A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

  “I know all about your friends.”

  “Of course you do.” He reined in his temper with difficulty. Instead, he tried as usual to look at the man in front of him and see him as a human being rather than an enemy. Something caught his attention, and curiosity momentarily dissolved his resentment. “You’re a Commoner, aren’t you? You were braceleted as a child.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I can see the scars on your wrist. Most Commoner magicians have them from where the old bracelets used to burn them. Usually they’re hidden by the bracelets. They’re far deeper in French magicians; yours are quite visible by English standards.”

  “I tested it a good deal as a child,” Forester said shortly. He pulled his white sleeve over his wrist, as if on reflex. “What is your point?”

  “I wasn’t trying to make one, really. I only found it interesting. I suppose I was wondering why else you joined the Knights Templar.”

  “That isn’t your concern.”

  “I have no right to know, it’s true. But if it had anything to do with protecting people from dark magic, then you might want to consider the threat we face right now, and whether the Knights Templar are capable of defending against it.”

  “We are not,” Forester said. He said it simply, without hesitation. “I’ve known that for a very long time, and the French Revolution proved it beyond doubt. The Knights Templar have not been true knights for many years. We have power now only as long as our authority is respected. We do not have the power that it took to end the Vampire Wars in Europe more than two centuries ago.”

  “Then you need to let this one be fought,” Wilberforce said. “We both do.”

  Forester was silent. “I don’t know if I can mend the elixir,” he said at last. “It depends on why it’s ceased to work. And if I can, it may be too late.”

  “But you can try,” Wilberforce said.

  Forester nodded slowly. “I can try.”

  Walmer Castle

  Spring 1801

  Wilberforce had never talked to Pitt about his feelings about leaving office in any detail—by the time they had finally met socially, it seemed too late to broach the question, and Pitt had shown no signs of meeting him halfway. But he had heard from others that losing office had left Pitt heavily in debt and forced him to sell his house directly after moving out of Downing Street. He had known without being told that it would have nearly broken Pitt’s heart to do so, even though he had rarely indicated anything other than cheerful resignation. Wilberforce had dined at Holwood with a group of friends a week or so before it was due to be auctioned, and the weather had had the kindness or the cruelty to gift them an evening of unseasonable warmth. As a group of them had wandered through the gardens afterward, the gentle fragrances of grass and flowers hung in the air in a way that forcibly recalled all the days they had spent under the trees there when they were very young politicians with their entire careers ahead of them and no war on the horizon, and Wilberforce had heard Pitt sigh when he thought nobody was listening.

  “At least you still have Walmer,” he had said tentatively once, when they had found themselves a little apart from the rest of the group.

  “Mm,” Pitt had agreed, without much enthusiasm. “And I’m very fond of it. I just don’t tend to think of home as having gun turrets.”

  The castle had been gifted to Pitt by the king many years earlier as part of the office of Warden of the Cinque Ports: the estate, and the allowance that came with it, had been intended to help him out of debt when he had refused all other offers of assistance. At the time, it had been barely more than a rambling, run-down military fort on the stony beach, surrounded by wild grass and buffeted by winds from the sea. Now, as Wilberforce entered the main door and gave his coat to the butler, he was amazed at the transformation. The only traces of the fort’s exterior were in the glimpses of the battlements through the windows and the gentle curve of the walls; now those walls embraced well-appointed rooms with comfortable furniture and soft carpet. The worn stone had absorbed the warmth of the sun outside, and the afternoon light pooling on the floor gave it a peaceful, long-ago cast. It was one of the many differences between the two of them, that Wilberforce adapted readily to houses and gardens while Pitt was always thinking of ways to make them better. Holwood had always been in a constant state of landscaping, up to the day it was sold.

  He had never touched the oak tree, though. The two of them had sat under that tree the day they had first discussed the slave trade. That tree had been promised to Wilberforce, reserving the right to a rematch, and Pitt did not break promises.

  Wilberforce had been numb throughout the journey here. He had known only that he had to come, as soon as he could, despite the distance. He hadn’t let himself think about why it might be so important, or what would happen if he was too late. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he felt a lump in his throat.

  “Thank you very much,” he said to the butler belatedly. “I can see myself up. Is Lady Hester still here?”

  “She’s out riding, sir,” the butler said. “She’ll be delighted that you’re here. But I believe Master Forester is still upstairs, if you want to speak with him?”

  As it happened, he and Forester almost collided in the stairwell. It had been more than a week since Wilberforce had confronted him at the Temple Church. The Templar still wore the white and red robes of his order, but they were far less neatly pressed; his face, too, looked softer, as though fatigue had rumpled both.

  “He’s alive,” Forester said bluntly, before Wilberforce could ask. “Very weak, but alive. It was more difficult than I expected.”

  At first the relief at the first part of Forester’s greeting was so great that he could barely register the second, and it took longer still to form a response. “How so?”

  “To be quite frank, I assumed as you and Lady Hester did that the elixir had been improperly made—that the original, which was sound, had been corrupted over years of being made and remade without a proper alchemist. This wasn’t the case. What your friend has been taking is identical, for all intents and purposes, to the elixir that Dr. Addington formulated from the Templar records, and should work just as well.”

