Emily put up her hand. So did most of the class.
“Gorgon, you don’t agree.” Gordian’s nose twitched, as if he’d smelled something disgusting. “Why don’t you agree?”
“If my daughter was starving, I would steal to feed her,” the Gorgon said. Her snake-like eyes gazed at Gordian, daring him to disapprove. “I would take the risk, knowing the only alternative was watching my child die.”
Gordian looked at her for a long moment, then nodded curtly.
“A good answer,” he said. “Ethics—as a framework of thought—are flexible. It is wrong to steal for oneself, but right to steal for someone else. Thoughts?”
“I wouldn’t like it if someone stole from me,” Mathis said. “They might be stealing food from my daughter.”
“That’s true,” Gordian agreed. “Something that looks reasonable to one person might look very unreasonable to another.”
“But what happens if the person could afford to spare the food?” Melissa offered. “If I was starving myself, I wouldn’t want to lose the food. But if I was swimming in plenty, I could spare the food without a qualm.”
“It would still be your food.” Jacqui sneered. “Don’t you get to make the choice of what happens to it?”
“A valid point,” Gordian said. “Here is a different question. Should a thief who steals to enrich himself be treated more severely than a thief who steals to feed his children?”
Emily shrugged. She’d never seen any suggestion that the Nameless World cared one whit for social justice, in any of its forms. Thieves were thieves, whatever their cause; they were put in the stocks, or enslaved, or even executed ... there was no mercy, no matter their motives. And she could understand the logic, even if the punishments repulsed her. Far too many communities lived on the brink. A thief could push them over the edge.
Which doesn’t excuse lords and ladies living high while peasants starve, she reminded herself, grimly. They would kill men and rape women just for a little sport.
“It’s still theft,” Jacqui said. “There’s no misunderstanding here, sir. A person who steals from another knows he’s stealing from another, whatever his ... reasons. They have to be dealt with harshly.”
“Yeah,” Prunella agreed. “They could just ask for the food.”
Emily snorted. She couldn’t help herself. Prunella had grown up in a magical family and gone straight to Whitehall. She’d never starved a day in her life. She’d certainly never lived as a peasant or even a powerless aristocratic girl. There was no way she could comprehend the gulf between the peasants and the aristocrats, let alone the mundanes and the magicians ...
Gordian gave her a sharp look. “Do you have something to contribute, Emily?”
“A starving peasant could go to the lord of the manor to ask for food,” Emily said. It was hard to keep the disdain out of her voice. “But he’d be lucky if he was only laughed at. His lord and master wouldn’t lift a finger to help.”
She sighed. The aristocracy considered the peasants subhuman. They were more concerned about their horses and dogs than the hapless men and women who toiled on their estates, wretched serfs fit only to hew wood and draw water. Emily had never understood it—even if they hated the peasants, starving them to death was self-defeating—but it was a fact of life. A starving peasant who begged for help was more likely to be beheaded than fed.
“Yes, he might,” Gordian said. “But would refusing help be ethical?”
“Yes, it would,” Jacqui said. “The peasant has no claim on his master.”
Emily scowled. She’d been told, more than once, that a feudal chain of obligations ran up from the lowliest peasant serf to the monarch himself, that the nobility had obligations to the peasants ... but she’d never seen any proof. The nobles of Zangaria seemed to believe they had no obligations at all to their peasants, not even to help keep them alive during famine. The only time she’d seen the aristocracy concerned about the peasants had been when the peasants had started to run off to the big cities. They were prepared to move heaven and earth to recover a runaway peasant, but not to make any concessions that would convince the peasant to stay on the estate. The whole system was shitty.
“And if that is so,” Gordian asked, “does the master have any claim on the peasant?”
He held up a hand before anyone could answer. “We’ll return to this topic later,” he said, firmly. “Right now, we are discussing magic. What are the ethics of magic?”
“To know when to use and when not to use magic,” Melissa said. “And when magic can be used for power.”
Gordian nodded. “Power—and magic is a form of power—brings responsibility,” he said, seriously. “Why do you think we teach you here?”
“Efficiency,” Cirroc said. “Instead of one teacher trying to teach one student, you teach twenty or thirty of us at once. We pick up the basics so our future masters don’t have to hammer them into our heads.”
Emily wasn’t so sure. The master-apprentice relationship had its advantages as well as its disadvantages, but so did the educational system. On one hand, it could impart a great deal of knowledge relatively quickly; on the other, it limited the amount of individual attention each student could receive. Emily was fairly sure that she would have progressed far faster at school—in both worlds—if she’d been the sole focus of her teacher’s attention. But, on the other hand, she probably wouldn’t have gotten away with anything.
“That’s not a bad point,” Gordian said. “But it isn’t the one I want to discuss now. Anyone else?”
“Uniformity,” Melissa offered. “A cert from Whitehall has a fixed value, sir. Anyone who takes me on as an apprentice knows what I did to earn the cert. He doesn’t have to put me through my paces to discover the limits of my knowledge.”
“That’s also true,” Gordian said. “But there’s a different point.”
The Gorgon leaned forward. “You allow magicians from all over the Allied Lands to get to know one another,” she said. “Everything from friendships to patronage networks go through Whitehall.”
“There are other schools,” Gordian said. “But you’re right. Uniformity is important. It just isn’t the point I have in mind.”
Cabiria nudged Emily. “Then what does he have in mind?”
Gordian proved to have sharp ears. “You tell me, young lady.”
“You want us to come to believe that we are all magicians,” Cabiria said, a hard edge in her voice. Her early life had been blighted by the belief she wouldn’t develop magic when she reached puberty. “That whatever our origins, we have magic in common.”
“Again, not a bad answer,” Gordian said. “But it isn’t the one I want.”