Chapter Twenty-Four

“I made some food,” Johan said, as he stepped into the workroom. “Are you coming to eat?”

“Cass isn’t back yet,” Elaine said. She turned to look at her apprentice. “I thought I told Daria to send you to me when you awoke.”

“The brats needed something to eat,” Johan said. “I’m sorry.”

“Good thing you’re not working for Miss Prim,” Elaine said. “She would have sent you to be flogged for daring to be late.”

Johan smiled. “And will you have me flogged?”

Elaine shook her head. “Not unless you burned the food,” she said. “What did you make?”

“I’m afraid it’s only cold chicken, bread and butter,” Johan said. “I don’t think the servants will be back anytime soon.”

Elaine shrugged. She didn’t blame the servants for fleeing, after Johan had attacked Conidian House. The only real question was how Charity Conidian had managed to keep her siblings fed, at the same time as handling the affairs of the house and trying to salvage something – anything – from the disaster. Maybe the servants had left some food in storage before leaving ... or, more likely, she’d hired workers who couldn’t come back to the house after Deferens had ordered a curfew.

“We can’t stay here indefinitely in any case,” she said. “Did your father ever let you spend time in his workshop?”

“More time than I wanted,” Johan said. “They used to do all kinds of tests on me.”

Elaine shuddered. Johan probably viewed the workroom as a place of horror, just as she viewed the isolation box from the orphanage. Bringing him back here had been unkind, yet she knew there was no choice. Half of the tools in the room were charmed to prevent them being taken out of the room, save by the master of the house. The remainder were so commonplace they could have been purchased anywhere, with enough gold.

“Your father had quite an impressive collection,” she said, waving her hand at the iron workbench, the tools placed in wooden cupboards and the small collection of potions’ ingredients in a large cabinet. “But I don’t think he ever did much with it.”

Johan snorted, rudely. “Father liked to think of himself as a tinkerer, but all he ever really did was play politics,” he said. “I don’t think he cared enough to try to carry out research of his own, even on me. The only person I ever saw use this place was that rat-arsed druid.”

“Not everyone has the inclination to do research,” Elaine said. She was honest enough to admit she wouldn’t have known what half the tools were, without the knowledge decanted into her head. “Can we do one final experiment?”

Johan eyed her, doubtfully. “Is it important?”

“I believe so,” Elaine said.

She took a long breath. “The bond that formed between us only worked properly when boosted by another magician,” she said. “But we did the ritual correctly, so it should have worked perfectly. Why didn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Johan said. “Why didn’t it?”

“Your magic seems to be ... well, tamed wild magic,” Elaine said. “Children having their first bouts of accidental magic can produce stunning effects, which they can’t always duplicate until much later. We teach children to channel their magic properly to avoid causing mental problems as their magic sparks and flickers. You, on the other hand, don’t seem to need to channel your magic to keep doing interesting feats.”

Johan frowned. “So what does that mean?”

“My scans show that you have a flicker of magic, nothing more,” Elaine said. “You shouldn’t be able to do half the things you do. But if you’re ... well, using accidental magic all the time, you can do astonishing things.”

“Except it isn’t an accident,” Johan said, slowly. “I can make things happen by wanting them to happen.”

“I think you produce the same effect,” Elaine said. “There are some other tests we can run – and we will, once we’re out of the city – but I think that explains your manifold oddities. You keep keying into the level of power that caused accidental flashes of magic; indeed, to some extent, you have learnt to master it deliberately.”

“I see,” Johan said. “I think ... is this dangerous?”

“I’m not sure,” Elaine admitted.

She shrugged. “But I think that explains why the bond refused to form properly,” she added. “Your magic isn’t tamed to the point where it can hold up its side of the bond, so my magic has been doing all the work. And mine isn’t strong enough to maintain the bond indefinitely, hence my inability to sense you. I should have reworked the ritual to channel additional magic into the bond, rather than relying on the standard form. But we did need a legal claim to being mistress and apprentice.”

“Or my father might have challenged it,” Johan said. He looked up at her, alarmed. “But what does this actually mean? Can we fix the bond?”

“I believe so,” Elaine said. “Are you willing to work with me to repair it?”

Johan had another question. “And the other Powerless? Are they simply denied access to their powers?”

“I don’t know,” Elaine said. “It’s possible that you were merely intended to develop powers later in life and your father’s ... treatments actually buried the magic deeper. Or ...”

“Or I’m a freak accident,” Johan said. “Why wasn’t I born into a normal family?”

“You should have grown up in an orphanage,” Elaine said, quietly. “I would have killed to have the advantages you and your siblings were offered.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Johan said. “Really. It couldn’t have been as bad as having Jamal as an older brother.”

“Being alone is unpleasant enough,” Elaine said. “And there were worse things out there than merely being alone.”

