The Scholomance (52 page)

“Transmute,”
muttered Mara, and covered her eyes.

She just didn’t
know what to do.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

S
he slept until first-bell the following day
and woke more refreshed than she’d felt since even before her arrival. She
dressed, visited the garderobe and the bath, and somehow picked up Devlin in
between the two. He was antsier than usual, now that he had seen firsthand that
her mastery of the art of Malleation was not a fluke. He’d heard all sorts of
things by now—that she’d possessed Proteus in Horuseps’s class and somehow
stolen Sight from him, that she’d been to the rumored Reliquary that supposedly
lay at the center of the maze beneath the Nave, even (she rather liked this
one) that she’d somehow obtained one of the Seals of Solomon and was using it
to control the Scholomance’s demon Masters.

Devlin didn’t
know what to believe, but he’d seen enough not to dismiss any of it out of
hand. He looked at her as they bathed and saw, not a naked woman, but the
thoughtful look on Master Ruk’s eyes as he’d set her back on the ground that
day in the hall, the way Master Horuseps always seemed to be staring at her in
the dining hall, the subtle tremor of fear in Master Dalziel’s voice when he’d
sent her out of the theater. Some people even said she’d climbed to the top of
the lyceum and not come back for hours.

He knew that one
was true, because he’d followed her once (Mara glanced around, frowning). He’d seen
her go up there and because he, like every other student he knew of, had tried
to solve the riddle of that place, he knew that there was no other way out. But
when he’d crept in to find her, he’d seen only her footprints, some lit blister-lamps,
and the sealed doors at the end of the ornate hall, just the same as they ever
were.

Mara listened to
all this, probing deeper when the whim took her, too restless to pay attention
for long. When she got dressed, so did Devlin, hurriedly splashing after her as
she went up for breakfast. He skulked in her shadow until she’d cleared her
customary place at the center table, then dove in and grabbed at the platters. The
other acolytes knocked him away, but he kept his stolen bounty and retreated
with it to a safe distance to eat.

Mara watched him
as she scraped mold from a block of cheese. One had to admire his ability to
take advantage of any situation with such a complete lack of shame.

‘So do rats,
dearest,’ Horuseps thought,

**And rats
survive where people die.** Mara tossed the cheese to her own personal rat,
smiling when Devlin snatched it out of the air.

‘I hope you
won’t be offended when I observe you’re not the charitable sort. What do you
get out of it, I wonder?’

**His gratitude,
for one.**

Horuseps
remained a black silhouette with glowing eyes at the Master’s backlit table,
but she felt his smirk inside her mind. ‘Yes, it’s always amusing to lord
oneself over one’s devoted followers, but what will you do with him?’

Mara shrugged. **It’s
useful to me to have someone who knows his way around.**

His eyes flashed
once, illuminating his unsmiling face. ‘As well as I do?’

**Don’t be
jealous, Horuseps. He’s nothing. He could never take your place in my heart.**

‘It isn’t my
jealousy that should concern you.’

But behind that
pointed reprimand, Mara was intrigued to detect a genuine thread of envy after
all. He was aware of it, even amused by it, and did his best to crush it down
deep where he believed she couldn’t sense it, but it was there. He liked being
the one she came to when she needed to walk in dark places. To be replaced in
this, even in this, by a human galled him.

Mara ate her
bread and watched Horuseps stare out across the dining hall at Devlin. He
armored his mind, making it difficult to see his thoughts clearly amid the
chaos of a few hundred others, but the shadows they cast in the Mindstorm were
predatory ones. It was a small thing for a Master of the Scholomance to rid
himself of a student, and Devlin was more insignificant than most.

Mara tapped her
crust on the table, thinking, then burst out laughing.

Horuseps looked
at her.

