Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) (47 page)

“Well done,” the Grandmaster said. “Very well done.”

Emily looked up, dazed. He was kneeling beside her, while Sergeant Miles was studying the place where the Mimic had been. The floor was scorched and pitted into a series of blackened runes Emily was sure hadn’t been there before, all of them completely unknown to her. Judging from the sergeant’s frantic attempt to preserve them before they vanished completely, he didn’t know what they were either.

“I felt it die,” she said, softly. It suddenly hurt to speak. “What
was
it?”

The Grandmaster’s eyes narrowed. “A spell,” he said. There was a hint of puzzlement in his voice. “As you deduced.”

“I don’t know,” Emily admitted. She was sure that the emotions she had felt were genuine...and that implied a living creature. But a living creature wouldn’t have been affected by the dispersal spell at all. It was only good for destroying spells. A magical artificial intelligence? It seemed odd, but possible. “It might have been intelligent in its own right.”

“The faerie have made other intelligent beings by experimenting on humans,” the Grandmaster said. His voice became contemplative. “I suppose they may have created the Mimics to serve them in some way, perhaps during the wars. Or maybe a human sorcerer created them. No one really knows how much knowledge has been lost—or destroyed—over the years. Quite a few sorcerers went to their deaths without sharing what they knew—or teaching apprentices who might feel otherwise.

“But it was a killer,” he added. He helped her to her feet, his grip surprisingly strong for an older man. “I think you’ve messed up the room again.”

Emily looked around and shuddered inwardly. The dust had been scattered everywhere, her runes had been destroyed and the floor was badly scorched. They weren’t going to make her clean it up again, were they? She wasn’t sure she could do it again...

“I think someone else can do it,” the Grandmaster added, after a long moment. He smirked at her sigh of relief. “Unless you wish to learn some useful housekeeping spells. You’ll be surprised just how interesting they can be...”

“
I
think that she needs to go to the infirmary,” Lady Barb interrupted, shortly. She peered into Emily’s eyes, then cast a series of diagnostic spells on her. “Casting so many dispersal spells...no one really
knows
what
that
will do.”

“I need to sleep,” Emily said, fighting down a yawn. Now the Mimic was gone, she was sure that she would sleep better. So would everyone else. “Are you going to take down the wards?”

“Naturally,” the Grandmaster said. His smile grew wider. “You should be there...”

“Let her sleep,” Lady Barb suggested, although there was a hint in her voice that it wasn’t a suggestion. She
was
Emily’s Advisor, after all. “I can’t find anything dangerously wrong with her that a good night’s sleep won’t cure. I’ll walk her back to her room.”

The corridors seemed brighter, somehow, as they walked towards the dorms. Emily couldn’t help smiling as the lights came back up to full brightness, suggesting that the Grandmaster was already communing with the wards and lowering them so the students could go outside and play in the snow. She couldn’t help wondering just what was going to happen to all the students who had misbehaved, thinking that there was nothing left to lose and cutting loose. What would the Grandmaster do to them?

“I think he might just give them a warning,” Lady Barb said, when she asked. Her voice was carefully neutral. “Being under siege brings out the best and worst in people. I am not surprised that there were a whole string of nasty incidents.”

She stopped as they stepped into the dorms. “Go back to your room and sleep,” she ordered, as Madame Razz appeared out of her office. “I’ll speak to Madame Razz.”

Emily nodded and stepped past the housemother, walking automatically into her assigned room. It was empty; the Gorgon and Lin were elsewhere, perhaps joining the other students in the common room. She sat down at her desk and stared at her papers. Once again, someone had been peeking through them. And there were faint hints that someone had been trying to get into her trunk.

“Not this time,” Emily muttered, feeling a cold flash of pure fury cascading through her. How
dare
someone go poking through her papers and try to breach her trunk? She reached into her pocket and produced the fingerprint spell. “Whoever you are, I can find you.”

She cast the spell.

A moment later, she had her answer.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

L
IN.

