Chapter Fifteen

Johan felt oddly relaxed as he opened his eyes, although he wasn’t sure why. He was in an unfamiliar room ... and then it struck him. Jamal couldn’t slip into this room and hide an unpleasant surprise among his possessions. He was safe. And the room had a selection of interesting books on the shelves.

There was a quiet tap on the door, barely loud enough to be heard. Johan checked that he was decent – Elaine’s maids had provided him with a selection of nightclothes, allowing him to choose the most suitable – and called for the visitor to come in. It was a young girl, barely older than Johan himself, wearing the grey robes worn by most of the library’s staff. He couldn’t help a flicker of envy as he saw the wand at her belt, despite what Elaine had told him.

The girl bowed. “Master Johan, the Head Librarian would like the pleasure of your company in her quarters,” she said. “If you wish, I will escort you there.”

“I wish,” Johan said. He swung his legs out of bed and stood upright. “Or should I dress first?”

“I think that would be a good idea,” the girl said, with a smile that made Johan’s heart flip-flop. “She won’t mind waiting if you dress quickly.”

She turned her back, revealing that her robes were designed to be tighter around her buttocks than strictly necessary. Johan stared, then forced himself to look away as he felt a stirring in his loins. He’d ogled the maids, of course – Jamal had done a great deal more than ogle – but they’d never condescended to share his bed. What favours could he do them? But, even now, this girl was a magician. Staring at her might have unpleasant consequences. Charity still boasted of the day she’d hit an unwanted admirer with a hex far beyond her tender years.

Cursing himself, Johan found a pair of clean trousers and a shirt in the wardrobe and hastily pulled them on. Glancing at himself in the mirror, he had to admit that he looked very different. They weren’t magician’s robes, but they suited him. He coughed, then indicated to the girl that she could lead him to Elaine. Somehow, he managed to keep his eyes on the back of her head, despite the seductive rhythm of her hips.

“In here,” the girl said. “And good luck.”

“Thank you,” Johan said. He hesitated, then worked up the nerve to ask. “What is your name?”

“Jayne,” the girl said. “Jayne of House Rendang.”

Johan nodded, thinking hard. House Rendang was one of the minor houses, if he recalled correctly; he’d never paid close attention to his father’s lectures on who was who. It wasn’t as if the other Great Houses would ever want to know that he existed. But now ... he found himself staring after Jayne as she walked away, then forced himself to turn and enter Elaine’s quarters. Elaine herself was sitting at a table, reading a broadsheet.

“Come in,” she called, lowering the sheet so that he could see her face. “How did you sleep?”

“Very well, thank you,” Johan said, as he sat down facing her. “It was a safe place to sleep.”

“Back at the Peerless School, there were rules that stipulated that no pranks were to be played in a person’s dorm or bedroom,” Elaine said. “I assume your father didn’t make such rules?”

Johan shook his head, mutely.

“You may stay here for as long as you like,” Elaine said. She passed him a menu. “Choose what you want, then I’ll order it for you.”

“Thank you,” Johan said, scanning the list of food. It wasn’t very long, but it all looked good. “I’ll have the steak sandwich with eggs.”

Elaine cocked her head slightly, communing with the wards, then nodded. “Done,” she said. “It will take some time, though.”

Johan nodded, unsurprised. “Why does the Great Library have a kitchen anyway?”

“There are plenty of students who come here for the entire day,” Elaine said. “So they go to the canteen to eat when they’re feeling hungry, then go back to their studies. I have to watch them carefully to ensure that no food is consumed within the library itself. That would earn them a public whipping.”

There was something in her voice that told Johan she wasn’t joking. Charity had said that the Peerless School had firm ideas on discipline, but she hadn’t gone into details. It sounded worse than their father’s strict ideas on how to bring up children. But then, no matter how dire the punishments, they hadn’t done much for Jamal. He had graduated as annoying and obnoxious a bully as he’d started.

He changed the subject. “What’s going to happen to me now?”

“That will require a long discussion,” Elaine said. She stood up, picked up a jug of something hot and black from a side table, and poured two mugs with practiced skill. “Would you prefer to wait until after breakfast?”

“I would just like to get it over with,” Johan admitted. He took the mug she passed him and sipped it, grimacing slightly at the taste. “What is this stuff?”

“Students call it Study Muck,” Elaine said. “It helps them wake up in the morning after a hard night spent partying.”

Johan took another sip. “I suppose the shock value would help,” he muttered. “It tastes foul.”

“I can order something else if you’d prefer,” Elaine said. “But most students do drink that, although they often add milk to soften the taste.”

“Oh,” Johan said. He closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them and stared at her. “What happened last night?”

Elaine took a breath. “There was some debate over the precise way to handle your case,” she said. “You may never be able to go to the Peerless School.”

