Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) (45 page)

Fire billowed out of the staff, roaring towards the orcs. They bellowed and lifted their swords, but it was already too late. The flames consumed them and raged onwards, burning at the wards and the walls and the...

Emily gasped in pain as the sergeant slapped her bottom, hard. She had been lost in the magic and the spell had just kept going. It would have burned until she drained herself dry if he hadn’t stopped her.

“That spell is not easy to use without a staff,” Sergeant Miles said. “But it also illustrates the danger of trying to
use
a staff regularly.”

“Yes,” Emily said. The sense of powering the spell had been overwhelming. She’d reached a point where she could cast certain spells automatically, but this was different. Whole new vistas of power were opening up in front of her...and would be forever lost, if she became dependent on the staff. “I see what you mean.”

“You sound sullen,” the sergeant said. He sounded amused rather than annoyed. “That’s a very common reaction.”

Emily nodded, flushing. “How else would they react?”

“I’ve known students break their own staffs and then refuse to even
touch
another one,” Sergeant Miles said. “Others have become addicted almost at once, to the point where I had to make sure they never touched another staff until they had broken the addiction. You need to be careful.”

He took the staff back and looked down at it, thoughtfully. “With some effort, you will be able to embed spells within the wood yourself for later use,” he said. “There are magicians who have built up an entire armory of spells within their staffs. In a duel, they can just fire them off, one by one or all together. Their opponents have often been surprised and defeated before they could react.”

His eyes narrowed. “But there are also limits,” he added. “You could not direct the fire you summoned, not like you could if you worked the spell on your own. And you would only have what options you built into the staff yourself. And if you happened to rely on someone else to do the preparation...”

“You would be utterly helpless without the staff,” Emily finished.

“Oh, not helpless,” Sergeant Miles said. “But you
would
be in deep...ah, trouble.”

Emily nodded, remembering their first lessons. Sergeant Miles and Professor Lombardi had staged a duel, each step intended to demonstrate common mistakes made by magicians who thought a little power and knowledge made them dangerous. Afterwards, they had gone through every step in considerable detail, until Emily could almost recite it backwards. One of the rules was to never assume that a disarmed opponent was a defeated opponent.

But if I were dependent on the staff, another magician could take it and then freeze me
, Emily thought, ruefully.
And then I would be trapped
.

“We’ll practice more with the staff next week,” Sergeant Miles said, as he walked back into the armory and put it in a cupboard. “And remember what I said.
Do not
try to get your hands on the staff without my permission and my presence.”

Emily flushed. The moment he closed the door, she’d felt an overwhelming sense of grief and loss. It was silly, she knew; it wasn’t as if the staff had been confiscated permanently, not like some of the pictures male students had been caught passing around in class. And yet part of her wanted to sneak into the armory and steal it back before he could remove it to his quarters.

“I understand the feeling,” Sergeant Miles said. “But it is for your own good.”

He took a pair of short swords from the rack and passed one of them to Emily. “I understand that one of your tutors is teaching you swordsmanship?”

Emily nodded. The etiquette teacher had been dubious about teaching young women anything of the sort, but King Randor had apparently insisted. After what had happened in Zangaria over the summer, Emily found it hard to blame him. Alassa and Imaiqah needed as many ways to protect themselves as possible. Magic wasn’t the solution to everything.

The thought made her shiver. There were potions that deprived someone of their magic, if only for a very short space of time. What would someone utterly dependent on magic do if they lost it?

“Such teachers are good at making you
look
good,” Sergeant Miles informed her. “Does he get annoyed with you frequently?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “He says I have no sense of display.”

“Nor should you,” Sergeant Miles said. He grinned at her. “There are two sorts of soldiers in this world, Emily. The ones who look good and the ones who
are
good. They are very rarely one and the same. Besides...didn’t you see Sergeant Harkin’s flying kick?”

