Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) (35 page)

She jumped as a hand fell on her shoulder. “You did too well,” Lady Barb said, mischievously. “Your glamor was too good. It just looked
unreal
when I saw it.”

Emily glanced at her watch. Lady Barb had taken twenty-two minutes to find her. Sighing, she dropped to the ground and counted out eight more push-ups, then stood up.

Lady Barb shrugged, waggling her fingers at Emily. Taken by surprise, Emily froze. It took her several minutes to break the spell and escape.

“Work faster, next time,” Lady Barb said, as she turned to lead Emily back to the path. “You could be easily killed while you are helpless.”

“I know,” Emily confessed. She needed to move her hands to work magic, mostly. It was harder, somehow, to cast spells without moving. She’d worked hard, with Mistress Sun and Sergeant Miles, to master the art, but she was still only a beginner. “But it doesn’t always work properly.”

Lady Barb made a rude sound as they reached the path and started onwards. “Just you wait until you find a proper apprenticeship,” she said, darkly. “Your mistress or master won’t be so kind.”

Emily remembered some of Jade’s stories and nodded in agreement. Master Grey, whatever his faults, pushed his apprentice really hard. Jade could cope, Emily suspected, but he hadn’t had the benefit of a second year of Martial Magic. Master Grey was pushing him right to the limits, as well as teaching him to be a duelist. The thought reminded her of something she wanted to ask.

“Why didn’t you take part in the dueling contest?”

Lady Barb seemed surprised by the question. “I did, when I was younger,” she said. “And then I lost my ranking and decided I could bow out gracefully. I preferred to fight, rather than duel.”

She smiled. “It wasn’t something I really wanted to keep,” she added. “Dueling isn’t something that should be done casually.”

“I see,” Emily said.

“Master Grey holds the topmost ranking at present,” Lady Barb said. “This
is
who you were talking about, isn’t it?”

Emily nodded.

“Clasp your hands behind your back,” Lady Barb ordered. Emily opened her mouth to ask why, but Lady Barb went on before she could say a word. “To answer the question most girls ask, he can’t decline challenges without forfeiting his ranking. So he insists that all challenges be to the death, just to keep them down.”

“Men,” Emily said.

“Indeed,” Lady Barb agreed. She smiled, rather dryly. “Unclasp your hands.”

Emily tried...and discovered that her hands were stuck, bound by a spell. “You have twenty minutes to break the spell,” Lady Barb said as she walked away. “And don’t even
think
about standing still.”

“Cruel,” Emily muttered, as she followed her mentor. She struggled, but her hands refused to unlock. “Why...?”

“Because you need the practice,” Lady Barb said, in a surprisingly reasonable tone. “And believe me, you have to learn how to defeat these spells before it’s too late.”

There was something in her tone that bothered Emily, a suggestion she might need to learn fast – or faster. She cast the canceling charm, but wasn’t too surprised to discover that the charm failed. Lady Barb wouldn’t have trapped her hands with something simple and easy to break. Gritting her teeth, she tried a more complex charm, then another. Neither one worked.

She trailed along behind Lady Barb, struggling with the hex. It was odd; the touch was so light that she couldn’t sense the magic, merely the effects. She should have been able to sense something, certainly after two years of advanced study with Mistress Sun and Sergeant Miles. But there was nothing...

It clicked and she glared at the older woman’s back. There
was
nothing, at least nothing on her hands. The spell had affected her mind, forcing her to keep her hands locked no matter what she tried. Once she knew what it was, it was easy to counter. Emily freed her hands, rubbing them frantically. She’d gripped them so tightly that her skin, already pale, had gone white.

“You took far too long to realize how the trick was done,” Lady Barb told her, without turning around. “That may be a problem, later.”

Emily nodded, sullenly. There were spells she disliked intensely and almost all of them related to ways of rendering someone helpless – and open to outside commands or influence. Quite a few of the traps in Blackhall manipulated the target’s mind, either inserting commands or merely messing around with their perceptions. Emily’s standard tactic was to avoid them where possible. They were just too tricky to overpower.

