Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (21 page)

He pulled his shirt on hastily as there was another knock at the door, then called to invite the knocker into the room. Elaine stepped inside, wearing a simple pair of trousers and shirt herself, her hair braided into a ponytail and allowed to hang down her back. She looked nothing like the Head Librarian. If she hadn’t had a wand at her belt, she wouldn’t have even passed for a magician.

She wasn’t beautiful, not conventionally beautiful. Certainly nothing like Jayne or Charity, both of whom were stunningly gorgeous. But there was something about her that Johan found oddly compelling.

“I meant to ask,” Johan said, trying to cover his embarrassment at staring at her. “Why is there a rule that only magicians can carry wands if wands are useless?”

Elaine gave him an odd look, then nodded. “It’s considered rude to brush your magical field up against another magician’s field,” she said. “If you carry a wand, on the other hand, it’s a simple way to identify yourself as a magician. But if you
pretended
to be a magician ... well, you might run into some trouble.”

Johan could understand it. Jamal was always picking fights with his fellow magicians, constantly testing himself against them. If he happened to pick on a mundane
pretending
to be a magician ... it would be a one-sided slaughter. And besides, magicians had higher social status than mundanes. If people started pretending to be magicians, the social scale would be upended.

“You may not want to announce yourself,” Elaine added, breaking into his thoughts. “Your magic is odd enough that I’d prefer not to see you get into a duel.”

“Even with Jamal?” Johan asked. “I could surprise him ...”

Elaine gave him an icy look. “Your brother may be an ass,” she said, “but if he’d been a weak magician or a coward it would have been discovered long ago. Magicians constantly jostle for status, after all. And while your powers are odd, you are not all-powerful. Jamal might beat you through experience alone.”

Johan scowled. He’d always assumed that his brother was just bragging about how great a duellist he was, showing off to his powerless sibling just how much he could do. But he’d never heard anything to suggest that Jamal genuinely
did
have a reputation outside the house, one held by magicians who had no reason to be nice to him. Maybe Jamal hadn’t been boasting after all.

No, he was boasting
, Johan told himself.
He might just have had something real to boast about
.

“I understand,” he said, out loud. At least Jamal was in jail ... or was he? “How long will Jamal stay in jail?”

“It depends on the Grand Sorceress,” Elaine admitted, as she headed towards the door. “And how much political support your father manages to round up.”

Johan picked up the letter he’d written and passed it to her. Elaine skimmed it quickly, nodded in approval and stuffed it into an envelope. It drifted away a moment later, heading towards the library’s mail room, where it would be handed over to the postmen. Johan, who had once been told that he would never have any other career, had researched them and discovered that a letter could reach its destination in the Golden City within hours. It had seemed like a fun job from the outside ...

... But his father would never have agreed to let him go.

Outside, it was cooler than he remembered as winter came on. The crowds seemed to have largely abandoned their more ...
interesting
outfits, choosing instead to wrap themselves in fur coats or heavy robes. Most of the students seemed to be running to and from the Great Library, studying desperately for the exams at the end of the month. Practical magic, Johan had once been told, could be practiced anywhere, but students who wanted good jobs had to study magical theory, law and many other topics. It still galled him to know that he could have found a good job, even without magic. And now that he did have magic ...

He gritted his teeth. If his father only wanted him with magic, he told himself again, he was damned if he was going to give the old man anything.

Elaine seemed to be picking a rather roundabout route to the zoo, he realised, but it took him several minutes of observation to realise that she was deliberately avoiding the crowds as much as possible. Johan could understand that, even though he had never found the streets too disconcerting. But then, he’d only been able to slip out occasionally and he wouldn’t have allowed fear of crowds to keep him from the streets. Taking his eyes off Elaine, he looked around, drinking in his newfound freedom.

