Sorcerer to the Crown

by Zen Cho

  “It is only natural that you wish to keep the secret to yourself. Well, now you know how to call it forth, and may listen to your mother’s voice at your leisure.”

  “My mother?” said Prunella.

  “Did not you hear her?” said Mak Genggang. “It was very improvident of her not to have taught you about your singing orb. If she was going to the trouble of enspelling it so it could only be unlocked by your blood, she ought to have enciphered a message within your veins while she was at it, so you would know how to use the orb when you were old enough. It is a mother’s duty to teach her daughters about the uses of blood, particularly a magical daughter.”

  “But why do you say it is my mother?” said Prunella. She could not recall, now, if there had been anything familiar in the weary voice, singing in an unknown tongue.

  “Why, only a mother can store secrets in the blood of her children—that is to say, an unscrupulous witch may do anything with anyone’s blood, but that is a very evil magic, and attended by all manner of fell consequences. Did not you say you had the orb from your parents?”

  “Yes,” said Prunella. “But it was my father who gave it to me.”

  “A man, casting blood magics?” scoffed Mak Genggang. “You may as well say the English King loves Janda Baik, and has nothing but our good at heart! There never was a man but was frightened of blood magic—the magic in a woman’s blood, most of all. For what is more potent than a woman’s blood? I am sure mine has saved me many a time in my dealings with the spirits!”

  Prunella was only half-listening. The idea that the orb belonged to her mother—that it was her mother’s voice, and no stranger’s, she had heard—was so novel that it was only with difficulty that she abstracted herself from her thoughts. Mak Genggang was repeating her name.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am?” said Prunella.

  “I said, since the servants seem not to know whether their heads are in the air and their feet on the ground, or whether it ought rightly to be the other way around, you will have to take me to these thaumaturges,” said Mak Genggang. “That is what I came to tell you, before we were distracted by your orb.”

  “Why do you wish to see the unnatural philosophers?” said Prunella, puzzled.

  “I don’t give a fig for them,” said Mak Genggang. “It is the so-called sultan I wish to see, and the sky says he is with them. At a party, forsooth! I know what he is doing; he is begging from the British, thinking he will return laden with cannon enough to blow me and all my women to paradise. But he will find Mak Genggang is not so easily outdone! I should like to see what spirit he has for merriment once he knows I am come.”

  Prunella had started to say that she did not know where the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers was, but her interest was piqued by the mention of a party. “A party, at the Society? But thaumaturges are infamous dancers, Henrietta says.”

  But as she spoke she recalled the reason why Henrietta had had an opportunity to see thaumaturges dancing. It had been a great event, the great event of the year at the Society. Henrietta had attended it in her first Season, and she had been full of it for weeks afterwards when she returned to the school.

  “The Spring Ball!” Prunella exclaimed.

  “That is what the sky called it,” said Mak Genggang.

  Prunella put aside the troubling mysteries of her inheritance with relief. She would return to the orb and the treasures later—for now there were more pressing concerns to be thought of.

  “I long to see the Spring Ball!” she said. “Henrietta said it was the prettiest thing she had ever seen, and she has been to dozens of parties. Are you going? What shall you wear?”

  “I shall go in what I am standing in,” said Mak Genggang. “A witch is always appropriate whatever her attire. It is quite another matter for a young girl, however. We will ask the sky what is suitable for the occasion.”

  “Cannot the sky tell you where the Society is?”

  “I know where it is, but that is hardly to the point. It would be shockingly brazen of me to go alone to a party full of foreign gentlemen,” said Mak Genggang. “But if you are with me, there cannot be any impropriety, for we shall look after each other. Are you coming? We ought not to delay any longer, or they will all go home, and my interrogation of the sky will be all to do over again.”

  “Yes,” said Prunella. She stood, and slipped the silver orb under the collar of her dress. It nestled against her breastbone, a cold weight, heavy with secrets. “I shall certainly come.”

