Nanette's Tale

Chapter 8

“You shouldn’t be spending so much time with that firstie,” Penny said, as they bent their heads over the parchments. “People are starting to talk.”

“It’s only been a week,” Nanette pointed out, dryly. “And I have orders to mentor her.”

“Which is all that’s stopping some of the nastier rumours from getting any traction,” Penny snapped. “You do realise she’s got a pash on you?”

And you’re jealous, Nanette thought. It was fairly clear that Penny had a pash on her. She never wasted a moment to spend time with Nanette, practicing everything from etiquette to dancing when they weren’t working on the flying display. You want me to spend more time with you.

She shrugged. “I have my orders,” she said, trying to add a hint of sourness to her voice. “And how many others even give me the time of day?”

Penny reddened. “I could introduce you to people if you weren’t in detention every weekend,” she said. “Why did you help the little brat?”

“I…” Nanette shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, really.”

She peered down at the parchments. Penny was good, for her age, but Nanette was better. Aurelius had practically given her a charms apprenticeship, before she’d even graduated from Mountaintop. It had taken a great deal of work to craft charms that looked harmless, as long as they weren’t put together in a specific order. Nanette had few qualms about risking lives, but she knew she was risking discovery. A skilled charms mistress might realise something was wrong if she studied the parchments. She’d suspect the worst — and she’d be right.

“This is going to be great,” Penny said. “Everyone will be watching.”

“Yeah.” Nanette studied the parchment. “I still can’t believe you trust your life to these spells.”

Penny smirked. “Too scared to fly, little girl?”

Nanette allowed herself to flush. Mistress Jens had made it brutally clear she was not to try flying, at least until she’d mastered the spells. Nanette was sure she could use them, but it helped cement the idea she was bad at charms in everyone’s mind. And besides, she was entirely sure the spells weren’t safe outside a controlled environment. The teachers might promise expulsion without appeal to anyone who tampered with the spells, but what good was that in a real fight?

She sighed. Penny had finally dragged her into the arena and forced her to watch the older girls flying around like bats out of hell. There was a kind of freedom in flying, Nanette had to admit; there was something in her that liked the idea of letting go of her cares, throwing herself into the sky and letting the wind take her away. And yet, she knew she could never be so carefree. She knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a single spell could send her crashing to the ground far below.

“It’s not that and you know it,” Nanette said. “They won’t let me fly.”

“Maybe you should show off your true skill.” Penny leered at her. “Or would that get you into more trouble?”

“Yeah,” Nanette said, quietly.

Penny stood. “You promised me more dancing,” she said. “And I brought music.”

Nanette had to smile as Penny produced a spellstone from her drawer and placed it on the cabinet, then muttered the activation charm. Recorded music was rare — she’d never actually seen a recording spellstone, outside enchantment classes — but she had to admit it served a purpose. There was no need to hire a band for private dance lessons.

And any aristo who could afford a spellstone would sooner die than admit he couldn’t afford a band, she thought. One must keep up appearances, even if it means pawning the family gold and eating off one’s shirts.

She took Penny in her arms and led her through a series of dance steps. It was tempting to just let herself sink into the music and enjoy the dance — Penny was a better partner than some of the men who’d taught her — but she had a job to do. Penny sighed as Nanette ran her hand down Penny’s back, gently brushing her magic against the girl’s skin. The suggestions were definitely starting to take root. Penny couldn’t help feeling friendly and trusting towards Nanette. It only took a moment to strengthen her feelings of bitterness and resentment towards Lillian. The younger girl didn’t know it, but she was Penny’s romantic rival.

Nanette felt a pang of guilt as the music changed. She was no stranger to manipulating people in any number of ways, but it still cost her to play with Penny’s emotions. She wasn’t sure why. Penny had set out to use her, just like so many others. And yet… she shook her head, Penny leaning against her. She had a job to do. The plan was steadily coming together. And then she’d be gone, leaving a heartbroken girl behind.

And this school might accidentally foil my plans, she mused. What’ll happen if Penny starts questioning her own feelings?

She kept the worry off her face as she led Penny through a series of more complex dance steps. It was easy to cast compulsion or domination spells, but they tended to be incredibly noticeable. An outside observer would probably notice something was wrong, even if the mere act of casting the spell didn’t set off alarms. And Penny might be able to fight it off. It was better to play with her emotions, to steer her round to doing what Nanette wanted her to do without ever questioning her reasoning. And yet…

She’ll recover, she told herself. And she’ll be all the stronger for it.

Penny stepped back, her face flushed. Nanette understood. Dancing was as close as one could get to sex without actually making out. It was intimate… one of her tutors had told her that dancing allowed the partners to become intimately familiar with each other without ever crossing the line into intercourse. She’d thought it was silly at the time, but there was a world of difference between dancing with a tutor and dancing with someone attractive. She supposed she was lucky Penny didn’t have wandering hands.

“I…” Penny shook her head and tapped the spellstone, cancelling the spell. The music died to silence. “I really should get back to work.”

“You still have that essay to do?” Nanette leaned forward. “Do you really have to get it done before Friday?”

“I have to coach the team on Saturday and finalise the spells before the flying display on Sunday,” Penny said. “I really have to get it right.”

“I’m sure you’ll do well,” Nanette said. “It’s just a shame you can’t practice everything first.”

“We’re not firsties,” Penny said. “We have to pretend we’re starting from scratch.”

Nanette rolled her eyes. She’d been taught that practice made perfect. Better to get the mistakes out of the way during training than when lives were at stake. But she thought she saw the logic. What was the point of a surprise test if everyone knew it was coming? The girls weren’t just being judged on their flying, but on their ability to cast a complex semi-ritualised spell on the fly. She told herself, firmly, not to question it too much. It would come in very handy.

“You know who’s coming?” Penny smiled, wanly. “I have to impress them.”

“I believe you might have mentioned a few… hundred … names,” Nanette said, dryly. “I’m sure you’ll impress them.”

“I better had,” Penny said. There was a knock on the door. “Oh, what now?”

“Come in,” Nanette called.

The door opened. Lillian peered in nervously. Nanette glanced at Penny, just in time to see her face twist in jealousy. The suggestions were taking root, then. She’d heard enough horror stories about pashes gone wrong over the last few days to feel a twinge of sympathy for both girls. Young romance was bad enough even without someone manipulating one’s feelings to cause chaos at the right moment. It was funny, she supposed, how Laughter had more romantic drama than Mountaintop or Whitehall. The girls weren’t really expected to marry each other. They could indulge their feelings in the certain knowledge nothing long-term would come out of it.

“Ah… you said you wanted to meet,” Lillian said. “I brought my homework and…”

“We’ll go to the library,” Nanette said. “I have detention in an hour, so I can keep an eye on your work while I shelve books.”

“Just don’t get caught talking to her,” Penny advised, sourly. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours. We can sneak down to Pendle together.”

Nanette glanced at the clock, then nodded. “And have dinner there? I look forward to it.”

She smiled as she stepped through the door, Lillian following her. It was irritating to have a younger girl dogging her steps, like a lamb following her mother. Nanette had no idea how Emily put up with it. And yet, there was something oddly comforting in the open, guileless admiration in Lillian’s eyes. Nadine would not have been anything like so welcoming. The girl was so shallow that the mere fact Lillian shared a name with Nadine’s hated stepmother would have damned her.

Idiot, Nanette thought. She was used to changing names at the drop of a hat. It isn’t as if she chose the name.

Lillian caught her hand. “I don’t think the Head Girl likes me,” she said. “Why not?”

“She just likes challenging people,” Nanette lied. “She prefers people to stand up to her.”

“Oh,” Lillian said. “But… she’s the Head Girl!”

“Technically, she’s the Deputy Head Girl,” Nanette pointed out. The system made a certain kind of sense, she supposed, but she could see its flaws. If Penny disgraced herself, who would take her place? It made far more sense to have prefects and suchlike appointed by the tutors. At least popularity wouldn’t have that much influence on selection. “She has to survive this year before she becomes the formal Head Girl.”

Lillian shrugged. “Is it that important?”

“Being Head Girl looks very good on your resume, when you leave school,” Nanette said. It didn’t cheer her up. She’d been Head Girl at Mountaintop, but there was no way she could claim the title without revealing herself. “It suggests you’re impressive enough to get your fellows to trust you.”

She felt another pang as they walked into the library. She’d never been trusted, not enough to convince anyone to vote for her. They’d known her as a commoner, then as a tutor’s personal assistant… it wasn’t as if Aurelius had been a monster. There’d been students who’d served really bad masters. Everyone had felt sorry for them. But her? They’d all known Aurelius’s patronage could open doors.

And now he’s dead, she thought, savagely. She’d make Emily pay for murdering Aurelius. He’d been more than a tutor to her. I’ll burn down her world before I kill her.

“Nadine?” Lillian sounded worried. “Are you alright?”

“Just remembering,” Nanette said. “A moment of weakness, nothing more.”

She calmed herself as she looked around the library. It was nearly deserted. Two swots sat at widely separated tables, working through a pile of textbooks; a duty librarian piled books onto a trolley, ready to go back on the shelves. Lillian selected a third table — Nanette was amused to note she was keeping her distance from the other students — and started to unload her bag as Nanette sat down. Her tutors had given her enough homework to keep even an experienced student busy for days. Lillian would have been hopelessly stuck if Nanette hadn’t broken it down for her.

“I managed to cast a luminance charm in class,” Lillian said. “But… I couldn’t figure out how to change the light.”

“It’s a useful spell in more ways than one,” Nanette said. She took the parchment and scanned the spellwork. “It’s actually a difficult spell to block. What do you think will happen if you cast a blinding light into someone’s eyes?”

“You’ll blind them?”

