Love's Labor's Won (29 page)

She found herself relaxing as they walked from stall to stall. Hundreds of young children ran around, playing elaborate games of tag while their parents chatted, browsed, and bought supplies to take home with them. It was interesting to see just how easy it was to separate out the different social castes, Emily noted, despite her only having spent three years in the Nameless World. The aristocracy wore fine silks, the magicians bright colors and the merchants plain, simple garments. But there were other differences, too. The aristocracy walked around with their heads held high, while the magicians kept their eyes fixed on the other magicians; the merchants seemed to adjust their attitude, depending on who they were speaking to.

But that makes sense
, she thought.
A nobleman wouldn’t buy from an uppity commoner, no matter how much he wants the product.

It bothered her to see such social divisions, even at the Faire. Who was actually winning when a cringing merchant talked a proud aristocrat into buying something for twice the going rate? The aristocrat, because the merchant bowed and scraped, or the merchant, because he walked away with the money? And yet...she couldn’t help thinking the aristocrats deserved to lose their wealth. It was rare for them to bargain, even when they were poor. They felt they had to make a show of being rich and powerful.

Which explains some of the problems facing Zangaria
, Emily thought.
The wealthy and powerful are often not as powerful as they seem
.

Frieda poked her. “What are you thinking about?”

“Money and power,” Emily said. She noticed a magician bargaining with a merchantman and smiled. They were torn between ten silver coins and eleven. “And how some of the people who claim to have both have neither.”

Frieda gave her an odd look. “What does that mean?”

Emily shrugged — it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss at the moment — and led Frieda over to watch a performer. The young man — he couldn’t have been any older than Frieda — tossed burning torches in the air, catching them one by one, without the aid of protective spells. The crowd cheered loudly as the performer caught the final torch, bowing to his audience. A little girl — his sister, Emily hoped — carried a hat from person to person; Emily dropped a bronze coin into the hat, and watched as the girl carried it back to the performer. He grinned at the small pile of coins, and performed a whole series of backflips, carrying two torches in his bare hands.

“I could learn to do that,” Frieda said. “Couldn’t I?”

“Get Sergeant Miles to teach you the Sword Dance, if you want to do something insanely dangerous,” Emily said. The sergeant had taught Jade and several of the older boys, but he’d refused to teach Emily. Looking at how the boys had moved their swords, thrusting and parrying in a complex series of motions that could get someone stabbed if they messed up, it was hard to blame him. “One single mistake and you’d be dead.”

Frieda frowned. “But I could be healed, couldn’t I?”

“Healed from
death
?” Emily asked. “No magic can bring back the dead.”

“Healed from having my arm cut off,” Frieda said, throwing her a cross look.

“Maybe,” Emily said. She had never been
that
good with a sword. “But is it worth the risk?”

They moved on to the next set of performers, a band who sang songs about great battles, heroic love affairs, and a ballad about a mundane man who killed an evil magician. Emily was mildly surprised they dared to sing the latter at the Faire, where most of the clientele were magicians, but she had to admit it was a catchy tune. Besides, as she listened to the words, it became apparent that the magician had been an idiot, someone stupid enough to take a pratfall again and again. She couldn’t help wondering if the magicians enjoyed listening to a story about someone so stupid, he embarrassed everyone else.

“And then the dragon opened its mouth and blew fire towards me,” a voice she vaguely recognized boomed. “I ducked under its jaw, and stabbed up with my sword.”

Emily peered over at the next crowd and blinked in astonishment. Farmer Giles —
former
Farmer Giles — was standing there, wearing a mercenary suit of armor and telling an outrageously tall story about a battle with a dragon so large it had to have grown into intelligence. Emily shook her head in disbelief — she’d actually
met
a dragon, which was more than could be said for most magicians — and listened with growing amusement. Giles was a surprisingly good storyteller, even when he was describing how he tamed the dragon by pulling a thorn out of its scales. Emily knew that next to nothing could actually
harm
a dragon, save for magical weapons and other tricks...

