The Great Game (Royal Sorceress)

by Nuttall, Christopher

  Gwen studied him, thoughtfully. He looked... mussed, as if he’d been forced to leave the office on very short notice. Coming to think of it, she reminded herself, he rarely ever left the office. Whatever had happened had to be urgent – or disastrous.

  Lord Mycroft leaned forward, resting his hands on top of his cane. The pose reminded Gwen so strongly of Master Thomas that she felt an odd sense of déjà vu for a long moment, before firmly reminding herself that Master Thomas was dead. She missed him, even with what had happened in his final hours. If she’d had more time to learn the ropes, and impress the Royal Committee, would she have had so many problems now?

  “Tell me,” Lord Mycroft said. “Have you ever heard of Sir Travis Mortimer?”

  Gwen hesitated, thinking hard. “Not that I recall,” she said, finally. He didn’t sound like one of the men that Lady Mary had tried to convince her would make a suitable husband – and he wasn’t one of the people she dealt with as Royal Sorcerer. It wasn’t really surprising; there were so many people knighted in the British Empire that she couldn’t hope to be familiar with them all.

  “He was one of your people,” Lord Mycroft said, with a single raised eyebrow. “But, to be fair, he spent the Swing in India, so you might not have met him personally.”

  Gwen flushed. She didn’t know every magician in the Royal Sorcerers Corps – and probably never would. The sorcerers that had been sent to India or America or South Africa were on very long-term deployments. Some of them might not even have heard that Master Thomas had died, to be replaced by a slip of a girl. Even with Talkers, it took months for news to reach everywhere in the Empire.

  “He was a Sensitive,” Lord Mycroft added. “Quite an unusual fellow, really.”

  Gwen nodded, tightly. Sensitives were uncommon – and they tended to be predominantly women, rather than men. Doctor Norwell had admitted, when pressed, that men liked having the big and noisy powers, but preferred not to talk about possessing the more subtle powers. Charm was less effective if the victim knew that he was being Charmed... and Sensitivity sounded disgracefully feminine. Men!

  But, masculine or not, it could be a very useful talent.

  “A powerful Sensitive,” she mused. “What happened to him?”

  Lord Mycroft scowled. “Sir Travis was discovered dead this morning,” he said, grimly. “I was informed immediately, naturally, and came at once to Cavendish Hall. Your presence is required.”

  Gwen winced. Losing a magician hurt, even if she hadn’t known him personally. Maybe Master Thomas had been able to accept losing his people calmly, but she felt as if she would never master that skill. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to.

  “I see,” she said, thinking hard. “What killed him?”

  “A blow to the back of the head, according to the report,” Lord Mycroft said. “Do you see why that is odd?”

  “Yes,” Gwen said, slowly. “A Sensitive should not have died that way.”

  When she pushed her limits, she was almost completely aware of her surroundings, right up to the point where the sudden influx of information threatened to overwhelm her mind. A Sensitive, with only one talent, would either go mad or learn to live with it – and if he succeeded, he’d have a formidable tool. It was impossible to lie to a Sensitive, or prevent one from reading you, no matter how much you tried. Even keeping one’s mouth shut didn’t hide the reaction that betrayed your innermost thoughts.

  No Sensitive had a comfortable life. They rarely slept well – a single noise could awake them – and their marriages tended to end poorly. Gwen knew, from watching her own parents, that there were matters her mother and father never discussed openly, but that option would never be available to a Sensitive. Master Thomas had urged her to develop her Sensitivity, but never to rely on it. A Sensitive could be crippled by a sudden loud noise.

  She looked over at Lord Mycroft and frowned. “Sir Travis was in India?”

  “Indeed he was,” Lord Mycroft confirmed. “And yet he managed to keep from being overwhelmed by the exotic.”

  “Impressive,” Gwen admitted. Maybe she would have liked Sir Travis, if they’d ever had a chance to meet. Or maybe he would have been as smug and full of himself as many of the senior magicians. “What do you want me to do?”

  Lord Mycroft smiled. “I want you to investigate his death,” he said, calmly. “That is one of your roles as Royal Sorceress.”

