Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10) (29 page)

“I would not have stayed with Master Gila,” Sake said, bluntly. “I intended to leave as soon as I gained my mastery. There was no argument that could have convinced me to stick with the constant beatings, the fits of rage, the willingness to test new and unpleasant ideas on me ... I was obedient, but he had done nothing to earn my loyalty.”

He paused. “If there had been options, a way to leave ahead of time and find another master, I would have taken them,” he added. “And if your apprentices are ill-suited to your branch of magic, do you really want to
keep
them?”

Drake looked at Whitehall. “Compromise,” he said. He didn’t seem to have listened very closely to Sake. “All apprentices get the basics—from us, from any other masters we can recruit. And then we choose our apprentices from among the trained magicians.”

“Agreed,” Whitehall said. He silently canvassed the other masters. “Sake?”

“Then count my vote in favor,” Sake said. “I believe that is six votes to three.”

Master Chambers snorted. “This isn’t just a break with tradition,” he snapped. “This is a slap in the face of the DemonMasters. It will not stand.”

“Then go,” Whitehall snapped back. “Your pet demons have been luring us into madness for hundreds of years.”

“I found this place with the rest of you,” Master Chambers reminded him. “I have a claim to it too.”

He marched to the door, then stopped. “I believe this will go badly wrong,” he added. “And when it does, I will laugh.”

Emily wasn’t sure if she should laugh or cry as he stalked out of the door, followed by Master Reaper. Keldor exchanged a handful of words with Whitehall, then left the room too, closing the door behind him. Whitehall ... Whitehall looked tired. Emily couldn’t help wondering if he’d readied himself for a fight.

“We’ll start work tomorrow,” Whitehall said. “If we are lucky, we should be able to head to the Gathering in a week or so.”

“Unless the Gathering has been interrupted,” Wolfe pointed out. “The Manavores are on the prowl.”

“All the more reason to tell them about the runes,” Whitehall said. “And to invite them to join us here.”

He dismissed the rest of his group, then looked up towards the vent. “I should tell you,” he said wryly, “that those who eavesdrop rarely hear well of themselves. But I imagine you’ve learned that lesson for yourself by now.”

Emily recoiled in shock. How the hell had he known the snake was there?

“And you can report to me after dinner,” Whitehall added. “I’ll be wanting your input too.”

E
MILY COULDN’T HELP FEELING NERVOUS —VERY
nervous— as she approached Whitehall’s office after dinner. There had been no sign of him or any of the other masters in the Great Hall, leaving her fretting over the mystery of just how he’d known she was eavesdropping. No matter how she looked at it, she just couldn’t figure it out. Aurelius hadn’t made a sound—hell, the Death Viper should have been effectively invisible. And yet Whitehall had known she was watching through the snake’s eyes.

She recovered the snake from the vent, then tapped on the door, wishing she was somewhere—anywhere—else. Whitehall had trusted her and she’d betrayed him, simply by peeking on his secret meeting. It was expected, in
her
school, that students would try to spy on each other, or their tutors, but she had no idea how Whitehall would react. He might applaud her skills or evict her from the castle ... the door opened a moment later, allowing her to slip into the room. Whitehall was sitting behind his desk, scribbling notes on a piece of vellum. He glanced up at her and smiled.

“Eavesdroppers rarely hear well of themselves,” he said, as he nodded to a chair. “I trust you’re not
too
offended?”

Emily colored as she sat down. “I’ve heard worse,” she said, although that wasn’t entirely true. No one had accused her of trying to seduce King Randor—or Void. “Why are they so ... so angry?”

“There are always winners and losers in anything,” Whitehall said, sardonically. He gave her a sharp look. “I would have expected you to know it.”

“Yes, Master,” Emily said. “But Chambers and Reaper don’t stand to lose
that
much.”

“They will lose the prestige that comes with being DemonMasters,” Whitehall said. “We have already determined that our new apprentices will
not
be taught how to summon and use demons. Without that, their ability to win apprentices and gain influence will be severely limited. They’re too old to learn new tricks.”

