The Spellbinder (Tom & Laura Series) (11 page)

Chapter 13
   
Looking

Grades of Magical Power

Magic skills are broken down by the Empire into five grades. The skills users have are complex and the guide below gives only a flavor of the capabilities involved. The rare skills of Telepathy and
Reading
are not categorized into grades.

Grade 1

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Talents are mostly useless at this level but are still detectable and may sometimes prove useful.

Class A
           
A level roughly ten times as powerful as Grade 1.

          
- from A Short History of Military Magics by Sir Anthony Barrett

They discussed the school in the common room after dinner. Tompkins had disappeared, but
Cam
seemed determined to stay with them until bedtime.

According to the ever loquacious
Cam
, there were 123 pupils at Hobsgate and every one of them had some magical ability. However, with the exception of Tom and Laura, nobody had a lot of it. The Minister of War had ruled that only those with magical skills of Grade 4 or below could be used on such peripheral things as Intelligence.

“It used to be Grade 3 in the old days,”
Cam
told them cheerfully. “But as the Empire expands the number of talented people remains roughly constant and Grade 3’s are needed with the army and navy. Even then, any Grade 4’s in the Spellbinder and Healer categories are usually reserved for the forces or for teaching.”

“You’re all Farseers, Precogs and Empaths?” Tom asked.

Cam
nodded, “Pretty much.”

“And you are a…?” Laura asked.

Cam
frowned. “It’s not considered polite to ask. In your case it was up on the notice board so we all know what you are. At Hobsgate a person is judged by all their skills, not just the magical ones.”

Tom changed the subject as Laura looked annoyed.

“When you think about it, Empaths, Farseers and Precogs make perfect spies as all those skills can be really useful in their jobs, even at a low level.”

Cam
grinned. “They do. I’m an Empath and right now I am sensing that Laura is angry with me for not telling her. That sort of thing is really useful.”

Laura laughed and punched
Cam
lightly on the shoulder. The tension that had grown between them vanished.

When they got back to their bedrooms Tom and Laura were exhausted. Tom was feeling the bruises from the kicking he had sustained. He knew he was lucky to be alive and walking, but he didn’t feel the slightest bit lucky. He took a couple of drops of liquid opium from the bottle the doctor gave him and fell asleep within minutes.

Next morning, Laura knocked on Tom’s door before breakfast and let herself in. Tom was still in bed and as he slept naked he pulled the covers up to his neck to cover himself.

“Is there an emergency?” he asked, wondering if he’d have to run outside as he was or did he have time to dress.

“No, I just needed to talk to you alone before we join the others for breakfast.”

Tom relaxed and then was on his guard again as Laura sat on the bed, her body dangerously close to his.

“Tom, we have to start acting as if this is a prison and everyone is a potential enemy.”

“That sounds a little drastic?”

“We have been attacked twice in two days and Snood hasn’t even got here yet. What we need to do is explore, find escape routes. I plan to leave spare parchment and pens in hidden places, maybe food and other supplies as well. So that, if we need to, we can run without having to come back to our rooms. That’s the first place our enemies will look for us.”

Tom mulled this over. He regarded boarding schools as his home as he had spent a lot of his life in them and was already beginning to settle in here, but Laura was right. They could trust no one and they knew they were targets. It seemed best to go along with her scheme.

“All right. When do we start?”

“Today at noon, we don’t have any lessons this afternoon and we should find the escape routes out of the castle and out of the area.”

Cam
and Tompkins were waiting for them outside the mess door. Cam was her quite her usual self, there was a big fake bruise on her forehead and she had marked her hands at the wrists so it looked as though her hands had been cut off and stitched back together again.

Cam
’s mouth formed an O of surprise as she looked carefully at Tom

“The bruise on your face where you were kicked has gone. That amazing, you must be an incredibly fast healer. Unless…” She stared accusingly at Laura, “You used a bind.”

Laura laughed dismissively, because
Cam
had stumbled onto something very near the truth. “Binds can’t heal and I’m certainly not a Healer.”
 
Cam
continued to stare at her with narrowed eyes and Laura remembered the girl was an Empath. She’d have to be careful about how she felt when talking to her.

“I must have transferred it to you,
Cam
. That’s a very impressive bruise. Do you want me to heal it?”

Cam
grinned. “You know it’s a fake. I can’t let my audience down, you know.”

Tomkins scowled and stamped away from them to join the queue in the mess.

“Whatever’s a matter with him?” Laura asked.

Cam
shrugged. “He received some bad news from home. At least I assume it was bad news. He hasn’t told me what was in the letter he got this morning.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t stolen it to find out,” Tom said, only half-joking.

“Watch and learn,”
Cam
said, ignoring Tom’s insult.
 
She stepped briskly towards the door

Cam
hit her head against the side of the door so realistically that Laura wondered if there might now be a real bruise below the greasepaint one.

Staggering forward with the alarming fake bruise on the head, she accosted the girl who had screamed after her throat-cutting trick, but she just laughed when she saw her.

Despite the lack of a round of applause from the breakfast crowd,
Cam
appeared undaunted and bowed to them anyway. Her dignity was slightly damaged by the bread roll that soared out of the void and hit her on the nose, but she took another bow anyway before rejoining them.
 
She sighed, looking a little upset.

“Sometimes a disguise just doesn’t work.”

By the time they got their breakfasts
Cam
was back to her usual self.

 
“Where shall we go this afternoon? You puppies are new and know nothing yet. We can go to the unscalable cliffs and look down on Smugglers Cove if you want?”

She had not taken any breakfast and stole a piece of toast that Tom had just buttered and laced with marmalade. Her left hand appropriated a piece of bacon from Laura’s plate and just missed being skewed by a fork as Laura valiantly attempted to stop her.

“If the cliffs are unscalable, what’s the point of smugglers going there?” asked a puzzled Tom. “Surely they need to get their goods onto land.”

Cam
sniffed dismissively. “A trifling detail, child. There are local legends, and if you have met our housekeeper and staff you will have realized they are all one bread roll short of a breakfast. Ah bread roll.”
Cam
stole Laura’s roll and was off. With the roll in her mouth she ran out of the room.

“She has remarkable consistency,” Tom said as she disappeared from sight.

“So I have noticed,” Laura agreed.

Laura noticed that they were being watched by a youth in their class with blonde hair and blue eyes. She thought his name was Damon. He was looking in their direction with contempt, but whether it was aimed at Tom or her it was impossible to tell. He saw her looking at him and went back to eating his breakfast.

Laura had been making a list of all the other pupils and made a note against his. The list read as follows: