The Family Shame

by Christopher Nuttall

  I turned and looked out of the window. There was nothing, but darkness. The grounds were shrouded in shadow. I remembered Shallot, feeling another pang of homesickness. Even at midnight, Shallot had glowed with light. It was the city that never slept. I’d known teenagers who gleefully claimed to have slept all day and partied all night. Here … there was nothing to do after night fell. I could walk out of the hall and lose myself in the darkness.

  Shaking my head, feeling suddenly tired, I walked back to bed. It had been a long day and yet … I didn’t want to sleep. I was too nervous. What was making that sound? And who were the guests? Why had they come to Kirkhaven Town?

  I’ll ask Morag tomorrow, I thought, as I climbed into bed and closed my eyes. Maybe she’ll tell me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “The Master wants to see you after you finish your breakfast,” Morag said, when I walked into the kitchen the following morning. “I suggest you hurry.”

  I stared at her. I hadn’t slept very well, despite everything, but Morag looked as if she hadn’t slept at all. Her eyes were tired, her face was pale and her hair hung down in a manner that suggested she hadn’t bothered to brush it, let alone tie it in a bun, for days. She held a large mug of strong coffee in one hand, eying it as if she had to force herself to put it to her lips and drink. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

  “Are you alright?”

  Morag raised her head and gave me a look that made me take a step back. “Get your breakfast, then get to the potions lab,” she snarled. “And you’ll feel my hand if you say a single word.”

  I nodded hastily, then made a quick breakfast of bread and jam. Morag barely moved, one hand resting against her forehead. A headache? Or something worse? I knew potions that could help, but I was sure she had a supply herself. Uncle Ira could probably make anything she might need without any trouble at all. I did my best to ignore her as I munched my food, then washed the plate and hurried out of the room. Morag was in a foul mood and I didn’t want to give her any excuse to take it out on me.

  Uncle Ira, by contrast, was looking unusually cheerful as he sat in the lab, waiting for me. He was flicking through one of the books I’d ordered, making a handful of notes in a leather-bound notebook. I wondered, idly, what secrets he might expect to find in a book written for beginners, then reminded myself that he’d been in exile for decades. Techniques improved all the time. Uncle Ira might not have kept up with the latest ideas.

  “I trust you slept well,” Uncle Ira said, as I closed the door behind me. “Thank you for attending my little gathering.”

  I curtseyed. “Uncle … who were they?”

  “A handful of friends,” Uncle Ira said. “We have something in common.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Are they in exile too?”

  “Something like that,” Uncle Ira said, blandly. “But the details are really none of your business.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him. Neither Uncle Ira nor Morag seemed to go gallivanting around the countryside at will, although there was nothing stopping them from simply walking away from the hall. Morag did go to buy food at the local town, I supposed, but I hadn’t heard any suggestion of her going to visit friends. Maybe no one in Shallot cared what the exiles did, as long as they stayed well away from the city, or maybe Uncle Ira wasn’t being entirely honest with me. A person might be told to go away for a while without actually going into permanent exile.

  “Here,” Uncle Ira said. He passed me a scroll. “Tell me what you make of this.”

  I took the scroll. It was covered in dust, despite a pair of protective runes. I opened it carefully, silently grateful I’d thought to wear a shirt and trousers even though I wasn’t sure if the guests were still here. Perhaps they were. Uncle Ira was normally never seen until lunchtime, but now … it was barely half past nine.

  Morag would have told me to go straight back to my room and change, I thought, as I started to parse out the writing. She wouldn’t have let me wear trousers if there were strangers about.

  I pushed the thought aside and forced myself to concentrate. The scroll was written in Old High Imperial, somewhat to my surprise. The parchment didn’t feel old enough to date all the way back to the Thousand-Year Empire. It was possible that someone had tried to preserve a handful of original notes, or merely hide the contents from readers who couldn’t read Old High Imperial, but nearly everyone raised in the Great Houses could and did. The syntax was odd, yet I had no trouble slowly working it out. I wasn’t too surprised to discover that it was a potions recipe.

