Lessons in Etiquette (Schooled in Magic series)

by Christopher Nuttall

  The bird-magician turned and their eyes met. Emily knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he knew who she was. The disguise wouldn’t fool another magician…

  And then he threw a powerful curse right at her.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  EMILY JUMPED TO ONE SIDE AND the blast of balefire shot past her, slamming into the broken cabinets of alchemical ingredients against the far wall. She threw back a spell of her own, aimed at the vial of blood, then launched a cutting hex at the bird-magician’s face. Both spells struck his wards and vanished. Emily cursed–destroying the blood had worked last time–and then smelled burning wood from behind her. She risked a glance and realized that the alchemical ingredients were starting to burn. Professor Thande had warned the entire class that randomly mixing chemicals could be very dangerous.

  She parried another spell and then stepped backwards, towards the door. The flames were spreading quickly, changing color as more and more chemicals caught fire. Emily covered her mouth as green smoke started to billow up in the room, then ran for the door. The bird-magician came after her, using a simple spell to ward away the smoke. Emily scowled as she reached the door, then summoned up a final spell of her own. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

  Because Professor Thande taught you to keep magic to a bare minimum around the alchemical mixtures, her own thoughts answered. His lectures on safety had sunk in, particularly after watching one girl drink a shrinking potion and spend the rest of the lesson barely larger than Emily’s finger.

  Emily summoned fire and blasted the room, then turned and ran for the stairs. The bird-magician would have to deal with the fire before it spread further, she told herself; the stone walls were largely impossible to burn, but the flames and smoke could easily force the coup plotters out of the castle. And, if she were lucky, the chemicals would make it hard for him to simply summon water and drown the flames. If not…she pushed that thought aside as she reached the stairs and started to run up towards her quarters. By now, the entire castle would know that something was wrong. She needed a diversion.

  Two guards stared at her as she approached, unsure of just what she was doing in the castle. Emily snapped off a pair of quick freeze spells and sighed in relief as they both froze in place, then tumbled down the stairs. If they’d been wearing enchanted armor, they could have caught her before she managed to overload the protective wards woven into the armor. She heard a yell of outrage from below her and turned to see another line of soldiers, led by one of the barons. Emily shaped the strongest light spell she could and triggered it, shining a blinding light right into their eyes. The baron staggered backwards, clutching at his eyes. His soldiers weren’t in any better state. Magic could heal them, Emily told herself, but it would take time. Until then, they were blinded…Emily pushed the guilt aside and ran onwards.

  A powerful spell struck her and she stumbled to her knees, feeling her entire body jangling with energy. She couldn’t tell what the spell was actually designed to do, which made it harder to deflect. Somehow, she broke free and threw a kinetic spell of her own back down the stairs towards the bird-magician. The spell missed and shattered part of the railings.

  Emily ran. She concentrated on warding herself as she reached the top of the stairs and fled towards her apartments. The sound of a man or men chasing her grew louder as she cancelled the ward she’d left on her own rooms, opening the door. It felt like she had left them a lifetime ago; had it really been three days? The world had turned upside down…she slammed the door closed and pushed the ward back into place. It wouldn’t hold more than a few seconds when the bird-magician went to work–she knew that from Martial Magic–but it would keep him busy long enough. Her chest lay where she’d left it, right in the center of the room.

  This could easily go badly wrong, a doubtful voice whispered at the back of her mind.

  But there was no choice. The bird-magician was powerful and experienced. And he wasn’t alone. Even if most of the magicians she was facing used wands–which meant that they were either very weak or didn’t have any real magic at all–she was still badly outnumbered. She needed a diversion…she put her hand on the chest and sighed in relief as she realized that the charms worked into the pocket dimensions were still intact. After her unauthorized hacking and modification, it had been quite possible that the dimensions would snap out of existence completely.

  The door exploded inward in a shower of dust and splinters. Emily looked up to see the bird-magician standing there, raw magic crackling over his fingertips. The ward shattered, sending jolts of pain flashing through her head, but she was used to ignoring such distractions. Instead, she stepped backwards–keeping the link to the chest–and tried to look like a cornered rat. It wasn’t difficult.

  “You are not very impressive for one who beat a necromancer,” the bird-magician observed. “Could it be that Shadye was poisoned and your grandmaster decided to try to convince the world that you beat him in single combat?”

  Emily said nothing, concentrating on the link to the chest. She was straining the enchantments still further, despite knowing the risk of breaking the chest completely. If Yodel’s work had been less than perfect…but that hardly mattered. She’d screwed the warranty when she’d converted it into a makeshift prison.

  “Not impressive at all,” the bird-magician mocked. “I expected much better from the Necromancer’s Bane.”

  Most of the tricks I have invented are too destructive, Emily thought. She could split atoms with magic–it wasn’t very difficult, if one knew the basic concept–but doing it would destroy much of the city, as well as blowing herself up in the process. And if the necromancers learned how to make atomic bombs, they wouldn’t hesitate before shattering the mountains and advancing on the Allied Lands. The only thing holding them back would be a reluctance to kill the people they needed for sacrifices, but she doubted they were sane enough to remember that indefinitely.

