A low rustle of anger ran through the thousands of undead facing her. The Tsar might not be able to speak any longer, but he could still hear her – or was he hearing her through the ears of his undead slaves? Gwen knew next to nothing about how ears actually worked, but the Tsar’s ears appeared to be gone. Could he still hear? She looked at his eye sockets in genuine curiosity. Could he still see?
She recalled Olivia’s description of how the undead perceived the world around them and shivered. It was quite possible the Tsar couldn’t see her – or that he was reduced to seeing through the eyes of his slaves. And what did that mean? Was he no longer even remotely human? Whatever his state of awareness his decision to unleash necromancy, to unleash a plague of undead creatures, had condemned him to death.
Gwen had always felt sorry for the Necromancers condemned to death under the Demonic Powers Act, merely for being born. None of them had willingly committed any crime. It was one of the reasons she’d adopted Olivia and convinced Lord Mycroft to support her. But the Tsar was different. He hadn’t been born a Necromancer, he’d made himself one – and he’d unleashed the necromantic plague on his own people. Gwen had no legal authority in Russia, but she knew the Tsar had to be condemned to death. Besides, she doubted that many Russians would object once the truth sank in.
“The Father Tsar offers you the word of a prince,” the Talker said, finally.
Gwen narrowed her eyes. It had taken him a surprisingly long time to respond. Was he linked – mentally – to the Tsar? The part of Gwen that was intellectually curious – partly because she’d been brought up to believe that aristocratic women weren’t supposed to be intellectuals – was curious, curious enough to suggest that further study was necessary. But the rest of her knew the Tsar had to die.
She looked back towards the airship in the distance, then turned to face the Tsar. “You have visited a nightmare upon your own people,” she said. “You have condemned your country to utter destruction at the hands of the monsters you have unleashed. You have imperilled the entire continent through your selfish desires and utter madness. Why would I want to do anything to help you?”
The Tsar rustled angrily, but said nothing. Gwen couldn’t tell if he was reluctant to answer her charges, if he knew they were accurate ... or if he’d lost the intellectual capability to even consider before rejecting her accusations. She was tempted to try to touch his mind, but she knew it would be a mistake. The Tsar might manage to overwhelm her and make her one of his slaves.
“The Father Tsar would ally himself with your country,” the Talker said. “His armies would descend upon the French, destroying their homeland. The endless series of wars between Britain and France would finally come to an end.”
Gwen shuddered. It was her duty to ensure the British Empire came out ahead, whatever happened – and they were on the very brink of war, once again. But she knew the offer was madness. The French might be destroyed, but the Russians would pose a far greater problem, particularly if they ruled an army of undead soldiers. Besides, as much as she disliked the French, there were Frenchmen and women she respected – and ordinary people who didn’t deserve to be killed, only to rise again as undead monsters. If she could reject the idea of using Necromancy herself, even on behalf of Britain, she could reject the idea of allowing someone else to use it.
“No,” she said, softly. “It would be utter madness.”
OBEY! The command thundered into her head through her weak link to necromancy, sending her stumbling to her knees. There was nothing subtle about it, just brute force, powered by the collective mind of the Tsar and thousands of undead. It wasn’t Charm – Charm on that level would be utterly impossible to resist – but it was strong enough to stupefy her, albeit briefly. YOU ARE NOTHING. YOU BELONG TO ME.
Gwen staggered again, then pinched herself, hard. The Tsar was looking right at her, his dead eye sockets seeming to blaze with an eerie yellow light. But he’d played his best card, Gwen told herself, as she straightened upright. His commands were powerful and unpleasant, yet Gwen had grown up ignoring commands from her parents and an endless array of governesses and servants. And her link to Necromancy was too weak for it to be used to overwhelm her completely. As long as she didn’t touch his mind herself, her thoughts would remain free.
“You are nothing,” she said. “And you won’t last long, no matter what happens. Your undead body is dying. You are dying. Your undead reign over your country will end today.”
