Caleb shook his head. “Emily ... Marian is coming here.”
“To Whitehall?” Emily had heard something about that, but it had been months ago. “She’s going to be a firstie?”
“Yes,” Caleb said. “She’s coming here.”
Emily frowned, inwardly. Marian blamed—had blamed—Emily for Casper’s death. Emily recalled, all too clearly, just how unpleasant Marian had been. And yet, Marian had already been affected by Justice and his followers. It was impossible to tell how much of her unpleasantness had been hers and how much had been shaped by subtle magic. Even Marian herself wouldn’t be able to provide a real answer. Her moral compass and her ability to monitor it had shifted.
“Mother and father didn’t think she could handle Stronghold, not after ... well, everything,” Caleb added. “There was some suggestion she would go to Laughter, but she missed the cut-off date. Mother even considered holding her back for a year, just to give her more time to recover ...”
Emily leaned forward as his voice trailed off. “How is she?”
“She’s been getting better, apparently,” Caleb said. “I mean ... most of the time, she’s normal. Just like I recall from before ... before Casper’s death. But there are times when she suddenly starts crying for no apparent reason. We’ve worked our way through most of the tangles in her mind, but we think some are left.”
“Ouch,” Emily said. A person who’d been warped by subtle magic would have problems when they were forced to confront the difference between their mental conception of the world and reality. Their train of thought might as well run into a brick wall. Some people never recovered from the experience. “Have you discussed this with the Grandmaster?”
“I believe mother spoke to him at some length.” He paused. “But you know how little he can actually do.”
Emily nodded, shortly. The Nameless World had no concept of mental health treatment. There were certainly no psychologists. Anyone with a mental problem was expected to work their way through it on their own or be driven away, if they posed a danger to everyone else. She understood the logic—treating unstable magicians might make them all the more dangerous—but it had never sat well with her. Subtle magic wasn’t the only kind of abuse that could result in long-lasting trauma. Marian was on her own.
“I don’t know how I can help,” she said, slowly. There was no way she could reinvent the science of psychology, even if she hadn’t held most of its practitioners in contempt. The school counselors she’d encountered had been universally useless. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just ... be nice to her,” Caleb said. “And don’t hold her actions against her.”
“I won’t,” Emily said. “But I can’t turn a blind eye to misbehavior.”
“I know,” Caleb said. “I just wish ... I wish she could take another year to get better.”
Emily nodded in agreement. People didn’t recover that quickly from trauma. She’d had enough problems recovering from subtle magic and she hadn’t been anything like that badly affected. The bouts of mental incomprehension and confusion hadn’t lasted long enough to force her to retake the year. But Marian had been twisted until she’d betrayed her own family, staunchly convinced she was doing the right thing. It would take her years to get over it.
And the taboo on treating mental disorders makes it hard for her family to help her, she thought, grimly. Sienna must be desperate for Marian to fix herself before it’s too late.
“I won’t hold her accountable for anything that happened before now,” Emily promised, slowly. “But like I said, I can’t turn a blind eye to misbehavior.”
She sighed as she realized just how much trouble this was likely to cause. Marian had said some pretty awful things to her, back in Beneficence. She could ignore them if they were said in private, even after Caleb’s sister arrived at Whitehall, but not if they were said in public. She’d have to insist on punishment, which wouldn’t endear her to Marian any further ... not, she supposed, that it mattered. She wasn’t going to marry Caleb, after all.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Caleb said, looking relieved. “We do want her to get better.”
Emily didn’t blame him. There were people, she knew all too well, who would consider Marian to be little more than a maddened beast who needed to be put down. A magician who was already mentally unstable ... why wait until she embraced necromancy or the darkest arts to stop her? And yet, Marian was a sixteen-year-old girl, not a monster. Old enough to be treated like an adult, by the standards of the Nameless World, but not an irredeemable criminal.
“I want her to get better too,” she said. “I’m sure she will.”
Caleb nodded, gratefully. Emily kept her thoughts to herself. She didn’t hate Marian. She just wanted as little to do with her as possible. Thankfully, she probably wouldn’t be expected to interact with Marian on a daily basis. She had no idea who’d been Head Girl when she’d been a firstie. Jade had been a prefect, if she recalled correctly, but Head Girl? For all she knew, it had been a Head Boy.
I’ll have to have a word with whoever mentors her, she thought. In hindsight, she should have made the connection between the name on the list of firsties and Caleb’s sister, but she hadn’t looked too closely. She’d just matched mentors to mentees at random. If there are problems, that person can talk to me about it first.
She sighed. That was going to be a problem too. The last thing anyone needed was rumors getting out. Marian’s betrayal wouldn’t have to become public knowledge for her fellow pupils to get wind of her problems. And then they’d start picking at that sore until Marian recovered or snapped completely. Emily made a mental note to make it absolutely clear to Marian’s mentor that word was not to get out, but she knew it might be pointless. Someone in First Year might notice the problem and then all hell would break loose.
“I will do what I can to make it easy for her,” she said. “But you know it won’t be that easy.”
“Yeah.” Caleb shook his head. “Is it wrong of me to want to protect her?”
Emily felt a flicker of envy. She’d never had a brother, never had anyone to look after her ... would her life have been better, she wondered, if she’d had an older brother like Jade or Caleb or even Casper? Or would their overprotectiveness have been stifling? Frieda had had older brothers, brothers she refused to talk about. But it was clear she’d hated them. It hadn’t been an easy life in the mountains.
“I don’t think so,” she said, finally. “But you do need to let her stand on her own two feet.”