A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

  Instead, ropes were creaking, and sails billowing. She dashed across the swaying decks to her place beside the senior weather-mage on board to help raise a contrary breeze.

  They were just in time. A shout rang out from the rigging. In the distance—behind them now, and disappearing fast—a waving, writhing mass broke the surface. Tentacles. They reared high above the waves, like a forest in the middle of the ocean, and the salt water on them caught the light and gleamed. Kate forgot all about the wind and the waves. She stared. This was it. This, grotesque and unnatural in the middle of the seas, was what had killed her brother. Her heart filled with hot rage.

  “Forward!” Hardy shouted, and she picked up the wind once more, fumbling. But she wished with all her strength that they were going back.

  “What’s it doing out here?” she heard Bridges say to Hardy in an undertone. “Everything we heard was that the kraken was still in French waters, not with Boney’s fleet. How did it know we were here?”

  “It’s a kraken,” Hardy replied tersely. “We don’t know what it knows.”

  It wasn’t an answer, though, and Kate could tell the man knew it. He also knew, as did Kate, that there was no chance of catching the French fleet before it made landing now. They were going in completely the wrong direction.

  Across the ocean, in the House of Commoners, the news that Bonaparte had landed unopposed in Egypt was only one of many crises under discussion throughout the long, hot evenings, and not the most pressing. This was no disrespect to Bonaparte or Egypt, only one more sign that the world was growing so dark and thick with troubles that it was difficult to see through them. Between the fleet assembling in French waters with the kraken at its head, the attempted French landing and subsequent rebellion in Ireland that had been brutally suppressed by British forces, the attempt by a young fire-mage on the life of the Prince of Wales, and the recent English defeat in the Netherlands, the Mediterranean at least had the consolation of distance.

  Wilberforce, though, was used to finding no consolation in distance. The slave trade, after all, took place miles from Britain’s shores. When the House was filtering out into the moody darkness of two o’clock in the morning, he found Pitt and took him aside.

  “I thought we sent a fleet to intercept Bonaparte before he reached Egypt.” He dropped his voice, almost beneath the rumble of footsteps and weary voices around them. “I thought we decided that if he was the new collaborator with the enemy…?”

  “We did,” Pitt said, just as quietly. “The kraken was waiting for it.”

  Wilberforce was silent for a long time.

  “Please don’t tell anyone that,” Pitt added, with a glance at the emptying House about them. “The ships survived, you’ll be pleased to hear. They should be able to continue to search for the fleet. But it will almost certainly be too late to capture Bonaparte himself.”

  Wilberforce shook his head, for once too worried to be relieved about a lack of casualties. “But… how could the kraken be waiting for them? Nobody knew they were coming.”

  “The enemy did. That’s always been the difficulty—that was what killed Camille Desmoulins. The enemy can see through the eyes of anyone in his territory.”

  “But nobody was there to see the fleet out at sea—not early enough to send the kraken to intercept them, surely. He would have to know in advance.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Just… I wonder if there’s any way he could be watching us. Here. In England.”

  “He could only be watching through the eyes of someone in England if they gave him permission. Are you suggesting somebody in our government is betraying us to the enemy?”

  “Clarkson did, after all.”

  It was Pitt’s turn to be silent. “The movements of the fleet were only known to a small number of people,” he said at last, “all of whom I trust implicitly. Dundas, Grenville, Spencer—Eliot, of course, before his death. Even the captain and crew of the ship had sealed orders that they weren’t to open until they had cleared British waters.” Abruptly, he stopped.

  Wilberforce frowned. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” It wasn’t nothing, obviously. Even with the growing distance between them, Wilberforce recognized when a thought had come to him that he didn’t want to entertain. Pitt obviously realized that too, because he amended his answer. “It can’t be what I thought. I understand your concern, and I don’t mean to dismiss it. I only hope you’re mistaken. Because if someone in the inner cabinet betrayed us, then we’re in even more danger than I thought.”