  “Goodbye,” he said, and lifted his hand.

  “Goodbye,” Emily said, and released the cockatrice.

  The giant beast exploded out of the chest, slamming the bird-magician back against the stone wall. It’s tail lashed out, smashing into Emily’s bed and reducing it to firewood as it roared its outrage and confusion into the air. Time hadn’t moved within the chest, Emily knew; the cockatrice had to be hellishly confused. From its point of view, it had been in the mountains one second and her rooms the next. And the stone walls were hideously confining…

  The cockatrice roared again and blasted a wall of fire towards the bird-magician, who barely managed to shield himself in time. Fire cascaded around the room, sweeping over the hanging tapestries and reducing them to ash. A portrait of King Alexis II–bearing a surprising resemblance to Alassa–caught fire and burned with a brief, fierce light. The cockatrice couldn’t turn in the confined space, Emily realized in relief. If it had been able to turn around, it would have come after her.

  There was a flash of light and a wave of magic as the bird-magician threw the most powerful curse he could muster at the cockatrice. It howled in pain, but it didn’t seem to have been really hurt; moments later, scaly claws lashed through where the bird-magician had been seconds ago. Black crows rose up and headed for the door, only to be caught in a terrific fireball as the cockatrice roared its fury. Emily saw the crows catch fire and fall to the floor, burning. She heard–or imagined–the howl of pain as the bird-magician died. The handful of crows that hadn’t been incinerated fell to the floor and lay there, helpless. Moments later, the cockatrice snapped the birds up and swallowed them.

  The beast roared again, shaking the entire castle, then blew fire out the door, down towards the soldiers Emily knew had to be coming to find out what was going on. They’d probably decide that discretion was the better part of valor, once they realized that there was a live cockatrice in the castle. She wondered absently just how long it would take them to comprehend what was going on. It was rare for cockatrices–or other large creatures–to pi
ck fights with humans. Even if they did realize what was happening, it would take hours to assemble enough magicians to stun or kill the cockatrice. The flames alone would make it harder for them to do anything, but run.

  She jumped backwards as the cockatrice lashed its tail about in Emily’s direction. It knew she was standing behind it, all right…Emily ducked into the next room, avoiding the tail by a split-second, then ran over to the window. It had been spelled to make it harder to open, but a simple blasting hex shattered it, blasting the debris out into the night. Emily hoped that some of the enemy soldiers were underneath, before pushing the thought aside angrily. The cockatrice might have saved her life, but it was also blocking her way out of the apartment. Going out the window was the only other way to escape.

  There was a fire in the distance, somewhere near the city walls. Emily felt a pang of guilt–she’d organized the resistance–and then pushed it aside as she cast the strongest night-vision spell she could on her eyes. It was a risk–a single flicker of light would be blindingly bright - but there was no choice. If she’d had proper equipment…she pushed the thought aside, then transfigured some of her spare clothes into rope, tying one end to the fireplace and attaching the other to herself. At least she’d have some security if she lost her grip. Pulling the handkerchief out of her pocket, she pulled the illusion of Alassa around herself and then climbed out the window. If she was right, the charms built into the walls wouldn’t attack the crown princess.

  Sergeant Harkin had been fond of forcing them to climb up cliff faces and buildings that Emily would have sworn were impossible to climb. The trick, he’d claimed, had been never to look down, at least until she was confident in her own abilities. Here, so high above the ground, there were plenty of hand and footholds, as long as she was careful. Emily felt dangerously vulnerable, almost naked, as she started to inch along the walls, trying not to think of the fall if she lost her grip. Cold wind seemed to bite at her as she pulled herself along, mockingly reminding her of the fall. And of the times she’d been abseiling and lost her grip. The sergeants might have had safety precautions in place to prevent anyone from actually injuring themselves, but they’d also been very sarcastic to those who made mistakes…

  There was a dull roar echoing through the stone walls as the cockatrice scented humans nearby. Emily grinned to herself, guessing that the barons hadn’t believed the first reports and had sent more men to check just what was going on. Those men had run right into the cockatrice and discovered that the beast was furious. It had to feel trapped inside stone walls…Emily wondered, suddenly, just how they were going to get it back to the mountains? How far could a cockatrice fly? Or maybe she’d be able to trap it again and take the beast to Whitehall, as she’d planned to do.

  Wasting time, she told herself, as she reached a larger window. She’d memorized the castle’s interior–at least the parts she’d been told about, which didn’t include the secret passageways–but she’d never had to try to imagine how the outside windows corresponded with the interior. If she was right, the next three windows should be connected to Alassa’s rooms…carefully, she pulled herself up to them and peered inside. The apartments certainly seemed luxurious enough. Emily summoned a small cutting hex and tried to use it on the window. It didn’t work.

