Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) (26 page)

Emily winced. Somehow, the thought of being separated from the snake was unbearable. She knew, logically, that it was part of the bond she’d formed with the creature, but it didn’t matter. There was no way she wanted to leave the snake behind when they left the mountains.

“There are students with other dangerous pets,” she said. First Years were rarely allowed animals, but she’d seen older students with large dogs or other familiars. “Why not a Death Viper?”

“Because,” Lady Barb pointed out sarcastically, “none of the other pets are lethal to the touch.”

She shrugged. “
You
are immune to the snake’s poison. You
may
be immune to the rotting touch. But, for anyone else, your pet is a deadly menace. And you do know how the bonds work? If you get angry at someone, the snake might attack them.”

“The snake was going to kill me,” she said. “I didn’t have a choice. And I
like
him...”

She stopped. She hadn’t had any sense of the snake’s gender before. It had honestly never occurred to her that it
had
a gender.

“That’s the familiar bond talking,” Lady Barb said.

Emily shuddered. She could understand why Lady Barb was concerned, but at the same time she honestly couldn’t get rid of the snake. There were ways to break the bond, she knew, yet she’d never heard of them being applied willingly. The snake was effectively part of her now.

“I will have to give the matter some thought,” Lady Barb said. She motioned for Emily to sit down at the table, then produced yet more bread and cheese from the kitchen. “What happened between you and Rudolf? I hope it wasn’t
he
who took your shirt.”

Emily flushed. Lady Barb had seen right through the glamor. “It was damaged,” she said, shortly. If she went into details, Lady Barb might destroy the snake at once. In hindsight, she’d come far too close to death. “It wasn’t his fault.”

“Glad to hear it,” Lady Barb said. She put a piece of cheese on bread and nibbled it slowly. “And what actually
did
happen between you?”

“He told me that he was running away from an arranged marriage,” Emily said, softly. “Is that actually true?”

“It isn’t uncommon,” Lady Barb said, thoughtfully. “Why
didn’t
you stop him?”

Emily hesitated, then pushed forward. “I thought we weren’t meant to get involved in local politics.”

Lady Barb gave her a sharp look. “And the answer?”

“I felt sorry for him,” Emily confessed.

“His father was unhappy,” Lady Barb said. “But there was something odd about him, something that bothered me.”

She looked down at the table, then back up at Emily. “What were your impressions of him?”

“The father?” Emily asked. “I think he is the sort of person who will ignore his son’s feelings when he stands to benefit.”

“Something most aristocrats have in common,” Lady Barb said, dryly. “I believe he was under the impression that you were going to bring him back.”

Emily met her eyes. “Should I have brought him back?”

“Perhaps not,” Lady Barb said. “We aren’t meant to get involved in local politics.”

“We may not have a choice,” Emily said. “I found several bodies, too.”

Lady Barb stared at her, alarm in her eyes. “That is the sort of thing that should be mentioned
first
,” she snapped, as soon as Emily had finished. “Why didn’t you tell me at once?”

Emily stared down at her hand, unsure. Lady Barb was right. She should have mentioned the bodies at once, even dragged Lady Barb out to see them. But they’d slipped her mind...

Lady Barb stood up and touched Emily’s forehead, casting a light spell. “Someone used magic to hide the bodies,” she said, grimly. “Quite a subtle spell; if you hadn’t been banged on the head, you might have forgotten the bodies altogether.”

“I didn’t notice,” Emily confessed. She cursed under her breath. Lin had used subtle magic to avoid detection, but this was far worse. “I...”

“That is something of the point,” Lady Barb pointed out, dryly. “But it’s odd.”

Emily looked up at her. “How so?”

“Necromancers are rarely subtle,” Lady Barb said. “Why would one of them take a handful of children and use them for power, then
hide
the bodies?”

“I...I don’t know,” Emily confessed. Necromancers went insane; the first touch of necromancy started them on the path to madness. It was a law of nature. But it did take time for them to collapse completely. “It could be a newborn necromancer.”

“Perhaps,” Lady Barb said. She looked over at the snake. “Can your friend tell us anything useful?”

