I reached my office and returned to the grading, feeling my head start to pound as I read through the essays. There’s always a handful of students who don’t pay any attention to the instructions and a couple whose answers go off on tangents so bizarre you honestly wonder what they think they’re studying. You might as well ask someone to add two and two and get donkey as the answer. And then there’s the students whose handwriting is so bad that unravelling their answers is an exercise in cryptography. I knew teachers who didn’t bother to try…
Bastards, I thought, as I reached for the kettle to brew myself something to drink. They could put in the effort, couldn’t they?
I rubbed my forehead. Reading and writing were complex skills and the students from lower social classes tended not to have any training until they reached school. It made it harder for them to catch up … Geraldine’s family might have paid for lessons for her, if they were progressive enough to educate young women, but it was interesting that Alan knew how to read and write. The orphanage must have hired tutors. I sighed as I poured steaming liquid into a cup, then sat down to work. If I was ever in a position to change the rules, ensuring everyone had a chance to learn the basics before going on to the advanced classes would be the first thing I’d do.
“He gave me the same speech,” Mistress Constance said, that evening. “The board is coming, and we have to be ready.”
“He’s making sure the board isn’t going to be exposed to the food,” Pepper cracked. “Wise of him.”
I nodded, although I suspected Boscha was wasting his time. The board members had all been to school. Surely, they recalled just how bad the food was … surely. There were occasional midnight feasts, which were quietly ignored if they didn’t become excessive, but most students had to eat in the dining hall. Maybe they’d forgotten. Most people don’t like to dwell on unpleasant memories and school meals were very unpleasant indeed. It was something else I intended to change. I had to eat those dinners, too!
“Yeah,” I agreed. “What is he doing?”
“Building an army,” Pepper said, flatly. “We know it. But who is the real mastermind?”
I frowned. Boscha had been at pains to remind me of his connection to Lord Pollux. I guessed he had ties to Lord Archibald too. I doubted Boscha was acting on his own, but …
“We need to unseat him,” I said. “I doubt the board will do it for us.”
“No,” Mistress Constance agreed. “He’ll just claim he was giving students some extra tuition. He might even get away with it.”
“Probably,” I agreed. It wasn’t uncommon for students to seek out extra tutoring. The precedent had been set long ago. But Boscha was doing it on an excessive scale … if he hadn’t been working so hard to hide it, and Walter hadn’t been more obnoxious than usual, I would have wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake. The grandmaster could come up with a decent cover story for doing it openly, if he’d tried. “Why do it in secret?”
“To avoid exciting jealousy,” Pepper said. “But why not offer the lessons to everyone?”
“We need to keep training our own students,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I had in mind, not yet, but Boscha couldn’t be allowed to have the only army or he’d win by default. And so would his backers. “And we need to come up with a plan.”
I finished my drink and left, leaving them alone.
The next two weeks went slowly. We carried on the private training—and kept an eye out for new recruits— as we studied Boscha as closely as we could, trying to determine what he was planning. I was sure we were missing a major piece of the puzzle, perhaps the piece that would show us what the remainder of the puzzle would look like, but we didn’t have any idea what it was. Boscha himself showed no inclination to give anything away, save for endless reminders about the board’s visit. It made me wonder if he was planning to kidnap the board members and hold them for ransom, an idea that only made sense if one assumed Boscha was a complete idiot. Even Walter would hesitate to kidnap his own father!
Unless he thinks he can inherit ahead of time, I thought, before dismissing the idea as being absurdly complex. There were no shortages of heirs who’d inherited in suspicious circumstances, but most of them had fairly credible cover stories. Walter isn’t daft enough to believe he could get away with kidnapping and murdering his father outright, is he?
I didn’t know. I had relatives who were stupid enough to think they could get away with just about anything, from molesting the maids to lying to their fathers. They’d never faced consequences in their lives, not even a slap on the wrist … naturally, they thought they’d never face any consequences at all. Some of them had been right … others had discovered, too late, that they weren’t immune to punishment or that simply they’d been denied the rewards and prospects offered to others. I wouldn’t have trusted someone so entitled he thought he could get away with anything and many other people would feel the same way.
And then they had the nerve to complain they were being denied the posts they thought were theirs by right, I thought. It had been a rare moment of justice in a family that thought blood was often more important than skill. Walter might go the same way, too.
I kept walking, randomly wandering the corridors. The air felt tense, suggesting trouble … I kept my eyes open, watching for the first hint someone had drawn the short straw and found himself charged with keeping watch for approaching tutors. It was a thankless job, but someone had to do it …
And then I heard the scream.
Chapter 6
I ran.
Jacky popped out of nowhere and opened his mouth. I zapped him with a freeze spell and darted past, hearing his body crash to the floor behind me. The last thing I needed was for someone to shout CAVE before I caught the guilty party in the act. Someone else ran past, her pale eyes wide. I gritted my teeth as I ran around the corner, bracing myself as best as I could. There were few adults with the naked sadism of students. The youngsters tended to lack the awareness of possible consequences that dominated adult thought.
The scene before me was horrific. Alan was bent over, hands clutching his chest. Blood spilled from between his fingers and dripped on the floor. Geraldine stood next to him, frantically casting healing spells that refused to take … she was too frantic, part of my mind realised dully, to properly complete the spells. Walter, Adrian and Stephen stood nearby, faces twisted into leers. Other students were watching, unsure what to do. They scattered the moment they saw me. I was almost relieved. The bullies had gone too far, finally …
“Stand back,” I ordered Geraldine. She was trying her best, but she wasn’t helping. “Let me …”
I cast the freeze spell on Alan, then levitated him into the air. It was hard to get a good look at the wound—his hands covered everything—but judging by the neat tear on his robes his attacker had used a cutting charm. I was surprised Alan was still alive. The charm could have cut his entire body in half, putting him beyond all hope of salvation. I snapped out a pair of spells to clean up the blood—I didn’t want to leave it lying around, not when someone could use it to curse him from a safe distance—then levitated Alan down the corridor. The audience had vanished. I told myself it wouldn’t protect them. I’d seen enough faces to get their owners on the hot seat, then sweat them until they gave up the rest. It wasn’t fun and games, even by a sadist’s standards, any longer. It was attempted murder.