Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) (11 page)

She hadn’t been quite sure what to make of it at the time. Part of her had to admit that she liked Jade, part of her thought she only liked him as a friend. He’d kissed her – and she’d enjoyed it – but the thought of going further bothered her deeply. In the end, she hadn’t really given him an answer at all...

And that, she knew, had done him no favors. Jade wasn’t...well,
her
, but he would have his own set of marriage offers from magical families. If he picked one of them, particularly after concluding his apprenticeship, he would be well-placed for the future. Marrying Emily as she’d been at the end of First Year – a stranger in a strange land, feared more than loved – wouldn’t have been as good for him. It was easy to believe that he had genuine feelings for her. She hadn’t had much to offer him then.

But now...? She was a baroness.

She cringed, mentally. Earth’s modern-day love stories said that love could appear anywhere, among people of any class. But the past said otherwise and the Allied Lands agreed. Alassa wouldn’t have had so many problems finding a husband – she still hadn’t found a husband – if she hadn’t been heir to the throne of Zangaria. Back then, Jade’s proposal had almost been a
favor
. Now, it was socially laughable.

He’d meant well; she
knew
he’d meant well. But she wasn’t even sure she wanted it.

Jade cleared his throat. Emily realized she’d retreated into her thoughts.

“I...know that it must be awkward for you now,” he said. “But I gave my word.”

He hadn’t, Emily recalled. He’d made her no promises. She hadn’t asked for them.

But her feelings were a tangled mess. Did she want him? Had he found someone else? The thought stung, even though logically she knew it shouldn’t. She hadn’t promised him anything either; they certainly hadn’t agreed not to look elsewhere. And it had to have been hard for him, studying under a man who disliked Emily herself.

“No, you didn’t,” she said, very quietly.

Jade didn’t disagree.

Emily winced, inwardly. She knew she should cut through the tangled mess and talk bluntly, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The fear of hurting him was too strong. She would sooner have faced the Warden with nothing more solid than a feeble excuse. And she wasn’t even sure what she felt herself.

“I liked you – I still like you,” Jade said. He stared down at the table, unwilling or unable to meet her eyes. “But things have changed. You’re a...noblewoman now.”

“I can be a noblewoman and a magician,” Emily pointed out. She was hardly the only noblewoman with magic; Alassa had been
born
noble, as well as magical. “But I know what you mean.”

She wished she’d sorted out her own feelings beforehand, but she’d shied away from the thought. If she’d known – she
had
known. But she hadn’t done anything about it.

He doesn’t want me anymore
, she thought. She could understand his feelings – in the cold-blooded calculus that governed aristocratic marriages, she was well above his station – but it still hurt. If he married her now, he would be little more than her consort, forever tied to her apron strings. No one would take him seriously.

And Jade was ambitious. He wanted to make a name for himself.

“Look at me,” she said, quietly. Jade looked up, meeting her eyes. “Did you find someone else?”

Jade shook his head, wordlessly. Emily wondered, absently, if that was actually true. One advantage of being in Martial Magic was spending time with older boys, boys who sometimes forgot that Emily was young and female. They’d talked, unaware that she could hear them, about a brothel in Dragon’s Den. It was quite possible that Jade had indulged too...

“I understand,” she said, softly. It hurt – and yet it was also a relief. “Can we just be friends?”

Jade looked relieved, just for a moment. Emily felt a sudden sharp desire to hurt him, to lash out verbally or physically, a desire she forced back into the back of her mind. At least he’d tried to talk to her, openly. She mentally gave him credit for that. Boys found it hard to talk about their emotions, almost as hard as she found it herself. She’d never talked openly to anyone until she’d met Alassa and Imaiqah.

“Friends,” he agreed. He held out a hand. Emily shook it firmly. “Do you want to go to a play tomorrow?”

Emily found herself torn between laughing and crying. “A play?”

“There are some actors here,” Jade said. “They’re putting on a performance tomorrow – I think it’s
The Folly of The Heart
.”

