Infinite Regress Read online

  Lamarck was right where magic is concerned, she thought, as she passed the book back to Cabiria. A change in the parent’s body may have effects on the child.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Why aren’t they doing anything like this for animals?”

  Cabiria smiled. “Either the techniques are secret, as you said, or no one has done any research on it at all,” she agreed. “And I needed to know what had been done...”

  She shrugged. “Ah, well. Water under the bridge and all that rot.”

  Emily had to smile. “And you’re interested in humans too?”

  “You need to be a Healer to take a real interest in humans,” Cabiria said. “And besides, a great deal of work has already been done on humans.”

  “True,” Emily agreed. She bent down and retrieved a handful of textbooks from her trunk, placing them on the bed. “Perhaps a little too much, in some cases.”

  Cabiria frowned. “Too much?”

  “There are long-term side effects of some magical treatments,” Emily pointed out. The Royal Bloodline was the most serious case she knew about, but there had been others. She’d read about them after discovering what had happened to Alassa’s family. “People going mad or being born with deformities that are impossible to fix...”

  She sighed. “Anything you do to the animals might cause them problems further down the line too,” she warned. “You might have a fast horse in one generation, but a lame horse in the next.”

  “There is always a price to be paid for understanding,” Cabiria said, bluntly. “Magic always comes with a cost.”

  “Which you won’t be paying,” Emily said, irked.

  Cabiria smirked, widely. “This from the person who invented the printing press and a whole new system of letters and numbers?”

  Emily winced. Cabiria was quite right. Emily hadn’t thought too much either before releasing her innovations into the wild. How many people had watched helplessly as their lives were turned upside down, just by the introduction of something new? She wouldn’t shed a tear for the Accountants Guilds’—they’d tolerated far too many crooks amongst their number—but innocents had been hurt too. And the secret of gunpowder, out and spreading, would send thousands more to their graves in the very near future.

  “Touché,” she conceded. “But I should have been more careful too.”

  “Perhaps,” Cabiria agreed. Her voice hardened, tinged with bitter pain and regret. “My... family... isn’t keen on my little obsession. They thought I should do something a little more conventional with my life.”

  Emily looked up at her. “Conventional?”

  “Studying a field of magic or becoming a specialist,” Cabiria said. “Something the Patriarch would find useful.”

  “Ouch,” Emily said. She knew nothing about House Fellini—she made a mental note to look them up in the library, when she next had a moment—but she doubted they were that different from either House Ashworth or Ashfall. There would be a Patriarch, a handful of elders... and everyone else, who would be expected to do as they were told. “Didn’t they try to force you to study something useful?”

  “I told them I’d leave if they tried,” Cabiria said, bluntly. “And I swore an oath too.”

  Emily stared. Swearing oaths was dangerously reckless at the best of times. The consequences of breaking an oath ranged from losing one’s magic to death, depending on just how the oath had been shaped and sworn. Cabiria’s parents had to have recoiled in horror when they realized what their daughter had done. She was surprised Cabiria hadn’t been unceremoniously disowned. In some ways, her actions had threatened the whole family.

  “You must have been determined,” she said, finally. “Why...?”

  Cabiria snorted. “You don’t know?”

  “No,” Emily said. “Should I?”

  “It was quite the story, seven or so years ago,” Cabiria said. She laughed, rather harshly. “I suppose your appearance took some attention away from me.”

  “That would have happened two years before... two years before I came to Whitehall,” Emily said, slowly. She picked her next words very carefully. “I don’t recall hearing anything about you.”

  “You must be the only one,” Cabiria said.

  Emily held up a hand. “If you don’t want to talk about it...”

  “You’ll just go look it up in the library,” Cabiria interrupted. “At least this way you’ll get the unvarnished truth.”

  She scowled down at the floor. “I was the third daughter of my parents; my father the third son of House Fellini. My mother was a newborn magician. They had my two elder sisters in short order, barely pausing long enough to teach the last child to walk before having the next one.”

  Her voice lowered. “Until they had me.”

  Emily frowned. “You?”

  “I had magic, all the tests said,” Cabiria said. “But I couldn’t use it. No matter what I did, my magic refused to work. I might as well have been a powerless mundane! I should have gone to Whitehall or Mountaintop when I turned sixteen, but... no magic. My parents were on the verge of giving up on me.”

  “Shit,” Emily said. “They treated you badly?”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Squibs—for want of a better term—were almost completely unknown in the Nameless World. The children of magicians would almost certainly have magic themselves. Most families actively sought out newborn magicians to marry their children, knowing that it would make the bloodlines stronger. The thought of growing up in a magical household, without magic, was terrifying. She knew, all too well, just how cruel kids could be.

  “Oh, no,” Cabiria said. “They were very kind to me. My parents would have taken care of me for the rest of my life. I would have wanted for nothing. And my sisters were very solicitous of my welfare. But I wouldn’t have wanted to do anything either.”

  “They treated you as a cripple,” Emily realized. She shuddered. Being mistreated was one form of abuse, but having everything done for you was another. “What happened?”

