Necropolis

by Christopher Nuttall

  Lady Elizabeth’s mouth fell open. No sounds emerged.

  “Go get a bag of clothing each,” Gwen ordered the girls. She waited for them to run past Lady Elizabeth and into the manor, then looked back at Lady Elizabeth. “Madame Constant’s body is to be placed in a sealed coffin and shipped to Cavendish Hall for disposal, along with any personal possessions she might have. I shall expect to receive them within the next two days.”

  “But ...” Lady Elizabeth finally managed to stammer.

  Gwen gave her a completely sweet, completely fake smile. “You will say nothing about the affair here to anyone,” she continued. Lady Elizabeth could probably be relied upon to cover the whole affair up, but it was well to make sure of it. “The firemen will be dismissed, with enough money to ensure they hold their tongues. I do not want a single word to get into the broadsheets. Do you understand me?”

  Lady Elizabeth stared at her helplessly. She would have been less surprised, Gwen suspected, if Gwen had slapped her across the face. The whole idea of a young woman, someone younger than her, actually issuing orders was preposterous, at least to her mindset. Young ladies were there to be guided by their superiors, taught how to think and act and not to question those who happened to be significantly older. And, if a young lady dared to act independently, her reputation could be ruined.

  But Gwen was immune to all such threats. Lady Elizabeth had nothing to threaten her with ... and they both knew it.

  “Yes,” she said, finally. She drew herself up to her full height and glowered at Gwen. “You will see to it that the serving girl does not return?”

  Gwen thought about pointing out that Susan was also a magician, but kept the thought to herself. Lady Elizabeth was probably old enough to remember when magic was new and freakish, a feared change in the world ... and she probably still believed that it was almost exclusively a male domain. It was stupid, Gwen knew; there had been female magicians long before she’d come into her own powers. But people like Lady Elizabeth were very good at ignoring things that didn’t fit into their worldview. Clearly, she’d never even realised that Jo was a magician until the truth had been rubbed in her face.

  “Yes,” she said, instead. Jo’s existence produced other problems, but they could be handled, particularly with the help of a good lawyer. “You will send me all the documentation concerning her, of course.”

  Lady Elizabeth nodded, without arguing. Gwen was surprised. Jo’s youth suggested that she had been bought from her family, as easily as one would sell a dog or a cat. The thought made Gwen sick, even though she knew that Master Thomas had effectively done the same thing when he’d convinced Gwen’s family to let him take her to Cavendish Hall. But while Gwen had been groomed to be the Royal Sorceress, Jo had been treated as a slave. It was illegal, now, to sell children. And yet, it wasn’t enough to stop the trade.

  And Jo was lucky, Gwen thought, remembering some of the places Jack had shown her. It had been a bitter education, an introduction to a world she’d never known existed. There are far worse places to be than here.

  Gwen stepped away from Lady Elizabeth, had a brief conversation with Lady Fanny, then waited for the two girls to come running back into the open. Susan had a small leather case of clothes, but Jo was carrying hers in a cloth bag. Somehow, Gwen wasn’t surprised. No matter the letter of the law, Jo’s owners had been under no obligation to do more than provide her with the bare minimum. It was sickening, but it was legal.

  “Get into the carriage,” she ordered, then followed them in herself. “Cavendish Hall, please.”

  The driver cracked the whip. Moments later, the carriage shuddered to life and started to take them away from Willingham Hall. Gwen sat back in her seat, then sighed inwardly. The brief diversion had helped her to forget Olivia, but now the incident was over she remembered her missing daughter. Looking at the two girls in front of her, she couldn’t help wondering if she’d have to adopt them too. And yet the thought was almost a betrayal of her first daughter.

  She looked down at her pale hands, shivering. Just where was Olivia?

  Chapter Four

  Well,” Ivan said. “Did you enjoy your voyage?”

  Olivia glared at him, but the Charmer only laughed. He’d kept her in her cabin most of the time, bound by chains far harder to escape than ropes or handcuffs. She knew, intellectually, that she should be screaming with rage or fear, but instead she felt nothing apart from a damnable coolness that provided no impetus to break his commands. He’d done a very good job of binding her to him.

