Necropolis (Royal Sorceress Book 3)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Lady Gwen,” Sir Sidney said. Beside him, Romulus seemed to be serving as an aide. “How is she?”

  “Asleep,” Gwen said. She looked from one to the other, a thought striking her as she met Romulus’s dark eyes. “You’re working for Lord Mycroft too, aren’t you?”

  The Butler smiled and bowed. “Being underestimated comes in handy,” he said. “But I never actually had to do anything ... special until now.”

  “Be grateful,” Gwen said, dryly. She looked back at Sir Sidney. “What’s the situation?”

  Sir Sidney, at least, didn’t seem to have any qualms about reporting to a girl. “We have fifty-seven able-bodied men and thirty-one women,” he reported. He pulled himself up to attention as he spoke. “Some of our ... allies ... believe that others will come in from the city as the undead plague spreads, but I’m not hopeful. Right now, we’re setting up barricades and doing our best to secure the building. Fortunately, we have an ample supply of swords and other such weapons.”

  He paused. “I’ve put spotters out to watch for any signs of the undead, but so far we’ve seen nothing approaching the building,” he continued. “The Russians want to extend our defensive line until we can protect the entire complex, but I have my doubts. There just aren’t enough of us to hold the line.”

  Gwen nodded in agreement. They had her, true, but she knew there were limits to her magic, even without the Russian magicians becoming involved. They were fanatical enough to keep serving the Tsar, even though he was an undead monster. Or perhaps they were already bitten, but the same technique had allowed them to keep their minds. There was no way to know. Gwen made a face at the thought. Just how far had the Russians carried their experiments and what was the planned end result?

  A world of the dead, she thought, sourly. Is that what they have in mind?

  She looked over at Romulus. “And Lady Standish?”

  “Locked in her room,” Romulus said. “I dare say Her Ladyship will insist I be fired when we get home.”

  Gwen snorted. “You and Janet can come and work for me,” she said. Romulus clearly had hidden depths – and besides, she’d started collecting people no one else wanted. “How is Janet, by the way?”

  “Scared, but helping with the medical supplies,” Romulus said. He paused, looking from Gwen to Sir Standish and then back again. “Can we get out of here?”

  Gwen hesitated. If it had been just her, she would have made a run for the edge of the city by now, flying over the heads of the undead. But with over a hundred dependents she couldn’t see how they could make it to the edge of the city without being overwhelmed ... and even if they did, it was roughly four hundred miles to St Petersburg and the Baltic Sea. They’d never make it before the undead caught up with them. And then they’d die.

  “I don’t know,” she said. Maybe she should take Olivia and run. But she couldn’t leave everyone else in the lurch. “The Tsar didn’t strike me as being willing to negotiate.”

  “I’ll speak to the aristocrats,” Sir Standish said. He didn’t sound optimistic. “Perhaps they can suggest a plan.”

  “Good,” Gwen said. She staggered, slightly. It had been over a day since she’d slept and her body was telling her that she urgently needed rest. “Maybe there’s somewhere closer we can go than St Petersburg.”

  Sir Sidney nodded and walked away from her, followed by Romulus. Gwen watched them go, then settled down on a chair, trying to focus her mind. The next thing she felt was someone touching her mind. She jerked awake and saw Simone kneeling in front of her.

  “It is you,” the French girl said. She sounded impressed. “I never even sensed your presence.”

  “I hid,” Gwen said, darkly. She hated to admit it, but looking at Simone made her feel uncomfortably dowdy. The French girl was staggeringly beautiful, with a winsome air that called boys to her like moths to a flame. Whatever the truth of her origins, she looked far more aristocratic than many who had been born to the purple. “What do you want?”

  “Just to say thank you,” Simone said. Her voice was soft and sweet, suggesting someone in desperate need of protection. It was no doubt very appealing to young aristocratic men who liked to think of themselves as protectors. “The undead could have killed us all if you hadn’t come to warn us.”