  “Uncle Alanson”—she nodded towards the portrait at the foot of her bed—“dug up a really old rite he claimed would work and insisted on using it on me, over my father’s objections,” Cabiria said. “He was the Patriarch, Emily; his word was law. So he took me into his private spellchamber and...”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure what happened then,” she added. “My memory goes fuzzy after he started the first incantation. The next thing I know for sure is crying over his ashes, magic sparkling over me. I could finally use my powers. And I went to Whitehall a year later than I should.”

  Emily leaned forward. “You didn’t think to use memory charms to recover the lost memories?”

  Cabiria gave her a rather droll look. “First thing my parents tried,” she said, sarcastically. “It did nothing. My father thinks I must have blacked out as soon as the rite began, but we don’t know for sure. All I really know is that my uncle gave his life to let me use my powers.”

  “I see,” Emily said. “And now you’re studying how magic interacts with flesh?”

  “More or less,” Cabiria said. She looked up at Emily. “I’m a fluke, as far as I can tell; there are no recorded cases of anyone like me in history. I don’t know why I couldn’t use my powers until my uncle did something to me. Finding out why—unlocking the great mysteries—has been my calling ever since I first came to Whitehall.”

  “And Healer Oaths would make it impossible for you to study the root of magic,” Emily concluded.

  “More or less,” Cabiria agreed. “They are very restrictive.”

  She smiled. “So... what’s your story? What did you do to piss off our lord and master?”

  “Too many things to list,” Emily said. “He seems to believe I should have been expelled long ago.”

  “You did get away with a lot,” Cabiria pointed out. “Anything in particular?”

  “Accidentally challenging a tutor and then killing him,” Emily said. “I think that was
the matter he considered to be beyond the pale.”

  “Idiot deserved it,” Cabiria said. She smiled, rather gently. “My parents went through the whole affair in some detail. Master Grey should never have accepted your challenge. Or he should have beaten you to a pulp instead. The best he could have hoped for would be spending the rest of his life as an outcast.”

  “Probably,” Emily said. She didn’t want to talk about Master Grey. “Do you have any idea what Professor Locke intends to do?”

  Cabiria shook her head. “The Grandmaster may think that a history apprenticeship will keep us both out of trouble,” she said. “I can’t see him coming up with anything important.”

  She shrugged, dismissing the issue. “You can read my books if I can read yours. How does that sound?”

  “Great,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to read Cabiria’s books or not, but there was no point in picking a fight over the handful of books she’d brought with her from the house. “Trunks remain private?”

  “Of course,” Cabiria said. “I should warn you that mine is protected by a series of very nasty hexes.”

  “Likewise,” Emily said.

  Cabiria nodded. “Let me know if you and your boyfriend want to use the room,” she added, mischievously. “I don’t mind.”

  Emily colored. “Of course,” she said. “And you can do the same.”

  She smiled as she finished unpacking, then pulled the chat parchment out of her trunk and started to scribble out a note to her friends. She’d feared the worst, but Cabiria didn’t seem like a bad person. Perhaps having her for a roommate wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  Chapter Four

  “YOU SEEM TO BE SPENDING FAR too much time in here,” Frieda said, as she walked up to Emily and sat down facing her. The library was so quiet that her voice was surprisingly loud. “Your eyes will go funny.”

  Emily shrugged. She’d spent the last five days in the library, save for meals and bed, mainly reading about Professor Locke, Cabiria and Grandmaster Gordian. Cabiria’s story had been quite famous at the time, she’d discovered; there was no shortage of learned articles written about how a young girl might have no access to her powers, with explanations ranging from familial incompetence to a reluctance to actually knuckle down and work hard. Emily rather doubted it was the latter, just from a look at Cabiria’s side of the room. Cabiria might not be an extrovert like Alassa or a genius like Aloha, but she was definitely brilliant and scholarly. She knew how to work hard.

  “I need to catch up,” she said, feeling a stab of guilt. Frieda had stayed with her, but she hadn’t spent any time with the younger girl outside the dinner hall. “Much of this is fascinating.”

  “I suppose,” Frieda said. “Professor Locke used to have us reading all the old tomes and trying to draw a coherent story out of them. But nothing quite fit in.”

  Emily nodded. Historians on Earth had the same problem. Histories were written by the winners. Augustus Caesar had been careful to blacken the names of his opponents, up to and including Antony and Cleopatra. There was no way to be sure just how many of the surviving works from that era were accurate. Or, for that matter, what had been said in works referred to by an author that hadn’t survived to the present day. And the Nameless World didn’t have half the techniques available to archaeologists on Earth. They weren’t even sure when Whitehall Castle had been built!

  But they’re sure it predates the school, she thought, looking down at one of the textbooks she’d pulled from the shelves. It was empty when Lord Whitehall and the Whitehall Commune arrived.

  She shook her head in irritation, feeling a headache coming on. There were so many stories and legends, all of which tended to contradict other stories and legends. She’d done the same exercise herself, trying to put the story together into a single narrative, but it was impossible to complete the task without adding a great many caveats. Who’d taught Lord Whitehall? No one knew. Was Bernard De Born his son or merely an apprentice? Was Lord Alfred really a near-omnipotent magician or had the stories grown in the telling? And who was the Dark Lady, if she’d ever existed at all? There was so much confusion over the dates that she might have existed before or after Lord Whitehall, if her stories were based on a real person.

