Infinite Regress (16 page)

But it’s never that easy
, Emily thought, as she tapped on the classroom door.
I never really climbed out of mine
.

She pushed memories of well-meaning but incompetent school counselors out of her head as Professor Locke beckoned her into the room. A large map of the Allied Lands hung on one wall, which she recalled from her own lessons; the other walls showed portraits of famous people from history and a handful of detailed—and highly unrealistic—battle scenes. The painting of a famous sorceress who stopped an entire army was quite artistic, according to Lady Barb, but no one in their right mind would go to war wearing a chainmail bikini. It would be quite thoroughly uncomfortable.

“Ah, Emily,” Professor Locke said. “I have a small problem which I hope you will help me resolve.”

Emily frowned. “A small problem?”

“A small problem,” Professor Locke confirmed. “Adana of House Ashworth did not attend class.”

“Oh,” Emily said.

She bit down the response that came to mind. Her job as mentor didn’t include forcing students to go to class on time. If they didn’t develop the right study habits, she’d been told at the start, they would fail their exams and—eventually—be told they could not continue at Whitehall. Adana, no doubt, considered history to be an unimportant class. She’d probably been taught all the history her family considered important long before she’d been sent to Whitehall.

“I want you to find out why she skipped class and deal with it,” Professor Locke said. He cocked his head, consulting the wards. “Adana is in Classroom 7/17.”

Emily blinked in surprise. Classroom 7/17 was disused, like most of the other classrooms on the seventh level. Adana had no business being there, unless she was playing hide and seek with her friends. God knew Frieda and
her
friends had turned some of the disused levels into their own playing field over the last couple of years. They’d probably keep doing it too, unless they found themselves caught up in schoolwork. Perhaps Adana had merely started young.

“I’ll see to it, sir,” she said. “Do you want me to send her back to you?”

“No,” Professor Locke said. He shrugged. “I want you to do as you see fit.”

Emily nodded, then headed for the stairwell. The school grew quieter as she strode up the stairs, even though she’d expected to run into a gaggle of students playing games. She tensed, despite herself, as she reached the seventh level and hurried down the corridor. The air was cold and silent. Someone—a long time ago—had stripped all personality from the level. Even the portraits had been taken down and removed.

The school must have been bigger, once upon a time
, Emily thought.
Even with pocket dimensions and TARDIS-like structure, there’s far more space than anyone needs
.

She stopped outside Classroom 7/17 and peered inside. The room was cold and empty, dust lying on abandoned chairs and tables. Someone had removed everything apart from the basics, making it impossible to tell what the classroom had originally been used to teach. She glanced down and saw footprints making their way in and out of the classroom, leading towards a large wooden cupboard. A nasty thought ran through her mind as she hurried towards the cupboard and threw it open. A frog jumped out and hopped away at terrifying speed.

“Stop,” she shouted, spinning around. “I can’t undo the spell if you keep moving!”

The frog—Adana, she thought coldly—stopped and turned to face her. Emily felt a wave of anger, mixed with relief. At least she’d
found
the girl. Adana the frog peered up at her with disturbingly human eyes. Emily rested a finger against her warty back, carefully feeling out the spell. It wasn’t a standard prank, she noted immediately. The spellwork was far too advanced for that. Indeed, Adana had had very little hope of breaking the spell from the inside, even if she hadn’t been trapped in the cupboard. It was designed to practically make it impossible to cast the counterspell.

“It’s all right,” she said, as comfortingly as she could. “I can break the spell...”

There was a flash of light. Emily leaned backwards as the frog swelled, slowly morphing back into Adana. The younger girl looked pale, her eyes wide and staring; Emily couldn’t help thinking of Prunella, even as she put out a hand to steady Adana. Being a frog was quite bad enough, even without being unable to break the spell and being trapped in a dark cupboard. Emily didn’t want to
think
about what would have happened if the spell had worn off while Adana was trapped.

