The Royal Sorceress

by Christopher Nuttall

  Master Thomas frowned. “We would appear to have few options,” he pointed out. “If we call up the militias, we might just discover that we are reinforcing the rebels. The militias have never been comfortable serving in a repressing role, have they?”

  Lord Liverpool tapped the table. “This isn’t the time for arguments,” he said. “We can debate the true cause of these...uprisings later. The priority now is to recover London before the country comes apart.”

  “And to recover the King,” Lord Mycroft said.

  Gwen stared at him. “The King has been captured?”

  “We must assume so,” Lord Liverpool said. The Prime Minister, the man who had effectively sidelined King George, sounded bitter. His career was over, even if London was recovered quickly and without major damage. No one would ever trust or respect him again, not like they’d trusted Pitt the Elder or Pitt the Younger. “He certainly never made it to Hampton Court.”

  “He may be dead,” Lord Mycroft pointed out. His beady eyes narrowed. “Should we not be honest here? We used the King to absorb much of the bad feeling generated by our...reforms of the British establishment. The rebels may have determined to kill him if he ever fell into their hands. Their hatred for him is unmatched.”

  Gwen shivered. One of the books she’d skimmed through ever since they’d fled London and reached Oxford had talked about the Tsar of Russia. The Tsar had created a myth that he loved his population and would help them, if he ever knew about their suffering. But he was surrounded by evil noblemen who ensured that the Father-Tsar never knew about their crimes against the serfs. The writer had concluded by noting that if the perception that the Tsar cared ever slipped, it would be the end of Russia. None of the serfs in the field had any loyalty to their lords and masters. Why should they feel loyalty to men who treated them as beasts of burden?

  It was an ancient problem. Republican Rome had never managed to solve it; those who had tried to improve the lives of the poor and hopeless had come to sudden and violent ends. The Rome of Augustus had tried to impose some small manner of social reform, but it had never been enough. How could one balance the interests of noblemen with those of the poor? Gwen knew how David ran the family business; if he paid more in wages, the profits for expansion would go down. And who knew what would happen when more businesses started constructing airships? There was already more competition on the routes between England and France than anyone had expected, back when airships had first been proposed.

  “Master Jackson would understand the value of holding the King as a hostage,” Master Thomas said, sharply. “He wouldn’t have killed him.”

  He didn’t sound confident, Gwen realised. Jack was mad, after all; his madness gave him vision, but it also weakened his plans. He had staked everything on his demented plan to rescue the prisoners in the Tower. A single mistake would have ruined everything.

  “Maybe he is no longer in command,” Lord Liverpool said. “Uprisings have always lost control over their people...”

  Lord Mycroft shrugged. “We must proceed under the assumption that the King is dead, long live the King,” he said. “We cannot allow fear of his death to hold us back.”

  He looked down at the map. “Right now, we have only a few thousand soldiers in all of Britain,” he added. “They’re mostly Highlanders; capable enough in the field, but less capable in fighting within a city. We do have regiments in Ireland to call upon, yet it will take several weeks before we can move them over to England – and that assumes that Ireland will remain quiet. I doubt we will be so lucky.”

  “No,” Master Thomas agreed. “The Irish will start an uprising the moment they see our troops depart – if they even wait that long.”

  Lord Liverpool shook his head. “If we lose control of parts of Ireland, we can regain it once we have secured England,” he said, flatly. “The Irishmen always turn on each other as soon as they drive the English out – or sometimes they don’t even manage to do that before they start killing their fellow Irishmen.”

  There was a knock on the door, which opened a moment later, revealing the Duke of India. Lord Liverpool rose to his feet and shook hands with the Duke, who took a seat next to Gwen. The commander-in-chief of the British Army looked tired and worn; Gwen realised, suddenly, that he had to have been targeted by the rebels when they rose up in London. He’d escaped, somehow, but was that actually a good sign? The Duke of India was known to be utterly inflexible, a reactionary to the core.