“Alassa said you actually rode on a dragon,” Frieda said. “Is that true?”

Emily nodded, smiling, as Giles brought his story to an end. The crowd cheered, tossing a handful of coins towards him. Giles scooped them up, loudly promising another story in an hour or two. He would definitely make a fine author, Emily decided, as long as one didn’t happen to look too closely at his plots. She had no idea what would happen if a person pulled a thorn out of a dragon’s scales, but she doubted it would lead to lifelong friendship. The dragons were simply far too long-lived to give much of a damn about humanity.

And at least he found a way to support himself
, she thought, as she gave him a coin herself. His eyes went wide when he saw her, then he looked away.
He might make a career out of storytelling.

“You should tell stories yourself,” Frieda said, as they walked off towards the food stalls. The smell of cooked meat was growing overpowering. “You’re good at telling stories.”

“No, I’m not,” Emily muttered.

She sighed, inwardly. Every story she’d told Frieda, to help the younger girl sleep, had been from Earth. There was no one in the Nameless World to enforce copyright — she could write out
The Lord of the Rings
if she wanted to, and sell copies — but it still felt wrong to steal. Besides, there was no particular reason why someone couldn’t actually produce a whole series of magic rings, with one ring to bind them all. The story would only give unscrupulous magicians ideas, Emily was sure, and she knew from Lady Barb that they had too many ideas already. But she had never told Frieda the truth.

“You should,” Frieda insisted.

“I have too much else to do,” Emily said. Besides, even high fantasy like
The Lord of the Rings
would need to be revised to fit into the Nameless World. Putting semi-humans like hobbits as the heroes? It would not go down well. And then she would have to explain Gandalf and the other wizards as something other than angelic creatures of light. “But you can do it, if you like.”

Frieda frowned. “Can I?”

“Of course,” Emily said. She clapped the younger girl on the shoulder. “Don’t let anyone else tell you what you can and cannot do.”

“Unless they happen to be tutors?” Frieda asked. She gave Emily a sly smile. “Or older students?”

Emily was still chuckling as they bought pieces of pizza and settled down to eat. Perhaps Frieda
would
make a great storyteller...and, by the time the story was written, it would be very different from the original. Or perhaps she would find something else to do with her life. The Nameless World wasn’t ready to support an author trying to earn a living wage through writing. But she could always write in the evening, after doing her job...

Maybe she can write about the courtship of Jade and Alassa,
she thought. She’d read a few stories of past courtships, only to dismiss them as romantic nonsense. But there was probably a method in the madness. Romantic stories helped disguise the ugly truth, that all royal marriages were business arrangements first and everything else second. King Randor was fond of his wife, Emily knew, but he would still have married her even if he’d hated everything about her. His father wouldn’t have let him welsh out of the contract.

Frieda looked up, sharply. “What the hell is that?”

Emily blinked, then listened. Someone was barking like a dog...no,
several
people. And others were shouting...

“Stay here,” she ordered. Whatever had gone wrong, she had to deal with it. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She tossed the remains of the pizza into the bin, rose to her feet and hastened towards the source of the sound, cursing her dress as she moved. It just wasn’t designed to allow her to move quickly.

Do you want a slit in it so you can actually run
? Her own thoughts mocked her.

And show your legs to the crowd
?

She almost ran into Master Grey as she turned the corner around one of the larger tents, and blinked in surprise. A handful of children, ranging from seven to fourteen, were running around on the ground, barking like dogs. It would have been funny, Emily was sure, if it wasn’t for the panic in their eyes. And in the eyes of their parents, who were staring at their children in horror. She shivered, remembering the girl who’d served as a test subject for compulsion spells at Mountaintop, and looked up as she heard the sound of someone giggling. A young boy was perched on top of the tent, looking at the children and cackling madly. It took her a moment to place him as Maximus Ashfall, Markus’s younger brother.

