“Akin, my boy,” Uncle Malachi said. He was sitting in a comfortable armchair, half-hidden amongst the piles of books. “How are you?”
I blinked in surprise. Uncle Malachi had been in the hall for years - he had his own suite and everything - but it was rare to see him in the library. He spent most of his time wheeling and dealing, schmoosing with my father, Uncle Davys and everyone else who haunted the mansion. Indeed, he was one of the few people who managed to remain on good terms with both my father and his brother. It helped, I supposed, that he wasn’t really family. He’d married my Aunt. He might be an Uncle, but he’d never inherit anything.
“Uncle,” I said. He’d given me permission, long ago, to call him uncle, rather than senior. “It’s been a long day.”
Uncle Malachi waved to the armchair next to him. “Come and tell me all about it?”
I sat, resting my hands on my lap. Uncle Malachi looked jovial and stout, unlike my father and his brother. And he wasn't blond. His brown hair flopped over a face that was starting to show the effects of too much good food and not enough exercise. He’d always been friendly, always been willing to advise me and my sister ... he’d always been a friendly ear, someone willing to listen to us. Most adults had wanted us to be seen, but not heard, when we’d been children. Even now, it was hard to believe that any of them would take me seriously. They’d known me as a child. But Uncle Malachi had always listened.
“Father wants me to take the Challenge,” I said, numbly. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
“At the beginning,” Uncle Malachi said. “Why does he want you to take the Challenge?”
“To prove myself,” I said. “It ... I don’t want to do it.”
Uncle Malachi looked pitying. “You know your father took the Challenge, when he was your age?”
I blinked in surprise. “My father?”
“Your father,” Uncle Malachi confirmed.
If it had come from anyone else, I wouldn’t have believed it. My father’s disdain for sports - and everything related to sports - was well-known. He’d reprimanded Isabella for kicking a ball around the grounds, instead of spending her time developing her magic and learning how to be a proper young lady. My father ... but then, he had insisted that I take the Challenge. And he’d given good reasons, too. It was suddenly easy to believe that he’d had the same problem. My grandfather might have ordered him to take the Challenge too.
“Oh,” I said. “And what happened?”
Uncle Malachi looked ... vague. “Something happened. There was some sort of ... scandal. It got hushed up at the time, but ... your father was never crowned Wizard Regnant. Or anything, for that matter. Everyone involved was sworn to secrecy.”
I blinked. “Everyone?”
“Everyone,” Uncle Malachi confirmed. “Whatever happened was pretty bad.”
“And it was bad enough that everyone had to be sworn to secrecy?” I shook my head in disbelief. Asking someone for an oath was ... bad manners, at the very least. At worst, it was an outright demand for complete and total surrender. “Was it something to do with Uncle Joaquin? Cat’s father?”
“I don’t think so,” Uncle Malachi said, slowly. “But you won’t find anyone who’ll discuss it with you.”
I frowned. I couldn’t believe my father could be so petty as to hold a grudge over a sporting event. I knew the Challenge was important, but ... there was a new Wizard Regnant every year or so. Wasn’t there? Or ...
“And everyone has been sworn to secrecy,” I mused. “Why is it so important?”
“Are you really that naïve?” Uncle Malachi met my eyes. “The Challenge is more than just a game, Akin. Everyone knows the winner is marked out for great things.”
“Father said the same,” I said.
“He may not have explained it properly,” Uncle Malachi said. “The Challenge is important - and very far from fair. Cheating and outright sabotage is perfectly legal, as long as people cheat in the approved manner. And there have been quite a few contests where no one emerged victorious. There doesn’t have to be a winner.”
“And Father didn’t win,” I commented. “Why not?”
“The details were hushed up, as I said,” Uncle Malachi reminded me, without the irritation Father would have shown at repeating himself. “But ... it must have been bad. The Challenge is important. Enough leaked out, I think, for your father to wind up with egg on his face. It would have made his early years as Patriarch difficult. If you win ... it will reflect well on him.”
“Oh,” I said.
“The Challenge is really a mirror of inter-house politics,” Uncle Malachi added. “Whoever puts together a winning team is destined for greatness.”
“My father lost ... and he’s still great,” I pointed out, sardonically. “What happened to the other losers?”
“Some got points just for trying,” Uncle Malachi said. “Others ... vanished, after they graduated. But Akin ... everyone who won went on to great things.”
“So you keep saying.” I wasn’t that impressed. “Where do I find a copy of the rules?”
“They haven’t changed in the last fifteen years,” Uncle Malachi said. He pointed a finger at a handful of volumes, resting on the bookshelf. The closest was marked with Jude’s logo. “You’ll probably find the latest there, if you look. Check when you get to school, just in case there were any changes over the last year. They may be revised again.”
I frowned. “Again?”