Shoppers thronged the streets, looking for bargains, while roadside stalls tried to sell them food and drink. A variety of smells met his nostrils as he saw food from all over the Empire, from plates of hot and spicy curry to boiled fish and stringy vegetables. One stall was offering frozen cream – the seller was bawling loudly that it actually helped cool the blood – while another was offering bowls of hot soup. Johan remembered, with a sudden pang, the day he’d sneaked out of the house and bought himself a meal at one of the stalls. It had tasted good, all the more so because he’d been free ... if only for a few short hours.

It was almost a disappointment when he reached the zoo. On the outside, it was just a long low building, barely larger than his family’s house. Elaine led him inside ... and his whole world seemed to shift on its axis. The interior of the building was not only far bigger than the outside, it was spelled to give each animal a proper habitat. All around him, children were marvelling at a strange creature that looked like an oversized spider. The creature seemed to be eying them back with murderous intent.

“A Dark Wizard produced that creature using magic,” Elaine commented. “It couldn’t have existed otherwise. He was planning to produce a small army of them to terrorise the region, but the Inquisitors stopped him before he got much further. As it is, the eggs the creature produces can be used in a number of interesting and complicated potions.”

Johan eyed the spider, feeling oddly reluctant to turn his back on it. The children might be awed, but just looking at it brought out a fear of insects he hadn’t known he had. On eight legs, he asked himself, just how fast could it move? He didn’t think he really wanted to know the answer.

Elaine seemed more relaxed as they made their way through the zoo, pausing to look at each and every strange creature. Johan found himself relaxing too, wondering why his father had never brought him to the complex, even when he had been young enough to hope that his magic simply hadn’t developed yet. He glanced at Elaine, wondering just how old she really was. Glamours could hide signs of ageing, but he had a feeling that she wasn’t much older than Charity or Jamal. But if she was on the Privy Council ...

There’s no requirement to sit on the council
, he reminded himself,
apart from magical power and political power. She could have that at sixteen years old, if her parents were dead
...

“Thank you for bringing me here,” he said, and meant it. “This is fantastic.”

Elaine smiled back at him, then walked onwards. There was a giant scorpion, a creature that resembled a cross between a lion and a bear, a massive snake with something firmly fixed over its eyes, a small army of ants that seemed intent on building a colossal anthill in the centre of the zoo ... he found himself starting to grow tired, without even having seen everything in the complex. Five giant monkeys swung over his head, then made rude gestures towards the visitors. The kids laughed and ate it up. Their parents seemed much less amused.

“It’s not as if they can punish the monkeys,” Elaine commented, dryly.

Johan laughed.

An hour later, they left the zoo and headed towards a small café. Johan smiled openly as they stepped inside, remembering Charity’s tales of how she’d met new friends in similar places, places Johan had never been allowed to visit. Now ... he was almost disappointed. There was no magic in the darkened room, nothing special at all. But then, the café was some distance from the Peerless School. It was quite possible that few magicians came to drink there.

Elaine ordered for them both, then settled back to relax. Johan smiled at her, wondering if he dared ask if he could take Jayne next time. But she’d warned him that Jayne might not be interested ... his head hurt as he contemplated all the possibilities. Jamal, the lucky bastard, had been able to have his fun with the maids. Johan had known that none of them would have let him touch ...

There was a sudden loud noise from outside, followed by screaming. Johan saw Elaine jerk upright, drawing her wand from her belt. Brilliant light seemed to flare through the café’s windows as the screaming grew louder. Elaine moved her wand in a complicated pattern – summoning help, Johan assumed - then stood up and headed for the door. Johan hesitated, then followed her. Behind them, the handful of other people in the café were hiding under the tables. He found it hard to blame them.

Outside, all hell seemed to have broken loose. A handful of masked magicians were standing in the middle of the street, casting spells in all directions. Johan saw, to his horror, a pair of small children struck by an odd spell, their forms blurred together into a frozen nightmare. A woman was attacking her husband, several children were attacking their parents ... and others had been turned into frogs or inanimate objects. He froze, remembering what Jamal had done ...

