A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

  “It may not come to anything.” Pitt paused. “Still. Hester’s traveling in Europe right now, with friends of hers. I think I might send her a message and warn her to come home. Just in case.”

  In May, Britain and France were at war. The peace of Amiens had lasted no more than fourteen months.

  The Thames was sparkling gray brown in the spring evening when Kate pushed her way through the crowded wharves. The front of her dress was still damp from washtub spills, and her hair was falling loose from its knot. She didn’t care. Her magic sang the shifts of the sea and the wind; her face was flushed with cold and excitement. Her eyes roamed the ships nearest to the shoreline, trying to pick out a familiar mast.

  Kate was in luck—not only did she find the small boat, but the figure she wanted was on deck, securing it to the wharf. Her voice was used to cannon fire and ship’s bells now. It carried easily over the crowds. “Danny!”

  Danny turned; his brow furrowed when he saw her. She waited, feet together, catching her breath, as he spoke to the other men on deck and swung himself over the side of the ship.

  “What is it?” he asked as he came within earshot. “What’s wrong?”

  Now she was standing in front of him, she found that she was nervous after all—not of his disapproval, but of his disappointment. She’d never meant to hurt him.

  “The war’s back on again. The kraken’s on the move. They need battle-mages again, capable of strong weather magic.”

  He was silent for a long moment. “Are you going to sign up?”

  “I already have.” She said it as gently as she could, but she couldn’t hide the tremble of excitement in her voice. “I couldn’t wait. If enough men sign up, they won’t take women—I know them well enough for that. I’m to make my own way to Portsmouth tomorrow. Dorothea lent me the money for the coach fare. Once I’m there, I know there are captains who know what I can do well enough not to care what else I am.”

  “I see.” Danny looked away, but not before she saw the glint in his eyes. “I reckon we’re not getting married after all, then.”

  The quiet hurt in his voice melted her. “We still could,” she said. She took his hands in her own, feeling how cold and chapped his fingers were. This speech had seemed far easier when it had only been in her head. “That’s your choice. I’ll stay engaged to you, if you’re willing to wait for me to come back from the wars. It has to be that way. Married women can’t be battle-mages.”

  “And that’s that, is it?” His voice lashed out, uncharacteristic, like a whip. She flinched away on reflex. “You’re off to war again, and I’m not to get a say in it at all?”

  “Wives don’t often get a say when their husbands go to war,” she returned, stung despite herself. “I didn’t get a say in it when Christopher went. I didn’t want one. I wanted him to do what he needed to do.”

  “That’s not what I—!” His hands, empty of hers, curled into fists, and he drew a deep breath. She saw his eyes flit, just once, to the men waiting for him on the deck. “I don’t care what some husbands do. I’d never go to war without asking you first. You know I wouldn’t. And Christopher would have stayed if you needed him, Kate. I— For God’s sake, I waited for you to come home once already. We’re supposed to be engaged now. Whether you jilt me outright or leave me waiting for you to come back from the sea, I’m going to look a fool.”

  You don’t need my help to do that. The words leaped to her tongue, sharp as a knife; she bit them back and tasted iron. They weren’t true. Danny Foster wasn’t a fool, and he wasn’t an enemy. He was a good, strong, decent person, and he deserved better of her than her temper. He just didn’t understand. She had barely understood herself, until the day she had cast her magic out against a foreign sea and watched the ships’ sails flare.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, and meant it. “It wasn’t fair of me to agree to marry you in the first place. I would have done it, if the country had stayed at peace. I would have married you and cared for you, and I would have been your partner in life and borne your children. But I promise, you don’t need me, Danny. You need a wife. She’s a fortunate woman, whoever she is, but she isn’t me. I’m a magician.”

  Another silence. This time, his eyes stayed on hers, and she met them. They were hurt and confused and dark with tears. She made herself hold them and feel every inch of what she was doing. And yet somewhere, in the distance, she could still feel the waves singing.