  “I’ve been talking to Lord Waxhaw,” the Duke of India said, without preamble. “He feels that we can pull four of the regiments out of Ireland, but that will not be enough to recover London. We need to consider other options.”

  Lord Liverpool looked shaken. “But the regiments...four regiments are nearly twenty thousand men,” he said. “Surely that will be enough to retake London.”

  The Duke of India didn’t mince his words. “I was in France during the uprisings that formed the Paris Commune,” he said. “The French Army was gutted by the fighting that allowed King Louis to recover Paris – and Paris itself was devastated. We cannot assume that the rebels will surrender when they see us coming – and fighting in cities is always costly, even when the defenders are untrained rebels. And that assumes that the soldiers will stay loyal. Very few of my men signed up to fight their fellow countrymen.”

  There was a long pause. The Duke’s bluff manner – and his well-known competence in military affairs – contrasted sharply with Lord Liverpool’s gloom. He wouldn’t have told them that their plans couldn’t work, Gwen knew, unless the situation truly was hopeless. Jack had caught them in a neat trap; the government could negotiate and make concessions, or it would have to expend much of the British Army recovering London. And the devastation left afterwards, whoever won, would be hideously expensive to rebuild.

  And it wouldn’t stop there. There would be rebellions in Ireland, America, India, Australia and maybe even South Africa. The government would have to fight a massive war on several fronts at once, even if the French or Russians didn’t take the opportunity to knife the British in the back. Jack’s plan might be more cunning than she’d assumed; if the British Empire faced so many different problems, it might shatter. And then...who knew what would replace it?

  “I think we must start bringing the regiments over anyway,” Lord Liverpool said, finally. “Please see to it. Master Thomas...”

  “No,” Master Thomas said, flatly. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “There’s no other choice,” Lord Liverpool said. “One final throw of the dice.”

  Gwen glanced from him to Master Thomas, puzzled. “Is power really worth the price?” Master Thomas asked. “Do you know what this will do to us, even if we win?”

  Lord Liverpool’s gaze was unflinching. “I know the price,” he said. “You know that there is no choice.”

  “No choice?” Gwen repeated. “No choice, but to do what?”

  The Duke of India, surprisingly, answered. “A long-held contingency plan,” he said. He sounded...appalled. “Prime Minister...”

  “The decision is made,” Lord Liverpool said. “Master Thomas?”

  Master Thomas hesitated, and then nodded. “Very well,” he said. “I hope you can sleep at night afterwards.”

  With that, he got up and stalked out of the room. Gwen hesitated, and then followed her tutor, keeping a distance. Master Thomas had sounded angry – and disgusted. Gwen was unsure what to feel, but if it worried the Duke of India, it worried her too. Master Thomas walked up to the roof, ignoring the small number of students and staff he encountered along the way, and stepped out into the darkness. Gwen was on the roof just in time to see him leap into the air and head towards London. Even for a skilled magician, it would be a very long flight.

  For a long moment, she waited on the roof, unsure of what to do. No one had given her any orders, yet she had a feeling that Master Thomas would have wanted her to stay in Oxford, out of immediate danger. And yet...
>
  She leapt into the air and followed Master Thomas, holding well back from her tutor. The darkness enveloped her as she rose into the sky, following him towards London. They would be almost invisible from the ground.

  Wherever he was going, whatever he was doing, she wanted to know what it was.

  She was sure that it was nothing good.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I suppose you wouldn’t,” the King said. “You never doubted anything.”

  “Your government is at an end,” Jack said, ignoring the gibe. He was finally in a position to dictate terms to the King, the Monarch of Great Britain and her Empire. “Your people have risen up and overthrown you. Your aristocrats will no longer exploit the common people for their advantage, while leaving their victims scrabbling in the dirt...”

  The King smiled. “You mean like you acted, before you discovered that your life was a lie?”