Emily shook her head. “The bodies weren’t there last season,” she said. “But I don’t know what it means by a season.”

Lady Barb nodded. “I think I should take a look at the bodies,” she said. “If there is a necromancer running around, we have to deal with him.”

Emily shuddered. The spell had left her feeling violated, even though she knew she had been lucky. If she’d forgotten the bodies completely, the necromancer would have hidden his victims successfully. It was quite possible that the parents of the missing children had forgotten they’d even existed...

No
, she told herself firmly.
A mother wouldn’t lose track of her children. Just because mine probably hasn’t even noticed I’m gone...

“Someone broke into this building,” she said. “Could it be the necromancer?”

“It’s a possibility,” Lady Barb agreed. “But there’s too much about this case that doesn’t make sense.”

She cleared her throat. “Lord Gorham expects you to be punished for not bringing his son back to the castle,” she said. “You can stay here while I go hunting for the bodies. Don’t go outside, but help someone if they come here and ask for it.”

“And pretend I’ve been thrashed,” Emily said, crossly. “Can you find the bodies without me?”

“I can follow your tracks, I think,” Lady Barb said. Emily wasn’t sure that it would be easy, but held her tongue. “In the meantime, I want you to write out a full report for the Grandmaster. We can put it in the postal coach before we leave town.”

Emily nodded, reluctantly.

“Then sew up some basic runes,” Lady Barb added. “We can provide ourselves with some basic protections, now we know to be alert.”

“Understood,” Emily said. She hated sewing – unlike most of the female students, it wasn’t a skill she’d been taught as a child – but there was no alternative. “If someone is using subtle magic, is it possible that Lord Gorham might be affected?”

“It is,” Lady Barb said. “It’s also possible that he or Rudolf might be the mystery magician. That’s why we’re going to his castle tomorrow.”

She picked up her staff and walked out of the building, theatrically slamming the door behind her. Emily looked over at the snake, then stood and retrieved parchment and a pair of quill pens from Lady Barb’s bag. Carefully, she wrote out an account of everything that had happened, grateful for the essays Sergeant Miles had made her write. He’d taught her how to be observant – and to make sure she wrote down everything, no matter how seemingly inconsequential. The smallest clue, he’d said, could lead to the most significant piece of information.

Emily felt her fingers ache as she finished the letter, but she retrieved another piece of parchment and carefully started to draft a letter to Jade. The words flowed easier, she was relieved to discover, now that they’d sorted out their relationship. Perhaps they could be good friends, after all. She smiled as she reread it, wondering what he would make of her observations of village life. The only detail she’d glossed over was Hodge’s attempt to rape her. Jade didn’t have to know about it. Or, for that matter, about the snake.

The sun was setting in the sky when Lady Barb returned. Emily took one look at her drawn, white face and hurriedly boiled water as Lady Barb sat down, seemingly too exhausted to move another step. She made a mug of Kava, passed it to the older woman, then sat down facing her. Lady Barb gulped the liquid down, despite the heat. Emily watched, worried. She’d never seen Lady Barb so tired before, even when they’d walked all day.

“The bodies were
very
well hidden,” Lady Barb said, once she’d finished drinking. “A handful of glamors, a handful of runes...and a spell of forgetfulness, intended to prevent anyone from walking away with any memory of what they saw. But it’s a little harder to fool animals. Your snake clearly knew they were there.”

Emily nodded.

“Whoever did it isn’t a classically-trained magician,” Lady Barb continued. “It would be simple to destroy the bodies beyond recognition, but they settled for abandoning and concealing them. There were hints of vast power, combined with absolute ignorance. I think I might have noticed them even if I hadn’t been looking. There’s little as conspicuous as someone trying to hide.”

Lady Barb took a breath. “And the rite was strange too,” she added. “Necromancy isn’t
that
difficult.”

“I think he was going for life force, rather than magic,” Emily said, quietly. “The wounds were in the wrong place for magic.”

“It looked that way,” Lady Barb agreed. “But it doesn’t quite make sense.” She shook her head. “Let me see the letter to the Grandmaster.”

