“I thought…I was wrong,” David said, finally. “I…”
“I know,” Gwen said. She’d known that her brother had used whores, but she’d never imagined the farm. “I’m sorry.”
“I could have a child out there,” David said, distraught. “I could have a dozen children I don’t even know I have.”
“True,” Gwen agreed. She fought for control, fought to keep her mind steady against the helplessness threatening to drive her into depression. What could she do? What should she do? “I don’t know what to do…”
“I was in France a few years ago,” David said. Gwen nodded, remembering how she’d begged and pleaded with her mother to be allowed to travel with her brother. David hadn’t yet married Laura when he’d gone. “I met one of the men who’d organised the crushing of the Paris Commune, back in the 1790s.”
He shook his head, slowly. “The French rebels wanted revenge on the aristocracy,” he added. “So they killed the police and they took the city and they killed every aristocrat they could catch, burning their homes to the ground. And then they killed the merchants, the Jews, the money-lenders…and everyone else they didn’t like. And then…”
David looked up at her, grimly. “They ate themselves alive,” he said. “The rebels tore Paris apart long before the army arrived to restore order. Can you imagine what would have happened if they’d had a chance to take the entire country? They would have spread a bloody red terror over France, slaughtering everyone who knew how to make the country work…
“And now France is a despotic state, with fat King Louis on the Throne, mandatory Church services and no representation from the people at all,” he concluded. “And if your friend Jack happens to win, that’s what will happen to London.”
Gwen closed her eyes, wishing – for the first time – that she’d never been born with magic.
“So,” she said, finally. David was right. She knew that he was right. “What do we do about it?”
“I don’t know,” David admitted. “I just don’t know.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
No one had ever escaped from the Tower of London.
Or at least that was the official story. Historically, the Tower of London had served first as a Royal Residence, and then as an arsenal, a garrison and a prison for certain select prisoners. Elizabeth the Great, in the years before she’d succeeded Bloody Mary as Queen, had spent many days in the Tower, as had Sir Walter Raleigh and John Wilkes. Jack wasn’t surprised to discover that Lucy and the other prisoners had been sent to the Tower. It had always held political prisoners. Besides, unlike any of the other prisons in London, it was effectively impregnable. Maybe a few had escaped, over the years, but the Tower’s reputation remained intact.
Disguised as a beggar, Jack slowly made his way around the outer wall. The Tower of London had been renovated in 1801 after the first wave of unrest had begun lapping at the foundations of British society. It was now the main garrison for British troops in the City of London, with enough supplies and men to hold against anything up to a full-scale assault. Jack could see ways in which airships could be used to outflank the tower’s defences, but capturing an airship would be difficult.
There were enough troops manning the defences to deter any offensive from the civilian population. Jack had gone up against worse odds in the past, but the presence of at least a dozen combat magicians gave him pause. The Tower of London was also the only prison in Britain to hold magicians, the result of years of careful construction work by the Royal College. There was enough magic infused into its structure to hold any magician, even a Master. Jack knew that most rogue magicians were simply executed after capture, but some were kept alive for years. And if they knew what they had, the establishment would be sure to keep Lucy alive. Healing was a very useful talent, but it wouldn’t help her to escape captivity. They could cross-breed her with their magicians and see if her children were Healers.
He scowled as a pair of Bow Street Runners passed him, threatening to kick him into the Thames if he didn’t go beg somewhere else. Mimicking the stoop of a wounded war veteran from North Africa or India, he hobbled along back around the tower and out onto the streets. Beggars were not welcome in London, but the establishment generally tolerated their presence. There were even a handful of charities set up to try to help the poor and destitute. They would be more popular if they weren’t run by people more interested in preaching to the helpless than helping them learn a trade or recover from their injuries. The thought ground at him as he caught sight of Traitor’s Gate, the Tower’s private dock. Its prisoners were brought up the river and into the tower without ever having a chance to escape. Only a madman – or someone desperate to escape – would risk swimming in the Thames after the factories established upstream had started to flood the river with their wastes.
Cursing under his breath, Jack kept inching away from the tower, stopping every passer-by to beg for alms. A handful of people gave him coins, but most of them shuffled away as soon as they saw him. Jack rolled his eyes inwardly as he made his way down the street and away from the Tower of London. Behind him, he knew, Lucy and a handful of his friends were rotting in captivity. The Tower was famous for its array of torture equipment – and everyone broke, eventually. And if they made Lucy talk...the consequences could be disastrous.
It took him nearly an hour to make his way out of the richer part of the city and into a cramped alleyway. A passing policeman took a few moments to harass him, clearly intent on shaking him down for whatever money the helpless beggar had collected. Jack wanted to kill him – it would have been so easy – but he had to settle for using Charm to convince the policeman that he had nothing worth taking. He promised himself that he would remember the policeman’s face. There would be a reckoning some day in the future.
