Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) (22 page)

Lady Barb gave her a long considering look. “Not this one, I think,” she said. “You couldn’t fit through the entrance.”

Emily flushed. The square wasn’t large enough to allow anyone bigger than a baby to climb inside. In hindsight, she really had been lucky when she’d bagged the Cockatrice. Lady Barb smirked at her expression before drawing up another pocket dimension of her own. Emily watched as it took on shape and form, attached to a specific location rather than an object, and then yawned open in front of her. Somehow, looking into the drab greyness, stepping inside no longer seemed a good idea.

She braced herself and stepped inside. The icy cold hit her as she crossed the threshold, forcing her to hug herself as she turned, just in time to see the entrance vanish. She was surrounded by greyness, a pulsing mass of...
something
that pressed against her mind. It was easy to imagine something watching her, even though she wasn’t sure why. She reached out and touched...nothing. The pocket dimension, she realized slowly, was like a giant hamster ball. No matter how hard she ran, she would never escape. It felt like a prison. Hell, it
was
a prison.

There was a sudden shiver as the entrance reopened. Emily cringed from the light, then stepped back out into the normal world. It was so
colorful
compared to the greyness of the pocket dimension.

Lady Barb collapsed the dimension behind her, then gave her a rather droll look. “Satisfied?”

Emily nodded.

Lady Barb rolled her eyes and put her back to work.

Emily crafted two more basic dimensions, then started to experiment with some of the spells. Half of them collapsed as soon as she altered the spells too far, but the remainder held together remarkably well. A little fiddling, Emily decided, and the dimension could be programmed to collapse at a preset time. Combined with the nuke-spell...the possibilities were endless. What would happen, she asked herself, if a nuclear-level blast had nowhere to go?

“You have to be very careful,” Lady Barb said, as she collapsed the final dimension. “It’s quite easy to drain yourself trying out new spells.”

Emily nodded. She felt tired...not completely exhausted, but tired enough not to want to continue. It felt like experimenting with some of the more complex spells Mistress Sun had taught her, including a handful that had forced her to lie down right after casting them. But it had all been worthwhile...

“One last experiment, then,” Lady Barb said. She picked up the square and broke it down into its component sections. “I want you to try to anchor the dimension to this clearing, rather than to an object.”

“I’ll try,” Emily said.

She concentrated, but it was far harder to envisage the opening into the pocket dimension without something to serve as a guide. Every time she tried, the dimension refused to work properly or drained her too far to hold it together. She ground her teeth in frustration, then looked up at Lady Barb pleadingly.

The older woman took pity on her. “I’d be astonished if you managed to master it so quickly,” she said. “It took me weeks before I could even shape a basic dimension without an anchor.”

Emily was too tired to be angry. “Then why did you ask me to try?”

“Because some students leapfrog ahead if they don’t know the limits,” Lady Barb told her, sardonically. “You’ve already shown a definite talent for charms and spell improvisation. I thought...why not let you try to build a proper dimension?”

She shook her head. “But it will take time for you to master it, I think,” she added. “I think you can do a little practice each day.”

Emily nodded wearily.

“But you will not experiment with pocket dimensions without supervision,” Lady Barb warned her. There was a grim note in her voice that left Emily with no doubt that disobedience would be a very bad idea. “If you do, you will not enjoy the consequences – if you survive.”

“Understood,” Emily said, looking down at the ground. She’d learned that lesson, even if part of her sometimes resented being held back. But then, she wasn’t really being held back at all, was she? “I won’t experiment without you.”

Lady Barb passed her a vial of nutrient potion, waited for her to drink it and then stood. “It’s another hour or two to the town,” she said, “and it looks like rain. We don’t want to be caught out here if we can avoid it.”

Emily glanced up. Dark clouds were forming, high overhead, and the temperature was dropping rapidly. The weather here wasn’t as variable as the weather surrounding Whitehall, owing to the high concentration of magic in the air, but it was still capable of changing at remarkable speed. She stood, packed the mug away in her bag and followed the older woman as she turned and led the way out of the clearing.