... But Jamal was in jail. He had to be in jail. He couldn’t be one of the masked magicians, could he? Johan knew that Jamal was good at getting out of trouble, but surely he wouldn’t be stupid enough to worm his way out and then do the same crime
again
? No, this had to be his friends ...

“Power to the powerful,” one of the magicians called, amplifying his voice so that it could be heard all over the city. “Power to those who can take it ...”

His voice cut off as Elaine hit him with a stunning spell. He crumpled to the ground, his mask falling to reveal patrician features and long white hair. His comrades turned to stare at Elaine, then started hurling spells in her direction. Eldritch fire crackled around her as she used her wand to deflect the spells; Johan stared in horror, unable to quite comprehend the magnitude of their transgression. They weren’t just fighting with another magician, they were fighting with a
Privy Councillor
! There was no way that the Grand Sorceress would let
that
pass.

But they don’t know she’s a Privy Councillor
, he thought, numbly.
She isn’t wearing the robes
.

Elaine stumbled backwards as curses and hexes crashed into her protections. Johan hesitated, unsure of what to do, then started to cast the first spell Charity had shown him. One of the magicians snickered out loud – the gestures were recognisable, even if Johan hadn’t been wearing magician’s robes or carrying a wand – clearly convinced that a light spell couldn’t even begin to hurt him. And then he jumped backwards as blinding white light blazed into existence, followed rapidly by a wave of heat.

Johan half-covered his eyes, trying to see past the blaze. It sounded as though the ringleader’s robes had caught on fire, but it was impossible to be sure. They were definitely retreating though ... he had to stop them! He cancelled his own spell and smiled as he realised that he’d been right. Several of them were desperately trying to stamp out their burning robes.

He snickered. After having spent nearly sixteen years being tormented by his siblings, it felt
good
to win a fight.

A moment later, he cursed his own stupidity as the ringleader pointed a wand at him and chanted a curse in a language he didn’t recognise. He hadn’t won
yet
! There was no way to know which spell was going to be used, so he concentrated on forming a protective bubble around his body. Balefire flared through the air and flared around the bubble, but he was utterly unhurt. The ringleader’s face was still hidden behind his mask, yet somehow Johan was sure that he was flabbergasted by Johan’s new protection.
That
... was far from normal.

The ringleader’s wand slipped. For a moment, Johan thought that he was going to surrender – casting away one’s wand was a standard sign – and then he heard a scream beside him. He looked ... and saw Elaine’s face contorted in agony. Why wasn’t she defending herself? Or why hadn’t she run?

Because she was there for you
, his own thoughts answered him.
She was trying to protect you
.

Pure rage blazed through his mind, but he forced himself to concentrate on the effects he wanted. The ringleader’s wand shattered – he stared at it in disbelief – and then his entire body turned to stone. Behind him, his retreating fellows also turned to granite. Johan looked around, staring in horror at the innocent victims of compulsion charms, then
willed
them all to freeze. He didn’t know what would happen if he tried to remove the charms, but if they were frozen they couldn’t hurt themselves any further. Or so he hoped.

Silence fell, broken only by gasps of pain from the victims.

It was a scene out of nightmare. Countless bodies lay on the ground, blood pooling below them and drifting towards the gutters. Tiny objects lay everywhere; small animals were hopping around, trying to convince someone to break the spell and free them from their forced transfigurations. Men, women and children had been victimised alike, tortured and humiliated for nothing more than being mundanes ...

Johan turned to Elaine ... and cursed himself for not looking at her sooner. She was lying on the ground in a crumpled heap, sweat running down her forehead. He took her into his arms, shocked by how light she felt, and tried to help her upright. She seemed to be running on willpower alone. What else could keep her going?

“Water,” she breathed, as he lowered her into a sitting position. “Get some from the café.”

Johan hastened to obey. The patrons were still cowering under the tables, but it was easy enough to get some water from the tap. He poured a glass and took it back outside, holding it in front of her eyes. For a terrible moment, he thought that she was too far gone to drink ...