The Gordian Knot (Schooled in Magic Book 13)

by Christopher Nuttall

  EMILY HADN’T BEEN SURE WHAT TO expect when she first walked into Master Tor’s new classroom. A traditional room, with rows of desks and chairs, or something a little more informal? His last classroom had been thoroughly traditional. But this one was startlingly informal. A handful of comfortable chairs arranged in a circle, a number of groaning bookcases, a pot of Kava on the sideboard, a fire burning merrily in the grate ... it could easily have passed for a living room, a place where a family might relax after a long day. She took one of the seats as Cabiria and the Gorgon followed her into the room, reminding herself to be sharp. Master Tor didn’t like her much.

  Cabiria nudged her. “Half the class seems to have vanished,” she said. “Where have they gone?”

  “There’s only nine chairs,” the Gorgon pointed out. Her snakes shifted uncomfortably as she took a seat close to the fire. “The others probably decided not to take this class.”

  Emily frowned. “I thought it was compulsory.”

  “It is,” a familiar voice said. Emily looked up as Gordian strode into the circle and took one of the remaining seats. “But we cannot accommodate all twenty-five of you at once.”

  The Gorgon cleared her throat. “Sir, I was under the impression that Master Tor would be the teacher in this class ...”

  “It was decided that I would take the class instead,” Gordian said, coolly. Emily caught a flicker of displeasure in his eyes. It was hard to escape the sense that Gordian didn’t like the Gorgon any more than he liked Emily. His predecessor had been seen as astonishingly liberal for allowing a gorgon to study at his school. “Master Tor is otherwise occupied.”

  He leaned back into his seat, crossing one leg over the other. “The others should be here in two minutes. For future reference, the door will be locked two minutes after class begins. Anyone who fails to arrive by then will be denied entry and marked absent for the period. There will be no further warning.”

  And no way to alert the others to hurry, Emily thought. They won’t have heard the warning.

  Cirroc walked through the door, followed by Jacqui and Cerise. There was no sign of Caleb, to her private relief.

  She sighed, inwardly, as the last of the students arrived. Gordian taking the class boded ill, she was sure, even though it wasn’t a practical subject. Master Tor could hardly have ordered his direct superior to take the class, could he? But then, she’d checked. Gordian had very little experience of actually teaching. It was possible that he’d decided to try to fill in the gaps as much as possible. She supposed he deserved respect for that, if it was true. She’d met too many people who were staggeringly ignorant of their own ignorance.

  But you couldn’t get away with it indefinitely at Whitehall, she reminded herself. Bluffing doesn’t work when you’re expected to show competence at all times.

  Gordian waved a hand at the door. It shut with an ominous bang.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said. “This class is Ethics in Magic and Politics. Those of you who noted that there was no reading list—and had the sense to ask Master Tor—already know this is not a class in the traditional sense. I will be operating a discussion group, rather than lecturing you for the next two hours.”

  His lips curved into a cold smile. “I’m sure you will find that something of a relief.”

  Emily wasn’t so sure. She enjoyed discussions and debates, one on one, but she’d never been comfortable speaking in front of a group. It was too easy to make a mistake, then have everyone call her on it. She’d addressed the firsties, but there hadn’t been any audience participation. They’d been too awed or nervous to question her.

  And Gordian will probably enjoy pointing out my mistakes, she thought, sourly. So will some of the girls.

  “Let’s start with an obvious question,” Gordian said. “What are ethics?”

  “A code of conduct,” Cirroc said.

  Gordian looked faintly displeased. Emily wondered, sardonically, if he’d planned to make her answer the question. Or maybe he’d expected them to put up their hands and wait to be called on before they opened their mouths. Clearly, he’d never taken a discussion group before. She couldn’t help wondering if he’d taken the class himself, back when he’d been at Whitehall. Perhaps it was a relatively new innovation.

  “Close,” Gordian said. “Ethics are a framework of thought that define right and wrong.”

  He paused. “How many of you think it is wrong to steal?”

  Emily put up her hand. So did most of the class.

