Necropolis

by Christopher Nuttall

  He paused, then took another cake. “I won’t say that this will be easy, Lady Gwen,” he said, in an almost paternal manner. There was a grim look in his eyes that betrayed his concern. “You will find it far harder than investigating a murder or an outbreak of magical power. And there’s no guarantee of success.”

  “I know,” Gwen said. The thought of failure was terrifying. But so was the thought of staying in Cavendish Hall, waiting for news. She had to do something, anything. Going to Russia would put her closer to her daughter. “I’ll do it.”

  “Good luck, then,” Lord Mycroft said. He rose ponderously to his feet. “Sir Sidney will fill you in on the remaining details, then make preparations to insert you into the Ambassador’s household. I suggest you take a few days to learn your duties. It will not be easy to pick them up once you leave the country.”

  He paused. “And I would also suggest you make preparations for your death,” he added. “There is a very strong chance you won’t be coming back.”

  Gwen swallowed, nervously. “I understand,” she said, through a suddenly dry mouth. “I won’t let you down.”

  Chapter Six

  Olivia shivered helplessly, testing her bonds to no avail. It had been four days, she thought, since they had left St Petersburg and started to gallop further to the east. Every day, it had grown colder and colder, with snow falling around the horses and making the beast carrying her as cold and miserable as Olivia herself felt. Every night, they’d stopped at a way station where she’d cuddled up to the fire while Ivan, the bastard, renewed the commands he’d put in her head. Right now, even if she’d somehow managed to break her bonds, she doubted she could make it away from the Cossacks. Her legs would simply refuse to obey her.

  There were shouts from the Cossacks. Olivia allowed herself the fantasy of someone attacking the small convoy and rescuing her, but it was not to be. Instead, they cantered up towards a low dark building, barely visible through the driving snow. The horses came to a halt in what she assumed was the courtyard, and their riders dismounted. Olivia tried to glare at Ivan as he came up beside her and started to loosen the ropes binding her to the horse, but she didn’t have the energy. It was all she could do to stand upright when he tugged her off the horse and down to the ground.

  “I suggest you don’t try anything stupid here,” Ivan said, as he undid the cuffs binding her ankles together. “There is literally nowhere to run.”

  Olivia looked around as he half-led, half-pulled her towards the dark building. The snow was falling faster now, making it hard for her to see more than a couple of yards before her view was completely obscured. She had even less idea of where she was than she’d had at St Petersburg, where she might have been able to find help. There was no point in trying to run, even if he hadn’t implanted so many commands into her head that they were giving her nasty headaches. She gritted her teeth as she saw a door yawning open in front of her, then stepped through. It banged closed behind them a moment later, leaving the Cossacks outside.

  “They don’t mind the weather,” Ivan said, when she asked. “This is a light summer day for them.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Olivia said.

  Ivan snorted, rudely. “This isn’t that far to the east – or the north,” he said. “There are places further to the north where winter is always dark and cold – and snow is always to be found on the ground. We send rebels, traitors and dissidents there to count trees.”

  He smiled, as if he’d made a joke. Olivia didn’t understand. Ivan didn’t seem to care. Instead, he carefully removed her cuffs, freeing her hands for the first time in four days. Olivia rubbed at her wrists frantically, remembering horror stories about criminals who had been arrested and then forgotten about for a few hours. They’d sometimes lost their hands completely, simply because the cuffs had been too tight. Ivan hadn’t cuffed her that hard, but her wrists were still sore.

  “Get your coat off,” he ordered, as he led her into another room. The heat slapped her in the face, hot enough to make her sweaty and uncomfortable. A large bathtub, steaming furiously, was set in the middle of the room. “Get undressed completely, have a long soak, then walk into the next room. There’ll be new clothes there.”

