Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) (32 page)

“Come on,” Imaiqah said, jumping to her feet. “Let’s go see them.”

“You’ll have to undo the sticking charm,” Emily said. She flushed at Imaiqah’s expression. “Alassa stuck me to the seat.”

Imaiqah snorted. “I thought she was joking,” she said, as she cast the cancelling spell. “You did manage to hurt her badly, you know.”

“I know,” Emily admitted, bitterly.

The team was laughing and joking as they came out of the changing rooms, even though several of them had been injured and continued to play. Alassa’s nose looked slightly out of shape, marring her perfect features, but she refused to accept any more immediate medical treatment. Instead, she insisted on leading the team out of the arena and out onto the snow-covered field. The servants had already set up a pavilion where the cooks were roasting whole sheep and cows, sending wonderful smells wafting through the air.

Cat caught hold of Alassa’s shoulder and swung her around. “I’m sorry, all right,” he said, quickly. “I lost control and...”

Alassa stepped forward and kneed him in the groin. “Apology accepted,” she said sweetly, as Cat collapsed to his knees. The other boys backed away hastily. “And we won.”

“Report to my office after the feast,” Lady Barb ordered. There was the faint hint of a smile on her face, but it was buried under duty. “And then go get your nose fixed.”

Emily smiled as Alassa led her towards the cooks, who cut slices of meat from the roasted animals and placed them inside large slices of bread. The meat smelled even better up close, while other scents drifted over from the large table of condiments. Emily took some mustard and spread it on her meat, then added some lettuce and cucumber. It tasted remarkably good.

“Worth it,” Alassa said. They sat down at one of the tables and chewed their food. “Even if I don’t sit down for a few days, it will still be worth it.”

“That game was madness,” Emily said. “I...are you sure you want to play?”

“
Yes
,” Alassa and Imaiqah said, together. They grinned at each other.

“I guess I will never see the attraction,” Emily said, ruefully.
Ken
just didn’t seem
fun
to her. “And I thought they were trying to kill you.”

“Some of the uppermost players were alarmed by how well we did in our first game,” Alassa said, dryly. “I don’t think they really considered us a serious threat. Even if Travis hadn’t died, they would still have wanted to break us as a team.”

She touched her nose, gingerly. “I think we showed them not to take us lightly,” she added. “And the referee cut down on the nastier hexes...”

“Next time they’ll just concentrate on scoring and not trying to actually push us out of the arena,” Imaiqah observed. “What’s going to happen then?”

Emily shrugged. Even she knew that players had to strike a balance between scoring as much as possible and wearing down the opposing team. It was quite possible—if rare - for a team to lose all of its players and still win the match on points. In fact, the ideal would be to spend the first part of the match racking up a lead, then eliminating the opposing team before they could catch up. It was easier said than done.

She finished her sandwich and looked towards the pit, where the cooks were frying chicken drumsticks in oil. It looked dreadfully unhealthy, but tempting; she stood up and took a handful of legs for herself and her friends. The cook’s eyes opened wide as she recognized Emily, then passed her some additional bread without being asked. There were people, Emily suspected, who would enjoy seeing fear in someone’s eyes.
She
just found it depressing.

“Back to practicing tomorrow,” Alassa said, as she took one of the drumsticks. “And more classes on Monday.”

Emily looked down at her fingers and nodded. They’d spent some time every night sewing runes, but it would be months—she suspected—before she mastered it completely. Alassa had complained more, pointing out that preparing wards and runes were what court wizards were for. Imaiqah had asked her, rather dryly, just how far she was prepared to trust any court wizard. Her father’s old wizard had accidentally done serious harm to her family line.

“I suppose I’d better go see Lady Barb,” Alassa said, standing. “I’ll see you both in the library, won’t I?”

“I can come with you,” Emily offered. “And Imaiqah probably needs more medical attention.”

“She said I needed to rest,” Imaiqah said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, probably.”

“Probably,” Emily agreed. “I’ll escort you to your room, just in case...”

“Charming,” Alassa said, dryly. “Leaving me to my fate all alone.”

