The Royal Sorceress (16 page)

Inside, it was warm enough to pass for India. Jack pushed the second door open and walked into a room. He saw a handful of children waiting for him there, kneeling on cushions and wearing outfits that revealed far too much of their bodies. The oldest couldn’t have been any more than ten years old. Someone had painted their faces and styled their hair until they looked almost angelically beautiful. It was a beauty intended to attract the worst kind of person. He shuddered as he caught the eyes of a young boy, with long fluttering eyelashes. The boy gave him a smile that almost sent Jack fleeing in horror.

Jack had lived in France. He’d seen things that would shock the more straight-laced British public. And he had spent time and money in brothels, enjoying prostitutes from all over the world. But this was the worst kind of perversion. None of the girls were sexually mature, which meant that they would burn out quickly after they were broken to their task. Their owners would throw them out onto the streets or sell them onwards, knowing that there was no longer any money to be made from their bodies.

A door opened and a middle-aged woman looked out, her face puzzled. She caught sight of Jack and stared at him, unsure of who he was or what he was doing in her building. Jack didn’t give her time to react; he lunged forward, picked her up with his bare hands and slammed her against the wall. She let out a yelp that tailed off when he tightened his grip on her throat. If she intended to call for help, he was quite prepared to snap her neck and search the building personally. God alone knew how many famous people had secret ties to the building.

“I’m here for one person,” Jack growled, pushing his face right up against his victim’s nose. “Where is Lord Fitzroy?”

The woman stared at him. “I can’t,” she said, finally. Jack winced as the smell assailed his nostrils. She’d lost control of her bowels. The children were giggling, but none of them had moved from their position. They’d been trained to behave, rewarded with sweets and punished with beatings that left their skin unmarked. “He’ll kill me…”

Jack thrust his face up against hers, allowing a little magic to illuminate his eyes. “I hate you,” he hissed. “I want to break you. I want to show you exactly how these children have suffered. I want to boil your blood inside your body. And if you don’t tell me where he is, I promise you that you will die in the most horrific manner I can devise…”

The woman recoiled from his eyes. “I’ll show you,” she said, desperately. Tears were running down her cheeks. He’d shocked her far worse than he’d dared hope. “He’s upstairs…”

Jack followed her up the stairs, magic at the ready. The corridors were cramped, barely large enough for a single man to walk with his head bowed. He watched as the woman led him past a dozen doors until they reached an unmarked hatch, and then stopped. Jack smiled as she told him that Lord Fitzroy was inside, and then slammed a pulse of magic into her head. Her lifeless body hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. He’d wanted to make her suffer, but there had been no time for indulging himself. There would be time for that later.

He opened the door and stepped into a warm room. Lord Fitzroy looked up in alarm from his bath, which he was sharing with three naked girls, all well below marriageable age. Jack fought down the urge to vomit as he closed the door behind him, not taking his eyes off Lord Fitzroy. The Lord was reaching desperately for something hidden in his clothes. Jack smiled, despite the cold hatred spreading through his mind, as he saw the pistol. Lord Fitzroy hadn’t entirely trusted the establishment to guarantee his safety, after all.

“I wouldn’t bother,” he said, as Lord Fitzroy took aim. His hand was shaky, so shaky that Jack wondered if he – the target – wasn’t the safest man in the room. “That really isn’t going to hurt me.”

Lord Fitzroy fired. The children yelped as the bullet came to a halt in front of Jack, caught by his magical field. Jack took a step forward, and then another, ignoring the second and third shots. After that, he yanked the weapon out of the Lord’s hand with magic and threw it across the room. A second later, he picked up the girls, more gently, and put them down beside the piles of clothing. They looked…traumatized.

Jack smiled at them. “Do you like this man?”

They shook their heads, almost in unison. “Neither do I,” Jack said. He grinned at them, enjoying the feeling of doing something good for once. “Get dressed and then I will take you out of here.”

