Thornbound: Volume II of The Harwood Spellbook Read online

  I was married to a former scholarship student. I knew exactly how little that web of aristocratic social connections really mattered when it came to a magician’s true abilities—and exactly what it felt like to thirst for magic without an outlet.

  “I’d like to perform an experiment,” I said. “Miss Hammersley, would you please take up one of the textbooks from this table?” I gestured at the polished oak side table behind me, which was stacked with books of varying sizes.

  She hesitated with one freckled and calloused hand hovering above the pile. “Does it matter which one I choose?”

  “Not this time.”

  She bit her lip, then nodded decisively and scooped up a slim volume from the middle of the table.

  “An excellent choice.” I took it from her and held it up for the rest of the class to see. “This is Aguirre’s Elements of Spellcraft—a book traditionally studied in the third year at the Great Library.” Smiling, I passed it back to Miss Hammersley. “Why don’t you open it to page fifty?”

  Her throat moved with her swallow, but she did as I’d asked.

  “Now,” I said, “I’d like you to read it out loud.”

  For the first time, she balked. “Miss Harwood...” She took a deep breath, lowering her voice to a pained whisper. “I don’t know any of these words.”

  “You don’t need to...yet.” I put one hand on her shoulder, ignoring our audience to firmly hold her gaze. “Trust me. I don’t care about pronunciation or meaning. All I want you to focus on as you speak is your will.”

  “My...will?” She frowned as the other students leaned in, listening intently.

  “Your will,” I repeated firmly. “You have a strong will, Miss Hammersley. You all do, every one of you.” I looked across my class, taking the time to meet each gaze in turn: nine young women of different heights, skin colors, fashions, and ages, all united in one room and one radical endeavor. “You wouldn’t be brave enough to be here in Angland’s first class of women magicians if you didn’t.”

  I turned back to Miss Hammersley. “So don’t allow yourself to worry about anything else. Right now, I want you to hold just one thing in your head: how desperately you want to be a magician...

  “...Because you do, don’t you?”

  “More than anything in the world.” Her voice was ragged with emotion. A sigh of empathy rippled through her classmates as she spoke, all of them leaning even closer.

  “Then hold that in your head. Don’t even think about the words or what they might mean. Just think about what this means to you, now: standing here, beginning your training amongst your peers.” I gestured to the eight young women around us. “By the end of your four years here, I can promise you that the nine of you will have formed a bond that will be nigh-on unbreakable. And when women work together...” I let my gaze drift to the watching Boudiccate inspectors. My smile turned rueful as I nodded discreetly to them. “We all know what national wonders they can work.”

  Lady Cosgrave’s eyes narrowed. Annabel Renwick looked sour, while Miss Fennell looked pleased. Mr. Westgate looked stoically unmoved as usual...

  And Miss Hammersley’s voice rolled through the room, firmly and clearly reading every word of the spell—with the full force of her impressive willpower behind it.

  That was exactly what she needed.

  Glorious, celebratory bells suddenly rang through the air, sending students and inspectors jumping in their seats. The invisible bells chimed rich and resonant around us, so loud and overwhelming that they almost drowned out the cries of surprise and laughter and delight that sounded throughout the whole class in response...

  And tears of pride sprang to my eyes, mirroring the sparkling drops that rolled down Miss Hammersley’s freckled cheeks as her own glorious and strong magic sang out in those bells, filling the room with music and power.

  She read the entire spell from beginning to end without faltering even once.

  “And that,” I said, as the final echoes faded into a wonderstruck hush, “is what I want every one of you to remember over your next four years here. We will work on the intricacies of control. You will struggle to master every complexity that our vocation has to offer. You will memorize more finicky details than you can yet imagine...but at its essence? This is what magic requires, more than anything else: pure willpower and determination.

  “And I know that every single one of you is capable of it.

  “Now...” I plucked a well-worn book from a different table as Miss Hammersley strode back to her seat, her eyes shining and pride emanating from her like a visible sheen. “Let’s go back and start from the very beginning to see exactly how a competent spell is crafted.”

