Fantastic Schools: Volume 2

by Nuttall, Christopher G.

  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 summ
oning 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.

  9

  It was nearly an hour before Nanette was able to return to the bedroom, an hour spent watching as the healers poked and prodded at Lillian and then escorting the younger girl back to her room. She was tempted to stay longer, but she couldn’t be seen in a younger girl’s dorm. Her dormmates would say all sorts of things, mostly complete nonsense. The rumours of favouritism wouldn’t do her any good after the older girl graduated.

  And I won’t be here in a couple of weeks, if not less, Nanette thought, as she pushed the door open and stepped into the bedroom. Lillian will have to make do with what I can give her before then.

  She frowned. Penny was lying on the bed, tears staining her eyes. It was brutally obvious she’d been caned. Nanette felt a stab of sympathy that surprised her. Penny might have done something that deserved something more than a slap on the wrist, but she hadn’t been quite in her right mind. The suggestions had pushed her into lashing out at her rival before she could realise just how bad an idea it was.

  “I’m grounded,” Penny said. Her breath came in fits and starts. “I ... I’m grounded.”

  Good, Nanette thought. She pasted a concerned expression on her face. “You’re stuck in this room?”

  “No more flying for the rest of the term,” Penny said. “I ... I won’t get to impress the guests.”

  Nanette pretended to think about it. “But you could still claim the credit for planning the display, couldn’t you?”

  Penny shot her a look that suggested she’d said something stupid. “Do you think anyone will give me the credit?”

  “If you’re the one who planned the display,” Nanette argued, “they can hardly tell everyone they did it.”

  “Yeah,” Penny said. “They just won’t mention it. I have to blow my own trumpet and ... and I can’t.”

  “I see.” Nanette opened the drawer and searched for the soothing lotion. “Why don’t you ask someone to do it for you?”

  “And precisely who do you think is going to risk giving up their share of the credit?” Penny took the jar and started to apply the lotion to her backside. “My team? They’ll be pretending they don’t know me. The other teams? Get real. They’ll be promoting themselves, not me.”

  Nanette smiled. “Ask Lillian.”

  Penny stared at her. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “No,” Nanette said. “Think about it. Lillian has every reason to want you to suffer, right? So her telling everyone you planned the display will look good, right? And you can play it up, later, as you trying to apologise for losing your temper and hurting her. Nearly killing her. You do owe her more than just a written apology, so ... you can claim you’re giving her some patronage. And so on.”

  Penny didn’t look convinced. “You think she’d do it for me?”

  “I’d urge he
r to do it,” Nanette said. Things might just work out better than she’d hoped. If nothing else, it would be embarrassing - afterwards - for Penny to withdraw her patronage or cheat the younger girl. The community might not give much of a damn about Lillian, but they’d take note of a patron who tried to weasel out of her commitments. “And you would find a way to reward her, wouldn’t you?”

  She smiled. “So you can’t fly yourself. So what? You can still show off your spellwork.”

  Penny frowned as she forced herself to stand. “I’m not even allowed to talk to the team.”

  “So have Lillian carry messages,” Nanette said, patiently. “And if someone complains, you can say you’re trying to make it up to her.”

  “Hah.” Penny took off her dress and headed for the washroom. “Do you think that’ll work?”

  “It should,” Nanette said. She winced at the marks on Penny’s backside. The gym mistress had caned the back of her legs, as well as her buttocks. She knew from experience that was extra painful. “Yes, you did something stupid. Yes, you deserved to get thrashed. But ... you have a chance to show you can learn from experience, that you can recover from your mistakes. And it will work out in your favour.”

  Penny turned and gave her a shy smile. “Do you think so?”

  “Yes,” Nanette said. “And I’ll help you.”

  She smiled, coldly, as Penny stepped into the washroom and closed the door behind her. It had worked. Penny and Nanette would remain within the school during the flying display, while practically everyone else was in the Silent Woods. And they’d see more than they expected, when the different pieces of spellwork started to interact. Nanette allowed her smile to grow wider as she studied the parchments. Lillian would serve as the go-between, if Nanette asked, giving Nanette a chance to switch the parchments around. It didn’t matter if she told everyone Penny had done the work or not. It might be better, afterwards, if no one was quite sure who to blame.