  And how, she asked herself silently, was the nexus point tamed?

  “You’re driving yourself mad,” Frieda said, picking up one of the books. “I think it would be better if we went for a ramble now, Emily.”

  Emily scowled. “Why?”

  “Because the other students will be returning tonight,” Frieda reminded her. “And you don’t want to greet Caleb in a grumpy mood, do you?”

  “Point,” Emily agreed. She picked up the books and carefully returned them to the librarian’s trolley. She’d offered to return the books to the shelves, but Lady Aliya had flatly refused to allow her to waste her time. “How long do we have?”

  Frieda glanced out of the window. “I’d say around a couple of hours before the first students arrive,” she said, as they headed for the door. “But it depends on how they travel.”

  Emily nodded. Some students would take coaches to Dragon’s Den, where they would be picked up by the staff, but others would travel to the White City and step through the portals that would take them directly to Whitehall. She rather suspected she was the only student in her year who could teleport, although someone like Jade or Aloha might well have mastered the skill on their own. Aloha, in particular, was certainly good enough to cast the spell even under pressure, accounting for all of the variables before it was too late.

  But no one can teleport into the school, she thought. The papers she’d been given by Griselda had made it clear that teleporting was strictly forbidden within Whitehall. There was no list of consequences, but the wards would make teleporting very dangerous. They’d have to teleport to a point beyond the wards and walk into the school.

  They stopped at the kitchens long enough to pick up a snack, then walked out onto the grounds and up to the mountain pathways. The wards flickered around them, but made no objection to their departure. Emily smiled, relaxing despite herself, as the warm summer heat soaked into her skin. The weather surrounding the castle was always variable, thanks to the nexus point, but for once it was cooperating nicely. She watched a flight of birds skimming through the air, a couple dropping down to snatch at small creatures in the undergrowth and return, carrying tiny mice in their claws. Beside her, Frieda chatted about her coming classes and her application for Martial Magic.

  “I still don’t know who I’ll be rooming with,” Frieda said. “How is your roommate?”

  “She seems nice,” Emily said, after a moment. She rather liked Cabiria, although she wasn’t sure how far she trusted her. Cabiria didn’t seem to have any moral or ethical qualms about her research at all. “It could be worse, I suppose.”

  “Yeah,” Frieda agreed. “You could be rooming with Melissa.”

  Emily scowled at the thought. Melissa and she would never be friends, even though she’d done Melissa a colossal favor last year. And yet, Melissa had been cut adrift by her former cronies, after she’d been formally disowned from her family. Emily felt a stab of sympathy, followed by guilt. She hadn’t known what it was like to have friends until recently, but now she hated the idea of losing her friends. Chatting through the parchments was just not the same.

  If they cut her loose so sharply, they weren’t true friends, she told herself. And yet, she knew it wasn’t a convincing argument. Melissa will miss them even as she hates them for not being her true friends.

  She pushed the thought out of her mind as they walked on, then started the long trek back to Whitehall as the sky began to darken. Rain splattered down around them, bouncing off the wards they hastily erected, running in rivulets towards the lake. She glanced down at her charmed boots, silently grateful that the charms would keep the leather from spoiling. It was an expensive pair, even by Queen Marlena’s standards. Emily would have preferred to refus
e the gift, but there was no polite way to do so.

  And they keep my feet dry, she thought. Buying a new pair with similar charms would be tricky.

  They reached the bottom of the hill and walked straight towards Whitehall. A handful of carriages were parked outside the courtyard, their passengers using wards to shield themselves as they levitated trunks into the castle. Emily caught sight of Pandora and Prunella arguing over something and gave them both a wide berth. Pandora had never made much of an impression on her, but Prunella could be nasty if pushed. There was no point in getting into a fight she knew she’d be blamed for starting.

  “There’s Melissa,” Frieda said. “And the Gorgon.”

  Emily smiled as she hurried towards her friends. Seeing them together was a shock—she’d never imagined Melissa becoming friends with the Gorgon—but perhaps it made a certain kind of sense. They were both outcasts, after all; the Gorgon by nature and Melissa by choice. Emily wondered if Markus had accompanied Melissa, then remembered he probably wouldn’t have been allowed past Dragon’s Den. His family were less concerned with the near-disaster in Cockatrice than the Ashworths, but Gordian would probably be reluctant to give them cause to dislike him.

  Not that it matters, Emily thought. The Ashworths alone will be happy to make their feelings clear.

  “Emily,” the Gorgon said. There was, as always, a faint hiss in her voice, her snakes echoing her words. “I’m glad you got to stay.”

  “Me too,” Emily said. She glanced at Melissa, then looked back at the Gorgon. “How was your holiday?”

  “I went back to the homeland after the wedding,” the Gorgon said. She didn’t seem concerned by the question. “And I did a lot of reading as well as working.”