  He held out a hand as the ship rocked, slightly. “Come with me,” he ordered. “I have some surprises for you.”

  Olivia followed him, helplessly. She didn’t want to know what a Charmer might consider a nice surprise – she’d met too many Charmers to believe that any of them were decent people – but he wasn’t giving her a choice. Outside, she heard the sound of people calling out in the same language she’d heard every day, one that remained frustratingly impenetrable to her. And then she shivered as a gust of wind blew down the corridor, setting her teeth to chattering madly. She’d slept in the open in London in winter, when she hadn’t stolen enough money to get a place to stay in the Rookery, but this was far colder. She couldn’t help wondering if she was about to freeze to death.

  “In here,” Ivan said, as the boat rocked again. “I think we found the right size of clothes for you.”

  Olivia frowned as she saw a set of clothes on the bed. Most of them looked heavier than anything she’d seen in London, including a coat that seemed to be made of fur. She stepped closer, wonderingly, and saw a bathtub at the far side of the room. It was steaming so enthusiastically that she realised the temperature was dropping rapidly.

  “Have a wash, then dress,” the Charmer ordered. “Make sure you put on everything, including the coat and gloves. The weather outside is colder than anything you might have experienced in London.”

  Olivia opened her mouth to ask, even as her body went to work, if he was going to watch her undressing. Instead, before she could ask, he stepped out of the hatch and locked it behind him. Olivia muttered a word she’d learned in the Rookery under her breath, then undressed and dumped her clothes in the corner, cursing her own weakness. Once, she would have thought nothing of wearing the same clothes for weeks, without washing them. But that had been a different life in the Rookery, where being smelly and generally disgusting could save a person’s life.

  She washed herself as thoroughly as she could, then sorted through the clothes, trying to figure out in what order to put them on. The aristocratic girls at Cavendish Hall had their own ideas about wearing underwear, even though no one actually saw them wearing it, but she had never bothered to try to follow their fashions. Even though Gwen had given her an allowance for buying clothes, she rarely used it. Instead, she’d salted it away in various places, just in case. It had been months before she’d managed to stop hiding food too.

  In the end, she pulled them on in what seemed the most suitable order, leaving the fur coat and gloves until last. The outfit felt alarmingly hot after she’d washed herself, but she had a feeling that it would be necessary. Two minutes after she’d finished, the door opened and Ivan looked her up and down. She must have passed muster, because he beckoned for her to follow him rather than suggesting she change her clothes. A moment later, they were climbing up the ladder to the deck.

  The cold hit her like a sledgehammer, despite the coat and gloves. Olivia felt herself shivering helplessly as she staggered over to the rail and looked around. There were actual pieces of ice floating in the water! She stared in frank disbelief – she’d never seen ice before, at least not floating on the water – and then looked towards the looming city in the distance. One look was quite enough to tell her it wasn’t London. The style of buildings was completely different.

  She sucked in her breath sharply, the icy air stinging her throat. Some of the buildings at the water’s edge looked like slums, if more firmly built than
any of the slums outside London, but others looked strange, almost alien to her eyes. Many of them were topped with onion-shaped structures, painted gold so they reflected the light of the sun. The boat shuddered slightly as it altered course, taking them past an island that held a brooding fortress. Olivia had seen the defences built along the Thames to defend London, but these were different. Guns pointed in all directions, including towards the city itself. It struck her, suddenly, that the fortress was intended to oppress the city as much as defend it.

  It wasn’t the only visible defence, either. Hundreds of guns were placed on both sides of the river, in position to engage any warship planning to raid the city. Behind them, soldiers wearing dark uniforms marched and drilled, intent on keeping themselves warm through constant motion. Olivia remembered snowy days in London and shivered in sympathy, wondering just how long the snow remained on the ground ... wherever she was. The soldiers couldn’t have a very easy time of it.

