Emily nodded, although for different reasons. She’d never been allowed to be fussy, not on Earth. Ramen noodles, baked beans ... cheap, crappy and very unhealthy food. Her fellows at school had moaned about the school dinners, but Emily had cleaned her plate and gone back for seconds every day. Maybe it had come from the lowest bidder. It was still better than eating nothing. The idea of refusing to eat just because someone didn’t like the taste was absurd.
Frieda never got enough to eat, either, she thought. She knows better than to waste food.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. She caught the serving girl’s eye and waved. “You can come here every weekend, if you like.”
“Only if you come with me,” Frieda said. “There’s no fun in eating alone.”
Emily lifted her eyebrows. “You don’t have anyone who’ll go with you?”
“Not really.” Frieda looked down at the table. “No one I want to spend time with, at least.”
“Oh,” Emily said. “What will you do when I leave?”
Frieda stared at her. “I don’t ... you don’t have to leave.”
“I wish I didn’t have to leave,” Emily said. It was true. Whitehall was the first place she’d considered a real home. But she had an apprenticeship in her future. “What will you do when I go?”
“I don’t know,” Frieda said. “But I’ll think of something.”
Emily paid the bill, then passed the serving girl a silver coin. It was one of the newly-minted coins from Beneficence, with a stable value. Oddly, it would actually be worth more if it was sold as a curiosity, rather than used for currency. But that wouldn’t last as more and more minted coins entered circulation.
“It was very good,” she said, as she rose. “And thank you.”
“Thank you.” The serving girl curtseyed formally, then picked up the plates with practiced ease. “Please come again.”
Emily smiled. “We will.”
She looked at Frieda. “Come on. There’s still some daylight. We can go shop before we go back to the school.”
“Sure,” Frieda said. She still looked down. “Why not?”
Chapter Seventeen
“REMEMBER WHAT WE DISCUSSED,” EMILY SAID, as the doors of the Great Hall opened. “And stick to the rules.”
Cirroc nodded, affably. Jacqui and Cerise looked artfully blank. Emily eyed them both suspiciously—they’d been surprisingly quiet when she’d outlined the rules—and then looked away. Dozens—perhaps hundreds—of students were flooding into the Great Hall. It looked as if a third of the student body wanted to join the club. Emily couldn’t help wondering, despite herself, if Gordian had a point. There was definitely a demand for a dueling club.
She sucked in her breath as she surveyed the students. Two-thirds of them had followed instructions and donned shirts and trousers before coming, the remainder wore everything from robes to dresses. Emily glanced at some of the latter and decided they’d come to encourage their boyfriends rather than taking part themselves, if only because anyone wealthy enough to buy a dress wouldn’t have any problems buying a cheap shirt and second-hand trousers. There were families who objected to girls and women wearing male clothes, but they tended not to have magic. Magical families put learning ahead of almost anything else.
And what happens in Whitehall stays in Whitehall, Emily reminded herself. Magicians enjoyed a certain level of freedom from sexual mores, particularly when no one outside the school knew what they’d done. No one is going to talk about it when they go home.
She climbed onto the podium and looked down. Frieda stood with a group of Fourth Years, her eyes fixed on Emily. Several of the students she recalled mentoring last year stood near the front, chatting happily amongst themselves; others were strangers, students she couldn’t even recall passing in the corridors. There were fewer Fifth and Sixth Years ... she was oddly saddened to realize that Caleb had decided not to attend. It would have been awkward, but she could have relied on him to be sensible. She wasn’t sure that was true of some of the others.
Cirroc wants to be a dueling master, she thought. He’s got every incentive to make the club work.
The thought made her smile as she gathered her magic, drawing their attention to her like moths to a flame. Perhaps, after a month or two, she could pass most of her dueling club duties to Cirroc. He wanted the job, after all, and it would look very good on his resume. A dueling master would definitely see it as a plus, even if a combat sorcerer would have doubts. She could make a reasonable case that passing control to him would actually have beneficial effects in the long run.
Gordian might not buy that argument, she reminded herself. And he has the final say.
She cleared her throat. “Welcome to the first session of the dueling club,” she said, using a simple spell to amplify her voice. She made a mental note to thank Sergeant Miles for teaching her the spell, even though she’d thought it useless at the time. “How many of you are actually here to duel?”
Nearly all the students—including some of the girls in dresses—held up their hands. Emily resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Perhaps someone could fight in a dress, if the whole scene was carefully choreographed by a dedicated director—but it wasn’t something she would care to try for herself. Sergeant Miles would have had quite a few sharp things to say, she thought, if she’d turned up in a dress. He’d probably make her run laps or swim in it, just to teach her that impractical clothing could be dangerous.
They’ll learn, she told herself, firmly.
“Those of you who are not here to duel, please go to the back of the room,” she ordered, putting her thoughts aside. “We’re going to run through the rules first, which I expect you to obey. Anyone caught breaking the rules will be kicked out and not allowed back.”
A low rustle ran through the crowd. Emily found it hard to care. She didn’t want any accidents—or serious injuries—on her watch. Gordian might just have given her the job in the hopes she’d do something to blot her copybook spectacularly. Or something might happen anyway. Even a basic duel could lead to broken bones or spell damage that proved alarmingly resistant to treatment.
“We will fight our duels until one party is unable to continue,” she said. “We will not intentionally fight to first blood, nor will we battle to the death. Spells that might cause serious injury are not to be used, whatever the circumstances. You are not to bring wands, staffs or any other charged objects into the dueling circle. And if someone throws up their hands and surrenders, that surrender is to be honored.”
She ran through the other rules, ignoring a handful of discontented mutters. It wasn’t illegal, in a duel, to make someone’s clothes fall off, but it was rare. A real duelist wouldn’t take the risk, knowing that while he was casting something effectively harmless, his opponent might be trying to cast something nastier. But she’d chosen to ban such spells, along with a handful of cruel pranks. They might turn out to be valid tactics in her duels, making it harder for the duelists to adapt to the real world.