  Egypt

  Summer 1798

  In the heat of the afternoon, the flat landscape was an endless brown haze under a salt-colored sky. The Nile flowed sluggish and muddy toward a walled village. Farther in the distance, much farther, was a row of bumps that might have been mistaken for boulders or hills. In fact, of course, they were pyramids, and they stood very close to the still-distant city of Cairo.

  Napoléon Bonaparte had come to conquer Egypt.

  It had taken all his powers to persuade the Directory to allow him to mount the expedition. They were far too excited about the kraken—as far as they were concerned, they were ready to lead an invasion fleet across the Channel, with Bonaparte at its head. Napoléon knew it wasn’t the time.

  “One kraken won’t be enough,” he said. “It’s an asset—if you find me an animancer in the French Navy, I’ll pass over control to him, and with it the French coast will be secure against any attack. I’m a foot soldier—I have no interest in leading naval battles. But Britain still has mastery of the seas. Their magicians are bred for it; their navy is second to none. At the moment, all their ships will be concentrated on defending their own coast in case we attempt exactly what you want us to. Which is all the more reason why we should employ our own forces elsewhere. We’ve already taken possession of Italy. If we take Egypt as well, we’ll be virtually unchallenged in the Mediterranean.”

  “But can we take Egypt?” Talleyrand said bluntly.

  “I can,” Napoléon said. And they believed him.

  In theory, Egypt was under the command of the Ottoman Empire. In practice, it was more or less in the hands of the Mamelukes, a once-enslaved warrior caste who had overthrown their masters to become the ruling class. Istanbul braceleted its citizens, but they had given up imposing such a regime in Egypt, and so strong magic rose to the top as it did in other parts of the Middle East and in Africa. The joint rulers of Egypt were Ibrahim Bey, a fire-mage in Alexandria, and Murad Bey, a sand-mage who ruled in Cairo.

  To Napoléon, they represented power of the kind he had heard spun in stories as a child: not politicians in a cabinet or thin-blooded royalty, but warlords in opulent palaces, served by hundreds of slaves, ruling by sword and magic and fear.

  The simple truth was that since he was a child, he had been fascinated by Egypt. The first time he had seen it on a map, at the schoolroom in Brienne-le-Château shortly after his first meeting with his mysterious friend, something had stirred in his heart. He wanted to see it, to rule it—moreover, he wanted to learn it. He knew enough of the practical realities of soldiering to understand that it wasn’t this simple and, moreover, that Egypt wasn’t actually a mystical land of ancient pyramids and exotic landscapes but a real country with an unforgiving climate and complex political history that resisted conquering. His heart didn’t care. It was young, far younger really than his head, and drunk on the promise of his own success.

  In May, a fleet of five hundred ships cut across the ocean toward Egypt. On board were more than thirty-five thousand soldiers, as well as sixteen thousand sailors. Napoléon had been offered a regiment of the dead, but he turned them down. “I don’t want shadows,” he had said. “And the dead are really little more than shadows in human armor, whatever the army believes.”

  “They’ve won us the war so far.”

  “And they’ll continue to do so in Europe while I’m gone. But this is our chance to try something new, so we d
on’t remain dependent on them for all our victories. I want magicians.”

  “The Directory have given you a sizable allotment of battle-mages.”

  “Not enough, but that’s a separate question. What I want are magical scholars. They needn’t even be magicians themselves, come to that, although the best ones are.”

  Talleyrand blinked. “But what use would they be in a battle?”

  “Very little. I want them for after the battle. Once we have Egypt, we’ll have the wealth of her history at our fingertips. Can you even begin to imagine what we might learn from that? The magicians who built the pyramids had magic far in advance of ours. If a kraken can alter our fortunes in the war, imagine what might come of magic that nobody in Europe has ever seen before?”

  “So you’re willing to trade five hundred dead for an equivalent number of ink-mages who can’t fight or fend for themselves?”

  “Not only am I willing, I insist upon it.”