There was a surge of magic. Gwen didn’t try to resist as the Mover picked her up and threw her towards the barracks. Instead, she cushioned the blow as she hit the stone building, then threw herself up into the air, heading towards the grounded airship. She felt its skin shift oddly under her feet as she landed on top of it, staring down at the Tsar. The horde of undead threw themselves forwards, right towards her. Their leader, their would-be mastermind, was in the lead.
Gwen wondered, briefly, what he was thinking, if he was thinking at all. Smart military commanders led from the rear, she’d been told, although the British Army had more than its fair share of brave idiots who led the charge, resplendent in their red uniforms, only to be among the first shot down by the enemy. Maybe the Tsar just wanted to crush her and was past thinking of anything else. Or perhaps he’d finally lost his mind completely.
The Mover reached for her again, magic crackling through the air. Gwen took a breath and shot herself upwards, ducking the waves of magic following her. And then, bracing herself, she shot a pulse of fire down towards the airship, putting as much power into the blast as she could. The airship exploded, followed rapidly by the fuel storage depot and the explosives the Russians had left behind. Gwen felt the wave of heat shove her even further into the air as the fireball rose up in the sky, burning through the horde of undead monsters. The whispering seemed to grow louder, but the Tsar’s commands were gone.
She braced herself, then dropped down as flames tore through the remainder of the airstrip, burning the undead to ash. There was no sign of the Tsar and no sign of the undead, apart from a handful of shambling corpses that had been on the edge of the blast. Gwen targeted them from high overhead, picking them off with pulses of magic, then incinerated the undead who had been stuck in the ditch.
And let that be an end to it, she thought, as she looked around for more undead. None seemed to be moving, as far as she could tell. Please let it be the end.
But it wouldn’t be, she knew. Moscow had had a huge population – and not all of them had burned to death. The Tsar hadn’t led them all to the airstrip. She hesitated, then flew back over the city, staring down at the buildings and the hordes of undead swarming over them, then summoned fire for the final time. Enough buildings were wooden, she knew, for the flames to spread quickly. The undead wouldn’t try to put out the fires; hell, it was quite possible they wouldn’t even realise the city was on fire. They had none of the sensitivity of living humans.
She watched for nearly ten minutes as the flames spread, then turned and directed her flight back towards the airship in the distance. They would have seen the explosion, she knew, as she passed over the remains of the airstrip. There was no sign that the Tsar and his army had ever been there. What, she wondered, would they make of the whole story? She drew on her magic, pushing herself faster and faster, until she finally landed on the airship’s gondola. The hatch opened, inviting her inside.
The Russians hadn’t designed the airship for luxury, she noted, as she stepped into the craft with a flourish. There were only a handful of compartments, none of them designed to separate aristocrats and servants, but no one seemed to be complaining. Romulus greeted her with a tired smile, while Raechel wrapped her in a tight hug. Lord Standish merely nodded. The cynical part of Gwen’s mind suspected he was trying to decide how best to write his report to present himself in a good light.
“It’s good to see you again,” Raechel said. She held Gwen tightly for a long moment, then relaxed and released her. “Is it over?�
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Gwen hesitated, looking towards the smoke rising from Moscow. “The Tsar is dead,” she said, slowly. There was no way anyone could have survived the blast that had ripped the airstrip apart, burning the Tsar and his army to ash. “The Russians will have a chance to destroy the remaining undead before they can spread any further. And we’re on our way home.”
She rubbed her eyes, exhaustedly. “But we’ll have to write reports of just what happened and why,” she added. “And we have to hope Talleyrand will keep his word. If the French refuse to let us cross their territory ...”
“We’re heading for St Petersburg,” Romulus interjected. He nodded towards the map on the bulkhead. “We can take a boat from there if we can’t take an airship.”
Gwen sighed. The Tsar was dead and his heir was a minor child. British history suggested that regencies were inherently unstable – and Russia, she suspected, would have a far harsher time of it. There was so much unrest on the streets of St Petersburg that, when the truth leaked out, there might well be a revolution. And who knew what would happen then?
