Wedding Hells (Schooled in Magic Book 8) (50 page)

She scowled at the thought. If Nanette had intended to hand Lord Hans over to the rebels in Swanhaven, and it was the only logical reason Emily could imagine why she hadn’t killed Lord Hans herself, there had clearly been a great deal of collaboration between the two sets of rebels. Hell, Paren would have understood that a single rebellious city could be isolated and eventually starved into submission. Chances were, Swanhaven was only the first city to explode into revolution.

“If it doesn’t, however, we may be in for some trouble,” Randor added. “A prolonged period of instability will attract attack from outside the kingdom. My neighbors will see opportunity to take some land for themselves.”

“Particularly if your troops turn mutinous,” Emily said. King Randor wasn’t asking them to march on a rebellious baron, but on commoners who weren’t that different from the king’s soldiers. How far had seditious thinking spread through the army? “You should consider trying to make peace with the rebels.”

Randor shook his head, his expression unyielding. “I cannot make concessions under duress.”

“You should have made the concessions before it came to this,” Emily pointed out. Was there a single aristocrat capable of looking beyond the tip of his nose? Even
Alassa
hadn’t got on
that
well with Imaiqah until Imaiqah had been ennobled. “They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.”

She tapped the map. “If you attack the city and win, you will still be badly weakened; if you wait for them to starve, unrest will spread and your neighbors will scent weakness.”

“Correct,” Randor said. “There is, however, another option.”

Emily felt her blood run cold. What did Randor have in mind?

“I want
you
to stop them,” Randor said. He fixed her with his gaze. “
You
can deal with the rebels.”

Horror ran through Emily’s mind. Randor knew about the nuke-spell. He
had
to know about the nuke-spell. There was nothing else that would stop a rebellion in its tracks. An entire city, blasted to burning ashes in the blink of an eye...the remaining rebels would surrender rather than see themselves wiped out in an instant. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of men, women and children killed; the land poisoned for hundreds of years to come...

He knows
, she thought.
How does he know
?

Her mind raced. Alassa couldn’t have told him, because she didn’t know. No one knew what had happened to Mother Holly, save for Emily herself. The official explanation was that the newborn necromancer, unused to handling such vast layers of power, had lost control and released all the energy in a single burst. Only Lady Barb had any reason to doubt the explanation, yet she’d carefully refrained from asking. Emily had almost been relieved. As nice as it was talking to the older woman, the more people who knew, the greater the danger of the secret falling into unfriendly hands...

...And a low-power magician could cast the nuke-spell, if they understood the principles behind it.

She took a step backwards. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t
make
it happen.

Her mind scrabbled desperately for something - anything - she could say to dissuade Randor from mass slaughter. He wouldn’t understand, she knew; he believed, sincerely believed, that aristocrats had the right to rule commoners. The idea of letting commoners decide their own affairs was alien to him. No wonder he’d spent years weakening the Assembly even after Paren and his allies had saved Randor’s throne. He was bound to the aristocrats in a way he could never be bound to the commoners. They were nothing to him.

“You can...”

“No,” Emily said.

Randor blinked. “What?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Emily repeated. “I will not slaughter millions of people so you can keep your crown.”

Randor’s eyes widened slightly, then narrowed as he clenched his fists. “This crisis is
your
fault,” he snapped. “
You
brought ideas from another
world
into my kingdom!”

“This crisis was inevitable,” Emily snapped back. “Your system is built on the assumption that aristocrats are invariably superior to commoners. But you’re not! The only difference between you and them is that you are born to wealth and power! Sooner or later, someone would have asked the question of
why
they had to tolerate you - and once the question was asked, that person would have realized they
didn’t
have to tolerate you!”

“I am the descendent of the man who forged this kingdom from the ruins of an empire,” Randor thundered. “My
father
saved it from traitors who would destroy it!”

“Your kingdom would vanish without trace in my home country,” Emily said. It wasn’t entirely true - Zangaria wasn’t much larger than Britain - but it hardly mattered. “And you’re also the descendent of the monarch who proved incapable of governing the kingdom and nearly lost everything to the barons.”