  “Gorgon, you don’t agree.” Gordian’s nose twitched, as if he’d smelled something disgusting. “Why don’t you agree?”

  “If my daughter was starving, I would steal to feed her,” the Gorgon said. Her snake-like eyes gazed at Gordian, daring him to disapprove. “I would take the risk, knowing the only alternative was watching my child die.”

  Gordian looked at her for a long moment, then nodded curtly.

  “A good answer,” he said. “Ethics—as a framework of thought—are flexible. It is wrong to steal for oneself, but right to steal for someone else. Thoughts?”

  “I wouldn’t like it if someone stole from me,” Mathis said. “They might be stealing food from my daughter.”

  “That’s true,” Gordian agreed. “Something that looks reasonable to one person might look very unreasonable to another.”

  “But what happens if the person could afford to spare the food?” Melissa offered. “If I was starving myself, I wouldn’t want to lose the food. But if I was swimming in plenty, I could spare the food without a qualm.”

  “It would still be your food.” Jacqui sneered. “Don’t you get to make the choice of what happens to it?”

  “A valid point,” Gordian said. “Here is a different question. Should a thief who steals to enrich himself be treated more severely than a thief who steals to feed his children?”

  Emily shrugged. She’d never seen any suggestion that the Nameless World cared one whit for social justice, in any of its forms. Thieves were thieves, whatever their cause; they were put in the stocks, or enslaved, or even executed ... there was no mercy, no matter their motives. And she could understand the logic, even if the punishments repulsed her. Far too many communities lived on the brink. A thief could push them over the edge.

  Which doesn’t excuse lords and ladies living high while peasants starve, she reminded herself, grimly. They would kill men and rape women just for a little sport.

  “It’s still theft,” Jacqui said. “There’s no misunderstanding here, sir. A person who steals from another knows he’s stealing from another, whatever his ... reasons. They have to be dealt with harshly.”

  “Yeah,” Prunella agreed. “They could just ask for the food.”

  Emily snorted. She couldn’t help herself. Prunella had grown up in a magical family and gone straight to Whitehall. She’d never starved a day in her life. She’d certainly never lived as a peasant or even a powerless aristocratic girl. There was no way she could comprehend the gulf between the peasants and the aristocrats, let alone the mundanes and the magicians ...

  Gordian gave her a sharp look. “Do you have something to contribute, Emily?”

  “A starving peasant could go to the lord of the manor to ask for food,” Emily said. It was hard to keep the disdain out of her voice. “But he’d be lucky if he was only laughed at. His lord and master wouldn’t lift a finger to help.”

  She sighed. The aristocracy considered the peasants subhuman. They were more concerned about their horses and dogs than the hapless men and women who toiled on their estates, wretched serfs fit only to hew wood and draw water. Emily had never understood it—even if they hated the peasants, starving them to death was self-defeating—but it was a fact of life. A starving peasant who begged for help was more likely to be beheaded than fed.

  “Yes, he might,” Gordian said. “But would refusing help be ethical?”

  “Yes, it would,” Jacqui said. “The peasant has no claim on his master.”

&nbs
p; Emily scowled. She’d been told, more than once, that a feudal chain of obligations ran up from the lowliest peasant serf to the monarch himself, that the nobility had obligations to the peasants ... but she’d never seen any proof. The nobles of Zangaria seemed to believe they had no obligations at all to their peasants, not even to help keep them alive during famine. The only time she’d seen the aristocracy concerned about the peasants had been when the peasants had started to run off to the big cities. They were prepared to move heaven and earth to recover a runaway peasant, but not to make any concessions that would convince the peasant to stay on the estate. The whole system was shitty.

  “And if that is so,” Gordian asked, “does the master have any claim on the peasant?”

  He held up a hand before anyone could answer. “We’ll return to this topic later,” he said, firmly. “Right now, we are discussing magic. What are the ethics of magic?”

  “To know when to use and when not to use magic,” Melissa said. “And when magic can be used for power.”

  Gordian nodded. “Power—and magic is a form of power—brings responsibility,” he said, seriously. “Why do you think we teach you here?”

