Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) (49 page)

“I will speak to her once I have finished talking with you,” the Grandmaster said. He motioned for her to sit down. “Do you have any other reprimands you would like to offer or can I speak now?”

Emily flushed, embarrassed.

The Grandmaster smiled. “You’re right,” he said, “but be careful who you use that tone to, young lady. Not everyone is inclined to be forgiving.”

He looked down at the desk, then back up at her. “We searched your room carefully—again,” he said. “This time, we found nearly fifty runes scattered throughout the room, designed to keep you unaware of Lin’s presence and to encourage you to be a little bit careless. I have been forced to have hard words with Madame Razz and Master Tor.”

Emily blinked in surprise. “Why?”

“They searched your room after your little...experiment,” the Grandmaster pointed out. “The runes were not found.”

“But they might not have been there,” Emily said, wondering at her own willingness to defend Master Tor. But then, he
had
read to her and lectured her while she’d been petrified, giving up some of his own time to help her. “Lin could have put them in afterwards...”

“They would have needed to be there almost from the start of term,” the Grandmaster said, grimly. “They were missed.”

Emily nodded, silently resolving to look up the runes herself, later.

A thought struck her and she grimaced. Had Master Tor put her in with Lin deliberately? He’d made the room assignments and Emily had wound up with the spy. A lucky break for Lin .. or something more sinister?

“Master Tor may not be at this school for much longer,” the Grandmaster said, “but I did interrogate him under truth spells. He wasn’t directly involved in the whole affair. His rationale for putting you and Lin together was sound.”

Emily relaxed, slightly.

“We found nothing when we searched her bed, apart from a set of protections that should have been above her level,” the Grandmaster continued. “It wasn’t until we interrogated a couple of the other transfer students that we realized what she was. She was a spy for Mountaintop.”

“The other magical school?” Emily asked. “Why?”

“One of them,” the Grandmaster confirmed. “And as for why...are you aware of just how much you have changed the world?”

“I think so,” Emily said, although she wasn’t sure. There had already been unintended consequences flowing from her work, including some that had turned the world upside down. Who knew what there would be in the future? “She was sent to spy on me?”

“Yes,” the Grandmaster said. “Apparently, the other students were...
encouraged
to transfer, even though Mountaintop rarely allows it. My best guess is that they were pushed into moving because Lin coming on her own might have seemed suspicious. They didn’t know precisely what they were doing, of course. They were just cover.”

“And she has some of my notes,” Emily said, grimly. What might Lin have taken from her desk? “How advanced
was
she?”

“She was no second year,” the Grandmaster said. “Potions intended to de-age someone are rare—they tend to have unpleasant side effects—but she could easily have taken one to pose as someone
your
age. At a guess, she was in fifth or sixth year; knocking you and Imaiqah down would have been easy for someone at that level. Under the circumstances, I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that she didn’t slit your throat at night.”

“Or smash us while we were statues, leaving the Gorgon to take the blame,” Emily said, softly. It would have looked like a tragic accident. She scowled as a thought occurred to her. “Do you think she summoned the Mimic?”

“I doubt it,” the Grandmaster said. “That might just have been coincidence. She wouldn’t have attacked you at all—risking exposure—unless she had nowhere to go. And she didn’t, while the wards kept us trapped in the school. All she could do was try to slow you down.”

Emily nodded. The Mimic had acted oddly, but perhaps that was understandable if the spells that powered it worked along the same lines as necromancy. It had moved from consuming sheep and other animals to a school full of magic-users. The Mimic must have thought that it was enjoying an all-you-can-eat buffet. If, of course, it had thought at all. Did the sheer complexity of the spells that defined it allow for true independent thought?

“And she succeeded,” Emily admitted. “What are you going to do about Mountaintop?”

“I have not yet decided,” the Grandmaster said. “Spying on one another is not uncommon among magic-users, despite the Sorcerer’s Rule. Everyone hates it—and everyone knows that everyone does it. But this is different.”

He shook his head, slowly. “And then there’s your guardian to take into account,” he added. “Mountaintop may simply disown her.”

