“Yes,” I said, flatly. Pepper had offered to accompany me, but … there was no point in both of us ending up in deep shit, if the whole affair went horribly wrong. “If I get caught, you swear blind you don’t know me.”
Mistress Constance snorted. “No, I can’t remember the person I worked beside for the last umpteen years,” she said, dryly. “Who are you, and what are you doing in my rooms?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean,” I said. “Let me take all the blame, while you carry on with the plan.”
“The plan,” Pepper said. “We don’t have a plan. Do we?”
“No,” I said. If we knew what Boscha was doing, we might be able to come up with a plan to counter it. But all we had were theories. “If this works, we might be able to come up with something.”
I scowled. The last five days had been … difficult. The new prefects carried out their duties in a manner that seemed designed to provoke an uprising, although the combination of superior magic and the grandmaster’s unstinting support was enough to keep the revolt to sullen muttering … for now. I’d wondered if the plan was to provoke an uprising, perhaps to provide an excuse to kick the great unwashed out of the school, but it seemed a little pointless. Boscha might be a Supremacist, yet even the most snooty Supremacist knew the importance of adding new blood to the older bloodlines. It made no sense. What was I missing?
“Be very careful,” Mistress Constance warned. She held up a vial, turning it over and over so the liquid glinted in the light. “Once you drink the potion, you’ll have two hours—at most—before it wears off.”
“I know,” I said. I took a breath. “It’s time.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t come back early,” Pepper said. “We will try to warn you …”
I nodded as I took the vial, then left the chambers and made my way up the stairs. Boscha had left the building—I thought he’d gone to the brothel, judging by how carefully he’d slipped out—and there was no real danger of running into him unless he came back early, but there were other problems. The new prefects might notice something … or I’d catch them doing something I’d have to stop. I’d already caught one prefect meting out corporal punishment and another ordering younger students to write lines … I shook my head. Being a prefect was supposed to teach a student to be responsible, not give them a chance to indulge their sadistic side. If I had the power, I would abolish the position.
The air felt hot and heavy as I reached Boscha’s office, the heavy wooden doors suffused with powerful magic. It was an old tradition for students to try to break into the offices, but … very few ever succeeded. No one, as far as I knew, had ever broken into the Grandmaster’s office. It was regarded, with reason, as the hardest target in the school. I took the vial, opened the lid and downed the potion. It tasted ghastly, the magic making me feel a stranger in my own body. I gritted my teeth—for two hours, my magical signature would be practically identical to Boscha’s—and pushed open the door. It opened effortlessly, the wards drawing back smoothly. I was almost impressed. Boscha could have gone far, if he’d stayed with his studies.
And he could have kept his rooms safe, if he’d known he had a son who could be used as a source of blood, I thought. Alan’s blood was the key ingredient. It was close enough to his father’s to fool the wards, with a little fiddling. What you don’t know can hurt you.
I cast a night-vision spell and looked around. The office was surprisingly well organised. A handful of scrolls rested on the desk—some cheap parchment, some expensive—but otherwise there was nothing to suggest where I should begin. Three books rested on the bookshelf—it seemed wrong to have such a large shelf with only three books—and I took the time to check the titles. Two genealogical books—I’d had my fill of those when I’d been a child —and a detailed outline of the obligations and debts owed to Whitehall by Dragon’s Den. They were lucky, although they probably didn’t realise it. Whitehall didn’t demand very much from the town, unlike most aristocratic estates. I shook my head and examined the scrolls on the desk. None of them looked particularly important, except ....
Boscha would expect Daphne to deal with most of these, I thought. I’d known some high-ranking people who’d become so invested in every little detail they couldn’t see the forest for the trees, but Boscha wasn’t one of them. He did know how to delegate. He was so good at it that he didn’t have to do very much at all, as long as his staff did their job. Why are they here?
I looked closer. The records were quite detailed, but …
The parchment tingled with magic as I touched it. I swore under my breath. A palimpsest. I should have known. My family had used them frequently, when it wanted to send messages they didn’t want to be read by unfriendly eyes. Someone had written a message in charmed ink on the parchment, waited for it to fade, then written a second message over the first. Clever … and quite impossible to detect, if you weren’t the intended recipient. I wouldn’t be able to read the message, even if I guessed it was there, without Boscha’s help. Or at least some of his blood. They were so complex to produce that hardly anyone outside the magical families knew they existed, let alone used them.
I rested my hand against the parchment and watched as the writing shifted to reveal the hidden message. My eyes narrowed. Lord Pollux had been writing to Boscha—that was no surprise—and his message, even concealed, was so vague Walter’s father had left himself with far more than just plausible deniability. He dodged around the subject, listing objectives without ever mentioning what those objectives were … I suspected I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend anything if I hadn’t been raised by House Barca. I knew enough of the background to guess at some of the meaning, then infer others …
Lord Pollux knows Boscha is building an army, I thought, coldly. And he’s not the only one.
My blood ran cold as I started to put the pieces together. Boscha had recruited students from the most powerful magical families, the ones who believed—firmly—in Supremacist ideology. Boscha had promised the students rewards and … I shuddered, recalling what Walter had told Geraldine. There were seven board members, five of whom were either Supremacists themselves or inclined to go along with them. If their youngsters became a magical army, who could stop them taking control of the nexus points and declaring a Supremacist Empire? The old emperors were gone. I couldn’t see any of the mundane kings standing in their way. They’d be crushed like bugs.
Or turned into bugs and then crushed, I thought. I knew some of my relatives thought their magic gave them the right to rule. There’d be little resistance, if the Supremacists managed to take control of the nexus points. Why bother, when they’d be getting what they wanted? It won’t end well.
I put the parchment back on the desk—the hidden writing would fade, the moment I let go—and searched the rest of the office as thoroughly as I could without revealing any trace of my presence. I knew all the tricks—all the ways to hide something, from simple misdirection to concealment spells—but it still took me some time to find the hidden compartment under the throne and peek inside. I had to give Boscha credit. It was a neat place to hide stuff because no one would want to look there. The papers inside were very revealing, although most were so vague that—individually—they were almost useless. Collectively, they let me put the pieces together to reveal Boscha’s plan.