Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (41 page)

“I’m going to need a statement,” he said, quietly. He looked around the room again, searching – Johan realised suddenly – for Hawthorne. “And where is he?”

“There,” Johan said, pointing to the statue. He was sure that Hawthorne couldn’t free himself, not now his magic was gone, but he didn’t really want to take chances. Even with his strange magic, Hawthorne had come far too close to killing him. And he’d beaten Elaine halfway to death. “Can you help her?”

“She will need some time, but she will recover,” the first Inquisitor assured him. There was a confidence in his tone that made Johan relax, slightly. “We’ll take her back to the druids. You can come with us.”

“After you give your statement,” the second Inquisitor added, “you may stay with her.”

Johan scowled, but followed them and the floating Elaine out of the building. As far as he knew, there was no spell that would strip a person of their magic permanently; if there had been, he was sure the Inquisitors would have started using it when they took Dark Wizards prisoner. But he’d invented one ... somehow, he knew that would scare the magicians more than anything else he’d done. And who knew what would happen after that?

Never mind that now
, he told himself, bitterly. There were more important things to worry about than his future. Or, for that matter, what would happen to Hawthorne once they turned him back to normal.
Elaine got hurt because she ran after you. You need to be there to look after her.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Welcome back to the world,” a familiar voice said. Elaine opened her eyes to see Dread, standing at the foot of her bed. “How are you feeling?”

Elaine paused, considering. Apart from a handful of twinges from her leg, which wouldn’t go away until she walked long enough to accustom herself to her repaired bones, she felt fine. The druids had to have kept her asleep after she fainted, taking their time to work on her so she didn’t have to spend days recuperating. All in all, it was better than the treatment she’d had the last time she’d fallen into their clutches.

You weren’t a Privy Councillor then
, she reminded herself, tartly. A stab of guilt ran through her mind as she remembered the dead or dying in the city.
You’re important now
.

“I’ve been better,” she said, finally. She sat upright, realised that she was naked and grabbed at the sheet to cover herself. “What happened?”

Dread’s eyes narrowed. “How much do you remember?”

Elaine concentrated. “Hawthorne,” she said. She’d fought Hawthorne ... and lost. He’d snapped her wand right in front of her. If Johan hadn’t done something, he would have taken her and raped her and used her to bear his children ... she shuddered suddenly with remembered fear. “What happened to him?”

“A very good question,” Dread said. “He seems to have lost the ability to do magic altogether.”

“... Shit,” Elaine said, numbly. Johan had said that, just before she’d fainted, but she hadn’t believed him. Not completely. Magic was resilient. There were ways to dampen it, or force someone to swear an oath not to use it, yet there was no way to actually remove it completely. Not until now. “How many people know?”

“It’s meant to be a secret,” Dread said. “But rumours have no doubt already started circulating.”

“No doubt,” Elaine agreed. She looked around, hunting for her clothes. “What happened to my clothes.”

“They were stained in blood,” Dread said. “The druids took the liberty of destroying them and provided you with a pair of spare robes in exchange. If you’re sure you’re fit to move, you can get up and put them on.”

He pointed towards the wardrobe. Elaine scowled at him until he turned his back, then swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood upright. Her leg felt as if someone had stabbed it for a long moment, then the pain faded away into nothingness. Gritting her teeth, Elaine walked over to the wardrobe and found a pair of oversized robes. Casting the spells to resize them into something she could actually wear took a few moments – she made a mental note to get a new wand as quickly as possible - but eventually she was decent.

The effort brought back memories. There was a fund for poor students at the Peerless School, but it hardly stretched to new robes or anything else new apart from wands. She’d had more second-hand clothes than she cared to remember; she’d learned the spells that she needed to resize clothes very quickly, purely out of self-defence. Wearing something obviously unsuitable would have attracted mockery from the other students.

“They will do,” she said, finally. A look in the side drawer revealed the pieces of her wand and her bag, which she opened and checked quickly. Thankfully, the protective charms had held; the vial of blood was still intact and sealed. “What happened to Johan?”