Lady Barb kept tossing tests at her as they walked, each one slightly more complex and twisted than the last. Emily fought down her outrage and concentrated, but most of the tests required careful thought to defeat, though they were designed to make thinking difficult. It was worse than trying to study while someone was playing music, she decided, remembering days at school when she’d studied there, rather than go home and risk meeting her stepfather. Her mind was all she had and it could be twisted so easily...

“Set up the wards,” Lady Barb ordered. “And make sure you get plenty of sleep.”

Emily eyed her suspiciously. “Are you...are you going to do anything tonight?”

“Sleep,” Lady Barb said, innocently. “Or should I be setting you punishment exercises?”

“No,” Emily said, quickly. “But...”

Lady Barb’s expression softened. “It wasn’t very easy for me either,” she admitted. “But you have far better cause than I to learn how to resist mental attacks.”

Emily shivered, remembering Lin – and how the bodies had almost been wiped from her mind.

Lady Barb went back into the forest and returned, carrying a pair of rabbits and a handful of vegetables. Emily watched in some amusement as she dropped water into the cauldron, then boiled the meat and half of the vegetables until she’d made a tasty stew. The sergeants had done the same, she recalled, only with larger animals. But then, they’d had more mouths to feed.

“Your training has been enhanced, but you have a long way to go,” Lady Barb said. “Still...”

Her voice trailed off. Emily looked at her, sharply. The older woman almost seemed to be
hinting
at something. But what? She braced herself and asked.

“I can’t tell you, not now,” Lady Barb said. “But it is
important
that you concentrate on all of your defenses, not just the physical ones. You will need them.”

Emily ate her stew, then fell asleep almost at once. Nothing troubled the wards – or at least nothing woke her in the middle of the night. When she awoke, it was morning and Lady Barb was already awake. Emily felt a tight knot undoing itself in her stomach, one she hadn’t realized was there. Lady Barb was back to normal.

“I didn’t see anything last night,” Lady Barb said. “We might have slept in the wrong place.”

Emily shrugged as she washed her face, then drank the Kava. For once, Lady Barb had prepared breakfast, such as it was. The reheated stew tasted a little gamy, but she gulped it down anyway. Lady Barb packed up, passing Emily her bag. Emily sighed and took it.

“We’re going to pause overnight in a town on the edge of Easter,” Lady Barb informed her, once she’d pulled the bag over her shoulders. “We should have some time to get information out of the locals before we go visit Lady Easter.”

Emily nodded. The Sergeants had taught her the value of intelligence, although they’d also added that most people didn’t know anything outside their own limited experiences. It was rare to find a lower-class tourist in the Allied Lands, apart from magicians and traders. Even the upper classes didn’t travel very far from their homelands. Of course, that might change once the steam railways were finally in place.

Lady Barb kept testing her as they made their way along the path, heading down towards the nearest town. Emily sighed and concentrated on breaking the spells, one after another. Several of them caught her so firmly she couldn’t escape, forcing Lady Barb to free her, before teaching her how to escape and then casting the spell again. The second time that happened, Emily discovered that even the smallest change in the spell made it harder for her to escape. Her head was pounding uncomfortably when Lady Barb finally called a halt.

“You will need to keep practicing,” Lady Barb warned. “But the true danger lies in subtle magic. We may need to carve a rune into your flesh.”

Emily glowered at her, rubbing her forehead. Carving runes into one’s flesh could be dangerous, even if it worked perfectly. There was no way someone else could do it and expect it to work; she’d have to carve the rune herself, without benefit of anaesthetic. And she wasn’t even sure
why
.

“Unfortunately, it probably wouldn’t be missed,” Lady Barb added.

“Missed,” Emily repeated. “Missed by whom?”

Lady Barb said nothing. Emily was about to ask again, demanding answers, when the pathway suddenly widened and revealed a tiny village hidden within the trees. It looked alarmingly like the first village, save that it was organized differently and large carved stones had been placed in front of each of the shacks. A handful of people were moving from house to house, but something was missing. It took her a moment to realize that there were no children in sight.

