A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

“Most of the boys left.” Miss More’s voice came from behind him. “When the news came that Commoner magicians were wanted in the war. It was the chance they’d been waiting for, to have their bracelets off at last. Their education could be put into practice, just as we hoped.”

  He put the book aside and turned to face her. Her eyes were bright and wise in her beak-nosed face. “I wanted to educate them in the hope of emancipation, not war,” he said. “I don’t want Commoners to have the rights to magic only as long as they kill and die for this country. I shouldn’t have supported that bill.”

  “I wouldn’t torture yourself. Whatever else came from breaking the Concord, England has been forced to accept Commoner magic now, for the first time in centuries.”

  “In battle, certainly. But they’re very afraid in London. Every concession they make toward using magic in the war makes them even more determined to tighten restrictions on it at home. They only need an excuse now.”

  “The government are trying to hold back the tide they’ve unleashed. They’re afraid it will overpower them. But we need to make sure to channel that tide to our own purposes.” She paused. “Where does Pitt stand on this?”

  He sighed. “He’ll be as fair as he can. Or he’ll think that’s what he’s doing. But he’s always been afraid of magic, really. He has cause to be.”

  Miss More didn’t ask him to elaborate further. “All Aristocrats are afraid of magic deep down,” she said instead, “for the same reason they’re afraid of revolution. It threatens to bring about change to the old order, and at the moment that order is very much in their favor.”

  “I’m afraid of it too, at times. I try not to be. But I’m far more afraid of war.”

  “War doesn’t last forever. But change, once set in motion, is very difficult to undo. It’s one of the first rules of magic: you can never truly reverse a spell. Dirt will remember being turned into gold, a conjured storm leaves marks on the landscape, a shadow will remember being bound—or free. And when this war passes, Commoner magic will be very difficult to bind again.” She paused. “Besides. God works in mysterious ways.”

  “I won’t argue, of course,” Wilberforce said. “But it does seem difficult to see God in the last few years.”

  Saint-Domingue

  April 1797

  In Saint-Marc, in the early evening, Fina moved through a battle.

  The breaking of the Concord had changed little about the way war was waged on Saint-Domingue. The Concord had never applied to interactions with colonized countries and people—certainly never to slaves. The British officers perhaps flung more magic now: tufts of flame that risked igniting the trees in the hot, dry summer months; torrents of water; twists of metalmancy that sent guns and swords awry; shadows that wrought havoc before they could be halted with stakes or precious ammunition. Yet the magic was erratic, compared to the precision with which Toussaint’s troops employed their own. The only advantage the British retained was their defensive powers. The British alchemists were some of the best in the world—anyone who had ever been enslaved by them knew it to their detriment. Their troops were well armed with silver charms and oak wristlets and other amulets designed to repel enemy magic. But weather magic was difficult to charm against, far more so than fire or water. And with Toussaint’s storms keeping reinforcements from reaching Saint-Domingue, their spells were running out.

  Saint-Marc was one of the last surviving British strongholds. It had been a thriving port settlement on the west coast before the uprising, nestled in green mountains and visited by ships of all shapes and sizes. Now the fort that guarded it was heavily manned, both by British troops and by the slaves working for them in exchange for their freedom. Toussaint’s forces had tried an assault upon it that morning and failed. Their ladders had been too short to climb the wall, mage-fire had been repelled by protective charms, and the dead had mounted up as the men attempted to boost each other over the wall by standing on one another’s shoulders. Finally Toussaint’s best general, Dessalines, had ordered a retreat to regroup and tend to the wounded.

  They had been quiet for the rest of the day, as the sun rose hot over the island and heat and boredom relaxed the British troops against their will. To keep watch, Fina slipped behind the eyes of a young British officer posted as a lookout. It was a terrible place to be—the bodies of the white soldiers always were. This one was miserably hot and itchy in his uniform, his temples pounding in the fierce light, worn down by fear and dysentery and lack of sleep. And he was one of the fortunate ones. Most of his friends were burning with yellow fever; many were dead or near dead of it. Their exhaustion made them too willing to believe that the danger had passed.