Randor leaned forward, his beard bristling. It was all Emily could do to stand her ground, despite the rage flaring through her mind. She wasn’t his hired killer and she was
damned
if she was going to slaughter people who wanted a better life and a chance to rule their own affairs.

“You are a Baroness of Zangaria,” he said. His voice was very composed. “I am your liege lord. You have a duty to serve me. I have tolerated much from you, but no more. You will do as I tell you or I will strip you of your titles, wealth and power.”

Emily wanted to shrug. She hadn’t wanted Cockatrice in the first place. But something kept her from speaking.

“Your lands will revert to me,” Randor added, coldly. “The girl you have named as your heir will not inherit them after you.”

Emily’s temper snapped. “You are an oathbreaker, a monster and a fool,” she said, feeling magic crackling around her. “Your kingdom is doomed because you’re too short-sighted to realize that you need to adapt to the new world. Alassa was wounded, almost killed, because you broke your promises to the men who saved your goddamned throne!”

She tried to force herself to calm down, but her magic was boiling behind her eyes, making it hard to think. “And you are trying to emotionally blackmail me into pulling your nuts out of the fire rather than coming to terms with the new world. Why should the rebels
not
fight? What the hell do they have to lose?”

“That is none of your concern,” Randor snapped.

“You made me a baroness,” Emily hissed. “That
makes
it my concern.”

King Randor raised a hand. Emily felt the wards suddenly grow stronger, pressing down on her with terrifying force. She closed her eyes as panic flared through her mind...Randor knew, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was no one with any real obligation to avenge her death.
He
wasn’t scared of Void...her magic flared around her, lashing out at the wards. Their steady pressure slowly faded as she fought back, holding them back from her person. The magic seemed to grow stronger...

“Emily,” Randor said.

Emily gritted her teeth in rage, fury lashing through her mind. Randor had gone too far. She wasn’t one of his subjects, she wasn’t a tool for him to pick up and use...and she was certainly
not
going to obey orders that would result in thousands of deaths. The wards seemed to grow stronger, but her anger gave her magic strength. She felt almost as if she were trapped in the center of a thunderstorm, surrounded by power and lightning, as she
pushed
. Powerful chains seemed to be surrounding her, binding her to the spot, yet they were shivering, almost dissolving. She was suddenly very aware of the network of wards Jade had built up, layer upon layer of protections, some subtle and very powerful. Her spellwork was fading under their pressure, but they weren’t designed to cope with so much raw magic...

“Emily,” Randor said. “You have to stop.”

Emily opened her eyes and saw him. For the first time since they’d met, he sounded a little uncertain. Blood leaked from his nose, staining his armor; it took her a second, in her confused state, to realize that he was linked to the wards. It was a mistake. His paranoia, his refusal to trust anyone apart from himself, had weakened his own defenses.
Jade
might have been able to steer the raw magic away from the castle and disperse it safely, but Randor couldn’t even begin to try.

“I am not your puppet,” she shouted. The wards shattered, once by one. Randor stumbled backwards in shock as the castle’s wards fell apart. Jade - and everyone else in the castle with even a
hint
of magic - would know that something was badly wrong, if they hadn’t sensed it already, but it was far too late. “I am not your tool!”

Randor cried out in pain, but Emily barely noticed. Her magic was growing stronger and stronger, as if she were trapped in a whirlwind of power...

“I renounce your title,” she shouted. She felt a flicker of amusement as she saw his eyes widen with shock. He’d never really been able to comprehend that a baroness would willingly surrender her title and all the power that came with it. “And I am
not
your servant.”

The power grew stronger as Randor grasped for his sword. He wasn’t a strong magician, Emily realized suddenly; he’d
never
been strong enough to hold the wards himself. Zed - and then Jade - had done the hard work, but the wards couldn’t be perfect because their master lacked the power to handle them. She could kill him in an instant and they both knew it.

