Original Work The Unnatural Order (Schooled in Magic 27)

Hi, everyone

The Unnatural Order is book 27 of Schooled In Magic, and although it is intended to be reasonably self-contained it does draw on the story arc that starts with The Demon’s Design and continues with The Apprentice Mistress, as well as drawing on characters mentioned in some of the Fantastic Schools novellas. I hope it will be reasonably comprehensible, but a certain degree of familiarity with the earlier books will probably help a great deal.

Naturally, you can download the first book in the series from Kindle Unlimited here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZ79NNSB/?tag=survivalmonke-20

And you can see the other books in the series here:

The Chrishanger

I do want to write as fast as possible, but these are the school holidays and my family and I are going to the Glasgow WorldCon (if you are passing by, please stop and say hello) so there will be a pause midway through production.

And now I’ve got your attention …

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Chris

Schooled in Magic Recap

It is, of course, difficult to summarise twenty-four books (and six novellas) in a handful of pages, but I’ve tried to hit the high points.

Emily grew up in our world. Her mother was a drunkard. Her father a mystery. Her stepfather a leering man whose eyes followed her everywhere. By the time she turned sixteen, she knew her life would never get any better. She lost herself in studies of history, dreaming of a better world somewhere in the past. And then everything changed.

Shadye, a powerful necromancer on the Nameless World, wanted to kidnap a Child of Destiny to tip the war in his favour. He entrusted the task to sprites, transdimensional creatures with inhuman senses of humour, who yanked Emily out of her world and dumped her into Shadye’s prison cell. Unaware he’d made a dreadful mistake, Shadye proceeded to try to sacrifice Emily to dark gods in a bid to gain their favour. Emily would have died if she hadn’t been saved by Void, a sorcerer on the other side. Void took her to his tower, realised she had a talent for magic and arranged for her to study at Whitehall School.

Emily found herself torn between the joy of magic - she had something she was good at, for the first time in her voice - and the trials and tribulations of living in a very difficult world. Befriending a handful of people, including Imaiqah and Princess Alassa of Zangaria (and the older students Jade and Cat), Emily started introducing innovations from Earth to the Nameless World. Shadye, catching wind of how changes were starting to spread, assumed he’d been right all along about the Child of Destiny. Mounting an attack on Whitehall, Shadye nearly killed Emily before she managed to weaponise concepts from Earth to beat him.

That summer, she accompanied Princess Alassa to Zangaria and discovered her changes were not only spreading, but unleashing a whole new industrial revolution. This didn’t sit well with many of the local aristocrats, including King Randor - Alassa’s father - and a number of his courtiers. The latter mounted a coup, determined to take control for themselves before the commoners got any more ideas. Emily helped Alassa to retake control, at the price of seriously worrying King Randor. He had to reward her, by giving her the Barony of Cockatrice, but he feared her impact on the kingdom. The seeds were sown for later conflict as the king’s concerns started to grow into outright paranoia.

Emily’s second year at Whitehall was just as eventful as the first. Emily’s research into magic, including discovering a way to create a magical battery, nearly got her expelled. She might have been tossed out, if events hadn’t overtaken her. The school was plagued by a murderer, later revealed to be a shape-shifting mimic. Emily figured out the truth - the mimic wasn’t a creature, but a spell - and discovered how to defeat it. She also learnt enough from the spell’s final moments to, eventually, duplicate it as a necromancer-killing weapon.

Worse, however, she was starting to attract interest from outside the school. One of her roommates - Lin - was revealed to be a spy, hailing from Mountaintop School. Another nearly killed her, quite by accident. It was a relief to find herself spending her summer on work experience, in the Cairngorm Mountains. She saw, for the first time, the grinding poverty of people living on the fringes - and just how far they’d go to save themselves. It was sheer luck - and a piece of spellwork that triggered a small nuclear-scale explosion - that saved her life from a newborn necromancer.

