Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) (17 page)

“They should have been more careful where they put it,” Lady Barb said, angrily. “I’ve yet to see a whore in an inn who didn’t have something nasty waiting for anyone foolish enough to touch her.”

Emily winced. “But what about their wives?”

“What indeed?” Lady Barb asked. “I can brew a potion to deal with the wasting rot, but if their wives don’t drink it too, the disease will just re-infect them.”

She glanced out of the door. “There’s only two more people waiting to see us,” she said. “I want you to handle them while I make a start on brewing the potion. Don’t worry; if you find something you can’t handle, don’t hesitate to call for me.”

Emily nodded. The first patient turned out to be an older man who had a nasty cough. Emily ran a check, discovered an infection in his lungs and removed it, then told him to be more careful what he smoked. He was still laughing as he walked back out the door. Emily sighed, and called for the final patient. He was a young boy, short with dark hair and blue eyes; Emily quietly estimated him to be no more than ten years old. The way he looked around, peering into the darkest corners, suggested he was jumpy. But there was nothing obviously wrong.

“You’re safe here,” Emily said, feeling her heart go out to him. She couldn’t help feeling a sense of kinship with the young boy. There was something about him that reminded her of herself. “Sit down on the table, please.”

The boy walked over to the table and stopped, unmoving. Emily frowned; he wasn’t sitting down or undressing...or trying to speak. Was he mute? Or...she hesitated, then motioned for him to undress. His entire body trembled as he pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the ground. Emily took one look at his back, then looked away, horrified. Her gorge rose within and she had to swallow hard to prevent herself from being sick.

She’d seen horror. She’d seen Shadye and the Mimic. But this was different, all too human – and somehow all the worse for it. The boy’s back was covered in dark scars, several ending in very nasty bruises. Emily had seen marks on her own buttocks when she’d been caned by the warden, but this was worse. The skin had broken under the blows and become infected in several places. It was clear, she realized, as she forced herself to concentrate, that the boy hadn’t been caned. The bruises at the end of the scars were where the belt buckle had hit and broken his skin.

Be clinical
, she told herself. But it was so hard to look and not feel the desire to tear the person who’d beaten the boy into hundreds of tiny pieces. She could turn them into slugs and stamp on them, turn them into rabbits and set the dogs after them...there were so many options, but none of them would help him now. The infection was spreading so rapidly that she was honestly unsure how he’d stayed alive, let alone reasonably mobile.

“Finish undressing,” she told him, even though she didn’t really want to know. She raised her voice, hoping that Lady Barb wasn’t in one of the stages where the potion couldn’t be left untended for more than a few seconds. “I think you should take a look at this.”

She looked back at the boy, then turned away and threw up, violently. The bruises covered his buttocks and the back of his thighs, marching down his skin with almost military precision. Emily had had problems sitting comfortably for hours after the Warden had caned her, but this...she cursed herself for ever moaning about the Warden’s punishments. This was far worse than anything she’d ever endured, even in the moments everyone had wanted to blame her for the Mimic’s trail of bodies.

Lady Barb looked pale as she ran her fingers over the bruises, then pushed the boy into bending over the table. Emily looked away, sickened. Lady Barb’s voice was cold and clinical, but Emily knew her well enough to hear the outrage she couldn’t quite hide.

“No sign of rectal damage,” she said. “But, under the circumstances, it’s a small mercy.”

Emily shook her head when Lady Barb motioned for her to take a look. She’d always disliked examining private parts in class, even though the parts were mounted on a homunculus. Here, she didn’t want to strip the boy of what little privacy he had left...no, that wasn’t entirely true. She didn’t want to see any signs of whatever else had happened to him. It was selfish, but she couldn’t help herself.

“No physical reason for inability to talk,” Lady Barb noted. “Muteness probably comes from fear. Mental damage is a very strong possibility.”

No
, Emily thought. The Allied Lands stigmatized any signs of mental trauma or illness, fearing that it was a sign of necromancy. There were no psychologists to help coax the boy out of his trauma, no one who might be willing to help...she closed her eyes, wondering if there was something she could do to help. But she couldn’t take in everyone, could she?