Someone sounded an alarm and the women scurried into the nearest house, while the men produced a handful of makeshift weapons. Emily tensed, preparing a spell, as two men started towards them, their expressions frozen somewhere between grim determination and fear. But then, she wouldn’t have cared to face a sorceress either, not if she didn’t have any magic of her own.

“Greetings,” Lady Barb said, with studied casualness. “May we enter the village for the night?”

The two men exchanged glances. “Are you magicians?”

“Yes,” Lady Barb said, flatly.

Emily blinked in surprise. They were two women, travelling alone. What else could they be? And why had they been greeted with weapons?

“The headman told us that a magician would be coming,” the guard said. “He needs your help.”

“Then we will assist him,” Lady Barb said, regally. “Take us to your leader.”

“Prove it,” the second guard said. “We need...”

Lady Barb snapped her fingers. A frog looked up at her from where the second guard had been, quivering slightly.

“It’ll wear off,” she said, then looked at the first guard. “Convinced?”

The guard gulped. “Yes, Lady Sorceress,” he said. “If you will please come with me?”

Lady Barb followed him, holding her head up high. Emily followed her, glancing around with some interest. The village looked deserted, but she could tell that they were being watched.

“Stay alert,” Lady Barb muttered to her. “Something bad happened here.”

Emily nodded. She couldn’t disagree.

E
MILY COULDN’T HELP THINKING OF ONE
of the herbalists at Whitehall when she first set eyes on the headman. He was tall and almost painfully thin, with a long white beard that drifted to his knees. Beside him, there were four other bearded men, each staring at the two magicians with expressions that ranged from relief to outrage. Somehow, Emily doubted that they’d called the magicians for anything minor.

Lady Barb nodded at them politely, then lifted an eyebrow.

“We have a problem,” the headman said. His companions nodded in agreement. “We need you to interrogate a prisoner.”

Rudolf
, Emily thought, in sudden horror.
Did they capture Rudolf?

But they hadn’t. The whole story came tumbling out, slowly. Clearly,
this
headman did not have unlimited power. His companions inserted their own comments, argued and bickered with each other, pushing forward their own views as the headman spoke. Emily found it hard to follow the explanation, even though the headman generally waited for his companions to finish and then went on. By the time she had a fairly complete idea of what was going on, the sun was setting.

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Lady Barb said. “Two children vanished from your village.”

The headman and his companions nodded in agreement.

“The only stranger who came to the village was a postal worker,” Lady Barb continued, calmly. “Your people decided that he was responsible for their disappearance and threatened to lynch him. You managed to lock him up instead.”

Emily winced as she realized the dilemma facing the headman. If the postal worker was killed without proof of guilt, there
would
be eventual retaliation from the outside. Even if all they did was cut the village out of the postal route, it would have dangerous effects. The village didn’t import much, but it wouldn’t be allowed to import
anything
if strangers weren’t allowed to come and go safely.

But if the mob
wasn’t
allowed to kill the person it blamed for the disappearances – the deaths, if the kidnapped children were the dead she’d seen after meeting Rudolf – it might easily turn on the headman. There was a degree of consensus in this village that was missing from Hodge’s village, an understanding that there were limits to the headman’s authority. He was caught between two fires, either one of which might kill him.

Fortunately for him, he’d been lucky enough to have a pair of traveling magicians walk into his village.

“That is correct,” the headman said. “If he is guilty, particularly if you verify it, we can kill him. But if he isn’t—”

“I understand,” Lady Barb said, cutting him off. “We will hold a morning trial, I think. But I will have to see the suspect first.”

“Of course,” the headman said. He sounded relieved. “And I would be honored if you would join me as my guests for the night.”

Lady Barb nodded. “We would be honored,” she said. Emily knew her well enough to detect a faint hint of irritation in her tone. “Please take us to the prisoner.”

Emily was mildly surprised that the tiny village had a prison in the first place. Peasant customs of law and order were usually very limited. There was simply very little to steal and, for all the hardness of their lives, very few thieves. Those that
did
appear were normally beaten, sometimes to death, or were thrown out of the village. But then, there were very few things the peasants considered crimes. Beating one’s wife – or husband, for that matter – was certainly nothing unusual.