M ARAH SHAPED THE FIREBALL SPELL IN her mind and cast it, feeling the heat pulsing against her bare palm as the fireball took shape and form. She closed her eyes, imagining her stepfather standing right in front of her, and hurled the fireball with all the force she could muster. It exploded against the wards with a satisfying CRACK , her eyes snapping open just in time to see the last of the flames fade away. Her heart thumped loudly as she summoned a second fireball and threw it too, a brilliant explosion shaking the chamber. If her stepfather had been there, right in front of her…
He’d be dead , she thought, viciously. Or wishing he were.
She wanted to go back to Lubbock and put a fireball through his ugly chest or wound him badly enough for the company to write him off and throw him onto the streets to die. She’d seen him making fun of wounded miners, laughing and catcalling at their broken bodies and taunting them with snide jokes about their wives and daughters being sent to the brothels to work off their debts. A surge of anger shot through her as she recalled him threatening to send her there… rage boiled through her, a white-hot flare of pure power that manifested as a powerful fireball that blasted from her fingertips and struck the wards. The entire chamber shook, raw magic crackling through the air. She wanted to believe she’d killed her stepfather and freed her mother and laid waste to the wretched town, but… she knew better. They were a very long way away. She wasn’t even sure where.
It was hard, so hard, to calm herself. She forced herself to concentrate on practicing her spells, casting them one by one; she altered a handful of variables, trying to see if she could change the results. It was hard to keep the spellware from falling apart, no matter how hard she tried. Virgil really had done a lot of damage to her development, she realized dully. He’d made it hard, if not impossible, for her to learn the basics from scratch.
The anger exploded, again. Flames boiled around her as she reached for her power, raw magic boiling around her as she took the wards and warped them into spellware. Virgil had told her she needed a wand, but that lie had been failing well before she’d been sent to kill Emily… she gritted her teeth, recalling the early spells he’d taught her and trying to cast them without a wand. Pain – bright red pain – seared through her mind, but she kept trying as she heard someone laughing at her… her stepfather, or her treacherous mentor, or… she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She would master the spells, she promised herself, and she would make her stepfather pay. And the company. And…
She yelped as water – cold water – splashed around her. She dropped to her knees, nearly collapsing into a heap as the shock steadied her mind. The tidal wave of power faded into nothingness, leaving her dully aware of her own foolishness. She’d broken one of the rules… worse, she’d allowed herself to get drunk on her own magic. She knew how nasty a drunkard could get, drunk on nothing but alcohol, and feared what she might have done under the influence of her magic. Her eyes were closed – she wasn’t sure when she’d shut them – and she was scared to open them. She knew without looking that Emily was behind her…
Marah swallowed hard, unable to control herself. She’d never lost control like that before, not with her stepfather and certainly not with her treacherous master. It was too dangerous to mouth off to the former, and the latter had never given her any reason to think he meant her harm… until it was too late. Shame washed over her, shame and fear. Emily was her mistress . She was quite within her rights to punish Marah any way she saw fit, from beatings to transfigurations to… Marah didn’t know. She’d heard horror stories from the magic quarter, in Valetta, but she had no idea if any of those stories were true. What sort of man punished his apprentice by selling the young man into spellbound slavery?
She forced herself to open her eyes. The room was a wreck. The runes on the stone floor were charred and broken, the sigils on the wall badly damaged… she told herself, bitterly, that she deserved punishment. She’d never deserved anything from her stepfather, but this… she had no idea how Emily intended to punish her, if she wasn’t simply going to be dismissed like a scullery maid, but she’d take it like the person she aspired to be. She didn’t want to turn around, yet… somehow, she managed to force herself to turn. Emily was kneeling too, her dress scorched and drenched… Marah would have laughed, if it hadn’t been so serious.
Emily reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. Marah tried not to cringe. “What happened?”
Marah tried to think clearly, to sort out what had happened. Her emotions had been all over the place, and her memories were a tangled mess. She couldn’t put them in order or even determine if there was an order… she wished, numbly, that Emily was shouting, instead of keeping her voice very calm. Marah would almost have preferred to be beaten, rather than… she felt as if there was nothing she should say, nothing at all. But she had to try.
“I tried several spells he taught me,” she admitted, reluctantly. She didn’t really want to talk about it. “I thought I could get them to work without a wand.”