Emily gave him a sharp look, then nodded. “I’d be glad to go,” she said. It wasn’t entirely untrue. She hadn’t seen any plays in the Allied Lands – or on Earth, for that matter. The closest had been an amateur performance of
Romeo and Juliet
at school, which hadn’t gone very well. Too many people had giggled when Romeo kissed Juliet. “And thank you.”

She stood, feeling the urge to get back to her bedroom and think about what had happened.

“I’ll pay for half the dinner,” she said, as Jade followed her. “It isn’t fair for you to pay all of it.”

“It isn’t a problem,” Jade assured her. The waiter reappeared, holding out a piece of elaborately-decorated parchment. Jade took it, passed him a pair of gold coins, then shoved the bill into his pocket. “Really.”

Emily frowned. The value of coins – even gold coins – was variable, but she’d never eaten a meal that cost so much in Dragon’s Den. Clearly, the cooks had a captive audience.

“I’ll walk you home,” Jade said. “Coming?”

Shaking her head, Emily followed him out the door and into the darkness.

“W
ELL,” LADY BARB SAID, THE FOLLOWING
morning. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Emily shook her head as she sat down at the table, rubbing at her eyes. She hadn’t slept at all, if only because she had replayed her conversation with Jade over and over in her head. Part of her regretted agreeing to be just friends, part of her was relieved. And yet she still felt...
snubbed
, for want of a better word. Her feelings were a mess.

“No, thank you,” she said, finally. “I just need some sleep.”

“I noticed you didn’t sleep,” Lady Barb said. “Why didn’t you take something to make you sleep?”

Emily’s eyes narrowed, then she realized that the wards monitored her condition as long as she was in the house. Parents tended to use them to keep an eye on their children; Whitehall’s wards alerted the staff if someone was seriously hurt or bullied by someone in a higher year. It wasn’t something she liked, she had to admit. She’d spent most of her life hiding from her stepfather’s gaze.

“I didn’t feel like it,” she said, regretfully.

“You should have two more potions to brew,” Lady Barb said. She placed a plate of bacon and eggs in front of Emily, then reached out and touched her forehead. “I would suggest reading books, though. You’re bleeding magic.”

Emily looked down at her palm, then realized what Lady Barb meant. Magic responded to emotion and, the more she used her magic, the easier it was for her power to slip out of control and produce unpredictable effects. Most new magicians, she’d been told, were discovered after they produced their first spark of magic when hurt or upset. Emily herself was something of an exception to that rule, but only because she’d grown up on Earth.

“I’m sorry,” she said, slowly. “I...”

“Just go to the library after breakfast or take a sleeping potion,” Lady Barb told her. She sat down facing Emily and opened a parchment letter. “We have our official orders.”

Emily lifted an eyebrow, so Lady Barb held out the parchment for her to read. It was written in the old language, forcing her to struggle to decipher it. Not for the first time, she wondered just how Whitehall had managed to get so far without phonetic letters. If it hadn’t been for translation spells, she doubted half of the students could even read. She’d certainly needed one for her first year at the school.

The orders seemed simple enough, but the writer had padded them out. Lady Barb and her apprentice – Emily wasn’t mentioned by name – were ordered to walk through the Cairngorm Mountains, helping the locals and searching for traces of magic. If they found anyone with new magic, they were to provide basic instruction and then invite the new magician to Whitehall or one of the other magical schools. There wasn’t anything more specific, much to Emily’s surprise, apart from a note about wages and discretionary funds. Emily was barely being paid enough to stay alive. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. Her experience on Earth had taught her that student workers were often grossly underpaid.

“Interesting,” Lady Barb said. “Here.”

She passed Emily a second note. Emily read it, quickly. It warned that a handful of children had been reported missing in the Cairngorms, all too young to have developed magic. Emily looked up, worried. Missing children were never a good sign.

“Could be werewolves,” Lady Barb said. “There’s a werewolf pack on the other side of the mountains. Or vampires. Or plain old human unpleasantness. We’ll see what we see when we get there.”

Emily nodded. “There’s a letter for you,” Lady Barb added. “The Grandmaster forwarded it here. No one else knows where you are.”

Jade does
, Emily thought as she took the letter.
And so does Master Grey
.

