The Royal Sorceress (29 page)

Master Jackson scowled at his companion. “We won’t try to harm you,” he promised. He held out a hand and Gwen took it gingerly. It felt warm, almost too warm. Her hand, when she pulled it back, was mottled with oddly coloured skin. It felt almost as if she had been burned. “We mean you no harm.”

Gwen flushed, remembering the chase across London’s rooftops. She’d made a dreadful mistake. She should have held back and waited for Master Thomas, or a squad of trained combat magicians, rather than giving chase herself. And now she was a prisoner of the underground. God alone knew what they had in mind for her, but she was sure that it wouldn’t be pleasant, no matter what they said. She looked down at her arm and saw that the reddish skin was fading away. What had they done to her?

“I’m going to turn my back,” Master Jackson – Jack – informed her. “Lucy will help you to get out of those rags and into something more comfortable. Please don’t try anything stupid – take it from me, you’re in no condition for a fight.”

Oddly, he sounded as if he genuinely cared about her. Gwen reminded herself that he was probably using Charm and watched him carefully as he turned his back. Lucy helped her out of bed and held her upright as her head started to spin, almost as if she was recovering from a cold or the flu. She’d been ill as a child, Gwen remembered, and had been bedridden for nearly a week. The doctors had promised that she would recover, but Lady Mary hadn’t believed them. She genuinely did love Gwen, in her way. The thought made tears prickle at the corner of Gwen’s eyes. Would she ever see her mother again?

The dress she’d worn to her brother’s dinner party had cost nearly two hundred pounds. It was lucky that Master Thomas had given her a clothing budget, or else she would have been dependent upon her mother’s tastes in clothing. The dress was now a wreck, with much of the fancy embroidery ripped apart and great slits reaching up her legs. She flushed as she realised that she must have shown parts of London her underclothes, even her bare skin. No wonder the man she’d killed – and she shuddered at the thought – had taken her for a whore.

Her bare skin looked strange. The mottled pattern she had seen on her hands was all over her body, slowly blurring into the original skin. She’d felt bones breaking, yet she now felt intact and well, apart from the dizziness. Holding up her hands in front of her face, she studied them, puzzled. They’d broken when she’d hit the ground, and yet...she was alive and well. It made absolutely no sense at all. She caught Lucy’s eye and silently asked a question. The older woman merely winked at her.

Gwen’s mother would have thrown a fit if anyone had expected her to wear the dress the underground had provided for her daughter. It was dark brown and looked dirty, even though a quick examination revealed that it was surprisingly clean. Gwen felt like a shapeless lump as soon as she donned the dress, glancing down to realise that it concealed almost all of her body. It would have been decent almost anywhere – and made her almost unrecognisable.

“You can turn around,” she said, as strongly as she could. Her mother would have exploded even more violently if she’d heard that Gwen had changed in the same room as a man. “I’m ready for you now.”

Jack turned and smiled at her. He really was handsome, part of Gwen’s mind noted. Too handsome, really. She disliked anyone who touched her heart in such a way. He’d changed his own clothes sometime between their rooftop chase and now, wearing a simple factory worker’s outfit. There was nothing to mark him out as a magician, not even one of the silver-topped canes affected by Master Thomas and some of the other magicians. He wasn’t even wearing sorcerer’s black. Gwen realised, grimly, that he could walk right past the policemen searching for the underground and they’d never even realise that their target was right next to them.

“I’m sorry about the way we brought you here,” he admitted. “We would have sent an invitation, but it would have gone astray somewhere along the line. Master Thomas has been reading your mail, I’m afraid.”

He grinned at her, as if he was expecting her to share the joke. Gwen was outraged. How
dare
Master Thomas read her mail? Her face flushed, before she remembered that she was technically his apprentice and he had every right to read her mail, if he felt that someone unsuitable would be writing to her. The life of an apprentice was not very easy at the best of times.

But then, who would be writing to her?

“I wish I could tell you I was glad to be here,” she rasped, finally. “What did you do to me?”

Jack and Lucy shared a glance. “That’s our secret, I’m afraid,” Jack said, finally. “Suffice it to say that we saved your life. You came very close to death, I’m afraid. The Grim Reaper will have to wait for your soul, thanks to us.”

