Infinite Regress (11 page)

And the children of magical families will already know a few hexes
, she thought.
The rich and well-connected always have their advantages, don’t they?

She glanced at Caleb. “How many spells did you know when you went to Stronghold?”

“A few hundred,” Caleb said. “Mother was
very
insistent that I knew how to defend myself magically, as well as physically.”

Emily felt a flicker of envy. If only
she’d
had a mother like that. A mother who would’ve defended her—and taught her to defend herself. It would have been a dream come true. She swore to herself, deep inside, that if she ever had children she wouldn’t make the same mistake. Her children would learn how to channel and use their magic as soon as they decently could. She looked at Caleb, knowing that he would agree with her. Children needed to be able to take care of themselves.

She watched the last of the newcomers walking through the gate, then frowned as she saw Aloha emerge from the doorway and head straight towards them. The Head Girl was wearing a long white robe, charmed so it practically glowed with light. It was bright enough to draw attention from right across the room. Emily sighed inwardly—she’d been expecting a talk with Aloha at some point—and braced herself. The chat might not be remotely pleasant.

“Emily, I need to have a word with you,” Aloha said. She looked at Caleb. “Can I borrow your girlfriend for a while?”

Caleb glanced at Emily. “Emily?”

“You go on ahead,” Emily said, reluctantly. “I’ll meet you inside.”

She watched as Caleb strode off towards the gates, then glanced at Aloha. The older girl looked tired, even though it was only early afternoon. Emily supposed she would have been working hard to get the rooms ready for the new students and sorting out their schedules, rather than trying to sleep in one last time. The Fifth Years would be returning to work tomorrow, she knew, and she assumed the same was true of the final year students.
She’d
managed to sleep in until ten bells.

“Emily,” Aloha said. “I owe you an apology.”

Emily blinked. She hadn’t expected
that
.

“I’m not happy about Master Grey’s death,” Aloha added, hurrying on before Emily could say a word. “I wish you hadn’t challenged him and I wish you hadn’t killed him, but I do understand what happened. He should never have accepted that challenge.”

“I didn’t even realize it
was
a challenge,” Emily said.

Aloha bowed her head. “I know,” she said. “He could have just ignored your ill-chosen words—or turned them into a lesson. Instead...”

She shook her head. Emily felt a stab of sympathy, even though she knew Master Grey had deliberately set out to contrive an excuse to kill her. Aloha had practically worshipped the ground Master Grey walked on, seeing him as the embodiment of magical and martial prowess. She’d even hoped to plead for an apprenticeship with him, after completing her final year at Whitehall. And all those hopes were now gone.

“You liked him,” Emily said. She found it hard to pick her next words. “But you didn’t know what he actually
was
.”

“He
was
a great man,” Aloha said. There was a bitterness in her voice that shocked Emily to the core. “But I never realized he would stoop to such a level.”

She had a crush on him
, Emily thought. She’d never seen Aloha express romantic interest in anyone, let alone go out on dates like Imaiqah or calmly accept an arranged marriage like the Gorgon. But then, there were very few students at the same level as Aloha.
Master Grey must have seemed far more capable than anyone at the school
.

“I didn’t either, until it was too late,” she said. She tried to think for a moment, but her thoughts kept chasing themselves in circles. What did one
say
to console a friend? “He would have killed me.”

“I know,” Aloha said. She gathered herself. “I have treated you badly,” she said, clearing her throat. “And I offer my most humble apologies for my actions.”

Emily nodded, recognizing the ritual apology. “I accept,” she said. “And I don’t blame you for liking him.”

Aloha scowled. Emily wondered, suddenly, just how it would have played out if the duel had never happened. It was rare for a male to take on a female apprentice—and vice versa—but very few people would have questioned Master Grey choosing someone as capable as Aloha as his next student. And then? Tongues would have begun to wag, Emily was sure, if they’d started a romantic relationship... if, indeed, he’d felt the same way too. It was quite possible Master Grey had regarded Aloha as just another student, perhaps a mite more capable than the rest. He’d always been too focused on Emily to pay much attention to everyone else.