  Gwen blinked. “I am no detective,” she pointed out. “Surely your brother...”

  “My brother has... other matters to concern himself with,” Lord Mycroft admitted. “But even if he were free, it would still be your responsibility. A magician is dead, seemingly murdered. We must know the truth before time runs out.”

  Murdered, Gwen thought. It didn’t seem likely. Sneaking up on a Sensitive was impossible, unless the magician was drugged and comatose. Sir Travis would have known if someone with murderous intentions approached him – or, for that matter, if someone had been Charmed into serving as an unwitting cat’s paw. How could a murderer have got close to him?

  Maybe he was tricked, somehow, she thought. If nothing else, they would have to solve the mystery to ensure it could never happen again. But she honestly didn’t know where to begin.

  “Start with the crime scene,” Lord Mycroft advised. “And then see where it leads you.”

  Investigating magical crimes was part of the Royal Sorcerer’s job, Master Thomas had told her, but he’d never given her any formal training. There just hadn’t been enough time... and there might not have been any formal training. Gwen had watched Lestrade at work long enough to know that he had a habit of chasing the blindingly obvious or finding himself unable to work out how to proceed. Scotland Yard just didn’t seem to have very many detectives.

  But any one of them would be better prepared than Gwen.

  “The police will be supporting you,” Lord Mycroft assured her. “But you do have to take the lead. It is expected of you.”

  Gwen scowled. If she pushed someone else forward, even Mycroft’s brother, the Royal Committee would snicker and claim that she was shirking her responsibilities. And if she did try to find the killer, if there was a killer, they would claim that she was shirking her other responsibilities. Master Thomas hadn’t had to deal with so much backchat...

  ... Or maybe he did, she reminded herself. She’d never attended any formal meetings of the Royal Committee before he’d died, merely the emergency meetings before the Swing had gripped London and the government had had to flee the city.

  “Send me a couple of clerks,” she said, resignedly. If she could shuffle the paperwork onto someone else – at least the task of filtering out the unimportant letters from the hundreds she received each day – it would make life a little easier. And perhaps she could pass some decision-making down to the senior magicians. She didn’t have to approve their training schedules, did she?

  “They will be at Cavendish Hall later today,” Lord Mycroft assured her. “And don’t worry. They know how to be discreet.”

  The carriage rattled to a stop. Gwen almost jumped as a hidden panel appeared behind her head, revealing the face of the coachman. “The police are blocking the road up to the building, sir,” he said, to Mycroft. “They insist that you have to walk.”

  “Unsurprising,” Lord Mycroft said. He stood up, opened the door and clambered out with remarkable agility for a man his size. “You can wait with the other cabs until I come back.”

  Gwen jumped down beside Mycroft and glanced around. Like most aristocratic houses in this part of London, Mortimer Hall was surrounded by a brick wall that served more to mark the owner’s territory than provide a barrier. Gwen could have scrambled over it without using magic; given that she could see apple trees rising up on the far side, she had a feeling that the young men in the district probably raided the garden regularly. Olivia had told her that it was a common rite of passage among the young men unfortunate enough to grow up in the Rookery. Raiding an aristocrat’s garden made
them feel like they were fighting back, even though it was petty and pointless.

  Lord Mycroft led the way down towards the gates, which were guarded by a line of burly policemen in blue uniforms. She winced as she saw a handful of reporters already there, shouting questions towards the policemen and a handful of men in black suits, who probably worked for Mycroft. Some reporters were decent people, she was prepared to admit, but others had a remarkable skill for twisting the truth into something unrecognisable, without ever actually telling a lie. The freedom of the press was yet another consequence of the Swing – there were over two thousand new newspapers founded in London in the last six months – but there were times when she thought that it had gone too far.

  And they recognised her, of course.

  “Lady Gwen,” one reporter shouted. “Do you have any comments?”

  Gwen ignored them as best as she could, even though the questions were growing more and more absurd. Hardly anyone seemed to know that Sir Travis was a Sensitive – which did make a certain amount of sense – and half of the reporters seemed to have decided that a magician had killed him. It hadn’t been that long since Jack had terrorised the aristocracy, after all. A couple of rogue magicians could easily break into a house and kill the inhabitants...