  She was a magician. It had been a fact before. Now it was a truth, and everything she had thought she had cared about—the wages of a battle-mage, her desire to avenge her brother, her love of the sea—were just excuses after all. Somewhere, at last, in the light of it, she could see Christopher again.

  Danny couldn’t have seen this. But he wasn’t a fool; he could see something. At last, he nodded. “So that’s it, then.”

  “Yes,” she said, in little more than a whisper, and felt it was true in some far greater way than she could know. This was it.

  That night in Saint-Domingue, Dessalines’s troops had taken Port-au-Prince. Fina lay awake. By her own insistence, she always slept apart from the rest of the troops; this time, she was in a house of her own, small but still well furnished, a relic of a different age. Her best protection was to be entirely alone. Her own magic would stir if anyone came near; if nobody was meant to be there, it was easier to notice and react. It was safer that way. It was also the loneliest she had ever been. She rarely slept these days, and she never relaxed.

  This time, though, it wasn’t vigilance that kept her awake. She was thinking.

  There had been no sign of the stranger on Saint-Domingue for a long time. As far as she could tell he had lost all interest in their colony. Bonaparte’s troops still fought to hold it, but Dessalines won new victories every day. It could not be long before he took control. And then, if Dessalines was true to his word, the plans to liberate Jamaica from the enemy could soon resume.

  The trouble was, she was finding more and more that she could not trust Dessalines. It wasn’t just that he was cunning and cruel—the world he lived in called for him to be both. It was that he did not like her. He never had, however often they fought side by side. What was worse, he knew that Fina did not like him. Once Saint-Domingue was in his hands, there was every possibility that he would betray her too. And if she died, there would be nobody left to stand against the stranger. It wasn’t only her people at stake, though they were the ones for whom she cared the most. The stranger wanted the entire world.

  It wasn’t fair. She thought that in her darkest moments, when her fears for Toussaint turned to fury at his absence. Toussaint had promised to free her people; he had left them chained, used her to help to free his own, and left her alone with an even greater task than before. And this was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. She had been inside too many heads now to believe that truth was ever whole, and certainly to believe it was ever simple.

  At first, she thought it was a dream. She had been reaching for the stranger, as she always did after nightfall, and this usually brought her to her old plantation in Jamaica and the constant murmur of rebellion. But this time she was standing in a bay, encircled by cliffs and the encroaching sea. There was something deeply familiar about it, more so than could be explained by the fact that she had been there before. She had been to most of Saint-Domingue now, over the years. This…

  Her heart jumped—a hopeful jump, like a child sighting a familiar face. She knew it. Not just the beach, but the day. She knew where she was.

  “Fina,” Toussaint’s voice came, and she turned toward the sound. She never cried, but something blurred her eyes so that it took her a moment to see him.

  “Toussaint,” she said.

  She hadn’t seen him in almost a year. At first every day had been a fresh wound in her heart, and then time had healed those wounds over and she’d thought they had hardened into unfeeling scar tissue. She was wrong. At the sight of him they ripped open again.


  “You look well,” she heard herself say foolishly. He did look well: he looked as he had always looked. His body was filled with wiry strength, and his lopsided face was no older than when she had last seen it. But that was his mind, not his body. Outside, he could be anywhere, in any state. They were in a bubble that could burst at any time.

  “I’m dying,” Toussaint replied. It was true. She felt it seeping into the edges of their shared world, coloring it gray and chill. “I’m in a dungeon far below the earth. The cold and the damp got into my lungs a long time ago, and they’re drowning me from the inside. Bonaparte knows this—I’ve written to him many times. I’ve been buried alive. I don’t know what’s happened to my family, except that they tell me they’re unharmed.”

  “I can’t see them,” she said, answering his unspoken question. “They’re still being held in France. But I’ve heard they’re safe too, and I believe it.”

  “Good.” He sighed, very faintly. “Are you safe?”

  “I’m—”

  “Don’t tell me where you are,” Toussaint interrupted. “The stranger’s here. I can’t see him, but he’s always here.”

