Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (22 page)

And then the Inquisitors arrived.

Chapter Eighteen

It was hard, so hard, to focus her mind, but Elaine knew that she didn’t dare collapse. Fighting so many trained magicians at once had been foolish, particularly as she had had no time to rig the field to her advantage, yet she couldn’t have stood by and done nothing. If someone had resisted, she’d hoped, the attackers would have panicked and fled rather than fight and perhaps be caught by the Inquisitors.

But she’d drained herself badly even before one of them had hit her with a pain curse. Johan had stood up to them too, but despite his strange powers he was badly unprepared for close-quarter fighting. Thankfully, he’d survived ... and managed to fetch her water. She sipped gratefully at the glass, trying hard to regain her strength. But the only
real
thing she could do to help herself was food and sleep.

“Elaine,” a familiar voice said. She looked up into Dread’s cold grey eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Drained,” Elaine muttered. Her vision seemed to fade out for a long moment before she recovered herself. “Do you have nutrient potion?”

Dread pulled a gourd off his belt and passed it to her. Elaine’s fingers fumbled over the lid; he took it back, opened it for her and then held it to her mouth. The potion tasted foul, as always, but she felt a sudden surge of energy as she drank. Forcing herself to stand upright made her feel a little better. Dread reached out a hand to steady her, then let go as it became clear that she could stand on her own two feet.

“I need to know what happened,” he said. “And if we should be arresting your friend.”

Elaine stared at him, then looked around her. The masked magicians were standing in front of her, trapped in stone. Behind them, several Inquisitors and druids were doing what they could for their victims, although most of them would never truly heal from the scars the rogue magicians had inflicted on them. And Johan ... Johan was sitting on the pavement, watching the Inquisitors with a strange, almost unreadable expression on his face. He looked, Elaine realised suddenly, as if he expected to be blamed for the whole affair.

“I think you owe him a big favour,” Elaine said, shaking her head. “He caught most of the bastards.”

Dread nodded. “So it would seem,” he said. It was impossible to tell if he was serious about threatening to arrest Johan or if he’d merely been trying to galvanise Elaine into recovering faster. “I also need a statement.”

“One moment,” Elaine promised. She motioned for him to wait and walked over to kneel down next to Johan. “How are you feeling?”

“Strange,” Johan admitted. “I stopped them. I
really
stopped them!”

“And let’s hope that you got all of them,” Elaine said. She’d counted six masked magicians – and there were six statues in front of them, utterly unable to move. But there might well be others. “I’m afraid we have to give statements to the Inquisitors.”

Johan made a face. “I don’t think they like me,” he said. “They keep glancing at me when they think I’m not looking.”

“They don’t like anyone,” Elaine said. She and Dread were friends, of a sort, but there was always a distance between them. At base, Dread was bound by powerful oaths that guided his actions. If he’d thought Elaine was a criminal, their friendship would have meant nothing to him. He would have arrested her without a second thought. “But they’re decent people, all the same.”

She couldn’t really blame Johan for his reaction. Most people found Inquisitors a little worrying, if not outright terrifying. They were very powerful magicians with a wide range of legal powers for dealing with magical crime. And the fact that they hadn’t been able to stop Kane, even though few people knew
everything
that had happened six months ago, only made people wonder if it was worth putting up with their existence.

Dread came over at her wave, then stayed with Johan while Elaine went to speak to another Inquisitor. Inquisitor Cass looked sweet and innocent, as if she wouldn’t hurt a fly, but she was one of the most formidable magicians Elaine had ever encountered, with specific talents in mental magic. Piece by piece, Cass drew out everything Elaine had seen since the first scream, until she felt as though she’d been wrung out and left to dry. But it was definitely necessary to collect as many witness statements as possible.

Because mundane testimony is automatically downgraded
, Elaine thought, sourly.
But they can’t argue with mine on those grounds
.

“You shouldn’t have fought them like that,” Cass said, when she’d finished. “If that was an assessment, you would have failed.”

