Love's Labor's Won (18 page)

“If I ever even think of hosting anything like this, again,” she muttered to Lady Barb, “tell me to my face I’m being an idiot.”

“My Lady Emily, Necromancer’s Bane, Baroness of Cockatrice,” the herald thundered, “I present to you Fulvia, Matriarch of House Ashworth; Balbus, Patriarch of House Ashworth, Caelian of House Ashworth, Melissa of House Ashworth and Iulius of House Ashworth.”

Emily straightened up in her chair as the Ashworth grandees came into view. She knew Melissa already from Whitehall, but the others were new to her. Fulvia was the oldest woman Emily had ever seen, perhaps even older than Void, yet her back was straight and her eyes were bright with cold calculation. Emily shivered. Fulvia looked
formidable
, the sort of person who would always get their way, whatever the cost.

Beside Fulvia, her son — Balbus — looked more like a professor than a patriarch. Indeed, if Emily hadn’t taken the time to look the family up in the record books, she would have mistaken the white-haired gentleman for Fulvia’s
husband
rather than son. There was something kindly about his face, but also something else that disturbed her, even though she couldn’t put her finger on it. He leaned on a staff and smiled at her, vaguely.

Caelian, Melissa’s mother, didn’t look happy. Emily met her eyes for a brief second, wondering if it was her fault somehow, but it didn’t seem to be the case. Caelian looked no older than Lady Barb, with long red hair that fell to her knees, yet there was something about her gaze that suggested the fire had long since gone out of her. Melissa half-hid behind her mother, her expression sulky. Emily couldn’t help feeling a flicker of amusement. For Melissa to have to pay court to someone she saw as a rival, if not an enemy, had to be a humiliation in and of itself. And her younger brother, standing beside his mother, seemed almost bored.

“I welcome you to Cockatrice,” she said, politely.

“We thank you,” Fulvia said. Her voice was cool, collected...and surprisingly young. “We pledge to hold our hands in your house.”

Emily nodded. The ritual words still sounded odd to her, but she knew their underlying meaning. Her guests wouldn’t start fights with her other guests — or her. If, of course, they could be trusted. The rivalry between the houses made the Capulets and Montagues sound like amateurs. She glanced briefly at Melissa and frowned, inwardly, as she realized that something was bothering her rival. Something more, she suspected, than merely having to bow to Emily. But there was no time to figure out what it was.

“Then I will have my people show you to your rooms,” she said. Bryon had given each member of the family a private room, although Emily had a feeling that Fulvia would demand access to all of them. There was something about the woman that suggested she would be incredibly controlling. “And I will see you all formally at the dinner and dance tonight.”

“We thank you,” Fulvia repeated. “Others will be arriving later. Have them sent to our rooms.”

Emily felt a flicker of irritation at the blunt command. Did Fulvia think
Emily
was a servant — or one of her family? Or was she making a power play, right in front of the rest of her family and Emily’s friends?

“If that is what they wish,” Emily said finally, “that is what we shall do.”

Fulvia eyed her for a long moment, and nodded once, curtly. She turned and strode majestically out of the room, to where the maids were waiting. Her family turned in unison and followed her, apart from Melissa, who shot Emily an unreadable glance before turning herself. Emily felt a shiver run down her spine as the Ashworth Family left the Great Hall.

“That could have gone worse,” Lady Barb commented, from the sidelines. “You need to watch those people, though. They’re used to claiming every advantage they can.”

“I noticed,” Emily said. She was surprised to discover she was sweating. “Are they going to cause trouble?”

“I doubt they will try to cause trouble for you personally,” Lady Barb said. “But they may succeed in causing trouble anyway.”

Emily nodded, sat back on the hard chair, and thought hard. Their names had sounded
Roman
, save for Melissa; indeed, there was a considerable amount of Greco-Roman influence in parts of the Nameless World. Coincidence? Her memory playing tricks on her? Or was it something else? She had long since concluded that humanity couldn’t be native to the Nameless World, not when evolution had produced creatures like dragons and other monsters right out of fantasy novels. And she, of all people, knew it was possible to move from one dimension to another.

