Lessons in Etiquette (Schooled in Magic series)

Lessons in Etiquette

Christopher G. Nuttall

Twilight Times Books

Kingsport Tennessee

Lessons in Etiquette

This is a work of fiction. All concepts, characters and events portrayed in this book are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 Christopher G. Nuttall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

Twilight Times Books

P O Box 3340

Kingsport TN 37664

http://twilighttimesbooks.com/

First Edition, May 2014

Cover art by Brad Fraunfelter

Published in the United States of America.

To Mum and Dad

T
HE TOWER SAT ALONE IN THE
midst of desolation.

Years ago, well before the collapse of the Empire, two powerful sorcerers had duelled each other, neither one willing to yield before it had been too late. They’d died…but the damage they’d done to the land had endured for hundreds of years, leaving wild magic to drift through the countryside and warp all the living things it touched. No one lived within miles of the Tower; no one saw the murder of crows that flew high over the tainted landscape and came to land on the battlements.

And no one saw the crows blur together and become a man.

The Sorcerer Crow smiled to himself as he pulled his dark cloak around his form. Few sorcerers could handle permanent polymorph transformations, certainly not without taking on some of the aspects of their animal form. It was far more common for their thoughts to slowly blur into the animal’s mentality until they forgot that they had once been human. His solution–sharing his mind among a flock of crows–seemed to work. And besides, few sorcerers, even the most paranoid, would expect it. Any advantage was worth claiming when one was plotting treason.

His smile grew wider as he entered the Tower and saw the watcher waiting for him, standing in the shadows. As always, his employer had chosen to conceal his features behind a glamor, spelled right into the fabric of the hooded robe he wore. It was an unusual trick for a trained magician, let alone a sorcerer, but Crow could appreciate the advantages one could claim from it. If nothing else, it would be very difficult for an investigator to identify any particular magical signature.

It still bothered him that he didn’t know the identity of his master. But, if nothing else, it was proof that he was working for a powerful magician.

“Greetings,” the watcher said. Even his
voice
had been changed; it was spelled to sound neutral, utterly unrecognizable. “I have heard rumors from Whitehall. Are they correct?”

“Yes,” Crow said, simply.

The watcher made a hissing noise, one of anger–or frustration. Only one thing at Whitehall interested him; the progress of Crown Princess Alassa’s magic studies. Even the attack on Whitehall by the Necromancer Shadye hadn’t interested him, despite the fact that Shadye had been stopped by a Child of Destiny. The same Child of Destiny who was now Princess Alassa’s first real friend. And, to some extent, her tutor.

Alassa’s early education, in everything from magic to government, had been disastrous. She lacked the ability to concentrate on anything for long, or the self-discipline she required to master magic, the key to ruling successfully. Her parents had hoped for a male child, for a prince who would keep the throne strong; they’d allowed their daughter to become spoiled before finally admitting that she was the only heir they were ever likely to have. And then it had been too late to hammer some sense into the young girl’s head. Crow’s employer had been delighted. An incompetent queen on the throne was part of the plan.

But then Alassa had gone to Whitehall. And everything had changed.

“A Child of Destiny,” the watcher mused. “Much can happen when a Child of Destiny is involved.”

“She killed a necromancer in single combat,” Crow said. “Whatever else she may be, she is clearly a very powerful sorceress.”

“Or a necromancer herself,” the watcher reminded him. No other necromancers had been killed in duels with sorcerers; they’d been outthought or poisoned. “Do you feel that she is dangerous?”

“I feel that a capable Alassa is not in our interests,” Crow said, softly. “She may well be able to take the throne without a
protector
.”

It would have been easy to kill the princess, even though she was well-guarded after an attempted kidnapping in Dragon’s Den last year. The chaos that had enveloped Whitehall after the necromantic attack would have provided the perfect opportunity. But a dead princess was in no one’s interests, not when her death would have led to civil war.

But a princess who could be manipulated, a princess who could be
controlled
…
that
was a prize worth any amount of effort to secure. Who cared about the trappings of power when the reality was so much more rewarding?

Years ago, the Twelve Barons had managed to turn King Bryon into a cipher, powerless to prevent the aristocrats from tightening their control over Zangaria. But they’d reckoned without his son, the future King Alexis, who had turned his hobby of playing with soldiers into a deadly weapon that he had used to recover control over his father’s kingdom. And Alexis’s son had continued his father’s policies. The barons had been forced to wait, gnashing their teeth in impotent fury, until King Randor’s wife had given him a girl-child.