  The basics could never be as exciting as a spell from a third-year textbook. But the glow of Miss Hammersley’s triumph illuminated every student in her class. At the end of the hour, when they flooded out of the room for their first outdoor lesson in weather wizardry, their enthusiastic voices rose in an honor guard around her, carrying her at their center through the door.

  I would never allow any scholarship students to be treated with less than full respect and collegiality at my school...and while Miss Hammersley might not yet have an alibi for the night before, my experiment had revealed one essential trust. No one who was only pretending to desire magic could have successfully cast that spell in that context, following those specific instructions.

  If she was a spy for the Boudiccate, I would eat every one of my spellbooks—even the unforgivably ill-informed ones. But I didn’t believe it would ever come to that.

  I was smiling as I looked back from the now-empty doorway. The Boudiccate’s inspectors, however, were not.

  “Well!” said Annabel Renwick, shaking out the flowing skirts of her fey-silk gown as she rose to her feet. “You’re still willing to risk anything and anyone to prove a point, aren’t you? I should have thought you’d be a bit more careful when it comes to your students’ welfare rather than your own.”

  “I beg your pardon?” A disbelieving crack of laughter fell out of my mouth before I could stop it. “How do you imagine I’ve put any of them in danger?”

  Her upper lip curled as she studied me. “I seem to recall a certain arrogant woman magician losing all of her own magic—and nearly her life as well—when she attempted a spell far beyond her own abilities. To set a third-year exercise as a first spell for one of your own students now...”

  I didn’t even attempt to restrain my eye-roll at that nonsense. “You may ask Mr. Westgate, if you like, how much danger I put Miss Hammersley in with that spell.”

  “None whatsoever,” Mr. Westgate said curtly. “If she hadn’t harnessed the willpower for that one, it simply wouldn’t have had any effect. It’s an entirely harmless exercise...as any graduate of the Great Library would know.” He pointedly refused to meet my gaze as he rapped out his next question: “Where exactly is this next class being held?”

  “In the courtyard just by Mr. Luton’s cottage,” I told him.

  “Fine.” He jerked a dismissive nod, still not meeting my gaze, and strode out of the room for the next inspection.

  “Ah, young Luton. Poor, poor Delilah’s nephew.” Annabel sighed and shook her head as she swept past me. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by now at your...unusual taste in staff members.”

  “I suppose not,” I agreed with outward amiability.

  Unease slithered beneath my skin, though, as I watched her leave. If she was only disparaging me with that barb, I could endure it well enough; but if she’d somehow ferreted out any dangerous hints of my housekeeper’s fey background and thought to make some mischief with it...

  “Miss Harwood,” said Lady Cosgrave, “a word, if you please.”

  “Of course.” I snapped my attention back to the space in front of me, where Lady Cosgrave waited with her young cousin and protégée, Miss Fennell, standing rigid and expressionless by her side.

  I’d only met Miss Fennell a few months ago through her secret
fiancée, but Lady Cosgrave had been one of the prominent figures of my youth. Fashionable, charming, and quick-thinking, she had been twenty years younger than my own mother, but the two of them had been on sociable terms even before she and Amy had formed a close friendship of their own. She and I had never had a personal relationship, but I’d always felt at ease in her company...until now.

  I remembered the chill disdain on her face as she’d dismissed my loyal, loving sister-in-law the day before, and my own expression set in rigid lines despite my best attempts to keep it neutral. “You wished to discuss my lesson plan, too?” I inquired.

  She gave an irritated sniff. “Oh, really, Cassandra. Let’s not waste our time in pointless fencing when we have only a few minutes to ourselves.”

  ...Before she had to join Annabel Renwick, I assumed—and I remembered Miss Banks’s words from last night. “She has Lady Cosgrave entirely under her thumb.”

  I would have felt more empathy for any woman under threat of blackmail if she hadn’t saved herself by damning Amy and threatening my school.

