Bookworm (17 page)

And if Dread suspected that her powers had been boosted, he
would
be keeping an eye on her. Not out of suspicion that she’d hidden something, or that she’d lied to him about what had happened when she opened the book, but because she might go completely mad and at the same time develop levels of magic beyond her grasp before the accident. The thought of a maddened magician storming through the streets blasting buildings apart in revenge for slights, real or imagined, had to be the Inquisition’s worst nightmare. Despite herself, she wondered just how hard it had been for them to take the risk of allowing her to wake up. They could have cut her throat while she was helpless, long before she’d realised what had happened to her.

She ordered breakfast thoughtfully, looking at the menu to try to determine what were the local specialities. The Darlington had charged far more for far less, she was amused to discover; the locals seemed to like plates of meat and eggs for their breakfasts, as well as long rolls of brown bread and butter. She hesitated and then decided to order as much as she could eat. There was no way of knowing when she would be able to eat again.

“A good choice,” Inquisitor Dread observed. Elaine wondered if he was mocking her, but his face seemed curiously composed. “Your friend Daria would approve of the meat, if not the eggs...”

Did he know...of course he knew. Rumour claimed that Inquisitors had remarkable powers to divine curses and enchantments, even the complex and subtle charms that turned a normal man into a werewolf. He’d probably interviewed Daria while Elaine had been fighting for her life – Daria had used the Inquisition as an excuse to escape work for a few days – and discovered that she was a werewolf at the same time. The Inquisition probably wouldn’t bother with her unless she turned into a criminal, which far too many werewolves did. It wasn’t as if they had any hope of gainful employment when their true natures were exposed.

“Daria always enjoys eating meat and never puts on an ounce of weight,” Elaine agreed, trying to sound resentful. A werewolf had a far faster metabolism than a normal human and burned food at a far quicker rate. It probably explained why Daria spent so much of her life chasing boys when she wasn’t working. She hesitated. Asking the Inquisitor about her family had been one thing, but asking a more sensitive question would have been risky. And yet who else could answer her questions? “Sir...what kind of effects can magical accidents have?”

Dread studied her for a long moment, as if he were wondering why she’d asked that particular question. “It can depend on precisely what happened in the accident,” he said. “One particularly insane wizard once poured every one of his potions into the same pot to see what would happen. Nothing did...until his maid tried to sweep it all up and the mess decided to fight back. Somehow they merged into one being, a vaguely humanoid form made out of gel – and with a surprisingly sweet smell.”

Elaine shivered. She’d heard rumours about that particular incident. “And then there was the werewolf who became a...pureblood were,” Dread continued. “Every time he sees the moon, he becomes a copy of the closest living thing to himself; a rat, a snake, his wife...I believe that he accidentally bit her and now they make sure to share the same bed so they can swap forms every night. They find it quite interesting to exchange gender roles every so often.

“And then there was the poor girl who transformed randomly into an object whenever she became stressed, or the boy who shifted between human and horse forms whenever he saw a mare, or the twins who swap bodies on an hourly basis...”

Elaine felt a flush of irritation. He was toying with her. “None of those would concern the Inquisition,” she said. If they didn’t care about someone like Millicent playing games with people who didn’t have her power or connections, why would they care about people who were accidentally cursed? Even werewolves were targeted more by the city guards than the Inquisition. “What did you think had happened to me when you came to check up on my...accident?”

Dread met her gaze evenly. “Some magical accidents give magicians an unexpected boost in power,” he said, calmly. “Your...treatment of your former tormentor suggests that you suddenly gained powers that you might not be able to control. And the fact that you are visiting this strange little state suggests that you
know
that something has happened to you, doesn’t it?”

His voice suddenly became heavy with compulsion. “What happened to you when you picked up that book?”

Elaine swallowed. It took every ounce of strength she had to keep her voice from trembling, or babbling out secrets she knew would get her killed. “I don’t know,” she said, somehow. It wasn’t quite the truth...his words seemed to be humming into her head, forcing her to talk. “I just wanted to come here and find out what had happened to Duke Gama.”