“After we took his statement, he insisted on remaining nearby,” Dread said. He scowled down at the ground. “I’m afraid he blames himself for everything that happened. He was insisting that I should arrest him as a murderer. I ended up telling him to join a work gang and sweat it out.”

He held up a hand. “I’d suggest you put your glamour back on,” he added. “The people here have been scared enough.”

Elaine flushed, but did as he said.

“Good,” Dread said, examining her face. Thankfully, the spell didn’t need a wand to work, which was lucky. Wands were normally precise, but few magicians felt comfortable casting spells on themselves using them. The results could be unpleasant. “Follow me.”

Elaine blinked as they stepped out into the sunlight. The druids had been busy; they’d taken over a number of buildings and turned them into makeshift hospitals. Hundreds of young women had been pressed into service as nurses, including some who would normally have been considered too young to work in a responsible job. Beyond them, there was a dozen Inquisitors and a small army of City Guardsmen. Elaine couldn’t help wondering where the Guardsmen had been while Hawthorne had been attacking, but she knew better than to expect them to face a magician. It wasn’t what they were paid to do.

The destroyed buildings were being cleared, piece by piece, by workers. Johan was one of them; stripped to the waist, his body shining with sweat as he moved debris by brute force rather than magic. Elaine wondered just how strong the temptation
was
to use magic; for someone who had been denied it all of his life, Johan didn’t seem to
want
to use it now, even though it would have been helpful. But then, most of his spells went wrong one way or the other. He’d probably learned caution.

Johan saw her, dropped the piece of debris on the ground and raced towards her. Elaine barely had time to raise her arms before he wrapped her in a tight hug, almost lifting her off the ground. She hugged him back, then looked over at Dread, who was watching the whole affair with ill-concealed amusement.

“Tell me,” he said. “Should I find you a room?”

Elaine flushed, brightly. “Yes, please,” she said, once she trusted herself to speak. “We have a lot to talk about.”

Dread led them to a building guarded by a pair of Inquisitors and pointed them into a small room. “There are privacy wards erected to protect your words,” he said. Elaine, who knew perfectly well that those wards wouldn’t stop the
Inquisitors
listening to them, was not impressed. “And you should get a bite to eat as soon as possible.”

Elaine watched him go, then looked up at Johan. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Johan sagged in front of her. “I killed those children,” he said, bitterly. “And then I led you to your ... you were hurt because of me.”

“No,” Elaine said. She still remembered how guilty she’d felt after Kane had ripped through the Golden City, using knowledge he’d stolen from her mind. Family magic was
so
easy to misuse. At least Hawthorne would have needed years to draw
everything
from her. “That wasn’t your fault.

“You tried to hold up the building,” she continued, after a moment. It had been simple enough in hindsight to work out what had happened, although hindsight also showed several other possible ways to deal with the problem. “You did hold the walls in place, but that put additional pressure on the floors and they eventually collapsed.”

“Plunging the children into the flames,” Johan said. “It was my fault.”

“It wasn’t you who set the flames,” Elaine pointed out, wondering just how Dread – who had explained to her that everything that happened hadn’t really been
her
fault – had refrained from slapping her, or at least turning her into something that didn’t talk. “Nor was it you who put their lives in danger. Hawthorne did that, purely to make it harder for people to chase him.”

And perhaps to conceal what he was doing
, she thought, although she doubted that it would have worked. He would have needed to flatten half the city and, even then, people would have wondered. Or maybe the Witch-King had other tools who could help ensure that the truth never got out.

“You are certainly not a murderer,” she concluded. “Chasing after Hawthorne, on the other hand, was
dumb
.”

“I know,” Johan admitted. “I ... I just wanted to prove myself.”

“I dare say you succeeded,” Elaine snapped. She could understand the heroic impulse, as well as the desire to prove oneself; she just didn’t share it. And yet she’d gone after Johan without waiting for the Inquisitors. “Are you now content or are you going to do something else stupid?”