  Olivia nodded, cursing her treacherous fingers as they started to undo the buttons on her coat, which was dripping with melting ice and snow. Ivan gave her a sharp look, warning her against doing anything stupid, then walked out of the door, leaving her alone. Olivia immediately tested the door and discovered, not entirely to her surprise, that it was firmly locked. The Russians clearly weren’t taking any chances with her. Cursing her mistake, in words that would probably have earned her a long lecture from Gwen, she finished undressing and climbed into the water.

  It was gloriously warm, warm enough to make her entire body relax. She had to force herself to get out of the water after what felt like hours and stumble into the next room. Inside, there was a large bed, a robe that reminded her of a dressing gown, and a set of combs and hairbrushes. She puzzled over the robe before realising that it would provide absolutely no protection at all, if she managed to get out of the building. It was just another chain binding her to the Russians, more subtle than the others.

  She pulled the robe on, then looked around. A book lay on top of a table, written in English, but she couldn’t parse out the words. It was probably something religious, she decided, as there was a cross on the front. But she had never had any inclination to follow a formal religion, not when too many of their priests preferred to tut-tut at people like her rather than do anything to help. There was a knock at the door and she turned, just in time to see a thin-faced woman with long dark hair pushing a trolley into the room. Olivia’s stomach rumbled as she smelt food.

  The woman said something Olivia didn’t understand, then removed a small bowl from the trolley and placed it on the table, along with a wooden spoon that looked absurdly small for its role. A moment later, she added a glass of brown liquid and a second glass, containing water, then bowed to Olivia and made her way out of the room. Olivia hesitated – it was easy enough to stick a drug in food – then shook her head and sat down in front of the table. If the Russians wanted to drug her, they could just have their Cossacks hold her down while they forced poisons or sedatives down her throat. They didn’t need to dupe her into taking the drugs herself.

  She found that she was ravenous as she devoured the bowl of dark purple soup, although she wasn’t entirely sure what it actually was. It tasted faintly of beetroot, she thought, with some additional flavours she didn’t recognise. But she felt human again when she had finished the bowl and decided to risk a taste of the brown liquid. It was a kind of beer, she decided, before she put it to one side. She’d never cared for alcohol on the streets and she wasn’t about to start now. The water tasted oddly flat, but it was definitely safe to drink. Or so she hoped.

  There was another knock on the door when she’d finished, suggesting that she was under observation. Olivia winced – she’d grown far too used to privacy in Cavendish Hall and she’d tried to stay alone on the streets – and then watched helplessly as the door opened. At least the Russians probably weren’t interested in her as anything other than a Necromancer. The streets were utterly unsafe for young girls and boys.

  “Good afternoon,” Ivan said, as he entered. “I trust you are feeling better?”

  Olivia nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The mixture of food and a hot bath had left her feeling pleasantly warm, almost completely relaxed. They might have put something in the food after all, she realised dully, or it could have just been relief at being out of the snowstorm and somewhere warm again. There was no way to know.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Ivan said. He smirked, then held out a hand. “Please would you come with me?”

  Her body obeyed before Olivia had quite realised what he’d said. She cursed inwardly as she took his hand and allowed him to lead her through the door, as if he was courting her like a highborn girl.
Outside, there was nothing but stone walls leading into the distance. The massive, solid walls helped keep the heat in, she realised, as he led her down the corridor. She listened as hard as she could, but heard nothing apart from their footsteps. The rest of the building was as silent as the grave.

  They stopped outside a heavy metal door, which opened slowly at an unseen command. A faint smell reached out towards her, one that made her recoil in sudden disgust. Ivan placed a hand on her back and pushed, forcing her into the room. There was no sign of anything that could produce the smell; the room was almost completely bare, save for a wooden table and a man standing behind it, wearing monkish robes. His beard was long, his face was pitted and scarred and his eyes glinted with a devilish insanity.

  “You must be the Necromancer,” he said, in cracked and broken English. His voice was curiously high-pitched, as if he wasn’t quite mature. “I am Gregory. You are the answer to our prayers.”