“True,” she said. Romulus probably knew it wasn’t over – at least, not yet – but Raechel deserved a chance to relax and catch up with her sleep. “What happened to Lady Standish?”
“My Aunt is currently sleeping it off, under Janet’s watchful eye,” Raechel said, darkly. She snickered, unpleasantly. “I think I should have waved a sword in her face years ago.”
Gwen shook her head. Before going to Russia, Raechel had been a brat, a rebel without a cause. Breaking free of her family wouldn’t really have helped. But now, she had a cause and something to live for beyond endless partying. Gwen knew she could find a use for someone like Raechel, particularly if she knuckled down and worked at becoming an intelligence operative. And even if she didn’t ...
She liked Raechel, Gwen knew. Perhaps she would be her first true friend.
But the Royal Council will have a fit, she thought, with some amusement. Gwen had worked hard to be taken seriously, to avoid the impression of being a frivolous and fallible woman, not an easy thing to do when the councillors were each old enough to be her father or grandfather. If we were to start going out every night ...
“Maybe,” she said, finally. “And where’s Olivia?”
“She wanted to be alone,” Raechel said. She, of all people, would have understood the impulse. “We gave her the rearmost cabin.”
Gwen nodded, then yawned. “I need to talk to her,” she said. Part of her wanted to put it off, but she knew she shouldn’t do anything of the sort. “Give us some privacy, please.”
“Of course,” Romulus said. “And Lady Gwen ...?”
Gwen turned, lifting an eyebrow.
“Thank you,” he said. His dark eyes were warm with relief and private amusement. “Without you, we would all have died.”
“Just remember to put that in your report,” Gwen said, aiming her words at Lord Standish. He looked as if he had decided to forget about Gwen completely, unsurprisingly. In his world, maids didn’t turn out to be sorceresses, or butlers, secret agents. “Lord Mycroft is very good at sniffing out untruths.”
Lord Standish snorted, but said nothing.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The sun was setting, Olivia noted, as she struggled to open the window on the airship. It hadn’t felt like they’d been running and hiding and fighting all day, but she couldn’t deny the physical evidence staring at her. She cursed the ship’s designer under her breath as she finally managed to pull the window open, sending in a blast of cold air. Outside, there was nothing but a long drop towards the ground.
It was her fault, she told herself, as she started to scramble through the window. If she hadn’t been born, if she’d died during the Swing, the nightmare the Tsar had unleashed wouldn’t have happened. Uncounted thousands, perhaps even millions, would still be alive, while Gwen and the rest of her party wouldn’t have been in deadly danger. Gwen had come countless thousands of miles to save her life, only to be almost captured and reprogrammed herself.
And she’d lost control so quickly! Ivan had Charmed her into obedience, then Gregory and the Tsar had forced her into compliance ... and then the Tsar’s makeshift Necromancy had almost allowed him to control her. No, it would have allowed him to control her. If Gwen hadn’t snatched her away from the Tsar, Olivia knew, she would have become his slave once again. The magic she had been born with, her curse not her gift, had become a weapon to be used against her. She had been helpless against the Tsar and the monster he’d become.
Gwen had given her so much. She’d taken her from the streets, made her a lady, even promised Olivia an inheritance that would make her very desirable among the young bucks searching for a suitable marital partner. And how had she been rewarded? Her adopted daughter had been turned into a weapon aimed at the country she served, while her desperate attempt to rescue the child had almost resulted in her own death. And soon she would have to watch as her ward was executed on the orders of her own government.
Olivia had few illusions. Those who had illusions on the streets died. She had become a liability; in truth, she’d been a liability from the day she’d discovered her magic. Gwen might argue against her execution, but the Privy Council was unlikely to heed her pleas, particularly after the disaster in Moscow. Olivia would be taken to the hangman, a noose would be put around her neck and she would die. And she couldn’t really argue that she didn’t deserve it, either. Her mere existence was a deadly danger to the entire world.
