Elaine felt a flash of hot anger, tempered by a dull helplessness that had been part of her ever since she’d realised that she would always be a victim. “I need to ask you some questions,” she said. Spells danced through her mind, spells that could compel him to tell her the truth – or give her half of his inheritance. Judd’s looming presence behind her wasn’t as much a deterrent as he might have hoped. There were words that banished even the most persistent and deadly of demons in her mind. “Why did you become my Guardian?”
Lord Howarth shrugged, languidly. “There are...duties that come with one’s birth,” he said. Elaine felt her eyes narrow in disbelief. Since when had he even considered the possibility that his birth brought responsibilities as well as the freedom to enjoy himself into an early grave? “I merely felt that such duties had to be honoured.”
Something snapped inside Elaine’s mind. “You never showed any concern for such duties before,” she said. “Why now? Why
then
?”
“Have a care,” Lord Howarth said, coldly. And yet there was something else hidden under his voice. “I can have Judd take you outside and thrash you for imprudence.”
Once, that threat would have stopped Elaine from pressing the matter any further. She’d known that Lord Howarth had ordered several of his servants whipped over the years, once for a crime as petty as having his bath water slightly too cool for his enjoyment. And technically he
was
her Guardian, with almost paternal power over her.
“Of course you could,” she said, keeping her voice calm, “but that won’t stop me asking the question. Why did you become my Guardian?”
She heard Judd’s hulking form rustle behind her, but kept her eyes on her Guardian. “Why did you decide to take on my Guardianship?”
Lord Howarth met her eyes, but looked away first. “It was...pointed out to me that I had a duty to uphold,” he said, finally. “My father had promised to serve as a Guardian when the next child required a Guardian. He was one of the patrons of your orphanage and I believe that he took it seriously. When he died...I was in the position of choosing to renounce his word or taking up the position myself. You were the child in need of a Guardian.”
Elaine wasn’t sure that she believed him. It was true that an aristocratic family passed clients, favours and debts down the line from father to son, but becoming a Guardian was something different from calling in favours incurred by the previous generation. Perhaps it was why he’d never shown any real interest in her, even after she’d been accepted into the Peerless School, and yet...something about it didn’t quite ring true.
“Right,” she said. Judd’s presence seemed to loom closer, but she refused to look away from his face. “Who pointed it out to you?”
“Councillor Travis,” Lord Howarth said, finally. “He said that I should honour my father’s wishes or no one would ever take me seriously again.”
Elaine felt her knees buckle as she fought to prevent herself from laughing out loud. The thought was absurd! Councillor Travis had made his money in trade, not something that a respectable older family like the Howarth Family would consider respectable. Travis would have gone to Howarth to beg favours, not the other way around. He certainly wouldn’t have had the influence to make a noble lord assume a responsibility he didn’t wish to assume.
And yet she had the strange feeling that Lord Howarth was telling the truth.
“That was good of him,” she said. Part of her was astonished that she’d pushed it so far, but there was one more question to ask. “I assume you read my file at the orphanage?”
“Well, of course,” Lord Howarth said. He seemed to be relieved that they’d moved away from Councillor Travis. Elaine made a mental note to go back to that issue at a later date. Even if her Guardian was telling the truth, there was something about it that didn’t make sense. “I had to be sure that I wasn’t assuming the Guardianship of a thief.”
“Of course not,” Elaine muttered. Never mind the fact that an orphan would have better reason than most to steal. She cleared her throat. “Do you know who my parents were?”
“I was told that you’d been passed to the orphanage as a baby,” Lord Howarth said. He shrugged. “The orphanage never bothered to investigate your parentage. You could be the last surviving heir to the Empire for all I know, or the daughter of a scullery maid and a noble-born son. The gods know that such births are rarely treated as important to the families...”