  “I wasn’t about to.” If she was here, after all, the stranger had to be there too. She couldn’t have traveled to Toussaint’s mind on her own. “I was only going to say that I’m not safe, but I’m well, and I’m free. I’m with Dessalines.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “No. But he’s fighting back against the French. If he can, I think he’ll kill every white man, woman, and child on this island.”

  Toussaint nodded. “Perhaps he’s right, and it is the only way. I hoped it wasn’t. But he’ll win?”

  “I think he will. The fever killed them in their thousands last autumn. We did it. We held them back long enough.”

  “Then it was worth it. My only regret is that I accepted the stranger’s help on the day of the storm. I’m not convinced that we couldn’t have done better without him.”

  She remembered that day, the day when the rain and the waves swelled with magic dangerous and wild and free. It hadn’t been free at all in the end. But that feeling had carried her through so many rough and jagged years ever since. It was hard to wish it away. It was hard to wish any of it away.

  “We got to where we’re standing,” Fina said. “Maybe another path could have brought us here, and maybe not. We can’t know. All we can do is go forward. And we will now. Thanks to you.”

  “Very wise,” a new voice came.

  Fina knew that voice. She had been prepared to hear it, but still her heart quailed. Even in the labyrinth of their minds, where there was no sound or language, it was a slave master’s voice.

  The stranger was standing in the shadow of the cliff. There had been no shadow there in real life, and there hadn’t been one in her memory. Perhaps he had brought it with him. It obscured the planes of his face, but it didn’t matter. Fina knew what he looked like.

  “There you are at last,” the stranger said. “Toussaint’s magician, the woman who can slip in and out of waking minds. I knew you’d come to him, if I made it possible.”

  “Get away from her,” Toussaint said.

  “Am I near her?” His head turned. “I can only see you. But I can hear her when she speaks. Do you want to speak again, Toussaint’s magician?”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Fina said.

  “There. I heard that. You should be, to answer your assertion. You’re on Saint-Domingue still, are you not? My hold is very tenuous over there now. It flickers one day to the next, and soon I’ll lose it forever. But enough of it is still mine to make things very dangerous for you.”

  “Why would you care about me?” she said.

  “Because I’ve never encountered anyone with magic like yours before. And because I know that once Dessalines has taken Saint-Domingue, he’s promised to help you take Jamaica. At this point I can’t stop him taking Saint-Domingue. You’ve won. But you know Jamaica is another matter.”

  “I know more than that.” In that moment, she truly wasn’t afraid. “I know what you’re doing in Jamaica every night. While they’re asleep, you come and work your way into the spellbinding. And all the while you whisper to them of rebellion.”

  “And what would be wrong with that? They deserve a rebellion.”

  “They do. But after it, they deserve their freedom. You want to control them. The island will burn, but they’ll never be free.”

  “Would it matter so much?” the stranger said. “It would still be a rebellion, of sorts.”

  “Of course it matters. What would be the point of a rebellion without freedom?”

  “Those who tormented you would be punished. That might be the only freedom any of you will ever have.”

  “It won’t be.” Fury was like ice in her blood. “I was wrong before. I do know Saint-Domingue could have been free without you. We did it in spite of you. And we always will.”

  The stranger opened his mouth to reply, but Toussaint spoke first. His voice cracked like a whip.

  “Stop talking to him.”

  Fina turned to him, away from the blue eyes that sought her face without success. “Why?”

  “Something’s wrong.” Toussaint was looking at the stranger, sharp and suspicious. “He didn’t lure you here to speak with you. He’s trying to keep you here.”

  “Why? He can’t hurt me here.” The realization came so fast upon the heels of her words that they almost collided.

  He couldn’t hurt her here. Nobody could. But she could be hurt in Saint-Domingue, and Saint-Domingue lay under the stranger’s influence, for at least a little while longer. As long as she was here, her body lay sleeping and vulnerable in enemy territory.

