“Lady Barb,” Frieda said. She winked. “You don’t want to argue with her, do you?”
“I also happen to know she’s not here,” Emily said, wryly. “Do you get to set the ground rules?”
Frieda looked embarrassed, a hint of a blush on her face. “This is serious,” she said. “Emily…”
Emily resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Frieda was no more a part of the city’s culture than she was. Her upbringing in the mountains hadn’t taught her how to comport herself in the big city. She would have been married off by now, if she’d lived long enough to grow into womanhood. Only the discovery of her magic had saved her from a life of total obscurity.
She looked up, inspecting the room. It was small, smaller than her bedroom at Whitehall, but larger than the one she’d shared with Lady Barb nine months ago. A pair of beds, no larger than the bed on the ship, reclined against the wall; a small dressing table, complete with a mirror spell on a reflective surface, was positioned neatly under the window. Someone – probably Sienna – had carved out a set of runes around the window frame, each one configured to uphold the household wards and keep intruders from breaking in. They wouldn’t be enough to keep her from forcing the window wide open, she thought as she walked to the window and peered out, but they’d probably make it impossible to sneak in and out of the house without triggering the wards. The street below was so busy, she doubted anyone could climb up without being noticed.
Frieda cleared her throat. “Emily, Lady Barb was serious.”
“I know,” Emily said. She felt a flicker of amusement, mingled with annoyance. It was nice to have someone looking out for her, but did Frieda have to be so overbearing? “I won’t do anything with him under this roof.”
“People will talk,” Frieda pointed out. “You have to be careful.”
Emily smiled. Frieda had grown up in a village where everyone knew what everyone else was doing. There was no real privacy, even for married couples. A pair of teenagers couldn’t find time to themselves without being caught and punished. She couldn’t help wondering, as she had the first time she’d visited the Cairngorms, if a particularly devious suitor sometimes set out to entrap a girl into marrying him. It didn’t have to be a boy, either. A girl could easily try the same trick.
“I’ll be careful,” she promised. She turned and picked up her bag. She’d only brought a couple of outfits, neither of which were really suitable for city life. “Did Lady Barb send some clothes, too?”
“There’s a trunk under the bed,” Frieda said. “I have orders to take you to a dressmaker if they don’t fit.”
“Thank you,” Emily said. Lady Barb wouldn’t have opened her trunk at Whitehall, even if it hadn’t been heavily warded. No one, not even Grandmaster Gordian, would have broken that taboo unless he saw no alternative. “What else did Lady Barb say?”
She opened the trunk and dug through the small collection of clothes as Frieda spoke. “Just that you have to respect the family’s mourning period,” she said. “And that you should take part in their ceremonies, even if things don’t work out. And that I have to behave myself.”
Emily looked up and smiled. “My, what have you been doing?”
Frieda smiled back. “I…um…I managed to catch Master Tor in one of my spells, back when I was playing Freeze Tag,” she admitted. “He was not amused.”
“Oh dear,” Emily said. She tried hard, very hard, not to giggle. “I imagine he was furious.”
“He was,” Frieda said. “I would still be in detention if I hadn’t been summoned here.”
“Ouch,” Emily said.
She pulled a dress and a set of undergarments from the trunk and placed them on the dressing table, then poked her way through the rest of the trunk. A small bottle of contraceptive potion she doubted she’d have a chance to use, a notebook and set of pencils…and, buried right at the bottom, a collection of books and a short note. She picked up the note and read it, then glanced at the book titles. Lady Barb expected her to have them read from cover to cover before she returned to Whitehall.
“They’re for your studies,” Frieda said. She looked doubtful. “You’ll have to work hard to catch up.”
“There goes my summer,” Emily said. Sergeant Miles had promised to help her study over the summer, if she needed to retake her end-of-year exams. She’d hoped to be able to explore more of the Nameless World, but exams came first. “Do you know what you’re doing for summer?”
“I’ve put my name down for work experience,” Frieda said. For a moment, she looked agonizingly young. “I don’t know if I’ve been accepted yet.”
“I’m sure you will be,” Emily said, reassuringly.
She put the books on the dressing table, then closed the trunk and shoved it back under the bed. Technically, she knew she should have locked it with magic, but there was nothing particularly valuable inside. Besides, she knew from Lady Barb that some household wards reacted badly to locking spells. It would be better to check with Sienna before doing anything that might provoke a reaction.
“I need a nap.” She also needed a wash, but she was too tired. “Will you be all right here?”
“Of course.” Frieda tapped her own trunk. “I’ve got schoolwork too.”