Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) (25 page)

She led the way out of the door, up the stairs and into the dorm. It was dark and silent, apart from the looming presence of Madame Razz at the far end. She didn’t seem pleased at all.

“Lie down on the bed,” Lady Barb said, before Emily could say a word. She pushed open the door to Emily’s room. The Gorgon looked up from her desk, her snakes hissing as they were disturbed. Lin was lying in bed, pretending to be asleep. “I’ll have a word with your roommates.”

Emily wanted to hear that conversation, but somehow she felt herself dropping asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

Chapter Twenty

S
HE WAS AWOKEN THE FOLLOWING MORNING
by someone shaking her, none too gently.

“Wake up,” Alassa’s voice hissed. “What
happened
yesterday? Where
were
you?”

Emily opened her eyes and looked up, blearily. Alassa was wearing a white nightgown that set off her blonde hair nicely and she looked...deeply worried. Behind her, Imaiqah was wearing a more demure outfit, but she looked worried too. Emily felt her stomach rumble as she sat upright, remembering that she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast yesterday. So much had happened that she hadn’t had time to eat.

“They’re saying you destroyed the Warden,” Imaiqah said. “What
really
happened?”

“Someone killed him,” Emily said. It was still hard to think of the Warden as anything other than a living being, even if he hadn’t been human.
Paddy
couldn’t pass for human; the Warden, it seemed,
could
. Or perhaps she’d been the only one fooled. “I found the body.”

Alassa scowled. “What
else
happened?” She added. “They’re also saying that you’re going to be expelled.”

Emily shook her head, bleakly. “Master Tor wanted me expelled,” she said. “The Grandmaster said no.”

“I should think so too,” Alassa said, crossly. She stamped her foot, then repeated the question. “What happened yesterday?”

“Long story,” Emily said, and outlined as much of it as she dared. “I think they thought I’d killed him at first too.”

“I don’t see you doing that,” Imaiqah objected. “You’re not a killer.”

“Shadye would disagree,” Emily said, numbly. She’d snapped him out of existence. And then there had been the crow-sorcerer.
And
a number of orcs and goblins during the running battle they’d fought in the mountains. How many more had she killed indirectly because of all the innovations she’d introduced to the Allied Lands? “But I didn’t kill the Warden.”

“They should have called me when they dragged you in front of an inquest,” Alassa said, sharply. “I shall have angry words with my father. You are effectively aristocracy now and part of my family...”

“Don’t,” Emily said. “I...they know I didn’t do it.”

“Inquests aren’t always about finding the truth,” Alassa warned her. “Sometimes they’re just looking for someone to blame.” She shook her head, sending golden ringlets shimmering everywhere. “Outside Whitehall, it would be illegal to put you in front of an inquest without my father’s permission. Or mine.”

Emily rubbed her forehead, feeling a dull ache inside her temple that was probably caused by hunger—or stress. “The killer might have been trying to frame me,” she said, grimly. “I...they used a knife to kill him.”

“There isn’t a shortage of suspects,” Alassa mused. She grinned, suddenly. “Who would want to destroy the Warden?”

“They’d have problems fitting all of the possible suspects into the Great Hall,” Imaiqah agreed. “The entire school would have a motive.”

Emily nodded. As far as she knew, the Warden’s only responsibilities had been to monitor the wards and administer punishment to misbehaving students. It was easy to imagine someone resenting their punishment and wanting to kill the Warden, perhaps even a would-be necromancer trying to practice on the person who would detect him when he started playing with necromancy. There was no shortage of possible suspects.

But what could they do? Master Tor had promised to discuss the laws surrounding evidence and truth spells later in the term—absently, she found herself wishing that she had paid more attention in his class—but this was serious. It was quite possible that the Grandmaster would insist on questioning the entire school. And if
that
happened...how many others had used a spell to make it impossible to drag information out of them?

“Hey,” Alassa said, slapping Emily’s shoulder. “There will be people who will call you a hero.”

“But I didn’t do it,” Emily protested. “They
know
I didn’t do it.”

“When has rumor ever paid attention to facts?” Alassa asked. “Do you know how many rumors there are at any one time?”