“There was a really big cheating scandal sixteen years ago,” Uncle Malachi said. “You would have been a baby at the time. I’m not sure what happened, really. Someone found a way to cheat that was against the spirit of the rules, but not the letter. In any case, they revised the rules carefully to prevent it from happening again.”
“And they didn’t tell us what they did?” That sounded odd, to me. “Why not?”
“They probably didn’t want to give future contestants ideas,” Uncle Malachi offered, after a moment. “There’s cheating and then there’s cheating.”
He stood. “I have a meeting with your uncle in twenty minutes,” he said. “But if you want to chat, afterwards, I’m available.”
“Thanks, Uncle,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
I watched him walk out of the room, then stood myself and reached for the latest copy of Jude’s rules and regulations. I’d read it once, when I’d gone to school, but I hadn’t paid much attention to the sporting rules. They’d never really interested me. A handful of warnings about not turning Magisters into toads, casting mind-control spells on fellow students and the dangers of drinking concentration potions before an exam greeted me as I opened the cover, reminding me that the rules did change fairly regularly. I wondered, idly, just which student had managed to turn a Magister into a toad. That would have been an impressive feat. Anyone who taught at Jude’s would be an above-average magician, no matter what they taught. I found it hard to believe that even an upperclassman could turn a Magister into a toad.
Maybe it was Madam Ruthven, I thought, uncharitably. The historian had the unearthly gift of being able to suck the fun out of her subject, as if she were a vampire and history lessons were her prey. It isn’t as if anyone has seen her do much magic.
I felt a pang of guilt - Cat couldn’t do any magic, and it certainly didn’t make her any less of a person - and pushed the thought aside as I flipped through the book. Rules on how to treat lowerclassmen, rules on how to handle upperclassmen ... detailed instructions for cleaning and pressing one’s uniform jacket? I was starting to think that whoever had written the book had been paid by the word. They always used five words where one would do. I was starting to feel a little frustrated by the time I reached the correct section. Irritatingly, it had been separated from the rules governing football, netball and all the other sporty wastes of time ...
... And the very first paragraph was a warning that the Challenge could be deadly.
I felt my heart skip a beat as I read thr
ough the section. The Challenge had rules - the writer had said, without bothering to elaborate - but even within the rules, contestants could die. A girl had died, four years ago ... I’d been in second year at the time, hadn’t I? How had I not heard about it? And a boy had died three years before that ... others had been badly injured, including one boy who would never be the same again. The book didn’t go into details, which I found more than a little ominous. Magic could heal almost any sort of physical damage. What had happened to the injured student? Perhaps he’d gone mad.
And Father wants me to compete, I thought, as I turned the page. Perhaps he’s gone mad.
Once I was past the harrowing warnings - and the blunt statement that anyone who competed knew the risks - I finally reached an outline of the rules themselves. They appeared to be relatively simple, something that worried me. I could compete on my own, if I wished, or form a team of up to ten students - all upperclassmen. Lowerclassmen were specifically forbidden from taking part. I supposed that made sense. There weren’t many lowerclassmen, myself included, who could have matched magic against an upperclassman.
And we’re not allowed to ask for help from anyone significantly older, I mused. The rule was clearly designed to prevent us from enlisting adult help. No parents, no teachers, no one from outside the school ...
I frowned. Cat and I were the same age, but - depending on how I looked at the rules - enlisting her help was probably out of the question. Uncle Malachi had pointed out that there was cheating and then there was cheating. The rules weren’t too clear on where the limits actually were, but asking for Objects of Power from my betrothed was probably too blatant for the staff to tolerate. No one else would be able to do it. And there was no clear explanation of what we’d actually have to do. I assumed we wouldn’t be kicking a football around the field, but ... what would we be doing? The rules weren’t clear.
It could be anything, I thought, slowly. I could ask Father, but if he hadn’t volunteered the information it was unlikely he’d give it to me. What do they want us to do?
I considered for a long moment. Something that required a team ... yes, I could do it alone, legally, but I had the feeling that would be asking for trouble. A magical duel, trading spell for spell? Or ... or what? A set of tasks that had to be completed in a given time? I’d done group projects at school, working with my handful of friends. Maybe the Challenge was the same thing, on a bigger scale. I didn’t know.
Shaking my head, I closed the book and surveyed the remaining shelves. The earlier editions weren’t any help, although one of them went into gruesome detail about an accident that had been expunged from later versions. I returned the original book to the shelf, then turned and walked out of the library. It was late afternoon, nearly dinnertime. Thankfully, I’d been told I could take it in my rooms.
Isabella would have done a better job, I thought, as I walked up the stairs. She’d have loved the Challenge.
I felt a pang of guilt as I reached my room, passing a pair of lesser cousins - both too young to go to school - on my way. They seemed so happy and carefree ... it made me wonder if Isabella and I had been so innocent, once upon a time. I heard their laughter as I opened the door, the sound cutting off abruptly as the door closed. I’d warded the suite against sound years ago. I had never been able to get used to hearing noises while I slept and worked.