Emily passed her the scroll of parchment. Lady Barb skimmed it before adding a note of her own at the bottom and sealing it up, casting a handful of spells to ensure that the Grandmaster was the only one who could read it. Emily took it and placed it by the door, intending to give it to the post office before they left.

“I’ll have to write another one,” Lady Barb said. “If there is a necromancer on this side of the Blighted Lands, we may have a real problem on our hands.”

She looked over at the snake for a long moment. “I had an idea,” she added, changing the subject. “You can transfigure the snake into something less harmful.”

Emily narrowed her eyes. “A dog or a cat?”

“I was thinking a bracelet,” Lady Barb said. “You wear it, all the time. No one thinks anything of it. But when you need a secret weapon...”

“The snake comes back to life,” Emily said. She hesitated, wondering if it
was
a good solution to her problem. The part of her that was linked to the snake seemed divided on the issue. She wasn’t sure how the snake felt about it. “I’d have to keep the spell in place permanently.”

“You wouldn’t be the only person to carry a secret weapon,” Lady Barb pointed out. “And you are in far more danger than most of your classmates.”

Emily nodded, remembering the knife Alassa had strapped to her leg. It had saved both of their lives in Zangaria. A hidden snake – a hidden, absolutely lethal snake – would make a very useful weapon. If another necromancer came after her, she could order the snake to bite him...if a necromancer could be killed by snakebite. But poison had been used to kill necromancers in the past, hadn’t it?

And there was a necromancer roaming the mountains right now...

“There’s little hope of replacing the supplies we used in this town,” Lady Barb said. “I want you to write up a list of everything we used, and we’ll send it in a letter down to the nearest city. They’d have supplies to send back up here.”

Emily nodded and left the table. The guesthouses were meant to be kept fully stocked, but the mystery thief had taken too much to be easily replaced. Someone would have to see to it before any further help could be offered to the townsfolk. She wondered, absently, if she could work out what the thief had wanted from the stolen ingredients, before deciding that it was probably pointless. There hadn’t been anything unique to one or two potions in the storehouse, not when such ingredients were too expensive to waste. Everything that had been taken had a multitude of uses.

She wrote out a list anyway, careful to separate the ingredients she’d used from the ingredients that had been stolen, then walked back into the main room. Lady Barb had fallen asleep, resting her head on her arms as students had been known to do in the library. Emily smiled, placed the sheet of parchment on the far table, and looked at her snake. It was still lying beside the fire, asleep. Emily crept around Lady Barb and clambered up the ladder into the bedroom. It was dangerous to disturb sleeping magicians.

Despite her own tiredness, she didn’t really feel like sleep. Instead, she wrote out another letter, this one to Imaiqah. She was a little more honest with her oldest friend, but again kept the details about Hodge to herself. It wasn’t something she wanted to talk about, even to the only one of her friends who might have understood. Alassa would have wanted to know why she hadn’t killed the young man.

Finishing that letter, she wrote out another one to the Gorgon. She wasn’t actually sure if it would reach her – the Gorgon lands weren’t on the formal postal routes, which meant the letter would have to be delivered specially – but it was the thought that counted. Besides, the Gorgon had even fewer close friends than Emily herself. She finished the letter, undressed as fast as possible and walked over to the window. Outside, the moon was rising, casting its eerie light over the town. No one, even soldiers, could be seen in the streets below.

Emily had always liked the darkness, but this was different. The shadows could have hidden anything, from a vampire to a merely human enemy. And it
did
hide a necromancer. She peered into the darkness, wondering if the faint hints of light marked where someone had built a fire for the night...or if it was something more sinister, waiting for them. A shape fluttered across the window and she jumped, catching her breath, before she realized that it was nothing more harmful than a bat. Shaking her head, she turned and walked back to bed.

There were no marks on her skin, she discovered, not from where the snake had rested on her chest. She didn’t know if she was unharmed because of the bond or because the snake’s skin hadn’t had time to reach her bare flesh. Even now, with the snake downstairs, she could still feel it at the back of her mind, something that wasn’t quite
there
, but still present. There were some stories about mental links between humans and animals that had chilled her to the bone, but she didn’t seem to have picked up any of the bad effects. Or so she hoped.