Chapter 3

It shouldn’t have surprised me, the following morning, that Walter was announced as the new prefect. It really shouldn’t. The original prefects were nominated by the staff, and elected after several rounds of horse-trading, but the grandmaster had the right to name replacements for any prefect who left the post without consulting his staff. No one else had a say. The female members of staff insisted Geraldine should be replaced by another girl, on the grounds a male prefect wasn’t allowed into female-only places and would be hexed blind if he tried, but Boscha ignored them. He didn’t even try to insist there were no suitable replacements amongst the girls. I wasn’t surprised.

I wasn’t surprised, either, that it didn’t take more than a day for Walter to become the least popular prefect in the school. He threw his weight around with abandon, backed up by Adrian and his two toadies. They harassed every student they could, including the ones they hadn’t been previously able to touch, often for the silliest reasons. A boy was tormented for not wearing the proper robe, a girl for not wearing the right underwear … I ground my teeth in fury when I heard that one, because I knew what he’d done to find out. There was no point in complaining to Boscha. Mistress Constance did so, only to be told the girls needed to learn how to defend themselves. I didn’t pretend to understand it. It was one thing to turn a blind eye to newborns being bullied, with an absurd explanation providing a fig-leaf of respectability, but quite another to ignore well-connected students who were being tormented. Their families could cause real trouble for Boscha …

It was a deeply frustrating week. I did my best to keep Walter and the others under supervision, at least in my classroom, but my ability to patrol the rest of the school was limited. They seemed to be aware I was watching them and taking delight in crawling as close to the line as possible, without ever crossing it and giving me the excuse I needed to kick them out of my classroom. It was just a matter of time before someone got really hurt—or killed. I watched the four bullies, and their victims, and silently prayed I could handle it when something exploded. It was going to happen. I knew it.

And I had to watch, dying a little inside, as Alan and Geraldine lost the will to live.

I’d never been knocked down that far, not ever. My brothers and I had been tough enough to beat Walter and his cronies, tough enough to take on the rest of our year and make sure they remembered us even if they won by sheer weight of numbers. We had always been able to rely on each other. Alan and Geraldine had no one. They were alone in the midst of a crowd, isolated from everyone else ... no one, I reflected sourly, wanted to be associated with them when it might mean getting targeted themselves. Alan had always been a quiet little thing, but he withdrew even further into himself; Geraldine, by contrast, had been a fun-loving girl when she’d entered the school. Now …

I probably should have reported it, when I caught Alan reading forbidden textbooks. He was no coward, whatever his other flaws, and he was no weakling either. In his hands, the rites and rituals could be really dangerous. And yet … I confiscated the books, gave him a lecture on the dangers of embracing the darkness, and sent him on his way. Boscha wouldn’t hesitate to expel him, if he knew about the books. He didn’t have to play politics with a boy of no real family …

But he was playing politics with Walter.

It took me a while to notice, but he was. Boscha had never shown any real interest in any of the students before, yet now … he was doing more than just showing open favouritism to Walter and his cronies. The pattern seemed odd … Boscha would sometimes override his tutors, when they handed out punishments, or give Walter privileges denied to other students, such as the right to visit Dragon’s Den during weekdays. It puzzled me. I couldn’t imagine any reason for such favouritism, certainly nothing Boscha could get elsewhere. The more I thought about it, the more it gnawed at me. What was he doing? I kept a close eye on the bully, watching and waiting, and eventually I saw him going deep into the school, to the tunnel that connected Whitehall to Blackhall. I was surprised he knew about it. My brothers and I had searched the school from top to bottom, when we’d been students, and we’d missed the tunnel. It hadn’t been until I’d found myself working closely with Lady Pepper that I’d been told about it. And yet, Walter knew?

Odd, I thought. Walter had never struck me as the kind of student who spent his time uncovering the school’s secrets, not when he could be pulling wings off flies instead. Did the Grandmaster tell him?

I slipped after him, down to the tunnel, and discovered it wasn’t just Walter. Nine students, all very well connected, were making their way through a passageway they weren’t supposed to know existed, wearing drab clothes that would make them harder to spot in the darkness. I wrapped myself in invisibility spells and followed, wondering just what I’d stumbled across. Walter could have asked for a pass, if he’d wanted to leave the school, and Boscha would have granted it. If he hadn’t asked Boscha … was he doing something that even Boscha would find abhorrent? Walter wasn’t stupid enough to engage in dark rites and sacrifices, was he? Or demon summoning? Or … I wasn’t in the best place to throw stones, but still …

Perhaps it’s something harmless, I thought. I’d known girls who’d used to sneak out of the school to go dancing, something I wouldn’t have thought would cause any trouble. But then, the thrill of getting away with something was very seductive to young minds. Not that I’d ever done anything like that, when I’d been a student. Of course not. Perish the thought. But with Walter involved … how could it be harmless?