  “You may tell me whatever you came to say, Honoria.” I turned away from her, gathering up my assorted books and tossing my words over my shoulder. “But let’s not pretend to any privacy between ourselves, if you please. Anything I say to you will only be repeated to Annabel Renwick the moment she asks, won’t it? She seems to have taken priority over all of your old friendships.”

  “Are you speaking to me of loyalty?” She let out a surprisingly bitter laugh. “I’m coming to you now to offer you this chance only because of my fondness for your family. You’re still Miranda Harwood’s daughter, whether you admit to it or not—so somewhere inside, no matter how deeply you’ve buried it, I know you must still have that sense of duty and of principle that your mother fought so hard to instill in you.”

  I was grateful that she couldn’t see my expression with my back still safely turned. “This has indeed been a delightful conversation. However, if you’ll excuse me, I have my next lesson to plan, and you—”

  “You have no idea how much danger we’re all in, if this disastrous venture actually succeeds. Were you even watching those girls in your class this morning, eating up everything you fed them without a second thought?” Lady Cosgrave had always been famous for her charm, but her voice lashed out now like a whip. “This isn’t some jolly girls’ adventure club you’re leading! It is a revolution that could topple everything Angland stands for.”

  “Oh, for—!” I bit off an intemperate curse as I swung around, clasping my gathered books to my chest. “Honoria, no one is trying to topple anything. Didn’t you see the pure joy in those girls’ faces?”

  “I saw exactly what you’d planned to show us all in that little demonstration,” she snapped. “I saw a tide of change that won’t be turned unless you call a halt to it now, before it’s too late. And I don’t just mean closing this school; I mean going to the newspapers and telling every one of them that it was a terrible mistake ever to have conceived of it!”

  At that, I laughed out loud, and my shoulders relaxed. “That is never going to happen,” I assured her. “If you remember my mother at all, you should know better than to expect any daughter of hers to be cowardly.”

  “And what kind of future do you want for your own daughters?” Lady Cosgrave demanded. “Once we’ve lost every gain we made in the past seventeen hundred and fifty years?”

  “I beg your pardon?” I blinked, looking past her to Miss Fennell. The younger woman’s lips were pursed together, and I couldn’t begin to guess at her true thoughts behind her lowered gaze. At last winter’s house party, surrounded by friends her own age, she’d been loud and expansive, with all the flair and magnetism of a future leader, but in her subordinate role here as an assistant—with secrets in danger from more than one of her superiors—she was keeping herself unnaturally mute, all her vibrancy dishearteningly repressed.

  It felt wrong...and it was a reminder: I wasn’t only fighting for my own students now.

  “Look at the new Daniscan Republic,” Lady Cosgrave told me. “Or the elven kingdom up north, cheek-by-jowl to Angland itself. Or half the nations on the continent, for that matter! What do they all have in common?” She answered her own question before I could: “Men. They rule everything. Do you have any idea how easily that could happen here as well?”

  “Don’t be absurd. From Boudicca onwards, we have always—”

  “Because we had an agreement!” she snarled. “An agreement that both sides followed without exception. I told your mother even one woman magician was too many—but those girls in your class are a tipping point that will crash our ship entirely.”

  Behind her, Miss Fennell’s lips opened as if to speak—but Lady Cosgrave swept straight past whatever diplomatic protest her younger cousin might have offered.

  “How many months do you think it will take,” she demanded, “for the first opinion pieces to arrive in the national newspapers, insisting that gentlemen be allowed to enter politics now that our old agreement has been broken? And how much longer do you think it’ll be before people start to say the gentlemen would do a better job of it on their own?”

  “They couldn’t,” I said flatly. “Everyone who’s studied history can see what a remarkable job we’ve done.”

  “Ha! The general public,” said Lady Cosgrave, “doesn’t care a jot for history. All they want is to feel comfortable now—and just wait until the next unpopular decision about taxes or tariffs has to be made. Or the next economic recession! Some enterprising group of gentlemen is going to leap at that opportunity and start trumpeting their greater talents in the newspapers, exactly as you did when it came to your own self-aggrandizing demands.”