  Jack’s eyes flashed fire. “I could kill you right now,” he snapped. Lightning danced over his hands. “I could behead you and stick your head on a pike in front of the tower.”

  “Of course you could,” the King said. He didn’t seem worried by the threat. “And someone in the Line of Succession would be acclaimed King and the country would go on. These aren’t the days when losing a monarch meant the end of everything. The government will carry on without me.”

  Jack had to smile. “And that prospect doesn’t bother you?”

  For a moment, he saw tiredness in the King’s face. “While my father was alive, I woke up every day unsure if I was Prince Regent or not,” he said. “He had days when he was the man I remember from my childhood and days when his mind was clearly gone, when he wanted me to marry a rosebush or to form a marriage alliance with the Tsar in Russia. The pressure of the Throne destroyed my father’s life. If I had my life all over again, I’d want to be someone happy and distant and small.”

  “Really?” Jack asked. “I think you’ll find that happiness and powerlessness don’t go together in the modern world.”

  “Maybe not,” the King agreed. “Lord Owen...I want to be like him. Spend my days happily pottering through libraries, researching ancient history while allowing the world to pass me by. You thought of me as an absolute ruler, but in truth I have less choice than you might think. I didn’t choose my wife...”

  “You settled for abandoning her instead,” Jack pointed out, tartly. “How many mistresses have you had?”

  “Too many and too few,” the King said. He looked up at Jack, sharply. “And how do you explain the women in the farms you...mated with while you worked for the Crown?”

  Jack winced, inwardly. “I had sex with them, yes,” he confessed. “I didn’t know what they were or what I was...”

  The King snorted. “Of course you knew what they were,” he said. “They were women who were helpless to resist you, who simply couldn’t say no. You have no sense of natural justice at all; your revolution is built on a lie. You’re the man who couldn’t face up to what he was without allowing it to warp him into a monster. Do you even know the names of the men and women who died on the airship you brought down in the Thames?”

  “There’s no such thing as natural justice,” Jack said, quietly. The King was right, no matter how much he wanted to deny it. “There’s only what we make for ourselves.”

  “And you have made a new world for yourself,” the King said. “What will you do with it, I wonder?”

  He smiled. “You’ve taken the city,” he added, “but you will find governing to be much harder than you think. What will you do for money if you abolish half the taxes, or if you force the businesses to pay better wages instead of using the profits to pay the government, or if you abandon the sugar colonies in the Caribbean? Who will feed the country if you abandon the new farming technology in England? What will you do when the colonies start revolting? And who will serve in the Royal Navy if you remove the country’s natural leaders?”

  “We will find answers to those problems,” Jack said, mildly.

  The King snorted, louder. “People have been trying to find solutions to those problems since the days of Alexander the Great,” he said. “There are countless texts on the subject of what makes a good monarch, or an ideal system of government. No one has ever produced a permanent solution – and no one ever will. Whatever system you devise, there will always be winners and losers.

  “You rail against the rich aristocrats who patronise the poor,” he added. “But if you take away their wealth and distribute it to the population, who will have enough money to invest in railways and shipping – even airships? Who will want to invest when there are no profits to be had? What will you do then?”

  He looked up. “I’ll tell you what you’ll do then,” he said. “You’ll break your own principles and do whatever it takes to rebuild Britain’s power. You’ll force the colonies to submit rather than granting them any independence. You won’t free the slaves...”

  “I will,” Jack said. “Slavery is a great evil...”

  “Would the slaves in America be better off without their chains?” The King asked. “And what would you say to those who own the slaves? Will you pay them for their human property or will you force them to let the slaves go without compensation? And if you do, what will you do when they produce a revolt against you?”

  The King chuckled. “Do you see why I was content to leave the government to Lord Liverpool and his Cabinet?” He asked. “I was King – and I could do nothing without risking the collapse of the entire system. Perhaps you’ll do better than me, perhaps not...I’ll wish you good luck. You’re going to need it.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “And what would you say if I told you that you were going to be executed on the morrow?”

