A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

  “And I’ve done so. I will continue to do so as long as our liberty is ensured under French rule.”

  “Very well,” the stranger said. “I think we understand each other.”

  There was no transition between waking and sleeping, not even the eyeblink that came with settling between her eyes and another’s. All at once, she was sitting bolt upright, gasping, her room careening dizzyingly before her eyes. She swung her legs out of bed, stumbled, fell to the floor, and pulled herself to her feet before she could feel anything. Her hand snatched at the door, fumbled at the handle, and pulled it open.

  Toussaint’s rooms were upstairs from hers, on the first floor. She must have made more noise than she thought, because she was only halfway up when Placide appeared at the top of the stairs. At sixteen, he already had the build of a full-grown man; even newly woken from sleep as he was, it took very little for him to stop her.

  “Fina—” He caught her by the wrists as she cannoned into him. “Hold on. Where are you going?”

  “I need to see your father.” She wrenched her arms free; he released her but still blocked her path. “Get out of my way, Placide.”

  “He said he wasn’t to be disturbed.”

  “He didn’t mean by me!”

  “It’s all right,” she heard Toussaint’s voice say, dazed but still strong. “Let her come in.”

  She pushed past Placide, or he moved to let her aside—she neither knew nor cared which. Toussaint was on the landing, backlit from the light spilling from his bedroom.

  “You tricked me,” she heard herself say. “You betrayed me. You betrayed all of them.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Suzanne Louverture came out of the room behind him, a shawl wrapped about her shoulders. From her complete lack of surprise, Toussaint had told her at least some of what they had intended to do that night. “Go back to your room,” she told her eldest son.

  “What’s happening?” Placide demanded. “Who’s been betrayed?”

  “We’ll talk later,” she said. Suzanne was a gentle woman, but she was also utterly implacable. “Go. And can you take Saint-Jean back to bed?”

  Fina glanced down the corridor; the six-year-old was looking at her from behind his own door, curls standing up from his head, mouth agape. It stirred something in her heart. Somewhere, amid all her rage and shock, she found a very weak smile for him. None of this was his fault.

  Suzanne folded her arms tightly over the shawl as her children left the corridor, then turned to her husband. “Well? Who has been betrayed? What have you done?”

  “I told the stranger I would leave Jamaica alone if he cooperated,” Toussaint said heavily. “I told Maitland the same yesterday.”

  “How dare you?” Fina demanded. Fury was blazing in her veins, but beneath it all was dark, bitter grief. She had trusted him. She had known better, but she had trusted him. “How dare you use me like—” She shook her head, lost for words. “That’s how you got the trade deal in the first place, wasn’t it?”

  “Fina, the safety of British interests was the only reason the British were clinging to this colony. It was the only reason they had left to oppose our liberty. They would never have allowed any other deal. They might not have agreed to withdraw at all. You know that.”

  “Then why deal with them at all? Why not just force them off the island and tell them never to come back? You could have done it. We don’t need their goodwill.”

  “We need their trade if Saint-Domingue is going to grow into a prosperous country.”

  “I don’t care about prosperity! I care about freedom.” She drew a deep, furious breath, forcing her hands to coil into fists. She had lived through so much, over so many years, without losing her temper. Her anger needed to strengthen her, not make her weaker. But she had never lived through anything like this. “You never intended to help Jamaica, did you? You let me think you might, because you needed me.”

  “That isn’t true. I told you from the first that I couldn’t promise to free Jamaica, or even to try to. My fight was to get the British off Saint-Domingue, not out of the entire West Indies.”

  “You haven’t just left Jamaica to the British! You’ve left it to the stranger! And you used me to do it, when I’ve fought by your side for years.”

  “Do you really claim I’ve done nothing for you in return?” Anger crept into his own voice now. “When we first met, you were lost and starving. I saved your life. I’ve protected you as long as you’ve been fighting for me.”

  She laughed, painfully, in disbelief. “Is that truly your excuse? That I owe you? Yes, you saved my life. But I didn’t follow you because I owed you for that. I followed you because I thought you saved me without asking for anything in return. I followed you because I believed in you. I didn’t think you would hand Jamaica over to the enemy!”

  “Fina—” For the first time in all their years together, she saw him visibly stop and gather himself. It wasn’t anger he was holding back, as she was. The flicker behind his eyes might even have been guilt. “I didn’t give Jamaica to the British, or to the stranger. They have it already. I don’t have the power to take it from them, not yet. By promising to hold off, I was promising only what would have been forced upon me anyway, and by promising it we gain the stranger’s help—at least for now. I need him to help me hold on to Saint-Domingue if I’m to keep any of us free at all. Do you see that?”

  “I see it.” And she did. She was rational enough and pragmatic enough to see it exactly. She didn’t care. Only minutes ago she had been on her old plantation, or near enough; she had seen her people in the grip of captivity and dark magic, and her body remembered every painful inch of what it felt like. Toussaint had never been spellbound, but he had been enslaved. He should have remembered too. “But there’s a difference between not being able to help someone and promising not to.”

  “Is there?”

  “There is to them,” she said. “There is to me.”

