorry,” Emily said, quickly. “I covered for it. I blamed it on Void.”
“Glad to hear it,” Lady Barb said. “It’s a good explanation, for now. But sorry isn’t always enough.”
She sat down, waving a hand at the other chair. Emily sat, relieved. She wasn’t entirely sure if Lady Barb could sentence her to a term’s worth of detentions while school was out, but there was no point in tempting fate. Besides, Lady Barb was right. She’d accidentally revealed something that could be used against her, at a later date. The Grandmaster would not be pleased, even if the cover story was firmly in place.
“I have received a message,” Lady Barb said. She sounded thoroughly displeased, but the tone was not aimed at Emily. “There is a...problem I need to deal with, before it gets out of hand. I will be away for at least a week.”
Emily stared at her. “You can’t stay?”
“I believe that’s what I said,” Lady Barb reminded her, primly. “Master Grey has agreed, reluctantly, to continue to work with you as Head of Security. I would have preferred Jade for the role, but there’s no way he can be put in command of his former master.”
“And he needs to stay with Alassa,” Emily said. “Is there no one else?”
“Under the circumstances, you’re very lucky to get anyone,” Lady Barb snapped. “These events are normally organized months in advance, with a small army of magicians arranged to help keep order.”
She rose to her feet and began to pace. “I would prefer to stay here myself,” she admitted, “but the request is actually quite important. It isn’t something I can leave with anyone else, even if someone was available.”
She stopped in front of Emily, staring down at her. “Time to stand up and do better,” she said. “I can’t hold your hand any longer.”
“I know,” Emily mumbled.
“Miles said he may be down in a couple of days, but no promises — and you’re not to rely on him either,” Lady Barb warned her. “I’ve done my best for you, at very short notice, but I can’t stay here any longer.”
She paused. “Keep charging your battery, and think of a way to use it if necessary,” she added. “You may have a few other tricks up your sleeve, but be careful. There are too many witnesses here.”
“I know,” Emily repeated. She rose to her feet, unable to escape the sense that she had been abandoned again. “I didn’t mean to put you to any trouble.”
“I’ll be using you as a live subject next term, if you’re not careful,” Lady Barb warned. “You do know there are limits to what can be learned if you work with a homunculus, don’t you?”
Emily flushed, embarrassed. She had no idea how Lady Barb had convinced a handful of volunteers to strip down and allow a class of students to examine them, but she was damned if she wanted to do it herself. Third Year Healing had seen most of the idiots and wannabes removed from the class — Lady Barb was strict with everyone — yet it had still been an embarrassing day. And none of the students had actually known any of the volunteers.
“I’ll do my best,” she promised.
Lady Barb clapped her shoulder. “Sometimes, we learn by being dumped in hot water,” she said.
“Yeah,” Emily countered. Most of Whitehall’s teaching methods were far superior to Earth’s, but some of them left something to be desired. “And sometimes people are scalded to death.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
IT WAS NEARLY LUNCHTIME BY THE time Emily finished channeling magic into the battery, although it took her some time to realize it. Somehow, the sensation of brushing against her own raw magic was relaxing, even if the effort of channeling and expending so much magic left her feeling utterly exhausted afterwards. As soon as the ring had cooled down, she placed it in her pocket, ate several ration bars in rapid succession, and after she felt like she had a bit of energy, then finally walked to Frieda’s rooms.
“Jade told me he feels guilty,” Frieda said, as soon as Emily stepped inside. “Guilty for what?”
Emily shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. She held out her hand. “Let’s go down to the Faire.”
The Faire looked busier than ever, she noted as they walked through the gates and into the mass of stalls. She’d half-expected to see that some of the stalls had closed, as they had to have sold most of their goods by now, but instead there seemed to be even more stalls open than before. They must have been bringing in new stock through the portals, she reasoned, as she perused one of the old book stalls. Sergeant Miles had made her study the logistic effects of portals on the Allied Lands and they tended to work a little like railroads on Earth, although they had their limitations. Nothing larger than a small cart could be moved through the gateway.
She found herself relaxing as they walked from stall to stall. Hundreds of young children ran around, playing elaborate games of tag while their parents chatted, browsed, and bought supplies to take home with them. It was interesting to see just how easy it was to separate out the different social castes, Emily noted, despite her only having spent three years in the Nameless World. The aristocracy wore fine silks, the magicians bright colors and the merchants plain, simple garments. But there were other differences, too. The aristocracy walked around with their heads held high, while the magicians kept their eyes fixed on the other magicians; the merchants seemed to adjust their attitude, depending on who they were speaking to.
But that makes sense, she thought. A nobleman wouldn’t buy from an uppity commoner, no matter how much he wants the product.
It bothered her to see such social divisions, even at the Faire. Who was actually winning when a cringing merchant talked a proud aristocrat into buying something for twice the going rate? The aristocrat, because the merchant bowed and scraped, or the merchant, because he walked away with the money? And yet...she couldn’t help thinking the aristocrats deserved to lose their wealth. It was rare for them to bargain, even when they were poor. They felt they had to make a show of being rich and powerful.
Which explains some of the problems facing Zangaria, Emily thought. The wealthy and powerful are often not as powerful as they seem.
Frieda poked her. “What are you thinking about?”
“Money and power,” Emily said. She noticed a magician bargaining with a merchantm
an and smiled. They were torn between ten silver coins and eleven. “And how some of the people who claim to have both have neither.”
Frieda gave her an odd look. “What does that mean?”
Emily shrugged — it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss at the moment — and led Frieda over to watch a performer. The young man — he couldn’t have been any older than Frieda — tossed burning torches in the air, catching them one by one, without the aid of protective spells. The crowd cheered loudly as the performer caught the final torch, bowing to his audience. A little girl — his sister, Emily hoped — carried a hat from person to person; Emily dropped a bronze coin into the hat, and watched as the girl carried it back to the performer. He grinned at the small pile of coins, and performed a whole series of backflips, carrying two torches in his bare hands.
“I could learn to do that,” Frieda said. “Couldn’t I?”
“Get Sergeant Miles to teach you the Sword Dance, if you want to do something insanely dangerous,” Emily said. The sergeant had taught Jade and several of the older boys, but he’d refused to teach Emily. Looking at how the boys had moved their swords, thrusting and parrying in a complex series of motions that could get someone stabbed if they messed up, it was hard to blame him. “One single mistake and you’d be dead.”
Frieda frowned. “But I could be healed, couldn’t I?”
“Healed from death?” Emily asked. “No magic can bring back the dead.”
“Healed from having my arm cut off,” Frieda said, throwing her a cross look.
“Maybe,” Emily said. She had never been that good with a sword. “But is it worth the risk?”
They moved on to the next set of performers, a band who sang songs about great battles, heroic love affairs, and a ballad about a mundane man who killed an evil magician. Emily was mildly surprised they dared to sing the latter at the Faire, where most of the clientele were magicians, but she had to admit it was a catchy tune. Besides, as she listened to the words, it became apparent that the magician had been an idiot, someone stupid enough to take a pratfall again and again. She couldn’t help wondering if the magicians enjoyed listening to a story about someone so stupid, he embarrassed everyone else.
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