  “But it no longer does,” Wilberforce said, understanding. “Hence the difficulty.”

  “Exactly. If the elixir was at fault, I could correct it. As it is, it’s simply insufficient to sustain the kind of magic raging in your friend’s blood these days—and, it must be said, for the physical and mental exertion he’s been laboring under since the war began.”

  “But he hasn’t called upon any magic.” It came to him briefly that he didn’t know that for a fact, but he dismissed it. He knew.

  “Magic knows when it’s needed. It doesn’t much care whether or not its magician intends to call upon it. And then repressing it takes its own kind of toll.” The Templar’s hand, just briefly, encircled his left wrist. “I’ve seen it sometimes in very powerful Commoner magicians, toward the end of their lives. Their bodies and minds can break under trying to keep magic under guard. One of the many reasons why I maintain the new bracelets are an act of kindness.”

  “And no bracelets at all would be a greater one, perhaps.” He pushed on before the argument could escalate. This wasn’t the time. “So if you couldn’t correct the elixir—”

  “I found a way to strengthen it. It took several days, which is a remarkably short time considering the work began over two hundred years ago. A few nights ago I thought I had run out of time. But he responded at the last. I don’t think he’ll die this time.”

  Wilberforce didn’t miss the hesitation before this time. “Will the new elixir keep working?”

  “I’m an alchemist, not a physician.” He ran his hand wearily over his eyes. “Perhaps. If his mind and body stay quiet, and he doesn’t push himself or his magic past his strength. At the very least, I think I did him a favor when I forced him out of office. He wouldn’t have survived that life much longer.”

 
; “If I’m not mistaken, he almost didn’t survive relinquishing it.”

  “You’re not entirely mistaken,” Forester conceded. “It’s strange how often that happens, whether magic is involved or not. People weather storms they should never be able to survive and then collapse once they’ve passed, as though the storm itself kept them upright. But if I were a physician, I wouldn’t recommend he do so again.”

  “And as a Templar?”

  “I would recommend he save his strength in case it is needed,” Forester said promptly. “Please be of no doubt, Mr. Wilberforce, I’ve saved him for one reason and one alone: in case he is needed to stop a vampire war. For anything else, I will not be held responsible. Do you understand?”

  “I understand you perfectly. Is he able to receive visitors yet?” Strangely, though he’d come all this way specifically to see him, he found himself half hoping that he would be sent away. Not forever, just until tomorrow or so.

  “Probably not, truth be told,” Forester said, “but he’s insisted on seeing you. He’s in the first bedroom to the right.”

  “I didn’t realize he’d been told I was here.”

  “He didn’t need to be told.” Forester gave him a hard look. “You still don’t understand, do you? He’s a blood magician, one whose magic is trying very hard to keep him alive even as it’s killing him. He can read your bloodlines from a mile away, because he needs them to survive.”

  “Of course.” Wilberforce refused to feel the chill that Forester was trying to give him. “I do forget. So he does want to see me?”

  Forester sighed, as if giving him up as a hopeless case. “Yes. Yes, he wants to see you. But if you want him to survive, please step carefully. I’ve told him to let his mind rest from politics.”

  Somewhere, he found a small smile. “As somebody who has on occasion been the recipient of similar advice, you might as well tell him to let his lungs rest from breathing.”

  “Well, since that is more or less what they’re attempting to do, that may well be the alternative. Either way, I’ve done all I can. I only hope I was right to do it.”

  “Thank you,” Wilberforce said, and meant it. “You look as though you’ve pushed your magic past your strength yourself.”

  “I’m used to it,” he said, but tiredly. “This has been a challenge, I’ll admit. I’ve had greater. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve been up all night.”

  “This is a large house. I’m sure you’d be welcome to stay another night or so, and leave in the morning when you’re rested.”

  Forester shook his head. “No. I’ll rest in the carriage on the way back. I don’t think any of us want me here longer than needed.”

  That was undeniable.

  Forester turned back once before he left. “The elixir,” he said, with some hesitation. “It’s a very subtle and elegant piece of alchemy. I’m impressed at the advancements old Dr. Addington made to it—it helps, of course, that he had a young vampire upon whom to test his theories.”

  “I’m sure he would have said he had a patient to save.”

  Forester brushed that aside. “I still don’t think the elixir should be made to work reliably on other blood magicians, given the risks they could pose. But I’m reasonably confident now that it could. And I must admit, from a purely intellectual standpoint, the challenge is tempting.”

  “Are you saying you intend to work on it further?”

  “I’m saying, at this point in time, that you might hear from me again.”

  It had been several weeks since Wilberforce had seen Pitt in person. Despite Forester’s warnings, he was startled at his appearance now. The morning sun had left the bedroom, which looked out toward the stormy seas across the Channel, and a fire flickered in the grate. By its light, his friend looked gaunt and haggard. Raising himself to sit as Wilberforce entered clearly took effort, and his lungs labored for breath before he spoke. Very weak, but alive, Forester had said. It was true, but it was more than that. It was as though a shadow had touched him and had taken something when it withdrew.

