Gordian gave her a sharp look. “You feel that we are teaching students bad habits?”
“Dueling and fighting are two very different things,” Emily said, unwilling to back down from the unspoken challenge. “The club isn’t preparing students to fight.”
“But it is laying the groundwork for our return to the interschool dueling contests,” Gordian said. “In times such as these, Emily, it is important for the schools to work together. Your position as dueling champion could have opened many doors, if we had a position in the league.”
“Until I lost it,” Emily said.
“It would have been enough,” Gordian said.
Emily shrugged, expressively. It hadn’t been easy to hold back, when she’d been dueling with Casper. Giving him an opening, even a tiny one, had been harder. Everything she’d been taught had called for drawing on all of her power and pounding him into the ground, to kill him before he killed her. She’d run a colossal risk just to let him hold the title for a few wonderful days.
And he was killed in combat, she thought. He never had to defend his title in the arena.
“I expect you to make sure we put on a show,” Gordian added. “Put the best of the duelists in the ring, then pit them against one another. Make it spectacular.”
And if someone gets seriously hurt, Emily thought sourly, will you consider that spectacular too?
“I’ll do my best.” She already had over ninety students who wished to compete in the first round. Thankfully, the ones who were more interested in having fun than winning had chosen not to take part. “But time really is not on my side.”
“I saw your application to abandon your extra credit project,” Gordian said. “Do you really want to quit now? You put in a great deal of work over the last two years.”
Emily resisted, barely, the urge to scream. He sounded as though he was trying to be helpful, but she was sure he wasn’t. A helpful man wouldn’t have encumbered her with so much extra work that she was trying to find ways to pawn it off on her fellow students. Perhaps she could talk Melissa into manning the office, one day per week. Or Caleb. They’d both be better at talking to young students than she was.
“I don’t have the time to do justice to the project,” she said, flatly. “We decided we’ll pick it up later, when we’re less busy.”
“Or pass it on to someone else,” Gordian said. “Have you considered that?”
“Not yet,” Emily said. The thought was tempting, but she didn’t want virtual spellware to get out of her hands. Someone without scruples could really misuse it. “It’s ours, sir.”
“Quite understandable,” Gordian said.
He made a show of looking at his watch. “Before you go, there is one final matter. A trio of historians are planning to visit over the half-term. Their original intention was to explore some of the tunnels and examine the documents you recovered, but I believe they’ll want to speak with you about what you saw.”
Emily frowned. “All of it?”
“Not all of it,” Gordian said. “But you could tell them enough to fill in some of the blanks.”
“Maybe,” Emily said. She wondered if it was worth trying to bargain. She’d talk to the historians if Gordian let her put Cirroc in charge of the dueling club. But she had a feeling that would get her nowhere. “I kept meaning to read some of those documents myself.”
And look for others, she thought. If Master Wolfe had—somehow—survived and made his way to Beneficence, might he have concealed other documents below the school? What else might be down there?
“A good idea,” Gordian said.
Emily looked down at the table, considering the problem. History was important. And yet, it was in the past. She wasn’t sure what would happen if the truth—or even part of it—came out. Would the magical community be really bothered if it learnt that Lord Whitehall hadn’t been some insane combination of Dumbledore, Gandalf and Q? Or would there be a reopening of interest into some more dangerous questions? What had really happened when Whitehall had been founded and why? Who’d really been there?
“It depends on time,” she said, finally. “I have a great deal of work to do.”
And I did promise to help Frieda, she added, silently. Perhaps if we can get over the major problem, she’ll calm down.
“Talk to me about it first,” Gordian said. “We don’t want to tell them everything.”
Emily nodded. The truth would only upset people.
And start them experimenting with time travel too, she thought. The spells weren’t actually that complex, but any would-be time traveler needed a nexus point and a way to navigate. It would be impossible for anyone to succeed without both, as far as she knew, yet that wouldn’t stop sorcerers from trying. And who knows what will happen then?
“I advise you to be careful,” Gordian warned. “People are watching you.”
“I know,” Emily said.
She rose. “I’ll see you at the contest,” she said. “And I hope you enjoy it.”
“I’m sure I shall,” Gordian said.
Emily walked out of the room, feeling her thoughts and emotions churning. Something had to be done about Frieda, but what? Emily wasn’t even sure she knew what was going on. There had been a girl on Earth who had gone downhill rapidly, but her parents had been going through a messy divorce at the time. Frieda hadn’t seen her parents for nearly four years.
Find her and ask, Emily told herself, firmly. Then you can decide how to proceed.
But when she looked for Frieda, her younger friend was nowhere to be found.
Chapter Twenty-Two
IF EMILY HADN’T KNOWN BETTER—AND she wasn’t sure she did—she would have wondered if Frieda was avoiding her. Frieda took classes as normal, thankfully, but when she wasn’t in class she was walking the grounds or wandering through the mountain paths on her own. Emily couldn’t tell if Frieda was ashamed of her conduct or angry at Emily for giving her a mild telling off, but it didn’t matter. She was surprised, four days later, when Frieda showed up for the first dueling contest.
Emily saw her with the others and sighed, inwardly. There was no time to have a private chat, not now. Seventy-eight students were waiting on one side of the arena, holding their tokens in their hands and clearly impatient for matters to begin; Gordian, a handful of tutors and the dueling league representatives were standing on the other side, chatting quietly amongst themselves. Emily couldn’t help wondering if she was the subject of some of those discussions. A number of representatives had been glancing at her with more than passing interest.