We dug two graves and buried our brothers near the shrine — there was no point in trying to bury the remains of the professor — then cleaned up the mess before heading back to the tents to collect our supplies. The shrine’s magic had been tainted beyond all hope of recovery. The grass would never grow again…
“They didn’t sense anything in the castle,” Void said, quietly. “They’d have sent a small army if they’d known the truth.”
I scowled at him. “What now?”
“We leave,” Void said. “And go our separate ways.”
I’d thought, at first, that the demon had left him unscarred. It wasn’t until he spoke so plainly that I knew the demon had left a mark on him too. Our connection, the link the four of us had shared, was as dead as our brothers. And that meant… I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“There’s no point in going back to the family,” Void added, as he hefted his pack. “I’ll see you around, I’m sure.”
He turned and walked away.
I’d like to say I never saw him again, but we both know I’d be lying.
Epilogue
There’s very little more to tell.
I never went back to House Barca. There didn’t seem any point. I contented myself with writing Uncle Mago a short note, outlining our cover story and ending with a report of the deaths of Hamilcar and Himilco. There was no response. I assume the family was glad to see our little unit broken up, once and for all. Uncle Mago himself died a few years later under circumstances that made me wonder, in the privacy of my own mind, if Void had something to do with it. I never tried to find out. In truth, I was afraid of what I might uncover.
And, as you know, my eyes never healed.
Grandmaster Boscha didn’t seem to realise what we’d really been doing. Professor Bodoh hadn’t left any note, as far as I could tell, or even told anyone else where he’d being going on the night he died. The grandmaster wound up offering me a teaching role and I accepted, at least in part because I thought I could convince others not to make the same mistakes as myself and my brothers. I wound up launching a coup after the grandmaster finally went too far, kicking him out of the school he’d tried to turn into his private fiefdom and taking the position myself. I was surprised the White Council confirmed me in the post, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. If they’d known what we’d tried to do, they would have arrested or executed me years ago.
No one ever did figure out the truth, as far as I know. If they did, they kept it to themselves. Our notes were destroyed, in the aftermath, and no one followed in our footsteps. I don’t know anyone who could have even hoped to try — certainly, there are no reports of other magical twins being born, let alone triplets or quadruplets. House Barca had a certain interest in suppressing all reports of my father’s experiments and, to a certain extent, they succeeded. Very few people ever knew I was from their bloodline and the ones who did thought I was just a bastard, rather than one of four unique quadruplets.
Void himself? He walked into the shadows, working for the White Council. We stayed in touch, but our relationship was never the same. I suspected, deep inside, that the demon had marked him in ways beyond the obvious. His behaviour grew more and more erratic at times even as his power and skill reached levels few could hope to match. And when he found you… I was honestly surprised he allowed you to go to Whitehall. Perhaps he was wise enough to understand his limitations.
Or perhaps he had something else in mind. You may know by now.
I don’t know when you’ll get this message, Emily, and I don’t know what you’ll make of it. Will you be disappointed in me — in us — for doing something so risky it could have destroyed everything? Or will you understand how our anger and resentment led us to doing something incredibly dangerous and very nearly fatal? I wish I could speak to you openly, to tell you the story and answer your questions, but the Tontine won’t allow it. And even I cannot break it openly.
If you read this letter, it will certainly be after my death. There will be no one left to protect you. Not from him. Be careful.
Hasdrubal, Late of House Barca.
Grandmaster of Whitehall.
Afterthoughts
Emily is the undoubted star of the Schooled in Magic series, but I always intended to do a handful of spin-off stories and novellas that elaborated on earlier backstories or showed what other characters were doing when Emily wasn’t there. It isn’t easy to write such stories as they must work towards a known outcome, rather than a natural stopping place, and they must show the featured character as a younger person who can and will grow into the person we know and love. It also risks destroying what sympathy the reader had for the character, either through depicting them as idiots or showing them as older people in younger bodies (in much the same way Jean-Luc Picard, sent back to his younger days in Tapestry, comes out as a terrible prig rather than a teenager.
It was easier to write this story, in a sense, because there was such a gulf between the past Hasdrubal and Void and their future selves. There is no doubting they made a terrible mistake, in hopes of converting a demon into their personal source of power, and they drew different lessons from the experience. Hasdrubal chose to concentrate on teaching the next generation, while Void moved to work for the White Council and then, later on, for himself.
I do intend to write one more story set in this period, the story of how Hasdrubal defeated Grandmaster Boscha and took control of Whitehall (as you can tell, the school changed a lot between this story and Emily’s arrival), but that story will come later (probably in one of the Fantastic Schools collections).
There are two other points that should probably be mentioned. I left it vague if Emily ever found the letter — she certainly didn’t find it before the events of The Right Side of History — and I left Void’s true name unmentioned. But if you know anything about the historical Barcas of Cartage, you can probably figure it out.