Johan felt a strange mixture of relief and disappointment. Most magicians went to the Peerless School – it allowed them a chance to make contacts as well as develop their magic – but from Charity’s descriptions he wasn’t so sure that he wanted to go. Jamal was bad enough; having hundreds of students practicing their hexes on him would be far worse. But at the same time, it was where future careers were made.

And Jayne went to the Peerless School, he was sure ...

Stop it, he told himself, savagely. You barely know the girl!

“Your powers are just too different,” Elaine admitted. She placed her fingertips together, contemplatively. “On one hand, they might be able to hurt you; on the other hand, your odd spells might be able to hurt them. It isn’t something that the new Administrator could tolerate. Even with the new ideas I have for teaching you control, you don’t have the right level of skill to be allowed to join classes.”

She took a breath. “And I don’t think that you will ever be able to master potions or several other magical arts,” she added. “Your powers are ...”

“Different,” Johan interrupted. “So ... what was decided?”

“There’s also a legal issue,” Elaine added. “Your father has a claim on you, a claim he has yet to renounce. You would find yourself bound to him unless that claim was superseded.”

She leaned forward. “I would like to offer you an apprenticeship, with me,” she said. “It would solve many of our problems.”

“It would,” Johan agreed. From what little he knew, parents surrendered custody of their children to their new master, who would serve in their place until the apprenticeship was finished. “I will ...”

Elaine held up a hand. “You need to enter this with full awareness of what you’re getting into,” she warned. “Your case is far from normal.”

Before she could continue, two plates drifted into the room and landed on the table in front of them. Johan’s sandwich looked good, but Elaine’s plate was piled high with bacon, eggs and potatoes. It seemed a lot for such a slight girl, Johan thought, before realising that she probably needed to consume plenty of calories to power her magic. Charity had been much the same as she grew into maturity.

Johan hesitated, then muttered the traditional blessing – old habits die hard – before picking up the sandwich and biting into it. The steak had been cooked to perfection, he realised in delight; they’d even cut off the fat, leaving it pure meat. It was so close to how he liked it that he couldn’t help wondering if someone had contacted the family’s cooks and asked about his favourite foods. Or it might have been a coincidence.

“Tasty,” he said, though a mouthful of steak, bread and raw tomato. “Thank you.”

Elaine shuddered. “Eat with your mouth closed,” she said, dryly. “It isn’t a pleasant sight.”

Johan flushed, but obeyed. Jamal had been given rigorous etiquette lessons for the past eleven years; he might be a bully, yet none of his social equals had ever sneered at how he carried himself. But Johan had been allowed to skip those lessons as it had become clear that he would never play a role in society. He’d forgotten most of them as he’d grown older.

He watched with some amazement as Elaine put away most of her food, wondering just where she put it. Her robes were nowhere near as tight as Jayne’s, but it was clear that she was almost painfully thin. Charity had been like that after her first term at the Peerless School, when she hadn’t eaten enough to power her spells. The cooks had fed her up remorselessly until she’d put on plenty of weight.

“The normal rules of an apprenticeship are that the apprentice serves the master in exchange for tuition,” Elaine said. “You have nothing to offer me – and I don’t really need an assistant – so we will have to skip that requirement. A more serious concern is that your magic might not respond well to the oaths of apprenticeship. You might not be bound by the rights and duties of other apprentices.”

Johan struggled to recall what they were. “Obedience, loyalty, secrecy ...”

“And dedication to your studies,” Elaine said. “If you served under a druid, you would be expected to master healing magic in four years – unless, for some reason, you proved utterly incapable and had to be released from your oaths. The point is that you would be agreeing to make a magically-binding oath that would make you follow all of those duties ... and, given the odd nature of your magic, the oaths might not take.”

“I don’t understand,” Johan admitted. His studies had never been too detailed, not when he’d never expected a magical apprenticeship. “I thought that anyone could swear an oath.”

Elaine smiled, but it didn’t quite touch her eyes. “Only magicians can willingly enter a magically-binding oath,” she explained. “You would swear to uphold the duties of an apprentice; I would swear to uphold the duties of a master. But your magic might not be capable of binding you to me. And, if so, it would be very dangerous for me to bind myself to you.”

“Because you would be compelled to carry out your side of the oath even if I wasn’t,” Johan guessed. Elaine nodded. “Do we actually need the oath?”

“It would make it harder for your father to demand that you go back to his house,” Elaine said, flatly. She held up her hand. “There’s a book on apprenticeships I want you to read, although much of the information is generalised. You don’t have to make your decision immediately. However ...”

She took another sip from her mug. “You and I will be experimenting with your powers, trying to teach you how to control them,” she explained. “Normally, a master would know much more than an apprentice. But in this case, I would be guessing at where to go ... as would you. The apprenticeship might turn into a joke.

“Your magic might add other complications,” she added. “You would be swearing to obey me, but you might well be more powerful than I. That may warp the bond in odd ways. Assuming it forms at all, of course.”

