“I can try,” she said, as she pulled on the trousers. They felt rough and uncomfortable against her bare skin, but at least they weren’t a silly dress. She struggled with her breasts for a few moments, binding them up with the remains of one of the dresses, before pulling the shirt over her chest. “How do I look?”
“Pretty,” Raechel said. “Adopted?”
Olivia looked at her. “Do I look young enough to be her daughter?”
“No,” Raechel said, dryly. “But how did you two meet?”
“Long story,” Olivia said. She stood and picked up one of the swords, hefting it in her hand. “Let me show you how to handle this properly.”
“I think I need a bigger sword,” Raechel said, as she picked up her own blade. “How am I meant to slice off their heads without being grabbed and bitten?”
“You’re not strong enough to carry a heavier blade,” Olivia said, firmly. She still recalled the first time she’d picked up a heavy blade in Cavendish Hall. It had been so heavy that she had almost dropped it seconds later. “And you need to hold the weapon upright at all times, rather than lean on it or put it down when you’re not fighting.”
She gave Raechel a cautionary look, then started to demonstrate the correct way to handle the blade. It felt odd, compared to the fencing blades she was used to using at Cavendish Hall, very clearly a dangerous weapon. There were no Healers in the building, she reminded herself, and the closest Healer she knew was Gregory. It was unlikely he would do anything to heal a foreigner, particularly someone who might fight the army of undead.
Olivia sighed. Normally, she would have fenced lightly with her partner, but now she merely concentrated on how to thrust, parry and defend oneself. The undead weren’t likely to come at them with swords. She’d certainly never seen them using anything more than hands and teeth as they charged their enemies.
“Go for the neck,” she said, again and again. “I’ve seen the undead take blows to the chest that leave them torn in half and yet they keep coming forward, crawling on their hands until they are smashed flat.”
Raechel gave her an odd look. “You were in London?”
“Yes,” Olivia said, flatly. She found it hard to like Raechel, even though she understood what Gwen saw in her. They were very alike, in many ways. “I was at the barricades during the Swing.” She watched Raechel’s expression furrow and sighed, inwardly. “Where were you during the Swing?”
“At my father’s estate,” Raechel said. There was a bitter tone in her voice. “My parents died shortly afterwards, leaving me in the care of my Aunt and Uncle. But they weren’t back in London until recently.”
Olivia shrugged. At least Raechel had known her parents. Olivia hadn’t known her father at all, while her mother had died while she was very young. Raechel looked slightly put out by her reaction, but it wasn’t something Olivia wanted to explain. Raechel was dangerously smart, smart enough to wonder why a mere Sensitive would be considered a suitable adopted daughter for the Royal Sorceress.
“My arm aches,” Raechel said, changing the subject. “Why?”
Olivia smirked. “Are you used to waving a sword about the room?”
Raechel shook her head. Olivia smiled, remembering how much she’d ached after the first few sessions, despite her tolerance for pain and discomfort. Raechel might be a fun person, but Olivia would have bet good money she’d never suffered any real discomfort in her life, even after her parents had died. The young aristocrats might feel the weight of their father’s hand from time to time – or the Sergeant’s cane, if they lived in Cavendish Hall – yet they’d never been starved almost to death. Nor had they had to struggle to find enough money to get a place to stay for the night, or sell their bodies just to stay alive. The little bastards didn’t know discomfort.
“You’ll be fine,” Olivia promised. She’d healed quickly, even without Lucy’s help, but Raechel didn’t seem to have any magic. There was no way to know just how quickly she would recover from anything. “You just need to build up the tolerance to handle the sword.”
Raechel looked oddly hopeful. “Can I pretend they have the face of my Aunt?”
“If you want,” Olivia said. She’d never thought of any of her fencing partners as her tormentors at Cavendish Hall; indeed, her tutor had strongly discouraged it. But now ... she could think of the undead as having Gregory’s face. It would help her behead them before they got to her. “Or think of them as having the face of your least favourite society butterfly, if you wish.”
“Still my Aunt,” Raechel said. She grinned at Olivia, then picked up the sword again, wincing slightly. “More practice?”
Olivia smiled. “Pain is how you know you’re stretching your muscles,” she said, remembering one of her tutor’s sayings. He’d never held back, once he’d finally grasped the idea that he was meant to be training a girl how to fence. “But you have to be careful not to take it too far.”
She paused as a banging sound echoed down the corridor. “What was that?”
Raechel smirked. It wasn’t a pleasant expression. “Oh, just my Aunt,” she said, airily. “She’s locked in her bedroom. I don’t think she likes it very much.”
She shrugged, her face hardening. “She’s locked me in once or twice too,” she added, nastily. “Serves her right.”
Olivia had to laugh. Somehow, she discovered that she quite liked Raechel after all.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In the sunlight, Gwen couldn’t help realising that Moscow was almost beautiful. It didn’t have the elegance of St Petersburg, but it had a style all of its own, particularly the core of the city. The reddish-brown buildings, some glittering with gold paint in the sunlight, were strikingly different from London. But the screams – and the hordes of undead moving through the streets – painted a very different picture. Moscow was fast becoming a city of the dead.
A Necropolis, Gwen thought, recalling just how many plays had been set in infested cities and towns after the first outbreaks of undead creatures. But there’s no one here to save the day.
She floated in the air, looking down at the dying city below. There were no signs of any humans in view, just the endlessly marching undead, breaking into houses, searching for any traces of the living and then moving on to the next house. It was almost hypnotic; they searched one house, then they searched it again and again, as if they didn’t quite realise that they’d searched the house already. Gwen hoped that meant that the Tsar, wherever he was, was having problems coordinating so many undead at once, no matter how far his mind had expanded. Or maybe he was just thinking of something else.
The undead paid her no heed as they moved about their deadly work. Her blood ran cold as she saw newcomers joining their ranks; men, women and children, some barely old enough to walk. Most of them were dressed in nightclothes, but others were naked, not that it mattered any longer. Their faces were twisted into savage masks, each one displaying a desperate hunger; their eyes burned with eerie yellow light. The only consolation, as far as she could see, was that none of them were carrying weapons. It looked impossible for the Tsar to coordinate an infantry unit made up of undead.
Unless he is just learning how to use his new abilities, Gwen thought. He may master it soon enough.
She shook her head. There was no precedent for someone to become a magician at such an advanced age ... but the Tsar wasn’t really that old, was he? He’d merely been worn down by trying to rule his ungrateful country during a series of natural and not-so-natural disasters. Gwen could understand the frustration that came from struggling against entrenched interests and determined opposition, but she’d never killed her political enemies. The Tsar might have been justified in purging his noblemen, yet now he’d sentenced his entire country to death – and then a hellish non-life. He’d gone completely mad.
She wanted to summon fire and rain death on the undead from above. It would be so easy, after she’d had a chance to sleep and regain her strength. But she couldn’t incinerat
e them all, while using her magic so blatantly would tell the Russian magicians precisely where she was. All she could do was watch and wait and hope to hell they found a way out of the necropolis before the undead came for them. But she wasn’t hopeful.
A dull rumbling sound caught her ear and she turned to look, just as a small palace collapsed into rubble. The undead swarms walked through the debris, tearing through the rocks and brick, looking for traces of human life. Gwen’s eyes narrowed as she puzzled over why the building had just collapsed. A building designed to survive Moscow’s winters would be strong enough to survive a horde of the undead, surely?
Magic, she thought, and drifted away from the building. Now she saw more clearly, she realised that the undead were swarming through all of the palaces, palaces that had to have belonged to some of the more treacherous noblemen. The Tsar, not content with killing his noblemen and watching them rise again to join his army, was wiping out all traces of their existence. She recalled some of the burned buildings from the Swing and shivered, despite the magic keeping her warm. The Tsar would have reshaped the continent completely by the time he was done.