Emily winced. Sergeant Harkin had shown them a flying kick that had come straight out of a movie featuring ninjas—or it would have done, on Earth. It had looked hellishly impressive until he’d done it again and Sergeant Miles had knocked him flat on his back. Once he’d picked himself up, Sergeant Harkin had explained that the move was designed to look good—and an opponent who didn’t
care
about looking good would use it as an opening to smack the kicker down hard.

“Stand on guard,” the sergeant ordered, as he lifted his sword. “And we begin.”

He lunged forward, probing Emily’s defenses. Emily barely managed to raise her own sword in time to block his thrust, then found herself being pushed backwards by a series of slashes that threatened to cut into her chest. He was holding back, she knew, and yet he was overwhelming her with ease. She feinted, trying to take back the advantage, but he crashed his sword against hers and sent it spinning out of her hand. It was something she’d been warned not to try in a real battle.

Emily dived for the sword, only to land flat on her face as he pushed her down to the floor. She gritted her teeth and tried to move, but he put his foot firmly on her back, trapping her in place. Escape was impossible.

“Bad habits,” Sergeant Miles observed. “Why didn’t you draw your dagger when you lost the sword?”

Emily flushed. “I didn’t think of it,” she admitted, finally. “I was just focusing on the sword...”

“There are no such things as dangerous weapons, only dangerous men,” Sergeant Miles lectured, as he took his foot off her back and held out a hand to help her to her feet. “The weapon you carry may be the best in the world, charmed to help a hundred men win a thousand battles, but if you don’t have the right mindset to use it...you would find yourself helpless very quickly. What do you think would have happened if you had disarmed me instead?”

“You would have still fought,” Emily said.

“I would have gone for you,” the sergeant agreed. “In your case, you should have gone for your dagger—or turned and fled. Running was probably your smartest option.”

Emily scowled at him as she stood upright, waving away his proffered hand. “You didn’t tell me that,” she objected.

Sergeant Miles snorted. “Did I
have
to tell you the rules?”

Rule one
, Emily recalled.
There are no rules
.

“I’m bigger than you, stronger than you and more experienced than you,” Sergeant Miles said. “You need to learn to fight
smarter
, not harder. There is no way that a slight girl like you will win a wrestling match with me. That tutor will feel the flat of my blade.”

Emily suspected he wasn’t joking. “I’ll do more swordplay with you,” she promised. If nothing else, it would be a diversion from the yearning she felt in her soul. In hindsight, perhaps she should have refused to take the staff. “And I will have a few words with him myself.”

“If he listens,” Sergeant Miles said, darkly. He picked up Emily’s sword and passed it to her, hilt first. “Clean it up, then replace it.”

Emily nodded and carried the blade to the workbench. The sergeants insisted that all weapons be maintained by the students who used them, threatening dire punishments to anyone who dared mistreat a weapon. Taking care of one’s weapons, Sergeant Harkin had said, was the first step towards ensuring they took care of you. She found a cloth, wiped the blade clean, then started to oil it. As always, the smell made her feel as if she were at home. She had no idea why.

“Good,” the Sergeant said, when she had finished. “Where do you want to go now?”

Emily considered it. She hadn’t—quite—finished the barracks, but under the circumstances it hardly mattered. Master Tor could rant and rave all he liked; there was no point in Emily working on the barracks when it was unlikely that they would ever leave Whitehall. Once the food ran out, they would all starve. She wondered, absently, how human flesh would taste, before dismissing the thought angrily. It would be better to die than eat her fellow humans.

Ah
, a voice said, at the back of her head.
Will you still feel that way when you’re starving
?

“I don’t know,” she said. “Have there been any other attacks?”

“We found another body this morning,” Sergeant Miles said. “A fourth-year student,
well
out of bounds. The gods alone know what he was doing out alone—or who was there when the Mimic abandoned him and moved on to the next victim.”

Emily scowled. The Mimic had yet another new face to play with and blend into the crowd. It could be anyone...

“The Grandmaster is considering trying to trap it again,” Sergeant Miles added. “Perhaps if we pour additional power into the wards...”

“Maybe,” Emily said. She’d had the impression that the Mimic had not found it difficult to break through the wards. “What if we used a solid barricade instead? I didn’t notice it going
through
the walls...”

“Good thought,” Sergeant Miles said. “I’ll suggest that to the Grandmaster.”

Emily gritted her teeth. What sort of creature
was
the Mimic, that it could do so much and yet behave so oddly? And yet there was a certain cold intelligence to its actions. What was it?

She stopped and stared at the crossbows hanging from the walls. What
was
it?

The realization, when it came, made her break down into giggles. Sergeant Miles looked at her as if he thought she’d gone mad. In hindsight, the answer had been right in front of her nose ever since she’d faced the Mimic for the first time. If she’d stopped to think about it, she might have realized what the Mimic actually was long ago.

“Tell me,” she said, recovering control of herself, “what
is
a Mimic?”

Sergeant Miles scowled at her. “A monster,” he said, shortly. “Why...?”

Emily shook her head. There was no clear proof, apart from a single observation, and yet she felt
sure
she was right. It was the only answer that made sense.

“We thought of it as a beast,” she said. “A creature like a cockatrice or a basilisk, something weird, but something understandable. Why not? The world is
full
of creatures that have been warped by magic. Why not a shape-shifting ball of mist? But it isn’t!”

Her giggles threatened to overwhelm her again. “It
isn’t
a creature,” she said, softly. “The Mimic is a
spell
!”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

T
HIS IS THE LATEST VERSION OF
the fingerprint spell,” Professor Lombardi was saying, as Sergeant Miles led Emily into the staff room. “It’ll find fingerprints—but it will also show the person who left the fingerprints, assuming they are in range. I think...”

He stopped when he saw the Sergeant. “Miles...?”

“Emily has deduced something about our enemy,” Sergeant Miles said, addressing the room as a whole. “Something none of us would even
think
of. Emily?”

Emily took a breath, suddenly aware that some of the most powerful magicians in the Allied Lands were staring at her. If she was wrong...but she hadn’t been wrong before, had she? Her plan had
found
the Mimic, after all. It hadn’t been
her
fault that the wards hadn’t been as strong as they’d thought. But it was still a lot of weight to put on her...

And Alassa will be Queen of Zangaria,
she thought, tightly.
What am I complaining about
?

She cleared her throat. “The Mimic is a spell, a very powerful spell,” she said, flatly. “It works on the same principles as necromancy, draining power from unwilling victims to fuel its passage through our world. Quite why it becomes a
copy
of the victim is unknown, unless the spell was intended to serve as the ultimate spy and simply got out of control.”

“That’s impossible,” Master Tor said, stiffly. “A spell
cannot
act in such a manner.”

“It would be very difficult,” Sergeant Miles observed, “but it might be workable, if one had enough power and skill. The faerie were beings of magic; they might have created the Mimics as yet another instrument of terror. Or perhaps we should look for a more
human
creator. Someone might just have been trying to make necromancy viable and lost control of what they created.”

“It flinched away from a detection spell,” Emily said. “Why a
detection
spell when lethal curses just went
through
it? If I’d used the analysis spell, what would I have seen? The spell that makes up the Mimic?”

“Or it might have killed you,” Lady Barb said. “If you know its secret...”

Emily nodded, tightly. She
was
a target—but then, so was everyone else in Whitehall.

“We find it, again,” she continued, “and we cast the most powerful dispersal spell we have. And that should end its existence.”

“Assuming that the spell isn’t protected in some way,” Sergeant Miles said. “There is no shortage of methods to proof a spell against being terminated. Otherwise wards would just be a laughing stock.”

“But we have to try,” Emily insisted. “There’s no other choice.”

Professor Lombardi was scribbling down notes on a piece of paper. “The Mimic might just be a combination of several different spells,” he said. “All fiendishly complex, mind you, but they should go together...but you’d need a vast source of power.”