The Family Shame

by Christopher Nuttall

  We wiped out another family in the last House War, I thought. Perhaps it was the second-to-last House War now. Did we use dark magic to do that?

  It was a sickening thought. I’d never thought about it, not once. I’d always assumed that our armsmen had fought their armsmen and the best men had won. It had never crossed my mind that we might have used dark magic. Surely, the other Great Houses would have united against us if we had. Unless … did they have secrets of their own? We weren’t the only family with secret vaults. It was easy to imagine House Aguirre having a secret collection of dark magic books too.

  I sat down and forced myself to look at the two books. It was hard to keep my eyes on them for more than a second or two. Their mere presence polluted the air. I felt as if I was in the presence of something fundamentally wrong, as if the books were wrapped in something that made them hard to open. Perhaps that was a good sign. No one could open one of the books unless they were already tainted. I suspected that was intentional. The writer might not want readers who weren’t willing to appreciate his work …

  … And Uncle Ira had read them. What did that say about him?

  I tried to think, but my thoughts were a conflicted mess. I’d been told, time and time again, that dark magic was not to be messed with … but, at the same time, I’d been taught all sorts of spells that could easily turn dark, given half a chance. I’d turned Rose into a frog, on her very first day, because I’d thought it was funny … not because I’d had any halfway noble motive. And that might have been the first step towards darkness. I wasn’t the only one either. Alana Aguirre and every other schoolchild intent on winning themselves a patronage network had done the same. No one had tried to stop us.

  But everything we did, we could undo, I told myself. The spell I’d cast on Rose hadn’t lasted more than an hour. Turning Rose into a frog was one thing; making her be late for class was quite another. I didn’t do anything permanent to her.

  And yet, was that actually true? Callam had been deeply shocked when I’d turned his tormentors into frogs. He wasn’t used to seeing such magics. Rose might not have seen them either. She could turn back into a girl - she had turned back into a girl - but the mental effects might not fade so quickly. I’d taught her how far she had to go, yet I’d also suggested she might never catch up …

  … And Uncle Ira had done what? How could he have saved a life using dark magic?

  I looked at the books, wondering just what was inside. What had Uncle Ira done? It couldn’t have been too bad or he would have been beheaded. He’d pretty clearly been an adult when he’d been kicked out of the city and sent into exile. No one would have spoken up for me if I’d been a few years older. And yet …

  No, I thought. Part of me wanted to open the books and just get it over with, but … I didn’t want to read the books. I hadn’t felt so uneasy about touching something since the first day I’d had to cut up a spider for potions class. This isn’t right.

  I stood and forced myself to pick up the books long enough to put them in the box. It was difficult, even though I had no intention of opening the covers and reading them. And yet … there was something nagging at my mind, an urge to simply take a look inside. Who knew what secrets might be concealed within the tomes? Knowledge was power …

  No, I told myself, again. I am not going to read those books.

  I felt better, once I’d put the box at the back of the room. Uncle Ira might ask me if I’d read them, and then I would have to admit that I hadn’t read them, but until then … I wondered, morbidly, if it would be easier to read the books if he was in the room. I could ask him - or Morag - if he’d stay with me … no. The books were seductive, dangerously so. I wasn’t sure I could resist them indefinitely. As long as they were nearby, I’d be torn between the urge to read and the desire to run a mile.

  Shaking my head, I started to dig through the boxes of supplies for a spellcaster. There were a handful of broken ones at the bottom of one box, but it was clear that they were beyond repair. It would be easier to make new ones from scratch. I had to dig through two more boxes before I found a pair of spellcasters that could be repaired, if I cannibalised one to repair the other. I took them both into the forgery workshop and started to sort out the tools. Akin would have been in heaven - there were more tools in Kirkhaven Hall than I’d seen in his private workshop back home - but I was merely annoyed. Forgery really wasn’t my chosen career.