  Olivia shuddered as he came around the table and advanced on her. It was all she could do to hold her ground. She hadn’t felt so threatened since she’d been caught by a man who’d thought she was a young boy. Up close, Gregory smelt faintly of urine, as if he never bothered to wash. Once, she knew, the smell wouldn’t have bothered her. Few people on the streets bothered to wash. Now ... it disgusted her.

  “You will assist us,” he said, patting her on the head. She cringed away from his touch, feeling oddly violated. “Your gift will serve the Father Tsar.”

  “No,” Olivia said, gathering herself. “I won’t help you raise the dead.”

  “I can make you help us,” Ivan pointed out from behind her. “You would become our slave.”

  “Charm has its limits,” Olivia countered, remembering what she’d been told by Gwen, after one Charmer had played a nasty trick on her and the other girls. “You can’t push me too far.”

  “You’ll help us,” the monk said. The unshakable confidence in his voice chilled her to the bone. “If you refuse to help us of your own free will, you will be made to help us.”

  “You wouldn’t have such a precise control over my gift,” Olivia said, bracing herself for the beating she was sure would come. Gwen had forbidden her from ever using her talents without direct orders from her or Lord Mycroft. She’d heard stories of Necromancers who had practiced on dead rats and insects, but she’d never disobeyed Gwen’s orders. “If you warped me into your slave, you wouldn’t be able to control it.”

  “I imagined you would need more ... convincing,” Gregory said. He grinned at her – the most disconcerting expression she’d yet seen – and then turned and led her towards the door in the far wall. “Let me show you something of what we’re doing here.”

  Olivia hesitated, but a push from Ivan sent her forward. The smell grew stronger as Gregory opened the door and led the way into a much larger room, crammed with beds and tables. A dull moaning noise filled her ears as she saw men and women lying naked on the beds, tied down with solid chains. They were muttering endlessly in Russian, their bodies twisting and turning as they struggled against their chains. She stopped dead, feeling revolted; she’d heard stories of bedlams in Britain, but surely they weren’t as horrific as the sight before her now.

  “Good, good,” Gregory called, addressing a pale-skinned woman wearing a white gown and a cold dead expression. “I think that last one is showing signs of improvement.”

  The nurse eyed him blankly, then leaned over one of the prisoners and injected her with a noxious-looking liquid. The thrashing girl started to babble in Russian, then urinated helplessly on the bed. Olivia stumbled backwards, horrified and disgusted. Only Ivan’s grip on her arm kept her from running out of the door and trying to escape. Instead, she was pushed through the ward and into the next set of rooms.

  “It is our task to unlock the secrets of magic,” Gregory said, as he closed the door behind them. The moans, screams and endless muttering cut off abruptly. “Those who have gifts can either serve the Father Tsar or wind up here, having their gifts examined. Sometimes we learn something truly interesting.”

  He smiled, then waved them into the room. Instead of living victims, it held dead bodies in various stages of dissection. A handful of men in white robes moved from body to body, carefully drawing samples of blood and brain tissue from the corpses before shipping them onwards to an unknown destination. Olivia had thought herself no stranger to dead bodies – she’d seen more than her share before she’d discovered the true nature of her magic – but this was truly revolting. It reminded her of the story of the doctor who had hired footpads to waylay and kill people for him to dissect in front of his students. She had never been quite sure if there was any truth in it, but she’d seen enough horror to suspect it might be true.

  “There are changes in the brain tissue when someone becomes a magician,” Gregory informed her. He sounded pleased as they walked through the room and passed through a third door. “Some of the stronger magicians may actually have to adapt their brains to handle their powers – and if they fail, they are killed by their own magic.”

  Olivia shuddered. Some of the students at Cavendish Hall had been taken to the bedlam nearby, where they’d been shown magicians who had been driven mad by their own powers and had to be confined for their own safety. Most of them were Talkers, their powers so strong that they couldn’t prevent themselves from reading every mind in range ... and were completely incapable of separating out their own thoughts from everyone else’s. It would be more merciful, she suspected, to kill them outright. They had no hope of ever leading a normal life.

