Lessons in Etiquette (Schooled in Magic series) (27 page)

Emily
hadn’t
noticed–and cursed herself for the oversight. Of
course
Alassa would have had servants accompanying her at all times; certainly, the old Alassa would have insisted on it. But Emily hadn’t been raised to have servants and she hadn’t really noticed their absence; besides, Alassa had made a big issue of being able to dress herself. She hadn’t realized that Alassa had been preparing for royal visits where the servants would be strangers, strangers who would almost inevitably report on her to their masters.

“But that raises another problem,” she said, finally. “What if the whole idea was to embarrass King Jorlem? Or to precipitate a war with Zangaria?”

“Too many possibilities,” Lady Barb said. She stood up and started to pace around the room, finally stopping in front of the small collection of weapons. “All we can do is work hard to keep Alassa safe.”

Emily worked the problem, trying to recall everything she’d read about assassins who had killed–or tried to kill–monarchs. Killing Alassa would be dangerous, simply because of the risk of civil war, but what about taking control of the kingdom through her? A powerful nobleman might just be able to get himself appointed regent if King Randor died, allowing him to be king in all but name. But Alassa was seventeen, not
seven
. How long would such a plan last?

On the other hand, it might not have to last very long. Whoever married Alassa would have a claim to the throne–and if someone happened to hold most of the physical power, they might be able to force Alassa into marriage. And if they
did
have the power, the other nobles might grit their teeth and go along with it, particularly if the largess was distributed with an open hand. If…

“The barons are not supposed to have more than two hundred personal guardsmen,” Lady Barb said, once Emily had outlined her reasoning. “The Royal Army outnumbers them all twenty to one.”

That
wasn’t reassuring. The sergeants had pointed out that countries with large armies had been defeated by smaller armies in the past, armies that had known what they were doing. It wasn’t just manpower that determined the winner, but having that manpower where it was needed at the right time. Emily wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that most of the Royal Army troops were positioned along the borders, several days march from Alexis. A quick strike at the city might allow the mastermind to present the Royal Army with a done deal.

“Twenty thousand cooks,” she muttered. “How many retainers are they allowed in all?”

Lady Barb lifted an eyebrow. “Twenty thousand cooks?”

Years ago, Emily had read a science fiction story set on a world caught between modernity and a barbaric past. One nobleman, barred from having a large army, had raised a force of ‘cooks,’ armed very carefully with knives, spoons and ladles, all utensils that just happened to have a military application with a little imagination. The ruling monarch hadn’t seen the joke and crushed the ill-disguised attempt at rebellion. In hindsight, after months spent training with the sergeants, Emily doubted that the idea would have worked very well. The cooks would still have faced a small army of men with real weapons.

But it
did
have a real-life counterpart, although much less dramatic. Napoleon had barred the Prussians from raising a large army, suspecting–correctly–that it would be used against him. Undeterred, the Prussians had conscripted men and trained them for a year, then released them and conscripted a second batch of men. When the time came to throw off the restrictions and expand their armies, they had a much larger force than Napoleon had expected at their disposal, simply by recalling all the trained men.

“It’s possible that one of the barons could have tried something like it,” Lady Barb said, once Emily outlined her thoughts. “And they have plenty of lands to build up their forces without being detected. But they’d still have to get the army into Alexis without being detected.”

“Shadye managed to get an army close to Whitehall without being detected,” Emily pointed out.

It was still a mystery how the necromancer had managed that feat. Sergeant Harkin had speculated that Shadye might have dug a tunnel–a portal would have been detected–under the massive mountain crags barring his path, but none of the exploration missions that had been sent out after Shadye’s death had found anything. Emily had privately worried that they might stumble over something else while searching for the tunnel, yet nothing seemed to have happened. The grandmaster, the only other person who knew that there was a reason to be concerned, had certainly said nothing to her about it.

“None of the barons are necromancers,” Lady Barb said, flatly. “If they were, we’d know about it by now.”

“I hope you’re right,” Emily said, softly. “What about the lesser nobility?”

“The barons are the only ones who could hope to build up an army without having it noticed,” Lady Barb said. “Besides, the smaller nobles tend to support King Randor–and they’d support his daughter, if there was no other choice. The barons pushed them around during the Age of Bryon and the lesser nobles
hated
it. That was how Alexis III was able to get them to support the Assembly.”

Emily blanched as another thought occurred to her. Lady Barb had assumed that an aristocrat was behind the plot, if it was aimed at Alassa. Killing Emily might just be part of the plot. But what if the plotters were in the Assembly? Someone might just believe that killing Alassa would lead to democracy, or at least rule by the Assembly, rather than the nobles. It sounded insane, but revolutionaries had never been particularly sane…

But it wasn’t something she dared mention. The consequences could be disastrous.

“Here,” Lady Barb said. She plucked a small dagger off the wall and held it out, hilt first, to Emily. “King Randor has granted you special permission to carry it, but he would rather you didn’t call attention to it.”

Emily nodded. No one, apart from the royal guardsmen, carried weapons in the castle. Even the princes wore empty scabbards. Giving her a weapon might well be seen as a calculated insult to everyone else, even though she suspected that most people would never even recognize that it was a possibility. The kingdom had accepted the existence of sorceresses, but it didn’t seem to really understand that a woman could carry a mundane weapon just as easily as a man.

Better to be underestimated
, she told herself, as she hid the dagger in her dress.

“Alassa will be busy for hours,” Lady Barb said. “Everything has to be absolutely perfect for her Confirmation.”

Emily nodded. “I was invited to visit the Court Wizard,” she said. “I wanted to ask him about the Royal Bloodline.”