**You are
jealous!** she crowed, sending him careful waves of delight. **I don’t believe
it! Not even of Kazuul, who’s actually fucked me—** She breathed a few expert
images underneath that thought. **—but of
him
!**

‘Don’t be absurd,’
he told her, thinking (and believing the thought originated with him) of
Kazuul’s rough hand on her white breast, the bestial sounds he must have made
with every thrust. He remembered all on his own watching her in her cell, the
arching of her naked throat as she came, and the way she’d thought…of him.

He did not
forget about Devlin. Horuseps did not forget anything. But he did release the
hooks of his ominous interest and dismiss him from the surface of his mind. It
was good enough for Mara.

The bells rang. The
noise of the dining hall doubled as students engaged their last battles over
crumbs and bones, and the drumming of a few hundred feet made their way to the
door. Mara waited as she always did for the crowds to thin, picking at what was
left of breakfast and smiling at the Master’s table. She made it a point to
ignore Devlin, and eventually he, afraid of falling under a demon’s notice in
the rapidly emptying room, ducked out and was gone.

“You’ve lost
your little friend,” Horuseps observed.

“Have I?” She
glanced around, then shrugged. “Just as well. He has his uses, but he tends to
cling.”

“A wise
strategy. Anything could happen to him outside of your protection.”

“I’m not here to
protect him,” she said, and stood up.

Horuseps rose as
well, his eyes fixed on her. “Another search?”

“The same
search.” She couldn’t resist needling him a little, with his mind so full of
her. “Do you still wish me luck?”

He thought about
that for what seemed a long time. “I suppose I do,” he said at last, and
laughed. “We all want what is in our own interest. My desires may be more
selfish than yours, but in my own defense, they’re also more altruistic.”

And on that
enigmatic word, he left her, so Mara went out to find Devlin and begin.

*
         
*
         
*

They searched
the lyceum. Devlin knew all the instructors of higher arts who taught the ways
to combine the three she’d mastered. The doors weren’t difficult to open,
compared with those of Kazuul or the Oubliette, and the demons within all
seemed to know her and expect her. Like Dalziel, they allowed her to descend
into their private chambers, where most kept harems of one or two ambivalent
women in some form or another.

She sat for a
while in the last theater after seeing the two not-Connies hidden away in the
lair below, watching without interest as the demon who taught there
demonstrated Sight and Malleation by twisting the bones of some hapless bastard
on the dais. He was one of Kazuul’s breed; the ladies below, quite human,
 
had been Malleated to look like Zyera and
Letha. His resentment that this was now known seethed through every word of his
lesson. “Carve not with thy hand,” he murmured, glaring at Mara as he opened a
hole right through the man’s chest. Apart from some understandable queasiness,
the man felt nothing. “But with thy mind alone.”

Just as Ruk had
told her. And Horuseps, for that matter, who had so often mentioned that Sight
was essential to the application of every art. She couldn’t understand why so
many students here, who had presumably mastered both, had such trouble with
this lesson.

Then again,
maybe if she knew how to use Sight properly, she’d have found Connie by now. Mastery
wasn’t really mastery here, it was just a word they used to keep would-be
wizards complacent in their captivity.

Eventually, the
demon decided they’d wasted enough of his time, and with a muttered curse and
impatient wave, ordered them all out. Mara stood with the rest of them, but the
demon beckoned, and so she stayed behind as the other students filed out. She
waited while he sculpted his assistant’s body back into its original form,
aware of Devlin pacing in the hall each time the doors opened for another
departing student. The demon was aware of him as well, and let her know with a
dour grunt and deliberate thoughts of disapproval. Another telepath. Another
good one, even.

The demon
finished and sent the man away, shrugging into his robe as he ran up the
risers, all his human thoughts on dinner. Once the door had shut on him and
every other living mind, the demon turned his glare on Mara. “Didst thou not
know that Horuseps had laid eyes already upon my harem?”

“I know what he
told me,” she answered. “I wanted to see for myself.”

His lip curled
ever so slightly. “Thou art securely in our lord’s favor and so thy freedoms
are assured, but were thee not so, I would mark thee for this day’s insolence. My
bedmates are not for thee to sanction.”

