Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (46 page)

“Thank you,” Duncan said, crossly. He’d hoped that Jamal and Johan would patch together their differences if Jamal apologised, but it was clear that it hadn’t gone the way he had hoped. An
apprenticeship
? No matter who took him on as a pupil, Duncan knew, the ties binding Johan to his family would fray to the point where Duncan could no longer hope to influence him. “You may go.”

Jamal stood up and left the room. Duncan stared down at the table, thinking hard. Was Johan so determined to escape the family that he was prepared to apprentice himself to the Head Librarian – or was there something else going on? On the face of it, the very thought was absurd; students apprenticed themselves to Potions Masters or Alchemists or even Charmers, not librarians. Besides, there were plenty of openings in the Great Library that didn’t require an apprenticeship. For the poorer students, it was the easiest way to earn some spending money.

In theory, Johan would need his father’s approval to take on an apprenticeship, but if the Grand Sorceress had already given her approval Duncan knew that it was far too late to object, at least openly. And besides, Johan could take the oaths and then ... it would be hard to free him from the apprenticeship, even if he had taken the oaths without his father’s permission. It was illegal to force someone to break a magically-binding oath, even for the Head of a Great House. If Johan took the oaths ...

There was a knock at the door. “My Lord,” May began, “Lord ...”

Duncan sighed. “It’s Deferens, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” May said, showing no sign of surprise. For all she knew, he monitored the wards at the door constantly, although that would have left him no time for doing anything else. “He wishes to speak with you urgently.”

“Show him in,” Duncan said, with another sigh. He was far too aware of just how indebted he had become to the younger wizard – and of Deferens’ access to places and information he really shouldn’t have been able to reach. Duncan liked being in control, but he had a feeling that it was Deferens who was really in command. “And then bring us both a stiff drink.”

Deferens looked deeply worried, he realised, as May showed him into the room. His outfit was as neat as ever, but his face was pale. He plonked his staff down, leaning it against the wall, and then sat down without an invitation. It was such a breach of etiquette that Duncan realised that Deferens was on the verge of absolute panic.

“Do you know,” he said, without bothering with any small talk, “just who your son met after your other son left him alone?”

“No,” Duncan said, feeling a sinking sensation in his chest. At this point, he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that it had been the Grand Sorceress herself. Or, alternatively, the leaders of the opposing factions in the Golden City. “Who did he meet?”

“Hawke,” Deferens informed him. The name was unfamiliar to Duncan. “The Leveller leader.”

Duncan stared at him. “My son met a
Leveller
?”

“Indeed,” Deferens said, grimly. “Hawke is a prosperous merchant who pays his taxes on time, which is more than can be said for most of them. This somehow gives him the impression that, despite being mundane, he should have a say in how his taxes are spent. He is one of the leaders of the Leveller Movement and, perhaps, its biggest funder. And, despite being interrogated by the Inquisitors, he managed to hide his involvement in the death of young Graham.”

Duncan’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know he was to blame if he managed to fool the Inquisitors?”

“There are ways to fool truth potions or spells that even a mundane can use,” Deferens said, softly. “They can wipe their own memories, or ingest a counter-potion, or even ... well, there are dozens of potential methods. But who else would have a motive for killing Graham?”

He cleared his throat. “The problem is that he spent quite a bit of time talking to Johan,” he concluded. “And what, I wonder, did they talk about?”

Duncan considered it. He wouldn’t have blamed Johan, back when everyone had thought him powerless, for being attracted to the Levellers. Now, though, Johan had come into his powers ... and, clearly, had the power to make himself a very important and feared person indeed. Why would he
still
want to talk with the Levellers? And what might they have talked about?

“I wish I knew,” he said, slowly. “First an apprenticeship with the Head Librarian, now this ...”

Deferens used a word in a language Duncan didn’t recognise. It didn’t sound pleasant.

“The Grand Sorceress is making a power bid,” he snapped. “
That’s
what’s going on!”

Duncan stared at him. “How do you know?”