“How long will it be,” she asked, as they walked, “until I can make a dimension within seconds?”

“You have the power,” Lady Barb said. “All you need is the skill...and that will come, in time. Practice makes perfect.”

“Thank you,” Emily said. “I won’t let you down.”

T
HE RAIN STRUCK THEM THIRTY MINUTES
later. Lady Barb erected a ward to keep it from falling directly on them, but water still splashed around their feet as they continued down the path. Emily was grateful for the charmed boots she’d purchased at Dragon’s Den; no matter how wet it was, they wouldn’t allow water to soak her feet. But it was still a relief when the rainstorm came to an end and they looked down into another valley.

Emily sucked in her breath once she saw the town. It was larger than the village they’d left in the morning, with another castle on the nearby peak looming over the valley. She’d learned more than she wanted to know about good locations for castles, thanks to Alassa, and she had to admit that whoever had designed this particular castle had done an excellent job. It would be extremely difficult to get an army up the hill without being seen.

Magic could probably even the odds
, she thought,
but if the defenders had magic too...

She broke off that thought as Lady Barb led her down into the village. The houses looked better-made than the ones in the previous village. Here, they were almost all made of stone and looked remarkably sturdy, even to her untrained eyes.

But why do they have grass on their roofs
? She wondered.
On a stone house?

Her thoughts sharpened as she realized that almost no one seemed to be out in the open, even though it was still raining heavily. A chill ran down her spine as she recalled countless horror movies, then grew worse as they walked into the center of town and saw the soldiers.

Emily had never met a soldier before traveling to Whitehall, but she’d learned a great deal since then, thanks to the sergeants. These soldiers looked professional, wearing leather armor and colors that marked them out as household troops. They all wore the same outfits too, which suggested they weren’t mercenaries. And they didn’t seem to be harassing the townspeople too much...but that they were there at all was worrying.

She shook her head, mentally. The sergeants had told their classes that many soldiers couldn’t be trusted not to harass the local civilians, no matter where they were based or what their orders were. Looting, rapes, and even fights weren’t uncommon, even when the soldiers were at home. When they were on the march, invading another kingdom, it was even worse. Still, Emily wasn’t too surprised. The aristocrats, even enemy aristocrats, were off-limits, but civilians were fair game. Europe had seen the same pattern until the First World War.

Lady Barb stopped as one of the soldiers marched over to confront them. Emily suspected, looking at the slightly finer cut of his clothes, that he was an officer, although it was difficult to be sure. The Allied Lands had hundreds of different military units and they all had different ways of signifying an officer. But his outfit was clean, suggesting that he wasn’t used to actually being out and about with his men. Or maybe she’d been imbued with more of Sergeant Harkin’s feelings about officers than she’d realized.

“Lady Sorceress,” the officer said, addressing Lady Barb. He didn’t look at Emily, for which she was grateful. Most of his men seemed to be carefully looking elsewhere. “We are looking for the missing heir.”

Lady Barb’s back seemed to stiffen, just slightly. “The missing heir?”

“Rudolf, the son of our lord,” the officer informed her. “He has gone missing. We have searched the town, but he is nowhere to be found.”

There’s an entire mountain range to search
, Emily thought, sardonically. She kept the thought to herself, preferring to stay unnoticed as long as possible. Maybe the town could be searched rapidly, but it was right underneath the castle. If Rudolf had wanted to hide, he could have left his father’s lands completely. It wasn’t as if it had taken more than a few hours for them to leave one lord’s territory and move into the next.

“He may well have hidden elsewhere,” Lady Barb said. Perhaps she’d had the same thought. “Do you have any objection to us moving into the magician’s house?”

The officer shook his head. “The building remains sealed,” he said. “I don’t think he’s hiding there.”

“We will be sure to check,” Lady Barb assured him. Emily could hear a hint of mockery in her tone. “And if you’ll excuse us...”