Planning her return for third year, Emily agreed - at the request of the Grandmaster and Lady Barb - to allow herself to be kidnapped by Mountaintop School. There, she met the Head Girl - Nanette, who’d posed as Lin - and Administrator Aurelius, a magician with plans to reshape the balance of power once and for all. She also met Frieda, a girl two years younger than herself who was supposed to be her servant. Unimpressed with the classism running through the school, and grimly determined to find out its secret, Emily sparked off a rebellion amongst the low-born students and discovered the grim truth. Mountaintop had been sacrificing the low-born students for power. Breaking their spell, she left. She took Frieda with her.

That summer, Emily made a deadly enemy of Fulvia Ashworth, Matriarch of House Ashworth. Calling in a favour, Fulvia arranged for Master Grey - a powerful combat sorcerer who’d been appointed to serve as a teacher at Whitehall - to manipulate Emily into challenging him to a duel. Unaware of this, Emily’s discovery that Alassa and Jade had become lovers (and her first real relationship, with Caleb) took second place to a series of weird events taking place in the school, eventually traced back to a demon that had escaped Shadye’s fortress and slipped into the school’s wards. Backed into a corner, Emily risked everything to free the school from the demon, offering the creature her soul in exchange for letting everyone else go. The Grandmaster stepped in before the deal could be concluded, sacrificing himself so that Emily might live. Pushed to the limit, unwilling to run, Emily faced Grey in the duelling circle and won. The victory nearly killed her.

Her magic sparking, nearly flickering out of control, Emily returned to Zangaria and discovered that the kingdom was plagued by unrest. King Randor hadn’t kept his word about granting more rights to the commoners, prompting trouble on the streets. Worse, the rebels - including Imaiqah’s father - were being aided by a mystery magician, later revealed to be Nanette. Alassa nearly died on her wedding day, shot down by a gunpowder weapon that had grown from the seeds Emily had planted. Furious, King Randor demanded that Emily punish the rebels. Horrified at his demands, unaware the king didn’t know what he was asking, Emily fled. She was not to know that the king’s paranoia had become madness.

She was not best pleased, when she returned to Whitehall, to discover that Grandmaster Hasdrubal had been replaced by Grandmaster Gordian. Gordian was progressive in many ways, including a willingness to open the tunnels under Whitehall and determine what secrets could be found there, but he neither liked nor trusted Emily. She had to balance his concern with her growing relationship with Caleb as she worked with one of the tutors - and a new friend, Cabiria of House Fellini, to explore the tunnels. The tutor pushed too far and nearly caused the school to collapse in on itself. Luckily, Emily saved the school using techniques she’d devised with Caleb, only to find herself steered to the nexus point and hurled back in time ...

Emily rapidly discovered that the stories about Lord Whitehall had missed out several crucial details. The Whitehall Commune was on the run, fleeing enigmatic monsters - the Manavores - that seemed immune to magic. Their bid to take control of the nexus point nearly failed - would have failed, if Emily hadn’t helped them. She ensured they laid the groundwork for the school, before figuring out a way to return home. In the aftermath, Emily and Caleb consummated their relationship for the first time.

She was not to know that Dua Kepala, a powerful necromancer, was about to start his invasion of the Allied Lands. Having crushed Heart’s Eye, a school very much like Whitehall, the necromancer intended to invade the next kingdom and take its lands and people for himself. At the request of Sergeant Miles, Emily joined the war effort, fighting alongside General Pollack and his son Casper, Caleb’s father and brother respectively. Separated from the rest of the army, Emily and Casper attacked Heart’s Eye, reignited the nexus point under the school and found themselves locked in battle with the necromancer. Dua Kepala killed Casper and would have killed Emily, if Void hadn’t stepped in and fought Dua Kepala long enough to let Emily gain control of the nexus point and swat the necromancer like a bug. She found herself in sole possession of the nexus point and thus owner of the abandoned school. She and Caleb would later start developing plans to turn Heart’s Eye into the first true university, a place where magic and science would merge for the benefit of all.

Reluctantly, she accompanied General Pollack and the remains of his son to Beneficence, a city-state on the borders of Cockatrice. There, she met Vesperian, an industrialist who wanted her to invest in his rail-building program. Emily barely had any time to realise the problem before the financial bubble Vesperian had created burst, unleashing chaos on the streets as the population realised their savings and investments had simply evaporated. Worse, a religious cult, bent on power, took advantage of the chaos to secure their position, aided by what looked like a very real god. Emily, plunged into battle, discovered it was a variant on the mimic spell, one dependent on sacrificing humans to maintain its power. She stopped it, at the cost of sacrificing her relationship with Caleb. They would remain friends, but nothing more.