  “It was kind of you to come,” Pitt said. His voice, at least, was his own, though it had an edge of wariness. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

  “I wasn’t sure if you would want me to,” Wilberforce said frankly. There was a chair by the bed, presumably recently vacated by Forester. He lowered himself into it with more care than he usually would. “I met Forester on the way out. He had some things to say about you.”

  “I can imagine,” Pitt said wryly. “Apparently I finally baffled magical science, and he was on the brink of giving up on me entirely.”

  He smiled. “The charlatan. Are you certain he wasn’t just trying to maintain his reputation as a great magician when you suddenly recovered?”

  “Unlikely, unless it was for your benefit. He won’t be able to tell anybody else about this, and he’s certainly never cared for my good opinion. I have no idea how you persuaded him to come when for so many reasons, professional and personal, he would have preferred to cut my throat.”

  “I didn’t persuade him of anything. I spoke to him. I find most people are reasonable when you do that. Then I threatened him, of course.” He let his voice become more serious, although not serious enough to put his friend on the defensive. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this was happening? Forester says the elixir had been failing for years. You must have noticed.”

  “There was nothing to tell you.” The wary edge to his voice sharpened. “It’s faltered every now and then, especially in the last few years. But it’s always recovered, or I did. This time it didn’t.”

  “That sounds very routine and simple. You nearly died.”

  “I haven’t yet.”

  Wilberforce sighed in exasperation. “It only takes once, you know, even for you. You could have told me. There are a good many things you could have told me.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as.” This wasn’t what he had come to say. But he couldn’t stop himself, now he had started. Perhaps it was what needed to be said. “You never told me about Forester. You never told me you’d resigned because of him.”

  “You never asked me why I resigned.”

  “Would you have told me if I had?”

  He hesitated, which was all the answer needed. “You had no need to be involved.”

  “I want to be involved! And what’s more, I am involved. You involved me years ago when I tried to join the Knights Templar and you took me into your confidence.”

  “Yes, and I was wrong to do that.” Real frustration cracked through the brittle politeness. “We were both very young—old enough that I should have known better, it’s true, but it was a different world. There was no war with France; we didn’t know there was another blood magician in Europe, much less that we would be drawn into conflict with him. And you were nearly killed as a result. This isn’t your war. You have your own battles to fight, and your own welfare to think of, not to mention that of your wife and your children. How many is it now?”

  “Three—four, soon, we think—but they have nothing to do with this!”

  “They don’t, you’re quite right. They shouldn’t. And that’s exactly the point.”

  “Is that not my decision? I told you at the time, it was not your fault that I was hurt in Westminster Abbey all those years ago. It was as much my battle as yours—more so, in fact, because it wasn’t forced on me by blood. I chose to fight it. It was my privilege. It still is. Having a family only makes me want to fight it more. For God’s sake, Pitt, I’m willing to give my life for something important, regardless of how I value it! You can’t tell me you of all people don’t understand that.”

  “I do understand that,” he said quietly. “Please trust me that I do.”

  “I do trust you!” Wilberforce heard himself snap. It came on reflex, as if from outside himself. It was, he realized suddenly, what had been hanging over them for seven years.

  All at once, his anger evaporated. He seemed to be s
eeing Pitt, and perhaps himself, for the first time in a very long time. This was his friend, for God’s sake. His friend who was brilliant and kind and self-conscious, and had a lightning-quick sense of humor and tried to never lose his temper and knew Virgil and Shakespeare by heart and who, only yesterday, had nearly died. It was ridiculous that they should ever have been at odds with each other, whatever their differences of opinion. They knew each other better than that.

  “I do trust you,” he repeated, but this time very quietly. “I always have, and I never stopped. I may not agree with your actions, but I trust that they accord with your principles. I’m very sorry I ever implied otherwise—I know I have, probably quite frequently since this horrible war began, but certainly on the night the Concord was broken, and again the day after that ridiculous duel. And I know that if I hadn’t, you might have been more willing to trust me in return.”

  It occurred to him, belatedly, that this was the apology he had never made seven years ago: the one that Thornton, who was very wise in such matters, had urged him to make without knowing what it was for. He had, after all, been sorry about something.

  Pitt looked startled for a moment; then, all at once, he softened. It was more than a softening, it was a crumbling of barriers that Wilberforce had known were there but that went so much further and deeper than he had ever suspected.

  “I should be the one to apologize,” he said, and his voice sounded very much as it had in the earliest days of their friendship, with its unexpected flashes of shyness. Except back then it had never sounded so exhausted. “I’ve been ashamed for seven years for what I said and did that night. I knew you had every right to worry about what I had done, and what I was becoming. I gave you that right, for better or worse, when I told you what I was. I simply didn’t want to hear it. It isn’t easy to see your worst fears about yourself reflected on the face of the person whose judgment you value most in the world.”

  “I wasn’t worried about what you were becoming—not in the way you mean. I was worried about you. I did have that right, as your friend, if nothing else. But I chose the wrong moment to exercise it. I knew I’d just hurt you, terribly, standing against you in public.”