Necropolis (Royal Sorceress Book 3)

by Christopher Nuttall

  She allowed her face to flush, reluctant to give more details unless they were dragged out of her. She’d never realised, even when there had seemed no hope of ever being anything more than a devil-child, that such parties existed, that men and women cavorted together so freely, without even a thought for their reputations. But she understood – how well she understood! – the rebellious urge, to throw away parental conventions and just do something outrageous.

  It isn’t fair, she thought, mutely. Men can do whatever they like and it gets winked at. But if a woman loses her reputation, she has no way to recover it.

  “I can imagine,” Lady Standish said, primly. “You appear to have acted well.”

  “Thank you, My Lady,” Gwen said.

  She wondered, vaguely, if one of the reasons there was a high turnover of maids in the Standish Household was that some of them found Raechel uncontrollable. Someone born to the poorer classes might not have the confidence to drag Raechel out of the dance hall ... or the magic to cause a diversion. But it wasn’t something she could ask, not now. Lady Standish wouldn’t answer in any case.

  “I understand you were previously in charge of a young girl,” Lady Standish said, as if she hadn’t discussed the matter with Gwen earlier. Madame Hampton would have given Lady Standish Gwen’s fake file too. “Was she ever such a problem?”

  “She was too young to cause such problems,” Gwen said. The thought of such a young girl getting into trouble was horrific. And Jack had shown her that some young girls did get into such trouble, either stolen from their families or simply bought and sold into the worst kind of servitude. If they weren’t aristocrats, she knew, the government rarely gave a damn. “I would have prevented her from getting too close to anyone, if necessary.”

  Lady Standish smiled. “And yourself?”

  Gwen blinked. “My Lady?”

  Lady Standish looked up, her eyes meeting Gwen’s. “Did you ever get into trouble with young men?”

  “No, My Lady,” Gwen lied. If Sir Charles didn’t count as trouble, she didn’t know what did ... but Gwen the maid had had no contact with men. “There were few men on Lord Carmichael’s estate and none of them were interested in me.”

  “There have always been rumours about Lord Carmichael,” Lady Standish said. Her eyes had never left Gwen’s face. “Are they true?”

  “My Lady,” Gwen said carefully, “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She felt her face heat, despite her best efforts. It wasn’t uncommon for odd stories to follow men who married young, lost their wives and then never attempted to remarry. And Lord Carmichael should have had no difficulty in finding a second wife. His daughter certainly needed a maternal figure in her life. But he’d kept himself aloof from women ever since he’d lost his wife, not even – according to the files – trying to tumble the serving maids. Maybe he’d just been remarkably successful in keeping it quiet – or perhaps he was more interested in men than women. Given his rank, it would be a major scandal if such a thing were ever to be made public.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” Lady Standish said. She put the hairbrush down, a faint smile playing over her face. “You will continue to escort Raechel, wherever she goes. I will inform her that she will not be allowed to leave the house without you.”

  Gwen hesitated, unsure if she should point out that Raechel had left the previous evening without anyone trying to bar her way. There weren’t that many servants in the household, not enough to guard all the doors – and besides, she had no doubt that someone as fearless as Raechel would simply scramble out the window if necessary.

  “Yes, My Lady,” she said, instead.

  “And you have full authority to drag her away from any unsuitable situation,” Lady Standish continued. “You can do whatever is necessary to get her out.”

  “Yes, My Lady,” Gwen said, again.

  “Good,” Lady Standish said. She came to her feet and looked Gwen up and down. “I shall hope not to speak with you again. Should I do so, Raechel will have managed to get herself into real trouble and you will have failed in your duty.”

  The way she said it left Gwen in no doubt that she would be blamed if something went badly wrong. But it was common enough for the aristocracy to blame someone else for their failings. Whatever else could be said about Lady Mary, she hadn’t thrown Gwen out of her house when she’d discovered her daughter had magic, even if it wasn’t very ladylike. She thought, suddenly, of Susan and winced, inwardly. Susan had been very lucky. If her magic had appeared in a less public setting, who knew what would have happened? There was at least one report of a daughter dying at the hands of her horrified parents, when they’d discovered she had magic.