Emily returned to Whitehall, at the start of her final year, to discover that the staff had elected her Head Girl, despite Gordian’s objections. She didn’t want the role, but found herself unable to refuse it either. She found herself clashing with Jacqui, a student who wanted the post for herself, as her relationship with Frieda started to go downhill. The younger girl’s behaviour grew worse and worse until she nearly killed another student and fled the school, forcing Emily to go after her. She was just in time to discover that Frieda had been manipulated by another sorcerer, too late to save Frieda from a murder charge brought by Fulvia.

Stripped of her post as Head Girl (and replaced by Jacqui), Emily threw herself into defending Frieda from Fulvia. She rapidly worked out that Jacqui had been subverted by Fulvia long ago, to the point where Jacqui was prepared to risk everything to do her will. Scaring hell out of the other girl, Emily triggered off a series of events that led to Fulvia’s defeat and eventual death. However, her position at Whitehall was untenable. Realising the school no longer had anything to offer her, with an apprenticeship promised by Void, Emily choose to leave.

Unknown to her, events in Zangaria had moved on. King Randor had discovered that Imaiqah’s father had plotted against him, that Emily had chosen to keep this a secret and that Alassa and Jade were expecting their first child. In his madness, Randor imprisoned Alassa and Imaiqah in the Tower of Alexis, intending to take his grandchild and raise him himself while leaving his daughter to rot. Jade sought help from Emily and Cat, launching a bid to free the prisoners from the tower. During the plotting, Emily and Cat became lovers. The bid to free Alassa worked, at the cost of Emily herself falling into enemy hands. Randor sentenced her to public execution, but she was rescued by her friends. As they fled to Cockatrice, Randor - desperate - embraced necromancy and prepared himself for war to the knife.

A three-sided civil war broke out, between the king, the princess and the remaining nobility. The king crushed the nobility, only to be outgunned by the princess’s faction (as it had embraced modern weapons and ideology). Desperate, Randor mounted a bid to kill his daughter - nearly killing Imaiqah, who was stabbed with a charmed dagger - and use magic to crush her armies. Horrified, Emily and Cat planned to kill the necromancer king before he killed the entire kingdom. Their plan went horrifically wrong, forcing Emily into a point-blank fight with a necromancer. She won, barely, but Randor’s dying curse stripped her of her magic.

Seemingly powerless, plunging into depression, Emily threw herself on the mercy of House Fellini, the one magical family with experience in dealing with magicless children. She rapidly found herself dealing with a mystery, from Cabiria’s seeming lack of power to just what happened when the family performed the ritual that unlocked her magic. However. It seemed futile. A clash with Jacqui revealed just how powerless she’d become, leading to a fight that ended her relationship with Cat. Emily wasn’t in the best state to discover that the family had a deadly secret, or that Cabiria’s uncle wanted to claim Heart’s Eye for himself. It took her everything she had to gain access to the nexus point long enough to undo the curse blocking her powers and kill him.

Still reeling from the near-disaster, Emily joined Caleb and a handful of her other friends in preparing Heart’s Eye for its new role. As they explored the school, they discovered the mirrors had been part of an experiment that had gone horrifically wrong. The school was linked to alternate timelines, including one with a surviving Dua Kepala and another dominated by an evil version of Emily herself. They eventually figured out that the school’s original staff had been fishing in interdimensional waters, catching hold of a multidimensional creature that was trying to break free. As reality itself started to break down, Emily managed to let it go.

After briefly returning to Zangaria to meet her namesake - now-Queen Alassa’s daughter, Princess Emily - Emily started her apprenticeship with Void. Pushed to the limits, forced to comprehend levels of magic she’d never realised existed, she found herself preparing for a greater role. Testing her constantly, Void eventually sent her to Dragora with an unspecified objective (seemingly to find out who murdered the king before the regent was appointed). She eventually discovered that the king had been killed by his daughter, who’d been pushed into developing her magic before she could handle it. Unwilling to kill the daughter or let her wreck havoc, Emily took a third option and used the magic-blocking curse to save the daughter’s life and give her time to grow up. Her instincts warned her not to tell Void what she’d done.

