The Great Game (Royal Sorceress)

by Nuttall, Christopher

  And he was right. Even the poorest upper-class families would have at least three or four servants. Sir Travis had had just one. And even then, Polly should have greeted everyone at the door. Sir Travis doing it himself wouldn’t leave a good impression.

  I wonder what sort of conclusions Talleyrand drew, she thought. David would have known, of course...

  She studied Howell for a long moment. “Did you know anything else about Sir Travis’s life?”

  “Nothing,” Howell said, blandly. “His family weren’t speaking to him or his mother... although I dare say that they will already be demanding that Mortimer Hall is handed over to them. The closest branch of the family to Sir Travis is known for being grasping, I’m afraid.”

  Gwen scowled. There was probably a letter at Cavendish Hall waiting for her from the family, if they’d seen a copy of the will. And they might just be tempted to try to move into the building before Gwen had completed her investigation, even though it was still under police guard. If they were wealthy and powerful enough, they could ignore formality and present the world with a fait accompli.

  She wasn’t entirely sure that she believed Howell, but for the moment there were no grounds to ask further questions. “I should warn you that you are a suspect,” she said, instead. “Please don’t leave London without permission from the police. I may have to talk to you at a later date.”

  Howell’s eyes glittered in the dim light. “I have told you all I know that is relevant to your investigation,” he said, flatly. “Should you continue to harass me, I shall be forced to take steps.”

  Gwen met his eyes, resisting the temptation to take a step backwards. “It is a step in the investigation,” she said. “I’m afraid that there are no legal grounds for objecting, unless you can present proof that you did not kill Sir Travis.”

  “I am not required to prove my innocence,” Howell reminded her. His voice became mocking. “How can the Royal Sorceress be unaware of that?”

  That was true, Gwen knew. The police were required to prove someone’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt, not force someone to prove their own innocence. If Howell hadn’t been the last person to see Sir Travis alive, there was good reason to believe that he wasn’t the killer. She couldn’t blame him for being indignant at the merest suggestion that he was a suspect...

  And if I have a bad reaction to him, Sir Travis’s reaction would be far worse, she added, in the privacy of her own mind. He wouldn’t step down his Sensitivity while talking to him at all.

  “However, you are a suspect,” Gwen said, instead. “We can request that you stay in London until the investigation is concluded.”

  Howell’s face seemed to twist, becoming dangerous. Gwen had known many dangerous men, including Master Thomas and Jack, both of whom could have taken Howell’s house apart without breaking a sweat... and yet, it was impossible to escape the sense that she was looking at a very dangerous man indeed. Not a violent man, not a thug or a genteel magician... something far worse. She felt her skin crawling as she reached for her magic, preparing to shield herself. And yet there was no obvious threat...

  “Maybe I will,” Howell said. The sense of danger refused to abate. “How is your mother, these days?”

  Gwen blinked at the non sequitur. What did her mother have to do with any of this?

  “You might wish to ask your mother about me,” Howell said. He turned over, showing her the back of his head, then reached for the bell and gave it a ring. “Jarvis will show you out.”

  “What,” Gwen demanded, “does my mother have to do with you?”

  “Ask her,” Howell said. She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the amusement in his voice. “I am sworn to silence.”

  Gwen opened her mouth to demand answers, then the door opened to reveal the butler. She shot an angry look at Howell’s head, briefly considering trying to force answers out of him, before deciding that it would be futile. Even if she succeeded, it would give her enemies too much ammunition. There were strong laws on the books against mind-reading without a warrant, most of them too strong for their own good. Too many Talkers were in breach of them as soon as they came into their powers.

  “Good day, sir,” she said, icily.

  Howell made no response.

  She allowed the butler to lead her back down the corridor and out of the house, unable to escape the sense that she had just escaped with her life. It was illogical; there had been no danger, certainly nothing that she could see. And yet her senses had been warning her that she was in very great danger indeed. But of what?

