Chapter 12 #2
Three more first-years followed in quick succession, each one hit by the charm. The hall was too loud, too crowded, the threshold too narrow for the warning to travel fast enough.
That, too, was good design.
Then Miss Fishwife’s sisters walked through the door.
As usual, the twins were holding hands, and the charm took them simultaneously.
I couldn’t help chuckling as the two skinny little girls dropped into identical curtsies with the mechanical precision of puppets, their voices ringing out in unison: “I’m an upstart fishwife from Bernswick!”
The center tables erupted in a fresh wave of laughter.
I watched avidly as the twins were frozen in their curtsies for the three seconds demanded by imperial court etiquette. It was a clever touch in more ways than one. Three seconds were long enough to feel endless.
The twin on the left squeezed her eyes shut in anguish.
I saw her body tense as she struggled futilely to break the charm’s hold.
The twin on the right stared straight ahead at the middle distance with an expression I recognized all too well: the rigid blankness of someone refusing to cry in public.
Then the charm released them, and they straightened.
Miss Fishwife appeared in the doorway.
She took in her sisters’ devastated expressions, the laughter filling the hall, and the still-ringing echo of their voices.
I watched her figure it out. It took only an instant, and then something in her expression shifted into something that I found, against my will, extremely interesting.
She stepped forward with deliberate grace, and the charm took her, forcing her to drop into a curtsy that was, I had to admit, nearly as graceful as any noblewoman’s. Her voice rang out with that same unnatural, projected clarity.
“I’m an upstart fishwife from Bernswick!”
More laughter. Lady Beatrix made a quip I didn’t catch, and the surrounding students at the far end of my table laughed harder.
Even Mage-Instructor Varro and First-Year Assistant Chatelaine Julissa were grinning from their seats at the staff table. Spell-casting outside of class or labs was strictly prohibited, but neither of them made any move to stop the prank.
I watched Miss Fishwife hold the curtsy for the full three seconds. Her spine was perfectly straight. When the charm released her, she rose with no visible hesitation, put an arm around each of her sisters, and steered them gently to their usual table.
She said something to them, impossible to hear over the din in the hall. The one who’d squeezed her eyes shut nodded. The one who’d stared straight ahead finally blinked.
Then Miss Fishwife looked up, directly at me, with those too-sharp hazel eyes that had seen right through my concealment glamor during our very first encounter.
There was no hurt on her face. And no humiliation either, where I could see and enjoy it.
With an unpleasant jolt I recognized the same cold resolve I saw in my mirror every morning.
She turned back to her sisters and guided them to the commoner’s food line at the back of the hall without looking at me again.
“Ah,” I said, making my voice light with practiced amusement as Damien sat rigidly beside me. “It appears Lord Ormond wasn’t lying when he said he could deliver results.”
Damien said nothing, but I felt his disapproval radiating from him like heat from a banked fire.
He kept his eyes fixed on the retreating backs of Miss Fishwife and her sisters, his expression unreadable to most. But I knew him too well to be fooled.
The slight tightening around his mouth, the tension in his shoulders—he was troubled by what he saw.
“This is black magic,” he said in a flat tone. “You know what the law says about using a spell to interfere with free will.”
My stomach twisted with an unexpected pang of something dangerously close to guilt. For a heartbeat, I allowed myself to remember that the three sisters had lost their mother recently.
The thought slid through my defenses before I could stop it, and with it came a rush of unwanted empathy that made me feel suddenly ill.
Which was stupid because I could barely remember my mother. The scheming Fae bitch had abandoned me on my father’s doorstep after I was born, and the resulting scandal had cost Father his place on the Imperial Council.
I reined in my unwanted moment of weakness immediately. So what if a backwater mage drowned while traveling to a desolate island? It’s not my problem.
To feel for others was to invite exploitation. To show compassion was to reveal a soft underbelly to those waiting to eviscerate you.
“Oh, please, Damien,” I said, infusing my voice with scorn in case he’d noticed my momentary lapse.
“This isn’t that serious. It isn’t actually hurting anyone.
And the commoners shouldn’t come here if they can’t handle a harmless prank like this.
Our academy isn’t a nursery for fragile wildflowers. ”
Damien’s gray eyes flicked to mine, his expression still carefully blank. “Your new friend is using a compulsion charm on children.”
“They’re old enough to learn how the world works,” I snapped, more harshly than I intended. “Old enough to know their place.”
Then Mage-Instructor Mundise stormed into the dining hall. I saw Elio Ferraro’s tall figure hovering behind Mundise, just outside the door… and out of range of the charm.