Several months later, Emily found herself going to war again. Three necromancers had banded together to invade the Allied Lands, using vast armies of slave labour to cut through the mountains and flood into the lowlands. Working out a plan, Emily used the bilocation spell to ensure that she’d be with the army raiding enemy territory and trying to sneak into the necromancer’s castle to reignite the nexus point (as she’d done earlier at Heart’s Eye). After a shaky start, and the decision to share the battery secret with a bunch of other magicians, she used a mimic to take out the final necromancer and then reignited the nexus point. Unknown to her, the nexus point was the linchpin of the entire network. Reigniting this nexus point would reignite the remainder, frying a handful of necromancers who’d been too close to the drained points when they came back to life. Between the nexus points and the batteries, the threat of the necromancers was gone ...

... And, with their defeat, the glue that held the Allied Lands together was also gone.

It did not take long for trouble to begin. In the aftermath of the war, old grudges flared to life. Kingdoms battled for power and position, armies warred over patches of land, commoners demanded political rights and freedoms from their aristocratic masters and magicians started plotting to separate themselves from the mundane world or set up new kingdoms in the formerly Blighted Lands. And, with the White City no longer wholly human and the White Council scattered, it was only a matter of time before the fragile peace was shattered beyond repair.

In a desperate bid to save what they could, the Allied Lands planned to hold a conference at Laughter Academy to settle the questions frozen in time by the seemingly-endless war. But all was not well in the witches school. The girls were growing increasingly reckless, increasingly out of hand, preying on the mundanes below the mountain school while their tutors plotted and schemed to take advantage of the chaos. No one knew why.

Recovering from the trials and tribulations of the war, and eager to resume her apprenticeship, Emily was in no condition to intervene. But when Lady Barb, her former tutor, asked for her help, Emily could not refuse. Heading to Laugher, she took up a teaching position as she searched for the truth. Dragged into a deranged plot to resurrect a long-dead witch, assisted by shadowy figures from outside the school, Emily discovered that the real purpose was to disgrace the school. She was barely in time to save the girls from certain death.

However, she was unaware that - now the war was over - powerful magicians felt they no longer needed her. And, as she left Laughter for the final time, she found herself surrounded by enemies and placed under arrest. Realising they intended to kill her, she tried to escape - fighting a bunch of combat magicians, led by Master Lucknow, to a standstill. Void arrived - summoned by Jan - in time to insist they gave her a proper trial in front of the White Council. It went badly - for them. Queen Alassa and a bunch of Emily’s old friends and allies arrived to speak in her defence. In a bid to save face, Master Lucknow put forward a proposal.

The Kingdom of Alluvia had been rocked by revolution. The king and queen were prisoners, the crown prince and his brother leading an army to put down the rebellion before it spread out of control. The White Council proposed that Emily should meditate between the two sides, in hopes of ending the conflict peacefully. Agreeing, Emily travelled to the kingdom in the company of Prince Hedrick, Lady Barb and Silent, her maid. She arrived to discover that the king had already had his head chopped off.

The mission rapidly proved impossible. Neither the Crown Prince - now King - nor the rebels wanted to agree on terms. Worse, Emily became aware that an unseen force was manipulating both sides, a force using magic. She investigated, all the while trying to convince the two sides to lower their demands, but it was impossible. As matters spiralled out of control, she discovered the worst possible news. Nanette, her old enemy had been posing as Silent. And that meant that it was Void who was pulling the strings.

Hurrying to Whitehall, where the White Council was gathering to discuss the future, she discovered she was too late. Void had already claimed the nexus point for himself, using a combination of Emily’s own spells to take control of the school and declare himself the new ruler of the Allied Lands. He tried to talk her into joining him, pointing out that the White Council were incompetent and the kings and patriarchs self-interested. Emily refused, only to be held prisoner by a spell targeted on her name. Lady Barb saved her, buying time for Emily to escape at the cost of her life.

Unknown to Emily, as she and a handful of companions fled, she was chased by two sets of enemies; Void’s enhanced troops and the remainder of the White Council’s forces, which blamed her for the chaos. Emily was forced to run deep into Alluvia, where she forged an uneasy alliance with Prince - now King - Dater and then into Rose Red, where she joined forces - briefly - with Princess Mariah, Dater’s promised bride. Leaving the newly-married Dater and Mariah behind, holding a nexus point against Void, she and her companions kept moving, encountering rebels - one of whom claimed to be her - and, eventually, being taken prisoner by the White Council’s forces.

Held in Resolution Castle and threatened with the complete loss of her magic (again), Emily was forced to escape, destroying what remained of the White Council’s enforcers in the process. Making it to Zangaria, she was confronted by Void and captured by Nanette, who risked the displeasure of her master to avenge herself on Emily. Helpless, Emily took the risk of opening her mind to Nanette, showing her rival that it hadn't been her who’d killed Aurelius, Nanette’s former master and father-figure. Convincing Nanette to join her, they made their way back to Zangaria and planned a counterattack. Mustering Emily’s allies, they went on the offensive and eventually won, defeating Void at the last moment.

But it was too late to save the old order. Many kings and aristocrats had been killed in the first terrible moments of the war. Others had been forced to flee and fight for their lives. The old White Council had been destroyed, while the magical communities had been infiltrated and turned against each other. And rebels and revolutionaries want to reshape the world according to their ideals …

The war is over. The peace has yet to be won.

And with new enemies making their appearance, Emily’s life is as dangerous as ever …

 

Prologue I: The Grand Sorcerer

Great Sorcerer Resolute, Council Leader and Head of State, stood in front of the window and stared out over the city. His city.

Celeste was a beautiful city, a strange combination of wizarding towers, dimensionally transcendent homes and fairy-tale structures that could only be built with magic, and would collapse under their own weight if the magic went away. There was no other city quite like it, Resolute knew, and there never would be. Most magicians lived alone, or in families that were really clans; Celeste, and Celeste alone, was the only place where hundreds of magicians lived and worked together, sharing their lives as only those touched by the gods could. It was the closest thing to paradise the world had ever seen, and yet …

He chose not to look at the drab buildings on the edge of the city, just inside the walls, where the mundanes lived, or to allow his imagination to wander to the layers of lost cities built on top of other cities, only to be buried again under Celeste. The city was old – the site had been settled so long ago that much of the city’s history had been lost – and warped by magic, from the sheer pressure of so many wards and magical structures to the remnants of experiments and magician disasters that had been flushed into the undercity and left to turn the local environment into a danger zone. He’d been down in the tunnels as a young apprentice, hoping to strike it rich; he’d found nothing, beyond an appreciation of the city – and the sheer potential it represented – that his master had never shared. And it had given him a cause.

The old simmering anger burnt at the back of his mind as he waited for the council meeting to begin. Celeste was the hub of magical activity, of everything from trading to higher education and apprenticeships, and yet the magical aristocracy and the Allied Lands had tried to cut the city down, to keep it from growing into the wonder it should have become. They had made the rules and enforced them, taking the best of the newborn magicians for themselves and limiting the rest to ensure they could never pose a challenge to their rule. Resolute – he hadn’t been called Resolute, in those days – had been denied a chance to rise to the top, because he refused to let himself be turned into breeding stock and lacked the power to convince the aristocracy to overlook his lowly origins. He had seethed with resentment when he’d been forced to take up the sole apprenticeship he could find, but he’d turned that resentment into power when he’d entered local politics. He wasn’t the only one who saw the Compact as a tool to keep the lower magicians down, keeping them from enjoying their god-given gifts just as much as it kept them from rising to the top. It had taken time to build a power base of his own, to climb to the top of city politics and make a play to challenge the established order, but now …

His lips twisted, although there was no real humour in the expression. The Necromantic Wars were over. The Allied Lands were in disarray, the mundane aristocracy waging war on their rivals or being overthrown by their own people; the magical community was in chaos, trying to recover from the damage inflicted by a single power-mad sorcerer. There would never be a better chance to overthrow the Compact, to isolate the city of magicians and practice magic as it should be practiced. Who knew how far they could go? The city alone might not be enough for the new order. There was an entire world to be claimed.

