A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

  There was a pause, the kind that comes between a crash of lightning and a roll of thunder. In Wilberforce’s case, the silence was one of shock at his own words. He couldn’t read Pitt’s silence at all. They were standing on the brink of something terrible, and neither wanted to step forward, but nor would either step down.

  “I understand how you feel about dueling,” Pitt said at last. The terrible thing was that he didn’t even seem surprised. It was as though Wilberforce had called him a vampire king a thousand times. This time had been out loud, that was all. “Even if I can’t sympathize. I understand how you feel about the war too. But I’m afraid that’s as much as I’m willing to concede. I’ve never in my life stepped aside from a challenge. I’ve always been taught that no gentleman ever would. You may be right, and I’m living by an outdated code of conduct. But it’s the only way I know how to be.”

  Wilberforce nodded tightly. “Then I suppose we have nothing further to say on the matter.”

  “We do, as a matter of fact.” His voice hardened. “You’ve announced that you intend to put forward a motion in the House of Commoners very soon. Common knowledge says the purpose of it is to demand that dueling be made illegal. Is it?”

  “You have no right to ask me that.”

  “Nonetheless, I’ve asked.”

  “Yes,” said Wilberforce. “You know it is.”

  “In that case,” Pitt said without surprise, “I feel it a real duty to say to you frankly that your motion is one for my removal. If any step on the subject is proposed in Parliament and agreed to, I shall feel from that moment I can be more use out of office than in it: for in it, according to the feelings I entertain, I could be of none.”

  Wilberforce blinked. “Are you truly saying that if I put forward a motion in Parliament calling for the abolition of dueling, you will resign?”

  “Yes.”

  “You? The prime minister of Great Britain for the last fifteen years?”

  “That is to whom I refer, yes. And I should mention that that is the second time you’ve brought up my position in the last several minutes. It seems excessive.”

  “What seems excessive is you threatening to abandon the country if I speak against you.”

  “I’m not threatening, and I’m not abandoning anyone. I’m stating directly and explicitly what I feel.”

  “And since when have your policies been dictated by what you feel?”

  Pitt didn’t answer. “It’s a very simple question. Are you intending to forward a motion that would expose me to public censure, or are you not?”

  “I can’t help but think that this is a very strange length to carry a point of honor.”

  “Then we disagree on that as well.”

  “You said years ago you’d never mesmerize me into doing something against my will. This is in some ways worse.”

  “I know.” Pitt’s voice didn’t relent. “But I meant what I said before. These are dark times. I’m still confident I can see us through them, but I need your support. I can’t have you betray me again.”

  Now he understood Pitt’s lack of response earlier. Because Pitt had never before directly accused Wilberforce of betraying him either, but he felt no surprise at all, only something inside him harden painfully. The scar at his side throbbed. “I didn’t betray you.”

  “You did. I understand why you did, I in no way blame you for it, but you did. I’m asking you not to do it again.”

  “In other words, you’re asking me to betray my principles instead.”

  “That is exactly what I’m asking you to do. And if you can’t, then I need you to tell me now, so I can prepare accordingly this time. I remember too well what it was like to have no warning.”

  “I remember too.” Wilberforce was silent for a moment longer, deliberately focusing his gaze anywhere other than Pitt’s eyes to avoid even the suspicion of undue influence. Then he remembered his friend’s hurt, reproachful gaze when he had last stood up in Parliament and spoken against him, and he knew he simply wasn’t going to do so again. At least not this time.

  “I’ll abandon the motion,” he said reluctantly, hating himself a little more with every word.

  “Thank you.” Pitt relaxed, just a fraction. “For what my opinion may be worth, I believe you’re doing the right thing by your principles as well.”

  “Because you think my principles should involve keeping you in power.”

  “Do they not?”

  Wilberforce was not willing to take it so lightly, or even to pretend to. He was seething, and the fact that most of his anger was directed at himself made it even worse. “If they do, they shouldn’t. I was just talking about doing the right thing at any cost. I should be willing to live by that.”

  “You are.” The faint hint of a smile that had been kindling in Pitt’s eyes dimmed at once. “Believe me.”

  Wilberforce shook his head. “Don’t ever do this to me again. I’ve given my word now, so that must be an end to it, but the next time…”

  “If there ever is a next time,” Pitt said, “then I’ll know it really will be time for me to resign.”

  “You won’t ever resign.” The words were out before he could stop them, and he didn’t want to. “I don’t know why I feared you would. You love this. You were raised for it since before you could speak; it’s been your entire adult life. You have nothing left without it. You would never have let it go.”

  “Is that truly what you think of me?”

  Since the night the Concord broke, Wilberforce had realized two things. The first was that, strange as it might seem, he was one of the few people who could break through Pitt’s armor and truly hurt him; the second was that he should never do it. He knew he should not now. And yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to step back from doing so, either, with fury so hot in his veins. He hesitated.

  Apparently his silence said enough.