“They could,” Emily insisted.

“I doubt it,” Whitehall said. “They have grown too reliant on using demons.”

Emily nodded. That made sense, she had to admit. Master Chambers had grown far too used to taking spells from the demons and casting them, without any awareness of how the spells actually worked, let alone how they could be modified by capable students. His demons might have given him insights in some areas, but they’d left him terrifyingly blind in others.

She took a breath. “How did you know I was listening?”

Whitehall gave her a rather crooked smile. “You have until the end of this discussion to work it out,” he said. “And if you do, we’ll forgo punishment for both spying on us and getting caught.”

Emily swallowed. “Yes, Master.”

Whitehall smiled. “We’ll be spending the next four or five days organizing the teaching patterns,” he said. “If nothing else, the apprentices will have to learn how to draw the runes you devised—you’ll be willing to help teach them, won’t you?”

“Yes, Master,” Emily said. She wondered, vaguely, if the apprentices would actually listen to her.
Bernard
listened, but she’d beaten him in a duel. “If that is your wish.”

“We’ll be traveling to the Gathering in six days, depending ...” Whitehall added, and paused. “I’ll be taking you, Julianne and Bernard. Lord Alfred may be in attendance too. Have you ever attended a Gathering?”

Emily shook her head.

“Dozens of masters and hundreds of apprentices—and would-be apprentices—will be gathering, nearly two hundred miles from here,” Whitehall explained. “We will have ample opportunity to tell them about the castle and our planned new approach to magic.”

“Oh,” Emily said. She frowned. “Is it safe to travel?”

“It’s
never
safe to travel,” Whitehall said. “But we need additional masters and apprentices.”

Emily nodded, sourly. As interesting as the Gathering would be, there was no way she could look forward to the trip. Two hundred miles was nothing on Earth—a car could travel two hundred miles in less than a day—but it was a significant trip on the Nameless World. At best, it would take several days ... and if they were expected to walk, it would take a great deal longer. Whitehall
did
have some horses ... she shuddered at the thought of riding a horse for several days. Alassa might be horse-mad, but Emily had never liked the smelly beasts.

And the Manavores were out there, somewhere.

She leaned forward. “Master ... won’t the Gathering make a very tempting target?”

“Yes, it will,” Whitehall said. “It may even have been cancelled.”

Emily shook her head in disbelief. But then, there were no communications spells in the past, no way to get a message from one place to another instantly. Whitehall might arrive at the Gathering only to discover that it had been cancelled, or that the camp had already been attacked and destroyed by the Manavores. It was just another thing she’d had to get used to after her arrival, although there
were
spells, in her era, that could get a message from place to place. She’d just never learned them until she’d had a reason to learn.

“And we’re going,” she said. “Is there no way to check if it’s still taking place?”

“Not really,” Whitehall said. “I was hoping that some of the other communes would find their way to the castle, but we haven’t seen them.”

He sat back in his chair. “You will be coming, won’t you?”

Emily rather suspected it wasn’t a request. She was his apprentice, as far as he was concerned; he couldn’t leave her alone in the castle. Who knew what sort of mischief an unsupervised apprentice would get up to? And besides, she was still a young girl in his eyes. Whitehall knew—intellectually—that she could look after herself, but emotionally it was a very different matter. He felt responsible for her safety.

“If you wish me to come,” she said, silently resigning herself to a long and uncomfortable trip, “it will be my pleasure.”

Whitehall gave her a look that suggested he
knew
she wasn’t happy about the trip, but said nothing. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been a little perplexed by her reluctance to go. For most villagers, going to the next village was hard enough—traveling to the nearest town or city was the trip of a lifetime. And for a young girl, who wouldn’t be expected to travel at all, the opportunity to go on a trip was not to be missed.

Julianne will love it
, she thought.

She took a breath. “Is it wise to leave Lords Chambers and Reaper here alone?”

“They will not be unsupervised,” Whitehall said. “Drake and Wolfe will keep a close eye on them.”

