Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling Read Online Free PDF Page A

way to replace them quickly. The Grand Sorceress was already making preparations for the coming winter, but few others took the threat seriously. How could they when everyone knew that it was always summer in the Golden City?
    The weather should tell them , Elaine thought, sourly. The young men and women on the streets had taken to wearing longer robes and dresses, rather than the scandalously short outfits they’d been wearing only five months ago. No one outside the Privy Council really knew what had happened during the contest to select the next Grand Sorcerer, but the devastation had loosened the bonds of society. Elaine honestly couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing.
    She hesitated as she turned the corner and approached the Imperial Palace. It was easily the largest – on the outside – building in the Golden City, surrounded by gardens that called attention to the Emperor’s wealth and power. Living space was at a premium in the city hemmed in as it was by mountain ranges. To have a private garden – and a building that didn’t make use of transdimensional magical engineering to be bigger on the inside than the outside – was conspicuous consumption on a grand scale. Almost everyone else, no matter how wealthy and powerful they were, had to make do with tiny patches of land, if that.
    The Palace was surrounded by a handful of young men and women, yelling slogans as they marched to and fro under the watchful eyes of the guards. Levellers, Elaine realised; mundanes who wished a greater share in government. Kane’s attack hadn’t just loosened the social bonds; he’d also weakened the faith in the system that kept it going. Right now, mundanes were asking if they could really trust the Grand Sorceress to keep the rest of the magicians in line. Elaine honestly wasn’t sure what to make of that either.
    It was hard for her to walk forward and up to the gates. She had never liked company, and the pressure of the crowd, even composed of non-magicians, pushed at her composure. By the time she stepped through the wards and started to walk up to the palace, she was trembling, even though she knew that there was no reason to fear. She might have been a weak magician, but she had been able to protect herself even before she’d become a Bookworm and started to unlock some of the true secrets of magic.
    She missed Daria dreadfully, she realised, as she stepped through the doors and into the palace. Her friend had always boosted her confidence, telling her to keep chugging on despite her fears and near-panics. And now Daria was off on a mission that even Elaine knew little about, leaving Elaine all alone. She knew she could talk to Dread – the Inquisitor always had time for her, despite the pressures of his job – but there were few other friends in her life. Most of the people who had introduced themselves to her after she’d been raised to the Privy Council had clearly wanted to use her, rather than know her.
    The Imperial Palace felt ... strange . It was a magical building, yet the magic was blurred with the mundane to a degree that would have puzzled her, if she hadn’t known more about its history than anyone else. There had been plenty of non-magicians in the long-gone Imperial Line; hell, the last Emperor hadn’t been a magician, which explained what had happened to him during the Necromantic Wars. Unlike the Great Library or any of the Aristocratic Houses, it wasn’t designed to bond with just one person, but with an entire family line. And that family line was gone.
    There were always rumours of heirs, Elaine knew. But none of them had ever proven real.
    No guards blocked her path as she made her way down the corridor and into the Reception Room. Lady Light Spinner, Grand Sorceress and unquestioned ruler of the Empire, was her own best protection. Elaine knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Light Spinner could have beaten the old Elaine without raising a sweat ... and maybe even the new