Wedding Hells (Schooled in Magic Book 8) (35 page)

She sighed. “By the time we get to this point, it’s possible those of us who actually
work
at the school may be able to get some input into the decision. Mistress Irene has spent the last two weeks in the White City, trying to help steer the discussion. It may not have helped.”

“I would have thought they’d select the best candidate,” Emily mused.

“The candidates do have to meet certain requirements,” Lady Barb said. “A powerful sorcerer, a capable diplomat...someone skilled in balancing the competing factions that make up the school board...but there are quite a few people who meet the requirements and
want
the job. The winner will be the one who commands enough support from the factions in the White City.”

“But that would leave him beholden to everyone who supported him,” Emily objected.

“Yes, it will,” Lady Barb agreed. “The previous Grandmaster had a measure of independence because he successfully balanced a number of factions. Not everyone was happy with that, Emily. The next candidate may be forced to be more responsive to the White City. Life may grow harder for all of us.”

She shrugged. “In any case, I have to leave tomorrow morning,” she added. “I’ll try and make it back for the wedding, but I can’t make any promises.”

“I’m sure Alassa will understand,” Emily said.

“Keep an eye on the queen,” Lady Barb told her. “And if she wants a confidante, try to be there for her.”

Emily blinked. Queen Marlena had barely spoken a word to her since she’d arrived in the castle. She’d certainly not invited Emily into her private chambers for a chat. Emily had half-expected
something
, after it became clear that King Randor wasn’t pleased about her courtship, but the Queen had been preoccupied. And she didn’t look very well...

The question slipped out before she could stop it. “Is she unwell?”

Lady Barb gave her a reproving look. “Am I in the habit of sharing
your
medical condition with everyone?”

“No,” Emily said, feeling her face heat. “Is she being poisoned or cursed or...?”

“There’s nothing
physically
wrong with her,” Lady Barb said, cutting her off. “Her problems...it’s unlikely she’d choose to talk to you about them, but if she does I want you to try to be sympathetic.”

Emily frowned. Nothing
physically
wrong?

“I’ll do my best,” she promised. She hesitated, then met the older woman’s eyes. “Did you hear about Lord Hans?”

“I heard you turned him into a slug and stepped on him,” Lady Barb said. “I assume that wasn’t actually true?”

“It isn’t
remotely
true,” Emily said. She ran through a quick explanation of everything that had happened. “Did I do the wrong thing?”

Lady Barb shrugged. “Frieda isn’t yours to give away,” she said. “And I don’t think the king would have thanked you for supporting Lord Hans. His sanity was questionable even before he tried to attack you. Lady Regina, as unpleasant as she is, probably seems like a better deal for him, particularly as...”

She shook her head. “I don’t think you could have done anything else. Frieda would not have had a pleasant life with him, if she’d allowed you to bully her into marriage...or she might not have given
him
a pleasant time. And it wasn’t as if you
wanted
to force her to marry him. But, at the same time, Frieda doesn’t belong to you. She might well be angry, later, at you interfering in her life.”

“I want her to be happy,” Emily said, biting down the rejoinder that she’d saved Frieda from Mountaintop. “And I wasn’t going to give him my support in exchange for him taking her off my hands.”

“Which is how he thought of it,” Lady Barb agreed. “And, from what you said, Frieda had good reason to be pleased you rejected the whole idea.
But...
the next person who comes along may be better than Hans, may genuinely court her...and what will you do then? Frieda will resent it if you say no or even if you interfere in the decision.”

“If I act like King Randor,” Emily finished.

“Precisely,” Lady Barb said. She held up a hand before Emily could say a word. “There’s a difference between being friendly and being overbearing, Emily, and you’ve crossed that line more than once.”

Emily colored. “I don’t
mean
to be overbearing...”

“I know,” Lady Barb said. “But not everyone is prepared to make allowances for you.”

She flicked a hand through her hair, brushing away an imaginary fly. “Watch your friends, be there for them if they need you, but don’t be overbearing,” she warned. “Frieda is her own woman; her family rejected her years ago, selling her to Mountaintop. She loves you, I think, but love can easily turn to hate if you presume to make decisions for her.”