It wasn’t easy to remain hidden in the tunnel as we reached the far end and clambered into Blackhall. The problem with being invisible is that no one knows you’re there—obviously—and they try to shut doors in your face, without ever knowing what they’re doing. Or worse. I suspected I’d be in some trouble if anyone ever figured out what I’d done. Getting into the hall was tricky—I had to cast multiple spells to conceal my presence and the signs of my presence—and it galled me to resort to such tricks. I was a senior tutor! I should be able to walk through the corridors without being invisible. But … students don’t normally do things they know they shouldn’t when they know a tutor is watching. Even Walter had more sense.

I expected to see the group head out the doors and into the forest, picking their way to the nearest clearing or heading down to the town. Instead, they headed upstairs, into a large chamber. I had no idea what it had been used for, originally, but now it was a training room for students studying various defensive magics. The students lined up and bowed in unison as someone emerged from the far door and nodded to them. For a moment, I didn’t recognise him. Wearing a training outfit, Boscha looked like a different man.

My blood ran cold. What the hell is he doing?

My eyes darted from student to student. There were seventeen students, all from the upper years … all high-born. Most were from magical families of long standing, although a couple were from families that were aristocratic in both the magical and mundane communities. They were all boys … I cursed, silently, as I confirmed there were no newborn magicians, aristo or commoner, in the group. I could barely move. What was Boscha doing?

“You know what to do,” Boscha said. He sounded crisp, direct … so unlike the grandmaster I knew and loathed that I was tempted to hit him with a spell to check his identity. I didn’t dare move. I’d never thought of Boscha as particularly talented, but it was growing alarmingly clear I’d underestimated him. “Begin.”

The students did as they were told, running through a series of magical combat exercises that put the ones my family had offered to shame. I watched, feeling my heart sink further with every passing second, as they cast spells on each other, ranging from simple offensive spells to others that were tricky, almost forbidden. I’d wondered where Walter had learnt the spell he’d used on Alan … I knew now. Boscha walked from student to student, offering advice to some and a mild rebuke to others, praising the deserving in a manner that would have impressed me if it hadn’t been so … slanted. They weren’t being praised for doing well. They were being praised for living up to their bloodlines.

He’s a Supremacist, I thought, numbly. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised. The idea that magicians were just better than commoners had been around for a long time, that magic instantly elevated the poorest and lowliest amongst us to a nobility none of the mundane aristocracy could hope to match. I might have been more taken with it myself, if I hadn’t been so aware of how my brothers and I had been treated. Boscha is a Supremacist and he’s teaching them to be Supremacists too.

I swallowed, hard. Boscha was pushing at an open door. Walter and his cronies—and the rest of the group—were already convinced of their own superiority. I knew how they treated the mundane servants—and newborn magicians, even though they had magic too. It was easy to be cruel, if one believed the cruelty was amply justified … I wondered, suddenly, if Boscha had given Walter instructions on what excuse to use, if they were caught by the other tutors. Or … I cursed inwardly. It was easy to manipulate simple minds. All you had to do was pretend to be their friend, and excuse their misdeeds, and they’d love you.

And they know he’s not a weakling either, I mused, as I watched the lesson go on. There’s no sense he’s giving them what they want because he’s afraid of them.

My head spun. Boscha wasn’t just teaching them how to fight. He was teaching them to work as a team, to think their way through tactical obstacles … he was building an army! My blood ran cold as I inched back, careful not to do anything that might risk discovery. I wasn’t afraid of the students … no, that wasn’t true. Not any longer. Fifteen magicians with combat training, even incomplete, could give me a very hard time. And Boscha himself …

In these times, fifteen magicians would make a formidable force, I thought. I kept moving, back down the stairs and into the tunnel. And who’s to say there aren’t more?

The thought nagged at my mind. There were two thousand students in Whitehall. A third of them, more or less, had bloodlines that stretched back at least three or four generations, perhaps more if you overlooked certain … irregularities … in the records that might suggest a combination of forgery and wishful thinking. Even if Boscha restricted himself to the older students, and I suspected he would, he might still be able to put together a formidable force … enough to do real damage out in the world. The Empire was gone. The Allied Lands were constantly on the verge of falling apart. And if Boscha took power …

I shuddered. I didn’t want to think about it.

