Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7) (7 page)

“I understand you were going to be working on your project,” the Gorgon said. “How did that go?”

“She wound up with a boyfriend,” Imaiqah said, quickly. “It was very sweet!”

“He isn’t my boyfriend,” Emily protested, feeling her cheeks heat. Beside her, Frieda giggled. “He isn’t...”

Imaiqah smirked. “We shall see,” she said. “But you did make it through to Fourth Year.”

“That’s very well done,” the Gorgon said.

“Thank you,” Emily said.

“I’m getting married,” Alassa said, drawing the conversation away from Emily. “You will be coming to the wedding, won’t you?”

The Gorgon looked shocked. “Would I be welcome?”

“By me,” Alassa said. “And Jade. And everyone else can go jump off the battlements.”

“Or throw
you
off the battlements,” the Gorgon predicted, mournfully. “That would be a tragic end to the wedding.”

“The last one was quite peaceful,” Alassa said. She nodded to Emily. “Of course, it
did
require someone to silence everyone with a spell.”

Emily nodded back, slowly. Markus and Melissa’s wedding had been small, with only a handful of guests. Melissa had deserved a bigger wedding, given what she’d had to do to get married to Markus, but she’d been disowned by her family. In the end, even her former friends had failed to make it. Emily couldn’t help feeling another stab of sympathy for someone who had started out as an enemy, or at least a rival. Melissa hadn’t deserved to be disowned, let alone cut off from her entire former life.

But at least she has Markus
, Emily thought.
They’ll get through it, won’t they
?

“So I heard,” the Gorgon said, breaking into Emily’s thoughts. “I didn’t know you had
that
sort of power.”

Emily cringed, inwardly. Gorgon magic was strange, different; it wasn’t easy to undo their ability to turn someone into a stone statue.
Emily
had been caught in the Gorgon’s magic and it had taken nearly a week for Whitehall’s staff to free them both from the spell. No wonder so many people were scared of gorgons...and now, she suspected, they would be scared of her too. It wasn’t something she’d ever wanted.

“I was desperate,” she said, shortly. The Gorgon was brilliant - there was a fine mind in there, combined with two additional years of schooling - and quite perceptive. She might reason out that a trick had been involved, although Emily hoped she would never figure out how it was actually done. “I tried something and it worked.”

“Yeah, well everyone is talking about it,” the Gorgon said. “You’re going to have everyone staring at you this year.”

“Again,” Alassa put in.

“Try and steal the show,” Emily urged. “Talk about your wedding or something,
please
!”

“Wear a glamor,” Frieda suggested. “Pretend to be a younger student or something. Hang out with us in Second Year.”

Alassa giggled. “I don’t think she’d do
that
,” she said. “Really.”

Emily shook her head, slowly. It was rare for the older students to hang around with the younger students, even if they were related. They were on entirely different levels, or so they believed, and even
talking
to younger students made them look weak in the eyes of their equals. It had never made any sense to her, but then...she rarely tried to talk to
anyone
outside her circle. Frieda was something of an exception to the rule.

“Then you’ll just have to endure it,” the Gorgon said, briskly. “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” Emily said.

“I hear Aloha has already returned to school,” the Gorgon said. “Have you seen her?”

Emily shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “I thought the upper classes were told to stay out of our way.”

“I think she’s in 5.07,” Imaiqah said. “That’s what she said on the chat parchment, anyway.”

“Be careful when you go there,” Frieda offered. “We were playing games up near the doors and they chased us away.”

“I think that had something to do with the racket you were making,” Imaiqah pointed out, dryly. “They
were
trying to study, weren’t they?”

“We were very quiet,” Frieda protested.

Emily smiled. She’d seen Frieda and her friends at play and
quiet
was not the word she would have used to describe them. The shouting and screaming alone was enough to put anyone off their work, while they had a tendency to run into empty classrooms and turn them into impromptu playrooms. For girls who were approaching seventeen, if they weren’t already there, they were remarkably childish. But then, at least they were enjoying themselves. It was more than could be said for herself before she’d come to Whitehall.

