The Grandmaster's Tale

I kept my face impassive, with an effort. Her words stung.

“Because they have the backing of their families,” I said. And Boscha, although we’d get to that later. Perhaps much later. “There are limits to what I can do to them without drawing attention.”

“And so you let them go on,” Alan burst out. I was surprised he went so far. He had to be hurting more than I’d thought. “You do nothing and then …”

Geraldine nudged him, hard. I wondered, absently, just what sort of relationship they’d developed in the last few weeks. They were both pariahs … were they pariahs together? It wouldn’t be the first time two strangers found themselves working together because being alone was worse. I hoped it would last, despite feeling it would not. No one deserved to be completely alone.

“Freaking aristos,” Alan snarled. “They always look after themselves.”

I bit down on the urge to point out that magical and mundane aristos were two very different groups. He was right about one thing. They did band together to support their peers, if they were accused of anything from stealing a blade of grass to deflowering a maiden or joining a mercenary band. It didn’t matter if the person in question was innocent or as guilty as a man caught with his hand up a girl’s dress. They’d put all of their considerable power to work ensuring the wretched man didn’t have to face any punishment for his misdeeds. Bastards.

“Yes,” I agreed. We could quibble over the definitions later. “There’s nothing that can be done, legally. But we can step outside the law.”

Geraldine eyed me. “Is this anything to do with what they’re doing after class?”

My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“They’re slipping out, every second night, and not trying to be sneaky,” Geraldine said. “All of them … all aristos.”

I had to fight to hide my amusement—and annoyance. Geraldine had clearly noticed something … why hadn’t we? But then, it wasn’t as if we bedded down in the dorms. The housemaster reported to Boscha and … I frowned inwardly, wondering what—if anything—they’d told each other. Sneaking out of dorms and prowling the school at night was an old tradition. I knew housemasters who would turn a blind eye to students leaving the dorms on the grounds they needed to sharpen their skills elsewhere. My old housemaster had certainly pretended not to see us until we got to the bottom of the corridor.

“They’re up to something, aren’t they?” Alan met my eyes. “What are they doing?”

“Private lessons,” I said, flatly.

Geraldine sucked in her breath. She’d worked her ass off to catch up with the other students. She’d had no choice. Her merchant family hadn’t been able to give her the background knowledge she needed, let alone the training to make proper use of her magic from the moment she came into it. They might not even have realised she had magic until it started to manifest. She’d done well, she knew she had …

And yet, her eyes showed the despair of someone who’d just realised the game was rigged. Still rigged.

Alan cleared his throat, loudly. I felt a flicker of admiration. Alan was drawing my attention to him, in a manner that would be very difficult to overlook. He was risking a thrashing to ensure Geraldine would have a few moments to calm herself … impressive. Very impressive. I just hoped it wouldn’t bite him on the rear later.

“I have an offer for you two,” I said. “Private lessons of your own, from me and a couple of other teachers. You can catch up and surpass Walter and his friends.”

“Right,” Alan said. He sounded like a man who’d just been handed a gift horse and suspected he reallyshould look it in the mouth. “What’s in it for you?”

His friend nudged him again. “Alan!”

“It’s a sensible question,” I said, mildly. It was, too. “And to answer it, I don’t think it’s right they should have private lessons of their own.”

Geraldine frowned. “Does this have anything to do with Walter’s bragging?”

“What bragging?” I’d heard Walter brag about everything from his sexual conquests—I doubted he’d had so many; he’d have had no time for schooling—to the lands and wealth he would inherit when his father went to meet the gods. I had a private suspicion the old man’s life would be in danger the moment his son graduated, even though Walter had a trust fund that paid out—monthly—more money than most people would ever see in their lives. “What’s he been saying?”

“That things are going to be different,” Geraldine said. “And that I could be his concubine if he wished.”

“He wished,” I repeated. I didn’t like the sound of that. Most magicians were smart enough to realise that adding new blood to their family tree made them stronger, in the long run, but that didn’t always mean they treated newborn magicians well. My family hadn’t been very kind to my uncle’s wife, even though she’d given them three strong and powerful children to carry the bloodline into the next generation. “What else did he say?”