Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (45 page)

I’ll be Elaine’s apprentice
, he told himself.
There would be no point in pushing at Jayne once I take the oaths
.

“I would understand,” he said, “if you didn’t want to see me again.”

The thought was a bitter one. He’d liked Jayne – and seeing the glances some of the younger staff threw at him when they thought he wasn’t looking had chilled him to the bone.
They
believed that it was his fault that Jayne’s life had been damaged, perhaps ruined. And how could he really blame them, when dating him had been enough to turn Jayne’s life into a nightmare? And it hadn’t even been his fault!

“I don’t know,” Jayne said. She reached out and squeezed his shoulder, then stood up. “I’ll let you know.”

She walked away despondently. Johan watched her go, realising that she wasn’t swinging her hips or doing anything even remotely seductive. She just wanted to leave.

He heard someone clearing his throat and looked up, into the eyes of a man dressed in black robes. “There is someone who would like to meet with you,” he said. Johan saw the wand at his belt and knew that he was dealing with the owner personally. “Would you wish to talk with him?”

“Depends,” Johan said. He looked past the owner and froze.
Jamal
was standing there. For a moment, he was tempted to say no, then he changed his mind. “Why not?”

Jamal didn’t look very good, Johan realised, as his elder brother sat down facing him. He looked thinner, almost gaunt; his face was pale and worn. But his eyes still had traces of the old arrogance Johan had come to hate ...

.... And yet he didn’t hate him so much now. When he’d been younger, Jamal had seemed all-powerful, but now he’d faced a Dark Wizard ... and won. Whatever else happened, he told himself, he would never be scared of his brother again.

“I have been told to apologise to you,” Jamal said. There was nothing in his voice to convince Johan that he actually
meant
it. “Father says that I acted badly.”

“The understatement of the year,” Johan answered, flatly.

“And you tattled on me,” Jamal added. “Why did you do that?”

Johan sighed. “You haven’t learned anything, have you?”

Jamal reached for his wand. “I can ...”

“Nothing,” Johan said. “You can do nothing. Not here and not elsewhere.”

“Not here,” Jamal agreed. “But why?”

It was strange, Johan realised. He had his memories of Jamal as a terrifying figure, always ready to cast a spell to humiliate his younger powerless brother. But now ... he had the oddly-reduced person sitting in front of him, still with traces of arrogance, yet weaker than Johan remembered. And Johan had magic too ...

“You have always had power,” Johan said, quietly. Maybe it was worth an attempt to teach his elder brother where he’d gone wrong. “You never had to earn it, you never had to do anything to prove yourself worthy of it; you just had it. Birth gave you advantages that many magicians couldn’t match. You never really realised that those advantages came from sheer luck, rather than anything else.

“And when you discovered that others didn’t have those advantages, you looked down on them,” he added. “You looked down on your fellow magicians who came from poorer backgrounds, you looked down on people without magic ... you even looked down on your younger siblings, just because they weren’t
you
. And you treated me very badly.

“Did it never occur to you that what you were doing was wrong? Did you never think that the people you tormented might have had thoughts and feelings of their own? Did you never realise that you were just becoming a pointless bully, rather than the worthy heir to a Great House? Or were you so consumed with the thought that you were unthinkingly superior that you never even
wondered
about your actions?”

“I am strong,” Jamal said. He didn’t meet Johan’s eyes. “The strong rule the weak. That is the way of the universe.”

Johan smiled. “Really? Ask Hawthorne what he thinks of that
now
.”

He sighed, tightly. “But you never even questioned your own doctrine,” he said. “You just
did
it. And, when you finally got into trouble, you were more outraged at being arrested than you were at your own actions.”

Jamal gave him a long look. “Is it true? Did you really render a Dark Wizard powerless?”

“I did,” Johan said, calmly. He looked into his brother’s face and smiled. “I will never be scared of you again.”

“No, clearly so,” Jamal said. “Father ... father wishes you to take my place.”