  “Very well. Thank you for your opinion.” Pitt’s voice was cold once more. There was no trace of magic blazing in his eyes this time, and that made it even worse. There was only pure hurt, and pure anger. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve defended you to the rest of the British government? To the king, for that matter? Do you have any idea how often I’ve defended my own association with you to the cabinet? I’m not like you. I’m the head of a government at a time of war. I cannot afford to answer only to my own conscience, and I cannot afford to answer to you.”

  “Well, you need to make sure you answer to somebody,” Wilberforce returned. “Or you really will be acting like a vampire king.”

  They held each other’s gaze for a long time, neither bending. And then Wilberforce inclined his head, stiff and formal as though they had never met before, and left the room.

  As the door closed behind Wilberforce, Pitt sank down into his chair. Mesmerism burned deep in his chest, unreleased; he drew a deep breath and swallowed it down deeper.

  He had grown used to the sudden, unexpected surges of magic in his veins over the last few years—the impulse when faced with vicious argument to subdue, to control, to overpower. Yesterday, during the duel, it had been so unexpectedly strong that after the first shot he had deliberately discharged both pistols into the air, in accepted fashion, because he didn’t trust himself to look his opponent in the eye. Holding someone with mesmerism as they died was the key to blood magic. It was why vampire wars were always ended with duels. For that, if for none of the other reasons Wilberforce had outlined, he knew quite well he should never have taken that risk, whatever the cost to his honor. (And he did, whatever Wilberforce said, believe in honor, somewhere deep in his soul or in his upbringing. He was an Aristocrat at heart and by title, if not by birth. He couldn’t help it.)

  This time, though, his magic wasn’t the only thing rushing to the surface. Alongside it were anger and guilt, so inextricable that they couldn’t be rationalized, only felt. And he didn’t have time to feel them. The country was at war—he said it too often, even to himself, but it was al
ways true. Everything he loved was at risk. The country didn’t care that he had doubts; it didn’t care that his magic wouldn’t settle anymore, that he spent an increasing number of days sick with pain and exhausted from pretending he wasn’t, that his life was narrowing to a fixed point while Wilberforce’s was constantly expanding. It didn’t care, and so he couldn’t either.

  Fortunately, Downing Street had become very empty of people who would notice that he was troubled, or that he looked rather pale. Both Harriot and Eliot were dead; his cabinet was filling with younger members, most of whom admired him in embarrassing ways but tended to assume he was invulnerable. Dundas had problems of his own to worry about. Only George Rose, who had known him since before he was prime minister, looked at him askance when they came in to resume the meeting.

  “Should you be here?” he asked. “I thought you weren’t looking very well yesterday. You look worse today.”

  “Thank you, but I think that here is exactly where I need to be,” Pitt replied, with a wry smile. “Whatever I may look like.”

  This was undeniably true. His supporters were annoyed at him for risking his life in a duel; his enemies were delighted. Invasion looked imminent. Rebellion was still raging across Ireland and rumored in the streets. Whatever else Bonaparte was doing, he was also moving across Egypt like an encroaching shadow, and the kraken had taken two more of their ships off the coast of Spain. Pitt had to report on all this to the king that afternoon. And the king had already sent him a very sharp letter regarding what he thought of his ministers dueling members of the opposition in their own time.

  The shadows flocked thick around the palace at Kew these days. They had since the king’s outburst of illness or madness, the year before the Bastille fell; they had grown thicker again since the war. Shadow-sickness, it had come to be called when it happened to lesser shadowmancers, as it had often since the army of the dead had woken in Europe. They danced in the corners of the homely rooms and darkened the windows; they plunged the house into a supernatural chill that always took Pitt a full day to shake. Still, there was no question that the king was in control of them for now. George’s aging face showed no sign of the distraction that had often plagued it since his illness. Certainly, his anger over the duel was focused enough.

  Pitt could and did argue with the king, but after his argument with Wilberforce he made no move to do so on this occasion. He nodded when the king seemed to call for it, promised repeatedly never to do such a thing again, and managed to slip papers on the table for George to sign during the pauses for breath. He could tolerate being reprimanded by the king—fortunately, since he had no choice in the matter.

  He was less happy about the fact that the King’s Magician was there to witness it. Anton Forester seemed to be at the palace more often than he was at the Temple Church these days, and always at the worst possible times. Forester’s eyes took him in from head to foot, sharp and malicious. Pitt, by contrast, kept his eyes fixed somewhere vaguely over Forester’s head, as though neither Forester nor his regard was worth a flicker of an eyelash. They were players at the same game, only with different moves.

  Which was why it was an unpleasant surprise when he left the king, papers in hand and spirits thoroughly ruffled, only to have Forester follow him out to his carriage.

  “The king is growing worse,” Forester said, without troubling himself with a polite segue.

  “He looked in perfect health to me,” Pitt said—quite truthfully, as it happened.

  “Your foolishness focused his mind. He forgets where he is sometimes entirely. And the shadows are thicker every day.”

  “Perhaps I should be foolish more often.” Pitt caught himself before the argument could escalate. Apart from anything else, his magic still hadn’t settled, and between the shadows and the arguments he’d had already today, he was not in the mood to talk to Anton Forester. His head throbbed, and his limbs felt made of broken glass. “If you’re proposing the king isn’t fit for his position, I would advise you to be very careful.”

