Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) Read online

  Study in Slaughter

  Christopher G. Nuttall

  Twilight Times Books

  Kingsport Tennessee

  Study in Slaughter

  This is a work of fiction. All concepts, characters and events portrayed in this book are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Christopher G. Nuttall

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Twilight Times Books

  P O Box 3340

  Kingsport TN 37664

  http://twilighttimesbooks.com/

  First Edition, July 2014

  Cover art by Brad Fraunfelter

  Published in the United States of America.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Prologue

  THE FLASH OF LIGHT WAS, FOR a long moment, overpoweringly bright, a surge of magic as well as light. It faded quickly, revealing a tall woman with a harsh, angular face and a long braid of blonde hair that hung down to her waist. The Grandmaster bowed in welcome as she approached, his shorter form contrasting oddly with the newcomer’s. They made a study in contrasts.

  He spoke. “Welcome back to Whitehall, Lady Barb.”

  “Thank you, Grandmaster,” Lady Barb said. She bowed formally to him. “It’s good to be back.”

  He didn’t say another word until they were in his office, surrounded by the most complex and powerful wards in the Allied Lands, and they both had a glass of wine in their hands.

  “I understand that you had a chance to observe our Child of Destiny in Zangaria,” he said, bluntly. “What do you make of her?”

  “A bundle of contradictions,” Lady Barb admitted, after a long moment. “She’s smart, but she seems to lack practical knowledge and awareness. She’s powerful, but she seems almost reluctant to use that power. She’s loyal to her friends, to the point where it gets her into very real trouble. Where does she come from?”

  The Grandmaster leaned forwards, interested. “What makes you think she comes from anywhere special?”

  “Her...attitudes, for want of a better word,” Lady Barb said. “I was given to understand that she was brought up in a sorcerer’s tower. She simply doesn’t act like any of the other children I’ve known who had sorcerers for fathers. At times, she can be more caring and sympathetic than anyone else, but at other times she simply doesn’t realize that there is a problem. She acts more like a foreigner than someone who belongs in Zangaria.”

  “Where she was ennobled, after saving the lives of the Royal Family,” the Grandmaster said, dryly. “But you’re right. She doesn’t come from here at all.”

  “Lady Emily was kidnapped out of her world by Shadye,” he admitted. “She’s from another universe.”

  Lady Barb listened, feeling a growing sense of unreality, as the Grandmaster explained.

  “Impossible,” Lady Barb said, when he had finished. “There are no such things as alternate universes.”

  “It isn’t a very well studied branch of magic,” the Grandmaster said, shaking his head. “But yes, alternate worlds do exist—and Lady Emily was taken from one.”

  “And saved by Void,” Lady Barb said, unable to hide the bitterness in her voice. “Do you trust him with a girl of unknown potential?”

  “No,” the Grandmaster said. He looked down at his desk. “Why do you think I was so quick to agree to allow her to come to Whitehall?”

  Lady Barb studied his face for a long moment. “Do you trust her?”

  “I think that she is a decent human being,” the Grandmaster said. “On the other hand, some of her virtues are also weaknesses. Do you realize that her loyalty to her friends has often overridden her common sense?”

  “You mean she might be loyal to Void,” Lady Barb said, after a long moment. “Do you trust him...with anything?”

  “With great power comes great instability,” the Grandmaster said. “And a certain lack of concern for everyone else.”

  “That isn’t an answer,” Lady Barb said.

  “We know very little about Emily’s life before she was kidnapped,” the Grandmaster said, ignoring her. “I believe that it wasn’t a very happy one, as she has shown no particular interest in returning home. On the other hand, her life here hasn’t been very happy either.”

  “She’s wealthy and famous,” Lady Barb pointed out.

  “She was targeted by a necromancer for death—and then enslavement,” the Grandmaster countered. “One of her father figures is a rogue half-mad sorcerer. Another—Sergeant Harkin—died at her hands. She had no choice, but she still took it badly.”

  “I’d only heard rumors,” Lady Barb said. “Is that true?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” the Grandmaster said. “She really had no choice.”

  He explained, briefly.

  Lady Barb listened in disbelief. “She knows how to perform a necromantic rite?”

  “It isn’t difficult to master the theory,” the Grandmaster reminded her. “Do you like Lady Emily, personally?”

  “I could,” Lady Barb admitted. “She’s a decent person—and I honestly don’t think that she intended to cause problems for the Allied Lands. But on the other hand...there’s a sense that she thinks she knows what is right, always. She has a touch of Void’s arrogance without the willingness to believe that the ends justify the means.”

  She shrugged. “And when the time came, she slipped into the castle to save Princess Alassa—her friend—and the rest of the Royal Family,” she added. “Someone like that shouldn’t be dismissed easily.”