  It had not.

  The first they knew was a rush of wind from the east, a sudden darkness as a great cloud passed overhead. The white man whose body Fina inhabited turned his head to the sky and felt the first splash of rain on his face. Soon it was pelting in hard drops like buckshot, and thunder rumbled. His chill of fear came just as Fina’s own spirits rose. Toussaint was coming.

  The British never knew quite what to attribute to Toussaint’s weather magic these days: the climate of Saint-Domingue was already against them, and his magic was so far-reaching now that anything could be him. Since the day of the storm, they saw him in every breath of air and beat of the sun. The constant dread of his presence was almost as effective at wearing them down as actual attacks. But this storm, out of nowhere, left them in no doubt. Already there was a call to arms; men grabbed their rifles, fighting not to get the powder wet, and manned the cannons. There was nothing to aim for, though, only wind and rain and thunder. And, soon, the flash of lightning.

  Lightning was very difficult to summon, even for the strongest weather-mage, and it was of little use in battle unless used very well. It could strike only once or twice, and there were many more than one or two men behind the siege wall. But this one didn’t strike the men. Instead, it lashed from the sky like a glowing whip. It struck the wall of the fort: once, twice, three times. A chunk of stone crumbled and fell. It took the soldiers a moment to realize what had happened. The fire charm embedded in the wall had been obliterated.

  At the same time, Toussaint’s soldiers burst from the undergrowth. Those who had rifles aimed them high; those who did not wielded knives and machetes or just the blazing force of their magic. They swarmed the fort. The fire-mages were in front: flames scorched from their hands, and this time there was nothing to hold them back. Several of the British troops fell, shouting, their woolen uniforms ablaze. Others fired. The man next to Fina’s soldier screamed and fell, writhing; she recognized Dessalines’s cruel, peculiar magic, which could inflict pain at a glance. She had felt it once or twice herself, in the body of another—the feel of every nerve catching alight. It made her shudder inwardly.

  Toussaint’s soldiers had reached the base of the fort. The ladders still didn’t reach, but there was no need for them now. Toussaint himself had arrived. Fina saw him, his black horse glistening with rain, his eyes fixed on the battle ahead. A hard gust of wind battered the fort; the soldiers in front braced themselves and were carried up. They caught the edge of the stone and pulled themselves over. Some were pushed back, but more came.

  The British soldier Fina occupied had been slow to act, scared and bewildered. He brought his rifle up now, and she stirred herself at once. She wasn’t, after all, only here to watch while her body sat miles distant.

  Stop, she told him. Stop right now.

  He stopped. She was now used to the way they tried to fight her; used, too, to the horror that descended when they realized that they couldn’t. They knew the rumors of a powerful magician who could move among them and freeze them in place. Some said that she could stop their hearts with a thought.

  Possibly she could; she’d never tried, even at her most vengeful, and after years at war her fire for vengeance had hardened into cool practicality. She did something far simpler. She took control of the soldier’s limbs, and she threw
his weapon away. Then she left him, fumbling and harmless, and moved to the next one. She did it over and over again. She kept doing it, pushing the bounds of her magic to the ragged edges, until Toussaint and the others burst through the gates of the fort.

  Fina could have come back to herself then. The battle was over. But the war was ongoing, and there were always more places to be.

  She left one head and entered another.

  Fina woke in her bedroom—or, to be more precise, a room in one of Toussaint’s plantation houses. He had left her with his wife and younger sons the last time he had ridden out, and she had agreed to be left. His reasoning was twofold: partly, he genuinely wanted her protection for his family, and her counsel on hand for when he might require it. He also needed her to be safe herself. Her magic left her body very vulnerable when her mind was traveling, and there were few of his men who could be trusted enough to guard her.

