Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7) (39 page)

“Sit,” Lady Barb grated. “Do you have
any
idea how much trouble you’re in?”

Emily hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”

“You practically challenged him to a duel,” Lady Barb said. “And he saw fit to
accept
your challenge. He’s going to kill you.”

She glared at Emily, then started to pace from side to side, her fists clenched. “You were manipulated,” she added, tiredly. “We were
all
manipulated.”

Emily didn’t see it. “By the demon?”

“Perhaps,” Lady Barb said. She swung around, her eyes flickering as if she were searching for an invisible enemy. “But no; I think Master Grey intended to goad you to a point where you issued something that could be taken as a challenge. Making you think you’d watched your little friend die...that you’d failed to save her...might have been intended to push you over the brink.”

“I didn’t mean to challenge him,” Emily said, stunned. Master Grey had switched from asshole to teacher and then back to asshole, time and time again...had he been deliberately trying to keep her off balance? She could have endured constant disdain, but it had been hard to cope when she’d never known which of his two personalities would emerge to take the lesson. “I...”

“You told him to shut you up,” Lady Barb said. “It might not be the formal slap, but it’s certainly close enough. The White Council might rule in his favor if it came to court.”

Emily closed her eyes and tried to recollect what she’d been taught about dueling. She’d never felt inclined to duel for fun, so the only real lessons she’d taken had been at Mountaintop and the rules were softer for students. A tutor couldn’t challenge a student, she was sure, but a student could challenge a tutor. There were rules, she thought, yet she’d never bothered to look them up. It had never seemed important.

She opened her eyes, feeling a terrible numbness spreading through her chest. “What do we do?”

“
You
can’t do anything,” Lady Barb snapped. “I imagine the Grandmaster will try to bring pressure on him to refuse your challenge, perhaps with some face-saving formula about blaming everything on the demon. It might work; hellfire, it might even be true. If not...”

She sat on the bed, facing Emily. “You don’t have many options,” she said, tiredly. “You didn’t accuse him of something unforgivable, so you can’t discover his innocence and retract your challenge on those grounds. He’d have every right to make you eat crow if you issued a false accusation, even if you believed it to be true at the time. Or you could retract it anyway...?”

Emily frowned. “What’s the catch?”

“He might claim compensation from you,” Lady Barb said. “It isn’t impossible for him to lay claim to Cockatrice itself. The White Council
might
back him up, if they heard the case; he could presumably argue that he’d won by default and was thus entitled to everything you own. King Randor wouldn’t be pleased, but trial by combat has been laid down in his law. It might be hard for him to object.

“Or he might demand
you
. As a slave.”

“No,” Emily said.

“He could,” Lady Barb said. “There is precedent for that, too.”

She met Emily’s eyes. “Everything he did, it seems, was done to create a situation where he can kill you, without fear of retaliation,” she warned. “Or otherwise render you harmless. If you ran, and you
could
run, your property would be seized and your reputation destroyed. I don’t think anyone would believe you actually killed two necromancers if you couldn’t face a single combat sorcerer.”

“I can’t,” Emily said.

“He has twenty years of experience,” Lady Barb agreed. She tapped her palm as she spoke, underlining each word. “He’s stronger than you, faster than you, tougher than you and nastier than you. You don’t stand a chance.”

I could blow him up
, Emily thought, vindictively. She could reuse the nuke-spell, if they were somewhere isolated. Master Grey wouldn’t be expecting a small nuclear blast. It would probably kill her too, but she wasn’t inclined to care.
Or...

She looked at Lady Barb. “Where will we be fighting?”

“Here, perhaps,” Lady Barb said. “The seconds are normally charged with finding a suitable place.”

Emily groaned. Using the nuke-spell in Whitehall would not only destroy the school, killing everyone inside, but also destabilize the nexus point. The resulting explosion would devastate the land for hundreds of miles around, slaughtering millions of innocent civilians and unleashing wild magic in its wake. She couldn’t have that on her conscience, not if all she wanted to do was drag him down beside her. She’d have to fight without the greatest weapon in her arsenal.