Emily scowled. She hadn’t given a single thought to the political aspects—but they were there. Lin had effectively tried to kill one of Zangaria’s most powerful nobles, something that King Randor would be entirely justified in considering an act of war. And then Void might be expected to take a dim view of it too. Even if Lin had panicked and overstepped her orders, it was still going to create an unholy mess. The Allied Lands might come apart at the seams if it turned into a general war.

And then the necromancers would just walk over the mountains and complete the destruction of humanity.

“She must have hoped that the Gorgon would get the blame,” Emily said, slowly. “If I hadn’t been able to testify...”

“It would be unlikely that the Allied Lands would believe her,” the Grandmaster admitted. “She would have made a very convincing suspect. And if you both ended up dead...Lin might have vanished completely.”

“If she really was working for Mountaintop,” Emily mused. “Might she have intended Mountaintop to take the blame?”

“Perhaps,” the Grandmaster said. “Not everyone likes the Mage Master of Mountaintop. The great magical families are
very
cutthroat, always trying to squeeze an advantage for themselves out of every little incident. Maybe the true object of the exercise was to embarrass their leader.”

His face twisted into a grimace. “We will certainly investigate,” he added. “But I have a feeling that the information we were given about Lin will be more than a little misleading.”

Emily blinked in surprise. “You didn’t check their credentials?”

“We didn’t check yours either,” the Grandmaster pointed out, rather snidely. “We took Void’s word for it.”

He stood and paced over to the bare wall, then turned to face her. “There will be investigations,” he said. “The White Council will have to be informed. Steps must be taken—and Void, as far as possible, must be kept uninvolved. We really don’t
need
a major confrontation between him and Mountaintop right now.”

Emily stared at him. “You trust him to do your dirty work, but not to avenge an attack on his ward?”

“Mountaintop provides a quarter of the White Council’s combat sorcerers,” the Grandmaster said. “If this led to open conflict, it could rip the Allied Lands apart. We need to know what is actually happening before we decide what to do about it.”

“You’ll have to speak to King Randor,” Emily reminded him, wondering just
what
Alassa’s father would say. He hadn’t been able to do anything about Alassa’s near-death experience; legally, could he involve himself in the affair? “And I need to get back to my friends.”

The Grandmaster seemed to look right at her. “You do realize that you have...acted foolishly, this term?”

Emily flushed at his tone, but said nothing.

“I know; you don’t come from this world and you lack the basic knowledge we teach newborn magicians,” he added. “And we assumed that Void had taught you, as was his duty, and never really
checked
on it. I would scream at him for his oversight, if I thought it would do any good.

“But your experiment, whatever it was, could have had disastrous consequences. And it wasn’t the only mistake you made. What would have happened if you had reported Lin to a tutor at once? She might have been caught before she could flee Whitehall. And you came very close to alienating your two best friends.”

He looked down at the floor. “How much of this was because Lin was using runes to influence your mind?”

Emily shuddered. The truth was that she didn’t know—but then, she wouldn’t. She really
didn’t
like wasting time watching sporting events...it was easy to understand why she might want to leave early, certainly before she’d understood just how important it was to Alassa and Imaiqah that she
watched
. There was no way to know, in the end, how much of her mistakes had come from her own stupidity.

“It isn’t uncommon,” the Grandmaster said quietly, “for people to react badly to stress, or to make mistakes as they come into their magic. They become so consumed by what they’re doing that it just runs away from them. You, on the other hand, are rather more than just another student. You need to learn faster—and not just magic. You need to learn control and discipline.”

His unseen eyes seemed to bore into hers. “We punish misbehavior as severely as we do to ensure that you
do
know the price of messing around with magic,” he added. “But there comes a time when a sore bottom cannot save you from the consequences of your actions. I don’t know how many of your problems this term came from Lin’s runes, but you need to learn to watch yourself. You are not just
any
pupil.”

Emily flinched at his tone. He was right—but that didn’t make it any easier for her to hear.

“Lady Barb has, I have been told, sworn to keep what you tell her to herself,” the Grandmaster said. “I think you should consider confiding in her, now that she is literally unable to share whatever you tell her with anyone else. She is your Advisor—and will be making sure that you learn what you need to know in future. Talk to her if you have any other ideas.”

