Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) by Christopher Nuttall Page B

have been immediately obvious.
    Aloha coughed and turned pale. “Is that a...?”
    “Correct,” Sergeant Miles said. The humor was gone from his voice. “This is a Death Viper. A single drop of poison is almost always fatal. There is only one recorded case of a person surviving—and that was only because he cut off his leg to prevent the venom from spreading through his bloodstream and into his heart. Everyone else died within two minutes.
    “You’ll notice that the beast has no natural camouflage,” he added. “It does not even try to blend in with its surroundings. This is because its scales also carry poison, although a slightly less venomous kind than its fangs. Should you pick up the snake with your bare hands, you will be lucky if you only have to have them amputated. The venom is not called the Rotting Death for nothing. It is often used to inflict a particularly unpleasant and agonizing death.”
    The Death Viper opened its eyes and reared up. It seemed tiny, Emily realized, hardly even as long as her forearm. But it didn’t have to be huge to be dangerous. It opened its mouth, showing sharp fangs; its beady eyes seemed to suggest endless malice. Emily caught herself taking a step backwards, then realized that she wasn’t alone. Almost everyone had reacted badly to the colorful snake.
    “I mention this because a third year student was dumb enough to find this particular snake in the forest yesterday and pick it up,” Sergeant Miles said. “Luck, it would seem, favors the fools. The snake seemed to accept his petting without trying to bite him, leaving the poison on its skin to spread through his hands. That fool of a student is now in the infirmary. One of his hands will probably need to be removed permanently, unless the healers can patch it back together. There may also be long-term damage to the rest of his body.
    “If you see a snake like this, don’t try to pick it up. If you see a creature you don’t recognize, don’t try to do anything with it, no matter how harmless it seems. In fact, give all creatures a wide berth unless you need to hunt—and if you do, be careful what you chose as your target. I expect all of you to review the books on dangerous creatures—Mistress Kirdáne, I am sure, will be happy to go over it with you.”
    He looked down at the snake, which had lowered its head and gone back to sleep. “The idiot who found this snake will be lucky if he manages to return to classes by the end of next year,” he added. “His future career prospects have been shattered, if only because there are spells that depend on the caster making the right hand movements. One stupid mistake almost killed him. I expect all of you to avoid the same fate.”
    Emily shivered as she looked down at the Death Viper. Its lack of natural camouflage made sense, she told herself. Any creature that tried to eat it would end up being poisoned and eaten itself. She wondered, briefly, just how smart the snake actually was, before deciding that it didn’t really matter. The snake would have evolved a hunting pattern that suited it—or it would have died out.
    “These snakes are often used in alchemy,” Cat said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “What’s going to happen to this one?”
    “I believe that the Grandmaster intends to show it to everyone in the school,” Sergeant Miles said. “After that, we will kill it and Professor Thande can turn it into something more useful.”
    Aloha nudged Emily. “Would you want to drink something you knew had been made from a Death Viper?”
    Emily shook her head.
    “It’s really too dangerous to keep around,” Sergeant Miles explained. “If it managed to escape, it could kill other students before we hunted the beast down and destroyed it.”
    Emily winced, inwardly. She knew , intellectually, where most of the ingredients for alchemy came from. As Professor Thande preferred to assign detentions rather than send students to the Warden, she’d spent