  “You’re welcome,” Gwen muttered. She yawned. The temptation to just push the girl away was becoming overwhelming. Magic seemed to shimmer through her mind, responding to her desire. But she was too tired to focus. “Just do whatever you can to help the defenders.”

  “I will,” Simone promised. She paused, then pasted a concerned expression on her face. “Would you like a hand getting back upstairs?”

  Gwen glared at her. Her mental shields were starting to crack because she was completely exhausted. Having help to get back upstairs was tempting, but it would allow Simone too much opportunity to poke around in Gwen’s mind. Instead, she pulled herself to her feet, shook her head and walked towards the door. Somehow, she managed to stay awake until she reached Raechel’s room and sank down on the small bed the Russians had provided for her.

  “You didn’t bring a weapon,” Raechel observed, from where she was sitting next to Olivia and pretending to read a book. “I ...”

  “Keep an eye on Olivia,” Gwen ordered, and closed her eyes. She was too tired to snap at Raechel, even though Gwen had forgotten to bring her a weapon. “She’s the most important person in the room.”

  But she wasn’t sure she knew what to do with her adopted daughter, she realised. The Tsar had done something that isolated his undead, largely severing their connections to other Necromancers and Gwen herself. Maybe, if the Tsar died, Olivia could take control of the undead, if they hadn’t developed an intelligence of their own. There were so many potential undead in Moscow that it was easy to imagine them crossing the threshold and developing intelligence if their Lord and Master died. Olivia wouldn’t be able to issue orders if they could think for themselves.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “Goodnight.”

  Sleep overcame her and she knew no more.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Olivia snapped awake.

  There was a strange girl in the room, sitting on the bed reading a book. Olivia stared at her, then looked around the room. It wasn’t another prison cell or her rooms at Cavendish Hall, although there was no shortage of gilt and paintings of dead men on the walls. It looked almost welcoming. The strange girl tapped her lips, then pointed to a bed in the corner of the room. Olivia saw Gwen lying on the bed, snoring loudly.

  “You can tell her she snores,” the stranger said. “She didn’t believe me.”

  Olivia studied the girl for a long moment. She was tall, stronger than she looked at a guess, with long red hair and an angular face that made her look sharp, rather than conventionally beautiful. The dress she wore looked odd on her, as if she would have preferred a set of trousers or even a simpler dress. Olivia’s instincts told her that the stranger was a good person, but that didn’t mean much. She’d met far too many well-meaning aristocrats who’d caused more trouble through good intentions than through outright malice.

  “I will,” she said, darkly. “Who are you?”

  “Raechel,” the girl said. “Welcome to ... some unpronounceable Russian palace.”

  Olivia rubbed her head as her memories surged back into her mind. The Tsar had injected himself with her blood, then killed himself, somehow maintaining his conscious mind while becoming one of the undead. Gregory’s Healing had probably helped with that, she decided, although she had no idea how the Russians had even decided it was possible in the first place. Maybe they’d just kept pushing the limits of magic until they’d decided there were no limits.

  “Thank you,” she said, as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. Her legs felt wobbly, but nowhere near as bad as she’d feared. “Is there a place to wash?”

  “In there,” Raechel said, pointing towards a door. “Do you require assistance?”r />
  Olivia shook her head, hastily. She’d never been comfortable with the idea of being naked in front of anyone, but the Russian girls hadn’t given her a choice. Now, she entered the bathroom, closed the door firmly behind her and undressed hastily. The absurd Russian dress was so pitifully thin that it had been practically falling apart even before she tore it off and dropped it on the floor. Once she was naked, she looked at herself in the mirror and froze. Her body was badly bruised, her eyes were haunted ... and she looked so thin that she could see her bones through her skin. Clearly, the Russians hadn’t fed her anything like enough to power her magic.

  Somehow, she managed to wash herself in the warm water, then pull a bathrobe over her body before she walked outside. Raechel was sorting out a plate of food; Olivia felt her stomach rumble as soon as she saw it. She took the proffered plate and tore into it, forgetting six months’ worth of etiquette training in her desperate need to fill her stomach. There was a faint cough from where Gwen was lying and Olivia looked up, just in time to see her adopted mother sitting upright. The sight sent an odd burst of warmth through her body.

  “You came,” she said, wonderingly. No one had ever given a damn about her before, not even Jack. “I ...”

  Gwen smiled at her. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  Olivia lowered her eyes. A life on the streets had convinced her that no one, absolutely no one, put themselves out for someone else unless there was something in it for them. If she’d been adopted by an older man, she would have expected to be forced into his bed or made to serve him in some other way. And there were even women who liked women ... but Gwen hadn’t asked for anything from her. She’d even come all the way to Russia to save her life.

  She didn’t want to cry. It had been years since she’d let herself admit to any form of weakness. But she found herself crying now.

  “It’s all right,” Gwen said, as she stood up and walked over to Olivia. “You’re safe now.”

  “But only for a given value of safe,” Raechel said. “Have you looked out of the window?”

  Olivia stood up and walked to the window, then pulled the heavy curtains aside. Outside, a line of undead stood on the streets, staring up at the building with unblinking eyes. She sucked her breath in sharply, wondering why she couldn’t hear any whispering. Their presence had been completely unsuspected until she’d actually laid eyes on them. She cast her eyes down the line of undead, noticing that some were wearing uniforms, some were wearing rags and some were completely naked. But they were all united under the Father Tsar.

  Gwen walked up behind her, then swore. Olivia giggled, remembering Tanya’s threat to wash her mistress’s mouth out with soap, then looked back at the undead. There were more of the bastards beyond the watching line, some crawling over buildings and hunting for living victims, others performing ritualistic marches, as if they were toy soldiers. Was the Tsar testing the limits of his control, Olivia wondered, or was he up to something else? There was no way to know.

  She started as Gwen touched her shoulder. “Can you hear them?”

  Olivia shook her head. “No whispering,” she said. “I can’t even sense their presence.”

  “Nor can I,” Gwen said. “They’re completely silent.”

  Raechel coughed. They both looked back at her. “Why would you expect to hear them?”

  Olivia looked up at Gwen, wondering how she was going to answer that question. One rule Gwen had hammered into her head, time and time again, was never to tell anyone what she actually was. The last thing either of them needed was for someone to try to invoke the Demonic Powers Act – or, for that matter, use the failure to invoke it to bring down the government. With Britain on the verge of war, a political catfight could be disastrous.

  “Olivia is a rather unusual Sensitive,” Gwen said, smoothly. “But not much else, I’m afraid.”

  Raechel didn’t look convinced, but she held her tongue. Olivia eyed her for a long moment, then turned to look back at the undead. It was impossible to escape the feeling that they were clustering there to keep the foreigners penned into the building – and that they were just waiting for the order before attacking. The Tsar might come to supervise the deaths of the foreigners in person.

  “You should have woken me,” Gwen said. She sounded irked. “I needed to see this earlier.”

  “You were completely exhausted,” Raechel countered. “And there was nothing you could do.”

  Gwen sighed loudly, then walked over and out of the door, still clad in her rumpled dress. A moment later, she returned, carrying two short swords with her. Olivia eyed them with some surprise – she’d never seen Gwen carrying anything other than a pair of pistols – then took the sword Gwen offered her. She’d taken fencing lessons at Cavendish Hall, once the tutor had been convinced that a young woman needed them, but the sword felt heavier than the ones she’d used for practice. Raechel seemed to have no idea what she was doing with the sword at all.

  “Remember what I said,” Gwen warned. “Go for the neck and behead them, or make it impossible for them to move.”

  She paused, eying Raechel. “Perhaps you should go and ask one of the Russians for fencing lessons,” she said. “I’m sure the one who was waltzing you round the dance hall would be happy to teach you.”

  Raechel nodded and left the room, sword in hand.

  Olivia eyed her adopted mother accusingly. “You Charmed her.”