“I will,” Emily promised.

“We are going to have to reset all of the schedules for classes, since we missed so many,” the Grandmaster concluded, walking back to his desk. “Go see your friends, enjoy your time with them...and if you haven’t apologized for acting so badly, I think you should.”

He smiled. “And maybe you should consider playing games with them too,” he added. “It will help bring you back together.”

“Thank you,” Emily said, as she stood. Part of her mind insisted that it would be a fate worse than death, but she knew that was being silly. “I will.”

“You might come to enjoy it,” the Grandmaster said. “Oh, and one other thing?”

Emily paused, waiting.

“There are already rumors about you and Lin,” the Grandmaster warned, “but you might want to avoid telling anyone—apart from your friends. The more people who know the full details, the harder it will be to deal with the situation in a calm and reasonable manner.”

Emily nodded and left the room.

Chapter Forty

E
MILY DUCKED THE SNOWBALL ALASSA THREW
at her, then scooped up a handful of snow and threw it back at her. A moment later, Imaiqah’s snowball narrowly missed her as she ducked, but Emily slipped and fell over backwards. Imaiqah ran up to her and dropped snow on her chest, then winked down at her.

“I meant to do that,” she said.

Alassa threw a snowball that caught Imaiqah in the back of the head. She yelped and scooped up more snow to throw back. Emily laughed, then caught Imaiqah’s arm and pulled her down into the snow. Alassa saw the glint in Emily’s eye and jumped backwards, heading towards the frozen lake. Emily used a simple spell to hurl a snowball after her.

“Missed,” Alassa taunted, from a safe distance.

Emily had to laugh. Alassa and Imaiqah had dragged her out of the library and insisted that she join them for a snowball fight—and she was enjoying it more than she had expected. The Gorgon had refused to join them—snow didn’t agree with her people, she’d explained—but she had promised to go over their textbooks tonight. Now that everyone was back at Whitehall, the staff was making them work hard to make up for the missing weeks. There was already a rumor going round that the coming holidays would be cancelled if the students weren’t where the staff thought they ought to be by then.

She looked up at the darkening sky and thought, grimly, about Lin. The rumors going round were far off the mark; half of the students seemed to believe that she had been the Mimic’s final victim, while the other half believed that the Gorgon had killed her and ground her petrified body into dust. At least no one seemed to be pointing fingers at Emily any longer, not after she’d received full credit for defeating the Mimic. But she’d still made sure to spend time with the Gorgon.

“Sunset,” Alassa said. “Why don’t you come with us to the Great Hall?”

Emily would have preferred to find a mug of chocolate—it had been surprisingly hard to introduce the concept of chocolate milk to the cooks—but she knew better than to argue when Alassa was in such a determined mood. Besides, they still weren’t allowed to share a bedroom. The room Emily still shared with the Gorgon had been repaired—the beds, desks and wardrobes had been completely replaced—but there was no room for another roommate.

Or, rather, someone would have had to have been left out
, Emily thought.
I wasn’t going to do that to anyone
.

She’d come to the decision that she rather liked the Gorgon, once she’d had a chance to get to know her without Lin’s subtle influence. They were very alike in many ways, both outcasts and strangers in a very strange land, although the Gorgon had been treated with love and affection by her family rather than neglect and abuse. It had been her magic that had set her apart from the other Gorgons, but they had also valued it as a gift. And they appreciated her intelligence.

They brushed the snow off their coats as they slipped through the door and into Whitehall, then headed to the Great Hall. Emily sensed the waves of magic coruscating through the building as the Grandmaster and Professor Lombardi slowly prepared a new Warden and reformatted the wards to make it harder for the next one to be killed. The monitoring system wasn’t fully in place yet, but there hadn’t been a single hexing since the wards had come down, somewhat to Emily’s surprise. Or perhaps it wasn’t a surprise. The day after the Mimic had been destroyed, she’d been told, the Grandmaster had given the entire school a scathing lecture on their conduct while under siege. He seemed to have cowed everyone.