“Pass me the painkilling potion,” Lady Barb ordered. Her voice was still clinical, almost completely dispassionate. “And then stand ready to help me if necessary.”

Emily hated her at that moment, hated her cold clinical approach to the problem. Cold logic told her that rage and fire wouldn’t help, but cold logic was no comfort. Lady Barb took the potion, helped the boy to drink enough of it to numb his entire body, then started casting spells over his back and buttocks. The infection would have to be removed before the skin could be healed.

It hadn’t been once, Emily told herself, as she watched, fighting to avoid retching again and again. The boy had been beaten to within an inch of his life, not once, but many times. Each of the scars lay on an older scar...she wasn’t even sure how the boy had remained alive for so long. How often had he been beaten that he’d managed to keep going despite the pain?

She watched the scars heal up, remembering one of the lectures Lady Barb had given her class when they’d talked about working as healers. It was quite possible for someone to be tortured, healed and then tortured again, prolonging his torment indefinitely. Lady Barb had told them that it wasn’t
quite
a violation of Healer Oaths, but they might have to be prepared to decide if they wanted to cooperate or not. And, if they decided poorly, they might be blamed for the whole affair.

“We can’t send him back,” she said, as the boy slipped into an enchanted sleep. Lady Barb helped him down to the floor and placed him on a rug, but even so he didn’t look comfortable. Emily wondered what nightmares would torment his sleep, then decided she didn’t want to know. “What are we going to do with him?”

Lady Barb shook her head. “I’ll have to talk to the headman,” she said. “He will have to make the final decision.”

She turned and headed for the door. “Stay with him,” she added, as she picked up her staff. “He shouldn’t wake up for a few hours, but just in case...keep an eye on him.”

Emily watched her go, then turned back to the boy, picked up a blanket and draped it over his body. He looked small, too small. He’d been deprived of food as well as love and care.

Poor bastard
, she thought.
But we can help him, can’t we
?

I
T WAS NEARLY TWO HOURS BEFORE
Lady Barb returned, two hours that Emily spent alternately reading a book and keeping an eye on the boy. He twitched and moaned in his sleep, but not enough to break the spell. Emily watched him, wondering if there was something she could do to help, yet nothing came to mind. All she could do was watch.

She shuddered as she looked down at the pale skin covering his back. It would be days, if she recalled correctly, before the skin had tanned enough to blend in with the rest of his body, but at least it wasn’t scarred. Emily couldn’t escape the memory of looking down at the scars and wondering just what sort of person would do such a thing to a defenseless boy. It wasn’t punishment, she told herself firmly, it was
abuse
. No child deserved to be beaten within an inch of his life.

How long would he have lasted without their help? His scars had already been infected. It wouldn’t have been long before the infection killed him. Even a necromantic rite would have been kinder.

She tried to concentrate on her book, but her thoughts kept mocking her, pointing out that her stepfather hadn’t been so bad. He’d never laid a finger on her. But the thought made her sick.

She looked up as the door opened and a grim-faced Lady Barb stepped inside. Emily watched as she walked over to the child and cast a handful of spells, then swore out loud and rolled the child over. His chest looked unmarked, but he was so thin that Emily could see his bones clearly. He looked like a famine victim from a third world country.

“I spoke with the headman,” Lady Barb said. “His...aunt and uncle believe that he was possessed.”

Emily stared at her in disbelief. Possessed?

“Or so they claim,” Lady Barb added. “There are odd traces of magic on him, but nothing demonic.”

“Oh,” Emily said.

She struggled to remember what little she knew of demons and demon magic, but there was almost nothing in the open section of Whitehall’s library beyond a single word:
don’t
. Shadye had wanted to sacrifice her to a demon-like creature, she knew that much, yet it was one of the few issues the Grandmaster seemed reluctant to talk about. The one time she’d asked, he’d told her to leave it alone.

“It’s not uncommon for someone to be touched by wild magic to the point where their behavior becomes erratic,” Lady Barb said. “You know just how many spells there are that influence behavior.”