  Forester sniffed. “I’m proposing nothing of the kind. I certainly don’t want his idiot son to be regent. I’m proposing quite the opposite. The king is very fit for his position. His magic is reacting to a threat across the country. A threat, if the strength of the king’s shadows is anything to go by, that is much greater than anything of which the country has been informed.”

  “We’re at war,” Pitt said evenly. “The shadows are bound to be excited. So is the king’s magic.”

  “From what I know of shadows, and the magic that binds a king to his country,” Forester said in the same tone, “it would take a good deal more than a war between England and France to excite this kind of response. And I know rather a lot.”

  God, he was unbearable. “The undead are walking the battlefields. This is already a good deal more than that.”

  “Yes. The last time we saw dark magic on this scale was the Vampire Wars. Undead on the battlefields, a kraken in the sea, and the shadows are stirring, whispering of a new age of chaos. A strange coincidence, is it not, that at this time the leader of our government has a family history of blood magic?”

  Long habit kept his face perfectly still while his heart raced. “I was tested at birth like everybody else,” he said. “You must have seen the records.”

  “I have. And we both know that those tests aren’t entirely reliable. Magic manifests late sometimes.”

  “Just what are you asking, Master Forester?”

  “I’m asking if you would consider submitting to a second test. Now.”

  “No.” He met Forester’s gaze this time, and he didn’t care what Forester saw there. “I would not. And without any evidence of illegal magic from me, you have absolutely no grounds to ask for one.”

  Forester nodded slowly. “Thank you,” he said. “That was what I suspected.”

  Wilberforce had meant to go back.

  By the time he had reached the foot of the stairs, his fury had started to cool, and he debated turning then and there. But the sound of footsteps above preceded him, and he could already hear voices coming once again from the cabinet room—the war meeting had resumed, apparently, as though nothing had happened. The anger in his chest reignited, and it was enough to carry him all the way home, back to the cool green of Clapham Common, where his family waited. It was evening, and Barbara was putting the infant William in his cradle in the nursery.

  “How was it?” she asked—quietly, so as not to wake the sleeping infant.

  “I said a lot of very hurtful things,” he said, just as softly, and knew it was true.

  “Did you mean them?” Barbara asked. She was not a practical woman at heart, but she had a disconcerting way of getting to the practicalities of human interaction.

  “Some,” he sighed. “Not all, and not in the way I said them. They were the wrong things to say, in any case. I should have said something far simpler.”

  “What should you have said?”

  He laughed a little. “Oh, I don’t know. ‘How are you? Is everything well with you? Can I help?’ It’s what I would have said years ago.”

  The trouble was, it was difficult when standing face-to-face with Pitt to think that he could ever need help. He was too practiced at seeming invulnerable, and though Wilberforce had always been confident he could see through any such pretenses, he was beginning to realize he had only ever been able to do so because Pitt had let him. Now, away from him, he knew something was wrong, very wrong. The duel had shocked him, but he had recognized Pitt in it. Beneath all his layers of practicality and equanimity and principle, there had always been a kernel in his friend’s heart that had been nourished on classical rhetoric and Shakespeare, that believed in honor and glory and desperate last stands, that flickered alight at odd moments in the House of Commoners and, once, a long time ago, when the two of them had stood against a shadow in the streets of Paris. Their argument had betrayed too much else that he didn’t recognize. It had angered him, and stil
l did, but it also frightened him.

  “It isn’t too late,” Barbara said. “You can go say that tomorrow.”

  “I very much doubt he’ll tell me, now,” he said with a sigh.

  He would have tried. But when he returned to town, he found that Pitt was unwell and not able to accept visitors—not, in fact, able to come to the House of Commoners, which by Pitt’s standards meant he really was desperately ill. Wilberforce sent him an immediate note of concern and received back a brief, polite note of reassurance, which made it very clear that a door had been closed. If, as Wilberforce suspected, the elixir was indeed failing, he was not allowed to know about it.

  Besides, his visit would have done no good. Nothing had changed. The Concord was still broken, the Forester bracelets were still in effect, and every attempt to bridge the gap between them was only widening it further. They were at an impasse, and there was no Eliot to bring them with soft, unrelenting patience back together, and no more common ground to stand on, and very little hope.

  Saint-Domingue

  The War of Knives

  By the end of 1798, the last traces of British troops had gone from Saint-Domingue. Shortly afterward, Hédouville was politely but firmly forced from the island; his replacement, meant to protect French interests, was brought to Le Cap as little more than a glorified prisoner. Between them, Toussaint in the north and Rigaud in the south held absolute power in Saint-Domingue.

  By 1799, they were at war.

  In theory, it was a war of race. Toussaint stood for the ex-slaves, the Black men and women who had been enslaved or born to work the plantations, beaten and spellbound and now at last free. Rigaud stood for the free colored population, those of mixed parentage who had lived varied and uneasy lives in the cracks between classes before the rebellion.