Wedding Hells (Schooled in Magic Book 8) (40 page)

“Don’t try,” Emily advised. It would probably prove futile in any case. “Free competition will help the ideas to spread further than a monopoly.”

“One would hope so,” Paren said. He paused. “Production of muskets is rising slowly as we train more craftsmen. There are limits, unfortunately, to how many apprentices we can take on at any one time. We
have
been trying to streamline the training, but many apprentices are reluctant to take a reduced apprenticeship because it hampers their ability to find employment elsewhere.”

Emily nodded. “And the assembly-line concept?”

“Still has too many hiccups,” Paren said. “We
have
been training apprentices while getting them to work on basic tasks, but it’s slow going.”

He sighed. “About the only thing that’s going according to plan is the production of fireworks for the Royal Wedding. I’m bringing in thousands of fireworks for the final day of the ceremony.”

“Alassa will love that,” Emily said.

Paren looked down at the carpet. “I’ve sent a full report to you,” he concluded. “However, I was hoping to discuss another matter.”

Emily tried hard to keep the dismay off her face. What now?

“I would be happy to discuss anything,” she lied. Was Imaiqah planning to get married? No, she would have told Emily first. Had someone else asked for her hand in marriage? It was certainly a more plausible explanation. “What would you like to talk about?”

“The current political situation,” Paren said. His voice darkened. “Have you been following developments?”

“Vaguely,” Emily said, carefully. She wasn’t sure she wanted to discuss politics right now. “I know that someone has been spreading leaflets condemning the cost of the wedding.”

“It’s getting a little nastier than that,” Paren said. “The Assembly was strong-armed into passing a bill to collect additional taxes, despite protests from its members. King Randor saw fit to simply ignore them. I’ve tried to caution him about the dangers of increasing taxes, but he hasn’t listened to me. And that’s just in Alexis. The situation in a number of baronies is a great deal worse.”

“I was in Swanhaven,” Emily said. “They didn’t look happy...”

“They’re not,” Paren said. “Emily, do you remember what happened during the coup?”

Emily nodded. She’d escaped the castle with Alassa and they’d made common cause with the assemblymen, working together to defeat the plotters and restore King Randor to his throne. Paren had been ennobled in the wake of the coup, just as
she
had been; Alassa had been Confirmed as her father’s successor. The aristocracy had been badly weakened.

“Agreements were made,” Paren said. “
Promises
were made. Those promises have not been honored. Indeed, there are rumors that he is unstable. I believe the king is ruling more and more like a tyrant every single day.”

Emily agreed, wholeheartedly. Randor had
always
been a dictator - he’d been born to rule as king - but he was growing darker. Breaking promises was never a good sign, even promises made to merchants and commoners. The king knew, thanks to her, that the rebels were growing stronger, their ideas spreading through the kingdom, yet he didn’t seem inclined to moderate his rule. And...

And you don’t even know what he did to Alicia
, Emily thought.
And just what it might have done to Alassa
.

“It isn’t just the Assembly that is at risk,” Paren added, when she said nothing. “The unconfirmed aristocrats have been gathered in the castle, while the king appoints his men to run their lands. He is slowly gathering all power into his hands...”

Emily held up her hand. “I understand the problem,” she said. “What would you like me to do about it?”

Paren gave her a long look. “The king respects your judgement.
Talk
to him.”

“I tried to tell him the dangers,” Emily said. “Right now, he’s caught between three different sets of demands. His kingdom rests on a knife-edge.”

“There aren’t many people who care to understand his point of view,” Paren told her. “The commoners are restless, Lady Emily, while the aristocracy is trying to reassert their power. It will not be long before there is an explosion.”

Emily sighed. “You think?”

“You taught everyone how to read, write and do their sums,” Paren said. “Ideas spread faster than ever before, faster than the king can shut them down. People are asking questions about
why
the king has the right to rule, why the aristocracy has the right to keep everyone else down, and they’re not coming up with any good answers.”

“I’ve seen the leaflets,” Emily said, flatly.