  “I trust that you would allow me a parson so I could make my peace with God,” the King said. The tiredness had crept back into his voice. “If the sacrifice of a monarch is required for peace in my country, I am willing to serve.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jack said, flatly.

  “You’re in charge now,” the King said. “You can believe what you like.”

  Jack scowled at him, resisting the temptation to ram his fist into the King’s chest. “Your men have deserted you,” he said. “Your Butler escaped into London and hasn’t been seen since.”

  “Edmund has always looked after himself first,” the King said. He didn’t sound worried or concerned. “You’ll probably find him in one of the pie-shops, eating a pie and plotting his escape. He always thought of me as an idiot, even when I sought to patronise the latest works of English scholarship. I don’t suppose I can blame him. I’ve certainly spent enough time pretending to be nothing more than an idle pleasure-seeker.”

  “Instead of doing your job as King,” Jack hissed.

  “The job is impossible, as you will soon find out for yourself,” George IV said. He smiled. “Do you want to know what my father told me, during one of his lucid moments?” Jack cocked an eyebrow. “He asked me what right we had to be Kings – and then he answered the question. We had the right because we were Kings; like it or not, there was no one else on the Throne. We had to play the role because there was no one else in our shoes.”

  He shrugged. “And now you’re in charge, of London at least,” he said. “Best of luck, Master Jackson. You’re going to need it.”

  Jack studied him for a long moment, and then turned and walked out of the door, closing it firmly behind him. He wasn’t sure what he had expected when he met the King for the first time in five years; a man who gloated over what had happened to the poor during his reign, or a man who begged and pleaded for a mercy he knew would never come? Jack hadn’t expected to see a tired monarch, resigned to his fate. And yet he was right about one thing; there was always another monarch. Charles I had been beheaded – and instantly succeeded by Charles II, who had eventually returned to England and reclaimed the Throne. The government – whatever was left of it – wouldn’t give up just because Jack held the
King in his clutches.

  Olivia met him as he came down the stairs and into the map room. “There was a runner from Pall Mall,” she said. “Lord Blackburn has not been taken into custody.”

  Jack nodded, unsurprised. Lord Blackburn had always been good at looking after his own skin. A quick change of clothes, a pause long enough to scoop up everything valuable in his apartment and then he’d be out into the city, heading towards Oxford or Cambridge or wherever Lord Liverpool had fled since the uprising had begun. Besides, a Charmer was hardly as dangerous as Master Thomas. He might be caught on the streets and lynched before his magic had a chance to work on his attackers.

  “There are a lot of angry people out there,” she added. “They want to loot and burn the noble mansions.”

  “Leave them covered,” Jack said. He couldn’t blame the poor and downtrodden for wanting to destroy houses that would never be open to them, but they needed the aristocrats alive and – more importantly – the wealth stored within those houses. “If anyone shows too much enthusiasm, we’ll move them to the barricades.”

  The air in the map room was calmer than it had been earlier, with Davy and Ruddy directing their troops with the aid of several Talkers and a small army of messengers. Jack nodded to them as he glanced at the map, noting the system of barricades that were already taking shape within the city. If – when – the Army came to disperse the rabble, they wouldn’t find it a particularly easy task. There were even mines being floated down the Thames to make life interesting for the warships gathered where the Thames merged into the sea.

  He shook his head, exhausted. They would only have a few days to train most of the new recruits in using their weapons and other basic combat techniques. And then...who knew what would happen when the Army attacked the city? Davy’s figures suggested that they had about thirty thousand men, which seemed a vast number until one realised that they had to be armed, trained, and then deployed in a ring around the city. Smaller units would have to be kept in reserve; without Talkers, the task would have been nearly impossible. Jack didn’t know how Wolfe or Amherst or even Cromwell had coped in the days before Talkers. Coordinating a military force, even one on the defensive, would have been far harder.