He turned back to Lord Fitzroy and chuckled nastily as the Lord rose to his feet, watery foam washing off his body and revealing his nakedness. The Lord was holding a knife in his hand, although Jack had no idea where he’d stashed it, probably in the pile of clothing that had concealed his pistol. Jack gestured with a hand, pulled the knife out of Lord Fitzroy’s hand, and angled it back towards the Lord. Lord Fitzroy had no time to scream as the knife slashed at his genitals and cut them right off. Bright red blood flowed from the wound as he staggered and fell back into the water. Jack stepped forward, almost casually, and removed his sword from his scabbard.

“I wish I had time to make you suffer,” he said, as he pulled Lord Fitzroy’s body out of the bath. “I’ll have to leave that to the many thousand minions of Satan.”

He cut Lord Fitzroy’s head off with one stroke of the blade. He’d designed the sword himself, using magic to sharpen the finest cutting blade in the world. Swords were useless against magic and few people expected a magician to carry a sword, but Jack had seen advantages in concealing his powers. The headless corpse fell back into the water, blood streaming out into the pool, but Jack ignored it. Instead, he wrapped the head in his cloak and turned back to the children. They were all clad in short shirts designed for adults, shirts that came all the way down to their knees.

“Come on,” he said. The children were staring at him, their eyes wide. They were thinner than he had expected, although it shouldn’t have surprised him. The owners of the establishment wouldn’t want to feed them more than the bare necessities. “It’s time to go.”

Leaving the body behind, he went from door to door, peeking into the private rooms. A number were empty, but a handful held others who had been invited to the perverted establishment. Jack killed them before they had any chance of escape, adding the abused children to his small following. Before he knew it, he had twenty-two half-naked children, girls and boys, following him, looking up at him worshipfully. The sensation of actually
helping
people, even in a small way, made him feel proud. He’d accomplished something concrete for tiny lives, the lives that really mattered.

He knew why the establishment existed. The children hadn’t been kidnapped; there would have been no need to steal them from their families. They would have been sold by their parents, who chose to believe promises that their children would be well cared for – and that they would receive good positions. Maybe they knew the truth – maybe they guessed at the truth – but it wouldn’t have been enough to convince them otherwise. The money from the pimps and their masters would make the difference between surviving another winter, or the entire family dying in the cold.

It was far from the only place where children were abused. In the workhouses, children as young as three years old were put to work, fed little more than gruel and flogged savagely if they so much as faltered in their work. There was no shortage of replacements when they died – and many did – and those that rebelled often found themselves broken, or cast out onto the streets to die. Jack had seen it all, back when his eyes had been opened, and he hadn’t been able to look away. Perhaps his first plan had failed, perhaps he had been forced to flee to France while Master Thomas and the Dragoons thought him dead, but he hadn’t given up. And maybe this time he would genuinely change things for the better.

He herded the children down the stairs and into the lobby. Two guards were standing there, eying the children with half-puzzled, half-disgusted eyes. Jack cut them both down before they could react, cursing them as their dead bodies fell to the ground. They’d known what had been happening here, behind shuttered windows and locked doors, and they’d guarded it, rather than raising the alarm. Maybe they had felt that they had had little choice – the visitors to the building had powerful connections and would never be brought to justice – but Jack didn’t care. They were just as guilty as the men who came to the building to force themselves into prepubescent girls or fondle young boys. They disgusted him.

“Get some proper clothes,” he ordered the children, as he checked through the final two rooms. Unsurprisingly, there was very little suitable for children, making it harder for them to run away. He was mildly surprised that they hadn’t been chained like animals. There were brothels where the girls were tied down with their legs spread, making it utterly impossible to resist their customers. It was an old trick for breaking a girl who showed any sign of resistance. “Pull those cloaks around you – hurry.”

He looked outside into the darkened streets, waving to the guards. They came up to him – and he burned them both down, nodding to Olivia as she appeared from an alleyway. The remaining guards would be alerted soon enough; by then, they had to be well away from the building. If Master Thomas was on watch – and if he put two and two together – he might realise what had happened. But then, whatever his other faults, Master Thomas wouldn’t have patronised the brothel. He might have been a reactionary, using his powers to impede change, yet he did have his limits.