Gwen didn’t doubt him. The memory of her bones breaking was crystal clear. And yet...if her bones had broken, why wasn’t she dead or crippled? Had she imagined everything, or...no, that couldn’t be possible. There had always been rumours of a Healing talent, but Doctor Norwell had always insisted that they were just rumours. And yet she knew that she’d come very close to death...

“Doctor Norwell insists that there are only rumours of a Healing talent,” she said, finally. Lucy seemed oddly concerned; Jack only smiled. “Did you...did you master the talent?”

“Ah, Doctor Norwell,” Jack said. His grin widened. “Is he still a long-winded bore?”

Gwen ignored the sally. Doctor Norwell could be long-winded, but he’d been the first tutor who had actually tried to teach her something useful. She would have forgiven almost anything from a teacher who wanted her to learn. Her other tutors had acted as if they were humouring her, or, more accurately, humouring Lady Mary.

She looked up at Lucy, suddenly convinced of it. “You’re the Healer,” she said. “You Healed me.”

“I did,” Lucy said. Her head tilted, oddly. “And if you would like to thank me, please keep that to yourself.”

Gwen hesitated, caught between duty and gratitude. It was her duty, as Master Thomas’s apprentice, to report the existence of a Healing talent – and a living Healer. As a Master, she should logically possess the talent herself. But gratitude – Lucy had saved her life – told her otherwise. If Lucy wanted to keep her talent to herself, who was Gwen to say otherwise? And besides, she owed Lucy her life. Another Healer would appear soon enough, surely.

“I will,” she said, finally. “How do you do it?”

Lucy hesitated, just long enough for Gwen to realise that she was having difficulty putting it into words. She’d seen similar pauses on the part of Changers and Infusers, magicians whose talents were at least partly intuitive. They couldn’t explain what they did, or how they did it, either.

“The body wants to heal,” Lucy said, finally. “I push myself into the body and allow it to guide me in healing itself. The magic within you helped, which is why you healed so quickly...”

She broke off. “They’re going to know, aren’t they?”

“Depends,” Jack said. “We have much to show our guest before she returns to Cavendish Hall.”

He looked up at Gwen, smiling. “I have to show you a few things,” he said. “After that, you may not want to return to Master Thomas.”

Gwen scowled at him. “How long was I out of it?”

Jack pretended to be surprised by the question. “It’s early evening,” he said. “All over London, the little ones are being tucked up in bed, while the big bad folk are going out into the street, to drink and carouse and burn away their pay before going home to their miserable wives and even more miserable children. Drunkards, robbers and thugs are wandering the streets, looking for targets...”

Lucy coughed. “But if you’re feeling better,” Jack said, “we can go out and join them. You have a great deal to see and very little time before you have to return to Cavendish Hall – if you still want to return, that is.”

“They’ll be looking for me,” Gwen said. “All of the Seers will be hunting for me...”

“Of course,” Jack agreed. He grinned, again. “The trouble with Seers is that they’re not always very reliable. A tiny amount of magic infused into stone will prevent them from seeing you” – he nodded upwards towards the ceiling – “or us, for that matter. Poor Master Thomas will be worried sick about you. He’s in his eighties, you know. He really should have retired long ago.”

Gwen stood upright. The pain in her head had faded, although she still felt rather faint, as if she hadn’t eaten for a long time. Lucy silently produced a set of cheese rolls and handed them around. Gwen’s mother would have turned up her nose at such simple fare, but to Gwen it tasted rather like manna from heaven. The cheese was surprisingly tasty and the bread a perfect complement to it. She finished one roll and took a second.

“Just because we’re in the underground,” Jack said, “it doesn’t mean that we can’t eat well.”

He grinned, before changing the subject. “Did you ever hear of Perivale’s Sleeping Plague?”

Gwen started to shake her head, and then stopped. She
had
heard of the Sleeping Plague, but where? A moment’s thought reminded her that Lord Blackburn’s uncle had mentioned it at the Fairweather Ball, back before they’d known that Jack was still alive and intent on causing trouble. It had passed out of her mind, forgotten about in the press of events that had followed the ball.