“You appear to have drawn on the wards themselves,” Emily observed. Her tone was still even. Marah couldn’t tell what Emily felt. Her stepfather had always shown his feelings openly, but she knew a few others who’d been prone to tranquil fury. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”
Marah swallowed. “I thought… I thought…”
She stared at the floor. She couldn’t put her feelings into words. Everything had just bubbled up inside her, a surge of pure rage that had come and gone and left her feeling hopelessly drained. She had wanted to rip her stepfather to pieces with her bare hands, or burn him into ash, or turn him into a snail and stomp on him, or one of a hundred atrocities that she knew should horrify her and didn’t . Her power had billowed around her and… she wished, suddenly, the floor would open up and swallow her whole.
“I just thought I could do it,” Marah said, finally. “I thought…”
“You have a great deal to unlearn,” Emily said. “Your spells accidentally tapped into the wards themselves, making the magic stronger. That could have been very dangerous.”
Marah looked at the damaged room and scowled. “Get on with it.”
Emily met her eyes. “Get on with what?”
“My punishment,” Marah said. She forced herself to stagger to her feet. “Do it.”
Emily didn’t move. Marah stared at her. “Why aren’t you angry?”
“I had a teacher, once, who was always snapping and snarling and jumping to the wrong conclusions,” Emily said, mildly. She stood, her dress hanging oddly around her frame. “I promised myself that I wouldn’t be like that, when I became a teacher myself. I can wait to hear your explanation before I decide what to do.”
“I…” Marah stared at her. “I broke your rules!”
“I’m well aware of that,” Emily said. Her voice hardened suddenly, a grim reminder that Emily had fought and killed necromancers . “I’m waiting to hear if you have a good explanation for breaking them.”
“I…” Marah felt sweat prickling down her back. “I… I got angry.”
Emily cocked her head. “Angry?”
“Angry, at everything.” Marah stared at the floor. “It was all a little too much, too quickly, and…”
“Anything in particular?”
Marah sighed. “My stepfather. And Virgil. And the Company. And…”
She stared. “Why are they allowed to do it? Why… why can’t we stop them?”
Her heart twisted. “You could stop them. You could stop them all.”
Emily said nothing for a long moment. “Do you want to hear a story?”
Marah blinked. “What?”
“I was new to magic, just like you, when I was sent to Whitehall,” Emily said. She held up a hand, summoning a canteen of water and passing it to Marah. “I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing. You’ll be better prepared by the time you go, if you do. Magic was this strange and wonderful and terrifying thing, which could do acts I couldn’t even begin to imagine. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.”
“I thought you grew up with magic,” Marah said. She sipped the water gently. “Didn’t your father teach you the basics?”
“No,” Emily said. “I was a complete naïf when I went to school.”
Marah wasn’t sure she believed her. “And then… what?”
“There were a handful of students who picked on me,” Emily told her. “I was defenseless. I had to learn how to fight, and quickly. And then one attacked me and… I nearly killed her. The spell I used turned a chunk of her body into stone, not all of it… the shock nearly finished her off. I could have killed her, because I let myself act without thinking.”
“She was picking on you,” Marah pointed out. It was difficult to wrap her head around the story, let alone believe it. Emily was only a few years older than she was, but there was a lifetime of experience between them. “Were you just meant to stand there and take it?”
“I came very close to giving her the death penalty,” Emily said, bluntly. “Did she deserve to die?”
Marah didn’t know. The boy who’d tried to rape her – and been killed by her first surge of magic – would have raped others, others who didn’t have magic to defend themselves. The lads in town, who had harassed her and the other girls, had had a long history of being unpleasant, of walking up to the line without ever crossing it. It was one thing to argue intellectually that they didn’t deserve to die, but quite another to agree when you were one of his victims – or might become one, in the future. You didn’t take chances with people who had proved they would cross the line. Better to remove them, rather than risk them crossing the line again.
She felt her heart sink. Emily knew safety, in a way Marah never had. She could afford to take the risk of forgiving her bully, secure in the knowledge her growing power and reputation would be enough to protect her. Marah could not. Nor could the vast majority of people. It was better to kill a rapist, or a murderer, rather than letting him go free to do it again.
“You taught her a lesson,” she said, finally. “But did she become a better person or did she take it out on someone else instead?”
“A better person,” Emily said.
She met Marah’s eyes. “I want you to learn from this experience,” she said. “What you did was very dangerous, as well as breaking the rules I laid down for you. You were lucky you didn’t seriously hurt yourself, or worse. It could have ended very badly indeed.”
Marah gathered herself. “What are you going to do to me?”
Emily looked back at her, evenly. “What sort of punishment do you deserve?”
Marah had no answer. She admitted she deserved something, but what? Her stepfather would have bent her over and thrashed her bloody with his belt by now, or worse. Virgil had never punished her for anything, even answering back. And Emily…
“No magic for a few days, I think,” Emily said. “You can work on your letters and numbers – and theoretical spellwork. We’ll continue to drain your power reserves until you’re ready to make full use of them.”