  The battle-mages and the magical scholars had fallen into mutual enmity over the long sea voyage. The battle-mages didn’t see why their own magic and safety should go to protecting men who for the most part could do no practical magic of their own. The magical scholars, who of course thought their own part in conquest the most important, didn’t see why the battle-mages weren’t interested in exploring the science and the possibilities of the magic they had lived with their entire lives. Napoléon looked indulgently on the bickering of the two groups, when he bothered to notice it at all. Magicians were notoriously argumentative. Besides, they would soon have neither the time nor the breath for anything but their own survival.

  The long, brutal march to Cairo robbed some of them even of that. Even Napoléon was entirely unprepared for the scorched, barren landscape they found when they stepped off the ships. In the heat of the sun, woolen uniforms became itchy, sweat-soaked torture chambers. His exhausted water-mages faltered, then failed altogether as the French magic scrabbled to find purchase on the harsh, unfamiliar landscape. Elemental magic grew incrementally weaker outside a magician’s homeland, Napoléon found, or perhaps the magicians did. And they were a very long way from home. He pushed them on, through heat and pain and tormenting thirst, leaving behind an ever-increasing trail of the exhausted and sick, who would be picked off by the prowling Bedouin. Some killed themselves rather than go on. Napoléon was unmoved. If they couldn’t survive this, it was unlikely they could survive the battle that awaited them at the other end.

  Now, at last, he stood on the west bank of the Nile, the pyramids of Cairo visible in the distance—some eight or ten miles distant, it was true, like specks of shadow on the horizon, but that was no matter. The men collapsed, exhausted, to the ground as Napoléon scanned the surrounding landscape. He was weary himself, and his tongue felt swollen with heat and dust.

  “Murad Bey is encamped at that village,” one of his generals, Louis Antoine Desaix, informed him with a nod ahead. Their shadowmancers had been sending shadow-scouts ahead to bring them intelligence. None were powerful enough to summon more than faint gray wisps, so their range and communication had been limited, but they were sufficient in the sparse desert, where there was little enough to see. “About a mile away. Ibrahim Bey is still on the east bank.”

  “That’s foolish of them,” General Bon said. “They’d stand a much better chance if they hadn’t divided their forces.”

  Napoléon was still looking through his field glass. Not far from the town walls, a weathered statue stood, half-buried in the sand. Time and grit had worn its features down to a smooth lump that might have once been a crocodile, or a jackal. Napoléon gave it a cursory glance, then turned to his aide.

  “This is the place,” he said. “Bring me the Chosen Magicians. Oh, and Madame Foures is to accompany them.”

  The man’s eyes widened at the addendum, but he left.

  “Everybody else,” Napoléon said to his generals, “you have your instructions. Give the men an hour to rest, then prepare them for battle.”

  Nobody argued. They all knew better by now.

  “Why,” was all Desaix said as he left, “did we ever decide it was a good idea to invade Egypt in the summer?”

  Madame Pauline Foures was brought to Napoléon with the fifty or so Chosen Magicians who would stand by Napoléon’s side in the battle. He ignored her at first, as he gave them brief orders as to the placement of spells. She was the young, newly married wife of one of his cavalry officers, and she should never have been near Egypt, much less the battle lines. Like many others of her gender unwilling to be parted from their husbands or lovers, she had snuck aboard the transport ship dressed as a man and not revealed herself until they had reached Egypt’s shores. Although no longer in disguise, she still wore the uniform of a chasseur, and her fair hair and delicate face were startling against the green.

  Napoléon’s wife, Joséphine, had refused to accompany him to Egypt, no matter how he had soothed and persuaded and caressed. He had left her at Toulon and sailed away not knowing if or when he would ever see her again, or if she cared.

