The Royal Sorceress

by Christopher Nuttall

  Jumping down off the rooftop, Jack ran through the shadows until he reached Lord Burley’s wall. It was almost impossible for anyone to climb, but Jack didn’t need to climb to get over the wall. He levitated into the air, lifted himself over the wall, and put himself down gently on the grass. The illusion of darkness surrounding him would make him impossible to see, unless there was a Sensor among the guards. Jack doubted that anyone with Lord Burley’s tastes would hire a Sensor, but he kept himself moving quickly anyway. The moment they knew that he was there, all hell would break loose. He kept a sharp eye out for dogs as he crossed the lawn and came up to the building. Human eyes could be deceived, but dogs were far harder to fool. No magic could confuse their noses for long.

  Up close, he found himself admiring the patterns that had been carved into the stonework. Lord Burley had spent a small fortune – enough money to feed and clothe most of London for a year – on his house. It was an advertisement for his military skill, culminating in a depiction of one of the most savage battles against the Sikhs in India. The British troops and their Indian allies had crushed the Sikhs, but only after a long and savage conflict. And now the Sikhs were flowing into the British Indian Army and being transformed into the tool that would take the British Empire north into Afghanistan, maybe even up to the Tsar’s borders. It hadn’t been that long since Alaska had been taken from the Russians. Who knew what else could be taken and added to the British Empire?

  Gathering his power, he floated up into the air. He wasn’t the most capable Mover he’d ever seen, but it was easy to lift his body up to the roof. There were no guards positioned on top of the building, an odd oversight for a competent general who had good reason to fear for his life. Jack suspected that the full implications of magic – and the airships that were coming into service with the military – had escaped his notice. The French had a plan to invade England using airships. It might just allow them to land an army on British soil without having to fight their way past the Royal Navy. They might even win.

  The rooftop was flat, almost barren compared to the outer walls. Jack moved over to the skylight and examined it quickly, noticing that it was locked from the inside. It would have prevented any normal thief from getting inside, at least without smashing the glass and alerting everyone, but Jack was no normal thief. He closed his eyes and sent his Sight into the lock, and then carefully used his magic to unlock it. There was a click, loud enough to make him jump, and the skylight swung open. Jack dropped down into the house and landed softly, without making a sound. He listened, but there was no sign of anyone else. His Lordship was clearly still in bed, sleeping off his marathon session of drinking and wenching. The rumours had made him out to be something of a pig.

  Jack’s lips twitched as he slipped forward, careful to inch along the walls rather than walk down the centre of the corridor. A single creak from the wooden floorboards might wake someone, or alert them to an intruder in the house. There was nothing more conspicuous, his old master had warned him, than someone trying to be stealthy and overdoing it. The tricks of burglary were more effective than magic, if used at the right time. He froze as he heard the sound of someone breathing, before realising that it was nothing more than Lord Burley, storing inside the master bedroom. Jack slipped up to the half-open door and peered inside. Lord Burley lay on his bed, face down on the blankets, one hand gripping the hand of a young girl. She couldn’t be older than sixteen. Jack winced in disgust, even though he’d expected nothing less. Whatever the Church of England had to say about adultery and fornication, powerful men always considered themselves above the law. Lord Burley was far from the worst of his class – and at least he’d contributed to the Empire, which was more than could be said for most of the aristocrats.

  He slipped into the room. The girl was still awake. She opened her mouth to scream for help, but Jack was on her before anything could reach her mouth. He felt her struggle helplessly against him and cursed mentally, knowing that he might well have to kill her. But she was an innocent. She didn’t deserve to die. Jack picked her up with his magic, keeping one hand clamped over her mouth, and put her down onto the floor. Lord Burley snorted and turned over in his sleep, his walrus moustache twitching as it came into view. Jack found himself smiling as he stared into the girl’s eyes and touched his lips. If she stayed quiet, he promised himself, he would let her live.

  “Stay quiet and still,” he whispered, pushing as much Charm into his voice as he could. The girl started, and then relaxed. Her eyes went wide with fear. Charm was often more effective when used subtly, rather than with force, but Jack had no time to gently push her into submission. “Don’t move a muscle.”

  He stood up and looked down at Lord Burley. A single slash of his throat would leave him bleeding out in his own bed, but that would be far from enough punishment for the oppressor of the masses. Lord Burley’s men had whipped rioters whose only crime was not dispersing fast enough when the Riot Act was read, after they’d come to protest the latest rise in taxes that made it almost impossible for the poor to escape their debts. He deserved a far more meaningful punishment than simply having his throat cut. Jack reached out with his magic and lifted Lord Burley into the air. The overweight Lord’s eyes shot open in shock. He’d clearly been drinking before retiring for the night with his latest lady friend. Absently, Jack wondered how much he was paying her. He doubted it was enough to compensate for everything that was about to happen.

  Lord Burley’s mouth fell open, but Jack stuffed a cloth into his teeth before he could say a word or shout for help. The Lord tried to struggle against Jack’s grip, uselessly. Jack bound his hands tightly and then secured the gag in place. Once Lord Burley was secured, Jack tied up the shaking girl, just in case. He’d spent long enough in the underworld to know that a girl could be twice as dangerous as a man, if only because her opponents would tend to underestimate her. He paused outside the door long enough to check that none of the guards had come upstairs and then turned his attention back to his target. To give him due credit, Lord Burley was showing no sign of fear. His gaze – if he had had the magic to power it – could have killed.