  Gregory smiled at her. “We take samples from magicians and insert them into non-magicians, just to see what will happen,” he said, as they entered a long corridor. “Sometimes, the results are quite interesting.”

  Olivia shuddered, again. This time, each of the patients – the victims – had their own cell, locked and barred against escape. Some of them were clearly mad, others just sat on the floor and stared at nothing. She shivered as she saw a Mover, floating in the centre of his room with his eyes firmly closed, a handful of toys orbiting his body like the Moon around the Earth.

  “That one worked out surprisingly well,” Gregory said. “He developed magic after the surgical infusion of brain cells from a natural-born magician.”

  Olivia said nothing as she glanced into the next cell. A girl sat on the bed, barely seven years old, clutching a ragged pillow as if it were a teddy bear. Her eyes were wide, staring at nothing – or, perhaps, at something only she could see. Olivia gritted her teeth as she saw the girl’s bones clearly visible, despite her tattered dress. The poor thing was slowly starving to death.

  “You need to feed her,” she said. “She’s hungry!”

  “She also needs to learn to cooperate,” Gregory said. “And so do you.”

  There was a cold evenness in his voice that made her glare at him, then look away in disgust. Beatings would have been kinder. Olivia looked back at the girl and started in shock; the child was staring directly at her, dark eyes firmly fixed on her face. She babbled something in Russian, then collapsed onto the bed. Olivia looked away, bitterly. There was nothing, she knew all too well, that she could do for the girl.

  The next cell held a young boy who seemed to be in constant motion, jumping around his cell and giggling unpleasantly. He smirked at Olivia, then made a rude gesture towards the two older men, who seemed unmoved. The cell after him held a pair of middle-aged women, holding hands so tightly they seemed to have fused together. Beyond them, there was a man who was staring down at a single stone on the floor, as if it were so fascinating that it had captured all of his attention.

  And the next cell held a man who seemed to be arguing with himself. Olivia stared, noting the sudden shifts in body language as his various personalities fought for dominance, then looked away as all of the personalities started hurling abuse at Gregory. It was chilling to hear how they would switch from a brave personality to one too timid to do more than mutter in
sults just loud enough to be heard. The personality seemed to change completely, every few seconds.

  Gregory merely smiled and hurried Olivia past what seemed an endless succession of cells, each one containing a different horror. She honestly couldn’t understand just what would drive someone to create such a nightmare. Even the loan sharks in the Rookery hadn’t been so monstrous.

  “Tell me,” Gregory said. “Have you seen enough?”

  Olivia wanted to scream at him. Instead, she forced herself to speak almost normally.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “We want you to raise the dead,” Gregory said. “And help us with our research for the Father Tsar.”

  He turned to face her, dark eyes boring down into her own. “If you cooperate, you will be treated well,” he said. “Food, drink ... even company, if you wish it. But if you refuse to cooperate ...”

  Olivia glared at him. “You’ll torture me?”

  “No,” Gregory said. “We will cut out your brain and use it to create other Necromancers.”

  Olivia hesitated. Despite what the monk had told her about the young Mover, she didn’t know if it was possible to create a magician, certainly not through using any form of medical technique. Gwen had certainly never told her that such a thing was possible, although Doctor Norwell had been keen to remind her that they had barely scratched the surface when it came to studying magic. Maybe it was possible after all.

  And if she refused, she would have no chance to escape.

  “I’ll cooperate,” she said, promising herself that she would escape as soon as possible. “But I need to rest before I start using magic.”

  “Certainly,” Gregory said. He patted her on the shoulder, then looked up at Ivan. “Take her back to her room.”

  Chapter Seven

  Ifeel absurd,” Gwen muttered, as she looked at herself in the mirror. “This isn’t me.”