“Father can wait until the skies fall and the heavens open,” Johan snapped, remembering the one story that most of the religions shared. One day, there would be a final conflict between the gods and their chosen followers. The winner would be the sole god of the next universe. “I have no interest in returning home.”

Cold rage burned through his mind. He could lash out at Jamal, he could force him to endure everything that Johan had endured, he could even take his magic ... and yet it seemed pointless. After Hawthorne, his brother was just a nuisance. It would be fitting, part of Johan’s mind whispered, to rid him of his magic. Let him see what life as a Powerless was like. But somehow it didn’t seem worth the effort.

“You can tell him, furthermore, that I am going to apprentice myself to the Head Librarian,” he added. “I will no longer be under his control. And he can take his plans and shove them ...”

Jamal let out an incredulous bark of laughter. “You’re going to apprentice yourself to the
Head Librarian
?” he asked. “What is she going to teach you? Shelving books? How to chase down people who don’t return their books on time and turn them into books themselves? How to ...”

“How to be someone who isn’t part of a Great House,” Johan said, quietly. He wanted to punish the insults Jamal had aimed at Elaine, but he had something more fitting in mind. “I think,
brother
, that you will not be Prime Heir much longer. Charity is far more suited to the role than yourself. Our father has finally realised just what sort of person you are. If you don’t manage to improve yourself ... you might find yourself being kicked out of the family.”

He twisted his face into a sneer, an expression he’d learned from Jamal himself.

“And what will
you
do, without the family? You are powerful, but unfocused; you have no magicians lining up to offer you an apprenticeship of your own. Father will not offer any reward for taking you on, not if you are disowned. You will sink into the gutter or go work outside the city ...”

“
Enough
,” Jamal barked. His fingers were clutching his wand. “You have said enough and more than enough. I should ...”

“Go right ahead,” Johan taunted. “But just remember what happened to
Hawthorne
.”

Jamal’s fingers slipped away from the wand. “I ... I’ll make you pay, somehow,” Jamal promised, as he stood up. But there was a flash of fear in his eyes that ruined the effect, somehow. “Be seeing you,
brother
.”

Johan watched him leave, then blinked as the owner came over to his table again. “There is one more person who wishes to speak with you,” the owner said. “Can he join you?”

“Of course,” Johan said, as grandly as he could. Inside, he was puzzled. Who
else
would come to speak with him? “Please, invite him to sit down.”

The newcomer wasn’t dressed in robes, merely a suit that suggested that he was a prosperous merchant. There was no wand, no trace of anything that could be considered magic apart from a protective amulet around his neck. Johan had seen plenty of similar artefacts in various books, back when he’d been trying to convince his family that he would be safe outside, away from the house’s wards. His father had never been convinced.

Johan studied him, thoughtfully. He looked young, about twenty-five, with sandy-blonde hair and a faint smile flickering over his face. In some ways, there was a diffidence about him that reminded Johan of Elaine, but there was also a sharpness in the man’s eyes that reminded him of his father. This man might have no magic, yet he was clearly not a man to cross.

“My name is Hawke,” the man said, as he sat down. “And I wish to discuss politics.”

Johan took a wild guess. “Leveller?”

Hawke nodded. “Among other things,” he said. “I understand that we have you to thank for the capture of some of the terrorists?”

“Yes,” Johan said, unsure of what to say. As a Powerless, he would have been devoted to the Leveller cause, but now ... he shook his head, angrily. Did he think that his sudden power meant that Jamal had been right all along? “But they were released ...”

“Under strict conditions,” Hawke said. He smiled, rather sadly. “To tell you the truth, I was expecting that they would be released without charge.”

“Me too,” Johan said.

Hawke placed his fingertips together. “I shall come right to the point,” he said. “We have heard rumours that you stripped a Dark Wizard of his powers. Is that actually true?”

Johan hesitated, then nodded.

“We also heard rumours that you were a Powerless,” Hawke added. “Is that true too?”

“Yes,” Johan said, flatly.

“Which leads us to the all-important question,” Hawke said. “Can you give other people powers as well as take them away?”

