The Royal Sorceress (17 page)

The ballroom was massive, large enough to impress even Gwen. There seemed to be hundreds of guests, the great and the good of London and the British Empire, gathered in one place. She caught sight of a pair of dark-skinned representatives from India – probably from one of the Princely States – and even a handful of Colonials from America, enjoying the music as much as anyone else. But then, the Colonial Government knew that it had to cleave to the British Crown. No one wanted a second war or even a bloody uprising that would have to be crushed by the Redcoats. She grinned as two other couples linked hands with them as the music changed, pulling them into a circle. Lombardi was grinning as well, his nerves forgotten in the excitement; Gwen watched as they exchanged partners in a waltz that would eventually see them meeting again. Who knew? Perhaps she had created a social animal in a shy and retiring young magician. But she still had to prompt him to pick up a dance card for her.

Soon, the music came to a halt and the dancers headed for the side of the room. A trumpet sounded, calling their attention to the stairs leading up into the mansion. Gwen watched in silence as Lord and Lady Fairweather descended, arm in arm, and came onto the dance floor, announcing the start of the formal dancing. She took Lombardi’s arm and pulled him out into the gathering crowd as the band struck up a new tune. The leader called out instructions for the first few steps and then sat back, leaving the dancers to manage on their own. Gwen held Lombardi’s hand and took him through the steps. Despite some of the glances cast in her direction, she found that she was enjoying the dancing. It was almost too soon when the tune came to an end and a new one began. This time, she found dozens of partners coming up to write their names in her dance card. She made sure that Lombardi had a partner and then threw herself back into the dancing, resolving not to sit out a single dance.

An hour later, her body aching even as she felt surprisingly good, she left her current partner and headed for the stairs to answer the call of nature. Outside the ballroom, the sound of music was curiously muted, giving the mansion an eerie atmosphere that bothered Gwen more than she wanted to admit. A couple of rooms were occupied with young men and women testing the limits of their chaperon’s patience, something that would cause a major scandal if they were caught. Gwen ignored them and headed onwards, searching for the toilets. They were never far away from the ballroom. She stopped outside one unmarked door and was about to push it open when she heard a voice coming through the wood. It was Master Thomas – and he sounded angry. Good girls didn’t eavesdrop, Gwen knew, but she couldn’t resist. Besides, ever since Lord Burley had been assassinated, Master Thomas been consumed with something that he’d refused to talk to her about, even though she was his designated successor.

“It has to be him,” he was saying, flatly. “Who else could it have been?”

“This is a pretty rum show,” a second voice – Lord Mycroft, Gwen thought – said. “I was under the impression he was dead.”

“We never found the body,” Master Thomas snapped. “It is quite possible that he managed to escape in the confusion and made it out of the country. The French or the Spanish would be pleased to hide him in exchange for services rendered.”

“So he’s become a traitor as well as an anarchist,” a third voice said. It was lazy, almost languid. Gwen didn’t recognise the speaker’s voice at all. “I don’t think he had much to offer our friends across the water.”

“Of course he had something to offer them,” Master Thomas said. He sounded like a teacher explaining something to a particularly dim-witted child. “There is one service he could perform for his paymasters that they couldn’t find anywhere else. And he would have paid that price willingly. His cause is all.”

“He’s a Master,” Lord Mycroft said. “I have information that King Louis would gladly part with half of his Kingdom to win the services of a Master. The French have yet to breed one from a French mother.”

“The French will never gain the services of a French-born Master,” the mystery voice sneered. “Charles Darwin has proven that to my satisfaction.”

“Darwin’s theories may not hold water,” Master Thomas warned. “He could only theorise.”

“His theories are beyond question,” the mystery voice insisted.

“Of course they are,” Lord Mycroft said, dryly. “They support your political position.”

“The only other theory we have is Perivale’s Sleeping Plague,” the mystery voice said. “Do you believe that his theory holds any validity?”

“It is a capital mistake to speculate without facts,” Lord Mycroft said. “We have too few facts to speculate. We are also missing the important detail – our old…friend has returned to London and presumably made contact with his old allies.”

