Lessons in Etiquette (Schooled in Magic series) (55 page)

“We thought long and hard about what reward would be suitable for you,” the king said. “What could we offer you that would reward you for what you have done? And then it occurred to Us that the Barony of Holyoake is vacant. The baron and his sole heir were deeply implicated in the plot, as was his young daughter.”

The duchess
, Emily thought. The Duke of Iron had collapsed when he’d finally found out the truth about his wife, and then decided that he needed a long holiday. He hadn’t even stayed around for the Confirmation…which might not have been a bad thing. It was removing him as nominated regent, in the event of the King’s death.

“Holyoake will vanish from the kingdom,” the king said. There was a mild edge to his voice that fooled absolutely no one. “In its place, there will be the Barony of Cockatrice–and you, Baroness Emily, will be its ruler.”

Emily felt her mouth drop open. Her, a
baroness
? And a baroness with
real
power?

She found herself eying the king with new respect as she realized what he had done. No one could dispute that she’d earned a reward, so he’d given her one that came with a nasty sting in the tail. By accepting it, she would be binding herself to Zangaria, perhaps even accepting him as her overlord. She would have to be loyal to him, placing his interests above those of the Allied Lands as a whole. If she’d been asked, in private, if she would accept, she might well have turned it down.

And yet…it did have its temptations. A baron had absolute power within his barony, as long as he didn’t plot rebellion against the king–or at least get caught at it, the cynical side of her mind added dryly. She could introduce all kinds of innovations in Cockatrice–she had to admit that the king had picked an appropriate name–without needing to worry about opposition. Hell, she could invite anyone who felt that their local aristocrats didn’t approve of them to come
live
in her barony. Hadn’t there been a ruler of the Ottoman Empire who had gloated when medieval Spain expelled the Jews? They’d enriched his country tremendously.

She needed time to think about the implications. Would she have to leave Whitehall and stay in Zangaria? What would the king want from her in the future? For her to be a friend to Alassa or something else? Would he insist on controlling her marriage? And what was she actually getting into…?

But there was no time to think. And she couldn’t object here, not in front of the entire court. The king had planned that too, she realized. And once she’d accepted, it would be very hard to get rid of the title. He’d manipulated events with as much skill as the duchess, bending them to suit his own ends. No wonder he’d stayed on the throne for so long.

“I thank you, Your Majesty,” she stammered, finally.

The king placed his sword upon her shoulder. “I name you Baroness Emily, of House Cockatrice,” he said, formally. “And I welcome you to my kingdom.”

He’d dropped the royal We, Emily realized, numbly. Barons were
important
.

“You may join your peers,” the king said, nodding to the remaining barons. None of them looked quite happy to see Emily raised to their level, but they didn’t dare object. Not publicly, anyway. Judging from some of the comments she’d overhead before the coup had been launched, the barons struggled against each other as much as they struggled against the King. The entire country was the Allied Lands in miniature.

King Randor sat back on his throne. “There will be changes to come,” he said, once the cheering had died away. “But Zangaria will adapt; we will preserve the essence of what we are, no matter what becomes possible in the future.”

He stood up, took Alassa by the hand and led the way out of the Great Hall. The barons followed them, forcing Emily–still numb from her sudden ennoblement–to walk after them. She shook her head tiredly, unsure of what it all meant, then stepped into the dining hall. Servants were ready to point them towards their seats; Emily’s, she realized in some relief, was right next to Alassa’s throne. They could talk.

“You could have warned me,” she muttered, after casting a privacy ward into the air. “Why…?”

“Father wanted it to be a surprise,” Alassa admitted. “He felt that you deserved a large reward.”

She smiled, brilliantly. “You do realize what this means?”

“No,” Emily said.

“You will be one of the most powerful people in the kingdom,” Alassa said. “When I am queen, you will be my chief advisor. Your children will be marrying into the other noble families, building up your personal power and influence. There isn’t a person in the kingdom who wouldn’t want to change places with you right now.”

She frowned. “But you don’t like the idea?”

“I don’t know what to make of it,” Emily said, softly. “What does this mean for me personally? What does it mean for my life?”

“Nightingale is already looking forward to briefing you about protocol,” Alassa said, with an evil grin. She knew how Emily felt about protocol briefings. “Just remember that House Holyoake no longer exists. You can make a clean sweep of their retainers if you choose or you can take them into your own service. I plan to do that now that I’m Confirmed.”

Emily blinked in surprise. “Right now, we have a window of opportunity to get some changes made,” Alassa said. “A number of hereditary posts are going to stop being hereditary. It seems that quite a few of them were actively disloyal or untrustworthy…so we can get a few changes made. You can help with that.”

She reached out and gave Emily a hug, in full view of everyone in the hall. “If you don’t want to stay and rule the barony, you can appoint someone to serve as your regent,” she added. “You’re going to have to do that anyway, unless you stay here instead of going back to Whitehall. Just make sure you pick carefully…Paren of House Steam wouldn’t be a bad choice, if he were willing.”

“I’ll ask him,” Emily promised.

“And after the banquet,” Alassa said, “you and I are going to have a long chat about the future. Perhaps we can avoid future problems if we talk out the changes first.”

Emily nodded. Alassa was right.

“We will,” she agreed. She looked over at her friend and smiled. “And thank you for putting up with me.”

Alassa elbowed her. “You saved my life, my father’s life, my mother’s life…we have good reason to be grateful to you,” she said. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

Emily flushed. “I’ll do my best,” she promised. Lady Barb had told her the same thing. And yet it was hard
not
to feel guilty for her role in the near-catastrophe. “But thank you anyway.”

