The Grandmaster's Tale

My mood darkened with every passing second. I could be in the classroom, preparing my lesson plans, or supervising detentions. Or ... there was an entire list of things I needed to do, before the coming exams, none of which were being done because I was stuck in the stupid meeting. Gods! I didn’t know why Boscha bothered. He ruled the school. He could do whatever he liked and get away with it. As long as he was careful not to push his staff too far …

“We must take this opportunity in both hands and seize it,” Boscha continued. “Both for ourselves, and for the good of our community.”

I wished, suddenly, that he’d given the speech in front of the students. Someone would have hurled a tomato by now, even though the student would then have been flogged to within an inch of his life and whatever was left of him put in the stocks. Students have low boredom thresholds, particularly when it comes to kneeling on the stone floor in a manner that is pretty much a stress position, and I couldn’t blame one or more for lashing out. Perhaps I’d volunteer to administer their punishment myself, so I could take them somewhere that sounded unpleasant but was nothing of the sort. Maybe I could convince the Grandmaster that a few hours in the White City, attending pointless meetings, was sufficient. But I doubted he’d get the joke.

Or he would, I reflected. He just wouldn’t see it as a comment on him.

“There are matters that need to be attended to,” Boscha said. “And I’m sure we are in agreement on this point.”

“Quite,” Madame Clover said. I was surprised she’d managed to get a word in edgewises. “We need to do something about students getting injured by other students. And quickly.”

I winced, inwardly. Whitehall had always been a rough place—students had been establishing the pecking order since the school’s founding, through force of magic, intimidation and breeding—but it had been getting worse recently as the chaos outside the walls started to spill into the school. My brothers and I had been lucky. The four of us had watched each other’s backs, and we’d had the advantage of growing up in a magical household, but other students—particularly the newborns—weren’t so lucky. A student who didn’t even know he had magic a year ago was hellishly vulnerable, when he found himself in Whitehall. On paper, he’d come into his magic at the same time as his peers. In practice, he was so far behind that catching up was incredibly difficult. They tended to find themselves slaving for the older boys. It was the only way to get some protection.

I’d always felt sorry for those boys and done what I could to help. But it hadn’t been enough.

“Boys will be boys,” Boscha said, dismissively. “It is of no concern as long as it doesn’t impede their learning …”

Madame Clover cut him off. I admired her bravery. Very few people would dare lay a hand on a healer, or hurl a spell, but it was still risky to interrupt her superior. Boscha had quite a few ways to get back at her without making it obvious. Or he might just start looking for a replacement.

“The problem is getting out of hand,” Madame Clover snapped. “Yesterday, I had nine students in the infirmary, all hexed well beyond the point they could heal themselves, and a girl someone had slipped a love potion! She was lucky, sir, that her friend realised the problem and dragged her to me for a curative before it was too late. She could have been raped!”

I shuddered. Love—lust—potions were nasty. The basic brews would turn their victim into a lusty creature, lost to reason as they tried to satisfy their lusts … with consequences that could easily be imagined. The more advanced and dangerous brews were far worse. The victim would become obsessed, either submitting themselves to the brewer or taking them by force. There were horror stories about people who’d meddled with such potions and wound up hurt, or dead. None of them were particularly reassuring. How could they be?

“It will teach her a useful lesson,” Boscha said. “She could have checked her drink for potion before taking a sip.”

Madame Clover glared. “This week, I also had twenty servants who’d been hexed or cursed,” she raged. “Two manservants were turned into toads, a maid was trapped in a mirror, and another spelled into walking around naked …”

Boscha shrugged, as dismissively as before. “They knew the risks when they chose to work here,” he said. “There’s no shortage of people willing to take their place.”