“Perhaps not for long, but you’ll make it very hard for them to think straight,” Nanette said, dryly. She allowed herself a tight smile. Blinding charms were generally forbidden at school, but there was a rather neat loophole if someone used a luminance charm in their place. There was enough plausible deniability to keep someone from being expelled if they went too far. “Thinking outside the box, Lillian, can lead to some really interesting tricks.”

Lillian frowned. “Like what?”

“Cast a washing charm on someone and you’ll drench them in cold water,” Nanette pointed out. “Modify the charm a little and you’ll scald them instead. Cast a summoning charm when someone is between you and whatever you’re trying to summon and that person will be smacked in the back. Cast a painkilling charm when someone is not in pain and you’ll make them numb, very numb. It’s astonishing how many simple household spells have nasty uses if you think about it.”

And thinking outside the box is Emily’s skill, her thoughts added, darkly. Who’d have thought of using mundane means for magic?

She skimmed the homework quickly. “The trick is to know how to cast a particular spell without becoming too attached to any particular version of the spell,” she explained. “The standard washing charm, for example, produces cold water. You work out how to fiddle with the spell to produce hot water, rather than simply casting a hot water spell. And that’ll give you insight into modifying other spells.”

“I see, I think,” Lillian said. “What if I change the variables like this…?”

“Don’t write it down,” Nanette advised. “Try and alter the variables in your head.”

“The teacher said to always write it down,” Lillian objected. “I…”

Nanette had to smile as she broke off. “It’s good to ask, if you don’t understand,” she said, as reassuringly as she could. “You write the spell down to fix it in your mind. But you actually cast the spell in your head.”

It was a little more complex than that, she thought, as she rose to start her detention, but it would do for the moment. The duty librarian glanced at her, then shrugged. Nanette guessed the detention wasn’t considered too important, not in the grand scheme of things. Her lips quirked. It wasn’t easy pretending to be ignorant. She had to make understandable mistakes, without getting booted out of the library and ordered to serve her detentions somewhere else. Thankfully, the shelving system for the open collection was easy to use. A complete illiterate could have emplaced the books, even if she couldn’t read them.

Emily would love this place, Nanette thought. And she’d spend all her time here.

She scowled at the books. Reading was a useful skill, but she’d always preferred action. A magician could read a book and learn a whole new spell, yet actually mastering the magic required practice. She’d read, somewhere, of a magic that only worked when the spells were written down. In her experience, it was utter nonsense. Magic simply didn’t work that way.

The library felt odd as the hours ticked by. The older students would be in Pendle, enjoying their freedom; the younger students would be in the Silent Woods or sneaking their way to the Redoubt. Penny had told her all sorts of stories about the ruined castle, stories that had grown in the telling. Nanette had to smile at the concept of ghosts, goblins and things that went bump in the night, although she knew better than to laugh too openly. Anyone who lived in rural areas knew there were things out there that weren’t listed in any tome.

And the other folk are always listening, she thought. A shiver ran down her spine. Who knows what’s really buried under the ruined castle?

“I can’t figure this out,” Lillian complained. She was staring at a parchment. “Why doesn’t this work?”

Nanette left the trolley and walked back to the table. “Because you’ve knotted the magic into a collapsing spiral,” she said. “You’ve basically twisted the spell into a ball of string and tied the ends together.”

The door opened behind her. Nanette glanced back. Penny was stamping into the room, looking furious. Nanette wondered, idly, what’d happened. The suggestions shouldn’t have been that effective. Perhaps she’d had a row with one of her friends. It couldn’t have escaped their notice that Penny was spending a lot of time with a newcomer. Solid friendships had been destroyed by less.

“It’s time to go,” Penny said. She sounded like she was on the verge of exploding. “We don’t have much time left.”

Nanette glanced at the clock. It was mid-afternoon. “We have enough,” she said, picking her words carefully. She had to push the right buttons, all the while maintaining plausible deniability. “Just let me finish here…”

“Come on,” Penny urged. “It’s not that important…”

Lillian looked up, defiantly. “I need help and…”

Penny glared. “Be quiet!”

“I need help,” Lillian repeated. “I…”

“I said, be quiet!” Penny cast a spell. Lillian’s mouth and nose melted into her skin. “I said…”

“Undo the spell!” Nanette didn’t have to pretend to be horrified. Lillian was starting to suffocate. “Now!”

Penny’s rage built. She drew back her hand to slap Lillian.

“Enough!” The librarian cancelled the spell. Lillian started to gasp for breath. “You” — she jabbed a finger at Nanette — “take this firstie to the healers.”

She rounded on Penny. “And you, report to Lady Damia at once. Now!”

Nanette helped Lillian to stand, carefully concealing her private glee. It had worked! She hadn’t known precisely what would happen, but she’d been certain something would.

And now to see where the pieces fall, she thought. If everything worked as planned, she’d have a window of opportunity. If not… she’d think of something else. And no one can ever blame it on me.