My dinner was already waiting on the table when I arrived, concealed neatly under charmed covers that kept the food in stasis. The maid had come and gone ... thankfully, she hadn’t entered my bedroom or my study. I’d had to explain to her, years ago, that she couldn’t tidy my desks and shelves. Everything was ordered. It was just my order, impervious to lesser minds. Cat had laughed, when I’d told her. Mother had been much less amused.
Isabella was much the same, I thought. She had her own way of doing things too.
I sat down and removed the covers. The kitchen staff had outdone themselves, cooking a meal of roast lamb, roast potatoes, vegetables and gravy, with sticky toffee pudding for dessert. My father had hosted a dinner for lunch, if I recalled correctly. I wondered, suddenly, just who he’d been hosting and why. It couldn’t have been a big family gathering or I would have been forced to attend. Maybe it had been a friend or ... or Uncle Joaquin, coming to discuss plans for the wedding. I felt my stomach sink at the thought. I liked Cat. Really, I did. But I wanted our wedding to be more than just a family event, more than just the glue that bound our alliance together. I wanted ...
What you want doesn’t matter, a voice said, at the back of my head. It sounded very much like my father. Anything, for the family.
I scowled. I knew the problem. As long as Cat and I were children, we couldn’t get married. Of course not. And that meant that the ultimate question of whether or not we’d actually get married was moot. But, once we were declared adults, we would have to make an actual decision. And I knew we wouldn’t be allowed to delay for long ...
Being betrothed did have its advantages, I reminded myself, sourly. Normally, I would have spent my summers being introduced to suitable young women - and being chaperoned, heavily, as we talked about absolutely nothing. But that couldn’t happen as long as I was betrothed. I didn’t have to worry about filling out a dance card either. It would be insulting to my betrothed to dance with anyone else. Now, though, the time has come to pay the piper.
I ate my dinner, put the plates to one side - the maid would collect them later - and walked into my study, closing and locking the door behind me. I was fairly sure my father could get into the room if he wanted - he was the mansion’s wardmaster - but everyone else would have real problems breaking into my room without setting off alarms. I glanced around, quietly making sure everything was where I’d left it, then sat down at my desk and reached for paper. I’d promised myself I’d write a letter to Isabella before I went back to school ...
And I’m going to have to be careful what I write, I thought, sourly. The family council read the letters I wrote to Isabella, on the grounds an exile had no right to privacy. They’d wanted to read the letters I sent to Cat, too, but Father had overruled them. Who knows what they’ll conclude from my scribbling?
I rolled my eyes, wrote the letter and placed it in an unsealed envelope. There was no point in charming it shut. If the family council couldn’t open it, they’d toss it in the fire. They’d made that clear, long ago. Uncle Davys had been very firm about it. I had never understood why he’d been so angry at Isabella, but he’d made his point. The nasty part of my mind wondered why he couldn’t simply remove the charm, read the letter and replace the charm himself. He wasn’t a poor magician, whatever else he was. It wouldn’t be that much of a hassle.
Perhaps he just wants to make it clear that she’s in trouble, I thought, as I placed the letter in the box and headed into my bedroom. Or perhaps he’s just a pain in the neck.
My lips quirked. I knew worse things to call him. But if I said them too close to Mother ...
Bedtime, I told myself, firmly. Tomorrow will be a very busy day.
Chapter Four
I felt the ward jangle as someone opened the door, jerking me out of a sound sleep. I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. The maid - she was new, barely a year younger than me - started backwards, almost dropping the tea tray. I’d slept in the nude, as I usually did. Her face went so red I was sure she expected to be fired on the spot. I smiled at her as reassuringly as I could. I didn’t think I had the power to fire a maid. Mother ran the house with a rod of iron and she would be furious if I presumed to tread on her toes.
“Just put it there,” I said, covering myself as I indicated the table. “I’ll put it outside when I’m done.”
The maid placed the tray on the table, curtseyed delicately and retreated backwards out of the room. I tried not to stare. She was a very pretty girl and the maid’s outfit suited her, but Mother had made it very clear the maids were not to be touched. Given that she’d actually hit a distant uncle with wandering han
ds - and banished him from the household shortly afterwards - I wasn’t inclined to take liberties. Besides, Cat would kill me.
I stood, stumbled over to the table and inspected the tray. Coffee and milk, nothing else. Mother expected me to join the others for breakfast, then. I sighed - it was really too early in the morning for Cousin Francis - and drank my coffee, savouring the weak taste. I’d never been able to understand how my father could drink coffee that was darker than Cat or Uncle Joaquin. His coffee tasted so foul that I’d spat it out after I’d taken a sip. Maybe it was an adult thing. I’d discovered, over the last year, that a lot of things I’d considered unbearably disgusting - when I’d been a child - were actually tasty to the adult palate.
(The Zero Enigma Book 6) The Family Pride Page 4