A loud roar announced the presence of a bear, chained to the wall. Jack blinked in surprise, and then remembered that London had recently developed a passion for bear-baiting. The bear would be poked and prodded until it was enraged, whereupon it would amuse the crowd as it tried to get at them with its teeth and claws. Jack remembered, bitterly, the days he’d spent fox-hunting, back before he’d learned the truth about his birth. It shamed him to remember that he’d once enjoyed tormenting a helpless creature. Where the poor had lost limbs for daring to poach in the vast estates owned by aristocrats, the noblemen had thought nothing of cutting vast swathes through the animal population. Jack had even heard rumours that they’d hunted men – convicts – through their hands, although he’d never participated. It was astonishing how much evil a person could inflict on another if they thought of that person as less than human.
Five minutes later, he had changed his clothes and looked more like a poor manual labourer. The bear roared again and Jack had an idea. Pushing the beast back with his magic, he pressed his hand against the chain and Changed its composition, carefully weakening it. When the bear started to pull against its chain, it would break, giving its tormentors a nasty surprise. He was still grinning when he walked out of the alleyway, abandoning the beggar’s stoop, and headed down towards the docks. Davy and his subordinates should be waiting for him there.
And one of them was a traitor, he thought, bitterly. The stench of the docks – the mixture of raw fish, labourers and exotic goods from all over the empire – reached him and made him cough, even as he mulled the problem over and over in his mind. One of them had betrayed the cause – or had he? Magic could have made someone talk, or perhaps one of the Seers had picked up a hint of the coming struggle. And yet...the information hadn’t been very precise, or they would have known about Lucy’s talent. Maybe Master Thomas and the reactionaries had simply gotten lucky.
He checked around the warehouse first, watching for unpleasant surprises. There was a pair of urchins stationed around the building, standing guard where they would alert the inhabitants if the police or the army arrived in force. Jack was privately very pleased with that part of his plan – no one would thin
k anything of seeing a few dozen street urchins scattered around the docks, where thousands of them tried to scavenge a living – and it was almost a relief when he saw that two of them were paying close attention to him. He looked just like a police spy to them.
The warehouse door opened when he tapped on it, revealing two burly men carrying staffs and pikes. No one would be surprised to see manual weapons, while firearms would draw immediate attention. Jack pulled off his cap, revealing his face, and smiled as they waved him through into the office. The business was real, thankfully; no one would see anything suspicious as long as they didn’t go into the warehouse itself. And even the Bow Street Runners would hesitate before forcing their way into the building. A successful businessman could make real trouble for them.
“Jack,” Davy said. The underground’s nominal leader scowled at him. “I heard they got Lucy.”
“They did,” Jack confirmed. “They have her and the others in the Tower.”
Davy nodded, reaching for a bottle of wine and pouring two glasses. Jack was of the opinion that the wine would be better off poured back into the horse, but he took a glass anyway. The underground fighters would respect a hard-drinking man.
“Someone talked,” Davy said. “Who talked?”
“I don’t know,” Jack admitted. He’d turned the thought over and over in his mind. If any of the inner circle had turned – or broken under torture – they would have betrayed far more than just Lucy’s brothel. And yet...who had known about the brothel, but not about anything else? It didn’t make sense. “Someone talked to someone; maybe they didn’t pick up a complete picture.”
“Perhaps,” Davy agreed. “This ruins our plans. If they make Lucy talk...”
“They will want her to do a great deal more for them than talk,” Jack said, flatly. If they knew what they had...a thought struck him and he shivered. Perhaps Lucy and the handful of others were nothing more than bait in a trap. And he was the only logical target for a trap. “We have to get her out of there.”
Davy stared at him. “It’s the time for pulling in our horns,” he said, sharply. “We have to evacuate, now!”
“No,” Jack said, equally sharply. “We have got to push ahead, before the whole plan comes undone.”
“You’re mad,” Davy said. “You do know how heavily defended the Tower of London happens to be?” Jack nodded, but Davy went on regardless. “They have at least six hundred Dragoons in the barracks, twenty Sparkers and probably others held nearby, in reserve. And you want to knock it over as if it were a coach on an isolated highway?”
“I have been a highwayman,” Jack said, truthfully. He had raided coaches on his way out of England, back when his life had disintegrated around him. “It wasn’t that hard, as long as you watched your back. Plenty of highwaymen felt it was safer to rob other highwaymen than gentry on the roads.”
“You’re mad,” Davy repeated. He leaned forward. “I pulled the underground back together after we had our butts soundly thrashed five years ago. I managed to build up a new force, one that would push for reform and force the high and mighty toffees to change. I built up...”
“You did nothing,” Jack said. He’d known that Davy resented him. Indeed, the only thing that kept him from suspecting Davy was the simple fact that Davy could have unravelled the whole plan with a few words in the right ear. “You kept your head to the ground and avoided attracting attention.”
“And you fled to France,” Davy thundered. “You lived in luxury while we had to cower underneath the whip! Where were you when the widows and children had to sell themselves into indenture merely to eat? Where were you when Francine Macomb was raped by the Dragoons because her husband had been caught on the barricades? Where were you when they transported thousands of people to some godforsaken island hellhole in the middle of the ocean, just for daring to aspire to something better than...”