She cancelled the privacy ward as the servants began serving the high table with roast beef, potatoes and a thick gravy that smelled faintly greasy to Emily. No doubt it was very unhealthy…but she could take more exercise in the morning. And Sergeant Miles would make her work hard in second-year. She wondered, absently, who would replace Sergeant Harkin before deciding that it didn’t matter. There was too much else to worry about right now.

Wait till after the feast
, she told herself.
You can talk to Alassa then
.

F
ATHER HAS BEEN LOOKING FORWARD TO
this for ages,” Imaiqah said, as they waited outside the modified warehouse. “I think it has actually been distracting him during meetings.”

Emily shrugged. In the month that had passed since the duchess had been defeated and Alassa had been Confirmed, she’d been very busy. While Alassa oversaw the process of interrogating the remaining suspects and rooting out every last aspect of the duchess’s conspiracy, Emily had taken a trip up to Cockatrice and inspected her new lands. The whole experience had been faintly surreal, even though most of the peasants she’d met had seemed pleased to see her. She’d had to keep reminding herself that they probably wouldn’t say anything else to her face.

She hadn’t intended to stay long, but the task of cleaning up the problems caused by the previous baron–no one spoke his name out loud now–had taken longer than she’d expected. Most of his appointed superintendents were either corrupt or thugs or both, forcing her to unceremoniously discharge them from office and exile them from her lands. The baron’s legal system was appallingly bad; one afternoon spent reading a sample of the paperwork had convinced her that the laws contradicted themselves on at least a dozen different points. There was no way that it could be both legal and illegal to hunt wild boar on the edge of the forests. Eventually, she’d appointed a handful of superintendents who were willing to swear oaths to use common sense and promised to sort out the rest of the headache later.

“I don’t blame him,” she said. The barons might have been blocking large sales of iron ore, but
Emily
hadn’t hesitated to order the ore sold from the mines she’d inherited. Indeed, she’d discovered that the previous baron had built up quite a stockpile of ore, leaving her wondering just what he’d had in mind. “I’ve been looking forward to this too.”

Paren had taken advantage of his new rank to buy up a large chunk of the outer city, build a number of new houses and construct a factory right at the edge of the city. It had taken longer for him to impress the importance of sanitation on everyone–the houses outside the walls were so cramped that Emily was surprised they weren’t more disease-ridden–but free baths and health advice had helped with that. He’d ended up with thousands of very willing workers, who’d started to learn how to work with iron ore. The blacksmiths hadn’t quite realized what this meant for them in the future, but Emily suspected that wouldn’t last long. Mass production would weaken their position. On the other hand, more metal meant more work.

“My father wanted me to give you this,” Imaiqah said. She passed Emily a folded sheet of parchment. “They finally succeeded.”

Emily opened the sheet and glanced at the formula written there. “Good,” she said, although she wasn’t sure if it
was
good. “They know what to do with it.”

There was a whistle and the crowd turned to face the doors, which opened slowly to reveal a darkened interior. Imaiqah caught Emily’s hand in her excitement as the steam engine slowly came into view, puffing smoke into the air as it moved along the iron rails. It didn’t look very impressive, not compared to some of the early locomotives Emily had seen in history books, but it was a start. Besides, it was a great deal more impressive than any purely mundane device this world had ever seen.

It inched forward, slowly picking up speed. The crowd cheered as the driver waved to them, while the fireman kept shovelling coal into the boiler. Emily smiled as the crowd started to walk alongside the locomotive, pacing it. Not all of the crowd was so impressed.

“It’s so slow,” a man complained. By his outfit, Emily guessed that he was a wealthy merchant. “A man could outrun it easily!”

Emily gave him a wintery smile. “What use is a newborn baby, sir?”

The man smiled and clicked his fingers. Emily sensed the pulse of magic just before the entire world froze.

“Void,” she said.

“None other,” Void agreed. “Should I be calling you by your title?”

“I was wondering when you were going to show up,” Emily said, ignoring the question. “How much of this did you know about?”

Void shrugged, making no pretense that he didn’t understand the question. “We knew that the Kingdom of Zangaria was in trouble,” he said, dryly. “Part of that was your fault–your influence on Princess Alassa, the ideas you introduced–and part of it was the barons struggling to reassert themselves against the Royal Family. I’m sure that King Randor wanted to cripple them and would have tried, even without your meddling.”

Emily scowled at him. “And did you
want
me to meddle?”

“Whatever happens, happens,” Void said.

“That isn’t an answer,” Emily snapped. “What did
you
want from all of this?”

“The Allied Lands have got to work together,” Void reminded her.

“Hang together or hang separately,” Emily said.

Void bowed his head to her in acknowledgement. “I believed that you coming here would give King Randor a chance to secure his grip on power,” he said. “Without you, Alassa might have fallen back into her bratty ways, allowing her enemies the chance to manipulate her. The end result would have been chaos, which would have allowed the necromancers a chance to resume their assault on the Allied Lands. It could not be allowed.”

Emily remembered his casual dismissal of how close Alassa had come to death–at Emily’s hands–and shivered.

“Besides, you had friends there,” he added. “I believed that you deserved a chance to try to deal with the matter yourself.”

“Thank you,” Emily said, sourly.

Void showed no reaction. “I had a few words with Zed,” he said, instead. “He knows that you used Blood Magic to locate the princess. I…
convinced
him to keep it to himself.”

Emily blanched. “He
knew
?”

“He is an expert in alchemy and Blood Magic is related to alchemy,” Void said. “It would have been simple for him to deduce what you did, Emily. You’re lucky that he was so mad at King Randor that he didn’t say a word to him.”