Emily nodded. Even First Years knew a handful of mind control spells, as well as simpler tricks to influence and manipulate their rivals and enemies. It was yet another reminder of why Whitehall was so important. Someone on the outside, practicing on defenseless mundanes, could do a hell of a lot of damage before he or she was stopped. But this boy didn’t seem to have any magic of his own.

“It doesn’t help that his parents died years ago,” Lady Barb added. “I suspect his aunt and uncle were reluctant to take him into their home.”

Emily shivered, remembering her stepfather ranting about how much she cost him. It was almost nothing, she knew, because she practically brought herself up, yet cold logic was no defense against his words. He’d told her, time and time again, that he only put a roof over her head out of the goodness of his heart. Part of her had believed him – and part of her knew that he had resented her presence.

It would be worse, she suspected, for peasants in the mountainside. There was no social security network, apart from what the other villagers could provide...and they weren’t wealthy enough to provide much, even if they wanted to. An extra mouth could make the difference between surviving the winter and starving to death. And a young boy, barely on the edge of his teens, would be little help on the farm.

“I don’t think it matters,” she said, pushing her thoughts aside. “We can’t send him back to them.”

Lady Barb looked down at the sleeping child. “I don’t think we have a choice,” she admitted. “We have no legal authority to take the boy from his guardians.”

Emily felt her mouth drop open. No words emerged.

“We could take a magician – I have taken magicians, in the past,” Lady Barb continued, softly. “But this boy isn’t a magician.”

Emily found her voice. “You can’t mean to say you’ll leave him here?”

She pressed on before Lady Barb could answer. “This boy came very close to death,” she added. Her voice rose until she was almost shouting at the older woman. “If he goes back there, they’ll undo all the work we did and finish the job. We cannot send him back.”

Lady Barb held up one hand, but Emily hadn’t finished. “We can find him somewhere else to go,” she continued. “Or we can even take him with us.”

“And then...what?” Lady Barb said. She looked up at Emily, meeting her eyes. “Do you intend to keep picking up strays?”

Emily remembered Jasmine and flushed. “Yes,” she said, bluntly. “If someone has to do it, I will.”

She gritted her teeth, preparing to argue. It would be simple enough to have the boy sent to Cockatrice and given work in her castle. Or Imaiqah’s father might like an apprentice. Or...

“I understand how you feel,” Lady Barb said. “And I understand your feelings, but we don’t have any legal power to intervene.”

“To hell with legalities,” Emily snarled. Magic billowed around her, feeding on her anger. “We can just
take
him from them. Or we could buy him from them. Or we could just fake his death and say we destroyed the body. We...”

Her entire body froze, solid.

“I understand how you feel,” Lady Barb repeated. There was a cold edge to her voice that made Emily shiver, inwardly. “Do you think this is the worst I’ve seen up here?”

Emily tried to break the hex holding her in place, but failed.

“People who become cripples rarely last very long,” Lady Barb reminded her. “Old men and women are lucky to be allowed to remain in the houses over the winter months, no matter how much they did for their children. I’ve seen girls and boys forced to marry each other, no matter what they think about it. I’ve seen husbands beat their wives and wives beat their husbands; parents beating children and children turning on parents when they’re old enough to claim their inheritance. It’s a savage life up here, Emily, and you can’t help them by fixing one tiny piece of the problem.”

She caught her breath. “The law – such as it is up here – raises no objection to beating one’s children or relatives. Even if you took this boy, you wouldn’t be able to help others...and the peasants would start to hide from us. They don’t mind us taking magical children away, but they do object to losing mundane children. And we
need
to be able to work with them.”

So we compromise
, Emily thought, struggling to free herself. She wanted to shout and scream at Lady Barb for allowing this to happen, then rage at herself for not realizing that she would see worse than natural injuries on the trip. She’d known – she knew enough about the past to know that peasant life was no bed of roses – and yet she hadn’t actually comprehended what it was really like. She recalled a handful of bucolic images she’d seen at school, during what had laughingly passed for history lessons, and shuddered. Life in the fields had never been fun for people who had no alternative.