  Suzanne spoke up for the first time in a while. “Tell me,” she said to her husband. “You told me this would keep the children safe. Are they safe?”

  “He won’t touch them in France,” Toussaint said. “I promise.”

  Suzanne looked at Fina. “Can he promise that?”

  Fina shook her head. “No,” she said bitterly. “He can’t promise anything.” She caught Suzanne’s steady, worried eyes and forced herself to be fair. “But the stranger promised not to hurt them, and he knows there will be consequences if he does. They’re as safe as they can be—safe as long as the deal holds.”

  Suzanne nodded. “Thank you.” She turned back to her husband. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “So do I.” He was still looking at Fina. “But for better or worse, I did what I did. It can’t be undone. If you can’t trust me again—if you can’t forgive it—then I understand. I’m riding out at first light. I hope you will stay and see this out with me. But if you can’t, I’ll see that you have safe passage to anywhere you want to go.”

  She had nowhere else to go.

  That wasn’t true, of course. She thought about it the rest of that long night, as she paced her small bedroom with the air hot and sticky on her skin and her knee stinging from her fall in her scramble for the door. She was a free woman now. The country was open to her—so was the world. There were many places she could go, and with her magic and her strength she could survive. But she didn’t want to survive. She wanted to fight, and she wanted to bring freedom to others. Toussaint, even now, was her greatest hope for that.

  By the first glimmer of dawn, when Toussaint came out of the house, she was waiting for him.

  “I’m still with you,” Fina said without preamble. “But I want a promise from you, Toussaint. If you can make one to the stranger, you can make one to me. I want you to promise that if you break with the stranger, then you will move on Jamaica as soon as is humanly possible. No excuses. No delays. You do it.”

  H
e nodded, just once. Relief, swift and undeniable, crossed his face. “Agreed.”

  Perhaps he thought that he’d never have to fulfill that promise. Perhaps he thought he could keep the stranger on his side forever. It didn’t matter. Fina knew better.

  “Then I will do everything I can to keep you alive and help you keep Saint-Domingue free,” Fina said. “But don’t expect me to trust you again.”

  “I won’t.” His eyes, looking into hers, were warm and dark and clear. Very few met her gaze so openly now that they knew what she could do. “Thank you.”

  He didn’t apologize for what he had done, and paradoxically that helped to cool her anger. She knew he wasn’t sorry. She knew why he had done it, and it wasn’t just because it was the sensible thing, as he’d claimed. Deep down, he was scared for the country he loved, the one that as of yet existed only in his head, and for his sons, whom he loved too. She could forgive that, at least.

  “When the dream disappeared so suddenly,” she said, “I was afraid that he had killed you.”

  Toussaint softened. Just for a moment, he looked every bit like a man much older than her, one who had been up all night fighting a long, hard battle, who had made a terrible choice and wasn’t at all sure it had been the right one. “I know.” His hand closed about her own, warm and rough, and she let it. “I feared the same about you. And for what it may be worth, you were right about one thing. I thought I knew what it was like in his head. I didn’t. I knew he didn’t care if we lived or died. I didn’t know how much he hated us. I’m sorry that he learned of you through me.”

  She had barely had a chance to consider that aspect of it. The stranger knew of her now. He still hadn’t seen her, but he had learned she was there, and he was interested in her. In his questions to Toussaint there had even been a touch of fear. All of her life she had been overlooked; now she had been seen. There was a degree of power in it, but she wasn’t ready to grasp it.

  “He is going to kill you one day,” Fina said. She did not want Toussaint to die, not just because she needed him, but because despite his betrayal she still loved him as a leader or a father—his betrayal cut so deeply because she loved him. But in that moment, she took a fierce satisfaction in the words. “I meant what I said to Suzanne: you’ll be safe as long as the deal holds, and so will Isaac and Placide. But the deal won’t hold. You were only a distraction to him before. Now you’ve challenged him. He’ll help you for now, because he has no choice. But he’ll kill you when he can.”

  “A good many people want to kill me,” Toussaint said. “This was never about survival.”

  The Mediterranean Sea

  June 1798

  The British navy had reentered the Mediterranean Sea for the first time in a year. The fleet was led by Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, a Commoner who had won honors the year before at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. It consisted of thirteen ships of the line, one fourth-rate, and one brig. Scattered among them, in accordance with the promises made after the naval mutiny, were some twenty-five battle-mages of varying degrees of rank and power. Three of these battle-mages were women; seventeen were Commoners. One of the least important and lowest ranking of these was Kate Dove.

  It was the Forester bracelets that had finally pushed her from England. In the weeks following the news of Christopher’s death, as the law had changed and women were permitted to serve as naval battle-mages, she had hesitated. Though they had both dreamed of magic, it had been Christopher who had hoped for a better life, not her. The truth was, Kate couldn’t really imagine the world any better. She had never felt the stir of those stories about battle and glory. She knew war would be worse than all but the most dire poverty. She had never known if magic would be worth the price. Now that Christopher had paid it, she knew less than ever.

  And yet when she was ordered to report with the other Commoner magicians to the nearest Temple Church to be locked into a new bracelet, one that would quiet her magic once and for all, her flare of horror and rage surprised even her. It burst through the numbness of her grief, and for the first time she saw her own heart clearly. It wasn’t just that she wanted her magic, not anymore. She wanted the kraken. It had taken her brother from her. Until he had left for war, they had faced everything together. She would never be at peace until she had faced the kraken too. When her friends went to the Temple Church, she reported instead to the naval recruitment office down by the docks.

  Can you summon a wind? the lieutenant had said to her. His nose was reddened by drink, but his eyes were shrewd.

  She had nodded, and he had, impossibly, held out his hand for her wrist.

  Show me. He touched a key to her bracelet, and just like that the metal that had gripped her wrist all her life was gone. Don’t worry, you’ll not be punished for it. No Knights Templar around here.

  Kate had danced around the edges of her magic all her life, feeling the brush of it, never permitted to take hold. Now, for the first time, she seized it. She felt the surge of the air outside; then a rush of wind roared through the office. The officer’s clerk lunged for his desk as papers flew; outside, she heard the shrieking giggles of a group of young women grabbing for their skirts. It was crisp and cool and carried the wild salt tang of the ocean, and Kate had felt herself filling with something—light, or joy, or purpose.

  She hoped so much that Christopher had known it too, before he died. Perhaps they had not let him summon a shadow—perhaps they had made him wait for his first battle, which never came.

  This was to be her first battle, if their objective was achieved. She had been at sea for months on a frigate, doing simple reconnaissance, before she had been transferred to the HMS Mutine under Captain Hardy. They had rendezvoused with Nelson’s flagship the month previous, tasked with finding and engaging the French fleet that was said to be en route to Egypt. The fleet, unprecedented in numbers, should have been easy to find.

  They were still looking.

  They had had contrary winds from the first, difficult even for an experienced weather-mage to counter. The rumors were that the weather was the work of their rival French and Spanish magicians, and it may well have been. So might the way the enemy ships seemed to dance away from them at every turn—they would land and miss them by three days, or overshoot them by four, or even pass them in the night entirely. Kate was inclined, though, to think it just bad luck. The oceans were full of that.

  They were approaching Alexandria that afternoon, and Kate was on duty guiding the winds to the sails of the ships. It was delicate work. The Mediterranean Sea was different from the waters of the Thames—more saline, unfettered by tidal currents, quick to stir at the softest breeze—and the summer winds flitted between calm and gale force with little warning. She loved the feel of it, light and playful and tempestuous, like a constant dance. It was perhaps because of this that she noticed when the waves put a step wrong.

  It was difficult to describe. There was water sluicing back toward them against the wind and tide, but it was more than that. She felt them part, as they would before a ship. She stretched out her magic so that it touched the waves themselves—she was not a water-mage, but her magic had always had an affinity for the sea that went deeper than Templar classifications. And she knew, without having the words, that there was something very large moving through them now. She also guessed, with a catch of her breath and a shiver down her spine, what it might be.

  The first lieutenant, a stout, grizzled man named Bridges, was on watch that afternoon, on the quarterdeck. Kate wasted no time in leaving her post, though it was frowned upon in all but the most dire emergencies, and running to him.

  “There’s something coming toward us,” she said, with only the most rushed of formalities. “I think it’s the kraken.”

  “You’re a weather-mage, are you not?” The first lieutenant didn’t say that she was a woman and Commoner magician, but the implication was clear. “How would you know the presence of the kraken?”

  “I don’t.” She gritte
d her teeth and kept her calm. “But I know the movements of the waves, and they’re not moving as they should.”

  “Could that not be for other reasons?”

  “I suppose there could be something else the size of a frigate dislodging the waves, but if so, it probably still wouldn’t be good news, would it?” She folded her arms, the way she’d scold a young lad at the docks giving her trouble. “My brother was killed by the kraken. I’ve heard a thousand stories about it since. I think that’s what it is. And if there is even one chance in a thousand that I’m right, do you really want Nelson to hear afterward that one of his battle-mages reported the kraken and you did nothing?”

  “If it is the kraken,” Bridges said, but he had softened, “and it comes on us unawares, Nelson will be unlikely to hear of anything much at all afterward. He’ll be at the bottom of the ocean with the rest of us.”

  “Sir,” Kate said, neutral, and the man gave a wry smile.

  There was nothing more she could do. She returned to her spot on deck, took up the breeze again, and waited. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bridges go below and then emerge almost at once and go to the signalman.

  It was a matter of a few minutes before a shadow fell over her, and she turned to see not the first lieutenant but Captain Hardy himself.

  “You were right,” he said tersely. “Nelson’s water-mage confirmed it. Kraken to port. Tell the other weather-mages to turn us hard about.”

  “But…” In that moment, she forgot her place. “We can’t run! We have to engage.”

  “Are you disobeying an order?”

  “No, but—” But she had come here to face the kraken. It had killed her brother. She needed to see what he had seen before he died, and to make it know her.

  “Then assist the helmsman and turn us hard about!” There was no anger in his voice; it was typical naval discipline. She had earned a bit of goodwill by giving them advance warning of the kraken. But at that moment, she almost wished she hadn’t. They could have been face-to-face with it right now.