  “Efficiency,” Cirroc said. “Instead of one teacher trying to teach one student, you teach twenty or thirty of us at once. We pick up the basics so our future masters don’t have to hammer them into our heads.”

  Emily wasn’t so sure. The master-apprentice relationship had its advantages as well as its disadvantages, but so did the educational system. On one hand, it could impart a great deal of knowledge relatively quickly; on the other, it limited the amount of individual attention each student could receive. Emily was fairly sure that she would have progressed far faster at school—in both worlds—if she’d been the sole focus of her teacher’s attention. But, on the other hand, she probably wouldn’t have gotten away with anything.

  “That’s not a bad point,” Gordian said. “But it isn’t the one I want to discuss now. Anyone else?”

  “Uniformity,” Melissa offered. “A cert from Whitehall has a fixed value, sir. Anyone who takes me on as an apprentice knows what I did to earn the cert. He doesn’t have to put me through my paces to discover the limits of my knowledge.”

  “That’s also true,” Gordian said. “But there’s a different point.”

  The Gorgon leaned forward. “You allow magicians from all over the Allied Lands to get to know one another,” she said. “Everything from friendships to patronage networks go through Whitehall.”

  “There are other schools,” Gordian said. “But you’re right. Uniformity is important. It just isn’t the point I have in mind.”

  Cabiria nudged Emily. “Then what does he have in mind?”

  Gordian proved to have sharp ears. “You tell me, young lady.”

  “You want us to come to believe that we are all magicians,” Cabiria said, a hard edge in her voice. Her early life had been blighted by the belief she wouldn’t develop magic when she reached puberty. “That whatever our origins, we have magic in common.”

  “Again, not a bad answer,” Gordian said. “But it isn’t the one I want.”

  Emily glanced at Cabiria. Her pale cheeks darkened, just for a second. Perhaps it was as close as Cabiria could come to a flush.

  “There is a more fundamental point to Whitehall’s existence than anyone, even Cabiria, mentioned,” Gordian said. “In Whitehall, you grow up surrounded by your fellow magic-users. Anything you can do, they can do too. You can turn someone into a frog, or freeze them in place, or force them to recite doggerel ... but they can do it to you too. There is nothing special about you here. You are just one of many.

  “That isn’t always true in the outside world. A lone magician in an isolated region can wind up dominating an entire village—or worse. The sole possessor of power—true power—can crush any opposition, as long as they are careful not to attract attention. How much damage could you do, as students? Think how much you could do to people helpless to stand against you.”

  Emily swallowed. A couple of months at Whitehall had taught her enough magic to do real damage. She’d had the advantage of having ideals—and a mindset—that came from Earth, but that hadn’t made her uniquely destructive. Someone who’d grown up among people who couldn’t stop her, someone who had every reason to think they were superior to everyone else, might go mad with power. Or they might have set out to avenge themselves on their former tormentors. If Frieda hadn’t left her village, after developing her magic, would she have turned it into her own personal fiefdom? Or would the villagers—including her family—have killed her in self-defense?

  “When you leave Whitehall, next year, you will leave with enough magic and power to make yourselves unchallengeable, save by your peers,” Gordian added. “What will you do with that power?”

  “I don’t know,” Jacqui said. “But it will be my choice.”

  “Yes,” Gordian agreed. “And what will you choose?”

  He looked from face to face. “Ethics in magic is all about how you choose to use power. And you have power—have no doubt about that. Here, you are surrounded by your peers; there, you are the sole person with power. What will you do with it?”

  Cirroc’s eyes narrowed. “Sir ... why would I go live somewhere without other magicians?”

  “Perhaps you want unchallenged power,” Gordian said. His dark eyes gleamed. “Perhaps you want to live a life without limits.”

  His eyes met Emily’s, just for a second. “Perhaps you want to be accountable to no one, to answer to no one, to take orders from no one. Or perhaps you have always secretly wanted power and now you have the ability to claim it.”

  Emily kept her face expressionless. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven?