  Lady Standish studied Gwen for a long moment, then made a wordless motion of dismissal. Gwen curtseyed, then hurried out the door, lifting her skirts high enough so she could move without restriction. She’d forgotten how restrictive skirts could be until she’d had to wear one for several hours, without the ability to use magic.

  Janet met her at the bottom of the stairs, holding a second tray of coffee. “It’s for Lady Raechel,” she said. “You can take it to her.”

  Gwen nodded, tiredly. She would have expected Janet to be annoyed at having the new girl given so much responsibility, but Janet had probably seen several maids leave after failing to cope with Raechel. Letting Gwen handle the older girl probably worked better than trying to handle Raechel herself. Gwen smiled, took the tray and headed back towards Raechel’s suite. This time, when she knocked on the door, there was an incoherent muttering from the other side.

  “I said, go away,” Raechel snarled, as Gwen opened the door. She looked unkempt lying in bed, her nightgown barely covering anything of importance. “You’re not wanted here.”

  Gwen sighed. She would probably have got on well with Raechel if she hadn’t been forced to play the role of a maid. Instead, she put the coffee down on the table and poured Raechel a cup of steaming black liquid, then added milk and sugar. Raechel glowered at her unpleasantly as Gwen passed her the cup, but didn’t try to throw the cup at her. More relieved that she cared to admit, Gwen turned and opened the curtains as Raechel sipped from the cup. Brilliant light streamed into the room.

  “You shouldn’t have taken me home early,” Raechel said. “How did you get me to go to bed?”

  “You needed to sleep, My Lady,” Gwen said, cursing mentally. Subtle Charm was harder to detect than blatant Charm, but someone with a coolly logical mind might start asking why they’d acted in a particular manner, particularly if they were used to thinking out their actions before actually acting. “I think you just listened to me.”

  Raechel eyed her, suspiciously. “There’s nothing to do today,” she said, as she put the empty cup of coffee down on the bedside table. “Why don’t I just stay in bed?”

  “Because your Aunt wishes you to attend the dinner party tonight,” Gwen said. “You could spend the first part of the day doing something else.”

  “The dinner party will be boring,” Raechel said. “You know why my Aunt is taking me to Russia?”

  Gwen shook her head, genuinely curious. Raechel’s rebellious nature made her look like a diplomatic incident waiting to occur. Lord Standish would be dreadfully embarrassed if his niece did something – anything – to upset negotiations. In his place, Gwen wouldn’t have taken anyone apart from the core negotiation team. The ladies could remain in England, where they would be safe.

  “She wants me out of London,” Raechel said. “She’s taking me away from all my friends and halfway around the world, just to take me out of London.”

  It sounded reasonable, Gwen decided. In Lady Standish’s place, she would have been tempted to arrange a quick marriage for Raechel and then let someone else worry about Raechel’s conduct. But Lady Standish seemed to have other ideas.

  “It will be an adventure, My Lady,” Gwen said, trying to sound cheerful. If Olivia hadn’t been kidnapped, she would have looked forwar
d to the trip herself. “And you might come to enjoy it.”

  Raechel snorted, doubtfully.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Olivia had never been particularly good at telling the time, let alone counting the days. It wasn’t a prized skill among the gangs of children in the Rookery, not when few of them expected to live more than a few years before something – or someone – killed them. Life was nothing more than a constant struggle for survival, with each day being taken as it came. There was nothing to be said for mulling about the future when it was unlikely there was a future.

  But she thought she’d been in the complex for five days, although it was impossible to be sure. Every day, she would wake up, eat breakfast and then wash, before being escorted back into the lower levels for more experiments. Gregory didn’t seem to care about the accident, the one that had come far too close to getting them all bitten; if anything, it had made him more enthusiastic. He had her reanimating dozens of corpses, trying to understand the limits of her powers. Olivia would have found it fascinating if the whispering in her head didn’t get louder and louder with each new corpse she animated.