She looked up as dinner arrived: great steaming plates of goulash, bowls of noodles and boiled potatoes, slices of roast beef and chicken and giant tureens of soup. Frieda tucked in hastily, without anything resembling decorum; Emily shook her head in tired amusement before she started to ladle food onto her own plate. Frieda had never had enough to eat before she’d met Emily; even now, she ate far more than seemed humanly possible at each meal. But she definitely needed the energy. Magic tapped the body’s reserves far more than any physical exercise.

And she really was too thin when we first met
, Emily reminded herself.
She needed to bulk up before she drained herself too far and died
.

The food tasted heavenly, as always. Emily finished her plate and then pushed it into the center of the table rather than take another helping. It had always struck her as odd that Whitehall served so many
different
kinds of food, but perhaps, with students coming from all over the Allied Lands, it wasn’t strange at all. The food in Zangaria tended towards roast meat, overcooked potatoes and stewed vegetables. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it tended to get wearying after a while.

If someone had the money to buy meat
, she reminded herself. Poaching wasn’t forbidden in Cockatrice - she’d never been inclined to go hunting, let alone reserve wide swathes of the forest for her personal use - but elsewhere it was harshly punished.
The commoners are lucky if they get one helping of meat per week
.

She pushed the thought aside, angrily. Here, in Whitehall, it was easy to forget about Cockatrice and her responsibilities there. But she couldn’t look away, not when she knew just how many injustices had been perpetrated on a daily basis. People had been whipped, murdered, or worse, just for offending the old baron in some way. It wasn’t something she could allow to continue...

“Hey,” Imaiqah said, quickly. “Look behind you.”

Emily turned - and smiled as she saw Caleb standing at the door, looking uncertain. She didn’t really blame him, not when he was being forced to repeat an entire year. It shouldn’t have shamed him, she thought, but she knew it did; it shamed anyone who had to remain in the lower classes when their peers had advanced to Year Five. Caleb was a year older than the students he had to join...

“Better go speak to him,” Imaiqah urged. “He won’t get any food at all if he doesn’t come in.”

“We’ll save you some dessert,” Alassa added. “Unless it’s trifle, in which case we’ll eat it all.”

Emily hesitated, feeling an odd sensation in the pit of her stomach, and then rose and walked towards the door. Caleb looked relieved to see her, yet he seemed to have problems looking her in the eye. Maybe he’d been teased, too - Emily’s mother had told her what boys said to one another, when they thought girls weren’t listening - or maybe he was just awkward about stepping into a room infested with younger students. A year wasn’t
that
much of a gap, Emily thought, but...

The Gorgon stayed back a year
, she reminded herself, firmly.
But she was almost friendly anyway
.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said. She cast a privacy ward as she noted several people pretending not to listen to their conversation. “How was your family?”

Caleb colored, slightly. “My mother and my father are well,” he said. “Still disappointed in me, still thinking I should be doing something more
practical
with my time, but accepting that I want to remain at Whitehall.”

“That’s good,” Emily said, feeling a little tongue-tied. “And your siblings?”

“Casper is apparently in training to be a combat sorcerer,” Caleb said. His lips twitched into a smile, just for a second. “His master seems to think he isn’t
quite
ready to be released, not yet.”

Emily nodded. Jade had been Master Grey’s student for two years before he’d been released, although he
had
been working with Sergeant Miles rather than setting out on his own. Even so, it suggested that Jade was a truly brilliant student. Alassa was lucky to have him.

“The younger ones are still at school,” Caleb added. “Well, Karan just entered Stronghold - she made a fuss about me not going because she wanted an older brother there - while Marian is studying her letters and numbers before she comes into her magic. Croce had a very successful first term, or so he says. He spent half the summer in Melrose with a friend of his.”

“You spent half the summer in Zangaria,” Emily pointed out.

Caleb smiled. “It was far better than spending it with my family,” he said, looking down at his hands. They were still covered with faint scars. “My parents were none too pleased when I managed to injure myself.”