“I…” Marah stared. “I need to practice…”
“Your magic alone could have done serious damage,” Emily told her. “Drawing on the magic woven into the wards could have made it a great deal worse. You could have lost control completely, or been burned to death by your own magic, or gone mad. It was not a clever thing to do, and you need to work on your discipline, before you try to do it again. Next time, you might not get so lucky.”
Marah sagged. “I… I’m sorry.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Emily said, sternly. “I need you to do better.”
“I’ll try,” Marah promised, softly. She felt tired, drained and utterly numb. It would have been better, she was sure, if Emily had screamed at her like a fishwife castigating her husband. “I’m sorry.”
Emily patted her shoulder, then drew back. “One other thing…”
She paused, then went on. “I’ve arranged for a maid to do the cooking and cleaning, if she decides to stay,” she added. “Being a magician’s servant is a hazardous occupation at the best of times, even here, so don’t go making it worse. She isn’t your personal servant and she isn’t going to make your bed and you are not to cast spells on her, even with her permission. Do I make myself clear?”
Marah wasn’t sure if she should be offended or not. Probably not. She knew how unpleasant aristo children could be to their servants, particularly when their parents were insecure or had bought their way into rank and title. Virgil had told her – and she had no reason to doubt him – that most servants found ways to extract little revenges, from quietly doing as little as possible to openly betraying their masters. They were often the best sources of information one could hope for in aristocratic households. Their masters often forgot they were there.
“I wasn’t going to abuse her,” she said, finally. “And…”
“Good,” Emily said. Her tone hardened. “She will have trouble being friends with you, too. Give her time, and don’t make her feel obligated to do anything.”
Marah nodded. “Of course.”
Emily looked around the remains of the chamber. “I’ll drain the rest of the magic tonight, then you can help me fix the damage tomorrow,” she said. “It will be a useful lesson, although not one I intended to cover until much later. You should really learn that from a proper wardsmith, and you will when you go to Whitehall…”
“Oh.” Marah hesitated, then risked a question she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask. “What’ll happen to me?”
Emily frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You took me as your apprentice,” Marah said. Emily’s kindness felt worse, somehow, than the beating she’d expected. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, or if Emily would demand something in return… one day. “You’re teaching me magic… proper magic. But… what’ll happen to me afterwards? Where are we going?”
There was a long pause. Marah wondered, suddenly, if Emily hadn’t bothered to think that far ahead. She couldn’t have planned to take an apprentice, certainly not one who had so much to unlearn. Emily’s own apprenticeship, according to her, had come after six years of formal schooling. Marah was all too aware the gap between them was impossibly wide. She had enough power, now, to kill her stepfather, but Emily or Virgil would simply shrug it off.
“If you master the basics, you can go to Whitehall,” Emily said. “Or one of the other schools, if you wish. After that, if you get good grades, you can come back and complete your apprenticeship… or you might be sick of me, by then, and seek an apprenticeship with someone else. It’s up to you.”
Marah nodded, staring at the floor. Emily hadn’t thought ahead… not really. What would she do, when the apprenticeship ran its course? Marah wasn’t sure what she wanted Emily to do… it crossed her mind, suddenly, that she might have been taken on as a private project, as a great noblewoman would adopt a new debutante and teach her the ropes. Virgil had had much to say about that too, to the point she’d wondered if he’d been raised in a noble household. It was far from impossible. He could easily have been a bastard son, or a favored servant’s child educated with his master’s children, or even a whipping boy. Or…
And what will happen, she asked herself, if Emily gets bored with me?
The thought mocked her as they made their way down to the kitchens. Marah wasn’t sure if she liked Emily, although she was honest enough to admit that Emily had saved her life. Prince Jeremy would have raped her to death by now, if she’d stayed in the cells; it wouldn’t have taken him long to work out she had nothing to tell him, no matter how much he tortured her. And yet… she stared at Emily’s back, feeling something she didn’t care to look at too closely. Emily was safe – she had always been safe – and Marah was not.
“Jenny, this is my apprentice, Marah,” Emily said. Jenny – a girl so slight Marah thought one strong breeze would blow her away – curtseyed. She wore a simple maid’s uniform, carefully cut to hint at curves without showing bare skin. “Have you made up your mind?”
“I’ve decided to take the job, My Lady,” Jenny said. There was a hint of something in her voice, a hint of independence… Marah felt an odd flicker of fellow-feeling. Jenny might be worth getting to know, when they had time to spare. “The pay is very good.”
Emily smiled. “Very well,” she said, producing a contract from her pocket. “Welcome to the tower.”