And we have to move fast, he told himself. Everything has changed.

His heart clenched. He hadn’t believed the first reports from Heart’s Eye. The idea of mundanes being able to make magic was just absurd, the sort of nonsense one might read in the Lay of Lord Alfred. Resolute knew mundanes. They were, to a man, useless in the face of magic, cowering before magicians in fear in awe. The idea of a mundane who actually could gather, shape and cast magic was just … but it had happened. They’d built an airship, of all things, a flying castle that had been immune to spells and … and everything had changed. The old council had openly wondered why they should rock the boat, why they should risk everything on a bid for independence when they were already unchallengeable. But now they could be challenged. Their near-omnipotence was at risk.

It was time to act, to take control of their own destiny.

Someone cleared his throat, behind him. Resolute turned to see Boswell, a drab little man in a drab little robe, so low in magic that he barely had enough to light a candle. Enough to make him a magician, enough to let him lord it over the powerless mundanes, but hardly enough to let him become a power in his own right. The man had entered Resolute’s service a year ago and rapidly earned his master’s trust, not least because he had no aspirations of his own. He would rise and fall with his master, which gave him a very strong incentive to be as loyal as only a god-touched magician could be.

“My Lord,” Boswell said, with a nod. Magicians didn’t bend the knee to anyone, even lone powers. “The council has assembled, and is waiting on your pleasure.”

Resolute’s lips twitched, feeling a surge of glee as he picked up his staff and walked to the chamber. The councillors wouldn’t wait for long – they were prideful magicians, not mundanes – and he knew better than to keep them waiting, but it still felt good to have so many powerful magicians waiting on him. It was power, true power. He wondered, snidely, if it was how the Patriarchs and Matriarchs felt, as they lorded it over their magical families. He’d met Lady Fulvia once, back when she’d visited the city, and … he bit off that thought as he stepped into the chamber, Boswell taking his place at the wall as his master walked to his seat. The secretary had a perfect memory. He’d be able to recall, later, who had said what – and why.

But this time it won’t be needed, Resolute told himself. We are here to declare our independence, once and for all.

He sat, and allowed his eyes to survey the room. It had taken years of politicking to ensure that his faction controlled four of the High Council seats, giving them the majority they needed to take the vote to the Low Council. The outcome was already certain, to the point he was sure none of the councillors would take a stand by voting against it. They’d be taking their own lives in their hands if they did. They might be powerful magicians in their own right, but there were a lot of magicians on the streets who wanted independence and freedom now. Anyone who stood against their desires would be lucky if they had a chance to regret it.

“We stand at the brink of apotheosis or nemesis,” he said, without preamble. “The White Council is gone. The Allied Lands are in chaos. The magical families are in disarray. And the mundanes are getting ideas.”

He allowed his words to hang in the air. The idea of mundanes with magic was just terrifying – and it wasn’t just magic. He’d seen firearms and steam engines, railways and airships … the world was changing, and not for the better. The mundanes no longer knew their place … he cursed Lady Emily under his breath, for the changes she’d brought, even as he admired everything she’d done. She had the sort of power and influence he’d wanted, once upon a time, and the love and respect of countless people, magical and mundane alike. And yet, her foolishness was going to reshape the world. They had to take a stand now, while they could.

“It is time to act,” he said. He couldn’t help feeling a twinge of nervousness. They were about to step out of the shadows and into the light, to take control of an entire city and challenge the old order to a fight it could neither win nor refuse. “For decades, we have been held back; for decades, we have been treated as lower-class citizens, kept from achieving our full potential and becoming masters in our own house. It is time to separate ourselves from what remains of the old order, to renounce the Compact and inaugurate a brave new era.”

The air seemed still. No one spoke.

Resolute tapped the table, once. “All those in favour, raise your hands.”