  She wondered, as Gordian’s eyes moved on, if he was talking about her—or Void. The idea of being a Lone Power, of being strong enough—in magic—that no one could tell her what to do was attractive. She could admit that, privately. If someone else held power over her—power to tell her what to do, power to make her do what they wanted her to do—they could turn abusive. And if there was no higher court she could appeal to—to beg for help—there would be nothing she could do. Who could she count on to always put her interests first?

  But I might also go mad with power, she thought. Lady Barb had told her quite a few horror stories about sorcerers who went mad, even if they never crossed the line into necromancy or demon-summoning. If I lost my moral compass, how would I know I was crossing the line until it was far too late?

  “Many years ago, there was a young man who was treated badly by everyone he knew,” Gordian said, brutally. “He was kicked and beaten by his peers, ignored by his parents ... there wasn’t a young woman in the village who didn’t mock him for an ugly gnome. And he was ugly. He was weak and feeble and useless and they kicked him around for sport.

  “And then he developed magic. He enslaved his village. He killed or transformed most of his tormentors, then turned the young women into his adoring love-slaves. He might have enjoyed a long and happy reign over his village if he hadn’t started to build himself an empire by invading other villages. He was killed ...”

  Gordian paused. “Now tell me ... was he in the right?”

  Emily hesitated. On one hand, everything the young man had done had been awful. There was no way she could condone it. And yet, the villagers had treated him badly too. Didn’t they deserve some punishment? But hadn’t he gone far too far?

  “Maybe he had a point,” she said. “But he went too far.”

  Gordian lifted his eyebrows. “And what point is going too far?”

  “I have no answer,” Emily admitted. She recalled the age-old definition of pornography and smiled. “But I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “He should have just left,” Jacqui said. “He had power. He could have come here or gone to one of the other schools ... even apprenticed himself to a village druid or apothecary. He didn’t have to stay there, grubbing in the mud an
d rutting with peasant girls. His power should have lifted him up. Instead, he dragged it down.”

  “A valid point,” Gordian said. “Should he have left?”

  “There was nothing for him there,” Cirroc said.

  “Except revenge,” Mathis pointed out. “Didn’t they deserve to be punished?”

  Melissa shot him a challenging look. “I don’t think you got punished for turning my shoes into slugs.”

  “You jinxed my hands to the wall,” Mathis countered. “Who punished the villagers for treating that poor boy like shit?”

  Gordian cleared his throat. “The world is rarely as black and white as we like to pretend. And it is astonishing how many seemingly simple problems can become complex.”

  “It’s astonishing how many people can make simple problems complex,” Melissa muttered.

  “Quite right,” Gordian agreed. “But the world very rarely admits of simple solutions.”

  Because there’s always someone who loses out, Emily thought.

  “For homework, I want you to think about what you would do in that situation.” Gordian rose, just as the bell began to ring. “And I’ll see you all next week.”

  Chapter Twelve

  EMILY WAS STILL MULLING IT OVER as she followed Cabiria and the Gorgon down to the common room to get a glass of water, then up to the wardcrafting classroom. What would she have done, if she’d grown up in a village where she’d been savagely abused? What would she have done if she’d acquired the power to make her tormentors pay? What would she have done, she asked herself grimly, if she’d had her magic when she’d been living with her stepfather? Would anyone have blamed her for driving him out? Or turning him into a small hopping thing? Or even killing him outright?

  Someone who wasn’t there probably would, Emily thought. She knew Frieda had been abused and Alassa had been neglected, but she didn’t really comprehend how bad it must have been. They’d think I went too far.

  She sighed, inwardly. Objectively ... there was no objectivity, not when abuse was concerned. One might argue that regular beatings were better—or worse—than a constant torrent of emotional abuse, but the victim wouldn’t care. She’d just want the abuse to stop, whatever it took. If she’d had her magic on Earth, she wouldn’t have hesitated to drive her stepfather out of the family. It wouldn’t have mattered to her if some people thought she’d overreacted. All that mattered was putting an end to the abuse.