Schooled in Magic (21 page)

“Bad idea to admit more than you have to admit,” Mistress Irene said, after a moment of thought. She looked at Emily and shook her head. “You never know what might wind up being used against you.”

A moment passed, before Mistress Irene picked up a metal wand. “Your spellcasting is good, although you have a tendency to slop your
mana
outside the spell structure,” she added, looking down at the wand. “That isn’t too uncommon in a new magician, but you have to work on minimizing leakage. The results may not be pleasant.”

Emily nodded. At best, she’d waste
mana
for no purpose; at worst, she would either ruin her own spell or cause chaotic effects. A sudden change in the local
mana
field–caused by a magician losing control of her powers–might create new alchemical ingredients, or become a hazard to anyone who walked into the field without proper preparation. Her books had warned her that it was better to learn control using small, basic spells before trying to advance to the more advanced parts of the syllabus.

“Keep practicing,” Mistress Irene ordered. She put the wand down and smiled at Emily. “Do you have any issues that should be raised?”

Emily hesitated. She needed advice, yet she wasn’t sure who she should ask–or could ask. Whitehall might be a
magical
school, but magic didn’t seem to have improved human nature or prevented academic backstabbing as well as bullying. What if Mistress Irene decided to mislead her? But she needed advice and she had no idea who else to ask.

“Tell me something,” she said slowly. “Can I patent an idea?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question,” Mistress Irene said. “What do you mean by
patent
?”

“If I come up with a new way to do something,” Emily explained, “I claim it as mine, because I was the first person to think of it, and everyone else who uses it in the future has to pay me a small sum of money.”

Mistress Irene chuckled. “Goodness, is
that
how things work on your world? How do you encourage debate and research if people have to pay to use
your
idea?”

Her face sobered as she considered the question. “I hope you are not trying to devise entirely new spells already. You’re nowhere near ready to try to do more, right now, than modify a handful of the variables. Even
that
would be chancy until you master the art of precision.”

“No,” Emily said. She looked around the office for something that would illustrate what she had in mind, eventually pointing to the lamp on the desk. “I mean something physical ...”

“I see, I think,” Mistress Irene said. She frowned, deep in thought. “It’s very different to prevent someone from using a new magical concept. Once someone invents it, everyone else realizes that it is actually
possible
and starts trying to work out how it was done. If you came up with a new spell and used it in public, your friends could analyze it to see how it went together.”

Her frown deepened. “I don’t think you could claim a physical design permanently,” she added, a moment later. “You might be able to convince one of the Allied Lands to forbid anyone to produce it, apart from yourself, but the rest of the Alliance might refuse to honor the edict. And it would cost thousands of gold coins in bribes.”

That, Emily decided, made a certain kind of sense. Ideas
did
spread rapidly–and it would be very hard to prohibit someone else from using your idea, at least without creating laws that would be impossible to enforce.
This
world might have had vampires, werewolves and necromancers, but it didn’t seem to have lawyers. Apparently, it
was
possible to claim a trading monopoly; unsurprisingly, smugglers took advantage of it to sell goods to people who didn’t want to pay the inflated prices demanded by the monopoly-holder.

“Your sponsor might have left you with some money for ... personal use,” Mistress Irene said, “but it isn’t enough to bribe even a minor functionary.”

Emily blinked. The idea that Void might have given her some pocket money had never occurred to her. “He did?”

“Most students ask about spending allowances within the very first day,” Mistress Irene said with a grin. “You are entitled to five silver coins a month, with an additional gold coin for every time you gain an excellent mark on your exams. Should you wish to save them, you may place them in storage or keep them within your room. Any purchase requiring more money than you have will require you to convince your supervisor–me–that it is a
necessary
purchase.”

“Five silver coins,” Emily said. “And how much are they worth? I mean, how much will they buy me?”

“Depends where you shop,” Mistress Irene said. “And what you want. And how much effort it takes to produce it. You can get five or six decent robes for one silver coin, or you can have one made from rare and expensive materials for the same amount.”

Emily nodded thoughtfully. Back home, children had wasted their money buying designer clothes that really weren’t
that
different from cheap outfits, just because they believed that one brand was intrinsically superior to another. Here, they might have a point; materials like silk would be much more expensive than simple cloth. She had no doubt that Alassa and her cronies would have their robes produced to order and made from the finest materials available.

Mistress Irene shook her head. “What exactly do you have in mind for your first ...
idea
?”

Emily hesitated again. In theory, there were countless ideas from her old world that could be introduced to the new world, but she’d run into problems at once. No one had ever taught her how to construct a computer from scratch, or even something as simple as a radio transmitter or telephone. She was sure that she could eventually deduce some of the basic principles just by reasoning from what she already knew, but she doubted that she could put it into practice. And how did someone produce electric power anyway?

Once, years ago, she’d read a book about a girl who had been stranded on a primitive desert world. The girl had promptly introduced gunpowder to the locals and became a millionaire, as well as winning a war against their enemies. Because of this, Emily had already checked to see if there was anything like gunpowder in her new world and there didn’t seem to be anything remotely like it, not even fireworks. But there was one small problem with making gunpowder for herself, she didn’t actually know how to make it. The book she’d read had claimed that one person could produce a gunpowder factory from scratch. It might have been possible, but Emily didn’t know
how
. Modern schools disapproved of teaching children how to make explosive materials.