  “It’s odd,” I said. The recipe was completely outdated. “What does it do?”

  “I want you to update it,” Uncle Ira said. “And then I want you to actually brew it.”

  I swallowed, hard. The recipe had one thing in common with nearly everything else that dated back to the empire … there were pieces missing. Whoever had written the confounded thing had left out details that he or she had considered to be common knowledge. Perhaps they had been common knowledge, once upon a time. Now … figuring out what was missing was nothing more than guesswork. And getting it wrong could be literally explosive.

  “I still don’t know what it does,” I said, as I reached for a notepad. “What does it do?”

  Uncle Ira gave me a warm smile, but there was no warmth in his eyes. “Figure it out.”

  I resisted the urge to say something cutting as I carefully jotted down a translation, first of the ingredients and then of the instructions … such as they were. There was something maddeningly imprecise about the whole thing. Magistra Loanda would probably have banned me from my class if I made notes about stirring the potion without carefully detailing just how many stirs the potion needed. I dreaded to think how Father would have reacted if one of his apprentices had made the same mistake. I’d known, vaguely, just how much we’d lost when the Thousand-Year Empire fell - our family had been gravely weakened - but I hadn’t really understood it. I thought I did now.

  Gritting my teeth, I went through the list, piece by piece. Some ingredients were designed to boost energy, others were designed to dampen out the side effects … I put them together and guessed that the potion was intended to keep someone awake for days. I’d seen upperclassmen use wakefulness potions at Jude’s, although I’d been warned - in no uncertain terms - that I wasn’t to even think of taking them for myself until I was at least seventeen. A child who used the potions might wind up having a heart attack.

  “It’s a primitive wakefulness potion,” I said.

  Uncle Ira favoured me with a genuine smile. “Very good, Isabella,” he said. I couldn’t help basking, just for a moment. “Now, how would you go about updating it?”

  I was tempted to point out that there were newer recipes, but I had the feeling that saying that would cost me all the credit I’d just earned. Instead, I went through the list of ingredients, silently considering which ones could be replaced. Canossa Moss was relatively rare, outside Ardrossan; it simply didn’t grow very well in cooler climes, no matter how carefully the greenhouses were designed to mimic the climate in the princedoms. But it could be replaced, fairly easily. I was surprised the Thousand-Year Empire hadn’t made the connection itself.

  They probably took whatever they wanted from Ardrossan, I thought. The locals had been fighting each other for centuries before the Thousand-Year Empire and they’d resumed their pretty squabbles as soon as the Empire had collapsed. We don’t have that option.

  I wondered, absently, if that was about to change. The Thousand-Year Empire had had an unlimited supply of Objects of Power. Now, Tintagel had someone who could forge them too. Ardrossan wasn’t worth conquering, as far as I could tell, but control over the Gap would bring considerable power to whoever held fortresses on both sides. King Rufus might have professed his horror at Crown Prince Henry’s megalomaniacal plan to rebuild the empire, but he might be considering a few conquests of his own. It was only a matter of time before Galashiels or Balamory or North Cairnbu
lg found Zeros of their own.

  “I think that should do,” I said, as I held out the updated recipe. It might not be quite as effective as the ones used at Jude’s, but it should work. And I’d worked out how many stirs and suchlike should be necessary. “What do you think?”

  Uncle Ira scanned the paper, then nodded. “It looks workable,” he said. He motioned to the cauldron. “Why don’t you try to brew it?”

  I nodded and started to gather the ingredients. Uncle Ira sat back in his chair, looking as if he was on the verge of taking a nap, although I wasn’t fooled for a second. No Potions Master worthy of the title would take his eyes off an untrained brewer working on a potion she’d never tried before. I hoped he’d be forgiving if I made a mistake. Some of the ingredients were dangerous in combination, if they weren’t treated perfectly. I was grimly aware that an explosion might be very destructive indeed.

  The wards will keep me from blowing up the whole house, I told myself. Won’t they?