  • • •

  PRUNELLA’S first impression of the Spring Ball was of light. Veritable forests of candles were arrayed around the Society’s rooms, their glow reflected within innumerable shining mirrors, till it seemed as though the rooms were ablaze.

  The effect had been achieved by mortal art alone. The Society, being composed in large part of gentlemen fond of their food, had chosen to focus its magical enhancements upon the refreshments. But to Prunella, the change from the dark night without was almost magical in itself. She felt as though she had entered another world.

  When her eyes had grown accustomed to the light she looked around, ready to take pleasure in everything. But her heart sank as she registered her surroundings.

  It had been her intention to avoid Zacharias if she could, since she presumed he was at the Ball, but in fact when she saw him she was so consumed by disaster that she hurried towards him, grateful to see a familiar face.

  “Mr. Wythe, what is to be done?” she exclaimed. “Mak Genggang assured me that the sky knew these things, but it is clear to me the sky knows nothing of high society, and I wish I had never come! It was very unwise—indeed, it is nothing less than a disaster!”

  “I cannot but agree,” said Zacharias. “But if you think so, why did you come?”

  Prunella was too troubled to attend. “Only look at my dress!” she said. “To think of wearing hoop skirts and silk taffeta when every other young female is in white muslin! I do not know if the sky meant to be disobliging, or if it is merely ignorant. Surely it must have seen that this is not at all the thing. I look a very guy!”

  “That was not quite what I meant,” said Zacharias.

  The cut of Prunella’s gown was absurdly old-fashioned, it was true, but the hue was remarkably becoming, and the dress could not but benefit from being worn by the possessor of such lively dark eyes, and such a small, piquant face. The sky had not gone so far as to suggest that she powder her hair, and her dark curls tumbled over the back of her dress, only just restrained by a pretty bandeau. Altogether the effect was charming—Prunella looked like a china shepherdess, modelled in bronze.

  To Zacharias’s own astonishment, he heard himself say, “Indeed, I think you look very well.” He was no great hand at gallantry, and he felt like a coxcomb the moment his speech was out.

  Prunella was nearly as embarrassed. How she would have liked to respond with the elegant coquetry of her imaginings! Instead she flushed, cast her eyes down, and said abruptly:

  “Oh, you are being civil!”

  Anything less flirtatious could scarcely be imagined. But it was easier to devise witty replies in one’s fancy when the gentleman whom one addressed was a fiction: nameless, faceless, and not nearly so attractive as a certain Sorcerer Royal.

  Fortunately they did not long have the luxury of feeling awkward. Mak Genggang’s path had been blocked by a footman who sought to prevent her from accosting the sultan, and she began haranguing him for his impertinence, in tones that drew the fascinated attention of everyone in the room.

  “Wythe,” gasped John Edgeworth, emerging from the crowd, “what in Heaven’s name is that harridan doing here? Was not it enough to magic her up in your shewstone to affront the sultan? What is she saying to Morton?”

  Mak Genggang was dressing down the footman with animation and fluency. Her translation spell was still in effect, and
her words were comprehensible enough.

  “She is telling Mr. Morton that everyone knows the hooting of an owl always presages a death,” said Prunella helpfully. “I wonder what she means by prosing about owls at a ball! Oh, I see what she is at. She says she has not heard any owls hooting tonight, but if Mr. Morton persists in his impertinence, she may well do so. How cleverly she has put it!”

  Mak Genggang raised her arm. A bony, stick-like limb it was, but there must have been some potent power in her eye and voice, for the footman took a step back. Seizing her advantage, Mak Genggang sailed past him, and pitched straight into the terrified sultan.

  “I see Your Highness’s royal wife is not present,” she said. “I hope she is resting. I was shocked to hear that she should have been dragged across the seas in her condition! But there, it is all of a piece with your want of foresight and consideration! I am sure the poor girl rues the day she was ever compelled to leave Achin and take you as her husband.”