“I do not know,” Johan said. Elaine had refused when he’d offered to try, pointing out that power-enhancing rituals often came with a cost. So far, he seemed to have escaped madness ... but Elaine was a more normal magician. Who knew what would happen to her if he tried? “Dare I assume that you want me to try?”

“Among other things,” Hawke said. “We no longer wish to be subordinate to the magicians who rule the world. There are ... threads we can follow that may give us a surprise, but we need magic too.”

“If you had magic,” Johan pointed out, “you would no longer be
mundane.
” He scowled. “And what would that make you?”

Hawke met his eyes. “And what has it made
you
?”

“I wish I knew,” Johan said. Part of him was tempted to try, just to see if it could be done; the experiment would definitely settle the question. But Elaine had warned him not to experiment without her and he intended to do as she said. Besides, he needed to be her apprentice. It was the only way to get Jayne out of trouble. “The experiment would have to be carefully planned.”

“Do it now,” Hawke said, bowing his head. There was a naked desperation in his voice that surprised and worried Johan. “Make me a magician!”

“Not now,” Johan said. He didn’t dare do anything in public, not when there were so many rumours flying around. “Why ...?”

Hawke reached into his pocket and produced a small frog, tinier than his hand. “This is my daughter,” he said, softly. “There were two groups of magicians who searched our houses after that young idiot was knifed to death. The Inquisitors were polite, the others ... the others turned Mildred into this and said that if I didn’t find the murderer, she would be stuck this way forever. I ... none of the magicians I spoke to were prepared to break the spell! She’s only
nine
!”

Johan felt a cold shiver of horror running down his spine. He’d been transfigured more times than he cared to count, often into something worse than a frog. But Mildred would never have faced a magician, certainly not on a regular basis. Johan had reluctantly become used to being turned into something as a joke; Mildred had to be finding the whole experience nightmarish. She was so small that someone could squash her accidentally.

“Give her to me,” Johan said. He took the frog and looked down at it –
her
. The frog was trembling against his hand. “I ...”

He closed his eyes and concentrated, willing Mildred back into human form. His hand was suddenly dashed against the table as the frog expanded outwards, back into a small girl with long pigtails. She was so much like a younger version of Jayne that she made his heart stop for a long moment. Mildred rolled over and hugged her father, tightly. She was sobbing so loudly that she was attracting attention from the other customers, despite the privacy wards.

“I’ll do what I can to help,” Johan promised. If he’d known who was responsible, he would have gone to wherever they lived and stripped their magic away before anyone could stop him. “And I will talk to the Inquisitors. The person responsible for this will pay.”

Taking one last look at the restored girl, he walked out of the bar and headed back towards the library, already composing what he wanted to say to Dread. It was clear that
someone
apart from the Inquisitors had been trying to catch the murderer ... and equally clear that the Leveller leadership had had nothing to do with it. To torment a young girl like that was torture – and the fact that it was pointless only made it worse. Dread, he was sure, would take a very dim view of it. If nothing else, the vigilantes would probably get in the way of the official investigation.

And, now that he had spoken to Jayne, he could take up the apprenticeship.

And his father could take his worthless marriage contracts and rip them into very little pieces.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“He said
what?
”

“He said that he was going to take on an apprenticeship,” Jamal said. “He said it was going to be with the Head Librarian.”

Duncan stared at him in absolute disbelief. The Head Librarian? What could
she
possibly teach anyone? It wasn’t as though operating a library was actually
difficult
. And why would Johan want to be a librarian anyway? He wanted to travel the world and prove himself, not be tied down in one building for the rest of his life. Rumour had it that the Head Librarian was stuck there for the remainder of the Grand Sorceress’s term. The previous one had certainly been trapped until the Grand Sorcerer had died.

But she’d definitely left the city at least once ...

He pushed the thought aside and looked up at his son. “What else did he say?”

“Not much,” Jamal said, softly. “He ... he just said that he didn’t want to be part of the family any longer. And that the Grand Sorceress had already given her approval.”