I could use the battery
, she thought.
But to do what
?

Lady Barb met Emily’s eyes. “I suggest you write to Void,” she added. “You might wind up owing him a
second
favor, but he might be able and willing to help. Although...if he kills Master Grey now, it’s going to look very bad.”

“As if I went running to daddy,” Emily said.

“Quite,” Lady Barb agreed. “It would make him look bad too, of course.”

“Of course,” Emily echoed. “If I fight, I die; if I retract the duel, I lose everything; if I run, I lose everything,
apart
from my freedom?”

“Correct,” Lady Barb said, coldly. “You have enemies, Emily. I dare say that both the Ashworths and Ashfalls have good reason to want to hammer you. Others...will recall what you did last summer and decide it might be better to have you rendered harmless. Some of the Mountaintop alumni will certainly blame you for what you did to their school. It wouldn’t look good for you, if the matter did come to court.”

She sucked in her breath. “Run.”

Emily blinked. “What?”

“Take some money and your books and run,” Lady Barb repeated. She leaned forward, her blue eyes suddenly intent. “You can’t best him and you don’t want to wind up a slave. Go!”

“I can’t,” Emily said. She looked at Alassa, lying still and silent on the bed. “I can’t leave them like this.”

Lady Barb shook her head. “What can you do to help?”

“I don’t know,” Emily said. She thought hard, but no ideas came to her. What could she offer a demon that it might want? “But I can’t do nothing. I can go to Mountaintop...”

“Zed might take you in,” Lady Barb said. “Master Grey wouldn’t be able to force him to throw you to the wolves, if he gave you his protection. But you’d still lose everything else.”

“And be trapped there,” Emily said. Mountaintop had been stuffy and claustrophobic even before she’d discovered the school’s darkest secret. “I wouldn’t want to stay there...”

“You will die,” Lady Barb said. “Don’t you understand me? You will die!”

She reached forward suddenly, magic crackling around her fingertips. Emily, already tired and drained, could barely resist as Lady Barb shattered her remaining wards, yanked Emily to her feet and bent her backwards over her knee, hooking her leg over Emily’s legs to keep them trapped. Emily was utterly trapped, unable to move.

“I did that, easily,” Lady Barb said. “I could break your neck in this position and you wouldn’t be able to stop me. Do you think he’ll be any slower than me? Or weaker?”

“No,” Emily gasped.

Lady Barb pushed her to her feet, and sighed. “I’d beat you black and blue if I thought it would help,” she said. “
He
should have sent you for a thrashing, not chosen to take it as a challenge. If I’d realized in time...he must have had this planned for months, just gauging what buttons to press to make you angry...”

She shook her head. “Go back to your room and get some rest,” she ordered. “Make sure you set up a warding circle first or...

“The demon might not be able to touch you,” she added. “You are, after all, Shadye’s Heir. It practically admitted as much.”

“I’ll set up the circle anyway,” Emily said. She didn’t want to take the word of a demon, not when she was too tired and depressed to think clearly. “What about Frieda?”

“I’ll speak to her,” Lady Barb said. “She can share a room with one of the other Fourth Years, if necessary. I can take you to Mountaintop tomorrow morning, if you wish; let me know so I can contact the MageMaster ahead of time.”

Emily yawned. “Maybe in the afternoon,” she said. She took one last look at Alassa, her face inhumanly still. “He did say I can visit whenever I wanted.”

“Better not to presume too much on that,” Lady Barb warned. “And Emily?”

“Yes?”

“Think,” Lady Barb said. “Think as hard as you can. Because if you don’t find a way out, you will die.”

I can’t beat him in a fight
, Emily thought, numbly. She knew that was true. A man who’d been the undisputed champion on the dueling circle was unlikely to be beaten by a simple trick.
And if I run, I lose everything.

I
T WASN’T AN EASY NIGHT.