Master Grey glanced at Emily and made a show of stepping backwards, leaving the matter in her hands. Emily fought down the urge to glare at him, then returned her attention to Maximus. It didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to deduce that he was behind the chaos, even if there hadn’t been a number of parents looking at him, their faces torn between fear and rage. But he was eleven, wasn’t he? He couldn’t have magic of his own...

Potion
, she thought, as she saw the bottle in his hand.
He must have tricked them into drinking something that made them act like dogs.

Summoning her magic, she reached out for Maximus and
pulled
. The boy let out a yelp as he was torn from the tent and dropped to the muddy ground in front of Emily. He let go of the bottle of potion and turned to run. Master Grey stepped forward, arms crossed, and pinned Maximus in place with a glare. Emily couldn’t help feeling a flicker of envy. If only she had the presence to match her reputation. It might save her a great many problems.

“It was only a joke,” Maximus said. “I didn’t mean for them to actually drink it...”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Emily said, as the parents closed in. “What did you give them?”

“They didn’t believe me when I told them I was a magician,” Maximus said. “So I gave them Dogbreath Potion.”

Emily shuddered inwardly. Professor Thande had taught them to brew Dogbreath Potion in First Year. It didn’t actually turn someone’s breath into foul-smelling gas, despite some ribald comments from her fellow students; it actually make them act like a dog, at least until the potion had worked its way out of their system. A powerful magician might be able to push the effects aside, given enough mental discipline, but someone without magic would find it very hard to resist the potion. She looked at the barking children and shuddered, again.

“It was funny,” Maximus insisted. “And...”

Emily had to fight down the urge to throw a fireball right into his smirking face. She hated bullies; she’d
always
hated bullies. Maximus would come into his magic and go to Mountaintop, she was sure, where he would spend half of his time picking on the children from non-magical families...and then his Shadow, if someone didn’t give in to the temptation to feed him something lethal before Third Year. It would be so easy to wipe the brat’s smile off his face...

“I will take you back to your parents, who will deal with you,” she said, instead. “And you will
not
return to the Faire.”

Maximus opened his mouth, either to object or to pretend it had only been a joke, but Emily didn’t give him the time to say anything. Instead, she cast a spell, turning him into a tiny statuette of himself. The parents looked torn between relief and fear as she picked up the statuette, tucked it into her pocket, and turned to the children. They were still gambolling around like dogs.

“Take them to the healer’s tent,” she ordered the parents, quietly. Professor Thande had
also
told them what to do if they drank something they shouldn’t. “Tell the healers they will need a dose of purgative. If they try to charge you for it, have the bill sent to the castle and I’ll forward it to the brat’s parents.”

“Thank you,” a terrified-looking mother said. “I...”

She broke off as she saw through Emily’s glamor. “Lady Emily!”

“See to your child,” Emily ordered. She hadn’t wanted to be recognized. “I’ll deal with
him
.”

She sighed, inwardly, as the parents dragged their children towards the tent. It would have been nothing more than a prank in Whitehall or Mountaintop, nothing more than a harmless jest. Emily had lost count of the number of times Melissa and her cronies had pranked her...and of the number of times she, Alassa, and Imaiqah had pranked them back. But for these children, even if they recovered without permanent harm, it would blight the rest of their lives. Everyone would remember them acting like dogs even when the potion wore off.

“Not the nicest of people,” Master Grey observed. “But what can you expect from an Ashfall?”

Emily rounded on him. “You could have handled it.”

“You were the superior here,” Master Grey said, with a glint in his eye warning her not to presume on it under other circumstances. “It would have been insulting for me to take the lead.”

He shrugged. “I dare say Master Ashfall will not be too concerned,” he added. “It was only a prank.”

“Played on someone incapable of defending themselves,” Emily countered. “It could have been really dangerous.”

“It will be worse now,” Master Grey commented. “But really, what can you expect from an Ashfall?”

Emily scowled at him. “Are you allowed to show a link to your former family?”