  Sultan Ahmad made a defiant reply. Unfortunately it was lost on the onlooking audience, since he lacked the benefit of a translation spell, and must needs make his defence in his own language. Nor was he even allowed to complete it. Mak Genggang cut him off, crying:

  “I didn’t know, he says! I should have thought even a blockhead would guess the likely consequence of bringing his wife along on such a journey. You ought to have checked yourself. But you could never govern your lower passions, even as a boy. What a life you led your poor nurse! They hoped you would improve with age, but your being taken by the Achinese put paid to all of that. We celebrated when the foreigners sent you back to us, but we should have mourned instead, that they took our prince and returned him a tyrant! Oh, your father was a very syaitan in his youth, but he would never have done what you do now. God was merciful in decreeing his death before he could witness his own son, puppet of the Achinese kingdom, grovel before the British like a cur!”

  The blood drained from the sultan’s face. He stood staring, his eyes burning in a rigid countenance. Then he unsheathed his dagger and held it up before him. The crowd gasped and fell away. The dark blade of the creese gleamed like rippling water touched by moonlight.

  “Woman, you will rue your insubordination!” snarled Mr. Othman.

  “Shall I, indeed?” said Mak Genggang.

  She flicked her hand as though she were waving a fly away. The creese was knocked out of the sultan’s grasp and went shooting across the room. The swifter of thought and keener of instinct ducked or leapt out of the way, but not everyone was so alert to the danger. The dagger impaled a yellow satin turban crowning the bemused countenance of Mrs. Geoffrey Midsomer.

  The ladies around her shrieked as one woman.

  “What in the name of Poseidon—!” said Mrs. Midsomer.

  “Oh, Laura! Tell me you are not killed!” cried a friend.

  Another friend swooned, and this example was followed by several of the other women in quick succession. Mrs. Midsomer stared at them as if wondering what they were about, but then the danger she had been in seemed to dawn suddenly upon her. The change was so comically abrupt it almost seemed as though she had realised all at once how improper it was for her to take an assault upon her person so calmly.

  Her eyes rolled back. She collapsed, and was caught by her husband.

  “Good God!” cried Geoffrey Midsomer. “Stay away, sir!” Zacharias had rushed over to help. “If you come any closer, I shall not be responsible for the consequence.”

  “Is Mrs. Midsomer injured?” said Zacharias.

  “What a vast fuss for nothing at all!” exclaimed Mak Genggang. She looked more embarrassed than her words suggested, but she continued with obstinate ferocity: “It has only hurt her turban. Surely that ugly woman’s head does not go all the way up?”

  To Zacharias’s relief the weight of Mrs. Midsomer’s drooping head, combined with that of the creese, induced the turban to drop to the ground, revealing her ringleted scalp to be unharmed.

  “Thank God,” said Zacharias. “Midsomer, I cannot say how deeply I regret this accident.”

  “Regret?” said Midsomer. He rose to his feet, raising his unconscious wife with no very gentle hold as he did so. “Oh, you have not begun to regret this evening’s work, sir. But you will regret it, indeed. I shall see to that!”

  “How dare you!” shrieked Prunella across the room. “Unhand her this moment, you brutes!”

  Zacharias looked up to see his colleagues descending upon Mak Genggang. A few were already unsheathing their wands, but this worried Zacharias less than the way Mak Genggang raised her hands. He strode over, his staff held negligently—but pointedly—at his side.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he said.

  Zacharias was still the Sorcerer Royal, even if his peers questioned his right to the title. They hesitated, even the more belligerent lowering their wands, but one of the boldest said:

  “You saw what she did to that blade. It was magic! A woman, polluting the halls of the Society with rank witchery! She must suffer the traditional penalty.”

  This received a warm reception among his fellows, but Zacharias said dampeningly:

  “Let us have no doubt about what you propose. Do you mean to say you wish to burn her at the stake? An elderly woman, a stranger to us, who has committed no worse crime than that of making a scene?”

  The thaumaturge who had spoken first hesitated.

  “Yes?” he said, but another said at the same time:

  “Do you call attacking Mrs. Midsomer nothing?”