She shook her head before Emily could say a word. “Don’t worry about it,” she added. “I’ll be fine, if unhappy. You make sure that Imaiqah gets back all right.”

“I’m not
that
badly injured,” Imaiqah insisted. “I just need a rest.”

“Which you will get, as ordered by your team captain,” Alassa said, firmly. “I need you ready to go back into the arena tomorrow evening...”

There was a loud scream from the direction of the changing rooms. Heads snapped around to see a pale-skinned girl staggering out of the building. Emily didn’t recognize her at all, but she looked to be on the verge of panic. Sergeant Miles pushed his way through the crowd towards her, too late.

“It’s Danielle,” the girl screamed. “She’s dead!”

Chapter Twenty-Six

E
VERYONE, BE QUIET,” SERGEANT MILES BELLOWED,
his voice somehow effortlessly drowning everyone else out. “Be
quiet
!”

A wave of magic silenced the growing panic. Emily stared at the girl who’d found the body, shocked and terrified. If Travis was dead...and then his girlfriend, what did it mean?

“Start making your way back to your rooms,” Sergeant Miles ordered. He caught sight of a handful of boys making their way towards the changing rooms. “
Don’t
go peep at the body, just go to your rooms.
Now
.”

The students obeyed. Emily caught Imaiqah’s arm as the crowd pressed in around them, pushing them towards the entrance to the school. Everyone was glancing around nervously, many of them looking at Emily as if they expected her to do something. At least few of them seemed suspicious of her, although she was sure that would come in time. How could they blame her when she hadn’t been alone since the game had begun?

She pushed the thought to one side as they made their way up the stairs and into the dorms. Alassa tugged at her sleeve, indicating that they should go into Imaiqah’s room instead of either of theirs. Emily nodded; Imaiqah still looked tired, even though she insisted she was fine. Imaiqah could lie down, as Lady Barb had ordered, while her friends could sit next to her and chat.

Madame Razz looked deeply worried as she counted the female students back into their rooms. Master Tor, standing nearby, shot Emily an unreadable glance, but he didn’t seem inclined to throw any more wild accusations at her. Emily allowed herself a moment of relief as Imaiqah’s door opened, allowing them into her room. There were students who would take such accusations seriously merely because they were made by a tutor.

“Danielle is dead,” Alassa said, as soon as the door closed. “Why?”

Emily scowled. “It’s a pattern,” she said, trying to recall what little crime fiction she had read. Serial killers had patterns...and if they were identified, their next target could be predicted and protected. “That doesn’t bode well for the other girl.”

“You mean Kay,” Alassa said. She smiled at Emily’s surprised expression. “Her father is related to King Jorlem of Alluvia—you will remember Prince Hedrick, won’t you?”

Emily snorted. Alassa might have problems memorizing the thousands of different types of alchemical ingredients, but she knew everyone who had even a trace of aristocratic blood by heart. If she’d married Hedrick, Kay would probably have wound up as part of Alassa’s court, even if she’d sought to decline the honor. Or, perhaps, one of her confidants who could never be fully trusted without oaths, oaths that could never be asked for or granted.

She shook her head, tired. “Travis may have been the first person to find the Warden’s body,” she said. “He’s the next person to die. Danielle finds
his
body—and then
she’s
the next person to die. Kay may be the next target.”

“Except it was
you
who found the Warden’s body,” Imaiqah pointed out, softly. She looked very pale. “You weren’t targeted.”

Alassa nodded. “And if Travis was the first to actually
see
the body, not you, why didn’t he raise the alarm himself?”

Emily scowled. If Travis had raised the alarm,
she
wouldn’t have been blamed...but looking back at how he’d acted when she’d reported to the Hall of Shame, there had been no sense that he’d known what she would find. He’d seemed genuinely shocked when Emily had called him and told him that the Warden was dead. Besides, he
had
been interrogated under truth spells.

“Maybe they didn’t regard the Warden’s death as murder,” she growled. It was hard for
her
to think of the Warden as anything other than human, but someone raised in the Allied Lands might take a different view. “In that case, the pattern is that Travis was murdered first, followed by the person who found the body.”