  Sir Travis would probably have known what the danger was... but Sir Travis was dead. His Sensitivity had failed him at the last.

  The guards opened the gate for her, allowing her to step out onto the street. Gwen couldn’t help noticing that the gate was stronger than she’d realised, carefully designed to make it hard for someone to break it down without explosives. An angry mob might not be able to push it down by naked force. If Howell had enemies – and loan sharks would have plenty of enemies – maybe it made sense, but... somehow, she was sure that he hadn’t told her the complete story.

  Sir Charles jumped out of the carriage and held out a hand to help her into it. Gwen ignored his hand and scrambled up herself, her mind too jumbled to care that she was being rude.

  “I need to go to Crichton Hall,” she said, once he’d joined her in the carriage. “Can you have the coachman take us there?”

  “Of course,” Sir Charles said. He opened the slot and issued orders to the coachman, then closed it with an audible snap. “Is there something the matter?”

  “It’s not something I can discuss,” Gwen said, shortly. What was her mother doing mixed up in the whole affair? As far as Gwen knew, Lady Mary wouldn’t have known Lady Mortimer – and the thought of her knowing Sir Travis personally was laughable. “I just need to go there.”

  Sir Charles settled into his seat as the carriage started to move. “It won’t take long to reach your home,” he said. “Do you want me to come inside with you?”

  “No, thank you,” Gwen said. It was going to be hard enough talking to her mother without a single man being with her. And then it struck her that she was being incredibly rude. “I... I can make my own way back to Cavendish Hall.”

  Sir Charles grinned, relishing her discomfort. “There’s a formal ball this weekend for Ambassador Talleyrand,” he said. “I would be delighted if you would accompany me.”

  Gwen hesitated. She had received an invitation, but she hadn’t intended to go. And yet... the last ball she’d attended had been fun, at least until Jack had arrived to reintroduce himself to Polite Society.

  “I’d be delighted,” she said, although she had the vague sense that she’d been outmanoeuvred in some way. “But we’ll have to talk about that later.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gwen couldn’t help a surge of mixed emotions as she stood in front of Crichton Hall, waiting for the butler to open the door. The Hall had been her home; she’d never been anywhere else, save for a couple of brief visits to the countryside. She had played with David in the garden – until he’d grown all stuffy – and practised with her magic in the trees. They’d even spent one summer building a treehouse, before Lady Mary had decided that it wasn’t ladylike to climb trees and ordered Gwen not to do it any longer.

  And yet the Hall had also been a prison. She had been confined within its walls, held by invisible chains of social propriety... and the shame her mother felt at giving birth to such a child. What would have been a source of great joy and pride if she’d been born male had damaged her mother’s social standing when she’d had a daughter. That, at least, wasn’t going to happen on Gwen’s watch. She’d already started recruiting upper-class women who happened to have been born with magic.

  The door opened, revealing a familiar face. “Mistress Gwen,” the butler said, gravely. “Welcome home.”

  He’d been new when Gwen had left to go to Cavendish Hall, which was
probably why he was still working for the family. Most servants had been too scared of Gwen to stay for long, even though the rumours were wildly exaggerated. She had not turned a pair of maids into her dolls. Even the most skilled of Changers would have been unable to do that.

  “Thank you,” Gwen said, as he took her hat and coat. “Is my mother home?”

  “She is in the Flower Room,” the butler said. “Should I bring tea and biscuits?”

  “Please do,” Gwen said, although she had no idea if her mother would be pleased. She’d spent too long avoiding her mother in the months since Master Thomas’s death. “I can find my own way there.”

  Lady Mary had been redecorating since Gwen had left, she saw; over the years, Gwen had destroyed dozens of pieces of china with bursts of accidental magic. In hindsight, she wondered why Lady Mary hadn’t killed her - or given her up for adoption. Her mother had been a stronger person than she’d realised, she saw now. Perhaps, now that they were both mature adults, they could get along better. But Lady Mary might always see her as the little girl who’d thrown tantrums and pushed her tutors away.

