Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) (38 page)

And educational
, she thought, sourly.
It certainly taught me a few lessons
.

Shaking her head, she sat down at her desk...and froze. Someone had been rooting through it again...and the spells she’d used to protect it had completely failed. Emily swore out loud, checking where she’d left the books. Someone had moved several of the textbooks, hunting for something else. It wasn’t as if any of her textbooks weren’t carried in the school library.

The Gorgon gave her a sharp glance. “Language,” she snapped. “Watch your tongue.”

Emily rounded on her. “Have you been touching my desk?”

“Why,” the Gorgon sneered, “would I touch your desk?”

“
Someone
has been touching my desk,” Emily snapped back. “And what do you care about my language anyway?”

“If one of us gets in trouble, we all lose room points,” the Gorgon said, in a voice she might use to explain something elementary to a baby. “I happen to want something a little more comfortable than this rickety chair.
Your
little exploit, whatever it was, cost us every point we had. We currently do not have the points to get
anything
when the time comes to turn them into furniture.”

Emily scowled. It seemed like a simple trick to push the students into behaving themselves—and policing one another, at least when they were in their rooms.
She
could afford to outfit every room in Whitehall with fancy furniture, as could many other pupils. But it was against the rules.

“At the moment,” she said, controlling her temper with an effort, “it doesn’t really matter.”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter to you, baroness,” the Gorgon hissed. “And maybe it doesn’t matter to a Child of Destiny. But it
does
matter to those of us who don’t have vast fortunes or places to go after they graduate.”

Emily flushed. She knew what happened to most students when they graduated from Whitehall, but where would the Gorgon go? Would she fit in with her fellow Gorgons after leaving Whitehall? Many students from poorer backgrounds were seduced into joining the establishment by attending Whitehall and having proper plumbing and food for the first time in their lives. Emily might well be the only student whose living conditions had taken a step downwards since coming to the school.

But then, the company is better
, she thought, ruefully.

“If we get out of this alive, I’ll try to be a better roommate,” Emily said, tiredly. She couldn’t blame the Gorgon for being angry with her, but this was going too far. “Do you know who has been touching my desk?”

“Touching someone else’s desk is bad manners,” the Gorgon reminded her. “I wouldn’t have touched your desk unless it was on fire.”

Emily scowled, but accepted the rebuke. In Whitehall, touching someone’s personal possessions and notes was a severe breach of etiquette. It was rare for someone to even grant permission for someone else to touch their possessions. In all of her time at Whitehall, Emily honestly couldn’t remember someone allowing someone else to open their trunk and retrieve an item. Alassa and Imaiqah certainly had never told
Emily
that she could use their trunks.

She swung back around and stared at the desk, then cast a series of revealing charms. The wards and hexes she’d placed on it were still there; they’d just failed to bite at all. Emily inspected them as carefully as she could, but if there was something wrong with them it was beyond her ability to detect. And that meant...

“Gorgon,” she said, “would you mind testing the hexes?”

The Gorgon eyed her through snake-like eyes. “You don’t trust your own handiwork?”

“No,” Emily said, as she stood up. It was humiliating to admit it, but there was no choice. “I think I messed up the charms.”

“Fine,” the Gorgon said.

She stood, walked over to Emily’s desk and sat down on her chair. There was a flash of light and she froze solid. Even her snakes stopped moving. A skilled magician could probably break free, even if they couldn’t move their hands, but she doubted that a second-year student could.

“It works,” Emily said, as she performed the counter-charm. “I’m sorry...”

“Perhaps now you can shut up,” the Gorgon said, tartly. She stood, her snakes hissing around her, and headed back to her desk. “And
don’t
lose us any more points.”

Emily sighed, wondering just
who
was poking through her desk. Master Tor? He certainly
should
have the skills to take her wards down and then rebuild them—or at the very least neutralize them long enough to search her desk. But why would he need to spy on her when he could search her possessions at any moment? Why would he run the risk of being caught in a female bedroom alone? Surely Madame Razz would ask a few pointed questions if she caught him.

She scowled down at the desk, mulling over her options. The fingerprint detection charm might work, if she could remember where she put the note. She’d wanted to copy it into her own spellbook, but there hadn’t been time. Instead, she’d left it in her desk. Carefully, she searched through the set of papers and blinked in surprise when she realized that she couldn’t find it. The spell was completely missing.

Her blood ran cold. Fingerprint detection charms were unknown in Whitehall...or at least they had been unknown, until Emily had suggested using one. If someone had taken it, did that mean that they knew what the charm was intended to do? Had they hoped it would prevent Emily from recreating it? But that seemed absurd. Emily could have recreated her own work—and in this case, all she had to do was ask Professor Lombardi for a second copy.

She ran her hand through her hair, then looked to see what else was missing. Nothing was, as far as she could tell. They’d
only
taken the fingerprint charm. And that meant...what?

“I told you to be quiet,” the Gorgon said, sharply. “Do I have to turn you into stone to shut you up?”

Emily flushed. She hadn’t realized that she’d been mumbling aloud.

“I’m going to the library,” she said, and stood. “I’ll see you at dinner time.”

“Take someone with you,” the Gorgon said. “
Not
me.”

Emily looked at Lin, who barely looked up from her book. Her silent roommate clearly wasn’t going to come with her, or get involved in the argument. Shaking her head, Emily picked up a handful of books she’d intended to return to the library and walked out the door, then headed three doors down the short corridor to Imaiqah’s room. It was closed and, when she pushed her hand against the charm, it refused to open.

“I think she’s playing Kingmaker with some of the others,” Madame Razz said, from behind her. “They’re in the games room, if you’re interested.”

“Thank you,” Emily said. There was no point in disturbing her friend. Imaiqah loved Kingmaker and had taken to Chess like a duck to water, after Emily had introduced it. “I’ll find her later.”

She walked to the door and headed to the library. There had to be something there, she told herself, some way of finding a Mimic before it could kill everyone in the building. And there
were
ways to trap them...but they had to be found first. She was so intent on the possibilities that she didn’t even notice the Mediator until she walked right into him.

“You should watch yourself, girl,” he said. “This isn’t a safe place any longer.”

“No,” Emily agreed, quietly. “It never was.”

Chapter Thirty-One

T
HE LIBRARY WAS ALMOST EMPTY, EMILY
discovered when she stepped inside, apart from a couple of sixth-year boys who were working their way through a pile of textbooks. They gave Emily sharp glances, but apart from that they completely ignored her. Emily was silently grateful as she walked over to the desk and smiled at Lady Aylia. The librarian looked as tired as everyone else.

“Half the books in the library are out,” Lady Aylia said, by way of introduction. “What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering what you had on Mimics,” Emily said, lowering her voice automatically. “Is there more than I saw in the textbooks...?”

“Mostly restricted,” Lady Aylia said. “I shall consult with the Grandmaster.”

Emily nodded and wandered over to the shelves, looking for anything that might be interesting or helpful. She couldn’t help noticing that almost all of the books on hexes, jinxes and practical jokes had been taken out; the recent spate of infighting, she guessed, had encouraged the students to do more research. The only discipline that didn’t seem to have been raided was history, something that struck Emily as sad. She had always
loved
history, if only because it had been an escape from her life. And the history of Whitehall was fascinating.

It was hard to be sure, but she suspected that
real
history didn’t really go back as far as Professor Locke suggested. There were so many myths and legends about the time of the faerie that it was difficult to know what might be real and what might be myth, all the more so because there had been so many deliberate purges of knowledge over the years. Officially, the records dated back over three thousand years, but Emily suspected that they were only reliable up to about five hundred years ago. But there was no way to be certain.

She felt a tug and turned to see Lady Aylia waving her back to the desk. “I spoke with the Grandmaster,” the librarian said, when Emily approached. “He has authorized me to allow you access to the books.”

“Thank you,” Emily said.

“Go into study room five,” Lady Aylia ordered. “I’ll bring the books to you there.”

Study room five was larger than the study room she’d used last year, when the Grandmaster had allowed her to read a series of texts on necromancy. It was empty, apart from a table, three chairs and a poster on the wall threatening dire consequences for anyone who tried to remove the books without permission. Emily had done enough work in the library to know that trying to remove a restricted book would trigger the wards, which would immobilize the thief until he could be dealt with. There was no way to know if the Warden’s death had affected
those
wards.

Lady Aylia entered seven minutes later, carrying a stack of books in one hand. Most of them looked to have been recently handled, probably by the Grandmaster or Lady Barb. Thankfully, none of them felt as evil as the books on necromancy, just dusty and old. The librarian put them down on the table, worked a series of charms to remove the protections on the books and then left the room, leaving Emily alone. Carefully, she picked up the first book and read the title.
A Mimicry of Mimics
.

The author, she very rapidly decided, had never actually encountered a Mimic. Most of the text seemed to be a list of reported sightings, complete with some attempt at analysis. Emily skimmed it carefully, but saw nothing that she hadn’t already known. The only oddity was a report that some Mimics, in human form, behaved oddly before reverting to their natural state. But there was no clear idea of what was
odd
.

Did Sergeant Bane act oddly when he was a Mimic
? She asked herself.
Should he have done something other than dragging me off down the corridor
?

It was impossible to know. Instead, she read the rest of the book, frowning at some of the nastier comments about people who might be Mimics. The writer had suggested that someone who acted oddly should be scrutinized, just to be sure they weren’t Mimics...which probably didn’t help people suffering from mental illnesses. Someone unpopular could be lynched because the locals believed that he or she was a Mimic, just as suspected witches had been burned in Spain under the Inquisition.

Irritated, she looked at the next one and realized that it was more of the same, although the author did include an incredibly colorful account of an encounter with a Mimic that—he said—had sparked off a lifelong interest in the creatures. It hadn’t done anything for the writer’s mental stability, she decided, after reading the next few chapters. He’d come to the conclusion that
everyone
apart from himself was a Mimic and he’d eventually been locked up to stop him performing Mimic-detection tests. Emily read the description of the test in the hopes that it would be something workable, but it didn’t take long to realize that it was about as useful and impartial as dunking witches.

Both books agreed, however, that all
verified
Mimic attacks were spaced out by months, at least. The Mimic had been able to take someone’s place and pose as them—perfectly—for a long time, perhaps even forgetting what it really was. It
had
to forget, Emily decided, unless there was something utterly inhuman about its mindset. How could it be happy posing as someone else?

But it didn’t quite make sense. Emily could understand why one human would wish to take over another’s life. Everyone believed that the grass was greener on the other side of the hill. Taking someone else’s life, if it were possible to pose as them so completely, might seem an ideal solution. But why would a Mimic, an inhuman creature, want to be human? How the hell could something like it have evolved?

The Gorgon might want to be human
, Emily thought, slowly.
But why would a Dragon—or a Mimic?

Dragons, she suspected, had evolved to use the magic field to their own advantage. It was the only way something their size could fly. A Mimic might have done the same, but it still seemed odd. What sort of possible evolutionary advantage would pretending to be something else so completely grant it? It was such a complete pretense that its personality was utterly subsumed in the host. Assuming, of course, that it
had
a personality.

She remembered the sense of pure malevolence from the Mimic and shivered. They
did
have personalities. And they hated humans.

She picked up the third book and smiled in relief when she realized that it was far more practical. There was
no
decisive test for a Mimic, but a Mimic couldn’t change its form and hide without something to copy—and there seemed to be limits on just
what
it could copy. It didn’t seem to be able to turn itself into an object, or anything smaller than a puppy—and anything smaller than a human didn’t last very long. If the Mimic remained in that form while devouring life energy, it would return to its normal appearance within a few hours.