The Great Game (Royal Sorceress)

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “But there would be no conclusive proof,” Gwen pointed out.

  “It wouldn’t matter,” Lord Mycroft said. “The mere suspicion would be enough to scuttle the treaty – and destroy any hope of an alliance with Turkey.”

  Gwen shook her head, thoughtfully. “But who murdered Sir Travis and Hiram Pasha?”

  “We may never know,” Lord Mycroft said. “The Sultan is a sneaky fox – and his intelligence officers are trained to seize every advantage they can get. If one of them killed Sir Travis, then Hiram Pasha, it would break the chain that would lead us to Turkey – and make it impossible for us to prove anything. Except that still doesn’t explain the documents. What were they doing in Hiram Pasha’s house?”

  “Maybe Hiram Pasha didn’t know that he was about to be sacrificed,” Gwen said, looking over at the chessboard. “The assassin might not have known that they were there.”

  “Perhaps,” Lord Mycroft said. “I understand that you brought Sir Travis’s maid to Whitehall?”

  “Yes,” Gwen said, flatly.

  “You must find out what, if anything, she knows about Hiram Pasha,” Lord Mycroft said. “And then we need to wrap this whole affair up as quickly and quietly as possible.”

  Gwen shook her head. “How could someone as... loyal as Sir Travis be a traitor?”

  “Very few men are villains in their own mind,” Lord Mycroft said. “It was only three years ago that we caught someone slipping information to France in the belief that it would help prevent a war, which didn’t stop him accepting a hefty sum of money every year. Sir Travis... went through hell in India, which would be arguably worse for a Sensitive. And he had gambling debts. He might well have decided to switch sides at some point.

  “Or he might have genuinely believed that an alliance with Turkey was vitally important,” he added, “and compromised himself to ensure that one would be formed. Except now there will be no alliance, at least until every last line in the treaty is scrutinised by diplomats...”

  David is not going to be happy, Gwen realised. He’d been Sir Travis’s superior, his contact in Whitehall... and now his career would be blighted by being too close to a presumed traitor. What would that do to their relationship? Would he blame Gwen for the disaster? Or would he simply go back to business, leaving politics alone?

  She looked down at the papers they’d found in Hiram Pasha’s home. “How do you decrypt them?”

  Lord Mycroft smiled. “Each of the number sequences refers to a word in a particular book,” he said. “In this case; Jewels of the Orient: Tales from the Harem. You look up the word, then write it down... and by the time you finish, you have a complete paragraph in English.”

  Gwen winced. “There was a copy of that book in Hiram Pasha’s house,” she said.

  “That isn’t good,” Lord Mycroft admitted. “The code is close to unbreakable without knowing which book served as the key. Sir Travis would have had to have told Hiram Pasha which book he was using to encode his messages. And that would make him an outright traitor.”

  “Yes,” Gwen said, slowly. “Can I take the papers and decrypt them?”

  Lord Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a reason for that?”

  Gwen hesitated. “I want to play a hunch,” she said, although she couldn’t have put the hunch into words. “It just strikes me as important.”

  “Feminine intuition is always powerful,” Lord Mycroft said. “Very well, but take care of them. Don’t show them to any of your staff.”

  “Understood,” Gwen said. She stood up. “With your permission, I will see to interrogating Polly.”

  “After that... we will have to wrap the whole affair up as quickly as possible,” Lord Mycroft reminded her. “Sir Travis’s family will have the house; you can start handing out what remains of his fortune to the people he named in his will. The gambling debts... will have to be left unpaid.”

  “The Golden Turk might sue,” Gwen pointed out.

  “Pointless,” Lord Mycroft said. “They can claim their funds from Hiram Pasha’s accounts – I can give that a quiet push if the banks start to balk.”