  She pushed the thought aside as Lord Mycroft led her through the gates. Mortimer Hall was smaller than Gwen’s own home, built in a dark gothic style that had been all the rage a hundred or so years ago. It seemed to have survived the Swing with very little damage, but she couldn’t help noticing that a number of windows were boarded up and the Garden had been allowed to slip out of control. The handful of statues – all angels weeping and covering their faces, as if they were trying not to see the evil of the world – sent a shiver running down her spine.

  “I believe that Sir Travis’s mother died while he was in India,” Lord Mycroft said. “His father died when he was very young, leaving her to bring up their child on her own. She refused to move back with her family, even though there was no hint of scandal tainting the birth. Instead, she stayed here.”

  Gwen nodded, sourly. Magical children terrified the non-magicians; God knew she’d terrified hundreds of servants into giving their notices and seeking employment elsewhere before Master Thomas had taken her to be his apprentice. A Sensitive wouldn’t accidentally burn down the house or go flying, but he’d still have too much insight and a complete lack of discretion. Gwen suspected that Sir Travis’s mother had decided, after one or two incidents, that it was safer to keep her child isolated.

  She could have given him up for adoption instead, she thought, realising that she would probably have liked her, if they’d ever met. But then, Gwen’s mother had never seriously considered giving her up, even after her social reputation began to suffer. Maybe she’d underestimated her mother all along.

  The doorway was wide open, but guarded by two more policemen. “The Inspector is awaiting you in the study,” one of them assured Lord Mycroft. The other was staring at Gwen, as if he couldn’t quite grasp how she was wearing male clothing. “Do you require an escort?”

  “I have been here before,” Lord Mycroft said. “But thank you for the offer.”

  Gwen stared at his back as they walked inside. If Lord Mycroft had been here... Sir Travis had to have been important. Maybe it made sense to have the meeting away from Whitehall, where a Sensitive would find it hard to avoid being overwhelmed by his surroundings, but if that had been a problem, how would Sir Travis have been able to operate in India?

  She couldn’t ask when there were so many policemen around, so she concentrated on looking around and studying the interior of the building. It was surprisingly bare; she could see places on the walls where portraits had hung, before they had been taken down and stored elsewhere. There were definitely signs that someone had been trying to keep the place tidy, but it was clear that they were losing the fight. Dust was everywhere, particularly in places few men would notice. Maybe, Gwen told herself, Lady Mary’s lessons on how to run a household hadn’t been wasted after all. It was clear that Sir Travis hadn’t been a married man.

  The stairs seemed reassuringly solid, even though half of the carpeting had been removed and the rest had ugly marks from where dozens of policemen had tramped up and down. At the top, two doors had been forced open by the policemen, revealing rooms so dusty that it was clear that no one had been inside them for months, if not years. The pieces of furniture in the opened rooms were covered with cloths, providing some protection against the ravages of time. Somehow, Gwen doubted that they would still be in good condition anyway.

  “Sir Travis saw no need to use the rooms,” Lord Mycroft explained. “They were closed off, one by one.”

  He stopped outside a larger room and peered inside. “Lestrade,” he said, by way of greeting. “I trust that the crime scene remains undisturbed?”

  “Yes, Your Lordship,” Lestrade said. He looked understandably nervous; the last time aristocrats had started to die, he hadn’t managed to catch the killer either. But then, he wouldn’t have wanted to catch a Master Magician without some heavy magical support. “Sir Travis is lying right where he fell.”

  Gwen braced herself as she stepped into the room. Few people in London would have been comfortable allowing a woman to look at dead bodies; she still remembered the incredulous looks the policemen had thrown at her and Master Thomas when they’d thought they couldn’t be seen. Now, part of her was used to seeing corpses... London had been littered with bodies by the time the Swing was over. And it was part of her job.