  Toussaint realized it at the same time, or earlier. “You have to wake up. Now.”

  She nodded, and closed her eyes. Normally she would be able to slip back to herself, as sweetly and swiftly as a bird returning to its nest. She willed herself to do so now. She thought of her body, lying on the hard bed; of the warm breeze outside the window; of the cracked plaster walls.

  Nothing happened.

  “Fina…”

  “I can’t,” she said, as calmly as she could. Inside, her heart screamed the horror of being spellbound again. “I can’t get out.”

  “My fault.” The stranger took one step forward, as though volunteering for punishment. It brought his pale face a step farther out of the shadows. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry it has to be this way. But Toussaint is right. I did want to speak to you, but I didn’t only want that.”

  “You’re holding me here.”

  “Only for a little while.” His voice was tight; a spasm of something like pain or effort crossed his face. “I hope so, anyway. I must admit, this is more difficult than anything I’ve done in a while. They’re coming for you now, back in Saint-Domingue. And I don’t quite trust you to be awake when they do.”

  Fina closed her eyes again, then opened them. Her magic strained within her, desperate to pull free. Nothing happened. Around her, the heat was bleeding from the beach. The seas were turning dark, and the sky had lost its blue.

  “Let me go,” she said.

  The stranger managed a brittle smile, but no words. His attention was on keeping the doors to their shared nightmare closed.

  “Who is it?” she asked. She wanted to know; she also wanted to grasp at anything to distract him. If his attention flickered, perhaps that would be enough. Perhaps. “Who’s coming for me?”

  He still said nothing. Their magic strained around them, and so did the skies.

  Perhaps, just for the moment, they had both forgotten Toussaint until he stepped forward. His eyes were fixed on the stranger. It was only briefly that they flickered toward Fina, and his mouth quirked in a familiar smile.

  “Let her go,” he said.

  “You have no power left, Louverture,” the stranger said absently. There was a sheen of sweat on his white forehead. “Certainly not enough to stand against
me. Please don’t try.”

  “I do have power,” Toussaint said. “Not in the real world, perhaps. But this is my memory, and my Saint-Domingue. If you wanted to hurt Fina, then you shouldn’t have brought her to me.”

  He closed his eyes. Around them, the wind began to pick up. The bushes covering the slopes rustled; the waves crashed. Clouds mounded overhead. Fina’s hair stirred in the breeze, and rain hit her skin.

  The stranger flinched at the touch of the cold water. His teeth were bared in a snarl. “Don’t try this, Toussaint Louverture. I warn you. You’re a flickering candle. It would take the slightest breath for me to snuff you out.”

  Toussaint ignored him. “Do you have somewhere to run when you wake up, Fina?”

  “I do,” she said. There was no way her voice should have been heard over the growing storm, but he heard.

  “Then run. Run as far and as fast as you can. And then turn, and make a stand. Don’t let this man win.”

  “Of course I won’t.” The rain was like tears on her face, and she could barely stay upright in the howl of the wind. “Toussaint…”

  The lightning hit the sand without warning. It struck the stranger full in the chest; he gasped and staggered back, momentarily lit by flame. In the real world he would have been dead. But his head snapped toward Toussaint, and his eyes were lit by fury.

  No. Not only fury. Mesmerism.

  “Oh,” he said softly. “Oh, you will regret that.”

  “Now, Fina!” Toussaint snapped.

  She couldn’t leave him. She couldn’t. And yet the stranger’s magic had lifted—she could feel her body again now, waiting for her to come home.

  The stranger’s pale face was twisted in anger, and his eyes met Toussaint’s in a blaze of magic. The entire island screamed.

  “Fina!” Toussaint ordered.

  With a gasp that was like a sob, Fina closed her eyes. Toussaint’s dream dissolved behind her.

  There was no time for grief. No time for wonder. No time for fear. Fina’s eyes snapped open in the familiar dark of her bedroom and fell immediately on the glint of a knife.