  Ivan came up beside her and leaned against the railing, staring out over the city. Olivia looked across at him, then remembered she was allowed to ask questions. He hadn’t tied up her tongue, merely told her never to speak to anyone apart from him or someone he introduced to her. Shaking her head, she opened her mouth and posed the question he’d so far refused to answer.

  “Where are we?”

  “St. Petersburg,” Ivan said. Clearly, he’d decided there was no point trying to keep her in the dark any longer. “Russia.”

  A piece of ice struck the boat gently as his words sank in. Olivia knew little about geography outside London, but she had seen the map that hung on Gwen’s wall. Russia was beyond the Franco-Spanish Empire, separated from the French by a handful of German states. If London was a tiny dot on that map, Russia had to be thousands of miles from Britain ... she found herself shivering again as the sheer distance they’d travelled sank in, piece by piece. She couldn’t stay with them, not when she knew what they intended to do with her. If they’d just wanted to hurt Gwen, they would have killed Olivia by now. But even if she broke free, where would she go?

  “Oh,” she said, cursing the damnable coolness once again. “And what are we doing here?”

  “Closest safe port,” Ivan assured her. The boat shuddered as it hit yet another piece of ice, which was nudged aside by the impact. “I don’t think the ice poses much danger.”

  He straightened up and pointed towards a large wharf, near yet another gun emplacement. A handful of men wearing large fur hats and carrying rifles were waiting for them, standing beside a number of horses. Olivia smiled at their appearance – horsemen seemed to share the same sense of arrogance and daring-do, wherever they were – but then realised that they were her escort. They would take her to her final destination. And then ... she didn’t know precisely what would happen, but she was sure it would be nothing good.

  She thought desperately as the boat made its slow way towards the pier, but nothing occurred to her. Russia ... she didn’t know the language and knew no one who did, apart from Ivan and his crew. She knew a little French and Latin, thanks to the tutors Gwen had hired, but she knew no Russian at all. If she broke free, she wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone, no matter who they were. Unless there was a British Embassy somewhere in the city ... Gwen had been charged with assigning magicians to embassies, and St. Petersburg was a capital city, so it was likely that there was an embassy somewhere close by. But where?

  A dull thump echoed through the ship as it docked. A handful of men, who were shirtless despite the cold, scrambled off the boat and hastily tied it up to the pier. Olivia found herself staring at them, wondering how they could endure the cold long enough to do their work without freezing to death. Ivan could have told her, she assumed, but he was already speaking in Russian to another man. After a moment, he motioned for her to follow him towards the gangplank. Gritting her teeth, Olivia trailed after him, uncomfortably aware of the stares following her. The crew must have known they’d had a strange passenger, but just how much did they actually know about her?

  That’s why he wanted me to stay in my cabin, she thought, as she reached the edge of the gangplank and started down carefully. It was icy and felt dangerously unstable under her feet. He didn’t want the crew to know more than they absolutely needed to know.

  She lost her footing, suddenly, and landed on her bottom. As the horsemen laughed at her, she slipped and slid to the foot of the gangplank, silently grateful she hadn’t fallen into the water. Ivan held out a hand, helped her to her feet and patted her back in a gesture she suspected was intended to be paternal – or possessive. She glared up at him, then looked over at the horses. Gwen had offered to teach her how to ride, but they’d never actually managed to get around to it. Olivia hadn’t minded too much. She’d always found horses a little scary.

  “These are Cossacks,” Ivan said, by way of introduction. “Loyal to the Father Tsar: his most dedicated servants.”

  Olivia eyed the Cossacks with some interest, recalling tales she’d heard in London. They were brutal, she’d heard, utterly ruthless when it came to serving the interests of the Tsar. And they were monsters in human form ... although she knew better than to take that too seriously. The first time she’d met a Frenchman, she’d honestly expected him to look like a giant monkey. But instead he’d just looked like any other foppish nobleman.