  The Flower Room had once held David’s toys, before he’d grown up and had most of them transferred to his new house. Now, Lady Mary – in line with the ineffable dictates of fashion – had turned it into a hothouse where she was trying to grow exotic plants imported from the Far East. Gwen smiled as she smelled the flowers, wondering why her mother didn’t take such good care of the garden outside. But then, that would suggest that the family was too poor to hire a gardener.

  “Gwendolyn,” Lady Mary said, as she looked up from a potted flower. “How... nice to see you again.”

  “Thank you, mother,” Gwen said. Her mother could always make her feel like an ungrateful child – and, in truth, she had a great deal to be grateful for. “It has been too long.”

  She sat down on a bench and studied her mother as she worked on the flower. Lady Mary’s hair was slowly going grey, but apart from that she looked like an older version of Gwen herself. Gwen had wondered, more than once, about her own paternity; if Jack could have been adopted by a well-connected family, why couldn’t someone else have adopted her, if she’d come out of the farms. It was sometimes hard to see anything of her father in her. But then, the farms wouldn’t have sent an untested girl out for adoption. It was much more likely that Gwen was her parents’ child.

  But David doesn’t have magic, she reminded herself. If I do, why doesn’t he?

  “I heard that you were spending time with Charles Bellingham,” Lady Mary said, without looking up from the plant. “You are comporting yourself with all the dignity of your station, I trust?”

  Gwen scowled, inwardly. It hadn’t been more than a couple of hours since she’d had lunch with him. Word moved faster than horses and carriages in London... someone had probably spotted them in Glisters and sent a note to Lady Mary. The elder women always kept an eye on the younger girls.

  “Yes, mother,” she lied. Few girls of her station would share a carriage with an unrelated man, unless they had a chaperone. On the other hand, she suspected that she wouldn’t have enjoyed herself so much if Lady Mary had been there. Some of Sir Charles’s stories would not have amused her mother at all.

  “There is some... question over his family,” Lady Mary added. “But on the whole, you could do worse for marriage.”

  Gwen scowled, openly this time. Trust her mother to start wittering on about marriage, as if her life would only be validated when both of her children had left the nest and started building households of her own. David had a wife and a child on the way... she didn’t need to worry about Gwen. And besides, surely being related to the Royal Sorceress was something she could brag about in Polite Society.

  Or maybe not, she reminded herself. Master Thomas had no close relatives when he died.

  “I have no intention of getting married yet, mother,” she said, tightly. “I am young...”

  “You are growing older,” Lady Mary reminded her. “Most girls your age are not only married, but bringing up children. It is rare indeed for a young woman to marry a suitable young man after she passes twenty-five.”

  “There are no suitable young men,” Gwen said, dryly. If there had been another Master, she was sure that she would have been urged to marry him and see if two Masters could produce more Masters. Master Thomas had had children through the farms, but unless the suggestion that Jack had actually been his son was correct, none of them had been Masters. “And those you keep pushing at me don’t want to marry the Royal Sorceress.”

  Lady Mary scowled at her, then walked over to sit down next to her. “Your father and I only want what is best for you,” she said, as she gave Gwen a hug. “In many ways, you are lonely. You were always lonely.”

  Gwen had to admit that she was right. Being a so-called devil-child had left her almost friendless; very few girls of her generation had been willing to play with her, even before the rumours had grown far out of proportion. And, even as Master Thomas’s apprentice, her femininity had isolated her. She could never be too friendly with the other magicians.

  And now? The great and the good hung on her every word, or privately disdained her when they thought she wasn’t looking, but none of them were her friends.

  “You’re perceptive,” she said, numbly. “Why were you never this perceptive before?”

  Lady Mary surprised her by laughing. “While I was a child, my mother was a thoughtless old biddy who tried to run my life,” she said. “When I grew up, I realised that my mother had only wanted the best for me.”

