“They tried to grab me,” Geraldine stammered. She was in shock. She wouldn’t have been so open about what had happened if she’d been thinking straight. “Alan tried to stop them, and they cursed him and …”
“Later,” I snapped. Alan had lost a lot of blood. The wound could be sealed easily enough, but replacing the blood would be harder. I caught a passing firstie and sent him to take a message to Mistress Constance, asking her to meet me in the infirmary. She might have to whip up a potion to encourage his body to replenish its blood reserves. “Let me keep him alive first.”
Madame Clover’s eyes widened as I levitated Alan into the infirmary and dumped his frozen body on the nearest bed, then hurried to grab her wand and start casting diagnostic spells. I stepped back, taking Geraldine’s hand and pulling her out the way, too. Madame Clover was a practiced healer, one of the best in the world, but she could only do her work without interruption. Mistress Constance joined us moments later, her face grim. Madame Clover barely looked up as she snapped orders, demanding that I help her with some charms and the alchemist brew a pair of healing potions. She didn’t find anything for Geraldine to do, which might have been a mistake. The poor girl could only stand by the wall, watching in horror as the healer fought to save her friend’s life. I hoped—prayed—Alan would be fine. I hadn’t dared knock him out, not when it might push him over the edge. But being trapped in a wounded body, unable to move a muscle, wouldn’t do wonders for his mental state either. It might end very badly indeed.
I’ll keep an eye on him, I promised myself, although I knew it wouldn’t last. Alan would graduate, then leave without looking back. Perhaps I could convince my brother to give him an apprenticeship …
Madame Clover stepped back, after what felt like hours. “He will be fine,” she said, finally. On the bed, Alan looked almost childlike. The wound was gone, but his clothes were still stained with blood. “He just needs a few days of rest to replenish his strength, even with the potion.”
“He’ll …” Geraldine stepped forward. “Can I stay with him?”
“As long as you don’t disturb him,” Madame Clover said. “He’s in a healing trance right now. He has to come out of it on his own.”
She motioned for Mistress Constance and I to follow her into her office. “A bad business,” she said. The office was supposed to be secure, but I cast a handful of privacy charms anyway. “I was half-afraid the wound would be charmed to make it impossible to close and seal. Even so … he was lucky to survive. An inch lower and it would have sliced right through his heart.”
“Attempted murder,” I said, savagely. “They can’t get away with this.”
Mistress Constance looked at me. “Are you sure?”
I scowled. Boscha couldn’t cover for the little bullies now, could he? And yet, it had been hours since I’d broken up the fight and taken Alan to the healer. Anything could happen in a few short hours, from the bastards running away to their master finding a way to excuse their crimes. I couldn’t think of anything that would—it wasn’t a harmless little prank like turning a passing student into a toad—but that didn’t mean someone else couldn’t. Boscha wasn’t stupid. And he had a strong incentive to find a way to bury the whole incident.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, finally. I met the healer’s eyes. It pained me to say the next words, an admission of weakness as humiliating as confessing you were being bullied by your peers. “Will you stay with him?”
Madame Clover nodded. I allowed myself a moment of relief. No one, not even Boscha, would dare manhandle—physically, emotionally or magically—a healer. The Healers Guild would never stand for it and they’d bring immense pressure to bear on the community, convincing the board to fire Boscha before they lost access to healers themselves. The wretched man wouldn’t have a chance to bully Alan into forgetting what had happened … or something. I didn’t know how far he would go, but I feared the worst.
“There’s something else you need to know,” Madame Clover said, quietly. “I did a blood test. If I’d needed to find someone who could donate some blood to him ... it wasn’t necessary, but …”
I nodded. Healers wouldn’t use donated blood unless they were desperate. At best, it created a whole web of obligations and debts between the two that could be impossible to navigate or easy to abuse; at worst, it could bind the two together permanently or affect their magic in unpredictable ways. No one in their right mind would take the risk, if there was any other choice. Healers might be oathsworn to foreswear all debts, but the donor might not be so kind. Donating blood was so risky, and came with so many complications, that it was impossible to demand the donor do anything. And taking the blood by force was even worse.
Mistress Constance frowned. “What did you find?”
Madame Clover hesitated, noticeably. “He’s his son.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Alan is Boscha’s son,” Madame Clover said. “I checked twice. There’s no mistake.”
“Impossible.”
The word slipped out before I could help it. The Grandmaster’s son would be born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Boscha had all the experience and connections to ensure his child entered society at a very high level, enough of both to make up for any … irregularities … in his birth. His son might be spoiled so rotten he could give Walter a run for his money when it came to being an entitled brat. Alan wasn't spoilt. He was a poor boy from the local orphanage, his mother dead and his father a mystery …
And yet, there was something oddly familiar about him.
“If that’s true,” Mistress Constance managed, “does Boscha know?”
“There’s no relatives listed in his file,” Madame Clover said. “I suspect not.”
I nodded. Boscha wouldn’t leave his son in an orphanage if he knew the boy existed. Even bastards had rights, in magical society. No one would fault him for not taking the child into his home, but … he should, at the very least, have ensured the kid was adopted by a decent couple and given a steady upbringing. There were quite a few common-born children whose so-called parents had been paid to take and raise them as their own. The lucky ones, I had often thought, were the ones who never realised they were adopted. The ones who did often had trouble coming to terms with the fact …
“He doesn’t know,” I muttered. Alan didn’t know either, or I was a monkey’s uncle. “Do we tell him?”
“No.” Mistress Constance’s voice was very firm. “Boscha doesn’t know. How’ll he react?”
I nodded, curtly. Boscha had no legitimate son. He wasn’t even married. He might … he might acknowledge the boy and take him into his household, or he might pretend the young man simply didn’t exist. Or … I hated to admit it, even of Boscha, but he might kill his bastard son. I knew at least one bastard who’d died under suspicious circumstances. No one knew for sure, but the general theory was that the poor kid’s stepmother had resented his presence and murdered him. Boscha had plenty of options if he wanted to dispose of his son in a manner that couldn’t be traced back to him.
A thought crossed my mind. He has the Grandmaster’s blood …
Someone knocked, hard. Madame Clover cancelled the privacy wards. “Come!”
A young girl peeked in, her eyes nervous. “The Grandmaster requests the presence of his senior tutors, immediately,” she said. “I …”