  Gwen nodded and walked out of the door, heading down towards the guest suites on the ground floor. They were, she’d been told, comfortable prison cells, used when someone of high rank had to be held prisoner – or when someone had to be held without realising that they were held. There were no iron bars or sarcastic gaolers; instead, there was quiet supervision and good food. Gwen nodded to the guard and stepped through a door that locked silently. Polly looked up as she entered.

  “Lady Gwen,” she said. “Is the house all right?”

  “I think so,” Gwen said. If the maid was innocent, she must be on the verge of panic, wondering just what was happening to her. “I’m afraid that I have more questions to ask you.”

  She took one of the comfortable seats and sat down facing Polly. “I need you to answer truthfully,” she said, lacing her voice – once again – with Charm. “Did a man called Hiram Pasha ever visit Sir Travis?”

  “No,” Polly said, immediately. The Charm seemed to have affected her profoundly. Lord Blackburn would have made snide comments about the weak minds of the lower orders, but Gwen suspected that it had something more to do with her youth and general isolation from society. Someone more cynical might be more resistant to the Charm.

  Gwen frowned, thoughtfully. “Did you ever hear Sir Travis mention his name?”

  “No,” Polly said, again.

  But that proved nothing, Gwen knew. She didn’t tell her maid everything...

  A thought struck her and she looked into Polly’s eyes. Charm could never be truly trusted, any more than Charmers themselves. She’d asked Polly a question and received a truthful reply, but it might well be incomplete.

  She composed the question as carefully as possible. “Did you hear anyone else mention Hiram Pasha’s name?”

  “Yes,” Polly said. “You.”

  Gwen winced. “Anyone else?”

  “The visitor from the Golden Turk,” Polly said. “He mentioned the name once.”

  “Ah,” Gwen said, feeling a flicker of triumph. “What happened, exactly?”

  She listened carefully as Polly explained that a man from the Golden Turk had visited twice before, hoping to collect the debt that Sir Travis owed the gambling hall. Polly had taken a note each time and passed them on to Sir Travis, but he’d said nothing about it. She didn’t know who Hiram Pasha was or what, if anything, he had to do with her employer.

  Gwen scowled, convinced that she was missing something.

  “He just tore up the notes,” Polly explained. “I don’t think he cared.”

  Think about something else, Gwen told herself. Maybe you’ll realise what you were missing.

  A thought struck her. “Did Howell come to the house before the night Sir Travis died?”

  “He came in the morning of the same day, but Sir Travis was absent,” Polly said. Her voice had started to slur, indicating that the Charm was taking its toll on her. “I took a note for him...”

  Gwen’s eyes narrowed. “What did he actually say to you?”

  “He asked all sorts of questions about Sir Travis,” Polly said. There was a hint of pride in her voice. “I told him nothing, of course, even when he tried to slip me a guinea. The Mistress had always warned me to keep my mouth shut.”

  “He asked you questions,” Gwen repeated. “And you told him nothing...”

  She cursed mentally as the pieces fell together. Irene Adler, the most capable Talker in England’s service, had explained how easy it could be to read a person’s mind, without digging so deeply that the victim might notice even if he lacked a spark of magic. The Talker just asked questions and the answers floated to the top of the victim’s mind, even if he didn’t say them out loud. Someone could be interrogated and walk away convinced that he’d told the interrogator nothing.

  Polly had no way of knowing that she’d betrayed Sir Travis. She certainly hadn’t inten
ded to betray Sir Travis. But what she’d intended to do didn’t matter.

  Gwen thought her way through it, step by step. Howell had discovered that Lady Elizabeth was secretly engaged, probably through reading her father’s mind. He’d attempted to blackmail Lady Elizabeth, only to discover that she was unable to pay, even though she was devoted to her prospective husband. And so he’d gone to Sir Travis’s house, intent on destroying the marriage... and discovered, through reading Polly’s mind, that Sir Travis had gambling debts. Instead of destroying Sir Travis’s engagement he’d offered to pay his debts!