  She sat slowly in her bed, fighting the momentary dizziness that came with returning from very far away. Her mouth was dry, and her head throbbed. Her limbs felt strange and fragile after being so long gone; she swung her legs off the bed clumsily, as though still trying to manipulate them from a distance. She wasn’t sure how long it had been, but she had lain down yesterday as the sun was setting, and now the darkness had come and gone and the sun was high in the sky.

  There was a sharp knock at the door. Perhaps it was why she had woken—sounds could bring her back sometimes, she’d found over the years. She had to clear her throat before she could respond, and then her voice was husky.

  “Come in,” she called, and Toussaint opened the door.

  It was the first time she’d seen him through her own eyes in weeks. Through the eyes of others, he looked taller, stronger, invulnerable. In person, she had learned him well enough to notice the new lines on his face, like cracks in hard-baked earth; the faint slump to his shoulders as he folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe. Magic burned from him like a fever these days.

  “How long have you been there?” she asked.

  “I just came home,” he said. “I left Saint-Marc after the battle and rode through the night. Suzanne said you’d been quiet lately.”

  “I was away.”

  “So I hear. Are you spending any time in your own body these days?”

  “Are you ever not controlling some portion of the weather these days?” she returned.

  “My magic isn’t much use to this colony if I’m not.”

  “And mine isn’t much use to you if I’m in my own body.”

  “You’re not much use to me if you become too ill or exhausted to leave your body when I need you most.”

  “I won’t be.” She was confident he wouldn’t stop her either way. Like his own, her magic was too useful not to push. And unlike his, it belonged to her alone and not to any mysterious benefactor. She knew its limits—or she thought she did. Her back ached from so long lying still; she rubbed her neck and flexed her shoulders before looking at him directly. “Did the surrender go well?”

  “It went well,” he said. “Saint-Marc fell to us within an hour of breaching the fort. I’ve agreed to let enough ships through to allow the British forces to evacuate. I imagine we’ll have Port-au-Prince soon. Then the only significant British presence left on the island will be the garrison at Môle Saint-Nicolas.”

  “They won’t surrender the Môle quickly,” Fina said. “Not after what you did to their ships there in the first storm. And not as long as they’re afraid of us moving on Jamaica. They need to hold the west coast here to keep it safe from invasion.”

  If he heard her implied question, he didn’t answer it. Fina knew Toussaint as well as anyone could claim to know him by this time, but she still had no idea what his plans for Jamaica might be. She had come to him in the hope he would liberate the island where she had been enslaved; she believed he wanted to do it, as soon as his position on Saint-Domingue was more secure. For now she had to be content with that. But it burned her every time she turned the conversation to the most desperate desire of her life, and every time found the conversation deftly turned aside.

  “They won’t have a choice” was all he said now. “I’m keeping them drenched in rain and heat, to help matters along—the fever will be taking its toll. And they have Rigaud’s forces to contend with as well as mine. I assume you’re keeping an eye on Rigaud?”

  Fina nodded. “He’s moving against them soon.”

  “Will he succeed?” Toussaint asked.

  “I can’t tell the future!” she complained.

  He laughed. “You can tell me what he’s facing. And I trust your judgment, after all this time.”

  “It’s possible he’ll see them off.” She tried not to be too pleased by the compliment. “I think it’s more likely he’ll just wear them down before he’s forced to retreat. But it will all take its toll on the British forces.”

  “Then we’d better prepare to move in where Rigaud leaves off. I want the British to surrender to me, not him. And certainly not to the French commissioners.”

  “It’s supposed to be the same thing.”

  “It is, for now. It might not be very soon.”