  It was interesting to discover what the limitations actually were. The longer a dead body had been ... well, dead, the harder it was to reanimate it. But only if it had decomposed. A frozen body, kept so cold that decomposition couldn’t begin, could be brought back to a shambling mockery of life with relative ease. Gregory had seemed very excited by that, although Olivia had no idea why and Ivan had declined to translate his Russian babbling. And then he’d insisted on trying more and more experiments.

  She winced at the memory. If a body was so badly battered that it couldn’t move, she couldn’t reanimate it. If someone had broken bones before being killed, it was harder to bring them back to life, although it wasn’t impossible. And someone who had just died could be brought back almost at once ... Gregory seemed fascinated by that, even though he should have known about it already. It was how undead outbreaks spread.

  Ivan stepped into her bedroom with a thin smile on his face. Olivia eyed him, critically; she’d tried, more than once, to tell him that the whole plan was heading for disaster, but he’d refused to listen to her. Like most Charmers, he seemed to view the rest of the world – or at least the people he could influence – as nothing more than puppets. Gregory had tried to get him to use his Charm on the undead, but they’d shown no reaction. Olivia had hoped that this failure would show him that they were making a dreadful mistake ...

  “You’ll be having a rest today,” he said, seriously. “We might have pushed you too far.”

  Olivia nodded. Her headaches had only grown worse over the last few days, although she wasn’t sure if it was because of the use of her power or because of Ivan’s meddling with her brain. She needed to eat and drink more too, like other magicians who burned through their energy reserves regularly. It struck her, as Esther followed Ivan into the room with a large tray of food, that she’d never seen a fat magician who used his powers regularly.

  “Thank you,” she said. It was odd, but she felt a certain amount of liking for Ivan, even though he’d Charmed her into submission. Perhaps it was because he had also shown concern for her, while Gregory viewed her merely as a tool. “What’s the special occasion?”

  Ivan gave her a sharp look. “Gregory will be hosting a visit today, from the Court,” he said. “You’ll remain in this room until we come for you.”

  Olivia looked down at the fur nightdress she’d been given, after she’d complained about trying to sleep naked. “You expect me to meet them?”

  “No,” Ivan said. “We suggest you stay here and catch up on your sleep.”

  “Oh,” Olivia said. It was a joke. The more undead she had whispering at the back of her head, the harder it was to sleep. Every night, she dreamed of their twisted faces as they ran riot through the streets of London. She hadn’t told her captors that she could still hear the undead, not when no one had asked her if she could. It was something she might be able to use against them later. “I’ll do my best.”

  Esther finished laying out the tray, then departed. Olivia watched her go, noted how she shied away from Ivan, then looked up at the Russian. He seemed more amused than anything else, she decided, almost as if he’d relaxed in her presence. And then she decided to ask the question that had been bothering her since she’d first laid eyes on Esther.

  “That girl,” she said. “What is she?”

  “A Jew,” Ivan said.

  Olivia stared at him. She’d never actually seen a Jew, but she’d heard about them on the streets of the Rookery. No one had ever had anything good to say about the Jews. They were money-grubbing lenders, willing to squeeze the last penny out of someone in need ... which didn’t make them any different from the other loan sharks infesting the poorer parts of London. Olivia had feared and dreaded the day she would have needed to take a loan for herself, knowing that she’d be killed if she couldn’t keep up with the payments ...

  But Esther had been normal. Just another girl, little older than Olivia herself.

  “They’re hated in the cities and countryside,” Ivan explained, as he motioned for Olivia to start eating. “If they didn’t have the Father Tsar’s protection, they would be hunted down and killed by the outraged peasants if something went wrong. They are loyal because they have to be loyal.”