“An interesting choice,” Dread observed. His voice was back to normal, but Elaine refused to react. It was certain that he could start trying to compel her again at any moment...and if he kept working away at her, eventually she’d break. His magic required stronger magic to resist and Elaine wasn’t up to the challenge. The shielding spells floating in her mind required time and patience to set up, or power that she simply didn’t have. “And were you interested in Duke Gama before your accident?”

“No, sir,” Elaine said, honestly. “I never even knew he existed until I opened those boxes and read the attached details.”

“But that leaves us with an interesting problem,” Dread observed. “Did you come here because you were curious, or because one of the effects of the curse was to plant a compulsion in your mind to come here? It is quite easy to place a subtle command into a person’s mind without them ever realising that they’d been influenced. The more...emotional a person, the easier it is to command them while they’re convinced that they’re acting according to their own will. And how emotional are you, I wonder?”

Elaine hesitated. The possibility that someone had placed a compulsion in the spell to go to Ida hadn’t occurred to her, which could itself be an effect of the spell. Her bindings tutor had made several things clear, including the fact that the human mind was remarkably good at inventing justifications for its actions that always made sense – as long as they weren’t examined in the cold light of day. But then, he’d added with his famous sneer, alcohol was just as good at influencing a person as magical spells – and that didn’t have any magic in it, nothing more than natural chemistry.

“I like to think that I am not emotional,” she said, finally. It wasn’t entirely true, she had to admit. Her early life – and Millicent’s torments – had burned some of her emotions out of her, at least in her own mind. There was no point in ranting and raving about the universe’s unfair treatment of her when nothing would happen to make her life worth living. And the aching sense of loss she’d felt when she’d finally worked out the difference between an orphan and a normal child had faded away years ago. “Whatever happened to me could happen to others.”

“Of course it could,” Dread agreed, as the waitress returned and put a large plate down in front of her. Dread, it seemed, had ordered fried meat and chopped potatoes. Daria would have loved the spicy food, but it made Elaine’s stomach turn over in futile rebellion. “But what happened to you also
did
happen to others.”

Elaine stared. “Oh, I’m not talking about the book being charmed; that’s unique, as far as I can tell. But you’re hardly the first child to grow up without a real family, or face bullies at your school. The results can sometimes be very unfortunate as long-buried emotions start boiling through the mental blocks the mind erects to protect itself. Do you know that most abusers of children were people who were abused themselves?”

“That makes no sense,” Elaine said, with the private reflection that the entire conversation made no sense. “If they knew how horrible it was to be abused, surely they wouldn’t abuse others.”

“But the human mind is a complex thing,” Dread said. “Some abused children convince themselves that they actually
enjoy
being abused, a conviction so powerful that they carry it over into adulthood. Others come to believe that they
deserve
the abuse because it is the only way they can draw a line between their caring parents and the way they’re being treated. And because these...values are so ingrained in their minds, they never actually question any of them when they become adults. They might as well try to convince themselves that water is dry.”

He shrugged. “And it can become worse when one is being bullied at school,” he continued. “A person may believe that they deserve it, that they truly are all the horrible things they get called by their peers, or they may become convinced that no one else cares about them and bury it all away in their minds. And some of them, coming into magic, lose all sense of proportion and retaliate massively against their tormentors. They are so convinced of their own helplessness that when they discover they are no longer helpless, they just lash out with overwhelming force.”

Dread took a bite of his meat and then smiled at her. “Would you still claim to be a stable person?”

“Yes,” Elaine said, crossly.

“Self-delusion,” Dread said. “No child growing up into adulthood is stable; male or female. Some are just better at convincing themselves that they’re stable and they don’t have anything to worry about. And what happens when they discover that all the things they once took for certainties no longer are? I think your friend Millicent found out just what happens when her victim suddenly became more powerful than she could imagine.”

