I poured a circle of salt around myself on the floor of my dorm room to start a Working. Sylas was off doing something for that Lion Hall prick, and I should've had a few hours to myself. A bit of time to experiment. I laid my hand on the book and felt the mana held inside. A rushing river, a raging ocean. I took a hesitant sip and my core and channels filled to near bursting.
Working with a conduit especially prepared for someone like me, an instrument perfectly tuned to the energies of death, was oddly exhilarating. It felt like I was drinking clean cold spring water, like I had lightning dancing through my veins.
A simple Working, I thought. Something basic I can experiment with.
I already had a spell picked out, something Sylas had helped me translate the pieces of a few days prior. I still didn't think he realized exactly what sort of spells he helped me decipher. I'd been careful to show him passages that didn't contain long-winded explanations on how to get corpses to dig themselves out from their graves and start waltzing in the city streets.
That was literally a passage I found. Thankfully Sylas hadn't seen that one, I'd taken to translating most of the journal myself with a French to English dictionary I'd swiped from Prof. Dumont''s classroom. I was trying to only ask Sylas for help when I couldn't figure out something myself, hopefully that would lower the chances of him stumbling across something that would make it abundantly clear that this was a book of necromantic lore and not just some old Witch's rambling life story.
If I was being honest, I had been a bit dubious when Lord Woodman's letter had described the book as being La Voisin's diary, starting when I had first touched the tome and felt the inherent pull of a necromantic conduit. Indeed, while the book contained some passages that felt rather journalistic, including a rather long account of the author's sexual encounters with upward of six different men written in what seemed to be an especially messy, almost drunken, scrawl. Much of what the book actually had written in its pages were a variety of experiments, with poisons and necromantic rites. Most of which revolved around dancing around a fire in your underwear, drinking the blood of infants, and/or offering prayers to pagan gods. It was all rather dramatic and more than a bit morbid.
I was beginning to think La Voisin was more of an utter loon than a necromancer with any true modicum of talent.
Yet, her book was all I had to work with. So that was that.
The spell in question I was attempting to perform was a simple, "stay away" working that would, hypothetically, encourage all the delightful spirits of Angitia to avoid my dorm room and stop, say, waking me up in the middle of the night with portents of death and gloom.
The thought of having a good night's sleep was a powerful and enthusiastic piece of encouragement that made me rather eager to try it.
I took out a chicken bone pilfered from the cafeteria, specifically from Mason's dinner the previous night, and used it as a conduit, siphoning mana through it until it crumbled to dust. I didn't want to use the book anymore than I had to. I was afraid if I used it too much for gathering mana, then it would turn to dust on me, and I had the vague impression Lord Woodman would be less than enthused by a development like that.
I began the Working, focusing on the chicken bone and salt. The "props" I used to put on my little production, to tell this Narrative.
Stay away.
Mana leached from me and into my props. Back into the chicken bone I had just used to draw the mana in, circling through the salt on the ground.
Stay away. I require not your aid.
The Working snapped into focus, then melded over me like I was wearing an invisible coat over my clothes.
I tucked the chicken bone into my pocket and swept the salt up in my hands before tossing it in the dustbin under my desk. Sylas probably didn't need to know I'd been testing spells out in the dorms.
If it worked though, then as long as I kept the chicken bone on my person, then no ghost or spirit would bother me with any of their usual rigamarole. It was a wonderful development, in my humble opinion.
By the time I finished tidying things up, a look at the clock on Sylas's desk informed me I was already late to that night's meeting with the Lion Hallers.
***
My impression of Cecil Baldwin and Lydia had not improved dramatically in the two weeks since I began pre-rushing Lion Hall. Cecil wore an air of condescension the same way most cows I knew seemed to almost smell like shit. Meanwhile, Lydia never stopped eyeing people in a manner I'd often attributed to a hungry dog eyeing a slice of meat.
Much of the pre-rushing Lion Hall had done so far included being expected to hang around the building for a few hours each night, eat most meals with them to fetch things, and generally act like a servant.
I imagined that part of the entire tradition may have been born from an attempt to simulate how nulls live, perhaps to poke at the ego of any particularly snobby freshmen, but I couldn't see what the point of it would be. It almost went against the established ethos of wizarding society, that they could rule over nulls and make them do shit jobs because they were better than us. Bred and cultivated to be superior in both power and intellect to the lowly worms we nulls were. I couldn't see what the point would be of forcing young wizards into play-acting the roles of nulls. Then again, I was probably just overthinking the entire thing.
The only thing about Lion Hall that truly caught me off guard, though, was that the building employed null servants.
I hadn't noticed them at first.
The nulls employed at Lion Hall made a point of moving around the shadows of the building, appearing and disappearing through hidden doors as they busied themselves dusting rooms or refilling drinks for lounging Lion Hallers. The nulls did their absolute best to be silent and unnoticed, like all the small tasks they carried out just happened by magic. Pun intended.
The first time I actually saw a null in Lion Hall was when I'd looked up to notice one refilling the glass of water I'd been sipping at while listening to Cecil deliver one of his many long-winded stories about the one of Lion Hall's victories in the different competitions the Halls competed in on campus.
I'd been sitting next to Sylas, who'd adopted a look of feigned interest as Cecil went on and on, discussing how Lion Hall had beaten out Deer Hall to compete at the previous year's regional Alchemical Tournament. I had looked away briefly only to find a boy dressed entirely in greys refilling my cup from a pitcher.
The null had blinked at me with wide panicked eyes, before quickly looking at the ground and scurrying away to continue his work. He had looked about my brother Alfie's age, only ten or so.