  Olivia shuddered, remembering some of the stories about Loyalist Irishmen or American Indians. They were loyal, because without their loyalty they wouldn’t be protected by the King ... and without the King’s protection they would be slaughtered by their enemies. If the Russian Jews were in the same boat, they’d be understandably unwilling to assist her in escaping the complex. Esther wouldn’t just be killed; her entire family would be slaughtered. Olivia gritted her teeth, bitterly. She’d hoped the young girl might help her. But she knew better now.

  Ivan waited for her to finish eating, then withdrew, leaving her alone. Olivia rapidly found herself bored; she climbed out of bed, tried the door – it was locked, unsurprisingly – and then went for a wash. This time, the water was alarmingly cold, but splashing her face with cold water helped to wake her up. Still, when she got back to the room, there was nothing to do with her time. No books she could read, no games to play ... not even any exercises set by her tutors. Cursing under her breath, she lay down on the bed and tried to sleep. Instead, she received a jarring series of images from the undead ...

  ... One of them was facing a man, his hands tied behind his back. Sheer hunger blazed through her, overwhelmingly powerful; she lunged forward, sank her teeth into his throat and sucked the glorious life from his body. Warmth ran through her as she watched her victim fall to the floor, already starting the transformation into a creature just like her. He moaned as he stumbled back to his feet, then stepped away from her. There was life just ahead of them and they intended to take it for themselves ...

  Olivia snapped awake, feeling the whispering growing louder and louder until it threatened to overwhelm her. She screamed as the voices suddenly became very clear, then fell back into the darkness ...

  ... A woman was kneeling in front of her, banging her head on the floor as she begged for mercy. But Olivia barely noticed; she pulled the woman to her feet, bit into her arm and then dropped her to the ground. Life energy surged around her as she stumbled forward, seeing more sources of light and life ahead of her. The uniformed men would be tough, but she didn’t care ...

  ...They stabbed at her with their weapons. She didn’t feel the blows, not even when she sank to the floor and darkness overcame her ...

  She screamed again as someone slapped her face. Her eyes snapped open to reveal Ivan, standing beside the bed with a concerned expression on his face. Olivia was suddenly aware that her hands were sticky and looked at them, realising – to her horror – that they were covered in blood. Behind Ivan, Gregory watched with an expression of amused interest. He made no move to heal her palms from her self-inflicted wounds. />
  “You started to scream,” Ivan said. “What happened?”

  Olivia glared at him, mutely. He was her captor, even if he’d shown more concern for her than anyone else. She had no intention of telling him anything, unless he forced it from her with his Charm. At least she would have had the satisfaction of forcing him to actually do some work. Charmers were lazy, as a general rule. They found it too easy to manipulate others into doing their work for them.

  “It won’t be a problem,” Gregory said, in English. He meant for her to understand. “But we can leave her here for a few days ...”

  “Of boredom,” Olivia said. She sounded like a whiny child and didn’t much care. “There’s nothing to do here.”

  Gregory’s eyes glittered. “You could always raise some more of the dead.”

  Ivan spoke to him rapidly in Russian. They had a long conversation while Olivia listened helplessly, unable to understand a single word they said. Perhaps Esther could teach her Russian ... no, she knew better than to ask the poor girl anything now. If she tried to teach Olivia or even to help her in any way, her family would suffer for it.

  “We will find you some books,” Ivan said, finally. “And you will have time to relax.”

  Olivia sighed. She knew she couldn’t relax, unless they drugged her. And she didn’t want to ask for drugs. They’d know that something was wrong.

  “You wanted me to bring them back to life,” Olivia said. “Why? What’s the point?”

  Gregory, surprisingly, answered her, a gleam in his eye that chilled her to the bone. “The Father Tsar is surrounded by weakness and treachery,” he said. There was something about his attitude that reminded her of the doom prophets from London, the men who walked the streets clad in sackcloth and preaching that the end of the world was nigh. “He can no longer rely on anyone away from His Holy Presence.”

  Olivia swallowed. She had a nasty feeling she knew where this was going.