  Zacharias saw that this line of talk must be headed off, or the men would work themselves up into a righteous fury, and he would be hard put to it to control them.

  “She must certainly be tried,” he said. “But let it be conducted in an orderly fashion, by the Presiding Committee. This is hardly the time or place.”

  He swept a pointed look over the ruins of the Spring Ball. The Society’s unmagical guests might have enjoyed the drama of Mak Genggang’s confrontation with the sultan, but they had cleared out at the first sign of a magical quarrel.

  “I am surprised that the Sorcerer Royal should show such indulgence to a foreigner, and ignore her insult to an Englishwoman,” said one of the wand-wielding magicians. “But perhaps I should not be. If we had a Sorcerer Royal that thought of his country first, this evening might have had a very different conclusion.”

  “If you think it in Britain’s interests to antagonise Mak Genggang’s nation, I beg you will take it up with the Government,” said Zacharias, unmoved. “I have been told the Government is anxious to preserve its relations with her people, and I am bound to act accordingly. Though she may seem a mere common old woman, in her country Mak Genggang is an arch-witch of repute, and rough treatment of her is likely to cause ill feeling.”

  “Was not the witch’s quarrel with her own sovereign?” said a thaumaturge. “I do not know how these foreigners manage their affairs, but in England she would be hung for high treason.”

  “The sultan has little love for her, but he is not likely to be pleased if we execute his subject out of hand,” said Zacharias. “He might well think his opinion ought to be consulted on the point. I cannot condone anything that risks offending him.”

  Zacharias secretly suspected Sultan Ahmad would be just as pleased to hear Mak Genggang had been dealt with by the Society after he had decamped from the Ball. Any pique would soon be outweighed by the incalculable benefit of never again having to deal with Mak Genggang himself.

  But the Society had not the privilege of Sultan Ahmad’s acquaintance, and no grounds upon which to gainsay Zacharias’s account of the sultan’s feelings. He had introduced just enough doubt to render his colleagues uncertain about their course. While they hesitated, he grasped Mak Genggang’s arm, declaring that she should be detained in the Society rooms for the night:

  “Tomorro
w there will be time enough to carry out a full investigation of her offence.”

  “I shall certainly not be imprisoned, Sorcerer!” hissed Mak Genggang.

  “Would you prefer to be hexed by ten magicians at once?” he muttered, steering her away from the crowd. The resistance in the tough old arm within his grasp slackened. “I beg you will have patience. I shall endeavour to ensure you are at liberty again as soon as it can be contrived. All will be well, I assure you.”

  He spoke with more certainty than he felt. Zacharias suspected Midsomer had only spoken the truth. He would soon have reason to wish he had never gone to the Ball.

  14

  ZACHARIAS ESCORTED PRUNELLA back to his lodgings after the close of the Ball, adjuring her sternly not to go anywhere, nor do anything whatsoever, while he attempted to resolve the difficulties in which Mak Genggang had mired them all.

  It was late and Prunella was weary, but she could not avoid the orb any longer. Part of her longed to know more, even as another part shrank in indistinct fear from learning anything further of her history. Alone in her bedchamber, she took the orb off its chain and looked at it, glinting upon her palm.

  “But what is there to be afraid of?” she said aloud. Despite Mrs. Daubeney’s attempts to gilt his memory, her father was a suicide who had died in miserable obscurity, and achieved nothing of what he had hoped for. Surely she could not discover anything worse than that.

  She shook the eggs out of their pouch, spreading them out upon a directoire so positioned that she could observe them while she worked with the orb.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Prunella bit her lip until the coppery taste of her own blood filled her mouth. She fumbled for the orb, and pressed it against her lips. She opened her eyes, and flung the silver ball in the air.

  It hung suspended, shining as before, and the woman’s voice issued from the orb—unsteady at first, but gaining strength as she sang.

  She might have been singing in Greek for all Prunella understood of the words, but she listened, half-entranced, as though by close attention she might decipher the meaning of the song, and divine some quality in the voice that marked it as possessing a connection to her own.