  “True,” the Grandmaster agreed. “Will you watch her?”

  “I only agreed to stay at Whitehall for a year,” Lady Barb said, in some irritation. “You know how I feel about Healing. But yes, I will watch her.”

  “Good,” the Grandmaster said. “Because, just like her Guardian, she’s a rogue element. And rogue elements cause trouble.”

  Chapter One

  THE CASTLE WAS HERS.

  Emily stood in the chamber underneath Cockatrice Castle and closed her eyes. She’d never had a real home before, not one where she’d felt safe an
d welcome. Even Whitehall wasn’t hers, not in the sense that she could stay there permanently. Here, however, there was a home. It might be a cold castle, incredibly hard to heat save through magic, but it was hers.

  The hearthstone lay in front of her, glowing faintly as energy hummed through the wards protecting the castle from magical attack. Emily could sense, without even touching it, the power that was securely anchored in the stone—and the override King Randor had used to secure Cockatrice Castle. It no longer belonged to the treacherous baron who had plotted against the King—a man whose very name had been stricken from the books—but to Emily, who had saved the King and his family from assassination. And it would belong to her heirs in perpetuity.

  She felt a curious mix of emotions as she stepped forward and held her hand over the stone. Part of her wondered what her mother the drunkard would have said, if she’d known what her daughter had become; part of her wondered if there were unexpected surprises waiting for the Baroness Cockatrice in the future. The castle wasn’t free; being a baroness, one of the highest-ranking nobles in the Kingdom of Zangaria, brought obligations of its own. King Randor had set out to reward her, but he had also had an agenda of his own. Emily had no doubt of it. The man who had set out to ride the whirlwind of political and social change Emily had started needed to think at least two steps ahead.

  No time to worry about that now, she thought, as she reached into her belt and produced the silver knife. Holding her hand over the stone, she cut her palm, allowing blood to drip down and merge with the wards. The pain vanished almost as soon as it appeared—the knife was charmed to heal its wounds—allowing her to focus on the wards. Magic billowed forward, waiting for her. Closing her eyes, Emily stretched out and put her hand on top of the hearthstone.

  Her mind reached out, accessing the wards. It was a very different experience to touching the wards protecting Whitehall; here, the wards were crude, anchored within the hearthstone and in need of constant renewal. There was no sense that they were alive or adapting to new situations—or watching for young magicians pushing their luck too far. There was a long moment when she felt that the wards were about to reject her, before they recognized their new mistress and opened up for her. If she wanted, she could make them do anything. She was, to all intents and purposes, the administrator of the castle’s security network.

  Someone did a very crude job, she thought, as her mind flashed through the network. But that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Deprived of the raw power that allowed Whitehall’s wards to exist, the original creators had needed to limit the reach and power of their creations. There wasn’t even a ward intended to track magic used within the castle! Making a mental note to change that as quickly as possible, Emily found the administrative center and issued a handful of instructions, then pulled her mind out of the wards. There was, as always, a brief feeling of disorientation as her mind returned to her body. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if her body suffered an accident while her mind was drifting around in the wards.

  She stepped back from the hearthstone, which was glowing with heavy satisfaction, and walked over to the door. Outside, Bryon, Son of Cheam was waiting for her, as per her instructions. The young man didn’t look that impressive—he was thin, with short brown hair and soft brown eyes—but he came highly recommended by Imaiqah, one of Emily’s best friends. Reading between the lines, Emily suspected that her friend was sweet on Bryon, even though romance would be difficult now that Imaiqah’s father had been raised to the peerage. Her friend’s marriage would be a political tool, rather than a romantic affair.

  “My Lady,” Bryon said.

  “Come in,” Emily said, impatiently. There were times when the formalities annoyed her, even though she understood that they were part and parcel of Zangaria’s society, the lubricant that kept it running smoothly. “The wards are waiting for you.”

  There was no way that Emily could remain in Zangaria, even though she knew King Randor would be delighted if she did. She had to go back to Whitehall for her second year of study, leaving Cockatrice Castle and the surrounding lands under the control of a steward. Bryon was young and inexperienced, but he did understand what Emily wanted him to do, as much as anyone born in Zangaria could understand. She’d made a start by reforming the laws the previous baron had propagated—the man was a scumbag, even if he hadn’t tried to overthrow his King—but there was much else to do. Bryon would just have to make a start on her work.

  “Hold your hand over the stone,” Emily directed, as she cleaned the knife. The charms placed on the blade should have removed all traces of her blood, but she knew better than to take it for granted. Besides, taking care of one’s tools and weapons had been hammered into her head at Whitehall. “I’m giving you complete authority over the castle, so be careful. If I have to come home to sort out a mess, I will not be pleased.”