  And Akin will be married to someone even better at it than he, I thought, wondering how that would work out for them. Akin would never be able to forge Objects of Power, while Cat did it without thinking. How long did it take her to realise what she was actually doing …?

  I stopped, dead. What if … what if Callam was a Zero? He had no spark of magic that I’d been able to sense and he’d said, himself, that he hadn’t ever been able to cast a single spell. If he was a Zero … my mind raced, considering the implications. If he was a Zero, I could write to Father and tell him what I’d found. I could go home …

  Not being able to cast a spell isn’t proof he’s a Zero, I told myself, grimly. He might simply have very little magic …

  It wasn’t a pleasant thought. I wasn’t sure how one went about proving that someone had no magic. Callam might just be right on the lower end of the scale, with a talent so weak that it would require months of persistent training to turn the lowly spark into a fire. It would be the worst of all possible worlds, I thought; too much magic to forge Objects of Power, too little to be able to defend himself. A child born to the Great Houses would get the training he needed to become a respectable magician, but not a common-born teacher’s son from a town like Kirkhaven. Callam would be doomed to spend his life without magic.

  You don’t know, I told myself. Zeros had to be rare. Cat was the only one born to the Great Houses … unless one believed the stories of kids with low magic quietly being put up for adoption. I wanted to think it wasn’t true, but I knew how far some families would go to hide any hint of low-power magicians on the family tree. Callam might just be very unlucky indeed.

  I carefully took the first spellcaster apart and removed the focusing crystal, then checked it thoroughly to make sure it hadn’t cracked. It looked intact, so I removed the crystal from the second spellcaster and gingerly replaced it with the first. Akin had nearly blown his hand off when he’d been trying to do something rather less delicate, although he hadn’t thought to check that the Device of Power he’d been trying to repair hadn’t been depowered first. My spellcaster was so old that the power had leeched away years ago. I put the crystal into place, checked the remainder of the spellcaster, then carefully shaped a spell in my mind. It had to slip into the crystal and stay there.

  Just a simple light spell, I thought. It doesn’t have to be anything more complex.

  I smiled at the thought. I’d pestered Mother for a spellcaster that did all sorts of funny tricks when I was a little girl, although Mother had insisted I learn how to cast the spells properly. It had taken me years to learn that a Device of Power drew magic from the wielder, instead of producing magic for itself like an Object of Power. Cat had probably not been able to forge Devices of Power … I wondered, sourly, why her talent hadn’t been noticed earlier. Her parents must have been convinced she was nothing more than a very low-level magician.

  Bracing myself, I waved the spellcaster in the air. The crystal lit up, immediately. I closed my eyes, feeling the magic flowing from me into the device. It was perfect. I shut off the power, then placed the spellcaster in a bag. I’d show it to Callam when he came next, then see if he could use it. Even a very low-level magician should be able to use it.

  And if he can’t, I asked myself, what then?

  I glanced at the clock - it was nearly lunchtime - and then hurried back to my bedroom for a quick wash and change. I could go out in the afternoon, even if Callam didn’t come today. If I hid the spellcaster somewhere on the estate, perhaps with his tools, I could make sure that neither Morag nor U
ncle Ira got a good look at it. I didn’t want them wondering what I was doing with a primitive spellcaster. No magician my age would use something like it if there was any other choice.

  I reached the fourth floor … and stopped. The air was suddenly very cold. I paused, glancing from side to side. The corridor seemed normal, but … my hair felt as if it wanted to stand on end. I found myself inching backwards, even though there was no visible threat. It took everything I had to stop myself from running back up the stairs.

  There’s nothing there, I told myself. The hall was draughty. Some of the boarded windows hadn’t been boarded up very well. Gusts of cold air were common. I was simply imagining that the cold was something more sinister. And yet … I gritted my teeth. There’s nothing there.

