Necropolis (Royal Sorceress Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

her as Susan Willingham.
    The other wore a tattered dress that seemed to have survived the brief excursion to the forest better than Susan’s. She was smaller and thinner, with a nasty scar on her cheek that looked to have been made recently, perhaps within the last few hours. Her dark face and plainly braided hair suggested a poorer origin than Susan, although it was clear by the way the two girls clung together that they were definitely friends. Gwen felt a cold sensation in her chest as she worked out the remainder of the story, recalling the damage she’d seen in the schoolroom.
    “You must be Jo,” Gwen said, trying to appear as unthreatening as possible. Inspector Lestrade’s methods for interrogating suspects might work on burly men, but they would probably reduce young children to tears. “My name is Gwen. I’m the Royal Sorceress.”
    Susan’s eyes went wide. “You’re her ?”
    Gwen smiled, then levitated herself a few inches above the ground. “Yes,” she said, simply.
    Susan’s face went very dark. “I’m not going back,” she said. Raw sparks of magic flickered around her face, each one glittering with deadly energy. “I won’t go back.”
    “Probably not,” Gwen said. She sat down on the ground, heedless of the mud staining the seat of her trousers, then motioned for the girls to sit down too. “But I do need to know what happened today.”
    Jo looked alarmed. “It was my fault,” she said, softly. “Everything was my fault.”
    “No it wasn’t,” Susan snapped. She caught Jo’s hand and held it, tightly. “It was the crone’s fault.”
    Gwen smiled. “Madame Constant?”
    “Yeah,” Susan said, rebelliously. She would probably have been told off for slurring her words like that, if she’d been in the schoolroom. “It was all her fault.”
    “Then tell me what happened,” Gwen urged. “Start from the beginning, then go on until the end.”
    The two girls exchanged helpless glances, then Susan started to talk. “We were supposed to learn together,” she said. “Jo was meant to learn too. But every time I made a mistake, the crone punished Jo. Look at her face.”
    Gwen gritted her teeth. A whipping boy ... girl, in this case. She’d read about them in books, but she’d never heard of anyone actually trying in real life. An aristocratic boy would be given a friend from the poorest level of society, someone who could be whipped if the young aristocrat acted badly. In theory, the aristocrat would be overcome with guilt at watching his friend get punished and stop acting badly. Gwen suspected that, based on some of the more entitled aristocratic magicians she had to deal with as Royal Sorceress, the noble youth would as likely watch and laugh as his friend suffered. Not everyone was moved by someone else’s pain, particularly those who had never been taught basic empathy in the first place.
    “Jo could make things move,” Susan said. “I used to love watching her make our dolls dance, but when the crone found out she struck her across the face. And then I ... I ...”
    Her voice trailed away. Susan and Jo might have come from very different places in society, but their shared magic – even if they weren’t completely aware of it – would have brought them together. Gwen felt another sudden stab of envy, wishing she’d had a magical friend, even if she’d only been a serving girl. But she’d never met another magician until Master Thomas strode into her life and recruited her to serve as his successor.
    “Your magic burst out,” Gwen said, softly. “What happened?”
    “There was fire everywhere,” Susan said. “The crone fell backwards, her shoulder was burning; Jo threw her out the window, but the flames kept spreading. And we ran ...”
    “You can’t run any longer,” Gwen said. She stood up, using magic to sweep the mud off her trousers. “But I don’t think you will be staying here either.”
    Susan stepped in front of Jo protectively. “I won’t let