She wanted to cry in frustration. She’d been too late to stop the Tsar, despite everything she’d done to sneak into Moscow, and now all she could do was watch as swarms of undead made their way through Moscow’s streets, looking for the living. There had been hundreds of thousands of poor refugees in the outskirts of the city, she knew; now, they would all be part of the undead army. And there was nothing she could do to stop the nightmare unfolding right in front of her. There was no magic that could burn an entire city to ash.
A scream split the air, a young girl’s scream. Gwen turned and saw a pair of girls and their parents, standing on a roof as the undead slowly climbed up towards them. Their father was holding a sword in one hand and a gun in the other, but Gwen had no illusions. One man, no matter how capable a swordsman, couldn’t stop a horde of charging undead. She acted before her mind quite caught up with her intentions, swooping down towards the rooftop and summoning fire. The undead fell backwards as her flames washed through them, burning them to ash. But there were countless more where they had come from, advancing towards the building.
Gwen landed on the rooftop, praying that at least one of the Russians spoke English. The father reminded her of the nobleman who had taken Raechel to the first dance in St Petersburg, although he was clearly older and wiser. He gaped at her as if he didn’t quite believe his eyes. Behind him, his wife and daughters stared openly, the younger daughter muttering a word under her breath time and time again. Gwen smiled at them, suddenly aware of her appearance. They had to find her more frightening than the undead.
“I don’t speak Russian,” she said, as a low moaning rose up from the undead below. “Can you understand me?”
The Russian stared at her, then nodded. “I understand you,” he said. His voice was low and raspy, while his accent made his words almost impossible to understand. “Who are you?”
“A friend,” Gwen said. She’d seen some of the French propaganda about the Royal Sorcerers Corps and the Royal Sorceress in particular and she had no wish to make them baulk at accepting her assistance. “I can take you somewhere safe.”
“Yes, please,” the Russian said. “But how?”
Gwen turned. The moaning from below was getting louder, attracting hordes of undead towards their position. Gwen watched them flowing out from buildings, summoned by a call that seemed incomprehensible. But if dogs could communicate a great deal of information through barking, she thought, why couldn’t the undead do the same? And the Tsar might be watching through their eyes, just as Olivia had done during her captivity.
She swore under her breath as the undead started scrambling up the scorched walls, climbing over one another to get to the top. They weren’t showing the cold intelligence of large swarms of undead, unlike the ones in Haiti, which suggested the Tsar was still controlling them, if indirectly. But piling themselves up against the walls would eventually allow them to reach the humans on the top. Gwen summoned fire and launched it down towards the undead, then turned to smile at the Russians.
“This is going to be disconcerting,” she warned. Doctor Norwell had once asked her to take him for a flight, an odd request for the normally staid theoretical magician. But he hadn’t enjoyed the experience as much as he might have thought. “Brace yourself.”
She caught hold of them with magic, then launched all five of them into the air, flying away from the burning building. It had caught fire, she saw, hopefully incinerating more of the undead before they could escape the flames and regroup. The moaning grew louder, hundreds of undead looking up from the streets towards the flying humans, before slowly fading away. Somehow, Gwen and her charges had passed beyond their awareness.
The Russians looked panicked, she saw, as she angled their course back towards the palace – and the ranks of waiting undead. She tried to shoot the mother a reassuring glance, but it came off as more of a grimace. Her two daughters were staring down at the ground, their hands stroking the air as if they expected to feel something transparent holding them up and protecting them from the undead. Gwen felt a moment of sympathy – despite her powers, she had never liked flying under someone else’s control – which she ruthlessly pushed aside. She had no time to let pity distract her.
Romulus was standing on the roof, supervising several of the older diplomats, when Gwen landed, dropping the Russians to the floor. They looked surprised to see Romulus – they’d probably been raised on horror stories about dark-skinned Mongols – but they were clearly too relieved to make any trouble. Romulus chatted briefly to the father, then directed the mother and her two daughters inside the building. Gwen settled down on the rooftop, feeling sick at heart. The girls couldn’t have been older than eight or nine and yet the Tsar would have turned them into the undead, if they’d survived the first bite. None of the undead were particularly gentle when they bit their victims.
“Lady Gwen,” Sir Sidney said. Gwen looked up to see him coming out of the rooftop entrance. “Did you see anything interesting?”
“Just hordes of undead,” Gwen said, and recounted her observations. “We’re going to have to barricade the windows, just to stop them climbing up and breaking in.”
Sir Sidney looked irked. Gwen didn’t blame him. The building was stronger than any comparable building in London, but it had far too many glass windows – a sign of status in Russia – and all of them could be broken down by the undead. Barricading them all could take time, time they didn’t have. The ranks of undead outside the palace wouldn’t stay still forever.
“We need more people,” Sir Sidney said, finally. “Did you see many others?”
Gwen shook her head. The Tsar had launched his first strikes in the night, when most people would have been tucked up in bed. They would have been overwhelmed before they knew what was going on, let alone had a chance to defend themselves. The family she’d saved had been lucky, she suspected. But their luck had finally run out.
“By now, he could have the entire city,” she said. “Do we have any way to get a message out?”
“Not that we’ve found,” Sir Sidney said. He took her arm and led her towards the edge of the roof, some distance from the handful of guards. “How far can you fly?”
Gwen looked at him, sharply. She’d once flown from Cambridge to London, back during the Swing, but the effort had almost killed her. If it hadn’t been for Master Thomas, it would have killed her. And that was around sixty miles. It was over four hundred miles from Moscow to St Petersburg.
“Maybe around fifty miles,” she estimated. “Why?”
“If worst comes to worst,” Sir Sidney said, “I want you to leave us and fly home.”
“No,” Gwen said. Even if she had been willing to abandon Olivia, Raechel and everyone else, she couldn’t have flown all the way back to London. Even reaching the German states would be difficult. She’d have to stop along the way and hunt for
food ... in the middle of the Russian countryside, where finding food was far from easy. “I won’t leave you.”
Sir Sidney rested his arm on her shoulder, an oddly intimate gesture. “There are thousands upon thousands of the undead in this city,” he said. “I don’t know why we have been spared so far, but when they come for us – and they will – we will be overwhelmed. Even your powers aren’t enough to hold back thousands of undead indefinitely.”
Gwen didn’t want to admit it, but he was right.
“And then the Tsar will start attacking other Russian cities, then advance down south to Turkey or west into France,” Sir Sidney continued. “They have to be warned and we have no other way to get a message out.”
He squeezed her shoulder lightly. “Talleyrand can give you letters of introduction, should you reach French territory,” he added. “Hell, some of the noblemen here can give you letters for other Russian officers. You can get the word out.”
“And leave you all to die,” Gwen said.
There was a Talker at the embassy in St Petersburg, she knew, one with the reach to contact London. But getting there would be difficult, even for her. She’d need to find a great deal of food along the way or die in the Russian countryside, but where could she find the food? It was unlikely that the peasants would be interested in helping her. They’d be more likely, if some of the horror stories she’d heard were true, to chop her up for the stew pot.
But even if she did make it to St Petersburg, there was no way anyone from Britain – or France – could reach Moscow in time to help. And God alone knew what the Russian nobility would do. They might side with the Tsar, despite his madness, or start a civil war, while the undead advanced in all directions. It seemed unlikely that they would join the outsiders in stopping the undead while there was still time.
If there is still time, she thought, morbidly. The Tsar’s undead empire was already snowballing rapidly. Who knew where it would end?
Necropolis (Royal Sorceress Book 3) Page 27
