Free Bookworm by Christopher Nuttall

city’s founders to warp space around the Parade of the Endless, hollowing out the interior to allow it to become bigger on the inside than on the outside. In some ways, it was rather like the mirrored alternate dimension that made up so much of the Great Library. Mirror magic was complicated and very unstable, at least under normal circumstances. The sheer level of talent that had gone into producing the Great Library stunned her. Even knowing how it had been done, she doubted that any of the magicians of her era could have duplicated the feat...
    “But I’m telling you, this is my wife,” a man was saying. Elaine felt a shiver as she recognised the man he was trying to speak to as Inquisitor Dread. Who governed the Inquisitors when their only master was dead and his successor not yet selected? The Inquisitor looked tired, even behind the glamour hiding his face. “One of those bastards did this to her!”
    He was holding onto a pig’s neck, despite its struggles. “You have to do something,” he insisted. “She can’t remain like this forever!”
    The press of the crowd pushed Elaine and Daria away before she could hear Dread’s response. With so many sorcerers around, it was unlikely that the Inquisitor would be able to catch up with the culprit before he managed to escape into the crowd. The gods alone knew what the poor woman had done, if anything. Perhaps she’d been rude to the magician, or perhaps she’d refused a crude attempt at getting her into bed, or perhaps she’d just been a convenient victim. Dread could probably break the spell once the man had stopped begging for assistance and let the Inquisitor do his job.
    Daria grabbed her arm as the magic caught at them, allowing the crowd to see the small party gathered at the bottom of the arena. “Look,” she hissed. “See anyone you recognise?”
    Elaine sucked in her breath. Millicent was standing with some of the senior wizards, right next to a woman wearing a black garment that covered everything but her eyes. The woman was holding Millicent’s arm tightly, as if she didn’t quite trust the young sorceress to behave herself. Beside her, there were several wizards she recognised from the Peerless School, tutors in everything from potions to advanced spell-binding. She’d never liked the spell-binding teacher, she recalled, not least because of his thoroughly unpleasant branch of magic. He’d always given her the impression that he would have preferred to have everyone wearing one of his collars, with him in firm command of them all. The potions master beside him, by contrast, was fat and always friendly, even to a girl with strictly limited talents for producing potions to order. Elaine had some good memories of his patient tutoring and how he’d helped her get a passing grade.
    “That’s Millicent,” she said, sourly. At least something had managed to distract her nemesis from her studies. “Who’s the woman who’s hiding her face?”
    “Lady Light Spinner,” Hanson supplied. Elaine was surprised he’d lowered himself to answer her question. Perhaps he was just trying to impress Daria. “She is the Court Wizard to the Empress of the South.”
    Elaine remembered what Millicent had said and shivered. If Millicent had been telling the truth, Lady Light Spinner intended to try to become the next Grand Sorcerer. A Court Wizard in such an important post would be incredibly powerful – and whatever else could be said about Millicent, she didn’t lack talent or power. If her relative became Grand Sorcerer – Grand Sorceress – Millicent would be even more unbearable.
    “And maybe she was seduced by the Empress of the South,” Daria added, with a wink. “You think that she might be a man under that veil?”
    Elaine started to giggle, only to force it down as silence rolled out from the centre of the arena. The Caretaker, the current head of the Regency Council in the absence of a Grand Sorcerer, stepped forward. He was an old man, a