Lessons in Etiquette (Schooled in Magic series) (5 page)

“They expect you to wear that in the coach?” She asked, surprised. It looked as though one person would have problems putting it on without help. “Wouldn’t it get crumpled?”

“My father wishes me to make a proper appearance,” Alassa said. She peered at herself in the mirror, twisting and turning until she was satisfied. “It seems that there won’t be anywhere to change until we actually get to the palaces and castles we’re going to be staying at along the way.”

Emily resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. It would have been simple for Alassa to go home using a portal, or a teleport spell. Instead, her parents insisted that she ride home in a coach, allowing her to visit a number of castles belonging to other royal families before she was formally confirmed as heir to the throne. Alassa had tried to explain why this was important, but she hadn’t been sure of the details and Emily had ended up more confused than ever.

“This isn’t the only dress either,” Alassa added. “My mother has sent me fifteen dresses, one for each day. And I have to put them all on without help. Mother always said that I should never become dependent upon the servants to get dressed.”

“Sounds like good advice,” Emily said. “Anything someone else does for you is something you can’t do for yourself.”

Some of the more absurd royal courts on Earth had actually had protocols for who was to help the royal family dress in the morning. Some of the stories had been so absurd that she’d been left shaking her head in disbelief. At least Alassa didn’t seem to have to parade around naked to convince potential in-laws that she was healthy
and
fertile. It had struck Emily as little more than an excuse for the in-laws to be perverted, although it
did
make a certain kind of sense. Several royal families had tried to conceal their ugly daughters until the marriage had taken place.

“So I have been told,” Alassa said. She muttered a charm and the dress suddenly loosened and started to fall off her body. “This dress isn’t even the worst of them.”

She scowled. “And I won’t even have my servants with me,” she added. “I am to be completely dependent upon their hospitality. The Duchess of Iron thinks that it will be
good
for me. Personally, I think that
Mother
issued the orders and then blamed the duchess.”

Emily watched as Alassa stepped out of the dress, then carefully placed it back in her traveling chest. The princess’s underwear was almost non-existent, surprisingly. But then, every student at Whitehall was expected to wear the same all-concealing robes. Emily couldn’t help noticing that Alassa had a dagger strapped to her right thigh, although she couldn’t imagine how her friend was meant to draw it without tearing her dress. There didn’t seem to be any slit she could use to reach it.

“There’s a spell that turns the lower half of the dress to dust,” Alassa explained, when Emily asked. “It shouldn’t be used except in case of absolute need, when modesty is no longer a pressing concern. The dagger itself is rather special.”

Charmed
, Emily guessed. It would be much easier to set a spell to pop the dagger into Alassa’s hand. But if the blade was charmed, the spell would be unreliable.

Alassa turned back to face Emily, holding up a long cream-colored garment. “What do you think of this?”

Emily shook her head slowly. “I think you won’t be able to get into it without help,” she said, finally. “How are you going to tie up the back?”

“Bet you I can,” Alassa said. She lifted the garment over her head, then allowed it to fall down. A moment later, her head emerged from the top, while her hands came out of the sleeves. She muttered a handful of charms and then caught her breath as the inbuilt corset squeezed tightly. Clearly, the royal family had yet to embrace the bras Emily had introduced several months ago. Or maybe they were just impractical. “How do I look?”

“Dancing is going to be difficult,” Emily said. The dress fanned out so far that any partner would be unable to do more than hold hands with Alassa. It was also surprisingly loose around the chest, concealing her breasts, while tightening around her abdomen. Emily couldn’t help thinking of an exaggerated hourglass. “What is the dress actually for?”

“It preserves one’s dignity,” Alassa said, stiffly. It couldn’t be easy to breathe while wearing that corset. “I will be meeting potential husbands on the journey home and a dress like this helps ensure a lack of scandal.”

“Oh,” Emily said. It shouldn’t have surprised her, not after what Void had said, but it still left her feeling uncomfortable. “Because they can’t reach anything more delicate than your hands?”

“That’s the idea,” Alassa said. She lifted up the hem and showed Emily the additional layers of cloth below. “Even the most ardent lover would have difficulty gaining access to my hidden jewel.”

“Oh,” Emily said. She shook her head. “Do you think I should start wearing one?”

Alassa threw her a sharp glance. “Why do you think you might need one?”

Emily hadn’t meant to tell her about Jade, but somehow the whole story came tumbling out of her lips. She needed to talk to
someone
and Void, whatever his other attributes, couldn’t really offer proper advice.

Alassa smirked. “I was wondering when he’d have the courage to approach you,” she said. “It isn’t as if dealing with your guardian would be
easy
.”

“You
knew
?” Emily demanded. “You
knew
he liked me?”

“Of course,” Alassa said. “Was it not obvious?”

“I missed it,” Emily admitted. “Was I the only person to miss it?”

Alassa looked oddly apologetic. “You really are from someplace different,” she said, as if she were reminding herself of that fact. “I should have pointed it out to you.”

She muttered a charm and the dress jumped up, allowing her to pull it off her body and return it to the chest. “He always spent time with you,” she reminded Emily. “When
I
was there, he still paid attention to you. How did you miss it?”

“By being an idiot,” Emily sighed. But then, it wasn’t as if Jade could have taken her out to dinner, or to a movie. “But what do I do about it?”

Alassa considered it as she produced the third dress. “Well, Jade’s family isn’t very prominent, so you wouldn’t gain much advantage from being allied with them,” she said. “On the other hand, his relations wouldn’t have a strong motive to betray you later on. And they are tied to the Allied Lands as a whole, rather than to a specific kingdom. It could be quite advantageous to you to remain independent of the various monarchs.”

