A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

  There was another difference, too. It had seemed almost like an afterthought, as the Abolition Society had pored over the bill for the final time.

  “Do you think we should put the prohibition of spellbinding back in?” Wilberforce had asked. “I know it’s been a contentious issue in and of itself, and we’ve been careful to avoid rousing public opinion against us. But perhaps we’ve been too careful. The slave trade is severely diminished now, thanks to Stephen. The revolution in Haiti has faded from people’s minds except as an example of the triumph of liberty. And I promised Fina that I would do all I could.”

  Granville Sharp had looked thoughtful. “I think,” he said slowly, “we seem to have come quite far on that issue in the last year. Public opinion is well and truly in our favor.” He smiled a little. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, put it back in.”

  It was what they had originally moved for, just before the French Revolution, when they didn’t yet know how much everything was about to change. Now, perhaps, everything was about to change again.

  He had felt Fina in his head a few times that night and had known she was listening in the gallery above them. Most of the abolitionists were either in the House or in the gallery now. Others were missing. Wilberforce’s family were waiting at home for him, Barbara with child again for the sixth time. Clarkson waited in his cell for the news to travel along the bank of the Thames to the Tower of London. Wilberforce had gone to see him before the session and found him brighter than he had been in a very long time.

  “If this bill passes,” Wilberforce had added, “we’ll know the climate really has changed. Not only for abolition, but for magic as well. And perhaps then, we can petition for your release. Perhaps—”

  “I don’t care,” Clarkson interrupted. He spoke abruptly, but his voice was uncharacteristically soft. “I mean, by all means, let’s refine the laws—I firmly believe we will. But for me… I honestly don’t care, Wilber. I never have. Just stop that trade.”

  “I will,” Wilberforce promised. He’d done so many times, but this time really did feel different.

  Fox was also absent. He had died himself only months ago, finally serving on the government after so long in opposition. The last time Wilberforce had seen him, still well and strong, Fox had asked him cheerfully when on earth he was going to finally finish off those wretched traders.

  “It’s all well and good to walk your victim gently up to the scaffolding, Nightingale,” he’d said. “But sooner or later you’ve got to throw the noose around their neck and give it a good tug.”

  “I can’t imagine a less appropriate metaphor for the salvation of lives,” Wilberforce had returned with mock dignity, and Fox had laughed and clapped him on the shoulder before going off to gamble the rest of the night.

  It was one year since Pitt had been laid to rest in Westminster Abbey. Wilberforce had gone to visit the monument that marked his burial ground that morning, in the cool, dim quiet through which they had once chased an undead on a rainy night. He had expected to feel very aware of the presence of his friend there, but in fact he didn’t, not especially. For him, the memory of William Pitt lurked in the House of Commoners, at Downing Street, in St. James’s Park on beautiful days, in shadows by the fireplace in Thornton’s library, in the crash of the waves on the coast, and in flashes of ideas. It didn’t waste time in cold marble monuments, even very nice ones.

  “I thought you might come here,” a voice said.

  The King’s Magician had diminished in power since Wilberforce had last seen him. The office itself was becoming more necessary every day, but every day seemed to bring new, stronger magicians to fill it. The real work in magical scholarship now was being done on the battlefields, by Aristocrats and Commoners alike.

  “You never reported him,” Wilberforce said. He didn’t need to specify to whom he referred. They were standing at his memorial.

  “I saw no need,” Forester said. His face as he stepped forward looked faded, like paper left too long in the sun. “And no advantage. He’ll be the last of the illegal blood magicians, now the alchemists have their hands on the elixir. Let them die out in peace. The Order of the Knights Templar will die with them soon enough—at least, the Order as we’ve known it for the last three hundred years.”

  “You’re still King’s Magician.”

  “Not for much longer. I’ve been strongly encouraged to resign my position before it is resigned for me. The king wants to divorce the post from the Temple Church as soon as possible. The English Crown has never liked the Knights Templar.”

  “Then who will replace you?”

  There was a bite of irony in his voice. “It isn’t yet public, but it will be Catherine Dove—Lady Catherine, as she now is.”

  He blinked, genuinely startled. “A woman and a Commoner?”

  “A battle-mage,” Forester corrected. “The hero of the Battle of Trafalgar. It’s meant to appease the Commoners, of course. The king thinks it easier than locking them up. He doesn’t understand what he’s unleashed. Nor do you, I suspect. Free magic is a dangerous thing, Mr. Wilberforce.”

  “We don’t yet have free magic.”

  “It won’t take long. Without the bracelets, without the Knights Templar, with so many magicians rising to prominence on the battlefields, it’s impossible to police Commoner magic entirely. Once the time is right, you’ll move forward and propose that all but acts of harmful magic be made legal for Commoners, as they are for Aristocrats. The act will be resisted, but not for long, and you won’t give up. You’ll have the support of the King’s Magician this time. It will happen. You knew this when you proposed the bracelets be removed in the first place.”