Elaine nodded. Bastard children were a problem for any noble family, particularly when their sons were raised in a world where lower-class female servants literally couldn’t say no. Very few families would consider such a child an equal, no matter the circumstances of his – or her – birth. Farming the child out to an orphanage was one of the kinder ways to deal with the situation. Elaine had always considered such families to be heartless. She wondered, absently, if she was actually
related
to Lord Howarth, before dismissing the thought. If that were true, she would have preferred to forever remain Elaine No-Kin.
“I suppose they do,” Elaine said. Lord Howarth shrugged, again. He really didn’t care very much about her, she realised, but
that
was no surprise. She’d never been given any reason to assume he cared. “Could you ask if they kept some records they never showed you...?”
“They would have shown me everything,” Lord Howarth said. He looked up at her, sharply. “Why do you care, all of a sudden? You might not like what you find out.”
“I don’t know,” Elaine admitted. She honestly didn’t know where the desire to know the truth behind her birth had come from. It had always been part of her, but it hadn’t been important...not until she’d been hit by a powerful curse. And then she’d dared to ask an Inquisitor about her birth. There had been a time when she would have preferred to die rather than speak to one of the Inquisitors. “I think...”
Something clicked in her mind. “You don’t have any money left, do you?” she asked. It seemed impossible, and yet Councillor Travis had been in a position to influence her Guardian. And he’d seemed to worry about the cost of her medical treatment. “You’ve finally spent your inheritance...”
“Throw her out,” Lord Howarth ordered, so sharply that she knew that she was right. “Now.”
Judd grabbed Elaine’s arm and dragged her out of the room, back down the corridor towards the door. A dozen spells rose up in Elaine’s mind for breaking his grip and freeing herself, or banishing the demon back to hell, but she pushed them down. There was no need.
She was still chuckling when Judd threw her out of the gate and onto the street.
Chapter Six
“He’s got no money left?”
Daria started to chuckle. “No money...and he owes money to every loan shark in the city!”
“I don’t think it’s quite so funny for him,” Elaine said, before she started giggling herself. It
was
funny, damn it. “He might have to start watching what he spends money on now.”
“Drink and whores,” Daria said, tartly. She shook her head in disbelief. “I wonder how long it will be before he has to sell his grand house.”
“Maybe he can’t,” Elaine said. The orphanage hadn’t been a proper school, but they had battered reading, writing and basic maths into her head. She might have become an accountant – or a housewife – if she hadn’t had a talent for magic. “The house could already be used to back a debt. Someone might be intent on claiming it even now.”
She grinned at Daria. “Maybe he’ll have to sell some of the tacky ornaments his family has been collecting for a thousand years,” she added. “And what will happen when people realise that he’s selling them off?”
The great houses in the Golden City seemed strong and untouchable, which was probably why Lord Howarth had got away with his gambling debts for so long. But if the loan sharks scented weakness, they would probably start demanding more and more guarantees from her Guardian before they agreed to hand over further cash. How long would it be before one of them decided to call in the debts and demand the mansion in payment? And what would happen when they tried? The aristocracy might close ranks behind Lord Howarth, or they might throw him to the wolves for fear of provoking their own creditors to demand immediate payment. It would take the Grand Sorcerer to sort out the mess – and the Grand Sorcerer was dead.
“Well, he deserves it,” Daria said, unsympathetically. “How exactly has he treated you over the last eight years? The best that can be said of it is that he largely ignored you.”
She paused. “You’re not his adopted daughter, are you? You can’t get any of this muck on you?”
Elaine snorted. “I’m not even a ward to him,” she said, dryly. “I don’t think they can demand that
I
pay his debts, or anything that I might have to do if I
was
his daughter.”
“Perhaps you
are
his daughter,” Daria said, mischievously. “Would you inherit his debts if he spent your entire life ignoring you?”
“He would have to have started having kids when he was seven,” Elaine said. She had wondered, back when she’d hoped that Lord Howarth would be more than a distant presence in her life, but the timing didn’t work out. It was possible, she supposed, that she was his half-sister, yet that wouldn’t force her to pay any of his debts. “Besides, he spends more money each day at the tracks than I earn in a year. His creditors aren’t going to get money out of me that I don’t have, are they?”