“Just don’t sell him your new pet for less than twenty thousand gold,” Lady Barb advised. “The scales alone could bring him enough money to set himself up as a wealthy nobleman in his own right.”

“I don’t want to kill it,” Emily protested. The thought was appalling. “Perhaps I should just keep it as a pet.”

“And then it will eat you, if it breaks free,” Lady Barb warned. “Be careful. Be
very
careful.”

A
LCHEMY WAS THE CLOSEST THING TO
science Emily had discovered since Shadye had kidnapped her, although it seemed to follow rules that would have either perplexed or infuriated scientists from back home. It didn’t divide neatly into subsets either; research into the magical proprieties of certain materials could lead neatly into biological research, or send a researcher haring up towards a dead end. Most of the alchemists she’d met had been rather strange, even by the standards of Whitehall; they tended to spend most of their time in the lab, fiddling with new experiments. It was very rare, according to Professor Thande, to encounter one serving as a Court Wizard.

Zed’s lab was large, larger than the workrooms they used at Whitehall, crammed with tables, caldrons and glass containers holding various kinds of brightly-colored liquids. Emily could smell a multitude of different scents from the moment she stepped inside, although unlike a born Alchemist she couldn’t separate them out and identify the different materials. Zed himself wore white robes inside his lab, rather than anything that identified his rank. Emily realized, in a sudden flash of understanding, that part of the reason Zed had been given the position of Court Wizard was that he wasn’t personally ambitious. He wasn’t inclined to turn it into a power base for future expansion.

“My Lady Emily,” Zed said, with a half-bow. Technically, she should have bowed to
him
–she was still a sorceress-in-training, rather than an independent magician–but Zed didn’t seem to care. “Welcome to my lab.”

Emily had to smile. The room was as chaotic as King Randor’s private study, almost as bad as the alchemical workrooms Professor Thande had made her clean after a particularly disastrous lesson in alchemy. She suspected that she would be doing a lot of cleaning in the next three years, if only because she lacked the single-mindedness that was part and parcel of a good Alchemist. Brain emerged from behind a towering pile of glass tubes and gave her a shy smile.

“Thank you,” Emily said. She waved cheerfully at Brain as he retreated back behind the test tubes. Glass was so expensive, she realized, because alchemists bought up most of the supplies. Professor Thande’s lessons always included at least one or two test tubes being broken by unwary students. “This is a remarkable place.”

Zed beamed. It had clearly been the right thing to say. “Alexis I actually started this lab,” Zed explained. He turned and led her towards a small side door. “You wouldn’t believe that someone who spent most of his time governing a kingdom could be an Alchemist, but he actually made a very good start on the Royal Bloodline. We’ve done a great deal more since him, of course, yet he laid very strong foundations. He would have been the greatest Alchemist in history if he’d been able to devote all of his time to his studies.”

They stepped through the door and into a smaller room, with a table, several chairs and a single glowing light high overhead. “I don’t let any of the maids come in here to clean,” Zed explained, as he waved Emily to a chair. “My old master used to say that you could never let anyone else clean your lab, or it will be contaminated. He was a little strange in the head, but he was right about that.”

Emily concealed a smile. All alchemists were a little strange in the head.

Zed seemed to read her mind. “Oh, he believed all sorts of nonsense,” he added. “Would you believe that he actually thought that
women
radiated a field that disrupted magical vibrations? He had a daughter and an experiment that never fully worked and he thought the two of them were connected. And then he set out to find an apprentice who liked
men
on the grounds that it might reduce the disruption.”

“Oh,” Emily said. Maybe
she
was a poor Alchemist, but Alassa and Imaiqah were both near the top of the class in Alchemy. The whole concept sounded more than a little absurd, although not unprecedented. There had been plenty of people who believed that women couldn’t do science, or were unable to cope with higher education…all eventually debunked, of course, but it had still done a great deal of damage. “And did it?”

“No,” Zed said. “The problem was that he had mixed up the formula slightly, so naturally it didn’t work. And then his daughter pointed out what he had done wrong and he almost had a heart attack. She went on to be one of the greatest alchemists of her era.”

He picked up a large jar of water and poured it into a container, muttering a spell under his breath. “If you’ve been at Whitehall, you’ll probably have developed a Kava habit by now,” he said, without looking around. “Every student does, unless they’re too stupid or too lazy to breed. I think that one of them actually married a pregnant woman because he was so lazy.”

“I drink it,” Emily said, wryly. “Did he
actually
marry a pregnant woman?”

“Oh, there was some sort of mix-up,” Zed said. “Long time gone now.”

He put the container down on the table and passed her a mug. “Pour to suit yourself,” he said, seriously. “I just need to check on Brain.”

Emily shook her head as he left the room. It was odd to have a magician serving anyone drinks, but perhaps it made sense. No Alchemist liked the thought of someone tampering with his experiments, even a trusted apprentice. Professor Thande had bawled out one student for touching an experiment on the table, a rare display of temper for him. She poured the Kava into the mug and tasted it, carefully. It was strong, sour and would probably keep her up half the night, no matter how much she danced.

“I hate having apprentices,” Zed said, when he came back into the room. “They can never be fully trusted…but I need someone to take my place. The Royal Bloodline demands a steward.”

He sat down facing her and poured himself a mug. “So tell me,” he said. “How did you beat Shadye?”

Emily flushed. “I can’t really talk about it,” she admitted, finally. Zed seemed harmless, but alchemists were
never
truly harmless. Professor Thande had told the class–and he hadn’t been joking–that the true alchemical geniuses were told to do their experiments on mountain tops or the middle of deserts, well away from civilization. “It is something I have to keep to myself.”