Elaine stared at him. It made sense – and it was completely wrong. Elaine hadn’t had her power boosted – but she could, part of her mind whispered, if she was prepared to pay the price. Instead, she’d been crammed with forbidden knowledge that gave her insights into magic that no other living magician shared. Even the Grand Sorcerer would have had problems. He would have had to read the books one by one and so he might not have grasped how they interlinked together.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Elaine confessed. And yet part of her had felt nothing less than exultation when she’d seen the fear on Millicent’s face. “Why do you
let
it happen?”

Dread lifted a single eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

“You and your Inquisition swan around controlling magic, the final sanction against evil magicians, and yet you don’t intervene to stop powerful magicians picking on their inferiors,” Elaine snapped. She felt tears rising to her eyes and blinked hard to suppress them. “Where were you when I was at the Peerless School?”

“I never claimed that we were perfect,” Dread said, seriously. “And you know as well as I do that people have to develop their own controls, their own self-discipline, to understand and master magic. A certain amount of unpleasant behaviour is acceptable.”

“Not to the person on the receiving end,” Elaine snapped. She was almost shouting at him. “Don’t you care about them?”

“I care more than you can imagine,” Dread said, flatly. There was something in his voice that warned her not to press the question any further. “But I also know that we need to breed strong magicians and we cannot do that by coddling people who may be far more powerful – potentially – than their tormentors.” He put down his fork and looked at her. “Are you still prepared to claim that you are stable?”

“I think I know how to control myself,” Elaine said, sharply.

“You would be astonished – and depressed – by how many magicians have believed the same thing, only to end up convinced that the right thing to do is to lay waste to the countryside and enslave entire populations,” Dread said. “I was...I was involved in the liberation of a city-state that had been taken over by a single extremely powerful magician. And
he
thought that he was making everything better for his people. I think that he really
believed
every word he said about how killing and torturing dissidents made the world a better place.”

He shook his head. “But in the end, we had to kill three quarters of the population to save the rest,” he added. “Those choices are never easy, I am afraid. But someone has to make them.”

“I thought that that was the Grand Sorcerer,” Elaine said, waspishly.

“Who do you think gave the order?” Dread asked. “We didn’t decide to slaughter upwards of fifty thousand people on a whim.”

He smiled as he started to drink his hot coffee. “Eat up before it starts to go cold,” he ordered. “We have a long walk ahead of us.”

Elaine blinked. “We?”

“I think I’d be happier keeping you where I can see you,” Dread said. He leaned forward and looked directly into her eyes. “I don’t like the fact that you turned up here – I think you were...influenced to come here by the charm that hit you. And the choice is between taking you with me or leaving you in my room, shackled to the bed. And because I don’t know just how powerful you really are...”

“All right,” Elaine said, as grandly as she could. Without a clear idea of how powerful she was, he would have to knock her out to make sure she couldn’t escape. “You may come with me.”

Dread didn’t bother to respond to the sally. “Drink up,” he said, instead. “We have an appointment with the Court Wizard at Eleven Bells.”

Elaine looked at him. “Does the Court Wizard
know
that we have an appointment with him?”

“Of course not,” Dread said, crossly. “It would spoil the surprise if I announced myself ahead of time. And it would give him time to think up some lies.”

He grinned, picking up a pipe and sticking it in his mouth. “Something is very strange in this kingdom,” he added. “The game’s afoot.”

Chapter Fifteen

One thing about walking with an Inquisitor, Elaine rapidly noticed, was that everyone seemed to assume that she was under arrest. A handful of elder people looked at her as if they expected her to suddenly pull out her wand and start transforming people into frogs at random, while others hid their possessions and made signs to ward off evil gods when they thought the Inquisitor wasn’t looking. Some children catcalled in her general direction until Dread drew his wand and waved it towards them, knocking them down to the ground with irresistible force. Elaine wondered if this was how most of the werewolves felt when they entered a normal town. They’d be aware of the hatred and fear directed at them, even by people who prided themselves on control of their faces.