Maybe she should have had a paranoid kook for a father.

The first
workable
idea had been simple, so simple that she’d almost discarded it before she’d started taking the concept seriously. Madame Razz had issued her five pairs of knickers, but she hadn’t given Emily even one bra. The undershirt provided no support at all for her breasts. She’d wondered in some alarm if everyone would be able to see her nipples before realizing that the white robe hid everything from prying eyes. Eventually, she’d asked Imaiqah and discovered that the closest thing to a bra in the new world was a corset-like outfit worn by aristocratic women who wanted the support. Peasant woman merely bound their breasts with uncomfortable strips of cloth.

“If I tell you,” Emily said, finally, “can I ask you to keep it to yourself?”

Mistress Irene gave her a long look, and then smiled. “I am your Guardian,” she said. “It is my job to look after you while you’re attending Whitehall. I will keep anything you tell me to myself unless it poses a threat to you, your fellow students or the school itself. And I have enough money not to need more.”

Emily found herself flushing and cursed inwardly. “I was thinking of something like this,” she said, and outlined the concept of a bra. “Do you think that it is workable?”

“I’ve certainly seen girls who could use it,” Mistress Irene said. There was a long pause. “I confess that I have never seen anything like it, certainly not for the common folk. Do you realize just how hard it would be to prevent
other tailors from duplicating your work?”

“I was going to sell them the idea,” Emily said, then stopped. There were no big multinational corporations here, or clothing factories. Clothes were produced by seamstresses and tailors, who apprenticed themselves to masters until they had learned enough to strike out on their own. She could sell the idea to one or two of them, but it would spread rapidly. There would be no way to hold a monopoly for more than a few weeks. “I ... that isn’t entirely workable, is it?”

“No,” Mistress Irene said. “You might be able to earn some money that way but I don’t think that it would last for very long. Unless...you sold the idea to the right person, who could then establish himself as the premier producer of your...breast-supporting garments. I believe that your roommate’s father might be able to help you market the idea. He
would
want a share in the proceeds, however. No one does anything for free.”

Emily nodded sourly. Hopefully, selling bras would give her enough money to start experimenting with other concepts.

As it was, the world economy could only really be described as basic, with little concept of actually making
more
money. One of her Home Economics classes had discussed just how the concept of lending money, at a small rate of interest, could boost the overall economy, at least until there was a major panic. Opening a bank might work as a way to make money through interest, but that would have to wait until she had a great deal of money to use as a base.

“But there are other possibilities,” Mistress Irene added. “If you happened to come up with something that was very useful, you might be paid a fee by the monarch–or the military.”

Emily had thought about that, but she couldn’t think of anything that she could produce that the military might want. The Sergeants would love gunpowder, she was sure, yet she didn’t know how to produce it. She’d given some thought to producing magical guns–using spells to blast the cannonball towards the enemy with great force–before realizing that they already
had
that concept. Maybe if she used a spell to duplicate gunpowder’s effects directly ...

She scowled, remembering what she’d read in her book. Warfare didn’t involve tanks and aircraft, not here; it involved iron swords, sorcery and animals that had been modified by magic to be more intelligent and capable. There were horses in this world that could almost speak; cats and dogs that could think almost like a human. Everything she knew about warfare from studying history was either already present or beyond her ability to produce, unless ... a thought struck her and she made a mental note to check to see if they had invented stirrups. Or bicycles.

Bicycles would be interesting, if they could be produced with local metals. She might not understand precisely how and why gears worked, but she knew how they went together. It would be easy to sketch out the concept and see if Imaiqah’s father–or someone else–could produce them cheaply enough for commoners to buy. Or maybe rent them, if metal was too expensive for bicycles to be produced in vast numbers.

“I look forward to seeing what you introduce,” Mistress Irene said.

After a pause, Mistress Irene picked up a sheet of parchment from her table and passed it to Emily. “Your new class schedule for the coming week. I’m afraid you’re going to be busy.”

Emily scanned it quickly, feeling a sinking sensation in her chest. Now that she had been introduced to all of her classes, she would be starting the main ones with the other new pupils while being expected to join already-running classes in minor subjects and catch up as quickly as possible. She wondered if she was actually
meant
to do well in all of them, or if the tutors merely wanted her to have a taste of each discipline. Sorcerers, it seemed, were expected to know something about everything.

There were two periods for Martial Magic, she noted numbly, both consisting of two hours of hard physical exercise and tactical theory. Thankfully, the planners had placed them both at the end of the day, so at least she would be able to rest after pushing herself to the limit.

She also had a free period every day, but she already knew that it wasn’t really ‘free.’ Instead, she needed to use it to study. Each of her classes had a long reading list of books that students were expected to read in their own time and she had a feeling that if she didn’t do her own research, she would run into trouble sooner or later. Besides, there were points that everyone who grew up here knew–that
she
didn’t know - and no one had thought to tell her because they believed that they were obvious. She would just have to keep studying and pray that it was enough to keep her going without any major mishaps.

And there was a black mark on two separate periods.

“What’s this?” Emily asked.

“For the moment, you can consider them free periods,” Mistress Irene said. “Unlike most of the basic classes, Ancient Writing won’t be running a new primer class for several weeks. I’ll tell you when the next class has been organized. Just read about the subject if you have time.”