  “I did,” Gwen agreed, looking guilty. “But Raechel would have insisted on staying, if I’d let her, and there are things I want to talk about without someone listening to us.”

  She leant forward. “What – precisely – happened to you?”

  Olivia frowned, conflicted. Part of her wanted to object, to tell Gwen off for Charming a girl she clearly thought of as a friend ... and Charming her so casually too. The rest of her understood Gwen’s point. Raechel could not be allowed to know everything that had happened since Olivia had been taken from Cavendish Hall. There were details that shouldn’t go any further than Gwen herself.

  “They were running tests,” she explained. The whole story came out of her slowly, aided by Gwen asking pointed questions whenever she didn’t understand what she was being told. “I think they were hoping to unlock some of the secrets of magic.”

  “Blood transfusions,” Gwen mused. “I don’t believe that anyone has tried that in England.”

  “It worked, sometimes,” Olivia said. She smiled, suddenly. “Do you know they found a Master?”

  Gwen looked at her, sharply. “How?”

  “They killed her,” Olivia said. She grinned, wondering just what the Tsar would say when he found out that a Master Magician had been in the complex ... and never identified. “I don’t think they ever realised she was combining powers.”

  “I never did,” Gwen mused. She’d been a holy terror, according to Lady Mary. “But the Russians should have known that talents run in sets, with only a handful of people combining the powers.”

  “Maybe they just thought she was an unusual Charmer,” Olivia said, shivering as she recalled the strange girl and her fate. “They wanted to try to get her to use her powers even once she became undead.”

  “Odd,” Gwen said. She shook her head. “But they clearly succeeded in making the Tsar into ... what? An undead Necromancer?”

  Olivia looked up at her. “Would I still have my powers if I became undead?”

  “I don’t think so,” Gwen said. “Would you even have your mind?”

  Olivia shivered, but said nothing.

  “This is just too unprecedented,” Gwen said. She stood. “When Raechel comes back, the two of you can practice with your swords. You’ll probably have a chance to use them, sooner or later.”

  “The fencing master liked teaching me,” Olivia said. “Do you think he’ll like teaching her too?”

  Gwen smiled, clearly remembering the master’s praise of Olivia, once he’d managed to get used to the idea of tutoring a girl. Olivia, he’d said,
had had much less to unlearn than the boys he tried to teach ... and didn’t have their attitude, their automatic assumption that they already knew all there was to know about swordfighting.

  “I can see her having a ball,” Gwen said. She looked up as Raechel re-entered the room. “No Russians to teach you?”

  “They’re all busy with the defences,” Raechel said. “Sir Sidney wants to see you downstairs, if you’re decent.”

  Gwen smoothed down her outfit, then sighed. “See if you can find something suitable for Olivia to wear,” she said. “I’ll go speak to Sir Sidney.”

  Raechel eyed her back as she left, then turned to Olivia. “What would you like to wear?”

  “Something I can move in,” Olivia said, relieved that Raechel wasn’t going to ask any awkward questions. “Trousers, for preference.”

  She watched Raechel leave, then walked back to the window and stared out at the undead waiting patiently for their master to arrive. There were no reinforcements constantly arriving, she saw, just row upon row of the undead. Did the Tsar hope they’d try to sally out and fight the undead they could see, allowing him to ambush them with undead hiding in nearby buildings, or did he have something else in mind? Perhaps his armies were already heading to the south, marching towards the Ottoman Empire. It would take weeks, perhaps months, for them to reach Turkey, but they’d be gathering strength all the while.

  “It turned out that the footman has a young son,” Raechel said, coming into the room. “He was convinced to donate a couple of pairs of trousers and shirts. But I suggest you bind up your breasts.”

  Olivia turned to see Raechel holding a pair of dark trousers and two white shirts, then glanced down at her chest. On the streets, she had dreaded the day when her breasts first started to appear, knowing that it would mean the end of her life. There was no way she could pass for a boy now. But now, part of her didn’t mind any longer. She would never have to go back to the streets.