  Gwen nodded, slowly. Her maternal grandmother had died when Gwen had been very young, before she had discovered her magic. It was difficult to imagine Lady Mary as a naughty young girl, but she must have been ... once upon a time.

  She would have liked to have chatted to her mother for hours, just trying to enjoy her company, but duty called.

  “This trip isn’t for pleasure,” she admitted. She felt a pang of guilt as she realised that she might not have visited her mother unless she hadn’t had a choice. “I need to ask you about someone.”

  “Not Sir Charles, I presume,” Lady Mary said. “But I will definitely look into his family tree.”

  Gwen gave her a cross look, which washed off her mother like water from a duck’s back. Now, she could tell that her mother often concealed her intelligence behind a facade... although she wasn’t sure how much of the facade truly was a facade. If all she’d wanted was some flowers to impress visitors, it would have been simpler to buy them – or hire a proper gardener to take care of the plants.

  “Not Sir Charles,” Gwen said. “Augustus Howell.”

  Her mother’s arm shook. Gwen looked up and saw, to her alarm, that her mother had gone pale.

  “Mother?”

  Lady Mary stared at her. “Where did you hear that name?”

  Gwen hesitated, then answered. “I have to find out who murdered Sir Travis and he’s one of the suspects in the investigation,” she said, honestly. She could trust her mother, she suspected, to keep that to herself. “He suggested that I should talk to you...”

  Her mother clutched Gwen’s arm. “What did he tell you?”

  “Merely that I should talk to you,” Gwen said, alarmed. Who was Howell that so many people had bad reactions to his name? Lestrade, Lord Mycroft, Sir Charles... and now Lady Mary? What did those people have in common? Maybe she should have asked David; stuffy or not, she could usually get answers out of her brother. “Mother...”

  “Nothing else?” Her mother demanded, her grip tightening. “Nothing at all?”

  “No,” Gwen said, quickly. “Mother... who is he?”

  “No one,” Lady Mary insisted. “Just... just don’t go near him, all right?”

  Gwen stared at her. Lady Mary had been flustered before, particularly after she’d heard about some magic-related chaos the young Gwen had caused, but she’d never been on the verge of outright panic. Even when Master Thomas had come t
o invite Gwen to study under him, Lady Mary hadn’t panicked. She’d just fainted with shock.

  Briefly, she considered trying to Charm her mother. In hindsight, it was clear that she had used Charm on the servants, although she hadn’t really known what she was doing. She’d resented her ignorance at the time, even though it might have worked in her favour. If she’d really known what she was doing, would it have twisted her as badly as it had twisted Lord Blackburn?

  And she couldn’t Charm her mother. That would be morally wrong.

  “I need to know,” she said, quietly. “Mother...”

  “Don’t talk about him,” Lady Mary insisted. She let go of Gwen and stood upright, shaking so badly that Gwen was sure that she was going to fall over. “Just... leave him alone.” Her voice hardened. “That’s an order, Gwendolyn.”

  Gwen felt a flash of déjà vu. Her mother had been fond of that phase when Gwen had been a child, using it to remind her daughter that certain orders were not up for discussion, even though Gwen – and David – had spent considerable time and ingenuity looking for loopholes in her instructions. And yet... how could her mother issue orders concerning Gwen’s post and expect them to be obeyed? Gwen was no longer hers to command.

  “I need to know,” she repeated. “Mother, this is important!”

  “He won’t have murdered Sir Travis,” Lady Mary insisted. She turned and strode off towards the door. “Dinner is at five o’clock sharp, Gwendolyn. You will join us, won’t you?”

  The door banged closed before Gwen could formulate a response. What was Howell if the mere mention of his name pushed her mother into a state of near-panic? Somehow, Gwen doubted that a loan shark could cause so much shock. Her family might not be as wealthy as some families, but they were comfortably well off; her father’s investments in airships were definitely bringing in the money. Given time, David would probably ensure that they were richer than anyone else.