  Uncle Ira didn’t seem to be looking as I carefully started to brew the potion, but I could feel him watching me. I gritted my teeth, reminding myself that Magistra Loanda would be a great deal worse, then added the first of the dangerous ingredients. The potion bubbled alarmingly, threatening to explode; I forced myself to keep stirring, adding the next set of ingredients to dampen the reaction. Uncle Ira showed no visible reaction as the liquid calmed, cooling down long enough for me to add the third and final set of ingredients. I clicked the timer, then started to stir again. The magic was building up rapidly …

  Sweat trickled down my back as the liquid started to bubble again. Droplets splashed everywhere, one hitting my cheek. I cursed, using a word that would probably have got my mouth washed out with soap, but somehow managed to keep stirring. The liquid seemed to grow hotter, the magic flaring brightly …

  … And then everything started to settle down.

  “Very good,” Uncle Ira said. “Take the cauldron off the heat, then leave the potion to cool down.”

  I nodded, resisting the urge to rub my cheek as I moved the potion to the next worktable. I didn’t think the potion was dangerous, unless I actually swallowed it, but it had been hot enough to burn. I reached for a cloth as soon as I put the potion down, washed it with cold water and pressed it against my cheek. It didn’t make me feel much better.

  “You’ll find some salve in the next drawer,” Uncle Ira said. “Just make sure you wipe the injury clean before you apply it.”

  “Yes, Uncle,” I said. I wasn’t fool enough to mix two potions if it could be avoided. “I … did my recipe work?”

  “We’ll have to try it, later,” Uncle Ira said. He smiled, rather dryly. “But it didn’t explode, did it? That is something of an improvement.”

  I coloured. My first attempts at potions brewing had ended badly, so badly that Father had openly wondered if I’d survive my first year at school. Even Magistra Loanda’s steady tutoring - and constant supervision - hadn’t been enough to prevent a whole series of explosions. But I had gotten better. I looked at the steaming cauldron, feeling a flicker of well-deserved pride. I’d just made a potion that would have tested a third-year student. No, I’d practically reinvented a potion and then brewed it. I’d done very well.

  “Thank you, Uncle,” I said. It was hard to keep the pride out of my voice, even though I knew that Father - or Magistra Loanda - wouldn’t hesitate to tell me that pride went before a fall. “Can I … can I write up the recipe?”

  “See if it works first,” Uncle Ira said. “But if it does, you can write it up and send it to the Potions Guild. I doubt it will bring you much in the way of royalties, but you never know.”

  “Yes, Uncle,” I said.

  Uncle Ira stood and walked over to the rear of the room. A large cardboard box sat on the table. I wondered, absently, when he’d put it there. It certainly hadn’t been there yesterday, when I’d used the lab. Uncle Ira might have gotten up early or … or he might not have slept all night. I looked at the potion I’d brewed and frowned. Did he have an ulterior motive in ordering me to brew that potion? He was certainly strong enough to survive using it for several days.

  “I think you’ve made considerable progress over the last few weeks,” Uncle Ira said, as he picked up the box and carried it over to my table. He put it down with an audible thump and stepped back. “These are for you.”

  I blinked in surprise as he passed me a knife to open the box. Inside, there was a small collection of old books. A couple felt unpleasant to the touch, as if they were reeking with dark secrets, but the others were merely old. I pulled them out, one by one, and checked the titles. One of the dark books was on the Prohibited List; the other was unknown. I looked up at Uncle Ira and frowned. I wasn’t sure I wanted either of them anywhere near me.

  “The family has quite a collection of proscribed books,” Uncle Ira said, before I could muster an objection. “You would be surprised, I think, to discover just how many forbidden books have been hidden away over the years.”

  I swallowed, hard. The family came first, always. I’d had that drilled into my head from a very early age. My father had worked hard to put us on top, whatever it took. And yet, he would have been horrified at the thought of using such dark magic … wouldn’t he? He’d once ordered someone whipped for brewing a love potion, even though it was a very mild form of dark magic. I couldn’t imagine him agreeing to keep such books in the family vaults. And yet, there were sections of the vaults that were sealed to everyone outside the Family Council.