The letter was enfolded in creamy white paper, sealed with a spell that ensured that only the recipient could read it. Emily frowned down at it for a long moment, then opened it with her bare hands. She knew from experience that using anything else, even a paper knife, might convince the spell that someone unauthorized was trying to read it, destroying the paper and erasing the message. Inside, there was another sheet of expensive paper. She pulled it out and read it, carefully.

“They’re asking me to host the next Faire in Zangaria?”

Lady Barb looked up, surprised. “Interesting,” she said. “I wonder how many deals were made behind the curtains.”

Emily hesitated, rereading the letter. It was simple and quite uninformative, as if the writer had assumed that she would know what he was talking about. He wanted the next magical gathering to be held in Zangaria, in Cockatrice. Emily read it a third time, then looked up at Lady Barb. The older woman seemed more amused than puzzled.

“Well,” Emily said. “Should I agree?”

Lady Barb considered it. “The Faire is traditionally neutral,” she said. “It won’t reflect badly on you to host it, if you wish to do so.”

“And I should show off some of the other innovations in Zangaria,” Emily said, thoughtfully. “Let word spread far and wide.”

She gritted her teeth. Some innovations had spread far already, others were moving slower than she would have preferred...and some she would prefer to keep under wraps. But she wasn’t entirely sure just how many innovations Lin had managed to steal before she’d vanished from Whitehall. It was quite possible that whoever was backing her knew about gunpowder, cannons and steam engines. Emily hadn’t expected to keep the latter a secret – they’d shown off a very basic locomotive in Zangaria – but the others would really upset the balance of power.

“It would,” Lady Barb agreed, tonelessly. “Still, it’s your choice. No one will think any more or less of you if you say yes or no.”

Emily looked down at the letter one final time, then made up her mind. “I’ll write to Bryon,” she said. “He can have permission to arrange everything and I’ll leave it in his hands.”

Lady Barb shrugged. “Go to the library after you finish breakfast,” she said, again. “Or go back to bed.”

Emily nodded. Once the breakfast was finished, she walked back into the library and settled down in front of the books Lady Barb had found for her. The final book on enchantment talked about anchoring a pocket dimension to an object, outlining the basic spells to create a trunk that was bigger on the inside than on the outside. Emily had seen the spells before, but these were actually simpler. Yodel’s book had skipped quite a few stages in creating pocket dimensions. She worked her way through the book, feeling exhaustion slipping up on her...

The next thing she knew, someone was poking her in the arm. She started awake, embarrassed. Lady Aylia had told her that sometimes students had to be awakened in the library, before their snores grew loud enough to trigger the security spells. Lady Barb laughed at her confusion, then helped her sit upright. Emily’s arms ached from lying on the books.

“You’re lucky my father didn’t see you doing that,” Lady Barb said, dryly. “He would have been furious.”

Emily nodded, blearily. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep...”

“You’ve been asleep for nearly six hours,” Lady Barb told her. “I think you probably needed it.”

She looked down at Emily’s notes. “What are you planning
this
time?”

Emily had to smile at the resigned note in the older woman’s voice. “A protective shelter,” she said, seriously. “A pocket dimension capable of hiding someone from pursuit.”

Lady Barb frowned. “You do realize that such a dimension might not be safe?”

“I know,” Emily said.

The books hadn’t been too clear, but she’d reasoned out that time did funny things inside pocket dimensions. It didn’t flow at all within her trunk, keeping whatever she’d locked inside in stasis, while other pocket dimensions sped up time or slowed it down. Whitehall didn’t seem to have those problems, but Whitehall had a nexus for power. There was no way a single magician could produce anything akin to the school.

“You’d also have problems getting out,” Lady Barb added. “I don’t think you could open a gateway back to the normal world.”

Emily scowled. She had a feeling that the energy levels required to get into the pocket dimension were much smaller than the energy levels required to get out. There was no way to be sure, though. Whitehall’s best researchers hadn’t come up with a way of measuring magic like electricity.

“I could program the dimension to open up automatically after a set period of time,” Emily said. “If the dimension was still anchored to this world...”