  It made sense, she decided, once she had tested every last link in the chain. Destroying Lady Elizabeth would no doubt scare any other potential victims, but it ran the risk of a physical confrontation with Sir Travis, who had a long history of serving the Empire in India. Paying his debts, on the other hand, would create an obligation that would be hard to break – and if he took up a position in the Foreign Office, he would be in a good position to repay his benefactor. And Howell could keep Lady Elizabeth’s letters in reserve, just in case Sir Travis sought to break free of his web.

  No wonder Howell was such an effective blackmailer. He could read minds!

  He would have other advantages, she realised. Given a little careful work, he could isolate the people who would bow to his pressure... and never confront those who would resort to violence, even if their social ruin would follow immediately afterwards. And he could ensure the loyalty of his servants; their minds would be open books to him. She shuddered as she thought through all of the implications. Irene had admitted, once, that minds could be terrible things to read, which was why quite a few Talkers ended up in the madhouse. Howell... had chosen to immerse himself in the worst of humanity.

  And he might have found out about Lady Elizabeth’s letters through reading her mind, Gwen thought, and gritted her teeth. She could never tell Lady Elizabeth that. Polite Society would have a collective heart attack if they realised that someone like Howell had been poking through their minds for years...

  She shook her head. Howell was a rogue magician, completely unregistered. Dealing with him was her responsibility.

  He’ll expect mother to call me off, Gwen realised, as she remembered how Howell had pretended to be ill. It had kept her far away enough to prevent her from sensing his magic. What does he have on her?

  She hesitated, wondering just what she should do. If she went to deal with Howell, her mother’s life might be destroyed... but if she did nothing, Howell would be destroying other lives for years to come, until someone finally killed him. She couldn’t leave him free. If his secrets got out, Polite Society would hate her... but then, they hated her anyway. Besides, she could always force him to destroy the evidence before throwing him in jail.

  “You’re going to stay here for a few days,” she told Polly. The maid looked alarmed. “Don’t worry about the house; the police will keep their guard on it. You can have a rest here.”

  She stood up, winked goodbye and walked out of the door. “Make sure she eats properly,” she ordered the guard. “And if she wants more books to read, find her some.”

  “Yes, Milady,” the guard said, clearly used to taking care of the prisoners. “When should she be released?”

  “I’ll deal with that,” Gwen said. Of course; there would be no formal jail term for Polly. She wasn’t really under arrest. “Just make sure you take care of her.”

  She felt cold rage growing in her breast as she walked up to the ground floor and headed out of the building. Howell had to be stopped – and squashed like a bug, if he refused to come quietly. Master Thomas would just have gone to confront him at once; Gwen could afford to do nothing less, not if she wanted to build up a reputation of her own. She spied Sir Charles as he climbed out of a cab and waved at him. He smiled back at her.

  “Apparently Howell paid several debts,” he said, as they walked towards his carriage. “But I didn’t find anything linking him to Travis...”

  “I found it,” Gwen said. She explained quickly about Howell’s talent. “He offered to pay Sir Travis’s debts.”

  Sir Charles paled. “How long has he been reading minds?”

  Gwen shrugged. “He’s clearly mastered the talent,” she said. “That probably means that he developed it when he started to mature into an adult – I don’t think there’s ever been a child with the talent who remained sane. We can ask him after we arrest him.”

  “You intend to arrest him?” Sir Charles asked. “Don’t you need a warrant?”

  “I am the Royal Sorceress and he’s an unregistered magician,” Gwen explained, as she climbed into the carriage. “It is my duty to deal with him – and I don’t need a warrant as long as I have a good reason to believe that he is an unregistered magician. Testing him would only take a few seconds, after all.”

  “You might want to consider not taking him alive,” Sir Charles warned. “How many friends do you think he has in Polite Society?”

  “You mean people who are too scared of him to say anything,” Gwen snapped. Master Thomas might well have considered not trying to take Howell alive. She couldn’t afford to do that, not when she knew how far her tutor had been prepared to go at the end. “We can have him tried by the Royal Committee, should I be proved right. If not... it might prove embarrassing.”