She chuckled as she walked back into her room. “I think we’d better get dressed,” she added. “It won’t be long until the funeral begins.”
It had been nearly two years since she’d worn sorcerer’s black. The robes had been given to her after her graduation by the staff, a tradition that Millicent and her cronies hadn’t hesitated to use to make fun of the younger Elaine. Only
poor
graduates were allowed to keep their robes. Richer graduates tended to purchase their own tailored robes after their graduation and exchange them regularly, in keeping with the dictates of fashion. Elaine had had to let out the hem herself over the last few days, using half-remembered sewing lessons from the orphanage. Neither of them could have afforded a tailor, or even one of the seamstresses from the poorer parts of the city.
She pulled the robe on and looked at herself in the mirror. Graduate or not, she just didn’t
look
very impressive. She bit her lip as she picked up her wand and stowed it away in her sleeve, wondering if she should even go to the funeral. Everyone who was anyone would be there, attempting to make deals and political alliances even during the funeral itself, but
she
wasn’t anyone. The Grand Sorcerer hadn’t even been a nodding acquaintance. She’d only ever seen him once, at a dinner hosted by the Peerless School. And she couldn’t even remember what he’d looked like.
There had been a faint note of unease hanging in the air as she walked back to the apartment after Judd had tossed her out of the mansion’s gates. The Grand Sorcerer was dead...and everyone knew that that meant the competitions to select his successor were about to begin. Once he was decently buried, the competition would start in earnest. Elaine half-wondered what would happen if she’d been born with enough talent to make her own bid for supreme power, before pushing the thought aside. Even with the spells floating within her mind, including ones that would see her put to death if anyone realised she knew them, she was no match for a more talented sorcerer. Anyone who thought they could be the next Grand Sorcerer would have power to spare.
“Come on out,” Daria called. “What do you think?”
Elaine stuck her head out of her room and smiled at her friend. Daria wore black, setting off her long red hair nicely, with her robes pulled tightly around her body. She looked spectacular, even though she was going to a funeral. Elaine made a mental bet with herself that there would be no shortage of sorcerers trying to ask Daria to come out with them. The normal rules about how unmarried females should behave didn’t apply to female magicians.
“Striking,” she said, resignedly. The spells that would have made her just as stunning floated up to the surface of her mind again, tempting her. Each time she pushed them back down, it got a little harder. “You’ll bring the dead back to life.”
“Let’s hope not,” Daria said. “The last thing I need is to be branded a necromancer and chased out of the city by a horde of angry sorcerers.”
Elaine shrugged. “I suppose not,” she said. She checked her wand out of habit, before heading over to the door. “Shall we go?”
The streets were buzzing with people as they walked towards the Parade of the Endless, the massive arena at the heart of the city. Elaine saw hundreds of guards and soldiers trying to keep order and failing miserably, if only because thousands of magicians and sorcerers had descended on the Golden City, intent on networking while they buried their former master. Every year, there was a magical convention – and every year, families were dispatched out of the city by everyone who could afford to send them away to safety. Magicians loved to show off, or play practical jokes on the defenceless commoners...and there was no longer a single authority who could provide a final sanction for misbehaviour. The streets wouldn’t be safe until the new Grand Sorcerer was established and had a chance to impose his authority. Still, she doubted that any of them would try to pick a fight with two graduates in black robes. It was very hard to gauge a magician’s power until it was too late.
“Over there,” Daria said. “That’s Hanson – I used to date him before I graduated. Nice guy, but a little grabby in bed. Watch yourself.”
She pulled Elaine over towards the young man and his cronies before Elaine could object. Hanson
was
fairly handsome, in a bland way that suggested he used glamours to improve his looks. Hardly uncommon among sorcerers, male or female, but something Elaine had always considered rather dishonest. He smiled brightly when he saw Daria and gave her a hug, before looking over at Elaine and dismissing her a moment later. Elaine rolled her eyes, even as she felt the old stab in her heart. She would have loved to have a guy chasing her, just once.