  Jack leaned closer to the Lord’s face. “You have been judged by a court of your victims,” he lied smoothly, “and condemned as an Oppressor of the People. Do you wish to say anything in your defence?” He smiled as the Lord’s face purpled with anger. “No? We can proceed directly to the sentencing then.”

  It was too much to expect that Lord Burley would have provided a convenient hook for the hangman’s noose, but Jack could use magic to ensure that he was strangled to death, even if the rope wasn’t taut. The first flickers of fear entered Lord Burley’s eyes as he found himself floating up into the air, followed by the rope tightening around his neck. He started to struggle for breath as the noose grew tighter, but it was futile. His face darkened as he choked to death. It was not a pleasant way to die…

  …But it was how they killed on Tyburn Hill, Jack knew. He’d seen enough executions to know that the condemned– often men and women who hadn’t been able to bribe the judges or rely on the intervention of friends in high places – were slowly suffocated to death. A noose was the mob’s method of choice too, when it lynched infrequent victims. The enemies of liberty would know what kind of message Jack was sending them, once they saw the body. And they would know what would happen to them if they fell into his hands.

  Lord Burley made a final gasp and expired. Jack checked his pulse carefully – it would have been difficult to fake, but possible – and confirmed that he was dead for himself. The girl, who had been watching in terror, cringed away from him as he produced a knife. Ignoring her, Jack cut into Lord Burley’s leg and used the knife to pick up the blood, using it to write two words on the wall. When he was done, the words CAPTAIN SWING could be easily made out. Its intended target would know what he meant, and those who didn’t know would soon come to fear it. They would come to fear Captain Swing.

  He smiled as he checked that
the girl could breathe properly and walked out of the door. It would have been easy to slip back out of the skylight, but he had a reputation to uphold. By the time London awoke, everyone would know about Lord Burley’s death – and the name Captain Swing would be on every man’s lips. Whistling tunelessly, he strode down the stairs, wondering how long it would take for the guards to notice him. A man as paranoid as Lord Burley would never have forbidden his guards to enter the house. They weren’t as well-trained as Jack had expected. He heard two guards running up the hallway towards him long before they came into view. The moment he saw them, he rammed a pulse of magic through the first one’s head and picked up the second one, slamming him into the wall. Jack heard the sound of breaking bones and nodded in approval. He stepped over the prone bodies, wrapping himself in illusion. The alarm would definitely be out now. He gathered his magic as a new guard appeared, clad in sorcerer’s black. Jack chuckled aloud as the sorcerer lifted one hand in preparation to use his magic. It was nice of Lord Burley to identify his pet magicians for Jack.

  The sorcerer launched a bolt of energy at Jack, which lit up the hallway a second before it slammed into Jack’s magic. A brilliant haze flared out in front of him and then flickered out of existence. The sorcerer gaped, clearly not expecting to see someone who could use two different talents – even if he’d seen Jack using magic earlier, he wouldn’t have expected a Master Magician. Jack didn’t give him time to adapt; he launched a pulse of energy himself, right into the sorcerer’s throat. The smell of burning flesh filled the corridor as Jack stepped over the dead sorcerer and down towards the doors. Outside, he could hear the sounds of men running towards the house. Lord Burley’s guards, better paid than the average soldier and therefore more willing to risk their lives for their master, had definitely realised that something was badly wrong. And if there was a Talker among them, the Bow Street Runners would definitely have been summoned.

  Jack sent a wave of magic out ahead of him as he approached the doors and they burst into fragments, slamming out and into the small army running towards the house. A handful reacted in time to cover their eyes or drop to the ground, but most of them were hit by flying splinters. Jack knew that some of them would probably be blinded, yet he found it hard to care. They’d chosen to uphold the established order and betray their roots by taking their master’s money. They needed to pay for their crimes.

  Another pulse of energy shot at him and he ducked, reaching out with his magic to catch the Blazer and hurling him into the air. Even the most capable Blazer would have difficulty hitting anyone while flying – and would die when he hit the ground. The remaining guards seemed to be nothing more than mundane humans, but Jack was careful not to allow his field of magic to drop. One mistake and a bullet would kill him just as effectively as it would kill an ordinary human without a single hint of magic.

  He directed a burst of energy at one of the guards, and then switched to a second target. They had to be good and mad by now, but just to be sure Jack sent a concentrated beam of light at the rosebushes. Lord Burley had been a keen gardener, something Jack found a little hard to reconcile with his bloody-handed reputation for extreme conservatism. Or perhaps he had just liked the thought of growing something exactly as he planned. The bushes caught fire and the flames spread rapidly out of control, threatening to spread to the house and incinerate Lord Burley’s body. Just for a second, he considered jumping back into the house and rescuing the girl – she probably hadn’t wanted to share Lord Burley’s bed, but hadn’t been given any choice – before he realised that it would be a risk too far. The Royal Sorcerers Corps would have been alerted by now. Besides, he had every confidence that the guards could put out the blaze before it was too late. He’d gone to too much effort arranging the body to have it wasted through burning down the house.