Emily nodded, bitterly. She’d
wanted
to be special, she’d wanted to be famous...but now she knew just how irritating it could be. Or worse, if people really
believed
the rumors about her being a necromancer-in-training, one who had somehow slipped under the radar and hidden in Whitehall. Come to think of it, she realized, anyone who believed that might think she had a
very
good reason to want to get rid of the Warden. If she were feeling the necromantic lust for power, the Warden might notice...particularly if she tried to murder one of her fellow students.

Imaiqah put her hand on Emily’s arm. “What else happened?”

“I’m in deep trouble,” Emily admitted.

“You should have stayed in the arena,” Alassa pointed out, tartly. “If you had, you wouldn’t have seemed a plausible suspect.”

Emily flushed. Alassa was right.

“We were still playing when they cancelled the game and ordered everyone back to their rooms,” Alassa continued. “We looked for you, but we didn’t see you. Why did you leave?”

A dozen excuses ran through Emily’s head, but she pushed them all aside. “I got bored,” she admitted, “and I had work to do...”

“You should have stayed to support us,” Alassa said, angrily.

“Not that we were
winning
,” Imaiqah said. “We were behind by twenty points and we’d lost two players through fouls.”

“The referee was on their side,” Alassa grumbled. “But we could have caught up, eventually.”

“Maybe,” Imaiqah said. “But we were tiring fast...”

Alassa shook her head, impatiently. “Never mind that,” she said. “What sort of trouble are you in?”

She peered at Emily. “You don’t
seem
to have any trouble sitting upright.”

Emily felt her flush deepen. “He died before he could...you know,” she said, embarrassed. “I’m on restriction until Master Tor says otherwise.”

Alassa’s blue eyes showed a flash of sympathy. “That’s going to be ghastly,” she said, grimly. “No magic means that you can’t fight back if someone hexes you. I
hated
it.”

Imaiqah looked at her, sharply. “When were
you
on restriction?”

“After...” She rubbed her jaw, meaningfully. “I wasn’t allowed to do magic outside class for a week. Luckily, no one realized.”

Emily scowled. How long would it be before someone realized that she couldn’t do magic outside class indefinitely? If Master Tor
really
hated her—and he did, it seemed—all he would have to do to make her life hell would be to let that fact slip out. Melissa and her cronies weren’t the only people who might want to take a shot at the Necromancer’s Bane, particularly if they blamed her for ruining yesterday afternoon.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and looked around for her trunk, where she’d stashed some food. It was gone.

“They came yesterday and took it,” the Gorgon’s voice said. Alassa stepped to one side, allowing the Gorgon to look at Emily. “They searched everything, even
my
trunk.”

Emily winced at her tone. The Gorgon sounded
furious
.

“What were you
doing
?” The Gorgon demanded. “Do you know how many rules they broke just to search our rooms?”

Emily nodded, silently. The Sorcerer’s Rule wasn’t the only one that allowed magicians some privacy. Breaking into a magician’s house—or his trunk—was considered a dreadful mistake. Legally, as Master Tor had taken some delight in pointing out, a magician could do whatever he liked to a thief. Searching her trunk was pushing the rules as far as they would go; searching the Gorgon’s trunk snapped them into a thousand pieces. And she assumed that Lin’s trunk had been searched too.

“My people
value
their privacy,” the Gorgon hissed. Her face suddenly looked very inhuman. For a long chilling moment, Emily was convinced that she was about to be turned to stone. “Do you think that I take their violation of my privacy lightly?”

“No,” Emily said. She could barely look the Gorgon in the eye. Somehow, she’d not only been put on restriction, but also destroyed her relationship with one of her roommates. And Lin wasn’t going to be very happy either. “I’m sorry.”

“You
will
be,” the Gorgon said. Her snakes hissed in unison. “And
don’t
expect me to spend much time in this room.”

It took Emily a moment to realize what she meant. If she—or Lin—wasn’t in the room, Emily couldn’t be there either. She’d effectively be a guest in her own room. Whitehall’s wards didn’t allow someone to enter the room or stay in it without one of the original roommates also being there. The Gorgon could force her out just by leaving the room and spending most of the day in the library.