“Take a deep breath,” she advised. Adana would be used to being transfigured, surely? Lady Barb had told her that many magician families often transfigured their children randomly, just so the children became used to living in a different form. Fulvia had probably considered it to be a suitable punishment for real or imagined misdeeds. “Concentrate on your breathing.”

She forced herself to remain calm, despite her growing anger. Whoever had done this needed to pay. Adana hadn’t deserved to be tormented, had she? And even if she had, she didn’t deserve the prospect of a very messy death when the spell wore off. If she’d realized what would happen, she might well have been traumatized by the experience.

“I... I thank you,” Adana managed. “I thought I was going to be trapped in there forever.”

Emily scowled. Professor Locke had used the wards to find Adana, but only because she’d missed his class. If he hadn’t, no one would have known Adana was actually missing until the following morning, when she would have skipped breakfast and her early classes. It wasn’t as if Madame Razz would have looked for her, not when she’d assume Adana was merely trying to sneak around the school. In hindsight, she made a mental note to raise the issue with Aloha. Perhaps the mentors should quietly check on where their charges were before going to bed.

“You’re welcome,” she said, gently. “Who did this to you?”

Adana paled. “I...”

“You can tell me,” Emily said. She knew the code, she knew that younger students were supposed to handle such matters themselves, but
this
was no prank. Adana could have been killed! She wasn’t even sure what the wards would have done, if the spell had started to wear off. God knew
she’d
come far too close to killing Alassa without a flicker of intervention from the wards. “I need to know.”

“... Melissa,” Adana said.

Emily stared. Melissa?

She shook her head, firmly. “Melissa would not be stupid enough to pick a fight with a first year student,” she snapped. Melissa
wasn’t
stupid. “She’d run the risk of being expelled.”

“She hates me,” Adana said. “She...”

“She would not want to be expelled,” Emily pointed out, sharply. Melissa wanted to be a Healer. She’d never be able to reach her goal if she was expelled from Whitehall.
No one
would defend her for picking on a younger student. “If you must tell a lie, Adana, tell a convincing one.”

Adana looked down at the dusty floor. “Tiega,” she whispered. “It was her.”

That
, Emily conceded, was far more believable. Tiega’s family was magical. It was quite possible that she’d learned the transfiguration spell for self-defense. Given its power, it might well be effective against a student one or two years above her, particularly with the advantage of surprise. She had no idea just how powerful Tiega was, but if she’d been taught the basics by her family she was probably the most capable student in First Year.

“I see,” she said. It was a shame she didn’t dare use a truth spell. “Why?”

“We went back to our bedroom after lunch,” Adana said. She started to shake again. “And... and we got into a fight and she turned me into a frog and I couldn’t turn myself back and...”

“Take a breath,” Emily advised, dryly. The first time
she’d
been transfigured, she recalled, it had been a nasty shock too. Perhaps the spell had flaws, flaws that allowed elements of the frog’s mind to infect the human soul. She would have to get the spellwork off Tiega and take it apart, piece by piece, just to check. “You’ll have to work on your defenses.”

She sighed, inwardly. If Tiega could do that to Adana, what could she do to the girls who didn’t have
any
prior magical education? She was rooming with Jasmine as well as Adana, Emily recalled. The thought of her bullying the singer was horrific. But then, Jasmine probably
did
have some knowledge from the Travellers...

So did Adana
, Emily reminded herself.
And look what that got her
.

She gently removed her hand from Adana’s shoulder. “Go to the kitchens and get some water,” she advised. “And then I suggest you write a formal note of apology to Professor Locke for missing his class. He was not pleased.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Adana protested.

“I know,” Emily said. “But you need to write the note anyway. It’s good manners.”

She escorted Adana to the fourth level before pointing her onwards to the kitchens. Adana shouldn’t have any problems getting a glass of water, if nothing else. Emily shook her head as the younger girl hurried on her way, then took a deep breath to center herself. She
hated
bullies. The urge to do something horrific to Tiega was almost overpowering. And yet, she knew she didn’t dare lose control.

I would be no better than her
, she thought, as she entered the dorms.
And Gordian would use it as an excuse to expel me
.