Whitehall had never felt so welcoming, I reflected, even though I wasn’t really safe. Boscha controlled the wards … I hoped, prayed, he hadn’t been watching me as I left the school myself. Would he have worked out where I’d gone? Or … my thoughts spun in circles, trying to come up with a plan. Should I go to the White Council? Right now, I doubted the councillors could agree on anything, even something as important as putting out a fire threatening to burn them to death. Or my family … the thought of crawling back to House Barca, even to warn them, was abhorrent. They’d laugh in my face. Probably.

My feet carried me back to the staff quarters, then stopped. I needed to find allies and quickly. And that meant … I hurried down the corridor and knocked, loudly, on Mistress Constance’s door. The Alchemy tutor was tough—and had good reason to distrust Boscha. Her door swung open a moment later, her wards pointedly crackling around me. Mistress Constance had hundreds of suitors, all convinced she’d marry them if they asked nicely. So far, she’d rejected them all. I suspected I knew why.

Mistress Constance emerged from her bedroom, her dark hair hanging loose and spilling over a white nightgown. She eyed me in a manner that would have intimidated me, if I hadn’t seen too many horrors in my life. A sorceress’s rooms are her own private kingdom, and she is quite within her rights to do whatever she likes to you, if you intrude without her permission and a very good reason. But she had to know I wouldn’t knock on her door without good cause. Tutors learn to value their private time. They get so little of it.

“This had better be important,” she snapped. “I have the fifth years in the morning.”

“I found out what our grandmaster was doing,” I said, after casting a series of privacy wards. The look she gave me suggested I’d better explain quickly or I’d be spending the rest of my life croaking on a lily pad, if she didn’t chop me up and use me for ingredients instead. “He’s building an army.”

She stared as I ran through the full story, then swallowed. “He’s mad!”

“Perhaps.” I wasn’t so sure. Boscha wouldn’t have embarked on such a scheme unless he was reasonably sure it would succeed. Or at least let him back off and swear blind he’d been up to nothing. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing.”

“We had an odd little chat, Pepper and I and him,” Mistress Constance mused. “It was one of those odd little conversations, one of those discussions where you dance around the topic endlessly, trying to tease out what someone thinks about something without ever revealing your own thoughts and feelings. It was … he was talking about magical supremacists, asking what I thought of the concept. I dismissed it.”

I looked up. “You did?”

“It’s easy to say we’re better than the mundanes,” she said. “But the idea magicians who can trace their families back countless years are superior to newborns is absurd. I’ve been a teacher for years, and I have seen no inherent difference, nothing that proves newborns cannot catch up with students who were born and raised in a magical household and were taught much of what they needed to know before they came into their magic. You should have seen it, too.”

I nodded. If it had been up to me, newborns would have been given a year of preparatory schooling before they started classes with students who’d had that training before they went to school. It would have kept them from being left behind, confirming the prejudices against newborn magicians. Boscha had always refused to even consider the possibility. With what I knew now, I suspected he hadn’t wanted to risk giving the newborns a level playing field.

“Yes,” I said, curtly. “What’s his endgame?”

My mind churned. If Boscha was acting alone … he couldn’t be. It would just take one idiot like Walter to say the wrong thing to his parents, and all hell would break loose. Boscha might have tried to get them to swear oaths or sign contracts to keep their mouths shut, but his students had been born and raised in a community where asking someone to swear an oath was a huge red flag. And if Boscha had tried to test Mistress Constance, to see if she might be open to his ideas …

“He’s not the only Supremacist,” I mused. The Supremacists were strongest amongst the magical families, the ones with the background to buy into their claims. I knew there were a few in House Barca, damn them. “If he’s working for the others … what then?”

I thought I saw what Boscha and his allies had in mind. The world was in flux. There was no stability, no legitimacy save what was conferred by force. A magical army could impose a united government on the magical community, through a combination of sticks and carrots, and go on to create a magocracy ruling the entire world. It was rare for magicians to care that much about the mundanes, but … it wasn’t as if any of the magicians ever stuck their necks out for them. Walter and his cronies could do as they pleased and no one—no one important—would care enough to stop them.

“We need to unseat him,” Mistress Constance said. The urgency in her voice gave me pause, then I realised. A Supremacist government with the power to push magicians around would force her to marry and bear children, no matter her personal preferences. “And quickly.”

I nodded. “It won’t be easy,” I said. “He has control of the wards.”

“Yes,” Mistress Constance said. “We need to get Pepper and some of the others involved. And then we need a plan.”

“Yes,” I echoed. “And I think I have something in mind.”

Загрузка...