She shook her head. “I think I know how to rework the ritual,” she said, as she motioned for him to sit down on one side of a small table. “Are you ready to allow the link to reform?”

“Yes,” Johan said. “Are you sure this will work?”

“Nothing in life is certain,” Elaine said. She sat down facing him, placing a silver knife in the middle of the table. “But I think this will work.”

She took a long breath. The ritual for bonding a magician to a mundane carried dangerous implications ... and reworking the ritual so those implications were minimised or removed altogether had been difficult, almost impossible. Indeed, she was fairly sure that no one else would have been able to rework the ritual without access to the Great Library and a number of unwilling test subjects. But she thought she had something that would either work perfectly or fail completely, depending on just what happened.

“Hold out your hand,” she said. “I need to make a cut in your left palm. Once you’ve been cut, take the knife from me in your right hand and make a similar cut in my left palm. Do you understand me?”

Johan winced – Powerless or not, he’d grown up in a household where everyone knew to make sure that no one managed to steal a sample of their blood – then he nodded, tersely. Elaine winced inwardly, remembering the first days at the Peerless School, then reached out and cut his palm as lightly as she could. The blade was charmed to minimise the pain, but Johan still grimaced in agony, then took the blade and sliced into Elaine’s palm. Being inexperienced, he cut deep enough to do real damage. She had to fight down the urge to cast a healing spell at once; instead, she gripped his left hand with her left hand and allowed their blood to mingle, then chanted the bonding spell under her breath. There was a sudden stab of pain, then disorientation ... and then she was suddenly looking at her own body from the outside. No, she realised slowly. She was peering through Johan’s eyes.

His memories rose up around her, a blur of nightmare and horror, of abuse and bullying and desperate attempts to coax even a flicker of magic from him. She blushed furiously as she realised he would be seeing her memories, then forced the thought to one side. There were secrets she wished to keep from him, from anyone, but there was no point in trying to hide them. He was her apprentice, bonded to her. Whatever her personal feelings, he had a right to know what she was and what she’d done. The bond would ensure he kept those memories to himself.

She snapped back into her own body and stared at him, feeling her entire body trembling as sweat trickled down her back. His hand was squeezing hers so hard it hurt ... no, she was feeling his pain as well as her own. Her eyesight seemed to flicker; for a moment, she was looking at herself again, then snapped back to normal. Carefully, thinking through every step, she released his hand and waited for him to let go of hers. As soon as she did, she pulled back her palm, now covered in their mingled blood, and cast a healing spell.

Johan coughed. “What ... what is that?”

Elaine stared down at her palm. The cut was gone, although she knew from experience her palm would ache for days. But now, instead of bare skin, there was a single rune carved into her flesh. It wasn’t included in the textbooks she’d seen at the Peerless School, but she knew what it meant. Partner. It was far more than just a simple apprenticeship rune. Slowly, she reached for Johan’s left hand, already knowing what she would see. The blood was gone, leaving the same rune marked on his flesh.

“It means we’re partners,” Elaine said. She hadn’t expected that. Most apprenticeships didn’t bother with runes, but when they did the master always manifested the master rune while his apprentice manifested the apprentice rune. To be partners ... what did it mean? For once, there was nothing in her stockpiled knowledge to tell her. “I think.”

Johan stared at her. “I can feel you now,” he said. “Can you feel me?”

Elaine closed her eyes. Johan’s presence was there, shimmering at the back of her mind. She understood, now, why it wasn’t considered remotely proper for a female to apprentice to a male and vice versa. It had been written in the books, but she hadn’t really comprehended what it meant, not really. No one could unless they underwent it for themselves. She was so close to him, so intimate, that it would be easy to take the final step forward and invite him into her bed. Indeed, they shared an intimacy well beyond anything she’d shared with Bee.

“Yes,” she said, irked. She’d have to do something about the bond ... but she already knew she wouldn’t be doing anything of the sort. The whole idea of giving up the bond, even moderating it, was unthinkable. “We’ll have to move out of the building and separate, just to check it works properly. We should be able to talk together at any distance.”

“It feels different,” Johan said. “Firmer too.”

He paused. “What was that dark room?”

Elaine cringed, mentally. “When children were naughty at the orphanage,” she said, trying hard to keep her tone light, “the Orphan Mother would put the brat in the dark box, leaving him completely alone.”

Johan winced. “I’m sorry,” he said. He would have picked up on her horror ... and her memories of being in the box herself. “But at least you weren’t being starved to death.”

Elaine shook her head. “Being sent to bed without supper was another regular punishment,” she said. “And sometimes, we wondered what we’d done wrong.”

“I don’t understand,” Johan said.

“You never had to hunt for food,” Elaine said. “There were days when the orphanage simply didn’t have enough food to feed us all. So we went to bed hungry, wondering what we’d done to be denied food. Some of us even begged to be beaten instead because we were so hungry. But it never worked. None of us understood until we were much older.”