“What sort of apprenticeship could he get,” Deferens demanded, “if he works under the Head Librarian?”

He snorted, rudely. “But the Head Librarian is Light Spinner’s closest ally on the Privy Council,” he added. “If Johan swears to obey her, and that is part of the apprenticeship oaths, he will effectively be Light Spinner’s tool. What will happen when some magician decides that he disagrees with her?
Your son
will be sent to strip him of his magic!”

Duncan blanched. Power was everything to a magician; it was what separated them from the teeming masses of powerless mundanes, all of whom were helpless before a magician. The thought of losing his power was a magician’s worst nightmare. What Johan had done had made the entire community uneasy, even if it had only been a Dark Wizard who had been stripped of his powers. But Hawthorne had never posed such a fundamental threat to the entire social order.

Johan might not want to do what Light Spinner said. But the oaths of apprenticeship would force him to obey.

“Or what if she decides that someone
deserves
magic?” Deferens asked. “Could your son give it to him?”

“I ...” Duncan broke off, remembering the yearly tests the druid had run. All of them had agreed; Johan had no magic, nor had he any prospect of getting it. By the time Johan had turned seven, Duncan had known that the tests were useless ... which hadn’t stopped him from clinging to the last tiny flickers of hope. “He had no magic.”

Deferens lifted his eyebrows, quizzically.

“Johan had no magic,” Duncan said. “All the tests agreed that he had nothing, not even a spark that could be fanned into a flame. And now he has strange powers and ...”

“And an ability to take magic from someone,” Deferens said. “If he had no magic, yet somehow developed it, what’s to stop someone else doing the same?”

Duncan hesitated. He wanted to argue that it was something in his family’s bloodline that had produced Johan, but he had seen all of the test results. There had been nothing there; even the handful of procedures he’d pushed the druid into running, ignoring the man’s advice, had produced nothing. And yet Johan had developed powers.

“Nothing,” he said, finally. “Nothing at all.”

Deferens stood up and started to pace. “We have to act now,” he said, shortly. “As Patriarch of House Conidian, it is your duty to rein in your wayward son.”

“Johan isn’t listening to me,” Duncan said. “And how can I blame him?”

He’d failed. He’d failed all of his elder children. Jamal had become a bully, Charity had withdrawn into herself ... and Johan, who had suffered the worst, wanted nothing more to do with the family. The family magic prodded at him, reminding him of his failure; somehow, he would have to do better for the younger children. But he wasn’t even sure where to begin.

“Then you need to stop him, now,” Deferens said. “You have to have him killed.”

Duncan’s head snapped up, staring at him. “I can’t ...”

“You must,” Deferens insisted. “What will happen to House Conidian if your son becomes Light Spinner’s most feared enforcer? How will the other Great Houses react to this development? And what would happen if Johan decided to avenge himself on you?”

“No,” Duncan said. But Deferens was right. If the balance of power shifted so badly, the other Great Houses would start looking for someone to blame ... and House Conidian was vulnerable. Everything that Duncan and his father and his grandfather had worked for would be destroyed under the concentrated malice of the older Great Houses. “I can’t kill my son.”

“Some would say that you should have killed him long ago,” Deferens said, quietly. “And they will blame you for that too.”

Duncan shuddered. A Powerless in the family suggested weakness in the blood. When one appeared, they were often killed after it became clear that they would never develop magic – or expelled from the family and, if they were lucky, given to a mundane family to raise. But he had never been able to bear the thought of giving up his son, even though it might have been better for him. And yet ... Johan’s presence, even though it was largely unknown, had damaged the family’s prospects even before he developed his powers.

A Family Patriarch had ultimate authority over his children, at least until they reached the age of maturity. He could arrange marriage contracts, steer their education, even select their friends ... and discipline them if they were naughty. And, if they were too disgraceful for the family to tolerate, he could disown them or even kill them. But it was a dangerous line to cross. It had been bad enough contemplating removing Jamal as Prime Heir. Killing one of his children was worse.

And if you’re wrong
, he thought numbly,
the magic that binds the family together will turn on you
.