  Sir Travis looked to have been decent, she decided. He was surprisingly pale for a man who had been in India and Turkey, but that might not have been surprising. A Sensitive would prefer to avoid the sun where possible. He was clearly healthy, wearing a thin nightshirt and trousers that would have allowed him to host meetings without bothering to get properly dressed. There were some people – Lady Mary, for example – who would have complained about such informality, but a Sensitive could be counted upon to know his friends.

  “That’s the cause of death,” Lestrade said, pointing to the back of Sir Travis’s head. Blood matted his hair, revealing a nasty crack in his skull. Even a Healer couldn’t have saved someone whose skull had been caved in. Death, Gwen suspected, would have been effectively instant. “Can you sense anything from the wound?”

  Gwen gritted her teeth and knelt down beside the body. Carefully, she opened her senses, bracing herself for a rush of memories and impressions burned onto the world by the trauma of Sir Travis’s death. Instead, there was nothing...

  ... apart from an alarmingly familiar scent.

  “Wolfbane,” she said. “Someone wanted to block a werewolf’s nose.”

  “Yes,” Lestrade said. “Anything else?”

  Gwen hesitated. “No,” she said, finally. There should have been something, unless Sir Travis had been taken completely by surprise. But if that were the case, how could someone have sneaked up on a Sensitive? “I take it that he couldn’t have committed suicide.”

  Lestrade gave her an odd look. “Suicides normally shoot themselves, or stab themselves, or take poison, or jump off bridges,” he said. “I don’t see how he could have killed himself in such a manner.”

  Gwen stood upright and looked around. There were no signs of a struggle, apart from a broken object – a vase, she guessed, as there were several other intact vases in the room – that had been flung against the wall. Could it have been the murder weapon? She walked over and picked up one of the pieces, only to discover that it was almost eggshell-thin. It would have shattered on a person’s skull, without inflicting any real damage.

  “I shall leave you to your task, Lady Gwen,” Lord Mycroft said. He looked over at Lestrade. “See to it that she gets all the help and support that she requires.”

  “Of course, Your Lordship,” Lestrade said. “But we have already arrested a suspect.”

  Gwen blinked. “A suspect?”

  “The o
ne other person in the house when Sir Travis met his untimely end,” Lestrade said. “His maid. She is currently in the kitchen, being interrogated...”

  “I think I should talk to her,” Gwen said, shortly.

  “A good idea,” Lord Mycroft said. “I shall see you in Whitehall, Lady Gwen.”

  He bowed and left the room, twisting slightly so he could pass through the door. Gwen watched him go, then looked back at Lestrade. She could understand why he’d arrested the maid, but how could someone have harboured murderous intentions for so long and yet remained undetected by her master? A Sensitive would know better than to treat a servant as part of the furniture...

  “Take me to her,” Gwen ordered.

  Lestrade bowed and led her out of the room.

  Chapter Nine

  Sir Travis’s mother died just after the Swing,” Lestrade said, as they made their way down to the kitchen. “The maid was left in the house all alone until Sir Travis returns from India – and he dies bare weeks later. I don’t think that was a coincidence.”

  Gwen scowled, keeping her thoughts to herself. Lestrade was as tenacious as a bulldog, which wasn’t always a good thing. When he came up with a theory that fitted the facts, he rarely gave up on it easily, to the point where he twisted or ignored later facts so he could keep his original theory. She had to admit that two deaths in the same house looked suspicious, but it didn’t necessarily follow that the maid was a murderess.

  “Maybe,” she said, finally. “How did Sir Travis’s mother die?”

  “Cold, the doctor claimed,” Lestrade said. “She did have a hard life – plenty of family heirlooms had to be sold off to provide for her son. And many of their cousins called her a traitor.”

  Gwen nodded. Every aristocratic family with a high opinion of itself – which was almost all of them – prided itself on passing houses, land, paintings, jewels and worthless tat picked up overseas down to its distant descendents. There were aristocratic families, having trouble making ends meet, that could have solved their problems by selling off some of their family collections. But that wasn’t the done thing in Polite Society. Sir Travis’s mother would have been accused of throwing away her son’s heritage, even though she would have had no choice. It wasn’t as if his relatives had helped her when she needed it.