“We scattered the anarchists five years ago,” the mystery voice said. “We taught them a damn good lesson.”

“And someone with Master-level powers killed Lord Burley,” Master Thomas said. “There have only ever been five Masters – and only one of them remains unaccounted for.”

“Five that we know about,” another voice said. “How old were you when you discovered your powers? How many Masters have lived and died without ever knowing what they were?”

Master Thomas snorted. “How many unknown Masters would have the inclination and the training to cause havoc in London?”

Gwen felt a shiver running up her spine. Master Thomas had told her that two of the previous Master Magicians were dead – and the third was missing, presumed dead. But what if he hadn’t died after all? And…who
was
he? What had happened five years ago?

“Which leads to another point,” Lord Mycroft said. “What about Lady Gwen?”

“She should have been sent to the farms,” the mystery voice sneered. Gwen felt another chill at the cold loathing in the voice. “She does not conduct herself in the manner befitting a young lady.”

“We are not asking her to conduct herself in the manner of a young lady,” Master Thomas said, mildly. “And before you raise the issue of her slapping your nephew, the young fool did attempt to Charm her into undressing herself in front of him.”

“But…”

Master Thomas ignored the interruption. “There is also the minor detail that she remains too important to be sent to the farms,” he added. “We
need
her, desperately. We cannot afford to waste her on a program of dubious value. She is learning magic quicker than I had believed possible and should soon be ready to start coming out on patrol with me. Any small displays of unladylike behaviour are hardly a problem…unless one of you happens to be hiding a Master up his sleeve?”

There was a pause. “I thought not,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind…”

Gwen heard footsteps and stepped away from the door, walking down the corridor as fast as she could without running. The door opened behind her and someone came out, heading down in the other direction, away from her. Gwen kept walking until she found the toilets and finally answered the call of nature, her mind spinning as she tried to digest what she’d heard. Who was the mystery voice? Who was the mystery Master? And what were the farms?

One of the questions, she decided, should be easy to answer. The mystery voice had Lord Blackburn as a nephew. It would be easy to look him up in
Who’s Who
. And then…what?

Loud cheers greeted her as she re-entered the ballroom; cheers not for her, but for Admiral Lord Nelson and Lady Emma. Lord Nelson, who had won a glorious victory against the Barbary Pirates and forced the rulers of the Barbary States to refrain from plundering British shipping, was still the toast of the town, even though it had been nearly twenty years since he’d last taken command of a naval fleet and gone out to wage war on Britain’s long list of enemies. Lady Emma, if Gwen’s mother had been right, was actually his second wife – and he was her second husband. They’d been having a long affair before her husband passed away; they’d even produced a child out of wedlock. Nothing illustrated the hypocrisy at the heart of the British Empire more than Lord Nelson. Few would dare to point a finger at England’s greatest admiral, even the chattering wives of London.

She made her way over to Lombardi, who had just finished another dance with a girl Gwen vaguely recognised. The girl gave her a sharp look as she invited Lombardi to dance, a look that suggested that she’d had her eye on him as a possible husband. Gwen wasn’t too surprised; Lombardi might be a third son, but he was from a powerful family that had thousands of pounds in the bank. A young lady of noble blood and impoverished family couldn’t hope to find a better match. And who knew? Perhaps she would make him happy.

Lord Nelson was being pressed into service to lead the latest dance, a march that reminded her of some of the taller tales of military service whispered by the other magicians at Cavendish Hall. Lady Emma, Gwen noted absently, was enormously fat, so much so that the darker side of her mind wondered how they managed to sleep together. But maybe it was love, or maybe they stuck together because they knew that no one else would have them. Or maybe Nelson had his fun with the maids while his wife looked on helplessly.

Gwen followed the dance steps carefully, holding tightly onto Lombardi as they went through the motions. Partners were exchanged and exchanged again as the band changed the tune, forcing the dancers to react quickly to stay in the dance. A handful of couples even left the dance floor, preferring to take a drink from the tables and exchange catty remarks with the other wallflowers. Gwen knew that most of the real business would be transacted behind closed doors, with powerful family members striking deals with their allies – or even with their enemies. This ball would be particularly significant, if only because much of the London nobility was in attendance. She wouldn’t have been too surprised to see the King himself.