  I set my jaw and strove for patience. “I never said that women were naturally better magicians than men. I only said that we should be allowed—”

  “Half the world is already ruled by men who claim we have no right to any power at all! Have you paid even the slightest attention to the way that women are treated in the elven kingdom? They aren’t even allowed to choose their own husbands, let alone make decisions for their nation as a whole. I was the ambassadress there for three years, remember! I saw what they endure.”

  “And I believe you,” I said sincerely.

  Unlike the fey, the disdainful elves had never deigned to mingle with human society. Although our two nations were finally in the midst of an uneasy peace, the truth was that after all our long centuries of war, any true friendships would have been unthinkable even if any elves had been available to form them...and even then, no Anglish woman with any pride could have stomached them.

  Elven gentlemen were only rarely glimpsed outside the secrecy of their own northern kingdom, and no elven ladies were ever allowed outside it. Still, I had heard horror stories all my life of the depth of their subjection. The punishments that those ladies received for any infractions of their oppressive laws were notorious throughout Angland for their brutality.

  “But none of those other nations have been ruled by women for over seventeen hundred years. Moreover...” I frowned, thinking it through as levelly as I could. “If men do demand a place in politics to mirror women’s acceptance in the field of magic...would that be such a terrible thing?”

  It would be a shocking change, admittedly; an unsettling adjustment that would take some time even for me to wrap my own mind around. Like everyone else in Angland, I’d grown up with the firm and undisputed understanding that men were far too emotional and irrational to ever be trusted with practical governance.

  But hadn’t we also all been told that women were too rational and hard-headed to ever successfully work any magic?

  “It’s a new era for all of us,” I said. “It may take some time for everyone to settle into our new positions. I imagine there will be controversies along the way. But Boudicca herself overthrew the government of this nation, sent the all-powerful Roman Empire packing, and devised a whole new form of governance despite what
had always been done—so I don’t think any of us nowadays have to be too cowardly to aim for true justice and equality, no matter which field we’re speaking of.

  “After all, if we refuse to even try...then how can we claim to be better than any of those other nations you just mentioned?”

  Miss Fennell’s eyes shone, but she pressed her lips together and lowered her head, waiting deferentially for her older cousin’s response. Lady Cosgrave looked at me for a long, silent moment.

  When she spoke again, her voice was bitter.

  “I should have known,” she said, “that you wouldn’t care for anything but your personal ambitions, no matter how many other women’s futures are shattered by your actions. You broke your own mother’s heart when you refused her legacy all those years ago. Now you’re ready to destroy it for every other woman in this nation, after all the work your mother and grandmother did to maintain our traditions and keep all of us safe.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Cassandra...but I can’t say I’m surprised.” She swept towards the door, shaking her head. “Just remember: I offered you a chance to redeem yourself. I doubt that such a gift will be granted to you again.”

  With an apologetic look, Miss Fennell turned and followed after her older cousin.

  As they walked together through the doorway, I stood alone with my books in my arms and those final words echoing around me.

  8

  Amy found me ten minutes later as I sat in my office gazing sightlessly at a thick pile of papers on my desk. A quill pen in my hands dripped dark green ink that I hadn’t yet begun to use.

  “Cassandra? I—oh!” She gave a quizzical frown as I jerked, ink spraying across my pages, at the sound of her voice.

  “I beg your pardon.” Grimacing, I set down my pen and scooped up a cloth to dab at the spreading green spill. “I was in a haze.”

  “I can see that.” Smiling ruefully, she stepped into the room, patting baby Miranda’s back comfortingly. My little niece was securely propped against her mother’s left shoulder, but she strained to turn her head toward me, tiny, light brown hands fluttering against Amy’s striped morning gown. The glimpse I caught of her dark eyes looked mischievously alert.