Emily slept poorly, despite the warding circle and the potion she had taken as a last resort to help her sleep. Nightmares of the demon, and Master Grey, haunted her dreams, blurring together into a single malevolent entity. By the time she finally gave up on sleep and forced herself to get out of bed, she felt as though she hadn’t slept at all. She stumbled into the shower and washed herself in cold water, then dressed in her robes. Her body felt so tired and drained she just wanted to lie back down and sleep. But there was no time for sleep.

She picked up a handful of books from her bedside table and frowned as she saw the parchment, glowing faintly to alert her to unread messages. Jade had sent several messages, frantically asking what was going on. Where
was
everyone? Emily stared at it blearily for a long moment before recalling that everyone with a copy of the parchment, save for herself and Jade, was under the demon’s thrall. She reached for a pen, but stopped herself. What could she tell Jade? How could she tell him that his fiancée was held by a demon and his former master intended to kill Emily in a duel? And yet, she knew she had to tell him
something
. He would probably have heard all sorts of rumors, if he’d checked with the other magicians in Zangaria...

And he might even be on his way here by now
, Emily thought. It would have been nice to talk to him, but she knew he’d be more worried about Alassa than herself. And he should be, she was sure. They were in love.
And what will he think about the duel
?

Thinking about it made her feel sick, but she had no choice. She wrote a quick message on the parchment, outlining everything that had happened, concluding by telling him that she was going to the library. Lady Aliya had banned all chat parchments from the library, even though they would probably be helpful; she wouldn’t make an exception for Emily, even though Emily knew Jade would have questions and demands as soon as he read her message and realized the true horror that had been unleashed in Whitehall. Leaving the parchment on the desk, Emily strode from the room and down the corridor. The school felt different, almost unwelcoming. Now that she knew it was there, she could practically
feel
the demon nesting within the school’s wards.

They must have warned the remaining students to protect themselves
. Emily thought, as she stepped through the door and out into the main corridor. There was no one in sight, not even a tutor on patrol.
They might even have started sending them home
.

She pushed the thought aside as she walked through a twisting maze of corridors and upstairs to the library. It was closed, but Lady Aliya had never bothered to remove Emily from the list of student assistants who were granted access at all times. She stepped through the door, cast a light globe into the air and walked over to the small section of books on honor and etiquette. There would be something on the
Code Duello
there, she was sure. It wasn’t uncommon, she’d learned from her history books, for people in the Allied Lands to settle issues by combat, rather than a formal trial. The gods, it was believed, granted the victory to the true innocent party.

Which is fucking silly
, she thought, bitterly.
The victor would be the one who was better trained and more experienced, not the one who just happened to be innocent
.

She found a couple of thin books, took them both and settled down at the nearest desk to skim-read. Unusually for books on etiquette, the first one merely concentrated on the facts; the second one discussed a series of incidents that had been recorded over the ages, ranging from deliberate challenges to ones that had been issued in response to intolerable insults or threats. It was quite possible, Emily read with growing horror, for a challenge to be issued by accident...or for someone to use a challenge as a trick to bury their guilt. An accusation of madness, or necromancy, could be forgotten if the accused killed the accuser.

And she
had
issued a challenge, if Master Grey chose to take it that way. And he had.

She swallowed, feeling a cold lump of despair in her stomach, and read through the fine print, searching for loopholes. There weren’t many. A challenge could be retracted if new evidence surfaced - if the accused swore an oath, perhaps - but that hardly applied to her. A handful of case studies showed the former challenged issuing a challenge of his own, once his innocence had actually been proven. Why not? He’d just been accused of something that would overshadow the rest of his life, despite being innocent. Emily could hardly blame him for wanting a little revenge.

There didn’t seem to be any other ways to escape the duel - or the stigma of having issued a challenge, then fleeing the consequences. If she fled for her life, Master Grey could claim everything she owned; Cockatrice, Markus’s bank...maybe King Randor would object to him claiming the Barony, but it would no longer be
hers.
And no one would ever take her seriously again. She would be outcast, isolated from the entire world; hell, she could be killed on sight and her killer would suffer no punishment. It was brutal, it was barbaric...and it was pointed right at her. Master Grey might even be
praying
for her to flee. He would inherit everything she owned and destroy her reputation without suffering any backlash from killing a student.