“Lord Hans was
asking
me to make a decision for her,” Emily snapped, stung.

“Yes, he was,” Lady Barb said. “And you should have told him that Frieda could make her own choices.”

“He wanted me to support him,” Emily protested.

“Yes, he did,” Lady Barb agreed. “And you should have explained to him that you weren’t going to be making choices for Frieda, that she wasn’t yours to give away.”

She sighed. “You’re a child of three worlds, Emily,” she added. “Your homeworld, where things are very different; Whitehall, where you’re schooled in magic; Zangaria, where you’re a powerful noblewoman. And those different worlds are colliding.”

In more ways than one
, Emily thought, slowly. The printing press and gunpowder would change the country beyond recognition, if they hadn’t already. And the noblemen had enough trouble dealing with a magician, let alone someone from Earth.
They react to me like I should be one of them, and I’m not.

Lady Barb gave her an affectionate hug. “I’ll see you as soon as I can,” she promised. “Until then, take care of your friends and try to have fun. This
is
going to be the most exciting time of Alassa’s life.”

“I hope so,” Emily said.

She watched the older woman leave, then turned and walked into the bedroom. Frieda lay on the rug, a blanket tossed casually over her body, snoring loudly. She’d be very sore when she woke up, Emily thought. She looked down at Frieda for a long moment, then used a spell to levitate the younger girl into bed and tuck her in on the far side. They’d both need a good night’s sleep. Imaiqah was right. Tomorrow was going to be a very busy day.

But the evening should be fun
, she told herself.
Even if we don’t actually get any sleep...

“A
ND THANK ALL THE GODS
THAT’S
over,” Alassa said, as she closed the door. “The day could have gone better.”

“It could have gone worse,” Imaiqah pointed out. “The
rest
of the mothers could have turned up.”

Emily rubbed her forehead in tired agreement. The rehearsal hadn’t been
that
bad, but half of the mothers had started demanding - loudly - that their daughters take the best positions. And then they picked fights with one another over petty issues of social protocol. By the time Queen Marlena had tiredly sorted the whole issue out, it had been lunchtime; thankfully, the second half of the rehearsal had gone better.

Three more days
, she told herself, firmly.
Three more days, and then we can stop worrying about the wedding.

“My father offered more alcohol,” Alassa said, drawing attention back to her. “However, I thought it would be better to have fruit juice instead. The last hangover was quite bad enough.”

Emily took one of the glasses and sat down on the cushions. Frieda sat next to her, smiling tiredly; Imaiqah and Alicia sat facing her as Alassa handed out the remaining glasses and sat down herself. There was a long silence as they sipped their drinks, then Imaiqah started to giggle and they all joined in, breaking the ice. But it still felt a little awkward.

“I always wondered what it was like to go to school,” Alicia said, diffidently. Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper. “Is it always like this?”

“Good heavens, no,” Imaiqah said, mischievously. “Sometimes they actually expect us to
work
.”

“How
unreasonable
,” Alassa added, dryly. “And to think, we could be partying all the time.”

Emily snorted, trying to study Alicia discreetly. The young woman looked thinner than ever, her long blonde hair hanging down to her breasts, but there was a hint of quiet desperation in her eyes. Emily had caught Alicia glancing at her from time to time, as if she definitely
did
want to talk to her, yet didn’t quite dare make the first move. She silently resolved to pull Alicia aside after the hen night and ask what was bothering her. It wasn’t being the single mundane in a gathering of magicians, Emily was sure. Alicia would be used to magicians.

“That’s not what I meant,” Alicia said. “I mean, do you have slumber parties and midnight feasts all the time?”

“No,” Emily said. Alicia would probably have been educated by a succession of tutors, rather than go to school; her parents wouldn’t have allowed her out of the castle even if she’d had magic. “Boarding school isn’t
just
having parties and fun.”

“It’s those books someone wrote about life in a boarding school,” Frieda offered. “Whoever wrote them obviously never set foot in Whitehall.”

“At least they’re not Blue Books,” Emily said. There were times when she regretted introducing the printing press. Printing out unlimited copies of various textbooks was one thing, but printing trashy stories was quite another. “They’d be banned if they were.”