“You recovered,” Emily said.

“That’s not the point,” Caleb said. “The point is that I messed up and hurt myself - and almost hurt someone else.”

“I know,” Emily said, awkwardly.

“They asked a few questions about you too,” Caleb added, reluctantly. “Mother wanted to know what you intended to do with yourself. Father talked about enlisting you into his great plan to wage war on the necromancers.”

Emily blinked in surprise. Killing a necromancer wasn’t easy.
She
was the only person known to have killed two, both through cheating. Sending an army of men armed with swords and spears against a necromancer was dangerously futile; they’d just be providing the necromancer with more fuel for his magic. Caleb’s father had to know better, didn’t he?

“They’d smash any army we sent,” she said, slowly. “Even a hundred combat sorcerers would have problems stopping a necromancer.”

“He thinks we need to take the initiative,” Caleb said. “They’re killing us, right now, with gentle pressure along the borders. We almost lost Whitehall two years ago. He thinks we need to find a way to strike back.”

“If we can,” Emily said. She had some tricks she knew she could use, but she wasn’t sure she dared let them out of the bag. The nuke-spell might be worse than necromancy, once it spread widely. “Maybe we should wait until after I graduate.”

By which time he might have thought better of it
, she thought, inwardly.

She paused, trying to think of something to say. “Are you going to join us for dinner?”

Caleb hesitated. “I’m not hungry,” he said. “I...”

“Come join us,” Emily urged. She liked his company, even though she knew her friends were going to tease her. It wasn’t as if he was her
real
boyfriend, merely someone she enjoyed spending time with. “There will be trifle, if Alassa hasn’t eaten it all.”

She caught Caleb’s arm and tugged him gently towards the table, dispelling the privacy ward as they moved. Imaiqah smirked at them as they approached, then motioned for Frieda to move to one side, clearing the way for Caleb to sit next to Emily. He didn’t seem put out by the Gorgon at all, Emily noted in relief. She wasn’t sure she would have liked him so much if he’d been repulsed by one of her friends.

“Welcome back,” Imaiqah said, as they sat. The servers were already bringing out pudding, along with jugs of cream and glasses of juice. “Did you have a nice chat?”

“Yes, thank you,” Emily said, blushing. Privacy wards made it impossible for anyone to overhear their words - or even lip-read - but they tended to be easy to see. They could have been talking about something far more romantic than Caleb’s parents and the looming threat of the necromancers. “We did.”

The Gorgon cleared her throat. “As a student who entered Fourth Year,” she said, “do you have any words of advice?”

Caleb frowned, running one scarred hand through his brown hair. “Make sure you don’t miss the Grandmaster’s speech tomorrow,” he said. “They sometimes set an essay on the speech and its meaning, when they run out of other horrid things to do.”

“Seriously?” Alassa said. “But no one ever pays attention to those things.”

“Pay attention to this one,” Caleb said. “It’s quite important.”

He looked down at his hand. “And try not to injure yourself too,” he added. “That’s
also
quite important.”

“I can see why,” Frieda said. There was an odd edge in her voice. “You nearly killed yourself.”

“A moment of carelessness,” Caleb agreed. He looked at Imaiqah. “You have a project plan ready to go?”

“Yes,” Imaiqah said. She glanced at Alassa. “How long do we have to make it work?”

“You’ll be expected to present a progress report just before the first break, then a completed project after the
second
break,” Caleb said. “Didn’t you have this explained to you at the start of Third Year?”

“It’s always better to hear from someone who’s actually gone though the experience,” Imaiqah said, blandly.

She’s trying to get him to open up
, Emily realized, suddenly. Imaiqah might not be as studious as the Gorgon, or Emily herself, but she was perfectly capable of reading notes and following instructions. And yet, by asking Caleb questions, she was encouraging him to talk about a subject he might find comfortable.
Clever
.

“I didn’t have
that
much experience before I managed to put myself out of the running for the year,” Caleb pointed out. He held up his scarred hand. “All I can tell you is that they will go over everything you do with a chilling precision.”