Emily gritted her teeth as she looked down at the evidence in front of her. Professor Thande was a
genius
. His spell had not only isolated the fingerprints on the desk, but also identified the same fingerprints elsewhere in the bedroom. The ones covering Emily’s books were the same as the ones on Lin’s desk and bedside cabinet.

But she’d never even
suspected
Lin...

A haze in her mind she hadn’t even known was there seemed to snap. Emily swore out loud, then stood and walked to her bed. Lin’s fingerprints were there too, as if the girl had been sleeping in Emily’s bed when Emily hadn’t been there. Emily hesitated, unsure if she wanted to know, then pulled out the drawers under the bed and cast a light spell, peering under the bed. Even knowing that they had to be there, it still took her several minutes to spot the runes Lin had scratched into the wood. One of them, she discovered, was intended to distract Emily from realizing that the carver was even there. No
wonder
she had never even suspected Lin.

The others were unknown to her, but she had a nasty feeling she knew what they did. She’d been careless with her notes, without even thinking about it—and Lin had had every opportunity to copy them. Another might have pitted her against the Gorgon, or directed her suspicions elsewhere...assuming that she actually realized something was wrong. She’d been wearing her protective sash when she’d first discovered that someone had been going through her desk.

She straightened upright and walked back to her chair. Another set of runes were scratched into the underside, pushing her to be careless while working harder. They’d worked perfectly, she realized, even to the point of encouraging her to ditch the
Ken
game in favor of coming back to her bedroom and running a private experiment. Lin clearly hadn’t realized just how
odd
Emily was, even if she had been listening to rumor. Emily had been ignorant of basic material that every trainee sorceress knew.

“Why?” She muttered out loud. “Why were you spying on me?”

Emily paced across the room to Lin’s bed and cast the revealing spell. The first set of protective spells were basic, right out of the textbook without any modifications at all, but the second set were far more advanced, buried under the first. Lin was clearly far more competent than she’d ever admitted...in fact, some of the charms protecting her bed were comparable to ones Emily had seen in Martial Magic. Breaking them was not an option, not for Emily. And that meant...

Lin had stolen the first version of the fingerprint spell. And then someone had attacked both her and Imaiqah in the corridors, defeating them both. Had
Lin
attacked them? They’d assumed that it was an older student, because the spells used had been advanced, but what if it had been Lin? She must have realized that she had come alarmingly close to discovery and attempted to distract Emily. And she had succeeded.

She went through my notes
, Emily thought, grimly. She’d written everything down in English, rather than the Empire’s script or the phonic alphabet she’d introduced to the Allied Lands, but a simple translation spell would allow someone to understand her notes. They wouldn’t be perfect—there were concepts she’d scribbled down that wouldn’t have made sense to anyone who hadn’t come from Earth—yet Lin might be able to draw out information that she could use herself. How much had Lin seen?

The steam engine diagrams—if that hadn’t leaked out already from Zangaria. Gunpowder weapons and tactics, assuming that they realized what gunpowder was and what it did. Had Lin seen her copy of the formula? To her, it might seem nothing more than a nonsensical mixture of chemicals. And yet there were also her notes on spells and magical concepts. What about the spell processor...or the batteries?

Emily shook her head. She’d hoped that she could keep control of some of the more advanced concepts, even though the basic concepts were spreading like wildfire. But Lin...might have passed what she’d seen on to others. Or maybe she’d just kept the information for herself.

She peered under her desk, looking for runes, but saw nothing. Not that it mattered, she realized; the two sets she had already found had been enough to cause real trouble, as long as she hadn’t discovered them. But then, she hadn’t really been able to
see
them until she had already deduced their presence. They’d had months to build up a charge they could use to influence her. And perhaps the Gorgon as well. How much of the Gorgon’s anger had been due to her rage at having her possessions searched...or to the runes Lin had scratched out in the room?

The door slowly opened. Emily turned, raising her hand in a defensive posture, and saw Lin creeping into the room. Her roommate looked as small and waiflike as ever, but Emily could now see hints of quiet competence and determination surrounding her too. Lin might easily have cut runes into her own flesh, she realized as she stood upright. It would have helped her avoid attention while spying on Emily and everyone else.