  Emily swallowed a curse and tried again. Naturally, the security precautions on Alassa’s windows were tougher than the ones on her windows. Maybe they took them down whenever the windows needed cleaning…Emily shivered, wondering if she’d made a dreadful mistake, then started to put a spell together from memory. The concept had been easy to imagine, once she’d sat down and worked out concepts from Earth she could bring to her new home, but very dangerous. If the necromancers ever realized that they could destroy something by absorbing the energy that held it together…

  The window crumbled into dust. Emily coughed, clinging desperately to the wall, then flung herself into the room. She hit the carpet hard enough to knock the wind out of her, leaving her stunned and briefly helpless, but no one seemed to have heard her arrival. Pulling herself to her feet, she glanced around and realized that she was standing inside a nursery for young children. A large wooden cot, covered with gold and silver designs, stood against one wall. She felt an odd flicker of envy as she saw the toys scattered everywhere, from handmade dolls to board games, and realized that Alassa had to have grown up in this room. A large portrait of a chubby woman, glowing with life, hung above the cot. There was nothing to suggest who she might have been, or who had painted her picture. She didn’t look anything like Queen Marlena, or Alassa herself.

  Alassa had everything, Emily thought, apart from friends.

  She lowered the night-vision spell, then touched the handkerchief long enough to get a sense of Alassa’s location. The door leading out of the nursery was unlocked; she stepped through, ready to unleash a hail of spells at any target, only to encounter nothing apart from another darkened room. This one appeared to be a small bedroom, too small for Alassa or her mother. Emily guessed that it was where the nurse had slept every night; the royal family had probably hired a dozen nurses and nannies for their child. A portrait of the Royal Family hung on one wall; the child in the queen’s arms looked around five years old. It was odd to realize that it had been painted at the same time as Emily’s life was going downhill.

  Pushing the thought aside, she stepped into the next room and saw the guards. They spun around to stare at her in disbelief–they had to have searched the rooms and knew that no one was there–and then opened their mouths to shout an alert. Emily froze them both before they could get a word out, then walked over to the door and listened, carefully. It sounded as though the cockatrice was still causing havoc.

  The tug from the handkerchief pulled her towards Alassa’s bedroom. Emily took a sword from one of the guards, braced herself and pushed open the door. The room was brightly lit, illuminated by a dozen glowing balls of light, with Alassa lying on the bed, staring up at nothing. Emily shivered as she realized that the bird-magician must have put her under a spell before taking her blood. How long would it have taken him to turn Alassa into a puppet? The books had suggested that it could take days to build up the spells and weave them through the blood, but they hadn’t been very specific. And besides, Alassa had the Royal Bloodline. How long would it take to break the protections and enhancements that were worked into the Royal Bloodline?

  Alassa looked peaceful as she lay on the bed, her hands folded on her chest. Emily took her pulse, then started to cast dispelling spells, one after another until she finally ran out of ideas. There were some curses and hexes that were resistant to standard dispelling spells…whatever the bird-magician had done to Alassa seemed to be one of them. Emily touched her finger to her friend’s forehead, feeling…something…webbed over Alassa’s mind, something so subtle that she wasn’t even sure it was there. Maybe she was just imagining it.

  Maybe I should just kiss you, she thought, grimly. There were spells that needed a kiss to break them, although they rarely lasted long when a trained sorcerer started to concentrate on breaking them down rather than humoring the caster. Emily was good at charms–it was her talent–but this was something different. It held Alassa’s mind in thrall. A mistake could cause permanent damage.

  Emily hesitated, unsure of what to do. If she left Alassa here, the coup plotters could just continue with their plan, even without the bird-magician. But if she risked using a spell to shrink Alassa to carry her out of the castle, what would it do to the spell holding her under control? She had to free her friend before someone else came into the room and discovered them. But how?

  There had been a few suggestions in the books. But they had all been long on flowery language and short on actual detail, as if the writers had been too scared to write down precise instructions. Emily wasn’t too surprised; the more she had explored the concept of Blood Magic, the easier it had been to see how it could be abused. And the more she used it, the stronger the temptation
s would become…

  Bracing herself, Emily knelt down beside Alassa and unfolded the handkerchief. The link between Alassa and her blood was as strong as ever. For a long moment, Emily froze, unable to understand quite how to apply her thoughts in the right way…

  …And then she plunged into Alassa’s mind.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  NO BOOK HAD TOLD HER ABOUT direct mental contact, or prepared her for the experience. Emily understood why the moment she fell into Alassa’s mind, the experience was indescribable. A howling storm rose up to greet her projection, blasting her with thoughts and memories that came from her friend’s mind. Hundreds of thousands of disjointed impressions lashed out at her, each one distracting her for a split-second before vanishing again. Emily closed her eyes, but it was useless, naturally. She was navigating her astral projection within a person’s mind.

  “Alassa,” she said, or thought. “Where are you?”

  The storm seemed to part, just long enough to show her a direction–and the spell, holding Alassa firmly in a trance-like state. It represented itself as an evil green webbing floating through the storm, gripping parts of Alassa’s mind and securing them in place. Emily stared, wondering how she was even going to begin untangling the knot. The charms exam she’d been put through at Whitehall–one more complex than any she’d expected–had been nightmarish, but this…? This was worse.

  This is her mind, she reminded herself, as she started to float towards the core of Alassa’s being. A very subtle mind control spell might be very powerful here…