  She looked over at him. “If you don’t want to come...”

  “I’ll come,” Sir Charles assured her, quickly. “You’re going to need someone to watch your back.”

  Gwen sat back as the carriage rattled onto the streets, composing herself as best as she could. It would be nice if Howell came quietly, but she had a feeling that he wouldn’t, not when he had so many enemies who might just take advantage of his indisposition to burgle his house or simply have him assassinated while he was in jail. Maybe they would decide that they were going to be ruined anyway and lash out at Howell while they could.

  She looked back at Sir Charles and smiled. Somehow, his presence felt comforting, rather like the times she’d played with David before he’d grown up. It felt right that he was there.

  “Let me do the talking,” she said, flatly. Lestrade would throw a fit if Sir Charles gave the impression that he was working for the Royal College. “You just look tough.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Gwen hefted her cane – passed down from Master Thomas – as she jumped down from the carriage and landed neatly on the pavement. It felt reassuringly solid in her hand, although if she had to use it as a weapon she would be in some trouble. Behind her, Sir Charles checked his revolver before jumping down beside her. He gave her a grin that suggested that he was ready for trouble.

  “Park over there,” Gwen ordered the coachman, “and stay there until we come for you.”

  She looked up at Sir Charles, wondering how he managed to look so confident. Gwen always felt nervous before wading in to arrest a rogue magician; very few of them came quietly, even after the Swing’s aftermath had created a general amnesty for unregistered magicians who registered themselves with the Royal College. Howell might be a Talker, but there was no reason why he couldn’t have other magicians on his side.

  “Follow my lead,” she said, quietly.

  Sir Charles nodded. “Understood,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Gwen hid a smile – very few men in London would have been happy letting a girl walk first into danger – as she strode over to the guardhouse, pasting a confident expression on her face. The guard looked confused, then startled, as she held up her card rather than passing it to him. That always meant trouble.

  “Lady Gwen and Sir Charles, here to see Mr. Howell,” she said. Legally, she could have informed the guard that Howell was under arrest, but he might well be more loyal to his master than the law. “You will take us to him at once.”

  The guard hesitated. “I will have to call the house and...”

  Gwen cut him off. “This is a matter of vital importance to the Royal Sorcerer
s Corps,” she said, sharply. “You will take us to your master at once.”

  She prepared Charm, ready to force the guard to surrender, but he gave way before that was required. He led them up the path towards the house, glancing around nervously as if he expected someone or something to leap out of the bushes at any moment. Gwen puzzled over it – Howell didn’t seem the type to keep dangerous animals on the grounds, even if they had been large enough for such creatures – before realising that Howell had to be a dangerous master when crossed. The guard had to know that they had no appointment.

  Inside, they were met by the butler. “You will take us to Howell, at once,” Gwen said, flatly. The guard who’d escorted them so far made his escape while the butler was preparing his rebuttal. “We need to speak with him.”

  The butler was clearly made of sterner stuff than the guard. “Do you have a warrant?”

  Gwen scowled at his tone. “I have blanket permission to raid houses if I suspect that unregistered magicians are operating within,” she said, tartly. “Now, take us to Howell or I will place you under arrest for obstructing me.”

  The butler bowed – so deeply that it was clearly meant to be insulting – and turned, leading them towards Howell’s sickroom. Gwen found herself wondering if Howell would pretend to be sick again, before pushing the thought aside and concentrating on her surroundings. The other servants seemed to be nowhere in evidence.

  She frowned as the butler opened a different door. “Lady Gwen and Sir Charles, sir,” he said, announcing them. “They have no warrant.”

  Gwen stepped past him and into the room. Howell was sitting in a comfortable armchair at the far end of the room, a humourless smile playing over his lips. He wore a suit instead of a nightshirt, somehow looking far more dangerous. In the light from the gas lamps, he seemed far more dangerous than Gwen had realised. There was something almost serpentine about his appearance.