  “I hoped,” he said, and it was true. He had never, even at his darkest, quite stopped.

  Forester nodded, just once. “I hope you’re ready for the new world.”

  “I don’t think it matters if I’m ready for it or not,” he said. “It wasn’t meant for me.”

  Four o’clock in the morning. The abolition bill, at last, was raised in the House. One by one, the members of the House of Commoners rose to speak.

  What was striking, Wilberforce thought, was how few bothered to mention Britain’s economic interests, or the principles of magical regulation, or even the war—all the mists with which both sides had been deliberately clouding the issue for so long. Those mists had been blown away, and what remained was an issue of basic human rights. Most rose to decry the trade and all it stood for, and to praise those who brought about its end. Most, to Wilberforce’s embarrassment, rose especially in praise of him.

  “I cannot conceive,” the new prime minister said, looking directly at him, “of any consciousness more truly gratifying than must be enjoyed by that person on finding a measure to which he has devoted the color of his life carried into effect—a measure, moreover, which will diffuse happiness amongst millions now in existence, and for which his memory will be blessed by millions yet unborn.”

  The walls trilled gently, like a lullaby.

  Wilberforce couldn’t help smiling, as he had at all such kind tributes. He was kept from being overwhelmed, however, by his anxiety to have the vote taken. He had no doubt of its success; he truly didn’t. But until he heard it announced once and for all, he couldn’t believe it.

  More people spoke: many for, one or two against. Tarleton stood and repeated the same arguments he had been repeating for years. He had been repeating them, after all, for twenty years. There were no more arguments left.

  It had been a very long night. It had been a very long twenty years.

  Thornton turned to Wilberforce as the votes were hastily counted. “Nervous?”

  “Not at all,” Wilberforce said.

  “Excited?”

  “Not at all.”

  “What are you feeling, then?”

  “I think I might be about to faint, actually.”

  “Ah. What from?”

  “Nervous excitement, I would say, predominantly.” His heart felt li
ke a fluttering butterfly in his chest. “How are you?”

  “About the same. Remember to breathe.”

  “I couldn’t possibly. All nonessential parts of my mind are engaged in praying very hard.”

  “You may need to rethink your definition of nonessential,” Thornton said dryly.

  The Speaker was smiling as he read the results of the vote, Wilberforce noticed in a daze. That had to be a good sign, surely?

  “Against,” the Speaker read. “Sixteen votes. For: 283.”

  Wilberforce had caught his breath at the 16, as had half the House. At the 283, his eyes blurred sharply with tears, and the building erupted into cacophony. He never actually heard the Speaker announce the slave trade and the spellbinding of human beings to be no more, but he knew that, after twenty long, soul-destroying years, they finally were.

  “Thank you,” he whispered under the cover of the noise. He wasn’t entirely sure whom he was thanking: God, of course, but also Clarkson, and Fox, and Thornton, and Pitt, and Toussaint, and Fina. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  This was what it felt like when evil passed.

  For once, he had nothing more to say.

  Behind the screen, where the women on either side of Fina clapped and sobbed, Fina sat very still. The space was small and dark. The screen before her face trembled very slightly, as the sounds of muffled cheering filtered from the floor of the House of Commoners.

  At her back, the walls sang. It was no warm trilling this time, but a deep, profound note of joy, impossibly clear and sweet and painful, the kind that reached down into her heart and touched her soul. She knew it was only responding to a speech, that it only understood the magic of words and rhetoric and meaning. But she also knew that because of that peculiar alchemy the world had changed, and somehow the walls knew it too.

  She closed her eyes, and listened.

  A cold sun was rising in the sky by the time Wilberforce stepped out into the courtyard. Despite the hour, the place was alive with well-wishers, and he had been congratulated and hand-shaken and back-slapped and hugged until he was breathless. It was a wonderful feeling.

  “So,” he said to Thornton, “what shall we abolish next?”

  He was half joking, but only half, and Thornton’s weary laugh suggested he knew that quite well. “Wilber, you’re a wonderful person and I applaud your commitment to a better world, but I hope you don’t mind if we take a breath in between achieving one of the great objectives of our lives and moving on to the next. I think I may spend a solid week in bed.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.” He tilted his head back to look at the fading stars. “Never. Until this wears off, sometime in June, and then I may sleep for a very long time, so we’d better get all we can done in the meantime.”

  “I think it may wear off faster than that, Wilber,” Thornton said cautiously. “Maybe April, or March.”

  “Two hundred eighty-three votes to sixteen in favor of a pure act of humanity. It might even be July.”

  “I wonder who the sixteen were?”

  “Oh, never mind them!” There were still tears on his face, but he had never been happier in his entire life. He would have felt drunk with it, had it not contained at its kernel a hushed, awe-filled solemnity that he couldn’t yet examine too closely. Later, much later, when he was alone, he would. “Miserable souls. Let’s just think about the glorious 283.”