  “Your husband tells me you’re a shadowmancer,” Napoléon said to Madame Foures briskly at last. The part of his brain that wasn’t engaged in the placement of troops admired the way her blue eyes looked at him, with curiosity but no fear. “And I saw you conjuring shadows to distract the men during the march. Your technique seemed very controlled—more so than the army shadowmancers I have to work with. Tell me honestly, because our lives may depend on it. How good are you?”

  “Very,” she said at once.

  He nodded. “Then you’ll be with the Chosen Magicians for this battle. Belmont will tell you what’s needed. Do you have any objection?”

  “None.” There was the slightest hint of mischief in her eyes. “But my husband might.”

  “Fortunately, he’s under my command. I don’t need to heed anything he says.”

  “Neither do I,” she said.

  He held her gaze just a little too long and was pleased when she tilted her head to meet it.

  By three o’clock that afternoon, the dust had formed on the horizon that heralded an approaching army. Napoléon’s aide conjured a faint shadow, sent it skimming the course of the Nile, and called it back to him like a falconer calls its hawk.

  “Murad Bey,” he confirmed, and Napoléon nodded. The board was set.

  Of the twenty-five thousand men with him, about a thousand were battle-mages proper, trained in the use of shadowmancy or the elemental magics. As a rule, the most well practiced were the Aristocrats, who had grown up using their magic, but an irritating side effect of the Revolution was that there were very few Aristocrats left alive, and so the majority of the battle-mages were powerful Commoners who had learned quickly in the years since the fall of the monarchy. Among the common soldiers, of course, were many fledgling magicians. There had been two schools of thought at the start of the Revolution: the more traditional, who like the British thought it better for such men to keep their magic to themselves on a battlefield lest they harm their fellow soldiers, and the more radical, who felt that the principles of the Revolution demanded such magic be unleashed as it was in a common mob. Napoléon favored the first approach to some extent, particularly when the dead were at his disposal, but he made sure those with magical talents were pushed to the front of the battle. Such proximity to the enemy could have interesting effects when imminent death caused them to lash out on instinct. It also allowed him to keep an eye on any potentially promising Commoners who might be of more use in the magicians’ contingent. Assuming, of course, they survived.

  Napoléon’s real innovation in Italy, however, had been to arrange his infantrymen into squares, with a cluster of battle-mages protected in the center of each by lines of soldiers six to ten deep. It meant that the battle-mages could be in the center of the battle rather than at the back of long columns, yet it was very difficult for them to be harmed. There were five contingents this time, more rectangular than square, and they
waited for the approaching cavalry charge like rocks awaiting the rush of the tide.

  Napoléon looked at the horizon again—not at the cloud of dust this time, but past it, to the shadowy pyramids.

  “Soldiers,” he said. “Forty centuries look down upon you.”

  Most of the soldiers couldn’t hear him; those who could mostly didn’t care. They were more impressed by the threat of imminent death. It didn’t matter. It was a moment of destiny.

  Later, Napoléon would claim there were seventy-eight thousand Mameluke troops, some three times more than his own number. In fact, with Ibrahim Bey’s forces trapped on the left bank, there were only around six thousand mounted cavalry, supported by a cluster of fifteen thousand fellaheen, who were armed with clubs and who posed little threat to the French forces. Napoléon never saw the harm in exaggerating, even outright lying, and France was a long way away.

  The Mameluke cavalry were a force to be reckoned with. Their horses were magnificent, glistening in the desert heat as though oiled; the riders, too, glittered with the gold and jewels they wore beneath their kaftans. Deadlier glints came from their weapons. They each carried a musket and pistols, and their horses bristled with sabers and maces, javelins and battle-axes. Some carried no weapons at all, and those were the most dangerous, because they were magicians strong enough to need none.

  At a wave from the French weather-mages, the wind began, swirling dust and sand and grit—both at the army itself and across the Nile. Napoléon thought that Ibrahim would probably stay where he was rather than try to cross the water in full view of the French, but he saw no point in taking chances. Some of the approaching riders were already glowing with flame; his own fire-mages waited, poised and tensed. The thunder roar of horses’ hooves grew louder.