  Grinning like a loon, he grabbed at his body with magic and hurled himself into the air with terrific force. As a student, his old master had had to shame him into throwing himself madly around the city, but now he wondered how anyone could bear to walk when they could fly. Gravity reasserted itself and he started to fall, yet all it took was another burst of magic to send his body spinning over the rooftops and away from the house. The fire behind him started to dim as the guards fought it with more courage than they’d shown fighting him, but then none of them had expected to face a magician. And not a Master Magician at that…Jack wondered, as he came down and landed in a darkened street, if he was still officially dead. The forces of reaction would have preferred to believe that, certainly. But his old tutor would never have taken it for granted. Master Magicians were very hard to kill.

  He wrapped his cloak around him and strode off down the street. By the time the Bow Street Runners set up a cordon – if they did – he would be well on his way back to the Rookery. London never really slept, even in the middle-class areas. There were too many whores and criminals out wandering the streets to keep the city quiet. And nothing the Church had tried had managed to slow the spread of prostitution. There were simply too many young women with no other prospects in London. The only way they could earn money was through lying on their backs with their legs open. It disgusted him. So much potential was being lost on the streets.

  Slipping back into the little room he’d hired was easy. Few people asked questions in the Rookery. He stumbled over and collapsed into the hard bed. Using magic so often was very tiring. Jack promised himself a late breakfast in the morning, before he headed to find his next target. There were thousands of aristocrats to kill in London. They would all come to fear his name.

  Chapter Nine

  Charm is one of the strangest magical talents,” Doctor Norwell said. The theoretical magician, Gwen had discovered, loved lecturing his audience. And he didn’t seem to hold Gwen’s sex against her, once he’d gotten over the shock. “It is more effective if worked gently, rather than with force. The most dangerous form of Charm comes from a slow infusion of suggestions into the victim’s mind. A strong-willed person can break Charm if they realise what is happening to them, but if the effect is subtle they literally never realise what is happening to them.”

  Gwen scowled, inwardly. She knew what happened when a Charmer came into his or her powers, because Charm had been the first talent she’d used. The young Gwen hadn’t had the slightest idea of what she was or what she could do – and the effects had been staggeringly bad, bad enough to ensure that rumours continued to swirl around her even as a teenager. Master Thomas had used brute force to demonstrate Charm, yet she knew that that was far from the most dangerous form, even without Doctor Norwell’s lecture. She’d proved it herself as a child.

  She glanced over at Lord Blackburn as he sat on the opposite chair, staring at her. He was unmarried, Gwen knew, but he didn’t seem to be sizing her up as a possible bride, not like some of the other students. His gaze made her feel as if she was an insect trapped under a glass, unable to avoid his stare – or to resist him when she was finally pinned down and placed in a box. There was nothing, but coldness in his eyes, a coldness that sent chills down her spine. Lord Blackburn was a very dangerous person, even without a peerage that linked him to the highest families in the land.

  “Charm is also the most feared of all the talents,” Doctor Norwell continued. “The Houses of Parliament have passed strong laws against its use, with a number of cases being brought to the Old Bailey. However, proving the use of Charm – particularly subtle Charm – is extremely difficult. As always, it is hard to prove what a magician is capable of doing without actually witnessing them using magic.”

  “And that concludes the lecture,” Lord Blackburn said. His voice was cold, almost dispassionate. He took an interest in politics, Gwen recalled suddenly. It might be worth writing to her mother and asking for a briefing on his life and prospects. Her mother knew everyone who was anyone, or who thought they were. “We will now proceed to the practical part of the lesson. You may leave us.”

  Doctor Norwell scowled at him, but
accepted his dismissal without comment. “Master Thomas wishes to see you after this part of the lesson,” he told Gwen, as he picked up his case of papers and headed to the door. “You will report to him before lunch.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gwen said, automatically. Doctor Norwell wasn’t usually so rude. Lord Blackburn had definitely put him out of sorts. The door closed behind him with an audible thump and she turned to look up at Blackburn. His face was expressionless, but there was something in his eye that made her fear being alone with him. She couldn’t have put it into words, apart from a desire to run for her life.

  “Charm requires dedication and focus on the part of the magician,” Lord Blackburn said, flatly. His eyes had never left her face. “To reveal that one is using one’s Charm is to lose an advantage. The human mind does not take well to having suggestions pushed into it by a Charmer. Even the weakest of souls will fight Charm if they are aware that it is being used on them. And pushing too hard can break their minds.”

  His gaze fixed on her eyes. “Why don’t you stand up and take off your dress?”

  Gwen was on her feet and unbuttoning her dress before her mind caught up with him. He’d used his Charm on her…and done it so subtly that she hadn’t even realised what was happening, even though he’d spoken his outrageous orders out loud. Her mind hadn’t registered them properly…even though she knew what had happened it was still hard to force her treacherous fingers to stop. She buttoned up her dress, sat down and glared at him. The force of her glare made absolutely no impression on him at all.