Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) (31 page)

The smell must have woken Lady Barb, for she opened her eyes just as the sun was starting to set. Emily, more relieved than she cared to admit, found one of the metal plates, dropped a piece of rabbit onto it and passed the whole thing to Lady Barb. The older woman smiled gratefully, then blew on the meat and started to chew. Emily watched in concern as Lady Barb ate her food and drank some Kava. She still looked tired.

“It’s very good,” Lady Barb said. “Thank you.”

Emily suspected flattery. She’d never been very good at cooking, even on Earth. But then, she’d never had any proper lessons. She nodded in thanks anyway, then ate her own rabbit, which was rather overdone. Better overcooked than undercooked, she reminded herself. There were no modern preservatives in anything from the Allied Lands.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“Weak, but better,” Lady Barb admitted. She changed the subject before Emily could press her for details. “Check the wards before you go to sleep. There are wild animals out here that could be dangerous.”

Emily nodded. Darkness was falling steadily now, deterring her from venturing back under the forest canopy. She silently thanked the sergeants for lessons in camping, particularly the suggestion to pile up firewood while the sun was high. They shouldn’t need to leave the clearing until morning. If Lady Barb
could
leave...she gritted her teeth at the thought, praying that Lady Barb would recover. Emily didn’t know what she would do if Lady Barb died.

Probably walk back to town and ask for help
, she thought. If she
could
find her way back to town. She pushed the thought aside and checked on the wards, one by one. If someone wanted to disturb them, he would have to break through, which would alert her to the threat.

“My father rarely left his house,” Lady Barb commented. “But my mother’s people always slept out under the stars. They believed it brought them closer to the world around them.”

Emily shrugged. The sergeants had talked about the wonders of the great outdoors – and told horror stories about places they’d slept during wartime – but she hadn’t been too impressed, even though some of the camping trips had been enjoyable. She preferred civilization, libraries and hot running water to sleeping out in the wilds. But if someone knew no better...why would they not want the countryside?

“They used to tell stories too, around the campfire,” Lady Barb added. “I wonder if I can recall...”

She launched into a story, speaking in a sing-song voice that made her sound years younger.

“There was a forest once, near the heart of the world,” she said. “No mortal dared visit because it was inhabited by ghosts, demons and all manner of fell creatures. And then, one day, the monsters fell on one another in a frenzy of supernatural bloodletting. By the time the fighting came to an end. Emily, they’d wiped themselves out.”

Emily shivered. “Is the story true?”

Lady Barb shrugged, tiredly. “No one knows.”

Emily couldn’t help wondering just how much of the story was rooted in reality. Most stories
did
have some basis in history, even if the grain of truth had been surrounded by hundreds of lies and exaggerations, until the whole story became unbelievable. Was it something to do with the Faerie? Or was the story completely unrelated to them?

There was no point in asking. Instead, Emily listened as Lady Barb told a second story, one about a young man who had walked into an ogre’s cave, only to discover two children – two ogre children – crying for food. He’d fed them, then fallen asleep – only to be discovered by the ogress. She’d thanked him for feeding her children, then given him magic gifts he’d used to found a kingdom of his own. Compared to some of the stories written to explain why the Kings of the Allied Lands held power, it was almost reasonable. Emily rather doubted it was true, though. It wasn’t like anyone in the Allied Lands to leave ogres alive, no matter how young they were.

She felt a sudden surge of affection for the older woman as the tale came to an end. Was this what it was like, she asked herself again, to have a mother? Somehow, she couldn’t imagine her biological mother going camping with anyone. But she knew so little about her mother’s past. It wasn’t as if they’d ever sat down and talked about it. There had been times when she’d wondered if her father would come back for her...

...And instead she’d fallen through the looking glass.

Lady Barb looked over at her. “Do you want to tell a story?”

Emily was struck dumb. Public speaking wasn’t something she enjoyed, even though it wasn’t really
public
if it was just her and Lady Barb. She thought hard, wondering what sort of stories she could tell. Most of the fantasy books she’d read were long and wordy, too long for a single night, while few of the others would have any meaning for Lady Barb. She wondered absently how one would explain
Star Trek
to someone who had no referents for the concept of a starship, then decided it was probably impossible. Instead, she told a story about a good witch who’d gone to a school for wicked witches.