  My mouth was dry. “Why …?”

  Uncle Ira seemed to know what I meant. “Different reasons for different people,” he said, seriously. “Some felt - some have always felt - that the family is above the law. We’re the oldest family known to exist, are we not? Who has the right to tell us what we can and cannot do? And then there are people who believe that the only way to combat dark magic is to study it. How could we research the effects of curses without understanding how the curses actually work? And then there are people who believe that destroying knowledge, whatever sort of knowledge, is fundamentally wrong. Having the knowledge doesn’t mean that we’re going to use it.

  He shrugged. “And then you have the people who believe we might need to use such magics, one day, either in defence of the family or the city or even the kingdom itself. That’s probably what convinced your father to keep the books in the vaults.”

  I scowled. I didn’t want to think about my father and dark magic. “I thought … I thought these books were banned for a reason.”

  “Sometimes they were,” Uncle Ira said. “There’s a book-not one of these, fortunately - “that tells you how to raise the dead. Or so it claims. The ritual is so appalling that no one has actually tried, at least on the record. Others … not so much. Some of them are only listed as dark because they involve human flesh, blood and bone.”

  “Really?” I knew I was being disrespectful, but I was too shocked to care. “I thought … I thought that dark magic tainted everything.”

  “That’s a matter of intention,” Uncle Ira said. He seemed more interested in the debate than snapping at me for being rude. “I could, for example, turn you into a snail to force you to learn how to turn yourself back. The counterspells you’d need are ones that are quite difficult to cast without being able to move your hands. I would have done something quite unpleasant to you, but I wouldn’t have had bad intentions. Understand?”

  I nodded, silently.

  “On the other hand, I could turn you into a snail and step on you,” Uncle Ira added. “That would be murder, of course, and I would have bad intentions. I’d be tainted by my desire to murder you even if I didn’t allow any emotion to bleed into the spell. Would that, then, be truly dark?”

  “Yes,” I said, although I wasn’t sure if that was true. Father had told me that dark magic wasn’t easy to define. Magic done with bad intentions was the standard definition. And yet, there were plenty of unpleasant spells that weren�
��t on the banned list. “You’d mean to do me very real harm.”

  “Quite,” Uncle Ira said. He pointed to one of the books. “There are spells in that book that can be adapted for use without bad intentions. They can be cast, they can be used, without tainting the caster. And yet, they were banned without rhyme or reason. Magus Court prefers to shy away from anything dark, rather than admit there might be ways to purify dark magic. They are reluctant to explore the topic.”

  I looked at him. “Was that what got you sent into exile?”

  “I found a way to use dark magic with good intentions,” Uncle Ira told me. Anger ran through his voice. “And my reward for using dark magic to save a life was to be sent into exile. It was not just.”

  I stared. Using dark magic to save a life? Was that even possible?

  Uncle Ira’s face darkened. “Take the books to your workroom and study them,” he added. “You’ll be brewing more potions for me next week.”

  I swallowed, hard. “Yes, Uncle.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  It wasn’t easy to pick up the books, return them to the box and carry them into the next room - my study - but, somehow, I managed it. The box felt heavy, as if it was weighed down with the secrets it held … secrets I’d never imagined existed. No, that wasn’t entirely true. I’d been told just how unpleasant people could be, and what sort of dangers awaited me if I was careless, but … but nothing like this.

  I put the box down on the desk and carefully unpacked the contents. There was nothing wrong with most of the books, although they seemed to be focused on potions and charms several years ahead of my class; I checked the titles, the first couple of spells and then placed them on the bookshelf for later. The two dark books, however … it was hard to force myself to touch them. My skin crawled, helplessly. I felt as if I’d touched something irredeemably dirty, as if there was no way the taint would ever wash off. It was hard to believe that Father, my father, would have anything to do with such books. The family had limits …