The doors had been charmed to allow the mentors to enter, assuming there was a student already present in the room. Emily felt a flicker of
déjà vu
as she stepped into the room, remembering what it had been like to share such a room with two other students. She’d managed to get along with all of them, after a few prickly moments. Not everyone had been so lucky.

Tiega sat on her bed, reading a book. There was a resigned expression on her face as she looked up at Emily, as if she knew she was in trouble. Emily glanced at the other two beds—to her relief, they were both empty—and then walked over to Tiega. The younger girl put her book on the bedside table and crossed her arms under her breasts. Up close, she looked strikingly ugly. Emily couldn’t help feeling a flicker of sympathy for her, despite her anger. Tiega looked worse—far worse—than some of the mountain women she’d met in the Cairngorms.

“You could have killed Adana,” Emily said, flatly. She resisted the urge to sit down next to the younger girl. “You certainly caused her to miss a class, which could have landed her in hot water. Why?”

Tiega looked sullen. “Why do you care?”

“Because it’s my job to care,” Emily said, after a moment. “I’m here to help you.”

“No one cares about me,” Tiega said. She looked down at the carpeted floor. “You don’t care about me any more than my parents.”

Emily sighed. “I do care,” she said. She’d looked up House Worldweaver in the library, but there had been very little in the record books. The family hadn’t particularly distinguished itself in living memory. Tiega was, apparently, the youngest in her parent’s brood. “I’m here to help.”

“There’s no point,” Tiega said. “
Look
at me!”

“You cast a spell that should have been out of your reach for at least two years,” Emily pointed out, firmly. “I dare say you have the makings of a very powerful magician.”

“My family doesn’t think that way,” Tiega said.

“Then they’re being foolish,” Emily said. “Now, why did you cast the spell on Adana?”

“She was going on and on about
her
family,” Tiega said. “And about how she was going to be the Matriarch of House Ashworth one day. And then she called me an ugly troll half-breed.”

Emily winced. There were few worse insults in the Nameless World than suggesting that someone was a half-human hybrid. If there were people who taunted the Gorgon for being part of a twisted off-shoot of humanity... she shook her head in some irritation. No doubt Adana had played a role in her own downfall. Implying that Tiega’s father—or mother—had slept with a troll... for an adult, that would be practically an invitation to duel.

But that doesn’t excuse what Tiega did either,
she thought.

She glanced at the other two beds. “What happened to Jasmine?”

“I asked her to leave me alone,” Tiega said. “I just... I just wanted to be alone.”

“This would be
after
you transformed Adana and concealed her,” Emily said. “After classes too, right?”

“Yeah,” Tiega said.

Emily rubbed her eyes. She didn’t want to issue punishments of any kind, but she knew her duty. Tiega had crossed the line when she’d made Adana miss class and there was no escaping it. “You know I can’t let you get away with this?”

“I know,” Tiega said. The bitterness in her voice shocked Emily. “My parents never let me get away with anything either.”

“Report to the Warden,” Emily said, tiredly. She’d feel guilty for hours, afterwards, yet there was no choice. “I believe Adana has suffered enough, but I will have a stern talk with her anyway.”

Tiega snorted, rudely.

“This Saturday, we’ll all learn some spells,” Emily added, ignoring the snort. If nothing else, teaching the younger girls how to defend themselves would be interesting. She’d taught Frieda a few tricks back in Mountaintop. “And maybe we can work on getting you and Adana to get along.”

She stepped backwards. She’d have to read Adana the riot act too, although she had the feeling Adana had learned her lesson. There were taunts you
didn’t
issue unless you
wanted
a fight. Tiega rose, reluctance clearly written in her movements. Emily didn’t blame her.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Tiega said. “No one does.”

“I think you have talent,” Emily told her, firmly. She’d make sure to go through Tiega’s spell with her on Saturday. “And it’s high time you learned to use it.”

“E
MILY,”
A
LOHA SAID, THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
. “Do you have a moment?”