Her first
reaction was not a charitable one, but even she could be diplomatic when she
had to be. “I’m sorry if I offended you,” she said, inclining her head in a
stiff-necked bow. “But since none of you seem to know whether or not you’ve
seen my friend, how else am I supposed to find her except to look?”

The demon
grunted and eyed her as he put away the other tools of his instruction. Behind
the well-armored fortress of his mind, he very deliberately showed her his resentment,
his power, and his willingness to do her harm. “My back yet bends to Kazuul,”
he said, slamming it all away. “But I will risk even his wrath shouldst thou
dare to trespass here again. Go thou, and know my doors are shut to thee.”

She went, feeling
his eyes on her like spears at her back all the way up the risers to the door. If
he wanted to believe he was scaring her off, she’d let him. She took his
warning seriously, but she was also aware that his reasons, such as they were,
had not been entirely honest ones. Beneath his calculated anger and disdain had
been the faintest shadow of unease, and the lingering echo of frustrated
desire. His back did bend to Kazuul, and so he sent her away because he could
stand to do it once, maybe even twice, but if had to see her much more than
that, not even Kazuul’s will could keep him off her.

She supposed she
should feel flattered.

Devlin was still
pacing in the hall when she emerged, and his relief at seeing her unharmed was
like a hammer straight to her head. “What took you so long?” he demanded,
jogging up to join her.

“See if you can
complete this sentence. ‘None of your fucking blank.’” She glanced at him,
decided he was sorry enough, and said, “Do you know of any more Masters I’m
eligible to see?”

He shook his
head, staring glumly at his feet. He wished he could think of something to say
that wouldn’t piss her off. It didn’t occur to him to just wish she’d be nicer.

“Well, how much
trouble am I likely to get in if I just start opening doors?”

“Are you
serious? Of course you’re serious,” he amended hurriedly under her withering
stare. “But, come on, are you crazy?”

“Is that really
so much better than serious?”

“Why would you
deliberately do something you know you shouldn’t do, here of all places?”

“Behaving myself
isn’t finding her. Has anyone ever been sent to a tribunal for sneaking in to
the higher classes?”

“I’m sure they’d
start if someone did it a dozen times in one day! How far do you think you can
push them before they—”

“Push back?”

“Rip you open,
is what I was going to say! What is wrong with you? Why aren’t you afraid of
these people?”

“Oh come now,”
said Horuseps, gliding out of the shadowed corridor ahead of them with
dreamlike suddenness. He smiled at Mara as Devlin bowed nervously. “Whatever is
there to be afraid of? And Mara, my darling, where are you off to?”

“Back to my
cell,” she answered him, a little surprised by the question.

“No one expects
you?”

That was even
more surprising. She showed it, raising both eyebrows and lifting her chin. “Who
would be expecting me? If there’s a chess club in this place, I’ve missed the
meetings.”

He acknowledged
the joke, such as it was, with a thin smile and came a little closer. His eyes
shifted to Devlin and narrowed. The lights that moved inside them irised small
and very bright. He said nothing, but Devlin backed up at once, bowing the
whole time in what should have been a comical way if only it were not so
terrified. “I do hope I’m not interrupting you,” he murmured, watching Devlin turn
and run.

Mara listened
the slap of oversized sandals recede, smiling crookedly up at Horuseps. Jealous.
Unreal. “Hypothetically,” she said, “how much trouble would I be in if I let
myself into all the higher learning theaters, whether or not I’d mastered their
arts?”

He looked at her
at last and raised one eyebrow. “I swore upon my own immortal life to inspect
the harems on your behalf and it was done. Don’t you trust me?”

“I trust you,”
she lied evenly. “Not them. No offense, but you took a few days to do it. Someone
might have moved her.”

“If that were the
case, then this ‘someone’ shall certainly move her again, because no one can
make a thorough search of every theater in a single day. And mine, dearest, was
far more thorough than yours could ever be.”