  Bryon winced—and Emily cursed herself, inwardly. As baroness, she held the power of Middle and Low justice in Cockatrice—and High too, if King Randor didn’t wish to deal with it personally. She was effectively judge, jury and executioner...if she’d wanted to lop off Bryon’s head, it was unlikely that anyone would care enough to stop her. Save perhaps Imaiqah, of course, and that wasn’t something most of the locals would take into account, not when their friendships were often nothing more than political expediency.

  She took his hand in hers and cut his palm, just enough to allow the blood to drip onto the stone. The wards hummed loudly enough to be heard for a long moment, before falling back into the background magic pervading the castle. Bryon would have near-complete authority over them, save for a handful of areas that Emily had reserved for herself. For one, he wouldn’t be able to use spell-controlled slaves in the castle itself. The practice might be very secure, although Emily knew how easy it was for the spells to be rewritten by a competent sorcerer, but it still disgusted her. There was no way that she was going to allow anyone under her command to use them.

  “I can feel them,” Bryon said, in shock. “I...I don’t think they like me.”

  Emily smiled. Bryon came from a merchant family, one step above peasants grubbing in the soil, at least according to the previous baron. The wards had probably picked up a great deal of their owner’s personality, even though he hadn’t been the one who had built the castle or forged the wards. They respected Emily because she was now their lord, but it would take them time to grow used to Bryon.

  “They’ll come around,” she said, dryly. “Until then, do you think you can control them?”

  Now that Bryon’s blood had been linked to the wards, he should be able to control them mentally, no matter where he was in the castle itself. It had taken Emily nearly a week to master it, although she’d had a considerable disadvantage. The time she’d touched the living wards protecting Whitehall had spoiled her, giving her preconceptions that the wards of Cockatrice Castle hadn’t been able to meet. Bryon should find it easier to control the wards, even though he wasn’t a very powerful magician. He had less to unlearn.

  Besides, Emily thought, the last baron wasn’t a magician either.

  She led the way up to the baron’s chambers, shaking her head at how the previous baron had decorated his castle. He had been a great hunting enthusiast; there was scarcely a room that didn’t have a handful of mounted animal heads placed on the walls, all carefully displayed so they looked as savage as possible. There were hundreds of paintings too, each one showing the baron and his family in heroic poses—and a single painting of the Royal Family, which hung in the baron’s Reception Room. In hindsight, anyone who looked at the man’s castle would have known that he had dreams of kingship. Nothing else made sense.

  He’d also had a staff largely composed of young and pretty girls. Emily had told them that they were free to go, if they wished, but most of them had refused to leave, even though it was clear that the previous baron had abused them. The pay was better...and besides, young women were less useful on farms than their brothe
rs, particularly if they were no longer virgins. Emily found that sickening and hoped she would always find it sickening. The day she didn’t, she’d told herself, was the day she’d been in Zangaria long enough to go native.

  Emily’s own quarters would be off-limits to everyone while she was away, naturally; the castle’s wards wouldn’t permit entry. She’d put Bryon in the next set of chambers, which had belonged to the previous baron’s Castellan. The man had vanished after his master had been killed. No one quite knew what had happened to him, but Emily had taken the precaution of erasing all of his access permissions from the wards, just in case. Inside, the room was hot and stuffy; the maids had lit a fire in the grate to warm it.

  “Thank you, Milady,” Bryon said, once the door was closed. “I won’t let you down.”

  “Good,” Emily said. “I look forward to reading your regular reports.”

  She had to smile at Bryon’s expression. Unlike most locals, he had actually been able to read and write before Emily had arrived and taught everyone Arabic numerals and Latin letters, but writing out regular reports would still have been difficult. The Scribes Guild had made itself fantastically wealthy by providing a reading and writing service before Emily had inadvertently destroyed them. Now, over half the Kingdom could read and write using the system she had imported from Earth...but there was still room for scribes. Besides, Imaiqah had assured Emily that Bryon wasn’t as bad as some of the others.

  “I’ll send them weekly,” he assured her.

  Emily thanked him, then walked back to her own quarters and stepped inside. The rooms still struck her as insanely big—the bed alone was big enough for five people to share—but they gave her privacy, as well as plenty of space to work. She picked up a set of opened letters, dropped them into her borrowed trunk—her previous trunk was on its way to Whitehall, containing a very angry Cockatrice—and then glanced around to be sure that she hadn’t left anything behind. Unlike Alassa, the Crown Princess of Zangaria, Emily always travelled light. She’d never had the opportunity to develop bad habits.