“Oh,” Emily said.

“Jade himself is a handsome young man, without blemishes or defects of character,” Alassa continued. “He’s a capable magician, with excellent prospects; he could become a combat sorcerer, or stay at Whitehall as a tutor. Maybe not particularly wealthy, but that isn’t really a problem for you, is it?”

Emily nodded. Thanks to her innovations, she was actually reasonably wealthy by the standards of the Allied Lands. She wasn’t anything like as rich as one of the royal families, or the long-established trading houses, but she was getting there. And besides, it wasn’t as if she
needed
more money than she already had.

“So you could do worse,” Alassa concluded. “But then, you could also do better. There are quite a few prominent families with strong magical bloodlines. I’d be expecting them to make Imaiqah an offer soon–she’s
newblood
, with magic they’d like to add to their own. You would gain access to a whole strata of connections and influence in exchange for marrying one of their sons and bearing his children…”

She looked up, meeting Emily’s eyes. “And then there’s the whole Child of Destiny aspect,” she added. “You have proved yourself. Lots of families would want you.”

Emily stared at her. The whole process struck her as rather cold-blooded. She knew, intellectually, that marriage had meant different things throughout the years, but she had never realized that such considerations might affect
her
marriage. But then, she’d never really considered getting married at all. It certainly hadn’t worked out for her mother.

She shook her head, dismissing the memories. “How did you become so good at evaluating marriage prospects?”

“My mother insisted that I should be able to understand the advantages and disadvantages of any proposed union,” Alassa said. “Do you know how many people have tried to get my parents to promise me to them since I was a child?”

She shrugged. “My father may offer to arrange a match for you. For a young girl without a real family, that would be a very tempting prospect.”

“And bind me to Zangaria,” Emily said. Alassa’s parents
had
told her to stay close to the Child of Destiny. “Do you think I should accept Jade’s proposal?”

“I’d suggest waiting to see what other offers you received,” Alassa said. She scowled down at the dress, then put it back in the chest without trying it on. “Of course, Jade may believe that he is doing you a favor. If you happened to be married, or engaged, people couldn’t try to court you–at least, not so blatantly.”

“And now I’m confused,” Emily admitted. “Why can’t these things be
simple
?”

Alassa took the question seriously. “Because marriage is more than just the union of husband and wife,” she said. “It is also the union of two families, of combining their resources and building something greater. When a kingdom is concerned, marriage may decide the fates of thousands upon thousands of people. Such things should never be entered into lightly.”

She shrugged. “Consider yourself lucky,” she added. “The kingdoms we will be visiting each have a prince who may wind up marrying me. And I have to dance with them all, showing respect to all, but favor to none.
That
won’t be easy.”

Her lips twisted into a mischievous smile. “And by the way, my mother sent some dresses for you. Why don’t we try them on right now?”

Emily groaned.

T
HE GRAND HALL OF WHITEHALL, ILLUMINATED
by globes of light hovering in the air, was large enough to accommodate a small army. Emily sucked in her breath sharply as she stepped through the main doors and walked down the stairs into the throng, admiring the hundreds of portraits the servants had hung on the walls. Once, they had been covered with delicate carvings that had represented the many magical disciplines, but Shadye’s horde of monsters had ripped the room apart, searching for hidden students. Emily privately felt that the portraits offered more than the carvings, an opinion she kept to herself.

“You look nice,” Alassa muttered in her ear. “You don’t need to worry at all.”

Emily winced. She’d never really worn dresses on Earth, so she’d had problems learning to move in the robes worn by all students. The dress Alassa’s mother had sent for her, however, was something different. It was tight around the bust and thighs, showing off the shape of her body without actually revealing any bare flesh below her neck. Moving in it was difficult and she couldn’t help feeling that it was going to split open the moment she sat down, no matter how many protective charms were woven into the material. On the other hand, it was one of the more modest dresses in the hall.

The leaving dance was one of the few occasions where students were allowed to wear something apart from robes and they’d taken full advantage of it. Some of the male students wore courtly outfits–one of them had come dressed up in a robe that changed color every ten seconds–while their female counterparts wore everything from dresses to tight trousers that left almost nothing to the imagination. Emily caught sight of one girl who was wearing nothing more than a wire bikini and thong before looking away, embarrassed. Few of the guys seemed to have any compunction about staring.

“She’s going to be a sorceress,” Alassa pointed out. “What does she care if they stare at her?”

“They’re going to be sorcerers,” Emily countered.

“They still wouldn’t want to make an enemy of her,” Alassa said. “A sorceress is not someone to alienate.”

Emily nodded and looked away, towards one of the portraits. It showed a tall man in dark robes, wearing a hood that cast a shadow over his appearance. The only thing she could make out for sure was that he had a very strong chin, almost completely devoid of stubble. Looking at the tiny nameplate underneath, she carefully sounded out the name; JACKCLAW THE STRONG. At least she was learning to speak and read the local language, although her accent was still being mocked by some of her fellow students. Translation spells were so much easier, but they tended to be somewhat unreliable.

“I see boys coming this way,” Alassa muttered. She’d worn a long green dress, almost identical to Emily’s apart from the gold lace that marked her out as a lady of quality. “Do you want to dance with them? It will be good practice.”

“So you said,” Emily said. She’d been warned that there would be a formal ball every night during the journey to Zangaria, where Alassa would be expected to dance with her would-be suitors, but she wasn’t very good at dancing, if only because she hadn’t danced at all until she’d come to Whitehall. “Do I have to?”