She walked past the officer and headed down the street. Emily followed, wishing the soldiers would keep their eyes to themselves as she strode past their positions. All of them were staring, even though some of them surely should’ve known better—the older ones looked just as old and scarred as Sergeant Harkin. Their stares left her feel exposed, almost naked...and yet she felt more confident than she ever had before, when dealing with male stares. Hodge had taught her, quite by accident, that she actually could defend herself.

Emily calmed herself. She could handle it. And she could follow Lady Barb’s lead.

And then she remembered what she’d overheard at the dance.

“The other lord was building up his army,” she muttered, as soon as they were out of earshot. “Is this lord doing the same?”

“Probably,” Lady Barb said. “That isn’t a good sign.”

She said nothing else as they walked down the street. Emily looked around, catching sight of a temple built out of stone, resembling a Greco-Roman building from the classical age on Earth. It didn’t look to be dedicated to a particular god, she decided; there were no statues outside, indicating who or what was worshipped within its walls. That wasn’t too surprising; the locals simply didn’t have the resources to build many temples. Their gods would have to share.

The thought made her smile. Religion was odd in the Allied Lands, at least compared to Earth. There were hundreds of gods, but a person might worship only one or two in his or her lifetime, making the choice when they reached adulthood. Parents didn’t seem to expect children to follow in their footsteps; instead, they taught the children that all the gods were real and let them choose their own to worship. In some ways, she had to admit that it worked better than the system on Earth, where parents were known to disown or kill children for changing their religion.

She straightened up as she heard a clap of thunder in the distance. The rainstorm seemed to be moving back towards the town. Lady Barb stopped outside a long low building, pressing her hand against the door while casting a series of charms. The door unlocked itself, allowing them to step into the building. Inside, it was dark and cold.

Emily watched as Lady Barb cast a light-spell, covering her eyes until they became accustomed to the glare. The main room was dusty, while the next two rooms looked disordered, as if the people who’d last been in the building hadn’t bothered to clean up before they’d departed. Lady Barb muttered a vile curse, just loud enough for Emily to hear, as she peeked into the kitchen. Emily sniffed and almost gagged. There was a foul smell in the air.

She followed Lady Barb into the kitchen, wondering if something had been left out to decay. “Are these places supposed to be so ill-kept?”

“No. I shall be filing official complaints,” Lady Barb said, tartly. “They should have cleaned the damn place before they left.”

Emily looked back into the main room. It wasn’t even remotely clean – and they were meant to be seeing patients. The magicians knew the importance of basic sanitation, but not all of them seemed to care. They could cure almost anything that didn’t kill them outright. She glanced into the next room and scowled. The potions table – she recognized its purpose because of the burn marks – was dangerously unstable.

Lady Barb climbed up a ladder into the loft. Moments later, her voice drifted back. “They cleaned the beds, at least,” she said. “We’ll have to hire some people to help clean the building before we start seeing patients.”

Emily followed her up the ladder. The loft was smaller than she’d expected – she had to duck her head to avoid the ceiling – but there was something about it that charmed her. Two glass windows – rare outside the big cities – allowed her to look down into the street, while four beds, pressed close together, provided sleeping accommodation. Lady Barb pointed to a cupboard and ordered Emily to make the beds, then clambered back down the ladder and vanished. Sighing, Emily did as she was told.

It still amused her just how few of her classmates at Whitehall had known how to make their own beds when they’d come to the school. Even some of the poorest students hadn’t known, while Alassa and her fellow aristocrats had always had servants to do the work for them. Emily had been making her own bed since she was a child, as well as washing her own sheets, something they
didn’t
have to worry about at Whitehall. Everything was washed by the servants and then returned to the student bedrooms.

She made up two of the beds, then scrambled back down the ladder in time to see Lady Barb re-enter the building. “I’ve had a word with a couple of people,” Lady Barb said, as she closed the door. “The entire room will have to be cleaned thoroughly, so they’ll be coming in the morning. There’s no point in you expending effort outside the potions lab, so you can concentrate on that tomorrow.”