Lessons in Etiquette (Schooled in Magic series) (43 page)

Lin marched over to her husband, pulled him to one side and started whispering to him angrily. Emily wondered what she was saying–perhaps insisting that her husband helped or perhaps urging him to get rid of them as quickly as possible–before looking over at Imaiqah, who had brought in a small pile of clothes.

“They’re my size,” Imaiqah stated. “But you should be able to wear them.”

“I should have taken that class on clothing transfigurations,” Alassa said, ruefully. She still sounded shaken and, from the glances she was directing at Imaiqah’s parents, could hear too much of their conversation for her own peace of mind. “I could have altered them to fit.”

“Get in here,” Imaiqah ordered, pulling them into a small chamber. “Change into these clothes, then your old ones can be turned to dust. They can’t be found here.”

She hesitated as Emily started to strip off the dress the maids had given her…had it really only been a few short hours ago? It felt like years had passed since the coup had been launched. But then, Alassa and she had spent the night awake…she really needed to get some sleep. So did Alassa, or they’d be completely exhausted when the enemy finally caught up with them.

“Can you find Alassa a scarf?” Emily asked, as she finished pulling on the trousers and shirt. They felt uncomfortably tight, but it should help to convince any watchers that she was simply too poor to buy clothing in her own size. “Her hair is simply too recognizable.”

“Here,” Imaiqah said. She smiled brightly at Emily’s expression. “I thought of that.”

“Thank you,” Alassa said, seriously. She took the scarf and tried to put it on. “How do you do it?”

“Like this,” Imaiqah said, and demonstrated. “Remember, you’re a married women and you cannot take the scarf off in public.”

Alassa snorted as Emily inspected her. She didn’t
look
like a princess any longer, unless one paid too much attention to her face and realized that it was inhumanly perfect. Emily wondered if they could find something that could be used to mar Alassa’s skin, perhaps creating the impression of a wart or even a simple pimple. But it would have to be done carefully…perhaps they could create two glamors, one to suggest a nasty birthmark on Alassa’s face and the other to cover it up. Anyone who looked too closely would see the birthmark and hopefully not look any further.

Or we could just use dirt
, she thought.
It would be completely undetectable–and cheap!

Paren was waiting for them as they stepped back into the living room. “I’ve sent out messengers to the craftsmen to suggest that they go into hiding,” he said. His tone suggested that he’d had a contingency plan for that all along. “However…Your Highness, I would like to know why I should risk my family to help you.”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

“The only people who could make the coup work are the barons,” Alassa said, finally. If she found the question offensive, she kept it to herself. “I don’t understand how the duke could have risen against my father–if it is the duke–but both he and the barons have one thing in common. They both disapprove of the changes that have recently been introduced into the kingdom.”

Her eyes sharpened. “You are one of the most prominent merchants involved with spreading new knowledge,” she added. “Even if I’d never come here, you will be targeted. They will seek to make horrific examples out of everyone they can catch. If you help me restore my father to his throne, you will have his gratitude–and you will have safeguarded your own lives.”

Emily nodded when Imaiqah’s father looked at her. Alassa was correct, although it wouldn’t make the knowledge any easier to bear. Lady Barb had been right, Emily decided; she
had
been careless when she started offering Imaiqah the benefits of her knowledge. If they’d moved more carefully, perhaps the coup would never have happened…but then, once certain items became common knowledge, they would have spread like wildfire. The arrogance and corruption of the Accountants Guild would have seen to that.

“True, Your Highness,” Paren said, finally. “But how can we help restore your father to his throne?”

“I don’t know yet,” Alassa admitted. “There
will
be loyalists out there…”

“There’s a place where you can hide for a few days,” Paren said. “I’ll be sending most of my children to other hiding places. Imaiqah will take you there.”

“Thank you,” Alassa said. “And I
will
see you rewarded for this.”

Imaiqah led them both out of the room and into the store. “You’ll need some food,” she said, picking up a small knapsack. “The bread is freshly baked; father buys it from the baker just down the street. The apples are tasty; make sure you eat at least one a day. Everyone is eating apples right now. I’m not so fond of the cheese, but it will keep you healthy.”

Emily concealed her amusement. It had been her suggestion to set up a convenience store, one where people could buy whatever they might want without having to search through dozens of stores. Admittedly it didn’t work as well as it had on Earth, but it still brought in some additional money for Imaiqah’s family. She added a couple of bottles of water to the knapsack, slung it over her shoulder and waited.

“I’ve wrapped up the swords,” Imaiqah added. “If the guardsmen see you carrying them, they will certainly stop you and ask questions. Swords aren’t permitted to commoners.”

She gave Alassa a rather droll smile. “And what would have happened to the coup if they were?”

“Nothing,” Alassa said. She still sounded nervous, almost unsteady. “Everything happened too fast for anyone to do anything.”

Imaiqah frowned, then looked at Emily. “I could get you some potions,” she offered. “One of them ensures dreamless sleep.”

“No,” Alassa said, before Emily could say a word. “We can’t risk being caught while we’re drugged.”

Emily nodded. She’d used sleeping potions before when she’d had nightmares after Shadye’s defeat and they tended to work
too
well. Being woken up before the potion had completely worn off had produced hallucinations and waking nightmares, bringing back uncomfortable memories of the time Shadye had used her own blood to manipulate her. He’d moved her like a puppet and only lost control right at the end. And if Sergeant Harkin hadn’t sacrificed himself, she would still be his slave–or dead.

She tossed Alassa a puzzled look as Imaiqah opened the door. “When did
you
use them?”

Alassa made a face. “My roommates insisted after you hit me with those spells,” she said, one hand touching her jaw. Emily had turned it into stone when she’d been too angry to think clearly, coming within a hairsbreadth of killing her. “I was having too many bad nights.”