“I thank you,” Aloha said, formally. “I understand that you had little choice.”

She took a breath. “I should warn you that not everyone feels the same way,” she added. She lowered her voice, significantly. “There are quite a few people who think you
deliberately
challenged him and killed him.”

Emily scowled. She hadn’t spent
long
at Whitehall, after Void had helped her recover from the duel, but it had been clear—all too clear—that far too many students were frightened to death of her. Her friends had treated her as they always did, thankfully, but other students had quailed when she looked at them or hastily retreated as soon as she saw them coming. A reputation she would have liked on Earth—as it would at least have kept her from being harassed—was a depressing liability at Whitehall. If nothing else, it made it hard for her to talk to anyone outside her original circle of friends.

“I didn’t challenge him deliberately,” she protested. “And he didn’t have to take up the challenge.”

“No, he didn’t,” Aloha agreed. “But you know that isn’t the story everyone believes.”

Emily sighed. Rumors ran through the Nameless World nearly as fast as they did on Earth, even though the Nameless World lacked the Internet. Stories grew in the telling, to the point where bards confidently claimed that she’d wrestled Shadye into submission and befriended the Mimic by pulling a thorn out of its paw. The fact that anyone stupid enough to wrestle a necromancer would wind up dead in short order—and the fact that Mimics didn’t
have
paws—had never been allowed to get in the way of a good story. No doubt there were some new ones after Master Grey’s untimely death.

“They’re saying you pitched the duel in a manner he could not refuse,” Aloha warned. “And that you practically lured him to his death.”

“Idiots,” Emily muttered.

She rolled her eyes. Sure, she
could
have worded the challenge in a manner that practically
forced
him to accept—an accusation of necromancy, perhaps—but it would have been insane and suicidal. No one had expected her to win the duel. And she knew, even if no one else did, just how close it had been. A second’s hesitation at the climax would have seen her dead. Master Grey had practically beaten her when she’d struck the fatal blow.

“People are often idiots,” Aloha said. “Just be careful, Emily.”

Emily nodded and changed the subject. “I was thinking about something different we could do with the chat parchments,” she said, as they started to walk towards the gates. “It might be possible to work out a telegram service, using sheets of linked parchment.”

Aloha frowned. “A
telegram
service?”

“Just what I call it,” Emily said. “It would operate along the same lines as standard messages, but it wouldn’t need sorcerers to send or receive them.”

She explained the concept as they walked through the gates and into the rear of the Great Hall, slipping in behind the new students. Grandmaster Gordian stood at the front of the giant room, speaking about Whitehall’s long history of teaching magic, etiquette and everything else a sorcerer needed for success. He wasn’t quite as inspirational as Grandmaster Hasdrubal, Emily considered, but she had to admit he
sounded
competent. Given that some of the newcomers were clearly nervous, judging from the way they shuffled their feet, it was probably a point in his favor.

Caleb waved to her from where he was standing, next to Cirroc and Melissa. Emily slipped over to join him, silently counting the new students as she moved. There were around a hundred and thirty, by her count, more than anyone had expected. Gordian must have worked hard to recruit new students, she thought; he must have started long before he’d been formally appointed to his post. Or maybe Mistress Irene had started the process and Gordian was merely taking credit for her success. She wouldn’t put it past him.

“He’s been talking for nearly thirty minutes,” Caleb muttered, using a privacy ward to make sure that only Emily could hear him. “I think they’re getting a little restless.”

Emily nodded as she cast her eyes over the gathered students. She couldn’t see anything beyond the backs of their heads, but it was clear that
some
of them were shuffling uncomfortably. Gordian paid no heed, even when a couple of the students started playing games with their fingers. Emily couldn’t help noticing that the students who
were
paying attention were almost all from non-magical families. Clearly, the others thought they’d heard the speech—or some variant on it—already.