She poked her head through the window, then paused. Suicide was wrong, she’d been told, but if she was going to die anyway ... she pushed forward, then jumped as she felt a hand snatch hold of her trousers. Moments later, she was pulled back into the room and found herself staring into the eyes of a panicking Gwen. Her adopted mother, who was – in truth – only three or four years older than her – looked terrified and furious at the same time.
“You ... you shouldn’t kill yourself,” Gwen said. She sounded too shocked to make a better argument. “You have a whole life ahead of you.”
Olivia opened her mouth to snap out a sarcastic response, then hesitated. She could be rude to anyone else – social graces were not something she’d taken to easily – but not to Gwen, not to the person who had travelled thousands of miles to save her life. Instead, she felt her legs buckling and sat down hard on the deck. Gwen sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulder, holding her tightly.
“I won’t be alive much longer,” she said, feeling her entire body shaking with bitter self-hatred and rage. “They’ll kill me when I get home.”
“They won’t,” Gwen said. “None of this was your fault.”
“I could be forced to work for someone else,” Olivia pointed out, sharply. “My mere existence is a major problem. What happens if the French get their hands on me?”
“We can take precautions,” Gwen countered.
“But not enough,” Olivia said. “They took me from Cavendish Hall, the very heart of the Royal Sorcerers Corps. Where could I go that would be considered safe?”
She shook her head. “You should just pitch me out of the window,” she said. “End the threat ...”
Gwen slapped her. Olivia stared at her in shock. Gwen had never lifted a hand to her.
“Do you think,” Gwen snapped, “that there are people in this world who won’t miss you when you’re gone?”
Olivia rubbed her cheek, wordlessly. The streets had taught her that someone who was a friend today might betray her tomorrow, that everyone looked out for themselves first and foremost, that those who put their trust in others were doomed to lose control of their own lives. But it had been different at Cavendish Hall ... she might not have fitted in well with many of the younger magicians, yet she had had some ... acquaintances. Maybe they would have become friends if she had been able to relax and open up to them.
“You’ve become very dear to me,” Gwen said. “Do you think I wouldn’t miss you after
you’d killed yourself?”
“I ... I don’t have a choice,” Olivia said. “They will kill me anyway.”
She looked up at Gwen, feeling tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. “I don’t want to live any longer.”
Gwen’s hand twitched, then fell still. “Everyone feels the same way at one time or another,” she said, instead. “But you can’t give in to it.”
Olivia snorted. “How many of them were indirectly responsible for unleashing an undead plague and slaughtering millions of people?”
“You were not responsible for what the Tsar made you do,” Gwen said, firmly. “The law is on your side in this matter. If someone is Charmed into servitude, they are not responsible for what they do under the influence.”
“You know what I mean,” Olivia snapped. “What have you done that is remotely as bad as assisting someone to slaughter so many people?”
Gwen took a long breath. “No one realised I was a magician,” she said. There was a bitter tone in her voice. “It was fashionable, when I was born, to have male children tested for magic, but female children were generally overlooked. No one realised that I might develop magic until I was six years old and a very spoiled brat.”
Olivia nodded. Lady Mary had accepted Olivia into the family, but veered between treating her as something tainted and as a living doll, to be dressed in pretty clothes and put on display. It was easy to imagine her doing the same with the young Gwen, dressing her up from the very start and showing her off to her friends, then handing her back to the nursemaids and governesses. Many of the aristocratic girls she’d met at Cavendish Hall had barely any contact with their parents, their upbringings vested in their caretakers. She’d met enough of their parents to know it wasn’t actually a bad idea.
“I was ... bratty at the time,” Gwen continued. “I liked playing in the garden, even after rain, despite the mud. They’d given me a new dress, but I didn’t care. I ran out into the garden and got it thoroughly covered in mud. The new governess was horrified and screamed at me, unsurprisingly. But I didn’t see it that way.”
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