It occurred to me then that I hadn't thought about Alfie in what felt like a very long time. I hadn't seen any of my family in a very long time. The thought left a thick bitter taste on my tongue.
I'd paid more attention after that, and had noticed other people, men, women, and children dressed in grey uniforms moving through Lion Hall to serve the needs of the mages within.
I had thought Angitia had made a policy to not employ nulls on campus, something about encouraging students to learn how to fend for themselves or something of that nature. Another way to encourage growth among the students, and to help mark individuals capable of adaptation and growth in the face of adversity. Though admittedly it was less intense than having magical murder dogs roaming the mausoleum or practicals in the labyrinth.
I'd asked Sylas about it as we'd walked back to the dorms that night.
"Oh," he'd said, blinking in mild surprise. "I guess I hadn't really noticed them myself. I think some of the Halls may keep nulls? But only if the members are in good academic standing with the school or something like that?"
He hadn't noticed them? They were people like him or me.
But… I hadn't seen them at first either, had I? They'd almost just been part of the background, shadows among all the glory and opulence that was Lion Hall.
I'd not been able to sleep much that night. I'd just laid in bed, listening to Sylas's soft snores that had recently become much more tolerable, and I'd been unable to shut my eyes.
Was I becoming like Sylas or Lord Woodman?
Did I just not see nulls as people anymore?
That couldn't be true. I was a null after all.
I traced the outline of my Witch's Mark under the layers of wax and makeup I kept over it, even in bed. I was still a null, wasn't I? I didn't want to be a mage. A noble.
I tried to think about the farm I'd grown up on. The sounds of my brothers next to me as we slept. The taste of Mum's lamb stew. The smell of that turnip wine Da made every year. But the memories were fuzzing around the edges. My brother Alfie was probably old enough to work in the fields by himself, and my brother Matt might not live at home anymore. The curate would have looked for a wife Matt could marry, a girl with wide hips and a strong back to help further define whatever sort of breed standard the Wizards of Yorkshire had been trying to produce from their null populace for the last hundred years.
It was strange to think about. By all rights, I should have been married a year ago myself. It's what would have happened if I hadn't awoken as an Irregular. Never mind the fact that I'd never felt much interest in girls. I should be married and working a stretch of farmland. Maybe even with a babe already, or one on the way. Well, that was, of course, assuming I'd pass whatever standards the Wizards of Yorkshire wished to pass into the next generation of nulls. Otherwise they would have just shipped me off to another province to add to their null bloodlines, left an eternal bachelor, or simply gelded if anyone had ever questioned my sexual preferences, something I wasn't sure if wizardly nobles ever had to worry much about.
That world. My parent's cottage and my family. It was all still there, but I hadn't lived in it for over two years. Two years of silken sheets and fine meals that left me feeling full and baths every day that let me sleep clean and comfortable every night.
What if I was becoming one of them? A spoiled aristocrat, a mage who didn't care about all the little people who worked themselves to the bone to keep him happy and living in decadence?
I couldn't be.
I wasn't.
I told myself repeatedly, but I still barely got a wink of sleep that night. I'd woken up the next morning with a throbbing headache and feeling like a horse had trampled me in the night.
***
Since that delightful night of guilt and self-doubt, I'd made a point to notice every null who worked at Lion Hall. I smiled at the occasional maid moving through to dust furniture. I said hello to the manservant who brought out drinks and snacks for us all to enjoy while freshmen took turns sucking up to Cecil. And I even gave the occasional friendly wave to the children who tended the fires blazing in Lion Hall's hearth.
And every single null I tried to be friendly toward turned white as a sheet and subsequently began avoiding me like some sort of horrific plague.
I really didn't know what else I expected to happen. It was what I would have done in their positions. As I'd said before, most nulls learned from a rather tender age that attracting the attention of mages was a rather poor idea. From the cradle we're told cautionary tales of people who got too close to magical folk and suffered terribly for it, and sooner or later the same sort of thing happened to people we knew personally.
I was actually one of those stories to the people I knew growing up, including my immediate family. As far as everybody was concerned, I offended the current mage in charge of us all, and he reduced me to a pile of smoldering ashes in return.
To help sell the ruse, I'd been forced to live in the cellars of another one of Lord Woodman's properties as he drilled everything he thought I'd needed to know to be his agent at Angitia. By the time I could finally return to the manor on the estate I'd grown up on and see my family again it'd been about a year in change and everything from the way I dressed, to how I spoke, to how clean my fingernails were made me unrecognizable to most the people I'd grown up around.
Well, that and Lord Woodman had made me carry around a talisman that cast an aura of mild obfuscation around me. My own mother had barely recognized me unless I continuously reminded her who I was.
"Mum, it's me," I told her. "It's Theo."
Her eyes, a reflection of my own, would go in and out of focus as she looked at me.
"Theo?" She'd say in confusion and she'd reach out to touch my face, like she was trying to find something recognizable there. Her fingers were callused from decades of living on a farm and gnarled from the hemming she'd do at night for other nulls on the estate in exchange for odds and ends like the empty jam jars we'd use to pickle vegetables for the winter.
There'd be a moment where she'd recognize me, and my mum would smile, then the full force of Lord Woodman's Working would slam down on her and she'd pull her hand away like I had plunged it into a pot of boiling water.
"My Lord Mage," my mother would say to me, casting her eyes to the ground. "Please forgive me. You—I mistook you for someone else."
It was the same with the rest of my family. Moments of recognition, followed quickly by terror and supplication. I'd stopped asking Lord Woodman to let me visit the estate I'd grown up on after only a few visits.