“Look it up,” Jack said, flatly. “You’ll find a copy of his book in Cavendish Hall’s library.”

He stood up and grinned at her. “Come on,” he said. “I’m going to take you on the streets of London. And I will show you something to make you change your mind.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

W
ear this,” Jack said. He passed her a gold-painted crucifix. “You’ll need it.”

Gwen took it, puzzled. It was wooden, without any real value at all. She turned it over and over in her hand, looking for some sign or reason behind his choice, but she couldn’t think of anything. The young boy with short blonde hair who’d met them downstairs was scowling at her, almost as if he was jealous. But of what?

“The Little Sisters of Christ are the only people who actually give a damn about the people on the streets,” Jack said. There was an undertone of cold anger in his voice, but it wasn’t directed at her. “They’re also the only untouchable people, the only ones that everyone will rise to defend. No one will touch you while you’re wearing that cross.”

He opened the door as Gwen put the cross around her neck. “Come on,” he said. “It won’t get any easier the longer we delay.”

Outside, night had fallen over London. Gwen had never been on the streets so late and she was astonished by how many people were still wandering around, looking for drink or whores. A group of sailors were staggering along one side of the street, singing a bawdy song that made Gwen blush the moment she realised what the words meant, while a handful of women were eyeing them reluctantly. They would be sailors home from the seas, Gwen guessed, looking to spend their pay before returning to the water. The women – the whores – would try to seduce them into spending their pay.

Jack led her through the twisting alleyways and streets without showing any sign of fear. He glared at a group of thuggish men who saw the look in his eye and decided to seek easier targets elsewhere, stepping over a dead or dying body with magnificent unconcern. Gwen almost felt sick, again. The body turned over and groaned, revealing that someone had stabbed a knife in its back before making off with its wallet. It took Gwen several moments before she could determine that it had been a male victim. The clothing could have belonged to either sex in the poorer areas of London.

A group of street urchins ran past her, their hands snatching out at her dress as they passed. Gwen ignored them as best as she could, even though it was clear that they had wanted to rob her – and would have robbed her, if she’d had anything worth stealing. The crucifix wasn’t real gold, she reminded herself – and besides, even street urchins would have hesitated to steal something like it. It was certainly worthless to them. They turned a corner and stepped into a pub, where hundreds of men were drinking beer as if it were going to be prohibited tomorrow. A handful of drunkards had been tossed out and left to sleep it off on the pavement. She paused as she felt one of the drunkards clutching at her dress, before falling back into a stupor. God alone knew what had been going through his mind.

Jack caught her arm as they passed out of earshot of the pub. “The men here have nothing in their lives,” he said, flatly. “They have no hope of ever earning more from the factory owners – and when they get injured, they get put out on the streets and left to die. So they come here every evening and drink themselves into a state where, just for a while, they can forget their lot. They rarely care about their wives and children.”

He shook his head. “Would you like to guess how many wives end up dead on the streets?”

Gwen shook her head. “The men come home, drunk, and their wives yell at them for spending all their pay,” he said. “And they turn on their wives and beat them – and their children too, for all that it’s worth. They often beat their wives to death and no one gives a damn. Life on the streets is nasty, brutish and short.”

His scowl deepened. “And do you know what? Even if they didn’t drink, even if they saved all of their money, they’d never get out of the trap. What’s the point in struggling if you can’t hope to win? They keep fighting to stay alive, but that’s all they can do. There’s nothing to live for, not in London. It’s a strange world where the best thing that could happen to them is that they get transported to America or Australia.”

They passed through another couple of streets until they reached a lighted building. There were a handful of women outside, some younger than Gwen; others older, looking as if they were on the verge of dropping dead on the spot. One of them called out a suggestion to Jack that made Gwen blush furiously, which Jack ignored. Instead, he nodded down an alleyway, barely illuminated by an overhead light. Gwen saw a woman on her knees in front of a man, her lips wrapped around his penis...she looked away, frantically. She’d never even dreamed that a woman could do that to a man. Certainly, it had never been mentioned in any of the biological textbooks...