She gritted her teeth, wishing that she knew more about forensic magic. Master Tor’s lectures had been long on minutiae and short on any useful detail. The only thing she knew for sure was that it was impossible to raise the dead to ask questions—and that the very thought was regarded as taboo throughout the Allied Lands. Did they even know about
fingerprints
?

“It could still be Master Tor,” Alassa pointed out. “He
was
the last known person to see the Warden alive.”

Emily nodded. Assuming that Travis hadn’t entered the Warden’s office since Master Tor had left, it was possible that the Warden had been dead for some time prior to Emily’s arrival and the whole scheme was just a clumsy frame. And yet both Travis and Danielle were well-connected pupils. Killing them would be certain to draw an angry reaction from the Allied Lands. Unless, of course, that
was
the plan.

“If the Grandmaster lost his job,” she said, slowly, “who would take it up?”

“It would have to be decided by the White Council,” Alassa said. “But the post would need to be held by a very powerful and disciplined magician. Master Tor probably wouldn’t count.”

“Unless he’s a necromancer,” Imaiqah said. “He’d have enough raw power to rip the building apart after one or two murders.”

“Maybe,” Emily said, “but surely he would also be showing signs of instability?”

She’d watched Master Tor during his classes, after Travis’s death, but there had been no signs of madness lurking in his eyes. He still seemed to dislike her, yet
that
wasn’t really a sign of insanity. After what she’d unknowingly done, it would be hard to blame him for feeling that she’d escaped being expelled through powerful connections, rather than simple ignorance.

“He does slip into boring lectures,” Alassa said, lightly. “Perhaps that helps him to cope.”

Emily snorted. All jokes aside, she doubted it would be that easy.

She scowled a moment later as a thought struck her. “How do we know the bodies were
real
?”

Alassa blinked at her. “You mean they might be homunculi too?”

“Or one half of someone who had used a bilocation spell to split themselves in half,” Emily said, slowly. “Maybe Travis faked his own death.”

Imaiqah shook her head. “He’d be sacrificing half his mind in the process,” she pointed out. “The other half wouldn’t be able to carry on, I think.”

“And then he would still have to kill his girlfriend without someone else noticing,” Alassa added. “They
did
search the school thoroughly after his death.”

Emily had her doubts. Not counting the servants, there were fifty tutors on staff, nowhere near enough to search the entire building, not if their prey was moving around at the same time. Sergeant Miles might know how to catch a moving target, but the remainder of the staff wouldn’t have that training. And besides, she had difficulty in understanding why someone would sacrifice half of their mind.

“Fingerprints,” she mused. Maybe the killer had worn gloves, but it wouldn’t hurt them to
try
. Come to think of it, how hard would it be to create a magical fingerprint test? If there wasn’t anything like it already, she was sure Professor Lombardi could compose one overnight, if necessary. “We should ask them to check.”

Alassa stood. “We’ll go tell them,” she said, firmly. She looked at the empty beds, then back at Imaiqah. “What happened to your roommates?”

“They went hiking,” Imaiqah explained. “I’ll be fine, if you want to go talk to Lady Barb.”

“Well, she
did
tell me to report to her,” Alassa said. “Emily?”

“We should probably check with Madame Razz first,” Emily said. “I don’t think we
want
to get caught outside the dorms.”

Madame Razz glowered at them as soon as they emerged from Imaiqah’s room. “Why,” she demanded, “are you not in your rooms, waiting for permission to leave?”

“I have to report to Lady Barb,” Alassa said, quickly. “And my friend here has some insights into the killer’s pattern.”

The housemother eyed them, suspiciously. “Wait in my office,” she said, finally. “I will call her.”

Emily and Alassa exchanged glances, but obeyed.

“Useless biddy,” Alassa muttered, as soon as they were alone. “You want to bet she’ll tattle to Master Tor?”

Emily shrugged. Madame Razz was strict, but she also genuinely cared for the girls under her care—and she had a heart of gold. Emily still remembered how Madame Razz had been the one to take care of her after the nightmares had started, after she’d killed Shadye. And the housemother also had a sense of justice and integrity. She’d been furious when one of Alassa’s pranks had involved a maid.