She was right, Elaine knew. Despite all the information on duelling in her head, courtesy of the Witch-King, she had very little practice in fighting. Millicent and her cronies had beaten any duelling ambitions out of her before she’d finished her first year at the Peerless School. Just by standing still, she’d made a very tempting target. And the attackers hadn’t hesitated to take advantage of her carelessness.

“Get some proper training,” Cass suggested, firmly. “And make sure that your friend gets some too.”

She headed over to the statues, beckoning Elaine to follow her. “Whatever he did sure was powerful,” Cass added, as she tapped one of the statues with her wand. “Nothing we do seems to be able to break the spell. I don’t even know if they are aware in there.”

Elaine drew her wand and cast a diagnostic charm, but the results were inconclusive. There was a taint of magic hanging over the statues, enough to interfere with her readings, yet ... she gritted her teeth, puzzled. Had Johan actually
killed
them? If he had, it might cause a blood feud ...

“It might be hard to tell just who he killed,” Cass pointed out, rather snidely. “The masks might as well be nailed to their heads.”

She was right, Elaine realised. Johan’s spell had turned everything from their bodies to their clothes to stone. She tugged at the shape of the mask, but it refused to come free. If they
were
dead, it would be impossible to say for sure who the statue had once been ...

Or maybe not
, she thought.
They’ll just have to see who doesn’t come home tonight
.

“Good work,” Dread’s voice said. Elaine turned to see him and Johan approaching, having finished their own debriefing. “The Grand Sorceress will be pleased, even though this isn’t
all
of them.”

Elaine gave him a sharp look. “What do you mean?”

“The witnesses at the first attack claimed that there were ten attackers in all,” Dread explained, as he tapped one of the statues with his wand. “One’s in the Watchtower, six more are here ... that leaves three unaccounted for.”

He looked over at Johan, who seemed to have been cheered up by whatever Dread had said to him. “Can you undo the spell?”

Johan looked at Elaine. “
Should
I undo the spell?”

Elaine hesitated. Given what they’d done to their victims, there
would
be a certain natural justice in leaving them trapped in stone forever. But it wouldn’t allow them to be interrogated, nor would it help the Grand Sorceress to make a statement about such behaviour being unacceptable ... she scowled as she realised that Light Spinner might
prefer
to leave them as statues. It would save her from having to make a decision that, no matter the outcome, would make her more enemies.

But it wouldn’t be
just
.

“I think so,” she said. She glanced at the six statues and frowned. There were seven Inquisitors in the area, but there was no point in taking chances. “Try to do them one at a time.”

Johan nodded and closed his eyes, concentrating. For a long moment, nothing happened ... enough to make Elaine worry that he
had
killed them. Killing stained the soul, even if it were done by accident ... and, more importantly, once someone had killed it was easier to kill again and again. And some of the darkest magic spells could only be worked through sacrificing a human in cold blood.

The statue seemed to shimmer, then return to flesh and blood. Dread lifted a hand and cast a stunning spell, blasting the attacker into unconsciousness. Elaine felt a flicker of envy at how casually he’d cast the spell without a wand, then pushed the thought to one side as they moved on to the next statue. The other Inquisitors grabbed the former statue, rolled him over and slapped on the cuffs, then tore off the mask and took a long look.

“Gavin, of House Arndell,” Dread observed. The young man was completely unfamiliar to Elaine, but Dread seemed to know everyone who was anyone. “Fourth son of Lord Arndell. Flunked the Peerless School in his second year, two years ago. Since then, he seemed to spend most of his time trying to drink himself to death.”

Elaine made a face.
That
, at least, explained why she didn’t know him. His time at the Peerless School didn’t intersect with her schooling or her post at the Great Library. But flunking out in second year ...? Offhand, she could only recall a handful of such cases, almost all of which had been resolved by private tuition and heavy payments to the Administrator. But someone having left completely?