And Melissa might actually be derived from a Roman name
, she thought, as the wards shimmered again.
It must have been long enough for languages to change quite a bit, before the Empire froze everything in place.

“My Lady Emily, Necromancer’s Bane, Baroness of Cockatrice,” the herald thundered once again. “I present to you Marcellus, Patriarch of House Ashfall; Lady Nova of No Name; Markus of House Ashfall, Maximus of House Ashfall and Maxima of House Ashfall.”

Emily smiled as the Ashfall Family stepped into her hall. Marcellus looked younger than his rival, a tall thin man with a long brown beard and thin, almost feminine hands. Beside him, his wife looked slight, her dark hair shading to grey. She couldn’t help smiling in welcome at Markus, then glancing at his younger brother and sister. The two children, too young to have developed magic of their own, looked almost like twins. If Maximus hadn’t been a head taller than Maxima, she would have believed them to be the same age.

“My Lady Emily,” Marcellus said. He had a gravelly voice that reminded Emily of Professor Lombardi, although it was clear he was trying to be friendly. “My son speaks highly of you.”

Emily felt her cheeks heat as she looked at Markus, who winked. The last time they’d met, it had been just before Mountaintop had been exposed to the world...and
that
had been Emily’s fault. Markus had never struck her as a bad person and he’d given her a great deal of useful advice, but she knew he might resent her turning Mountaintop upside down. And yet, there was no trace of any of that on his face. Indeed, he seemed almost pleased to meet her again.

“I thank him,” Emily said, flustered. “I welcome you to Cockatrice.”

“We thank you,” Marcellus said. He paused, significantly. “Am I to understand that we will be sharing quarters with the Ashworth Family?”

“You will be sharing the same castle,” Emily said, carefully. “But you will not have to share the same rooms.”

Markus snickered. His father glowered at him before looking back at Emily.

“That is fortunate,” he said, dryly. “I would not care to share a bedroom with
dear
Fulvia.”

“You won’t have to,” Emily said. She tried to imagine the ancient woman’s reaction to having to share a room with her dread rival, but decided it would probably bring the castle tumbling down on top of her. “You each have your own apartments within the castle.”

“We
definitely
thank you,” Marcellus said. “And we pledge to hold our hands in your house.”

Markus nodded. “I hope I will have the chance to speak with you later, Lady Emily,” he said. “I have messages for you.”

“We will talk after dinner,” Emily promised.

“We have other guests coming,” Marcellus said. “Please, will you have them shown to our rooms?”

Emily’s lips twitched. At least he was politer than Fulvia.

“I will have them sent to you, once they’ve had a chance to freshen up,” she said, simply.

“I thank you,” Marcellus said. He shook his head. “Inviting both us and the Ashworths. I could think of few braver things to do. You are truly Void’s daughter.”

Emily blushed.
That’s probably the nicest way to put it
, she thought.

“We will attend your dinner and perhaps, if these old bones are up to it, dance,” Marcellus continued. “Until then, it was our pleasure to meet you.”

He bowed, turned, and walked out of the room. His wife and younger children followed him at once, but Markus hesitated before following them. Melissa had done the same, Emily recalled. It was an odd coincidence. If, indeed, it
was
a coincidence. Melissa, like Markus, might have preferred talking to Emily to staying with her family. She certainly hadn’t
looked
very happy.

Lady Barb cast a privacy ward as soon as Markus was out of sight, then stepped forward so she was facing Emily. “Question time,” she announced. “What was actually happening there?”

Emily took a moment to think about it. “He was trying to befriend me,” she said. “Or at least trying to get on my good side.”

“Correct,” Lady Barb said. “Marcellus is a manipulator, Emily; there isn’t a single person at that level who
isn’t
a manipulator. He will want you to like him because it will make it easier for him to influence your thoughts and feelings. Do
not
make the mistake of thinking he’s a decent person because he acts like a decent person.”

Emily swallowed. Her mouth was suddenly dry. “Why...?”

“Do I feel that way?” Lady Barb finished. “Do you recall, last year, that I told you that Alassa would not be welcome at the Faire?”

“You did,” Emily recalled. “Something about her inheriting her power?”