Outside, there was a new sense of tension on the streets. Most of the sellers seemed to have vanished, apart from a single hopeful-looking man pushing a wooden trolley that advertized sausages in a bun. Emily couldn’t help wondering how he got any business at all–his hygiene seemed almost non-existent–before seeing the marked prices on the side. Even a small bronze coin was fantastic wealth to some of the poorer people in the city. She looked away as the seller started to pick his nose, hearing the sounds of arguing in the distance. It sounded as though not everyone had decided to tamely accept the coup plotters’ orders to stay off the streets.

“Keep your heads down,” Imaiqah muttered, as she guided them into a cramped alleyway. “We don’t want to be noticed.”

The city was normally clean–or maybe Emily had simply become used to the smell–but the alleyway stank unpleasantly. She saw a handful of people trying to sleep and looked away, granting them what privacy she could. It was a mystery what they ate until she saw the remains of fish bones by one of the sleeping vagrants and realized that they probably helped out at the docks in exchange for food. Fish was cheap here…there was no real danger of fishing the waters until the fish were driven into extinction. That might change in the future, she told herself, grimly. Who knew where modern technology would lead them?

I should start writing about the pitfalls
, she told herself, and added it to her ever-growing list of things to do.
What will happen when they start producing factories
?

She hadn’t studied the industrial revolution as enthusiastically as she had studied ancient history–it was closer to her own time–but she had read about cities draped in smog and the health problems it had caused. And factory owners had been just as bad, in many ways, as the aristocrats they’d displaced from the pinnacle of power. Who knew what Imaiqah’s father would become when he no longer needed so many skilled craftsmen?

The stench grew stronger as they turned a corner and walked into a slaughterhouse. A giant animal–Emily realized, to her horror, that it was a whale–lay on the ground, while fishermen cut and hacked at its body, slowly removing all of the flesh. She had no idea what whale meat tasted like, but they would be able to melt down the fat for oil and–if she recalled one of Thande’s lectures correctly–probably use it for alchemy as well. Whales had been a protected species back home, but not here. But at least hunting them would be difficult.

She looked away as Imaiqah hurried them out of the far end and up a tiny flight of outdoor stairs. The buildings had become cramped boxy apartments, designed to cram as much living space as possible into a tiny area. Imaiqah knocked on a door, whispered something to the woman who opened it and then led the way inside. The woman gave Emily and Alassa a sharp look, but didn’t seem to recognize either of them. Emily breathed a silent sigh of relief as she turned and beckoned for them to follow her. Inside, the corridor was dark, barely illuminated by light streaming in from a window at the far end. The woman stopped in front of a door and pushed it open.

“Ye have paid for ten days,” she said, in a scratchy voice that sounded vaguely foreign. “Should ye not pay for more days by the seventh, ye will be evicted. Ye may not bring guests here without ma permission.”

Emily nodded and stepped into the room. It was tiny, barely large enough for the three of them to stand upright together, illuminated by a single flickering lantern. Emily closed her eyes and concentrated, sensing no trace of magic within the tiny compartment. The bed was barely large enough for one person, let alone two. At least the blankets appeared relatively clean. One look in the washroom told her things she didn’t want to know about it.

Imaiqah closed the door and sat down on the bed. “I miss Whitehall,” she said. “The rooms there were so much nicer than
this
.”

Alassa had a more practical point to raise. “Who
was
that woman?”

“Madame Comfort,” Imaiqah said, as if she expected the name to explain everything. It meant nothing to either of her friends. “She…runs this place as a boarding house for female visitors to the city. Most places refuse to take women unless they are accompanied by their male relatives–those that
do
take women are often rather unsavory. Just don’t bring any men here.”

“Oh,” Alassa said. “Is she discreet?”

“She won’t breathe a word about any of her guests to anyone,” Imaiqah assured her. “And this is the last place anyone would look for a princess.”

“I can see why,” Emily said. A small cockroach was crawling across the floor. Whitehall was nearly free of such pests, but they would be epidemic in the cities. Professor Thande had told the class that cockroaches were useful in certain potions that granted increased resiliency. Given how hard they were to eradicate, Emily could well believe it. “Are you going to stay here?”

“Not now,” Imaiqah said. She made a face. “Can you imagine what it would do to my father’s reputation as a councilor if his daughter stayed here?”

She stood up and put her hand on the door. “Cast one of those personal wards we played with at Whitehall,” she ordered. “I’ll be able to come in; everyone else will have to break down the wards before they can get at you. Just…just be careful if you leave. This district is not safe.”

Emily watched her go, then cast the first ward into the air. They’d experimented for hours at Whitehall, learning how to shape wards that were keyed to the three of them, without allowing others to pass without a struggle. Like so much else they’d been taught, it did have a practical application, although it hadn’t been perfect. Emily’s expanded wards had caught Imaiqah and Alassa–the other two who were supposed to have access–several times.

“Done,” she said, finally. The privacy ward was low-power, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Anyone who wanted to peek on them would still have to break it down, alerting her. “I should check the ways out…”

She hesitated as she realized that Alassa was shaking. The shock was finally getting to her. Emily reached out and enfolded her friend in a hug, feeling her trembling. Alassa had seen her uncle collapse–perhaps die–and her father blasted down by madmen with wands. Who knew what had happened to King Randor? Emily knew that the coup plotters would probably want him to surrender his authority peacefully–or as peacefully as possible, given that they would be forcing him to abdicate with a knife at his throat–but what would happen then? Had enough of the Confirmation been carried out to make Alassa his legal heir?

“They won’t kill your father,” she said, and prayed that she was right. “They can’t do anything to him until they get their hands on you.”