No one expected Alassa to be able to hold the throne without powerful support. And the price for that would be compromising her independence.

“We must act now,” the watcher said, “before this…
regrettable
independence of mind the princess has developed grows worse. She is returning to Zangaria for her Confirmation. It will give us our best chance to strike.”

Crow bowed his head. Zangaria was poised on a knife-edge, at least partly because of the Child of Destiny. It hadn’t taken much research to realize that all the new ideas flowing around Alexis City had come from the Child of Destiny, or that Alassa was offering royal patronage to some of the merchants who used the new ideas. The nine remaining barons, stubbornly conservative, hated and feared change, suspecting that some of the new concepts would reshape their world. Crow had a feeling that they were right.

After all, reshaping the world was what Children of Destiny
did
.

But Destiny was fickle.
Nothing
was set in stone.

“Alassa will be bringing her friend,” Crow said. “What do we do with the Necromancer’s Bane?”

The answer was immediate.

“Kill her.”

E
MILY HAD FALLEN IN LOVE WITH
Whitehall’s library as soon as she’d first laid eyes on the massive chamber. The bookshelves stretched as far as the eye could see, each one crammed with books on hundreds of different magic and magic-related subjects. Getting permission to work in the library had almost been a dream come true. It allowed her a chance to practice the local language as well as explore the shelves for anything new and interesting. She was almost guaranteed to find something.

She pushed the creaking wooden trolley between the shelves, peering down at the handful of books students had returned to the library. In many ways, Whitehall–although an academy of magic–was very much like a school from her own world, the world she tried to think about as little as possible. Magical students still returned books late, despite threats of punishment, or returned them to the wrong places. Now that the exam season was drawing to a close, the number of students in the school was dropping sharply, allowing the librarians a chance to re-sort the books properly. It was a vast project that would be completed just in time for the students to start disordering the books again.

But she had to admit that she rather enjoyed working as a student librarian. Whitehall’s vast collection of books was not well ordered, certainly not by the standards of the libraries she’d used as a child. It was impossible to say what gem would be uncovered by sorting through a shelf or two; Emily had developed a habit of putting books aside to borrow and read later, even though part of her insisted that it was unfair to the other students. Not that she was the worst offender. Every time she moved a stack of heavy books, she discovered a handful of other books hidden behind them, placed there by a student who wanted exclusive access to them. It was forbidden, naturally, but it never stopped. The spells guarding the library only reacted if books were taken
out
of the library without permission.

She took a book off the trolley and worked out the title,
A Guide to Simultaneous Magic
, before carefully placing it on the shelf. The whole system was badly flawed, she’d long since come to realize. There was no single unifying system. She’d grappled with the Dewey Decimal and the Library of Congress cataloguing systems as a younger girl, yet they’d made it very hard to put a book out of place without it becoming noticeable. In Whitehall, each librarian had their own ideas about where the different books should go. A book on ancient battles might be filed under history, or under military studies. It was impossibly confusing. She’d promised herself that she would work out a system for cataloguing books, but there was just too much else to do. Recreating the Dewey Decimal System was incredibly tricky.

Carefully, she finished returning the books and wheeled the trolley back to the desk. The original librarian had left Whitehall, seemingly at the behest of the Librarians Guild, allowing his assistant to take his place. Lady Aylia was tall and elegant, with long brown hair that reached all the way down to her knees. Emily rather liked her, even if she did have the same attitude as most of the other librarians she’d met in her life. They could have kept the bookshelves in perfect order if it wasn’t for those pesky users mucking up the shelves.

“One of the books you requested has been returned,” Aylia said. She took a thin volume out from under the counter and placed it on the wooden table. “And I can clear you to take it out of the building, if you wish.”

Emily nodded as she took the book. She’d been invited to visit Zangaria by both of her friends, once the exam season was over for good, and–naturally–she’d looked for books on the country. One of them promised to be a complete history of Zangaria, although it was remarkably slim. But then, Zangaria had been part of the old Empire until 170 years ago. It hadn’t really existed until its founding monarch staked his claim to rule. And the handwritten books of this world tended to be concise because of the time and expense required to copy them.