“But you went to the Peerless School,” Johan said. “You were fed there?”

“I was,” Elaine said. “And I ended up working over the holidays, just to stay away from the orphanage. The first time I went back there, no one was pleased to see me.”

She wondered if he would understand. The orphans had watched her leave, wearing new clothes, to a school where she would be safe, warm and well-fed. She’d come back, having put on weight, and started to eat from their communal supplies again. It was hard to blame them for resenting her, even though they’d largely left her alone. She’d been a magician, after all, with a wand at her side.

“No one was pleased to see me either,” Johan said. “And to think I thought my dad was bad, when he was angry at us.”

He looked down at the blood on his hand. “What do I do about this?”

“Allow me,” Elaine said, brandishing her wand. A simple charm and the blood was gone, leaving only the rune standing out against Johan’s pale skin. “And we should probably meditate until we know just how deeply the bond runs between us.”

Johan frowned. “It seems pretty deep,” he said. “Is this remotely normal?”

“I don’t know,” Elaine said. She looked down at the rune on her palm, feeling – for the first time in months – as ignorant as a new student. “There haven’t been bonds like this for a very long time.”

She hesitated. “You may dream of my life,” she warned, “and I may dream of yours. Just remember ... that not everything may be in context when you see it.”

“I’ll try,” Johan said.

Elaine followed him out of the door and down towards the dining room. It was as spotlessly elegant as she’d expected, but Johan’s family would probably not have approved of Daria, or Elaine herself, let alone the decidedly plebeian food on the table. Elaine had to smile at the thought as Johan started passing out sandwiches, wondering just what his father would make of him serving the food. Even as a Powerless, menial work was below a Conidian.

“Your scents have changed,” Daria said, sharply. “What have you done to yourselves?”

“Bonded,” Johan said. He held up his palm. “What does this smell like?”

“Elaine,” Daria said. She sniffed Johan’s palm, then smiled. “Concentrated Essence of Elaine.”

Elaine blushed. “It’s just a bonding rune ...”

“You might want to glamour it,” Cass said. Elaine jumped, one hand reaching for her wand, as the former Inquisitor stepped into the room. “Any magician worth his wand who sees it will know there’s something odd about it.”

Johan found his voice. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I just got back,” Cass said. “The poorer parts of the city are being searched, ruthlessly. I think thousands of people have already been displaced by the soldiers.”

“They’re searching for us, I presume,” Elaine said.

Cass nodded. “The people there can’t really make a fuss,” she said, darkly. “I imagine the search will continue until they’re sure we’re not hiding there.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Johan asked. “If they’re searching there, they won’t be searching here.”

“On the face of it, yes,” Cass said. “But the search will upset the criminal element, who will then have an incentive to look for us, just to end the search before the searches stumble upon something they can’t ignore. And there are other problems.”

She sighed. “The soldiers are not being very nice to the population,” she added. “There will be riots, soon enough. And then all hell will break loose.”

“We can’t do anything about it, though,” Daria said. “Can we?”

Cass gave her an odd little smile. “Not unless you want us to surrender to the Emperor,” she said. “Our best bet would be to get out of the city, then let the Emperor know we’ve made it out.”

“Which we will, if we can,” Elaine said. “Did you hear anything else?”

“Just that the Emperor has been taking students from the Peerless School,” Cass said. “My source was quite certain that all of the children came from mundane families.”

Elaine rubbed her eyes in confusion. She hated politics, but the more she thought about it, the more it puzzled her. Hostages made sense, but children from mundane families were useless as hostages. Their families could neither cause trouble for the Emperor nor offer him anything worth taking, if he wished it. And that suggested he had something else in mind ...

She swore. “A ritual,” she said. “He’s planning a dark ritual.”

“It certainly seems that way,” Cass said. “There’s nothing else he could do with the children.”

“Unless he wants to train them as his personal assistants,” Johan offered, hopefully. “He would want more sorcerers loyal to him, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes, but half of the children he took are girls,” Cass said. “And even if he was able to overcome his revulsion at the thought of teaching a girl how to use magic, it would still be years before they could do anything useful. Why not take students from their sixth year instead?”

Elaine shuddered. “We have to stop him.”

Cass tilted her head. “How?”

“I ... I don’t know,” Elaine admitted. “But there has to be something we can do.”

“He will carry out the ritual under heavy security,” Cass said, tightly. “There will be layer upon layer of protection surrounding him. We could not do anything to stop him.”

“There are Inquisitors there,” Johan said. “Wouldn’t they stop him?”

“The Grand Sorcerer can do no wrong,” Cass said. “Anything they do is legal by definition. I think that will be true of an Emperor too.”

She shook her head. “They won’t try to stop him,” she added. “And they may even find themselves helping! And there’s nothing we can do to stop him.”