Johan shook his head. “I won’t run off again,” he said. “But ... but they looked at me as though I was a monster.”

“I’m not surprised,” Elaine admitted, softening her tone. “If you took his magic permanently ...”

She shook her head. “Tell me,” she ordered “Just
what
happened when you were facing him.”

Johan did his best to describe his experience, but Elaine had to admit that it didn’t quite make sense. Magicians – apart from Johan – could sense magic. But none of them had ever reported anything like a web of life, apart from a handful of magicians who had written books she had in her head, magicians who had seemed half-insane. It was impossible, even for her, to separate anything useful from their ravings. And there was absolutely nothing about removing a magician’s magic. As far as she could tell, the only permanent way to make it work was to kill the magician.

“I’d prefer that not to get out,” she concluded. “But it already has.”

“I’m sorry,” Johan said. “But I needed to tell them
something
.”

“I know,” Elaine agreed. She ran her hand through her hair, suddenly feeling very tired. “How long has it been?”

“Since you were knocked out?” Johan asked. “Three days.”

Elaine scowled. Three days was more than long enough for the news to reach the Golden City. By now, the Privy Council would probably have met to debate the issue ... the gods alone knew what they would say. Johan’s magic was strange enough, but if he had the ability to take magic away ... they’d want him dead.

A thought struck her. “Do you think you could
give
a person magic? Or boost their spells?”

“I don’t know,” Johan admitted. He looked at her for a long moment. “Do you want me to try?”

The temptation was overwhelming, Elaine had to admit. Most rituals to boost magic had a high cost, but she had a feeling that Johan’s magic sat outside those rules. And what could she do if she combined her insights into how magic actually worked with additional power? There were spells she could never make work, no matter how much she broke them down ... but she could, if she had more power.

“No,” she said, finally. There were dangers ... and not all of them were caused by the rituals. “But I think you should keep that possibility to yourself too.”

Not that it will stop others from thinking of it
, she thought. Johan had been important before; now, he would be wanted by every faction in the Golden City. Even the Levellers would want him, in the hopes that he could give them powers.
But would it be wrong of him to try
?

She shook her head, dismissing the thought. It was one that could be mulled over later, along with Hawthorne’s connection to the Witch-King. Everything that had happened seemed to prove that Johan wasn’t connected to the Witch-King himself ... unless Hawthorne had been sacrificed to convince her that was true. She scowled, feeling a headache coming on. The Witch-King was such an elusive enemy that it was impossible to be sure if he was involved or not. Much as she disliked duelling, she had to admit that it was simpler than matching wits with a wily immortal enemy who could lay plans over decades – or centuries. The amount of planning that had gone into producing Elaine alone was staggering.

I’ll have to take a long look at Johan’s family tree
, she told herself, thoughtfully.
See what, if anything, pops out at me
.

But she knew that it was unlikely to be obvious. If indeed there was anything to find.

Johan was looking at her oddly. “Elaine?”

“Nothing,” Elaine said, shaking her head. “Just woolgathering.”

She looked down at the floor for a long moment, catching sight of a small spider scurrying back to its web, then looked back at Johan. “I think we should consider going back to the cabin,” she said, slowly. In truth, she was unsure what to do. If they went back to the city, it would allow her to start limiting the damage as much as possible ... but it would also make them easier targets for everyone who wanted a piece of Johan. “But I need to take a look at Hawthorne first. And have a word with the Inquisitors.”

“Understood,” Johan said. “And I need to get back to work.”

Elaine nodded. “Thank you for saving my life,” she said, softly. “He would have done far worse than kill me, if he took me prisoner.”

“I endangered your life,” Johan said. “I won’t ever do that again.”

Elaine smiled, led him outside, then turned to Dread as Johan hurried back to the work gang. “I need to see Hawthorne,” she said. “What happened to him?”

“He’s in the cells,” Dread said, leading her towards a City Guard station. The exterior of the building had been scorched, but it was otherwise intact. “And seemingly powerless, as far as we can tell.”