“My head hurts,” Johan complained, making a show of rubbing his temples. “Can we just tell everyone that I’m your apprentice?”

“They’ll want to see proof,” Elaine pointed out. “And without a working bond, we couldn’t present them with anything.”

“I’ll think about it,” Johan promised. He looked down at the table, then up at Elaine. “What are we going to do today?”

“There are some ideas I wish to try,” Elaine said. “But we can deal with them after breakfast.”

Johan nodded. “Can I look at the broadsheet?” He asked. “I want to know if there’s anything about me in it.”

Elaine shrugged. Johan took the broadsheet and frowned as he saw a drawing of Jamal glaring up at him. The artist had managed to make him seem mad, bad and dangerous to know, something that made Johan smile. It was a perfectly accurate rendition, at least in his opinion. The text beside it noted that Jamal had been arrested by the Inquisition and was currently being held in the Watchtower, but very little else. His father’s lawyers had probably had a few words with the editor, Johan decided. If they printed anything they couldn’t prove, they’d be sued until they didn’t even have clothes to wear while begging on the streets.

“I thought they would have kept it a secret,” he muttered. “But the whole city knows he’s under arrest.”

“Someone in the Watchtower probably leaked it,” Elaine said, sourly. “Or one of the Privy Councillors, taking an opportunity to embarrass your father. There’s no way to know for sure.”

“Nothing about me,” Johan said, unsure if he should be relieved or annoyed. “How many people know?”

“Your family, the Grand Sorceress, the Inquisitors and myself,” Elaine said. “And that wretched druid.”

Johan nodded and went to the second page. This story mentioned that the Dark Wizard Hawthorne had been sighted near a city in the Western Hills, where several children had been reported missing. The writer stated that a number of Inquisitors were already in the area and expected an arrest soon. Johan suspected that the writer didn’t really know what he was talking about. If the Inquisitors were really closing in on the Dark Wizard, they wouldn’t want a broadsheet story to scare the bastard off before they caught him.

“That’s the problem with the broadsheets,” Elaine commented, wryly. “They either print nonsense or they print the truth in embarrassing detail.”

“Maybe I should go after him,” Johan said, seeing a line that claimed that there was a ten thousand gold bounty for Hawthorn’s head, preferably detached from his body. “I could get the gold and ...”

“Get killed,” Elaine snapped. “You are nowhere near ready to face a hostile magician, let alone one so touched by darkness.”

Johan winced at her tone, but had to admit that she had a point.

A letter floated into the room and landed on the table in front of them. Johan took one look and felt his heart sink. His father’s handwriting was distinctive, particularly when he was annoyed. He’d seen enough notes his father had sent to various tutors to recognise the signs of irritation. It was a droll reminder that, no matter how hard he studied, he could never please his father.

“I don’t want to read it,” he muttered. “Can you destroy it?”

“I could,” Elaine said. “But I think you should read it.”

Johan sighed. “Is it even safe to touch?”

Elaine waved her wand over the envelope, casting a simple charm. “There’s a spell to ensure that only you can open it,” she said, “but nothing else. It should be fine.”

Swallowing, Johan picked up the letter and tore it open. His father had written a note on his finest paper, paper that cost one gold per sheet. If nothing else, it was a way of telling him just how much his father cared. But it was really too late for that.

 

Son,

I have heard the news from your sister that you are now a magician. This is good news, particularly in light of other recent developments. I believe that you should come home, where you and I can sit down and discuss the family’s response to these new challenges. You would be welcome. Charity has forgiven you your little mistake.

My treatment of you in the past has been far from ideal. I am truly sorry for the suffering you have undergone on your path towards magic. Now, I believe that we can rebuild our relationship and work together to ensure that the family’s position is solid. Towards this, I would be willing to sponsor you to enter the Peerless School ...

 

Johan felt the letter grow suddenly warm and dropped it, a half-second before it burst into flame. How could his father so casually claim to accept him, now that he was a magician? The message was arrogant and condescending and ... he gritted his teeth, willing his rage to abate. His father didn’t even realise that he couldn’t enter the Peerless School ...

“That’s a no,” he said, addressing the pile of ashes. Surprisingly, the fire hadn’t spread to the table, despite the heat. “I am not going home.”

“You may wish to write and tell him that,” Elaine said. “He did send you a formal letter.”

“Fine,” Johan sneered. “Can you pass me a sheet of the cheapest paper you have?”

Elaine sighed, but walked over to a drawer and produced a cheap notepad. Johan took it and glared down at the blank sheet, trying to decide what to write. He didn’t know any words unpleasant enough to get the full depth of his feelings across to his father ...

... And to think that he would once have done anything for his father’s approval.

“I’ve made up my mind,” he said, firmly. “I wish to be your apprentice.”

“Then read the book,” Elaine said. “I’ll give you an hour.”