“Shut up,” Jack said, controlling himself with an effort. Magic boiled behind his eyes, a mocking reminder of the day he’d come into his powers. “In all the years you were in sole control of the movement, what did you achieve? Nothing of any consequence at all. The best you did was arrange for teachers to enter the slums in the hopes that learning to read would help to mobilise the masses. They didn’t crack down on you because they didn’t need to crack down on you. You were nothing to them!”
“And you have gone and gotten Lucy arrested,” Davy snapped. “I heard you’d had something for her, back in the day. Where were you when she was taken away to the Tower?”
Jack swallowed, hard. “I was busy,” he said. “I was needed elsewhere.”
Davy glared at him. “Where?”
“That’s something I have to keep to myself,” Jack said. Davy was right; he should have been with Lucy. But there had been combat magicians – and perhaps Master Thomas himself – in the force that had arrested her and they would have overpowered him. Jack knew that he wouldn’t have died easily, but he would have died. “In the years since I left the country, has anything gotten better for the poor?”
Davy started to speak, but Jack spoke over him. “Nothing,” he said. “Back then, there were a number of liberal MPs in Parliament. We could hope for change, but they broke the movement when we merely asked for a say in how the country was governed. Now...there are few liberal MPs and Lord Liverpool can crack down on us however the hell he likes. And he feels that he can do it without needing to fear our response.”
“You didn’t grow up in a slum,” Davy snapped. “You never had to struggle for food. You never had to listen to your children crying because they couldn’t find anything to eat. You never had to explain to them that they couldn’t have fine clothes because you couldn’t earn enough to pay for them...”
“I know,” Jack said, as evenly as he could. “Davy...I know that we were never close, but you know as well as I do that we have to get Lucy out. The alternative is to abandon the plan and hide, leaving behind all the supplies we amassed for the uprising. And if they work out what we had in mind, it will be much harder to overthrow them in the next few decades. Perhaps there will be another revolution in America, or another rebellion in India, but I don’t think that we can count on it. The time is now.”
Davy sighed, all the fight slowly seeming to seep out of him. “But they’re in the Tower of London,” he said. “I have a few contacts with the Warders, but they won’t help us get them out...”
Jack nodded. “I have a plan,” he said. An idea was slowly forming inside his mind. “How many men could you get to the Tower without being noticed?”
Davy snorted. “I think the government would notice an army marching through London,” he said, dryly. “It is the kind of thing that tends to draw attention.”
“Maybe they’d be too shocked to react,” Jack commented. The last time London had been seriously threatened by an army had been during the Civil War. And that affair was very embarrassing, as no one was quite sure who had won. “But I have a better idea.”
“They’re going to keep them under guard,” Davy said. “You know how many men they’ll have watching the prisoners...”
“Just find out where they’re being kept,” Jack said. “And then I want ten men who are willing to risk their lives on a thoroughly crazy plan.”
Davy snorted. “I’m going to hate it, aren’t I?”
“Don’t worry,” Jack said. “You don’t have to come along. You’d better stay here and stay in contact with our army. We don’t want someone starting the uprising before we’re ready for it.”
***
Night was falling over London by the time Davy returned to the warehouse. Jack had spent the time sitting on the roof, turning the concept into a workable plan. If nothing else, he told himself firmly, it would have the benefit of being unthinkable. No one in their right mind would expect Jack to stake everything on one throw of the dice. But Master Thomas knew him...the Royal Sorcerer would have to be diverted, somehow. And only one person could do that...
He�
��d thought of contacting Gwen, but she wouldn’t have made up her mind which way to jump. Besides, if – when – she worked out that he’d blown up the farm with the girls inside, she wouldn’t be happy. Jack knew that there had been no way to get the girls out, even if they’d wanted to come, but Gwen wouldn’t see it that way.
Instead, he’d studied a copy of the latest Bradshaw railway and airship timetable, considering each step bit by bit. Breaking down a concept into multiple sections was something he’d learned from Master Thomas. Somehow, he doubted that his former tutor would approve of what he did with the lesson.
“They’re being held inside the Tower’s upper levels,” Davy reported. “The Warders are in a right royal sulk over the presence of so many combat magicians – and the Dragoons are irritating the hell out of them. It seems that some of the soldiers have been flirting with their wives and daughters...”
“If you can call it flirting,” Jack agreed. The soldiers of the British Empire were not known for delicate manners. They’d won an empire, defeating uppity local rulers and crushing rebels, but their behaviour off campaign left a great deal to be desired. It was one of the reasons why the government tried to keep the regiments overseas. They tended to cause colossal local resentment whenever they were billeted on any part of the country.
“...And some of them feel that the Prime Minister has overreached himself,” Davy continued. “But they probably wouldn’t agree to help us openly.”
“No,” Jack said. “We don’t need them anyway.”
The Royal Sorceress Page 27