  It was true. André Rigaud was the second-greatest military power on the island, the son of a white plantation owner and an enslaved woman, raised as a gentleman and educated in France. Like them, he fought for the French—Fina had met him once, and he had been polite if guarded. But once the British were gone, Toussaint, Rigaud, and the French Directory would lack a common enemy. Without that pressure pushing them together, they could easily split apart once more. Under other circumstances, that might not be troubling to her. Toussaint was the stronger of the two war leaders; he was stronger and cleverer, she thought, than the French governors, and certainly commanded more loyalty among the freed slaves. If the French wanted to hold the colony, it would be in their best interests to let Toussaint govern in their name. But it wasn’t so simple. They weren’t the only players on the board.

  “You haven’t only been watching Rigaud, have you?” Toussaint said, as though he read her mind. He didn’t have to. Their thoughts were often along similar paths. “Was the stranger in Jamaica last night?”

  “He’s in Jamaica every night.” The words were wrenched from her in frustration. “Still. Sometimes he stays an hour, sometimes only a few minutes, sometimes all night, but he’s always there.”

  “And you’re always there with him.”

  “Yes,” she said simply. She wasn’t sure if Toussaint understood what it meant to her to go back there. It had been five years since she had left—she thought she was in her late thirties now. But some part of her was locked in a terrified childhood, and that part was back on Jamaica. She had left it sleeping there, and willingly woke it every night.

  “He’s other places too, of course,” she added. “In France, and in England, and in Italy. Sometimes I think he’s across the whole of Europe.”

  “What about here?”

  She frowned. “Here, in Saint-Domingue?”

  “I believe that’s where we are.” There was a smile in his voice, but his face remained serious. Something important was on his mind. It was the first time he had willingly broached the question of Jamaica in her memory, and the first time they had spoken of the stranger in a very long time.

  “Not since you helped him escape the British,” she said carefully. “He strengthens your magic, of course. But otherwise I believed he had finished with us. Why?”

  “Because if you and I are not mistaken, we will force the British troops from this island very soon. If we do, then the last reason the stranger has to fire my magic will be gone. He wanted the British gone from the island—it doesn’t follow that he wants me to take it over in his stead.”

  “But you don’t intend to,” Fina pointed out. “The island is still a French colony. You’ve always been very clear that you want to act only as governor.”

  “So I’ve told them.” Nobody, Fina included, knew
how much he meant it. Outwardly, he was fervent, effusive even, in his alliance to the French motherland. But she couldn’t help but notice his talent for ridding the colony of any French officials who came close to challenging his authority over it. Laveaux, Toussaint’s closest friend among the French, had left at Toussaint’s urging to fight for their cause in France; Sonthonax, the most powerful of the French commissioners, had been forced back to France less gently. Toussaint always had plans. “And perhaps France wants to work with me. I hope they do. Perhaps the stranger does too. That wasn’t what you feared last year, though.”

  “No, it wasn’t. And I’m still afraid.” She paused. “There’s a new Frenchman he speaks to now, since Robespierre was killed.”

  They had learned Robespierre’s name only after his execution, when news of 9 Thermidor had reached the colony. But they had followed his conversations with the stranger for a long time.

  Toussaint’s attention sharpened at once. “Really? That’s interesting. Is he at all like Robespierre?”

  “Not at all. He’s a warrior, not a magician, and certainly not an idealist. And Robespierre was always scared. The dream they met in was dark and terrible. This man meets the stranger in broad daylight, as an equal, and he carries himself as though he were afraid of nothing on earth. I don’t know his name, or anything else about him. But whoever he is, he’s no friend to us. And the stranger has promised him France and all her territories.”

  “Do you believe he means this colony as well?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if he means to keep his promise. He promised Robespierre things as well.”

  “And delivered them, in his fashion. He also promised Robespierre a leader would come to rule over France. That France would become the head of an empire.” He mulled it over in silence. “If this man, whoever he may be, were given control of France—would he reinstate slavery here?”

  “I told you, I’m not a fortune-teller. He would want to, I think. He strikes me as one of those white men who want to control the whole world. But people don’t do everything they want.”