Idiots, Nanette thought. Who do they think manages the estate when the husband goes off to war?
The ruler cracked against her desk. She looked up. Mistress Jens was glaring down at her. “Well? Are you paying attention?”
“I’m trying,” Nanette whined. “It just isn’t…”
Mistress Jens scowled. “Can’t you read?”
“I’m trying,” Nanette repeated. A titter echoed through the room. “I’m just not used to…”
“We are not having any of the fancy learning in this room,” Mistress Jens snarled. It took Nanette a moment to realise she meant the New Learning. Emily’s New Learning. “And you will learn to read properly.”
“I can read,” Nanette protested, weakly. “I’m just not very good at it.”
“Well, you’d better get better,” Mistress Jens said. She nodded towards the rear of the chamber. “Penny, sit next to Nadine. Help her.”
Nanette concealed her amusement behind a blank facade. Penny wouldn’t be too pleased at being forced to sit at the front, even though it was unlikely she wanted to do anything that would irritate the teacher. Charms tutors tended to have nasty senses of humour when it came to forcing students to pay attention. Mistress Jens was actually the mildest tutor she’d met. Penny shot Nanette a knowing look as she sat down, placing her textbook between them. It was open to a different page.
Mistress Jens silenced a couple of snickering girls with a glare, then stalked back to the front of the room and resumed her lecture. Nanette listened, doing her best to pretend to be bright but limited. The spellwork was incredibly complex, tricky even at the best of times. It smacked more of a ritual than anything else, a combination of spells cast by separate magicians that merged into one. She wondered if she should be concerned. Ritual magic was never very safe.
“It is important you master this before you go flying,” Penny muttered, her finger tracing a line of text. “If the spell fails when you’re in the air…”
“Splat,” Nanette finished. The spellwork claimed it was resistant to tampering — and cancellation — but she had her doubts. It might lower her to the ground gently or it might simply drop her from a great height. “Do you go flying?”
“All the time.” Penny grinned at her. “I love it and…”
“Hold out your hands,” Mistress Jens snapped. “Both of you.”
“Sorry,” Nanette muttered, as she obeyed. “I…”
Mistress Jens brought the ruler down across her palm. She yelped in pain, trying to pretend it was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Beside her, Penny took the punishment stoically. Nanette heard sniggers from behind her and gritted her teeth. By the time the class was done, she’d be well-established as a stupid and utterly unreliable wimp. She was going to have to work hard, but not too hard. Learning too quickly would draw unwanted attention.
“It could be worse,” Penny said. She studied the nasty red mark on her hand thoughtfully. “I think…”
“It will be worse if you don’t pay attention,” Mistress Jens said. “Now, if you don’t mind, what are the four variables of conjuration in flying?”
Penny rose. “Height, weight, speed and resistance.”
“Correct.” Mistress Jens didn’t look happy. “And what do you do if one of the four becomes unbalanced?”
“You either enhance the others or lower the unbalanced variable,” Penny said. “At worst, you land and recast the spell.”
“Here, you always land,” Mistress Jens said. “If you want to get yourself killed by fiddling with the spell in midflight, you can do it somewhere else.”
Nanette nodded as Penny sat down. The flying spells were tough, particularly the ones the students had to cast on their own. And they had to be constantly refreshed when the magician was in flight or one of the variables would unbalance. She made a show of puzzling through the text, trying to sort out what was what while memorising the technique. Being able to fly would give her an advantage, particularly if no one knew she could do it. She honestly wasn’t sure why the technique wasn’t taught at other schools. If nothing else, the certainty of falling to one’s death was an excellent incentive to get the magic right.
They probably lost a few students and gave up, Nanette told herself. And reasoned that a cancellation spell could interfere with anyone’s flying.
She breathed a sigh of relief as the class came to an end. Mistress Jens assigned homework, gave Nanette a stern warning not to fly — the other girls laughed — and then dismissed them. Penny stood, shoved her textbook in her bag and headed for the door. Nanette followed, wondering what Penny would say when they were alone. Would she suspect Nanette was playing dumb? Or would she merely protest having to leave her friends?
A stinging hex struck her backside. She turned to see Lauran. “Why can’t you read, aristo girl?”
Nanette rubbed her bottom. It would be easy, so easy, to blast Lauran right down the corridor. The girl wasn’t holding herself like a duellist. It was clear she expected Nanette to grin and take whatever Lauran intended to dish out. Nanette could give Lauran the fright of her life, but it would blow her cover spectacularly. She’d have to settle for promising herself revenge at a later date.
“My mother never saw the value of reading,” she said. It was true enough, although the New Learning was changing everything. “My tutors didn’t give me a proper grounding.”
“You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude.” Lauran gave her a mock-wave. “Bye-bye.”
“She does have a point,” Penny said, as Lauran ambled down the corridor. “You do have to learn to read.”
“I can read,” Nanette protested. “Just slowly.”
“Very slowly,” Penny said. The bell rang. “Come on. We’ll be late for class.”
Nanette kept her thoughts to herself as she followed Penny into the potions’ classroom. The tutor — a scarred woman who looked as if she’d been in one too many accidents — ordered them to share a table, then launched into a complicated lecture on advanced healing potions. They would have been challenging under any circumstances, Nanette was sure, but all the more when she was pretending to be stupid. She cursed her luck under her breath as they were told to start brewing. Penny already knew she was hiding something. She wouldn’t be particularly tolerant of mistakes that led to explosions. She might even swallow her pride and report Nanette to her superiors.
And they might start looking too closely, Nanette thought, as she carefully chopped and deseeded the herbs. Who knows what they’ll find?
She sighed, inwardly, as she passed the ingredients to Penny. The tutors might find nothing, beyond an aristocratic girl trying to conceal her full powers. Or they might find the real Nadine. Nanette considered, briefly, going back to Pendle and disposing of Nadine permanently, then dismissed the thought. The brat had magic in her bloodline. Killing her might have all sorts of unwanted consequences. And moving her elsewhere might draw attention too.
The teacher stalked the room, checking on cauldron after cauldron. Nanette smiled as the tutor rebuked Lauran for a minor mistake, then ticked off two of the other girls for not chopping their ingredients properly. Healing potions were particularly unforgiving, she repeated time and time again; it was easy, all too easy, to produce a deadly poison instead of medicine. Or something that worked, technically, but had unfortunate and unpleasant side effects. Nanette had had the lecture herself, back at Mountaintop. She knew the risks.