Emily had her doubts. She’d always had the impression that Chambers simply didn’t respect Wolfe—or Bones. Even now, with their disciplines becoming increasingly useful, he didn’t think highly of them. But they would definitely respect Drake—and perhaps Sake too. And their ability to tamper with the nexus point was very limited.

Unless they want to cause an eruption of raw magic
, she thought.
The results would be quite disastrous.

“They will honor the commune,” Whitehall added. “A vote, once taken, cannot be overruled.”

“Yes, Master,” Emily said. She didn’t believe it—Master Chambers had good reason to be annoyed at the way the vote had gone—but there was no point in arguing further. Whitehall still saw Master Chambers as a friend. “I understand.”

Whitehall nodded, curtly. “I trust you have been keeping an eye on Julianne?”

Emily kept her face blank, refusing to allow the sudden shift to throw her.

“She’s been behaving herself,” she said, slowly. “Apart from sleeping through dinner, I suppose.”

“Understandable,” Whitehall said. He met her eyes. “But that wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.”

Emily hesitated. She knew
precisely
what Whitehall meant. “She and Bernard are drawing closer,” she said, flatly. “But they haven’t gone further than kissing.”

Whitehall gave her a sharp look. “Are you sure?”

Emily fought down a flicker of irritation. She understood Whitehall’s concerns, but she found it hard to accept them. Julianne was nineteen, by her own reckoning; hell, if she’d been born to a normal village family, she might have had two or three children of her own by now. She had the right, as far as Emily was concerned, to decide what to do with her own body. But Whitehall would feel very differently.

“To the best of my knowledge,” she said stiffly, “she hasn’t been alone with him long enough for anything to happen.”

She paused. “You
did
send them off together.”

“I did,” Whitehall said, curtly.

Emily leaned forward. “Do you ... do you
object
to the relationship?”

“If I did not approve of Bernard, I would never have taken him as an apprentice,” Whitehall said. He sounded irked, although Emily suspected he wasn’t angry at
her
. “But their relationship will cause her problems if they do not get married.”

“And it won’t cause
him
problems,” Emily said. “How ...
unfair
.”

“The world is not fair,” Whitehall said, rather sarcastically. “And rumors will destroy a young woman’s reputation even as they enhance a young man’s.”

Emily looked at him. “You don’t have a problem if they get married,” she said. It was hard to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “But you do have a problem if they
don’t
get married.”

“Quite,” Whitehall said. “Did your family not have such problems?”

No
, Emily thought.
Because no one would have given a damn
.

She shook her head in frustration. If Julianne lost her virginity outside wedlock, or if there were prevalent
rumors
she’d lost her virginity outside wedlock, it would reflect badly on her father. And if she’d had siblings, it would have reflected badly on them too, making it harder for them to find a good match. Hell, the mere
suggestion
that Bernard had seduced her purely to
marry
her wouldn’t do her any good either.

“I am surprised,” Whitehall said. He lifted his eyebrows. “Are things so different where you were born?”

“I never paid much attention,” Emily said. It was true enough—and it saved her from having to tell another lie. As absurd—as oppressive—as the system seemed, she knew it existed for good reason. The potions that might have changed that were simply unavailable, at least outside the fragmented magical community. “There was little hope of me marrying anyway.”

Whitehall didn’t look as though he believed
that
, although he didn’t seem inclined to challenge her words. An unwanted girl could always be sold off, if there was no one willing to marry her. Frieda would have faced such a fate if she hadn’t developed magic. Hell, she practically
had
been sold to Mountaintop. The harsh demands of survival insisted she be sacrificed so that others might live.

“It is of no matter,” Whitehall said. He smiled, rather wanly. “Although you should be aware that Robin has already asked for your hand.”

Emily shook her head, hastily. She had no idea why she’d been overwhelmed in the forest—her protections would have sounded the alarm if Robin had cast a love or lust spell on her—but she didn’t want to marry him. Her personal history said she would make it back to her future—she rubbed the scar on her cheek—and see Caleb again. She was damned if she was doing
anything
with Robin.