“There’s no choice,” Deferens said. “Act now or be forever lost.”

Duncan knew what he had to do. He just didn’t want to do it.

It wouldn’t be
criminal
, he knew. It wouldn’t break his oath. But it was still a terrifying and appalling thought.

“Damn you,” he muttered.

***

“You need to spend this evening in silent contemplation,” Elaine said, softly.

“I want to contemplate tearing the person who did
that
into very little pieces,” Johan said. He’d told her and Dread about the stunt someone had pulled with Hawke’s daughter as soon as he got back to the Great Library. Dread had been predictably furious and set out to find the person responsible. “To do that to a kid ...”

“You’re
meant
to contemplate why you want to be an apprentice,” Elaine said. She didn’t sound offended, merely understanding. “And if you want to back out, you can.”

Johan frowned, giving her a long look. “Are you ... are
you
having second thoughts?”

“My offer of an apprenticeship was genuine,” Elaine assured him. “But you do understand that you will be binding yourself to me for at least five years? If you want to back out, the time is
before
you take the oaths.”

“If I can,” Johan said. He wasn’t blind to the risks Elaine was taking. If, for some reason, his magic refused to allow him to uphold his share of the oaths, Elaine would be binding herself to him without him being bound to her. “But I have already made up my mind.”

Elaine smirked. “I will be a very hard taskmaster,” she said. She’d said the same thing every time the subject had been brought up. “And there will be a great deal of hard work.”

She smiled, more openly. “And research into your powers,” she added. “If we could find out a way to duplicate them ...”

Johan shrugged. The druids who had examined Hawthorne had all agreed that he was a mundane; indeed, if they hadn’t
known
that he’d been a Dark Wizard, they might have assumed that he’d been a victim rather than a victimiser. There was no trace of magic left in his body; Dread had noted that the side-effects of his experiments might well kill him before the former Dark Wizard could face the headsman. Johan was honestly not sure why they hadn’t simply killed him at once.

“If you can,” he said, remembering Hawke’s desperate plea for powers. Elaine had been disturbed by the request; Dread, thankfully, hadn’t stayed around long enough to hear
that
part of the story. It was hardly criminal to pray for powers – Johan had done it himself, more than once – but if it were possible ... it would turn society upside down. “But I want to learn more than I want to be studied. And I want to explore.”

Elaine made a face. Johan had already discovered that she didn’t like travelling, let alone roughing it in a primitive cabin, even if they
did
have magic to help with the hard work. But he had convinced her to agree that they could travel ... maybe next time they’d stay in an inn with proper room service. It would be expensive, but Elaine seemed to have plenty of money, even discounting her salary as a member of the Privy Council. And Johan still had the money his father had given him. He’d checked with the bank and apparently there were no obvious strings attached.

“We can try,” Elaine said. “But not for long.”

Johan smiled. Elaine had been raised in an orphanage, where there had been dozens of kids, and she’d gone to the Peerless School ... and yet she was scared of crowds. Put her at a table with twelve others and she would barely say a word. But Johan, who had been a virtual prisoner inside his home, had no trouble blending into the crowd. He could have happily gone to one of the parties Jamal had taken such pleasure in describing, although he might have skipped the entertainments. Drunken students were bad enough, but when they started to use magic ...

“Of course not,” he assured her. He looked around her room, noting that she’d somehow managed to bring in even more books. Most of them looked to be on apprenticeship oaths; one of them which she was skimming through, discussed applying such oaths to mundanes, who could not normally swear oaths. “Did you write the oath?”

Elaine nodded. “It should be upheld,” she said. She passed him a piece of paper. “But you have to be careful. Your magic is so ... strange.”

Johan nodded. Part of the reason magicians ruled – apart from godlike power – was because they could swear oaths that would be magically-binding. A magician who gave his word, bound up in his magic, would
keep
it or risk the consequences. And those consequences could be anything from a nasty scar to the loss of their magic or even death. But writing an oath for mundanes ...
that
was hard. The magic simply didn’t lock onto them properly.