“I don’t understand why she didn’t become evil,” Lady Barb said when she’d finished. “Or why they didn’t just kill her outright.”

“It’s a...story,” Emily said. Mentioning that it was a
fairy
story would probably be a bad idea. “I don’t think it was meant as anything else.”

She paused, remembering Lin. “Is Mountaintop a school for wicked witches?”

“It tends to cater to magical families and new magicians,” Lady Barb said. There was something in her tone that bothered Emily. “But it doesn’t produce evil sorcerers or wicked witches.”

Emily nodded, relieved. “How many other magical schools are there?”

Lady Barb smiled. “Six or seven, in the Allied Lands,” she said. “Whitehall is the best, naturally, with Mountaintop a close second. Then there’s Laughter Academy, which only caters for girls; they’re very traditionalist, but still honor the shared curriculum. Stronghold is an oddity; it takes only boys, but combines magical and non-magical children in most classes. Quite a few royal brats are sent there for education.”

Emily looked up, surprised. “They put boys with magic together with boys without magic?”

“I believe so, in most classes,” Lady Barb said. “Most of their students are trained in combat; they’re either snatched up by various armies or become Mediators. And, to answer your next question, their tutors come down hard on bullying, of either kind.”

She shook her head. “The remaining schools are quite small, with only a handful of pupils and teachers,” she concluded. “More like homeschooling, but with several families sharing their resources to teach their children. There used to be two more, but both of them were destroyed by the necromancers.”

Emily nodded. “I meant to ask,” she said, hoping that talking would make Lady Barb feel better. “How are exams arranged?”

“The White Council assigns examiners for graduating students at the end of their terms,” Lady Barb said. “In Whitehall’s case, there are external examiners in Fourth Year and Sixth Year. If you pass the exams, you get a degree recognized all over the Allied Lands and you can look for a master for an apprenticeship. Not every student bothers to take the exams, though.”

“I didn’t realize that was a choice,” Emily said, surprised. “Can I evade my exams...?”

“Not unless you want me very angry with you,” Lady Barb said, dryly. “And I dare say Void won’t be pleased, either.”

Emily swallowed. Everyone, even the Grandmaster, seemed to be more than a little nervous when they spoke about the enigmatic sorcerer. But then, she’d seen him jump into a necromancer’s fortress, knock Shadye down for a few seconds and teleport out, taking Emily with him. No one else in her experience had shown so much power merged with skill. Few sorcerers would dare consider facing a necromancer alone.

“Alassa might be wise to evade hers,” Lady Barb added. “She can’t really be an apprentice, so exams won’t give her any support and a great many problems, if someone uses them to deduce her abilities. I wonder if the Grandmaster will arrange matters so she’s expelled just before taking the exams.”

“He can’t,” Emily said, shocked. “She’s worked hard...it would disgrace her.”

“It would also conceal her true capabilities,” Lady Barb said. She snorted. “Believe me, she would hardly be the first aristocratic brat to be expelled from Whitehall.”

Emily rolled her eyes. Alassa’s behavior in First Year had been awful, even though she knew – now – that it had more to do with her insecurities and badly-chosen friends than genuine malice. If
that
hadn’t been enough to get her expelled, what
was
? Even voyeurism hadn’t been enough to earn more than a month of detentions. And the destruction of whatever plans the boys had had for the summer, she reminded herself.

“It doesn’t seem right,” she mumbled.

She knew that, barring unexpected events, Alassa would leave Whitehall at the end of her Fourth Year. Alassa was a royal princess, the confirmed heir to the throne; it would be time for her to return and start acting like a crown princess. King Randor would start passing some of the burden of governance on to his daughter, preparing her for the day she would assume the throne. But Emily knew that she would miss Alassa terribly.

It was still two years away, she reminded herself. And they would still be friends. But it still felt immediate. She’d gone through so much of her life without friends that having some now made it hard to face the prospect of losing them.