  Up close, the Cossacks were definitely hairy, with long beards and moustaches that looked straggly and uncut. Unlike the men in London, who seemed to pride themselves on neatly-trimmed facial hair, they seemed utterly unkempt. And yet there was a sense of intelligence about them that bothered her, combined with a brutality matching that of the goons she recalled from the Rookery. The Cossacks would do anything for their Father Tsar, she realised, including taking her to her final destination.

  Ivan caught her arm and propelled her towards one of the horses. Olivia shrank back as the brute snorted at her, shuddering in fear. The Charmer laughed, picked her up and practically threw her over the horse. For a terrifying moment, she thought she was going to fall over the other side of the beast and felt absolute panic gripping at her mind. She caught hold of the saddle and managed to pull herself into the seat, her mind feeling clearer than it had in days. The panic had broken Ivan’s commands!

  She forced herself to remain calm as the Cossacks raised a shout and started to canter down the road, along a street crammed with people, wagons and even a handful of small carriages. The Cossacks didn’t stop for anything; they just charged forward, knocking people and wagons out of the way by force. Olivia saw an elderly woman knocked over by one of the horses, then a pair of young boys jumping back to avoid a blow from a whip. The horses only picked up speed as they kept running faster and faster, as if they were being chased by the hordes of hell. Or, perhaps, as if they didn’t want to get caught in a single place. It made sense, she told herself, as she saw a woman with two children being whipped across the face. Olivia had seen horsemen brought down by crowds during the Swing ...

  A set of wagons was suddenly in front of them, accidentally blocking the road. Olivia saw her chance and pulled hard on the reins, bringing the horse to a sudden stop. Moments later, she jumped off the beast’s back, landed as well as could be expected and started to run, silently thanking the god she didn’t really believe in that the Russians had made her wear trousers. Running in a dress was damn near impossible, at least for her. She had a suspicion that the Grand Mistresses of Fashion preferred to make it harder for young women to run away from them.

  She heard shouts behind her as she plunged into an alleyway, silently praying that the street was too narrow for the horses. Like any London alleyway, it was jammed with homeless people trying to get what comfort they could by huddling together. She jumped over a pair of women who looked to be around fifty years of age, but were probably a great deal younger – people aged quickly on the streets – and then turned down another alleyway. Behind her, the shouts were growing louder. She darted onwards, turning into
yet another alleyway, then out onto a main street. A handful of stallholders eyed her darkly for a long moment, then looked away as she ran past them and down the street.

  And then someone caught her hand. Olivia swung around, just in time to see a young boy who couldn’t have been much older than she was. She threw a punch at him anyway, only to discover that he was just as experienced in dirty fighting as her; he sidestepped her punch, then slammed a haymaker into her jaw. Olivia tasted blood in her mouth as she stumbled, then heard the sound of hooves behind her. Moments later, a Cossack slipped off his horse, yanked her to her feet and slashed his whip across her back. She felt it even through the clothes she’d been ordered to wear.

  She’d been beaten before, during her time on the streets. It was just one of the occupational hazards of living rough, at least for boys. Girls had it worse, which was at least partly why Olivia had worked hard to pose as a boy. She’d believed herself inured to being beaten. But six months of living in relative luxury and freedom – Gwen had never raised a hand to her and she’d forbidden the tutors to even think about corporal punishment – had weakened her more than she’d realised. The brief beating hurt far more than it should have done. She didn’t want to think about what it would have felt like if he’d stripped her naked before laying into her. She found herself lying on the road, grunting in pain, as the others came up to join her captor.

  “That was foolish,” Ivan said. Olivia stared up at him mutely, then spat at him. “Even if you managed to get away from us, where would you go?”

  He rolled her over, caught her hands and pulled them behind her back. Moments later, she felt solid metal cuffs clicking around her wrists, so tightly that she could feel the flow of blood to her hands being constricted. She wondered, briefly, why he didn’t simply Charm her back into dumb obedience, then realised that he had to be having doubts about the efficiency of his powers. If he hadn’t scared her so badly earlier, she would have remained his obedient servant. Or his slave. She wanted to cry as he clicked a second pair of handcuffs around her ankles, then hauled her to her feet. Walking almost any distance would be damn near impossible.