“You saved us all,” Lin said, softly. “Thank you.”

Emily smirked. Lin had been trapped, unable to send messages to anyone outside the building. No wonder she had been prepared to risk exposure by attacking Emily and Imaiqah; she’d had nowhere to run. But now...Emily saw a hint of puzzlement flashing over her roommate’s face and smiled openly. Lin didn’t quite know what was going on.

“You were spying on me,” she said, watching Lin closely. The shorter girl didn’t show any visible reaction. “
You
were the one who was going through my desk.”

“That is an absurd idea,” Lin said. Her voice hadn’t changed at all. “I would not dare to touch your desk. The Gorgon is a much more likely suspect.”

Emily laughed out loud. “Your suggestions won’t work now that your runes have been discovered,” she said. Had Lin tried to steer her actions before? The hypnotic suggestion might have failed, now that she knew about the runes, but it might well have worked earlier. “I know that you intended me never to even
think
about you as a possible suspect.”

Lin seemed to straighten upright, marginally. “And you have
proof
of this?”

Her voice tightened. “You do realize that throwing around absurd accusations could get you in real trouble?”

“Except they aren’t absurd,” Emily said. She knew she should have called the tutors, but she wanted to gloat. “And I am no longer suggestible.”

Lin’s eyes narrowed.

“And I
do
have proof,” Emily added. “Your fingerprints are scattered all over my desk. The only other fingerprints there are mine. There are no fingerprints from anyone else at all.
You
touched my desk...and set aside my spells. Or did you influence me to leave cracks in the spells, all unknowing? I might not even have
seen
a damaged spell if I believed it was intact.”

She remembered the fight she’d had with the Gorgon and felt her temper flare. Lin had been cunning; the runes prevented Emily from realizing that Lin was a potential suspect, so she’d blamed the Gorgon. The fight could have turned very nasty indeed. And the Gorgon might also have been influenced to dislike Emily. It simply hadn’t worked until she’d been given a very good reason to hate her roommate.

“I think you don’t understand,” Lin said. There was an edge in her voice that hadn’t been there earlier. “I think...”

“
I
think that we should go to the Grandmaster,” Emily snapped. “Let
him
decide what to do with you.”

Lin took a step forward. “And if I refuse?”

Emily ignored the question. “Why did you even do this?”

Her roommate laughed, unkindly. “Did you really believe that you could make so many changes and then go unnoticed? Child of Destiny, Necromancer’s Bane...whatever title they end up giving you for defeating the Mimic...you’ve attracted attention. They’re all coming to steal your secrets.”

Emily flushed. “And who are
you
working for?”

Lin smiled. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Emily snapped. “I want to know who did this to me!”

Lin’s smile widened. “I’m afraid I am not permitted to divulge that information...”

She threw a spell at Emily before Emily could even realize that she was about to attack. It took everything Emily had to parry the spell, which gave Lin a chance to hurl another spell—and another. Emily flew backwards as one of them crashed right into her—her wards, she realized suddenly, were largely gone—and slammed into the wall. She gasped in pain as she fell and landed on the floor. Lin fired off yet another spell, sending a wave of fire washing towards Emily. Somehow, Emily managed to roll aside and throw back a series of spells of her own. Lin deflected them without apparent effort.

“You really need to work harder,” Lin said. “You’re the most valuable person in the school, yet your defensive spells are rubbish...”

I took them down when I faced the Mimic
, Emily thought, grimly. She’d shredded her own protections and then failed to repair them in time. It was an oversight that might cost her everything. And she didn’t dare to try to call for help now.
Damn it
!

She caught hold of the rug and pulled, hard. Lin stumbled, giving Emily a chance to pull herself to her feet and go on the offensive, throwing spells as quickly as she could. But Lin seemed to be deflecting them, all the while pushing forward while waiting for Emily to tire herself. Emily gritted her teeth, feeling her reserves rapidly draining. Between the Mimic and Lin, she had almost nothing left.