“Take them back to the house and introduce them to Lucy,” Jack ordered. He wanted to escort the children personally, but he had another mission. It might have been better to leave the children to die, yet he couldn’t bring himself to do that, not when they were innocents. They hadn’t volunteered to serve in the brothel. “I’ll be along after I’ve finished with the head.”

He glanced down at his cloak, which still held Lord Fitzroy’s head. Waiting until Olivia and her string of followers had vanished into the darkness, he turned back into the building and shaped a thought with his mind. Fire leapt from his fingertips and scorched the side of the building, flaring down the corridors and into the lobby. Expensive carpets, imported from Persia, caught fire rapidly, incinerating the wooden walls and paintings someone had hung above the carpets. The building itself caught fire seconds later, leaving the bodies and the evidence to be consumed by the flames. Jack stepped backwards, knowing that the fire could burn him, and used his magic to lift himself up to the nearest rooftop. The fire was already spreading out of control.

A clanging sound in the distance announced the approach of London’s fire brigade. The city was justly proud of its fire-fighting service – it hadn’t been
that
long since the Great Fire of London – but they wouldn’t be able to save the brothel. They’d be lucky if they managed to prevent the fire from spreading to the buildings next door, even if they did have the world’s most modern underground water supply to draw on. They might even have to start dynamiting the nearby buildings, just to prevent the fire from spreading out to consume much of the city. Magic might have started the blaze, but no magic Jack knew would be able to quench it.

Jack took one last look at the roaring flames and then turned and started to make his way along the rooftops. It was a long walk to Fairweather Hall. And then, he promised himself silently, the oppressors of the masses would know the meaning of the word fear.

Chapter Fourteen

F
airweather Hall was beautifully illuminated against the darkness, glowing with magic lanterns. Gwen watched as the carriage slowly drew closer and closer to the stairs leading into the building. By long custom, the guests would be expected to leave their carriages one by one, entering the building and mingling with the other guests once inside. The host and hostess would be waiting for them, allowing them the chance to greet each of the guests personally before they entered the ballroom.

She smiled, wondering what they would make of her. It had taken her hours to decide what to wear, if only because of her changed status. Finally, she had decided to wear a black dress, even though it might cause offence; young ladies were not supposed to wear black unless there had been a death in the family. But black was the colour worn by the sorcerers and Gwen knew that, one day, she would be the Royal Sorceress. Black was her colour. She’d braided her golden hair – shorter now, because long hair tended to get in the way when she was practicing with magic – and tied it up in a ponytail. Lombardi had stared at her when he’d seen her, suggesting at least one person was impressed. Gwen hoped that Lord and Lady Fairweather would feel the same way.

The carriage reached the steps and Lombardi got out, holding up one hand to help Gwen climb down. He looked terrified, but he was still managing to remember his manners. Gwen rewarded him with a smile as they started to climb up the steps towards the waiting Lord and Lady. There was no sign of Master Thomas or anyone else who might perform introductions and the last time Gwen had seen either of them had been when she’d been a child. They knew Lombardi, though, and appeared to take no notice of Gwen’s dress. She was almost disappointed.

Inside, they were greeted by the sound of music and happy laughter. Young couples were already out on the dance floor, waltzing to a tune Gwen vaguely recognised. There would be no formal dances for at least an hour, allowing the newcomers a chance to get used to dancing and overcome their nerves. Gwen looked up at Lombardi, who had fixed a slightly pained expression on his face, and smiled. He looked as if he was on the verge of bolting at any second. She held onto his arm gently and pulled him onto the dance floor. He seemed to know almost nothing about dancing – from where he should put his hands without violating protocol to how to move with the tune – but Gwen was patient. She had never tried to teach anyone how to dance before, but she had had lessons as a child and knew the basic steps. All the dancers really had to do was move with the music and remember not to move too quickly or too slowly.