  A door banged, ahead of me. I swore out loud and started to run down the corridor. This time, it wasn’t going to get away. Whatever it was … I pushed the door open and threw a wide-angle freeze spell into the room, realising - a second too late - that I might just have attacked either Morag or Uncle Ira. If one of them was sorting through the boxes of clothes or something else that might have been dumped in the room …

  … But the room was empty.

  I stood in the doorway and frowned, my eyes sweeping the room. It had been a bedroom, once upon a time, but everything had been removed along ago. I could see faded marks on the carpet where a bed, a cabinet and a chair had once stood. A handful of boxes sat against one wall, but they were too small to hide a child. The window was boarded up so thoroughly that I couldn’t see even a hint of light outside.

  This is growing absurd, I thought, as my heart slowly started to calm down. Why don’t they just fix the wards?

  Something moved, behind me. There was nothing there, but I threw a hex anyway. Magic flared, brightly enough to force me to close my eyes. When I opened them, I saw a ghostly figure, standing in the middle of the corridor. I stared in utter horror, feeling my knees slowly turn to jelly. The figure was looking at me … the face was so vague that I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, but it was looking at me. An indistinct hand reached towards me and touched my face. Ice brushed against my bare skin.

  My trance broke. I screamed, louder than I had ever screamed before. The figure seemed to shimmer, then vanish altogether, but I barely noticed. I scrambled backwards into the bedroom, slamming the door shut and snapping off a dozen locking charms. Magic - strange magic - congealed around the doorknob, as if the entity was trying to open the door. I screamed again, inching backwards until I crashed into the far wall. I wanted to tear off the boards and jump out of the window, even though I knew we were on the fourth floor. It was all I could do to muster a defensive spell as my vision started to blur …

  … And then Morag stepped into the room.

  Her voice was very hard. “What is happening?”

  I could only stare at her. “I … I …”

  “I heard you in the kitchens,” Morag said, sharply. “What were you doing?”

  It took me several moments to gather myself. “I saw … I saw a ghost.”

  I stumbled towards her and fell into her arms, holding her tightly. Morag huffed in astonishment, then wrapped her arms around me and gave me a gentle hug. I started to cry, helplessly. I’d seen something. I knew I’d seen something. But Morag didn’t seem inclined to believe me. Couldn’t she tell I was upset?

  “You probably saw something produced by the wards,” Morag said, firmly. She made no move to push me away, but she somehow made it clear that I wasn’t welcome to hold her any longer. “They are malfunctioning.”

  “I saw a ghost,” I insisted. The memory refused to fade. “I saw …”

  “An illusion,” Morag said. She untangled herself from me with surprising gentleness. “A convincing illusion, to be sure, but an illusion nonetheless. It wasn’t real.”

  “It was,” I said. There had been something about the ghostly translucent face that had been utterly real. “It was real.”

  Morag sighed. “Come help me prepare lunch,” she said. “That should help you feel better.”

  I glanced around the room, then followed her out the door. The corridor felt normal, not even a single stray flicker of magic or gust of wind. And yet, I didn’t feel comfortable until we were halfway down the stairs. It was easy to believe, now, that the sighting had a very mundane cause, but I didn’t believe it. I knew I’d seen a ghost. An illusion would have looked more real.

  Morag put me to work making tea as soon as we were in the kitchen. I filled the kettle, measured out the tea leaves to Uncle Ira’s standards, then tried to calm myself as Morag put pieces of cold turkey on plates. We were probably going to be eating the remains of that bird for several weeks. I wondered, vaguely, where Morag had found it. Had she had to send all the way to Caithness for it? I wasn’t even sure where turkeys came from. They’d always been seen as an exotic food in Shallot.

  Probably somewhere over the waves, I told myself, as the kettle boiled. The Thousand-Year Empire hadn’t been that interested in ocean exploration - there was no clear evidence that the Empire had ever made direct contact with Hangchow - but Tintagel had been sending out exploration ships for centuries. A dozen Great Houses had made or lost fortunes by investing in ocean-going ships. Whoever brought the first turkeys back must have made an absolute fortune.

