Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) by Christopher Nuttall

physical condition, but there had been too much else to do. Maybe she should join Alassa at Ken , if only to keep herself in shape.
    “This”—he indicated the building—“is Blackhall. It was built by a grandmaster a couple of hundred years ago who turned out to be secretly evil. He intended to drain Whitehall’s power and use it to turn himself into the most powerful magician alive, which shows a certain level of imagination lacking in the average necromancer. Thankfully for Whitehall, he was exposed and defeated before he could work out the kinks in his insane plan. His mansion was passed on to those responsible for training new combat sorcerers at the time.”
    He smiled at their expressions. “They spent months removing all of the booby traps and other nasty surprises the madman set up to welcome uninvited guests,” he added. “Don’t worry. We’re fairly sure that we got them all.”
    Emily shivered. Sorcerers were allowed to ward their homes however they pleased, including using lethal wards to kill anyone who tried to break in. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that most sorcerers spied on other sorcerers, looking for their secrets and testing the limits of the Sorcerer’s Rule. Legally, anything a sorcerer did to a thief was permitted. He could kill or transfigure or enslave and no one would say a word against it. She could understand the impulse to punish someone for violating one’s privacy, but she did wonder if they went too far.
    “Now, we have set up hundreds of traps of our own,” Sergeant Miles continued. “This whole house is a death trap—metaphorically speaking, of course. Over the coming year, you will be entering the house several times and trying to recover various items from inside—all the while avoiding traps and tricks that will disqualify you. When the year is finished, you will have plenty of experience in detecting and neutralizing booby traps. These skills are very useful for combat sorcerers. If nothing else, you will learn how to ward your own homes effectively.”
    He smiled at them. “Some of the traps are ones you can escape, through quick thinking and careful use of magic,” he added. “Others, I must admit, will stun you—or simply evict you from the house. In both cases, we will assume that you failed and were killed. That will be very unfortunate for you.”
    Emily snorted, inwardly.
    “You should know by now that the brute force approach rarely works when confronting a sorcerer holed up in his own house,” the Sergeant concluded. “The necromancers might be able to blast down the wards, but they might accidentally destroy the entire house in the process. Instead, you will be forced to learn how to avoid, trick or dismantle wards—ideally without alerting their master to your presence. Should you be caught...well, I don’t think you need me to spell out the possible consequences.”
    His gaze seemed to rest on Emily for a long moment, then he looked away. Emily shivered, remembering—once again—just how much experience the other students had, experience she lacked. Aloha had worked like a demon to enter Martial Magic in her second year; Emily had had almost no experience at all when she’d joined the class. It was clear that their current exercises should have drawn on lessons in Construction and Subtle Magic, lessons that Emily had only just begun. Just how far behind was she?
    She gazed over at the windows, spying small bushes that had been planted beneath them, crawling up the walls. Was it her imagination or were the plants actually moving ? There were walking plants, she knew, but she had thought that they were only found well away from civilization. But then, they would have made excellent guard dogs. Someone might well fail to notice them until the plants caught hold and pulled .
    I may end up repeating this year , Emily thought, and shook her head. Oddly, it didn’t feel like it would be a failure. More experience would definitely help