The Royal Sorceress (44 page)

The Royal College
had
established smaller training centres for magicians in both of the university towns. Gwen knew that she might be able to spend time there, although Master Thomas seemed to want to keep her in London. It wasn’t too hard to understand why; there was only one other Master Magician in the service of the Crown and other magicians couldn’t teach her how to use her powers in unison. She shook her head as a cold breeze drifted across the rooftop, a mocking reminder that winter was on its way. Down below, the night watch were closing in on the drunken students, preparing to drag them around to the gate and report their names to the gatekeeper. Gwen felt little sympathy for them. They had a whole wealth of knowledge – Oxford’s collection of libraries were famed throughout the land – and yet they chose to spend their time tossing back beer and singing out of tune. A snatch of song reached her ears and she blushed. She wasn’t supposed to know that such songs even existed, let alone what their words actually meant.

A footstep behind her caught her attention. “Begging your pardon,” a female voice said, “but Master Thomas requests the pleasure of your company in the tutor’s study.”

Gwen turned. An elderly woman stood there, one of the women who changed beds, cleaned the building and generally looked after the male students. Gwen had been surprised to discover that none of the maids looked young or attractive, but it made a certain kind of sense. Young men, away from home for the first time in their lives, chased every woman they saw, with little concern for the social niceties. Hiring elderly women to work inside the university probably helped avoid the kind of scandals that resulted in unexplained pregnancies and dismissals.

“Thank you,” she said, finally. She was ruefully aware that she was the youngest woman in the building. Some of the students had already tried to invite her into their beds, only to retreat in confusion when Gwen had used her magic to pick them up, hold them upside down and then let go. No one had been seriously harmed, but they’d given her a wide berth since then. “I’m on my way.”

The interior of Porterhouse, according to the Master of the College, had been constructed in the years before Henry VIII had separated the English Church from the Vatican. It had once served to educate priests before the building had been taken by the Crown and then handed over to one of the King’s more scholarly friends. Gwen wasn’t sure how much of the story to believe – one of the tutors had claimed that the building dated all the way back to 1200 – but it hardly mattered. The ornate stone corridors and carefully designed rooms for young students appealed to her, unlike the students themselves. They all looked as if the only thing keeping them from obesity was the heavy exercise they did every morning. What Porterhouse lacked in academic excellence was compensated for by its remarkable sporting record. It was a rare year when Porterhouse didn’t dominate the sporting field in Oxford.

There were two soldiers on guard outside the heavy wooden door leading into the tutor’s study. They looked Gwen over carefully before standing aside and allowing her to walk into the study. Lord Mycroft, Lord Liverpool and Master Thomas were inside, seated in front of a roaring fire. From what Gwen had heard, much of the government had been dispersed or captured during the uprising. Lord Mycroft’s escape had been just as hair-raising as their own. If his brother hadn’t come to his rescue, Lord Mycroft would probably have joined many others in the Tower of London. Lord Liverpool, thankfully, had been on a visit to Cardiff when the rebellion had begun. His escort had managed to get him to Oxford before Cardiff was affected by the growing chaos.

Gwen found herself wondering, as she took the seat Lord Mycroft indicated for her, what had happened to the rest of the magicians. They’d had to leave most of them with the Royal Navy, but surely there were others. But Master Thomas – a far more skilled Talker than herself – had kept what he’d heard to himself. Gwen had been left with her imagination – and she’d been able to imagine all kinds of disasters. What if Jack had more magicians than the British Government? What if...

She looked down at her hands, wincing inwardly. Lucy’s power had healed her, something she’d never told Master Thomas. What if she told him now? And yet...what would happen if the Royal College realised that Healers did exist? They would go looking for Lucy and put her into the farms. And then...she stared down at the fire, cursing her own ambition. She’d wanted to be important and develop her magic, hadn’t she? And she’d gotten exactly what she’d wanted.

“The news is not good,” Lord Mycroft said. “We have lost all control of London. What few troops were able to get out of the city have reported that many of the soldiers we sent into the poorer parts of London have been killed. The rebels have taken the Tower of London; the Warder, for whatever reason, was unable to blow the armoury before the rebels captured it. They now have access to one of the largest stockpiles of weapons in the country.”

He scowled at Master Thomas, who said nothing. “There have been smaller uprisings in a dozen other cities,” he added. “The farmers are uneasy and may be on the brink of revolt themselves. Rumour has it that the Irish are planning a new rebellion. So far, no word has leaked out in America or Australia, but we expect that there will be more unrest once they realise that London has been lost to us. We must act fast.”

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...”