The mood shifted. Four hands – including his – went up at once. Two more followed slowly, with a show of reluctance that might – or might not – be feigned. One hand stayed firmly on the table. Resolute scowled inwardly - Great Sorceress Sabayon had played her cards very close to her chest – and nodded openly. She would come to regret that, he was sure. Her voters were as driven by the idea of independence and freedom as the rest of the magical population. She would lose her post shortly, if he didn’t find a way to remove – or kill – her. There was no longer any time for half-measures. The dice had been thrown and now …

“The motion is carried,” he said. With six vote in favour, the Low Council wouldn’t try to stand in his way. Or even slow him down. “From this moment forth, we are an independent city once again.”

He allowed himself a tight smile. The preparations had already been made. The vote had been nothing more than a formality, a figleaf of legality covering a de facto seizure of power and imposition of a new order. His men were already fanning out, sealing the gates and removing a handful of magicians who could be relied upon to cause trouble, once they realised what had happened. Once order was in place, any magician who objected – or wanted to leave - would be allowed to go.

The mundanes would object too, of course. But who cared about them? They were beasts of burden, fit only to hew wood and draw water, to do all the hard drudgework while the god-touched magicians aimed for the stars. They would be put firmly in their place, if they tried to cause trouble. What could they do, against men touched by the gods?

What could they do, against magic?

 

Prologue II: The Merchant

Hannah looked up, sharply, and sucked in her breath as her cousin Jon stumbled into the shop.

It took her a moment to be sure it was Jon. He was normally a very handsome young man, to the point he never had any trouble finding a young woman to take to the dance hall, but now his head had been turned into an ass’s head, mounted so precariously on his body that she feared any sudden movement would break his neck. If he hadn’t been wearing the same short-sleeved shirt as herself, his tattoo clearly visible on his bare skin, she wouldn’t have recognised him at all.

“Jon?” Hannah stepped around the corner as the door closed behind him. “What happened?”

Jon opened his ass’s mouth and made a braying sound. Hannah gritted her teeth. The spell had robbed him of the ability to speak, at least in a manner anyone could comprehend. It was hardly the first time she’d seen some poor mundane hexed or cursed, for being powerless in a city ruled by magicians, and the hell of it was that it wasn’t the most sadistic or unpleasant transformation she’d seen. There were horrible rumours she knew to be rooted in fact … she bit her lip, hard, as she led Jon to the nearest seat and pushed him to sit down. It didn’t take much for a magician to decide to put a mundane in his place, to inflict humiliation or agony on a whim. Hannah had been hexed herself, more than once. And she had done nothing to deserve it.

“Stay there,” she said. Some magicians were friendlier than others, but she doubted she could find one who would undo the spell. They tended to believe that anything a magician did to a mundane was deserved, no matter how little that were true. “Don’t move.”

She darted to the door and locked it, switching the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. It was risky – she knew too many magicians who would happily take the sign as a challenge and blast the door down – but she dared not be caught doing something, anything, that could break the spell. Her skin crawled as she hurried back to the counter and opened an unlocked drawer, one that was so insignificant she hoped any watching eyes overlooked it. Their patron, who had cast the protective wards around the shop, could use them to spy if he wished. And if he caught them …

Her fingers closed around the runic tiles, pushing them into position as quickly as possible as she hurried back to Jon. The Magitech was simple, compared to some of the stories coming out of Heart’s Eye, but it was so explicitly illegal in Celeste that mere possession would be enough to get her a life sentence, and a brand new career as a spellbound slave. If she hadn’t had a distant cousin who’d obtained it for her … she braced herself as she pressed the tiles against Jon’s neck, all too aware she was crossing a line. But what choice did she have? The spell might wear off on its own or it might not, forcing her to pay through the nose for its removal.

Jon’s head twisted, bending in unnatural directions before snapping back to normal. “Thanks,” he muttered, gasping for breath. “That was …”

Hannah nodded, curtly, as she hurried back to hide the tiles and reopen the shop. There were advantages to living and working in Celeste – the money was good, and no one looked down at her for being a woman – but there were times when she wondered if it wouldn’t be preferable to go back to Kerajaan instead. Sure, she couldn’t own property in her own name – and if her husband turned out to be a boor she’d have to put up with it – but at least she wouldn’t be turned into a toad if she looked at some magician the wrong way, or merely happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when an angry sorcerer was looking for targets. She glanced at the rear of the shop, where her father was preparing ingredients, and shuddered inwardly. It was their one chance to make a fortune, but the price was too high.