The Gorgon started to turn away, then looked back at Emily. “Your trunk is with Madame Razz,” she added. “If you happen to want anything from it, you’ll have to ask her for permission to open the trunk. I don’t think they trust you any longer.”

She stalked back to her own bed, then started to pull on her robes. “Come on, Lin,” she called. “I think we should be somewhere else.”

Emily stared at her back in helpless rage. “Don’t worry about it,” Alassa said, quietly. “You can always stay in my room.”

“Unless your roommates hate me too,” Emily said, bitterly. “Did your room get searched too?”

“I don’t think so,” Alassa said. “Besides, that would be a gross breach of protocol.”

Emily nodded. Alassa
was
a royal princess, after all.

A loud chime rang through the air, interrupting her thoughts. “Attention, all students,” the Grandmaster’s voice said. “You are to make your way to the Grand Hall immediately. Do not delay.”

Emily stood upright and scowled. She was still wearing the trousers and shirt she’d donned yesterday. After sleeping in them, they smelt thoroughly unpleasant. She needed a shower before class, but somehow she suspected that the Gorgon and Lin weren’t going to allow her to stay in the room long enough to wash. She tore off the shirt and trousers, then grabbed a robe and pulled it over her head. If there was one advantage to wearing the strange outfits, she’d realized long ago, it was that she could wear much less underneath and no one would be any the wiser.

“You can shower in my room,” Alassa muttered, as they walked out into the corridor. “It wasn’t your fault that the Warden was destroyed.”

“Their possessions being searched
was
my fault,” Emily muttered back. “I can’t blame them for being angry.”

She wondered, as they joined the flock of students heading down towards the Great Hall, if Master Tor hadn’t inadvertently done her a favor by not letting her room with her friends. If she’d been responsible for Alassa and Imaiqah having their property searched, would they have been just as angry as her new roommates? Probably...and that might have destroyed their friendship. Alassa had so little privacy in Zangaria that she valued what she had. Imaiqah, a merchant’s daughter who had grown up in a very cramped environment, would feel much the same.

Rumors had definitely spread throughout the school, she realized, as other students glanced at her, their faces torn between awe and fear. A number of students grinned at her, rubbing their rears to suggest that they were pleased the Warden was gone, others seemed to shrink away from her, as if they believed that Emily would explode at any moment. She held her head as high as she could, fighting the urge demanding she run for her life and hide.

Maybe I should just go
, she thought, as they walked into the Great Hall.
I could go back to Zangaria—or Void
.

The thought reminded her that
Void
hadn’t attended the inquest either. She knew nothing about the laws governing such bodies, but she was fairly sure that if Alassa felt she should have been there, Void would feel the same way. Hadn’t the Grandmaster called him? Or had he felt that matters would proceed more smoothly without his presence? What would Void have to say to Master Tor?

You can’t keep relying on him to hold your hand
, she told herself, sternly.
He isn’t going to do everything for you
.

The glances and muttered whispers seemed to grow louder as she found a seat and sat down. She locked her eyes on the stage, where she knew the Grandmaster would stand, and refused to give anyone the satisfaction of looking at them. Somehow, as she caught sight of Mistress Irene and Sergeant Miles, it was hard to keep her face under firm control. Everyone seemed to be staring at her.

There was a subtle shift in the wards as the Grandmaster entered the Great Hall and stepped up onto the stage. Now she’d had a moment to think, Emily could tell that the ever-present sense of the wards had changed, fading slightly. Without the Warden, was it even
possible
to maintain the wards? Lady Barb had as good as told her that monitoring the interior of the school would be much harder without him. And she’d seen enough in the Construction and Warding textbooks to know how difficult it was to produce even a basic ward without the near-limitless power of the nexus.

The Grandmaster looked tired, she realized, as silence fell over the Great Hall. He looked utterly drained, as if he’d been up all night. Perhaps he had, Emily decided; they would have needed to take control of the wards and replace the Warden as quickly as possible. If they
could
replace the Warden. How long did it take to produce a homunculus anyway? Lady Barb had implied that it could take a very long time...