A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

  “Perhaps you should both stop being kind to each other and try instead to apologize,” Thornton said.

  “The difficulty with that,” he answered, “is that neither of us is sorry. I did what I believed to be right, that night; I know Pitt well enough to trust that he did the same.”

  “Well,” Thornton said, “I don’t know Pitt as well as you do. But I know both of you well enough to know that you’re both sorry about something.”

  Wilberforce didn’t reply. He didn’t know what they were sorry about. And he had very little idea of the right way to vote today.

  It had been three years since the battle between England and France had become a war of magic, and the House of Commoners had gathered for perhaps the most important bill so far. If it were to pass, Commoner magic would be made legal on the battlefield for the first time in centuries, when vampire kings had sat on the thrones of England and France and had nearly torn Europe apart.

  So far, the war had been an unequal one. France’s army of the dead numbered fifteen thousand, and they had crept like a dark wave across Europe. Most of the Continent had fallen to French hands now. Italy was about to follow any day. England remained secure thanks to the gulf of the English Channel and the unmatched strength of the British navy. The army of the dead were shadows at heart, and even dressed in the flesh of corpses, shadows could not cross large bodies of water unaided. It was why daemon-stones could not be employed on the sea, despite decades of work by the Knights Templar. The dead needed to be brought across the sea in the same ships as any other invading army, and so far not a single ship had made it to British shores. But this was of little help on the Continent. On dry land, the only thing that could reliably destroy the dead was mage-fire, and it took a very great deal of it before the burned, charred bodies stopped their relentless approach, the limbs collapsed to ash, and the shadows animating them departed. English bloodlines had never been very strong in fire magic—or, to be more specific, English Aristocratic bloodlines had not been.

  This was the real problem. Though Britain had embraced magic in battle, this was, as it turned out, not at all the same thing as embracing Commoner magic. Most of the upper echelons of the military were far more afraid of magic among the lower ranks than they were of the French, as were the Aristocrats at home. Battle magic had been reserved for officers only, and many of the best officers had little or no useful magic at all. It was one of the many things that had driven a frustrated Spain to ally itself with France the year before.

  “Why instigate a war of magic,” the Spanish demanded, “if you are afraid to fight one?”

  In some ways, the government’s new bill was what Wilberforce had spent the last ten years fighting for. Some Commoners, at least, would have their long-hated bracelets at last removed from their wrists and would be free for the first time in their lives to unleash the power locked inside them. But it was not intended as such—nothing that Pitt’s government had advocated in the last three years had anything to do with freedom. It would be magic conditional on the use of that power for war. It would do nothing to assuage Aristocratic fears of Commoner magic—quite the reverse. They needed them for battle, but they would be more scared than ever. And fear, Wilberforce had learned through long and painful experience, was always the enemy of change.

  “We are fighting a war of magic,” Pitt said that night, to a tumultuous crowd of politicians and spectators alike. “Our enemies have not hesitated to send dark magic across the face of Europe. We need magic of our own to burn it away. One way or another, there is going to be Commoner magic on English soil. You need to decide whether you want it to be English magic, wielded in defense of this country, or that of the French army of the dead.”

  Wilberforce barely listened to the argument. He was thinking, instead, of the first time they had each spoken in Parliament, when they were twenty-one and everything was beginning. Wilberforce’s first speech had been promising, well-spoken, perfectly adequate. Pitt’s had been spectacular. By the end of the first few sentences, the walls of the House had begun to reverberate softly; by the end of twenty minutes, they sang. It was very rare for a first speech to make the walls sing, and the clarity and timbre of the response were astonishing. More striking to Wilberforce, though, was the sudden self-possession that had transformed his friend’s tall, awkward figure into someone unfamiliar and powerful. It hadn’t been merely promising; it had been a promise—of greatness, or something like it. And then, afterward, he had joined Wilberforce and Eliot and several of the others at Wilberforce’s house in the country, the glamour had faded from him, and he had just been his friend again: playful, intelligent, sometimes painfully shy, and always unfailingly kind.

  They were thirty-seven now. Pitt had been in power for thirteen years. He could make the walls sing without a thought, or at least without apparent effort. And Wilberforce didn’t know what either of them was promising anymore.

  When the votes came to be taken, Wilberforce voted in favor of magic on the battlefield. He could justify it to himself: it was a vote for free magic in a twisted way; he couldn’t stand against Pitt any longer without siding with the opposition; the war had gone too far now to oppose. It was what he had told himself whenever he had voted for the government’s more repressive policies—when habeas corpus had been suspended, when pamphlets were suppressed and their authors arrested, when measures to stop spies crossing the borders reached new levels of paranoia. It wasn’t a vote against change, just a way of ensuring change took place through the proper channels. But there was a bitter tang of politics in his mouth.

  On the way out, Wilberforce saw Pitt talking with Eliot by the government benches. He hesitated, fighting a strong and very unaccustomed impulse to walk straight past.

  “Oh, go,” Thornton urged, watching him. “You can’t keep on like this forever.”

  And they couldn’t, Wilberforce conceded. Still, it hurt him deeply to watch Pitt catch sight of him approaching and see his shoulders stiffen and his face move smoothly from animation into polite reserve. Once, the change would have been the reverse.

  “Wilberforce,” Eliot greeted him, with genuine pleasure, and also a kind of pleading. He had told Wilberforce that being caught between him and Pitt was probably the tenth circle of hell.

  “Congratulations on passing the bill,” Wilberforce said, with a nod to Pitt. “I thought you may wish to know that I no longer intend to oppose the war. Things have changed, and I believe we’re past the point of peace for now.”

  “Thank you for that,” Pitt said, and he sounded somewhat more like his old self than he had for a long time. “While I am sorry about the circumstances, it would be a great personal comfort to me to have our opinions no longer materially differ. And you might like to know, in turn, that I have hopes we might be able to reopen peace negotiations very soon.”

  Wilberforce had heard this too often to quite believe it, yet he couldn’t help but hope, just a little. “Truly?”

  “If I have any say in it, we will,” Pitt said firmly. “This war has been too bloody and too wasteful already.”

  “And the enemy? Has there been any glimpse of him lately?” Pitt hesitated—perhaps to check they were out of earshot of the rest of the gallery, perhaps not—and Wilberforce pressed his point home. Eliot and Thornton had moved to talk privately; they wouldn’t hear. “You know you’ve barely spoken to me about the enemy since we entered a war of magic. I know we’ve disagreed on a number of things about how this war should be fought, but I still want to fight him alongside you.”

  “I know. And I thank you for that, truly. But I can find no trace of him—not, at least, anything that might tell us where he is.” He was telling the truth, too, or at least he thought he was. But Wilberforce could hear something unsaid lurking around the fringes of his words, in the pause before the addendum. He wasn’t telling him everything.

  A group from the visitors’ gallery filed past. Wilberforce glanced at them instinctively, and his eyes encountere
d a red-and-white flash of cloth. A Templar uniform. It could have been any of a number of Knights Templar, but the crisp bearing was familiar, and when the figure drew closer, his suspicions were confirmed. Anton Forester’s soft face was alert and interested despite the lateness of the hour. His sharp blue gaze caught Wilberforce, then Pitt; he inclined his head as he passed.

  “I wish he wouldn’t come to these debates,” Wilberforce couldn’t resist saying, once the Templar was out of earshot. Thornton always told him that it was perfectly natural for Forester to come to any debates regarding magic: the Knights Templar, after all, had guarded the use of magic in England for centuries, and Forester had become an increasingly high-ranking Master Templar since his involvement in the Saint-Domingue investigation. It was unreasonable to resent it. But Wilberforce was feeling increasingly unreasonable that night. “And don’t tell me he has every reason to come. I know he does.”

  “He does have every reason,” Pitt agreed. He was still watching after Forester’s departure. “He’s a religious zealot with a strong prejudice against Commoner magic, and he won’t stop until he has eradicated its use from England. He comes because he has a professional interest, but also because he wants to see who in Parliament might be a threat to him. Be careful of him.”

  Wilberforce looked at him in surprise. “Why? What can he do?”

  “At present, not a great deal. But he has the ear of the king. And… I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but given the current climate, the king wants to follow the lead of the Spanish monarchy in appointing an official magician of the court to advise him in matters of magic. That magician will almost certainly be Anton Forester.”

  “Good heavens.” Wilberforce turned it over in his head. “So—”

  “I said almost certainly. I’ll try to dissuade the king of the whole notion; failing that, I’ll suggest another candidate. But the king hasn’t listened to me very much of late. And if Forester does become court magician… The king is already predisposed against abolition, and against you. You can’t afford to make an enemy of Forester.”

  It occurred to Wilberforce that this was a veiled offer of reconciliation—not the information itself, but the fact that it was volunteered freely, honestly, and openly. If they had been in a different setting, the veil might have been thinner yet.

  “Do you honestly think that Forester would pressure the king to oppose abolition to punish me for supporting free magic?”

  Pitt hesitated for just long enough that Wilberforce suspected this was exactly what he thought. “Not in so many words. But I think you need to be careful about aligning abolition with radicalism.”

  “The two things are already aligned for some people. Eliot told me you think it would be unwise to present the abolition bill this year.”

  “I didn’t exactly say that. I said that I think it will be unlikely to succeed.”

  “But if we choose to present it, can we count on your support?”

  This time, the hesitation was shorter, but Wilberforce still heard it. “Yes, of course you can. I only fear my support won’t be very useful. Very few on the government benches would agree to follow me on this—your support is going to come from Fox’s people, in the opposition, and they don’t want to hear their opinions in my voice.”

  “They don’t want to hear your voice at all.”

  That, at last, raised a genuine smile. “Fair.” The smile faded quickly. “I meant what I said, though. Once Forester becomes King’s Magician, the lines of this battle are going to shift again. Please make sure, for all our sakes, that you and your cause aren’t trapped on the wrong side of them.”

  Kate and Christopher discussed the new bill that evening, while Kate struggled to stitch a fraying shirt. They were seventeen years old. The house was theirs alone now—their parents had died within days of each other in a bout of fever the year before, and Kate and Christopher had taken over both their few possessions and their work. Their jobs were the wrong way around, as they would be the first to admit. Kate, who was strong and tough and loved the sea, had taken on their mother’s washing and mending; she was slow at the sewing, and her weak eyes ached by the end of the day. Christopher, who had a quick mind and nimble fingers and was prone to catching cold, was out on the docks all day and came home bone weary and soaked through. His clothes were steaming water now as he sat close to the fire.

  “The Aristocrats won’t like it,” Kate said. “Even most of the wealthy Commoners won’t like it applying to the likes of us. As for the Knights Templar…”

  “I know,” Christopher said quietly. He rubbed his eyes and sat back in his seat. “They arrested Trent last week, did I tell you? He lost his temper and set a fire at the docks. It would have only been illegal magic a few years ago, but because the fire caught near one of the ships, he’s charged with treason. Attempt to disrupt supplies in wartime. He could be sentenced to death.”

  “They’re frightened of magical revolt.”

  “The government are,” Christopher said. “The Templars are just frightened of magic. They always have been.”

  Kate put down her needle and pinched the bridge of her nose, where a dull ache was beginning to build. Her stomach felt cold.

  “Here,” Christopher said, holding out his hand. “I’ll finish it. It’s a man’s work shirt. The stitches don’t need to be neat.”

  “Yours are neater than mine anyway,” she pointed out as she relinquished it. She watched him gather the fabric in hand and take up the needle, his eyes narrowed. There was a tiny scar across one eyebrow from when he had slipped helping their father on the boat—the summer the Bastille fell, when they were ten.

  “Will you go?” Kate asked. “If they really do call for recruits among magical Commoners. Will you go to war?”

  Christopher hesitated, and Kate knew the answer. “I don’t want to leave you,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know, you idiot,” Kate said, and reached across to give him a shove so that she wouldn’t cry. “It would be good money, if they pay even half what Aristocrat battle-mages get. Enough to keep the house. And you want to use your magic. I’d be the same, if they would ever let women join.”

  “It’s not so much that I want to use magic.” He looked at her squarely then, his face pale and tired and still younger than its years. “It wants to be used. It needs to be used. You know that. And I’m scared, Kate. I’m scared of what will happen if I can’t use it. If I keep holding it in, it’s going to drive me mad. But if I break, then the Knights Templar will take me away, and I’ll be locked up or killed.”

  She had to swallow before she could speak. “You could die in the war,” she reminded him.

  “I know. And I’m scared of that too. But I’d die free, at least, or as free as people like us can ever be.”

  “Does that matter, really?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted with a sigh. “But it feels like it should.”

  It felt like it should to her too. And yet she was afraid, for him and for herself left alone in England without him. She didn’t know what to hope for. She only knew that the world had changed so much during her short life, and none of it had ever once been for the better.

  The first Commoner battle-mages left from Portsmouth a month later, their wrists still pale from where their newly discarded bracelets had been clamped all their lives. Christopher Dove was among them, one of five shadowmancers bound for Italy.

  Wilberforce left town shortly afterward. Parliament was days away from breaking for the Christmas recess, and the streets of London were ice slicked and unforgiving. He had promised the other abolitionists that he would present the bill to end the slave trade again once the House reconvened, but he could already taste its failure, and it made him feel sick. He’d felt sick in general, that long winter. The jagged scar under his ribs was a constant shard of pain. There was no reason it shouldn’t be, given how tired he was, but he couldn’t help feeling it was more ominous than that. The wound had come fr
om the first undead—the only one, as far as he knew, whom Robespierre had created with the enemy directly. It didn’t bode well that it was growing worse as the enemy, despite all their efforts, grew stronger.

  Hannah More’s school in Mendip had thrived since he had helped her establish it years ago for the poor living in caves in Cheddar Gorge. When Wilberforce arrived in the evening, the glow of the candlelight against the snow and the murmur of voices from inside promised to heal something in his heart, as did the warm welcome he received. And yet the school was so very empty compared to what it had been a year ago. After breakfast, as the sounds of children playing in the gray drizzle filtered in from outside, he entered the schoolroom. Only half the desks had books set upon them. They were the books of magical theory that Miss More and her sister had printed some time ago—a way, revolutionary in every sense of the word, for magic to be studied by Commoner magicians who could not practice but who could feel the wild throb of it in their veins. Wilberforce had tried to read one at the time, without much success. The symbols the More sisters had invented were representing something too far out of his knowledge, like trying to describe the outside world to a man who had spent all his life in a cave. But for the young magicians among the students, the books had been a spark that at once illuminated and set their minds on fire.

  He had told Pitt about the books, Wilberforce remembered now. Of course he had—he had never thought twice about it. Pitt had been immediately interested, as usual. The two of them had discussed the practicalities of getting the research more widely known, what the Templars could do to interfere, what potential there was for introducing it to a university curriculum. But that had been before. Now he wondered suddenly if the government would come for the school next, and he hated that he couldn’t dismiss that worry as ridiculous.