Her eyes narrowed, a shiver running down her spine as she saw the black-clad young men marching down the streets. The magicians had always pushed the mundanes around, but the near-constant harassment had been getting worse over the last few weeks. She had heard rumours of debates in council, suggestions it was time to declare independence … as if Celeste wasn’t already independent. A number of merchants had already moved out, a handful abandoning their patrons; others, she’d been warned, had been told they wouldn’t be allowed to leave the city until their contracts expired. She wondered, suddenly, if her father was one of them. She hadn’t been privy to the negotiations before he took possession of the shop.

Jon coughed. “Thanks,” he said, again. “I said no.”

Hannah blinked. “No? To what?”

“A witch wanted me,” Jon said. “I said no. And she hexed me.”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. There was nothing else she could say or do. The magicians made the rules and everyone else did as they were told, or else. Jon had been astonishingly brave to say no and … Hannah gritted her teeth. It could have been a great deal worse. “Perhaps we should just go.”

She glanced back at the curtain leading to the workroom, feeling a twinge of guilt for even thinking about it. Her father wanted to make enough money to ensure they could rise in the world, and Celeste was the only place they could make a fortune in a hurry. And yet, with every passing day, the city was growing darker and darker. She could leave now, buy passage to somewhere – anywhere – else and not return, but that would mean abandoning her father. And letting the magicians push her around.

A shimmer ran through the air, a frisson of magic that scared her to the bone. Her body twitched, then started to move of its own accord. A dreamlike trance fell over her, the world turning into a nightmare, as her body made its way out of the shop and up the road, Jan walking helplessly beside her. They weren’t alone, either. Dozens – hundreds – of mundanes were coming out of their shops and homes, from the youngest children to elders who could barely walk, some fully dressed and others dragged out of their showers or beds. The nightmare sharpened … she told herself, firmly, to wake up. She was suddenly, terrifyingly, aware of the force acting on her body, but it was impossible to resist. And yet, it was no dream.

Her eyes lolled from side to side, taking in the drab buildings. Mundanes were supposed to live in the ghettos, unless their masters chose to allow them to sleep in their homes, and they weren’t allowed to make their homes stand out in any way. They weren’t even allowed gardens and parks! The apartment blocks were dull and lifeless, the communal kitchens renowned for serving tasteless food … the schools and trade shops were the only places that showed any individuality and even that was very limited, more focused on useful skills than independent thinking. A student who learnt to think for himself would be lucky if he was merely ordered to leave the city.

She stopped at the top of the road, her body hanging listlessly as her head snapped upwards. A magician was floating above them, wrapped in an aura of power. A stab of pure envy ran through her, sharpening her mind despite the spell holding her in its thrall. She’d grown up a young girl in a kingdom that regarded young women as property, unless they had magic, and she’d often wished she had magic herself. It would have opened so many doors for her, given her the chance to go to Whitehall or Mountaintop or even become an apprentice in Celeste. Instead, her fingers were powerless and now …

The magician spoke quietly, but his words were audible right across the ghetto. “There is a new order,” he said, his tone shimmering with magic and authority. “Magic rules. Those of us who have power, who are blessed by the gods, will reign over those who were never blessed …”

Hannah felt her heart sink as he went on and on, detailing the removal of what few rights mundanes had in Celeste and reducing them all to serfs. She had known she was on the bottom half of the city, but now … she swallowed hard as the deadly speech came to an end, with a final reminder they were now de facto property. Maybe not quite slaves, but she’d met enough escaped serfs to know the only real difference between serfdom and slavery was the spelling.

The spell came to an end. Her body staggered, her legs buckling under her own weight. She would have fallen if Jon hadn’t grabbed her arm, holding her upright as the rest of the mundanes fell to the cobblestones. Some were crying, others were blank, their faces seemingly robbed of independent thought … Hannah tried to force herself to move, as the sheer horror of the situation washed through her mind. It was too late to run and hide, too late to escape the nightmare that had settled over the city. They were property now …

And that was all they would ever be.

 

I've been having problems updating the thread

 

Hopefully they will get it fixed soon!!!