  I looked at Morag, wondering if I dared ask her about Uncle Ira’s books. What would she say? But I didn’t trust her. She’d made it clear, more than once, that she didn’t really care about me - or anyone, as far as I could tell. Whatever loyalties she had were to Uncle Ira, not to me. I didn’t dare ask her for advice.

  And yet, there’s no one else I can ask, I thought. I couldn’t write to my father, Callam wouldn’t be able to advise me … there wasn’t anyone else. I’m trapped and alone and …

  I shook my head in frustration. I’d enjoyed Uncle Ira’s praise. And yet, he expected me to read forbidden texts. I could get in real trouble for just touching the books, let alone opening and reading them. The temptation was strong, yet … I had to keep reminding myself that it could be dangerous. And … what was I supposed to do? Would Uncle Ira expect me to actually practice dark magic?

  I don’t know, I thought. Running away was starting to look like a very good idea. But where would I go?

  Chapter Twenty

  “You saw a ghost?”

  I scowled as I lay on the grass, staring up at the bright blue sky. Morag hadn’t believed me - and Uncle Ira had merely grunted when I’d tried to bring the subject up - but I’d hoped for better from Callam. But then, in the bright sunlight, the whole idea of ghosts seemed fantastical. The warm summer air, so pleasant compared to the cold rain, made me feel almost normal. It was the nicest day I’d had since I’d been sent into exile.

  “I saw something,” I said. “And it was real.”

  Callam coughed. “There are … stories … about ghosts here,” he said. “And other strange things.”

  I sat up. “What sort of stories?”

  “I’ve only heard whispers,” Callam said. He sounded pained. “Every little community has its own traditions, Isabella. Stories they tell each other that echo back to a time before accurate records … not that far back, not here. Even the shrine registry is remarkably vague about details that should be graven in stone. The locals don’t want to be over-taxed, you know.”

  “And they don’t tell you those stories,” I said, slowly. “Why not?”

  “I don’t come from here,” Callam said. He ran his fingers through his brown hair. “To them, I’ll always be an outsider. I could get married and have children and they’ll be the outsider’s brats. Maybe my grandchildren will be accepted, maybe not. Now? They certainly don’t tell me their traditional stories.”

  I frowned down at him. Shallot was very accepting of the new and different. It had to be. The Great Houses worked hard to encourage new magicians to marry into the older bloodlines, adding their wild magic to the established branches. Rose and t
he rest of her kind would start receiving offers as soon as they let down their hair, perhaps earlier. I was fairly sure that Rose would get an offer fairly soon. She had close ties to two Great Houses as well as powerful magic. Someone like that would not be allowed to remain single forever. But here …

  It was an odd thought. Callam had brown hair, the locals had red hair … there didn’t seem to be any other difference between them, save perhaps for accent. They were petty minor differences, not differences as notable as skin colour or eyes or something else that spoke of a more exotic origin than the village on the other side of the hill. And yet, I thought I understood it too. It was harder to accept people who couldn’t talk about their roots. The Hangchowese half-breeds rarely knew anything about their fathers, making it harder for them to marry into polite society. Callam didn’t have that problem, but he didn’t have a settled family either.

  I wondered, sourly, why his father had chosen such a wandering life. Didn’t he know what it would do to his children? Or … had he had a choice? There were estates that were passed down to the eldest child, with the younger children forced to either work for their elder sibling or leave the land. Callam’s father might have left, taking his children with him. Or he might have been so determined to teach other children that he ignored the damage it was doing to his own.

  “You’re very quiet,” Callam said. He sat upright and winked. “Want to play a game?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Is there anyone who might talk to us about the stories?”

  Callam looked doubtful. “Not really,” he said. “They’ll see you as an outsider too. Worse, perhaps. You’re connected to the Big Man and he’s connected to the tax collectors.”