Paren stared at her. “Then surely you understand what is at stake!”

“Right now, I don’t know what the king can do,” Emily said. “He cannot concede power to the Assembly without provoking his nobles...”

“But by crippling the Assembly, he’s pushing the commoners into the hands of those who want a violent uprising,” Paren snapped. “The nobles are
men
. In the end, they’re grossly outnumbered!”

Emily sighed. Reshaping Zangaria into a parliamentary democracy, with a House of Lords and a House of Commons,
might
work, but she doubted the system was mature enough to handle it. The aristocracy - and the king himself - would have to be willing to work within the system and everything suggested they wouldn’t be willing to do anything of the sort. And yet, without some compromises, the commoners might revolt, smashing all traces of the previous order. King Randor didn’t know what would happen, when the barricades finally went up, any more than Louis XVI had known. But he’d been beheaded by his own people after the revolution.

And a long period of unrest in Zangaria helps the neighboring kingdoms and the necromancers more than it helps anyone else
, she thought.
Who inherits the throne if Randor and Alassa are both dead? Alicia’s child?

“The king probably isn’t pleased with me at the moment,” Emily said. In the cold light of day, it was clear she’d placed Randor in an unstable position. “I can try to speak to him after the wedding...”

“I don’t know how much time we have,” Paren said. She shuddered at the bitter hopelessness in his voice. “Not everyone talks to me any longer, Lady Emily.”

Emily cursed under her breath. Maybe, after the stress of the wedding was over, she could talk Randor - or Alassa - into opening discussions with the rebels. If, of course, there was a way to talk to them. But there was no way to do it before the wedding.

She leaned forward. “Do you have a link to the rebels?”

“I can try to pass a message to them,” Paren said, “but they’ll be untrusting of anything from me.” He tapped his jacket with one long finger. “I am a nobleman now, you see.”

“They think you’ve sold out,” Emily said. The fine silk he wore would have been flatly forbidden to a commoner, no matter how wealthy the commoner was. “That once you were given a title, you belonged to the king.”

She wondered, briefly, if it wouldn’t have been smarter to try to convince Paren to move his operations to Beneficence, rather than staying in Zangaria. There was no way to keep the king from having his say, or trying to co-opt some of the more interesting inventions for the good of his kingdom. Imaiqah probably wouldn’t have minded the move, if it had happened before she’d been ennobled herself; hell, she could have stayed close friends with Alassa while the rest of her family moved away from the kingdom. It might even have made it easier for her to offer Alassa the advice she needed.

“Yes,” Paren said. There was a hint of bitterness in his voice. “To them, I am an untrustworthy aristo. To the aristos, I’m a jumped up little merchant who cannot possibly do anything without the king’s support. Neither fish nor fowl nor big red hen.”

“I’m sorry,” Emily said.

“Don’t be,” Paren said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Emily opened her mouth, then frowned as she heard someone knocking on the door. “Alassa is here,” she said, surprised. She couldn’t remember Alassa coming to her rooms - ever - while she’d been staying in the castle, but the wards recognized her. “Hang on.”

Paren rose. “Thank you for your time, Lady Emily,” he said. There was an odd note of finality in his voice. “And thank you for what you did for my daughter.”

Emily opened the door. Paren bowed to Alassa and Emily, then headed out the door as Alassa walked into the room. She looked normal, but she was clearly wrapped in a powerful glamor. Emily closed the door and stared at Alassa, trying to see through the haze. It popped, seconds later, revealing that Alassa’s face was streaked with tears. Emily hastily helped her to the sofa, horror flickering through her mind. She honestly couldn’t remember Alassa ever crying in front of her...

“What happened?” A nasty thought struck her. “Did he
beat
you?”

Alassa shook her head, miserably. Emily stared. What had happened? King Randor would have to be insane to tell Alassa she was no longer in the line of succession, or that her marriage had been canceled, or...or what? What could he have said to her that made her
cry?

“It’s all right,” she said, unsure what else she could say. “I’m here. It’s all right.”