“Some of them are quite close,” Frieda assured her. “I read one in which...”

“I don’t want to know,” Emily said, hastily.

Alassa cleared her throat. “It was hard to decide what we should do,” she said. “We can’t sneak out of the castle, we can’t prank anyone because they can’t prank us back and I don’t want to try any more experiments with alcohol. So I thought we should play a couple of games. Be childish, just for a night.”

Emily nodded. Children were expected to grow up fast in the Nameless World. A farmer’s child would be helping with the farm as soon as he or she was old enough to walk, a merchant’s child would be assisting with the stock; hell, an aristocratic child would be groomed for his or her role as soon as they could talk. Even Alassa had been brought up to be a princess and then a queen.

“Kingmaker,” Imaiqah said. “I have a board in my room.”

“Then you’ll win,” Alassa objected. She smiled, mischievously. “For our first game, I thought we’d play cards.”

Emily concealed her amusement as Alassa produced a set of cards and held them out for inspection. She’d introduced the idea of playing cards to Whitehall during her First Year and they’d spread with terrifying speed. She hadn’t been able to remember the rules for more than a couple of games, but the students had simply started making them up. If the Grandmaster hadn’t put strict limits on gambling, she had a feeling that student cardsharps would have made a colossal profit.

“I’ve never played before,” Alicia admitted. “How do you play?”

“Oh,
goody
,” Alassa said.

Imaiqah snorted. “The object of the game is to be the first one to get rid of your cards,” she explained, as she outlined the rules. Emily was fairly sure she’d mixed up a couple of the original rules - the only time she’d ever played Black Fives had been at school on Earth - but as long as the game wasn’t unbalanced she doubted it particularly mattered. “Do you see how it works?”

“I think so,” Alicia said. “Are we not gambling for anything?”

“Not tonight,” Alassa said. “It’s too much like hard work.”

Emily smiled as she took her set of cards and silently planned her tactics. Two cards were aggressive, a third was neutral; she put them to the back, knowing she’d need them later in the game. The other two had to be put down as soon as possible, but they weren’t contiguous and she’d have to hope she would have a chance to discard them. Imaiqah set off by placing a card on top of the base card, then waiting for Frieda to make a move. Frieda inspected her cards and put down a pair of twos. Emily gave her a betrayed look and took four cards from the pack.

“Sorry,” Frieda muttered.

“Sabotaging others is part of the game,” Imaiqah explained. “But it’s generally better to wait until someone is on the verge of actually
winning
.”

“They might not be winning,” Alicia said, slowly. She put an eight on top of the pile. “They might not be
able
to put down a card.”

“You don’t know what they have,” Imaiqah pointed out. “They might have an ace, which can be put down at any time.”

“I’ll wait,” Alassa said. “Imaiqah?”

Emily waited for her turn, put down five of her cards and smiled to herself. She hadn’t really expected to enjoy the game, but it was having its moments. The game went round and round until Frieda won; she sat out and watched as Imaiqah and Alassa left the game too, following her. Emily looked at Alicia and offered to call it a draw. As soon as Alicia nodded, a new game began.

“It’s more fun than I expected,” Alicia said, after the fourth game. “But I won’t be able to play it for long.”

“You can get a group of friends to play it later,” Alassa offered.

But it wouldn’t be that easy, Emily knew. Alicia had very few social equals, except - perhaps - Lady Regina. She couldn’t play cards with her subordinates and Alassa, once crowned, would be her superior. It was hard not to feel sorry for Alicia when it was clear she’d had a very isolated childhood. Even if she was confirmed as baroness, she’d be unable to have true friends.
Everyone
would want something from her.

“I think Frieda won the set,” Alassa said, once the tenth game was finished. “How did you get so good at it?”

“Practice,” Frieda said. “We had weekly games in Second Year.”

“Better remember you actually have to
study
next year,” Alassa said. She picked up a bottle, poured the remaining juice into the glasses and placed the bottle in the middle of the circle, using a spell to turn it into a spinning needle. “I was thinking we might do something different for the next game.”