She almost flushed as Master Thomas appeared in front of her. Gwen’s mother would have demanded to know if it was proper for a master to dance with his apprentice, but Gwen didn’t care. Besides, it wasn’t as if there were many female apprentices. Master Thomas danced with a dignity that showed his years, reminding Gwen that she didn’t even know how old he was, not really. He’d been in service to the Crown at least forty years, assuming that he’d served in the wars with France and Spain that had marked the end of the eighteenth century.

“A splendid ball,” he whispered to her, as he pulled her around the dance floor. “I hope you’re taking the time to see and be seen – and to listen?”

“Yes, sir,” Gwen said. It was hard not to flush – all she’d overheard was his conversation with Lord Mycroft and their mystery guest. She glanced around, but saw no sign of Lord Mycroft. It stood to reason he’d want to stay off the dance floor. Being so massive, he was a danger to shipping. “I think I’m enjoying myself.”

“I’m glad to know that you’re being a credit to your tutors,” Master Thomas agreed. He
sounded
perfectly sincere. “And I trust that you will make time to chat with some of the great and the good. They may be the ones deciding your future.”

They swapped partners before Gwen could think of a response. If Lord Blackburn and his Darwinists were right, magicians were superior to everyone else. And that meant that they should be giving orders, not taking them. But magic’s gifts were fickle and Gwen’s brother had shown no sign of magic, even though he had been tested extensively shortly after Gwen had come into
her
magic. In hindsight, it was clear that Master Thomas and the Royal College had known what Gwen had been long before they’d approached her. They’d almost certainly hoped that her brother shared the same magical talents.

But if Lord Blackburn was wrong, and magicians were just people with different talents, what did that mean? So much in the British Empire was decided by birth, not by merit. It took an exceptional man – a man like Lord Nelson – to rise from humble beginnings to achieve a legacy that would live on long after the man himself was dead. And a woman could rarely hope to be more than a daughter, a wife and a mother. Gwen had known that that was her fate until Master Thomas had offered her a chance to serve the crown. And if Gwen could do it, why couldn’t other women have the same chance?

The thoughts haunted her as the dance came to an end. She curtseyed to her partner and headed off towards Lombardi. The girl Gwen had taken him from had reached him again and was dragging him back onto the dance floor. Gwen smiled at his retreating back – they weren’t supposed to share any dance, but the first and the last – and changed course, heading towards the tables in the next room. They were groaning under the weight of the food, from whole roast chicken, pigs and cows, to a selection of dishes from all over the British Empire. She smelled a spicy scent from one of the curries and helped herself to a small portion, taking some bread and rice to cool it in her mouth. The normal rules of eating in public didn’t apply to balls, thankfully. A formal dinner was far more tedious.

She caught sight of Master Thomas sharing a dance with an elderly woman she didn’t recognise. Could she be his
wife
? He’d certainly never said anything about a wife, but then he’d said little about his past to her. As far as she knew, he slept in his own set of rooms at Cavendish Hall. Maybe they’d been sweethearts once, before he’d been called away to serve the Crown. Or perhaps she was wrong and he was dancing with her out of politeness. There was no way to know.

The sense of magic suddenly assailed her and she looked up. Above her head – above the entire ballroom – the chandeliers began to shatter. Glass showered down onto the heads of the dancers, forcing them to duck and cover their heads. Gwen reacted as quickly as she could, pulling her magic around her to shield everyone nearby, but it was far too late. People who had been happily dancing a moment ago were screaming as splinters of glass slashed into their faces and bodies, scattering blood over expensive clothes. Gwen started forward as something the size of a ball crashed down in the midst of the ballroom and bounced on the floor. It was a severed head, a head instantly recognisable to many of the dancers. Lord Fitzroy was clearly beyond recovery. Someone had beheaded him and then tossed his head into the midst of his family and friends…