  “Let us indeed,” Thornton agreed. “There are more of them coming this way.”

  There were, scores of them, abolitionists and politicians and campaigners alike. The one who mattered most of all, however, was Fina. She stood slightly aback from the others, waiting for the waves to subside; he saw her, and they exchanged smiles. When the path was clear, she came and took his hands.

  “We did it,” he said. “Thank you.”

  She understood, perhaps more than anybody, what his gratitude encompassed. She nodded. Her face was serious, but glowing softly.

  “It isn’t over,” she said.

  “No,” he agreed. He had said as much to Thornton, and had meant it in every sense. “It isn’t. But it’s a good place to begin.”

  Wilberforce bid Thornton good night at the gates of Parliament and hailed a carriage that would bear him home. It was quite a distance to cover this late in the morning, but when he reached it, Barbara would be waiting for him, and his children, and the large soft bed that was actually beginning to seem very inviting. He would sleep long and soundly, and when he woke, there would be breakfast on the table, and the sun would be shining, and so would the world.

  He turned once to look at Westminster Abbey as he got into the carriage. Dawn was breaking in the skies above it, streaking them through with pink and gold. He would have liked to have paused to watch it a little longer, but the driver was waiting for him with growing impatience. He sat down and closed the door, and the carriage left Westminster behind.

  Acknowledgments

  By the time this book goes out in the world, I’ll have lived with this duology on and off for seven years. I started the Acknowledgments to Declaration by saying I couldn’t believe it made it out into the world; this one, with everything that has happened in the last year, I can’t believe ever got written at all. (I’m writing this in the last few days of 2020; if 2021 is worse, then don’t tell me.) But it did, and here it is, and it owes that to many people.

  First and foremost: So many thanks to my agent, Hannah Bowman, and my editor, Nivia Evans, for working so hard and so perceptively and so cheerfully on this difficult book, and making it so much better. It’s such an honor to work with you.

  To the amazing people at Orbit: Thank you to Lauren Panepinto, creative director, and Lisa Marie Pompilio, cover designer, for such an incredible cover. Thank you to Bryn A. McDonald, managing editor, and Eileen G. Chetti, copyeditor, for fixing my grammar and logic mistakes and being so polite about the truly stupid ones. In publicity and marketing, thank you so much to Alex Lencicki, Ellen Wright, Laura Fitzgerald, Paola Crespo, and Stephanie Hess, for helping my books (and so many others) find their way into the hands of readers. And thank you to Jenni Hill, Emily Byron, and the entire team at Orbit UK for looking after this book on the other side of the pond.

  With Declaration I wanted to mythologize history, to bring out its color and scale and grandeur and intensely human conflicts in the way that people have used myth to illuminate the past since time began. In this one I wanted to go one step further—to let those mythic elements shape a slightly different history, to let it give a place to individuals who might not have found one in ours, to explore how the old world might pass into a new age of magic. Above all, I wanted these books to be about the choices faced in fighting for a better world, and the people who make them. So thank you so much to the countless historians and novelists and filmmakers whose work brought to life the time period for me, whose research answered all my questions and opened up still more, who let me build a new history because they had so thoroughly explored the darkest corners of our own.

  I was very fortunate that I got to travel places for these books before COVID shut the world down. So: Thank you to Kew Palace and Gardens, for the insight into George III. Thank you to Wilberforce House in Hull, especially to the nice man who found me in the library before he locked up and left at closing time. Thank you to the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, whose staff would be horrified to know how little sense the Battle of Trafalgar made to me until I stood on board the Victory. (I don’t mean in some profound writerly sense; I mean I wasn’t sure what a quarterdeck was.) And thank you to Walmer Castle and Gardens, one of my favorite places in the world, who gave this book its climax and a piece of its heart.

  To my fellow authors on Twitter and Discord, it’s meant so much to have the privilege of your companionship. To the Bunker in particular, thank you for your humor, your intelligence, your openness, and your kindness.

  To the ever-growing Menagerie: Angel, our cat; Jonathan Strange, Mr. Norrell, a
nd Thistledown, our guinea pigs; Robin and Muchlyn, our mice; and O’Connell and Fleischman, our beloved rabbits. I said in the acknowledgments of the last book you were no help at all, but that was a lie. You are everything. (Fortunately, none of you can read.)

  This book could not have been written without BBC’s Robin Hood. It’s difficult to explain, but thanks, lads.

  Most importantly, thank you to Mum and Dad for your love and support, and to Sarah for your patience and intelligence and kindness, and for being these books’ first, best reader.

  And lastly, to anyone who has read this book or the one that came before it: It sounds glib to say “Thank you for reading,” but thank you, sincerely, for reading. It means all the world to me.

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  BY H. G. PARRY

  THE SHADOW HISTORIES

  A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians

  A Radical Act of Free Magic

  The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep