She put the thought out of her mind and walked through the streets. Pendle was a nice town, if a little odd. The vast majority of the businesses were run by women, even the ones that were traditionally male-dominated. The young men appeared nice enough — certainly nicer than the boys she’d known at school — but it seemed most of them moved away as soon as they came of age. And a number had weird little pimples on their faces that suggested they’d been hexed at some point. She found it weird. Anyone powerful enough to hex someone with permanent pimples could certainly do a great deal worse.
The long-stay inn was the largest building in town, the largest she’d seen outside the magical or aristocratic communities. She ambled closer, just in time to see Nadine step out of the coach and walk towards the door with her nose firmly in the air. The girl was twenty, only a year younger than Nanette, but she managed to look much younger. She was classically pretty, with long blonde hair that reminded Nanette of Princess Alassa, yet there was no real character to her face. Her servants looked beaten down, as if the will to live had steadily been sapped from them out of them. The slave collars around their throats made sure of it. Nanette felt a pang of sympathy. If she’d had any qualms about replacing the little brat, they’d long since vanished.
She waited until the coach was driven away before slipping closer to the inn and casually walking through the front door. The building was not heavily protected, despite its importance to the community. Really important guests went to the school’s guesthouse, not the inn. Nadine wanted to keep her servants close, Nanette had been told. It struck her as a waste of money, but what did she know? She wasn’t an aristocratic bitch. She wasn’t someone who had to put on a show of wealth and power even if she didn’t have two coins to rub together. She’d met too many of them too.
The wards buzzed around her as she walked up the stairs, easily deflected with a handful of comforting lies. Nanette was surprised the innkeeper hadn’t asked the school’s mistresses to improve his wards, although she thought she understood the logic. The school was a political force in its own right, one that had vast influence beyond its walls. It would be very tempted to spy on guests, particularly ones who might not be well-disposed towards the school. She’d watched Aurelius play the game long enough to know that simple human decency went out the window when there was power and influence to be won.
She checked her knapsack before wrapping a glamour around herself and stepping onto the upper corridor. The uppermost floor had been entirely reserved for Nadine and her servants, at great expense. It was more space than she’d have at Laughter, certainly more space than Nanette had ever had at Mountaintop. Nadine was showing off her wealth in a manner that Nanette couldn’t help but find tasteless. Her father might be a baron — through marriage — but he wasn’t made of money. His wife would probably be looking for an excuse to cut his unwanted daughter off. It was what Nanette would have done.
The thought made her grimace as she walked down to the door and paused outside. Someone was shouting inside, barking orders in a manner that sent ice down Nanette’s spine. Nadine, she assumed. No one else would dare talk like that in the princess’s suite. Nadine might not be a real princess, but she certainly had the spoilt brat act down pat. Nanette wondered, as she tapped on the door, if Nadine had taken lessons from Princess Alassa. By all accounts, Zangaria’s princess had been a brat until she’d run headlong into Emily and lost. Nanette wondered, idly, how they’d become friends. They seemed to have very little in common. Nanette loathed Emily, but even she had to admit the girl was a powerful and skilled magician. She’d beaten a necromancer in single combat.
She readied herself, preparing a spell. The door rattled, then opened. A maid, her pale face marred with an unsightly bruise, stared at Nanette in confusion. The glamour made Nanette look like Nadine. Nanette didn’t give her time to realise her charge was in two places at once. She cast a freeze spell, locking the maid in place, then pushed her out the way and looked around the room. Three more maids gaped at her before they were frozen too. Nanette pushed the door shut behind her as a loud voice echoed through the air. Nadine had heard the door.
“Who’s that?” Nadine sounded haughty, very much like Alassa. “Tell them to wait for…”
Nanette strode over to the washroom and looked inside. Nadine was standing in front of the mirror, admiring herself. She turned as Nanette entered, one hand raised to deliver a slap… and froze as she came face-to-face with herself. Nanette laughed at her visible confusion, then cast the dominance spell. Nadine’s face went slack, hands falling to her side as she waited for orders. Nanette smiled coldly as she checked the rest of the suite. Nadine had some training in magic, but it clearly hadn’t been as intensive as hers. Aurelius had cast hundreds of mind control spells on her until she’d learnt to fight them off.
“Well,” she said. “How many servants do you have?”
“Four maids, three coachmen,” Nadine said. There was no hint of resistance in her dull voice. Her free will had been snuffed out by the spell. “The coachmen are staying in the backhouse.”
Can’t have them sharing a suite with the maids, Nanette thought, dryly. Who knows what they’d get up to?
She ran through a dozen questions, trying to fill in the blanks in her knowledge, before moving to the next stage of the plan. Nadine really was a piece of work. She had about as much self-awareness as a flea. It never seemed to have occurred to her that she was going into a completely new and different environment, where her fellow students would be her equals in magic. Or that her father might have sent her away deliberately. Or that… or that there was something wrong in constantly casting spells on her servants. Nanette rather doubted any of them were loyal enough to stay, if their collars were removed. She would have put a knife in the little brat rather than listen to her voice for a second longer.
And I’m going to have to act like her, Nanette thought. She cringed, inwardly. Nadine would’ve been in real trouble if she’d gone to Mountaintop. Her attitude would make her a pariah, the butt of all the jokes and the targets of all the hexes.People are going to be watching me.
She sighed as she ran through the last few questions, then opened her bag. The charmed fishbowl looked surprisingly plain, for something she was going to leave in an aristocrat’s suite, but it would have to do. Enchantment wasn’t her forte and there was no way she could ask any of the town’s enchanters to do it. This close to a school, they’d assume she intended to play a very nasty prank on one of her fellow students. They’d either report her to the mistresses or tell her to do her own dirty work. She filled the fishbowl with water, checked the spells one final time, then placed it on the ledge and released the dominance spell. Nadine’s eyes went wide, first with confusion and then fear, as she realised she was a prisoner. She might even have remembered being under the spell.
Nadine opened her mouth to scream. Nanette paralysed her vocal cords before she could make a sound.
“Just so you know, the fishbowl is enchanted,” she said. “If you try to break the spell, you’ll find yourself crushed to death. And I suggest” — she looked the aristocratic brat in the eye — “that you spend the next few months reflecting on how awful it is to be the victim.”