Jade will be on his way
, Emily thought, numbly. She felt sick, suddenly, at what she’d done, even if she’d had no choice. Randor, Alassa’s father, was a broken man now - and it was her fault.
I can’t stay here
.

Cold ice fell over her mind as she channeled the magic into a new spell, shaping it with the power of her mind. Randor’s face vanished in a brilliant flash of white light; the entire world rocked around her. She felt, for a long moment, as if she were flying and falling at the same time...

...And then she was in the Great Hall of Cockatrice, lying on the floor.

“My Lady,” Bryon said, in astonishment. Her castellan - no longer hers, part of her mind reminded her - was sitting on the throne, speaking to a handful of farmers. “What happened?”

A dozen answers ran through Emily’s mind, none of them good.

“I need to move some of the books from my rooms,” she said, instead. Randor would probably guess where she’d gone...or Jade would track the teleport. And then? He’d send one of his cronies to Cockatrice to run the place until he found a new baron. “And then I’ll be gone.”

I
T FELT STRANGE TO BE STANDING
in her rooms for the last time, but there was no time for sentiment. Emily opened the door into her secure room, then started to carefully unlock the spells she’d used to keep her possessions safe. Void had urged her to move them to the house in Dragon’s Den, where fewer people tested the limits of the wards, but there simply hadn’t been time. One of the maids brought her spare trunk; Emily tested the pocket dimension and its protective spells carefully, then started to move her books into the trunk. Two of them, she knew, would get her in trouble if anyone knew she had them; the remainder were merely copies of textbooks and various other books that had been printed on printing presses.

And it feels wrong to leave the other books here
, she thought, crossly. The thought of giving up a book was almost unbearable. She was pretty sure that whoever was assigned to Cockatrice in the wake of her departure wouldn’t be a reader.
Maybe I can have them boxed up and forwarded to Dragon’s Den
.

She sighed as she closed the trunk and took one last look around the room. It wasn’t really
hers
, not in the sense that she owned it; the room belonged to the lord of the castle, whoever he or she may be. There was almost nothing in it that belonged to her personally, now that she’d removed the books; the only item she had added to the walls - after she’d taken the stuffed heads down - was a painting of the castle, done by a young artist from the city below. She studied it for a moment, then shook her head. It was better to leave it in place than try to take it with her.

Bryon knocked on the door as she hefted her trunk. “My Lady,” he said. “What happened?”

Emily hesitated. Bryon was no fool. He was smart enough to realize that something was badly wrong. But what would he do, if she told him the truth? Try to stop her leaving? Or try to kick her out of the castle? Or...she shook her head. There was no time to play guessing games.

“I left the king’s chambers rather abruptly,” she said, instead. “He isn’t going to be very pleased with me for the foreseeable future.”

Bryon paled. “But what about the Lady Frieda?”

Emily kicked herself, mentally. She’d promised Frieda that her rooms within the castle would be hers for the rest of her life. And she’d left Frieda in Randor’s clutches...she’d be safe enough, she was sure; Alassa would take care of her. But she wouldn’t have the slightest idea of what was going on. God alone knew what Randor would tell his daughter, let alone everyone else. The truth? Or would he make himself out to be a hero who’d banished a monster from the castle?

“I don’t know,” she confessed. Bryon could put two and two together, if he wished; Randor was unlikely to let her keep her titles, even if she hadn’t shoved them in his face and teleported out. “Just...keep her room clean, for the moment.”

Bryon nodded and hurried off. Emily watched him go, then walked down to the basement, where the wardstone was pulsing to itself. She was tempted to leave it alone - her successor could hire wardcrafters to dismantle Emily’s wards and build his own - but that would be petty spite. Gritting her teeth, she touched the wardstone and plunged her mind into the wards. It wasn’t hard to remove all traces of her magical signature and reset the wards; her successor would have to key them to himself when he arrived. She pulled her mind out of the wards and looked up, surprised. A maid stood at the far side of the room, her eyes fixed on the ground.