The Grandmaster's Tale

Pepper caught my eye. “What if he brings the board with him? Or the rest of the staff?”

I shook my head. Boscha had nothing now, save for his post. He’d lost his army, he’d lost control of the school’s wards … the board would fire him on the spot, a move that would lead rapidly and inevitably to his assassination. The Supremacists would see him as a failure … worse, a failure who’d make them look like bloody fools if it ever came out. It would, too, if they didn’t tie up the loose ends as quickly as possible. Boscha might be a bureaucrat, instead of a fighter, but even he had to realise he was now expendable. The board would eliminate him, then try again with someone else.

“We have to move,” I said. “Constance, will the spells hold?”

“They should,” Mistress Constance assured me. “The magic should last for a few hours at least.”

I nodded as we hurried out the room. There was only one place Boscha could go now and that was the wardchamber, located under the school. Unless he’d decided to flee … I doubted it. He was nothing without the school, and he knew it. He wasn’t incompetent, when it came to magic, but he didn’t have time to reinvent himself. Too many people would be out for his blood.

The rest of the staff joined us in the antechamber, looking nervous. I didn’t blame them. We had committed ourselves to victory or … I had to smile. If we had to flee, we were far better suited to making new lives for ourselves. Hell, we could flee as a group and open a whole new school. We had the means and money to make it happen. But we didn’t intend to lose.

We waited, counting the seconds. Boscha didn’t show. I cursed under my breath as time seemed to slow, mocking us. What if Boscha had outwitted us? Or fled? Or … being caught and murdered by the students? I’d never heard of a full-fledged sorcerer brought down by a student, but stranger things had happened. If the sorcerer got overconfident and the student got very lucky …

And then Boscha stepped into the chamber.

Chapter 9

He looked a mess.

I would have felt sorry for him, if it hadn’t been his fault. His robes were drenched with … something. I hoped it was just water, and I feared it wasn’t. His hair had come loose; his eyes were grim and his magic … I gritted my teeth at the way his power was swirling around him, driven by anger and frustration and something I didn’t care to look at too closely. My earlier thoughts—magicians didn’t need pomp and circumstance—came back to mock me. Boscha didn’t look like a powerful sorcerer, not now. He looked like a drowned rat.

“You …” His eyes flickered over the group. “What are you …?”

I stepped forward. “You have a choice,” I said, flatly. “You can leave the school, giving us your oath to stay out of politics for the rest of your life, and we’ll give you enough gold to live comfortably until the day you die. Or you can fight us now and die.”

Boscha blinked, as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. I half-suspected he was in shock. His entire world had come crashing down in less than an hour, and no matter what he did, he was in deep shit. Crushing the student riot with the wards had been his only option, and we were blocking his way to the wardchamber. What else could he do? Nothing, I thought. His army was effectively neutralised, his allies would ditch him to save themselves … what else was there? And our offer of gold might just convince him to leave peacefully.

We don’t know how the wards will react if we actually have to fight him, I thought. The school wards were ancient and powerful, and there were quite a few things about the design that had never made sense. They might protect their master, even if he was kept out of the wardchamber, if we fought him. Or he might come up with something unexpected.

“You … you traitor,” Boscha managed. I hoped that was a good sign. If he was spitting insults, he wasn’t hurling curses. “You …”

“You created an army, with the intention of using it to stage a coup, take over the Allied Lands and impose Supremacist rule on the entire world,” I said, flatly. “That’s treason.”

I dared not give him any more time to think. “Your choice,” I said, flatly. “Leave and take our gold, or die here and now.”

Boscha glared at me. I glared back. It was galling to even think of giving him gold, but we had to sweeten the offer enough to convince him to take it, rather than digging in his feet and forcing us remove him by force. What was he thinking? I hoped—prayed—he took the easy way out. If we killed him, there would be all sorts of problems with the board. They might brand us murderers and use it as an excuse to hide their own role in the affair.

“You …” Boscha stopped and started again. “They’ll kill me!”

“They’ll kill you anyway,” I pointed out. “You’re of no use to them now.”