“I don’t think it would blight her future,” Lady Barb said. “She
is
the crown princess, after all, and the barons have been thoroughly cowed.”

Emily had to admit she was right. King Randor had taken advantage of the chaos caused by the attempted coup to remove a handful of ambitious noblemen who hadn’t been directly implicated in the conspiracy. Between the purge and the ennoblement of others the king wanted to reward – including Emily herself – the remaining noblemen weren’t sure quite what the new rules were. By the time they figured it out, Alassa would be solidly in place.

“She still needs a husband,” Emily said, mournfully. “Is she going to find one?”

“Let us hope so,” Lady Barb said. “She’d be better off with someone who isn’t aristocratic, someone who can introduce new blood into the royal family. But he would have problems being accepted.”

Emily nodded, ruefully. Alassa was smart – but she was also the product of her culture, a culture that looked down on people without aristocratic blood. It was odd to realize that they would sooner accept a bastard child than someone who was perfectly legitimate, at least as long as the child had aristocratic blood. And, if the father was high enough, they could even overlook the mother being a commoner, no matter what she did for a living. But they didn’t extend such license to the aristocratic women.

Would Alassa accept a commoner? It didn’t seem likely, somehow. And would King Randor accept it if his daughter brought a commoner back to Zangaria? Perhaps Alassa should find someone at Whitehall, a powerful magician who would be on a social level of his own. But, as far as Emily knew, she’d never shown any interest in dating anyone at Whitehall. Only Imaiqah had shown any real interest in the opposite sex.

The thought reminded her of her own predicament. “I was a fool to accept the Barony, wasn’t I?”

Lady Barb looked over at her, her face unreadable. “Most of your loyal subjects think otherwise,” she pointed out. “You could hardly do worse than your predecessor.”

Emily cringed, mentally. She’d looked at the laws the previous Baron had written – and enforced, when he felt like it – and banished all of them to the fiery depths of legal hell. It didn’t take a lawyer to realize that the laws contradicted one another in several places, or that the peasants barely had enough food to survive the winter. In the end, she’d designed a handful of laws and left Bryon to ensure that they were not perverted. It hadn’t taken long for the peasants to start reaping the benefits of some of her changes.

But she wasn’t sure if she
wanted
to remain Baroness Cockatrice.

“That wouldn’t be difficult,” she said, tartly. “If I only molested ten girls a month I’d still be a net improvement.”

She shook her head, pushing the previous baron out of her mind. How was
she
supposed to act? A sorceress had sexual freedom, but an aristocratic girl did not. And
she
fell into both categories. She shook her head again, a moment later. It was hard enough to imagine being touched, let alone going further. Even the memory of Jade kissing her felt like it had happened to someone else. But eventually she would need to give Cockatrice an heir.

“I could adopt someone,” she said. It had worked well enough for the Roman Emperors, at least until Marcus Aurelius had been succeeded by Commodus, his biological son. The more she thought about it, the more she thought she saw advantages. Her adopted son would be an adult by the time she chose him, allowing her to judge his character for herself. If Marcus Aurelius had been able to do that, perhaps Commodus would have been quietly strangled one night and dumped in the river. “Can’t I?”

“The bloodlines would be disrupted,” Lady Barb pointed out. “Unless you used an adoption rite and they can go wrong, if you picked badly.”

Emily rolled her eyes. What
was
the obsession with aristocratic blood?
She
was no aristocrat. Maybe, just maybe, it was vaguely possible she was related to an aristocratic family on Earth, but she had to admit it was unlikely. Even if she was, the aristocracy on Earth was hardly acknowledged by the Allied Lands. Or would they recognize an aristocrat from Earth?

“Magic runs in the blood,” Lady Barb reminded her, when she asked. “So do any little...quirks someone might have engineered into their line.”

“I have none,” Emily pointed out, tartly.

“You might have, sooner or later,” Lady Barb added. “Besides, there would be no questioning of a legitimate child – or even one born out of wedlock, as long as you were the mother.”