“Correct,” Lady Barb said. “Alassa never had to struggle to rise to power within her family, Emily. Marcellus — and Fulvia — unquestionably
did
have to struggle for power, first to grasp it and then to keep it. There are cadet branches of the family who would happily seize the chance to put forward a rival Patriarch or Matriarch, if they thought the ones in charge were losing their grip. The strong survive, while the weak...are pushed aside.”

“You’re stronger than me,” Emily said. “But would you be stronger than my entire year, put together?”

Lady Barb snorted. “The day I can’t handle a schoolroom of whining brats is the day I cut off my hair and sell myself into slavery,” she said, darkly. “But you have touched upon the crux of the matter. Fulvia and Marcellus will be skilled at getting others to support them – that, too, is a form of strength — as well as being strong themselves.”

She took a breath. “Tell me something,” she added. “Why is there so much bitterness and hatred between the families?”

“Master Grey said...”

“No, not the story,” Lady Barb interrupted. “The underlying truth.”

Emily shook her head. She didn’t know.

“There is an agreement among most magical families that...there are limits to how much infighting is tolerated,” Lady Barb pointed out. “You weren’t born to one, so you won’t know, but most of our internal struggles were verbal arguments, rather than magical duels for supremacy. Once I was an adult, I was invited to take my place in the family council and add my voice to the debates.”

She shrugged. “You know how my father was treated. I wasn’t really interested in steering the family, not when I could move away from it.

“But for one family to split into two, for dozens of people to simply walk away from the original family...that is largely unprecedented. The agreements binding the family together should not have allowed it. Whatever the council decided, the entire family should have accepted. Whatever happened, whatever the root cause of the split, it sent shockwaves through the entire community. It should not have been possible.”

“But it happened,” Emily said, quietly. “Why?”

“If we knew that,” Lady Barb said, “we might know just what went on in the first place.”

Emily considered the problem. “Can someone leave the family? I mean...without suffering any ill-effects?”

“Someone can leave simply by renouncing his ties to the family,” Lady Barb said, flatly. “But he wouldn’t be able to call on the family in the future. He would be an outcast, to all intents and purposes, a wandering magician on his own. It happens, and more often than you might think, but never on such a large scale.”

Emily stood and started to pace. “What do I do now?”

“You serve as host, you talk nicely to both of them, and you pray some young idiot doesn’t start a fight,” Lady Barb said. She paused as the wards tingled around them. “And some of your other guests have arrived. You’ll probably need to say hello to them, too.”

She was right, Emily discovered, as the herald showed a line of men and women, all magicians, into the Great Hall. Some of them had links to the Ashworth or Ashfall Families — Emily was amused and horrified to meet Steven of House Lansdale for the second time in her life — while others were independents, or came from other families. Steven explained, with a glint in his eye, that he’d come to support Markus, but he too would like to have a chat with Emily at some point. Emily sighed inwardly, but agreed. There was no point in trying to put it off.

Later, she allowed Lady Barb to lead her on a roving patrol through the castle. It was almost as chaotic as Whitehall on the day the students came back to school; maids and menservants were everywhere, carrying trunks through the building and placing them in different rooms, while the guests watched and chattered, catching up on affairs. Emily wasn’t surprised; she’d learned, from the last Faire she’d attended, that magicians loved to chat and spread rumors. She would have been happier about it if she hadn’t known that most of them were chatting about
her
.

The wards tingled in alarm. Lady Barb sensed it, too; she glanced sharply at Emily before plunging down the corridor towards one of the smaller guest rooms. Emily followed, cursing under her breath. Someone had just used magic on someone else. Lady Barb stepped into the room, then stopped. A tall man with a thin, cruel face was peering down at the floor, where a trembling frog sat.

“Using magic on the maids is not permitted,” Lady Barb snapped.

“She dropped my trunk,” the man said. His voice was very calm, but there was an undertone of entitlement that made Emily wince. “I have the right to punish her.”

“No, you don’t,” Emily said, stepping past Lady Barb. Using magic on magicians was one thing, but using it on helpless maids was quite another. “If you have a problem with one of my servants, you bring it to me.”