Alassa held her tightly for a long moment. “He...he told me off. He...”

Emily hesitated. “About Alicia?”

“Yeah,” Alassa said. She shuddered, violently. “He told me off for that. Told me I’d be in deep trouble if I ever thought about hurting the little bitch again. And then...”

Her voice trailed off. Emily frowned down at her. She’d seen Alassa get told off by Lady Barb, Professor Lombardi and Madame Beauregard, all of whom could deliver scathing lectures without raising their voices. What could Alassa’s father have said to her that made her
cry
?

“He asked me questions,” Alassa said. There was a bitter helplessness in her voice that shocked Emily to the bone. “I had to answer.”

She looked up. “Emily, he asked me questions about
you
!”

E
MILY SWALLOWED, HARD
.

“He said he wouldn’t,” she protested, numbly. “He told you...”

“Reasons of state,” Alassa said, sourly. All of a sudden, her crying made a great deal of sense. Her father had used the Royal Bloodline and forced her friend’s secrets out of her. “That’s what he told me, Emily. Reasons of state.”

Emily sat down on the sofa next to her, feeling stunned. Alassa couldn’t keep any secrets from her father, not if he saw fit to demand answers. She’d noticed that there were some questions King Randor had
never
asked his daughter, just to give her time to make up her own mind about things. And he’d
promised
he’d never interrogate Alassa about Emily.

She cursed under her breath, then wrapped an arm around her friend. “What did he ask about?”

“Everything,” Alassa said. “Your...your origins, your time at Whitehall... everything.”

“Shit,” Emily said.

She fought down the urge to panic. King Randor knew she wasn’t Void’s daughter, knew she wasn’t the inventor of everything she’d introduced to the kingdom...so what? It wasn’t as if it changed anything.

Except it did.

Randor might share the knowledge with others, like Caleb’s father. What would
he
say if he knew Emily’s true origins? And how many magicians would start looking for ways to hop across the dimensions if they learned it was possible? God alone knew what they’d bring back to the Nameless World...

They might wind up stuck
, she thought, nastily.
There’s no magic on Earth
.

“I’m sorry,” Alassa said. Her voice shook. “He just kept asking questions and I kept on talking!”

Emily squeezed her tightly. She didn’t really know what it was like to have a true father, unless she counted Void, but the thought of being forced to talk was horrific. There were things she wouldn’t have been comfortable sharing with anyone, even her parents; Alassa had no choice but to share them with her father. And she hadn’t been forced to betray herself, which would have been bad enough. She’d been forced to betray one of her closest friends.

“It’s all right,” she said, thinking hard. King Randor wasn’t likely to start telling everyone, not when he was trying to see what sort of use he could get out of the information. The only truly important detail was the realization that Void might not be particularly interested in defending Emily, if push came to shove. But he
had
given her a family ring...

She pushed the thought aside for later contemplation. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“He said you were odd,” Alassa said. She sat upright and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “He said you didn’t respond normally or something.”

Emily nodded, curtly. It was commonly accepted in Zangaria that a king would have mistresses, even though queens were expected to remain chaste and faithful. The only real difference between Alicia and a random lady at court was that Alicia was in line for a barony, which might add a political dimension to the match. And even having a bastard wouldn’t be held against the king, not really. King Henry VIII had even planned to make his bastard son king when his attempts at having a male heir had proven largely unsuccessful.

And I was standing up for Alicia
, she thought.
He might have suspected there was something odd about me before, but my words confirmed it
.

“I wasn’t raised in this sort of culture,” she said.

“You weren’t raised in this world,” Alassa corrected. She cocked her head thoughtfully. “How many problems do you face because you weren’t brought up here?”

“Too many,” Emily said. She rose and started to pace. “Did your father have anything else to say?”

“He spoke to Lord Barrows,” Alassa said. She glared down at her hands. “Alicia will be married to him in a couple of hours, a brief ceremony that will make them man and wife and then dispatch them to her castle. She’ll be safe from me.”

“The baby won’t be in the line of succession,” Emily pointed out.