She felt a stab of bitter envy. What would it have been like to grow up in a magical household? To learn magic from parents who actually cared? To be aware, right down to her bones, of just what magic could and couldn’t do? Everyone thought she
had
been given such an upbringing, from Void. They kept expecting her to know things she’d never even realized she
had
to know.

And yet, she’d met far too many magicians with a superiority complex, magicians who thought magic made them better than mundanes. Would she have changed the world, for better or worse, if she’d been born in it? Or would she never have known there
was
a box, let alone learned to think outside it? She might have wound up as unimaginative as Melissa’s former cronies, the silly girls who’d dumped her like a hot rock the moment she defied her grandmother and married Markus. Emily wasn’t really surprised that none of them had made it into Fifth Year. They might not have been
stupid
, but they weren’t very clever either.

You can’t change the past
, she reminded herself, firmly.
All you can do is make the most of what you have
.

She leaned forward, interested, as Gordian’s speech finally came to an end. Master Tor stepped forward and ordered the newcomers to separate, boys to the right of the room and girls to the left. Emily saw a couple of students glance at her, their eyes passing over her as if she didn’t quite register. No doubt they’d seen some of the more...
imaginative
paintings of her, if they’d seen any at all. She’d seen portraits—portraits painted by artists who claimed to have known her personally—that made her look like Alassa, Aloha, Melissa or—in one case—the
Mona Lisa
. They’d be surprised, she thought ruefully, when they actually heard her name. Maybe they’d think she wasn’t so intimidating in person.

“You will be sorted out into groups, then escorted to your bedrooms,” Master Tor said, calmly. “The Head Girl—” he nodded towards Aloha, who still stood at the back “—will introduce you to your mentors, who will then cover the basic rules, regulations and safety requirements of Whitehall.”

“I didn’t know we cared about safety,” Cirroc muttered.

“I nearly blew my hands off,” Caleb muttered back. “Being careful isn’t actually a bad idea.”

Cirroc snorted. “What sort of attitude is that?”

“The attitude that cost you your first try at the exams,” Caleb jibed. “Did you forget to revise or something...?”

“Shut up, the pair of you,” Melissa snapped. “You’re attracting attention.”

Emily concealed her amusement with an effort as Master Tor aimed a death glare at Cirroc and Caleb. Several of the newcomers were also paying attention to them, rather than to the tutors gathered near the Grandmaster. She wanted to pull Caleb away, but she knew that would just draw more attention. Instead, all she could do was wait and hope the problem faded away. She breathed a sigh of relief as Master Tor turned back to the new students and started to pass out colored tokens at random. Emily assumed the tokens would—eventually—be matched with a Fifth Year student. It made as much sense as anything else.

“I’ll be taking them up to their dorms now,” Aloha said, as Master Tor handed out the last of the tokens. “Emily, you’re going to be in Study Room One in twenty minutes; Melissa, I want you in Room Two; Pandora...”

“Good luck,” Caleb said. “Tell them who you are and you won’t have any trouble at all.”

Emily rather doubted it, but kept that thought to herself as Aloha walked over to the newcomers, reintroduced herself and led them towards the stairwell. Madame Razz would be waiting for them upstairs, unless she too had been replaced; the students would be issued everything from spare robes to potions and guidance medallions before being escorted to meet their mentors. It all looked surprisingly orderly, but she suspected that most of the students were too overawed to cause trouble.
That
would start once they found their footing and mastered the art of casting spells.

“Emily,” Master Tor said. He held out a second bag. “Take a token.”

She reached into the bag and pulled out a green token, which glowed faintly as she held it up in front of him. It was charmed to do something, she sensed, although the charm was fading too rapidly for her to work out what it
did
. Perhaps it just confirmed that she was female, she reasoned, or maybe it had been spelled to ensure she took the
green
token instead of any of the others.

“You’re going to be mentoring the green group,” Master Tor said. “You’ll have six students in your care.”

With the goal of making sure they don’t need my care
, Emily thought.
They want me to teach the students how to do things, rather than doing their work for them.