He was a fourth son
, she thought, grimly.
No doubt his father gave up after having three qualified magicians in the family
.

One by one, the other spells were released and their victims stunned. Dread identified them all, allowing Elaine to see a pattern developing. All of them were young – and had little to cling to, apart from their magic. Unless their elder siblings died, they would stand to inherit very little apart from their name. Indeed,
Jamal
was the only one who broke the pattern; he
was
the first son and, as such, his father’s Prime Heir.

“Jamal is just nasty,” Johan said, when Elaine pointed out that he was the exception. “The others ... just need someone to pick on to feel superior.”

Elaine suspected that he was right. A magician in the Golden City – and in the Empire, even more so – was
important
. People would defer to his judgement, for fear that he would turn them into frogs; in a dispute between a magician and a mundane, the magician would almost always win. The masked magicians had nothing to cling to, nothing to make them feel superior, apart from their magic. And the Levellers threatened to take even
that
away from them.

“They could have found work, even if they hadn’t passed all their exams,” she muttered, tired “Instead, they just wasted their lives.”

Shaking her head, she watched as the Inquisitors bundled the captured magicians away. By the time they awoke, they would be in the Watchtower, locked up in separate cells. She found herself hoping that they confessed before their parents were informed that they’d been captured, although it was probably too late. There had been plenty of people who had seen the unmasking and were now heading to the broadsheet reporters. The news would be all over the city by sunset.

“If you need us, we can stay and help with the wounded,” she said to Dread. “Or we can go back to the library.”

“Help if you can,” Dread said. “Some of these people may die if they can’t be properly treated.”

Elaine nodded and led Johan towards the first gathering of bewitched frogs. Thankfully, the attackers had used prank spells rather than anything more powerful, allowing her to break them one by one without spending too much of her own power. Johan watched, his face grim, as the frogs became human again, many of them crying out in shock at how they’d been treated. It was impossible to escape the feeling that the attackers, whatever they’d had in mind, were damaging the trust that held society together. After this, people would be
far
more scared of magicians.

And scared people do stupid things
, Elaine thought, as she snapped another spell. A young boy – he couldn’t have been more than seven – appeared in front of her. Thankfully, he didn’t seem too worried by the experience and even laughed as she pointed him towards the druids for a quick check before they let him go home. The next spell proved to have been cast on his mother, who seemed to be in shock. Elaine motioned for Johan to help her over to the druids and moved on to the next one.

What
had
they been thinking? The thought kept running through her brain as she broke spell after spell, often using her knowledge to dislodge the spell without pushing herself too far and draining her power. Their first attack had been targeted on the Leveller meeting, but this had been random terrorism. Had they intended to scare the mundane population by proving that they were utterly defenceless? Or had they had something else in mind? But what?

She wondered, briefly, if they’d been after Johan. But they clearly hadn’t expected him ... nor had they started the attack inside the café. On the face of it, it looked like everyone had had bad luck; Elaine had been unlucky to be so close to the attack, the terrorists had been unlucky to run into Johan, someone they could hardly have prepared for. But then, no one knew everything about Johan’s powers ... and Elaine had kept most of what she
did
know to herself.

The next victim was utterly heartbreaking. Two children, a boy and a girl, seemed to have been turned into glass and melted together. Elaine recognised the spell as one used by construction sorcerers, men who melded bricks and stone into one solid mass; she’d never seen it used on humans before, certainly not
children
. They were alive, according to her diagnostic spell, but suffering horrific agony. Their thoughts were being jammed together ...

She lifted her wand ... and then stopped, unsure of how to proceed. A single mistake would kill them, simply by shattering their minds. Or it might leave them mentally disabled ... she wanted to call a druid, but she knew from the knowledge in her head that a druid couldn’t do anything more than herself. The only thing they could do was slice them apart and hope like hell that the shock of separation didn’t kill them.

And would someone thank you
, part of her mind whispered,
if you separated a couple having sexual relations by slicing a knife between them? You don’t know what you might cut off
.