by H. G. Parry
“Thank you very much. The reports of the king from his physician are troubling, I’m afraid. Despite what I said, I did hope that the shadow was connected in some way, but if it is, destroying it hasn’t made any difference. The report I received yesterday used the phrase ‘perfectly maniacal.’ I’m visiting him with Dr. Addington—partly, I have to admit, to see if he can offer a more optimistic diagnosis.”
“That’s Henry Addington’s father, isn’t it? The one who…”
“My father’s doctor, exactly. The one who saved my life. And before you ask: yes, the fact that I’ve contacted him does indeed mean that I’m concerned the king’s magic is turning in on itself. I trust him to be able to tell me, which is more than I can say for the court physician—who is very likely in the pay of the Prince of Wales.” He forced himself to go on before Wilberforce could reply. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for what happened. I should never have asked you to help me go after an unmarked shadow—much less what it turned out to be. You were quite right: I was far too confident, and it was far too dangerous.”
“No, you were right,” Wilberforce said instantly. “I knew that as soon as we saw it, though like you I can’t quite explain it. It was our evil to stand against.”
As usual, Wilberforce had managed to articulate in a few words something Pitt was struggling to frame into thoughts. The trouble was, as usual, it made no sense.
“What was it?” Wilberforce added. His eyes kindled with some of their customary light. “Where did it come from?”
Pitt hesitated. “I can’t be certain.”
“If you can make an uncertain guess, it’s a good deal more than I can do. It was an undead. The first to be seen for hundreds of years. Only a necromancer can create an undead, is that right?”
“Half-right.” Pitt glanced at the door instinctively, to make sure it was closed. It was, but he sat down on the bed so that they could talk more quietly just in case. “Apparently it takes a necromancer and a shadowmancer working together to create an undead. A necromancer can animate a body for a short time after death, but that’s only an echo. The personality of the dead man or woman returns, along with their magic and their memories, for a very short time. To create a bona fide undead, he or she needs a shadow. That’s all an undead is: a corpse used as a vessel for a shadow. A necromancer anchors the shadow to the body, and it serves the shadowmancer who summoned it as a shadow always does.”
“So it would require two magicians.”
“Exactly. The problem is, it’s highly delicate, highly specialized magic. It’s not something either party does by instinct. The knowledge has been deliberately lost since the Vampire Wars—I had to read through half my library to find even what I’ve just told you. And there are no necromancers anymore, at least according to popular belief. The Knights Templar see to that.”
“Well,” Wilberforce pointed out, “there are no vampires anymore either, according to popular belief. Yet you do fairly well for yourself.”
“True. In which case we would be looking for a necromancer whose magic, like mine, manifested late and wasn’t caught. That wouldn’t be at all surprising, now that I think about it. Necromancy is only magic like any other. As long as they refrained from using it, nobody would ever know.”
“And yet they used it. They didn’t only use it; they used it to perform an act of magic that hasn’t been seen for more than three hundred years. In my experience, most illegal magicians only want to hide. What does this one want?”
Pitt didn’t answer directly. “I spoke to the Templars about the body. It’s fallen to their jurisdiction. They have no way of knowing that it was walking around after its soul left the premises, of course, but they still find it peculiar.”
Wilberforce managed a very faint smile. “Two causes of death, I would imagine.”
“Its throat was cut and it was drained of blood some time ago. The stake through the heart, of course, was recent.”
The smile faded. “The poor man.”
“Judging by his clothing and the contents of his pockets, they think he either came from France or visited there very recently.”
“And so you think there’s a necromancer in France.”
“I would swear that there wasn’t one in London. I would know. And we know there’s a magician in France with the habit of calling rogue shadows.”
“Dear God.” He shook his head. “What’s happening over there?”
The question hung in the air, unanswered.
“I’ll write to the Templars in France,” Pitt said at last. “Magic runs in families. If we have a list of magicians who were executed for necromancy, even at birth, it might give us a place to start.”
“I doubt you’ll find one. I can tell you from experience investigating magical crime, the Templars don’t like to share.”
“Let me worry about that,” Pitt said, and knew it was unhelpful. “At least for now. According to the healer guarding your bedroom door, you’re going to be convalescent for months yet.” If he was going to recover at all, was what the healer in question had actually said, but that wasn’t something Pitt intended to repeat even to himself.
Even without the addendum, it was the wrong thing to say. “I can’t be,” Wilberforce said. “I know the doctor means well, but he doesn’t understand: I really can’t be. We’re presenting the slave bill soon, and there’s still so much to do before then—”
“Quiet,” Pitt said, with a warning glance at the door: if the healer thought that his patient was being distressed, he would be through the door in a shot, and he hadn’t looked like a man who would hesitate to throw out the prime minister. “Don’t worry about the slave bill. I already meant to reassure you that I’d take responsibility for it myself. I’ll make sure it doesn’t disappear while you’re recovering.”
“You have enough to do,” Wilberforce argued, but weakly. His frown had eased.
“Not remotely. It’s been hours since I’ve had a worthy political crisis. I was already bored.” He let his voice become more serious before Wilberforce could respond. “I promise to do everything that you would do yourself, were you able. I’ll even present it to the House for you, if you really want, though I do think that had better wait until you’re healed. It’s more suited to your talents and contacts than mine.”
“I think you’re right,” Wilberforce agreed. “But if you could see the way ready as we planned, that would be more than I have any right to ask. Thank you.” He sighed. His face was whiter than before, and the dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced. “Bother. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, I’m very grateful, but… There’s no way to keep this from delaying things, is there?”
“Just one,” Pitt said. “Stop worrying about it, and get well quickly.”
That did, at least, raise a more characteristic smile.
Before he left, with a promise to go straight to call on Clarkson, Pitt turned back to regard his friend.
“This may be a strange question,” he said, “but would it be possible for you to leave town for a few months?”
“I’d planned on doing so,” Wilberforce said slowly. “My cousin Thornton wants me to come stay with him out at Clapham while I still need looking after. Why?”
“Thornton.” The name was vaguely familiar: he associated it with a gentle, strong-jawed face and a steady voice. “He’s one of the MPs for Southwark, is he not? He was a banker before that.”
“Yes. He joined the Abolition Society recently. We were excellent friends growing up.”
“Good. Then if I were you, I would accept his offer.”
“I will, of course. But… you can’t possibly think I’m in any danger. The undead is gone. And surely I was only attacked in the first place because I wandered into Westminster Abbey with a stake.”
“In which case you spend the next month or so in the countryside instead of in London to no purpose, which sounds enviable. I don’t think you’re in any further danger; at least, I don’t understan
d why you would be. There are still a thousand things about that night I want to understand. But for now, I’d appreciate it if you’d humor me.”
Normally, Wilberforce would not have let that pass; fortunately, at the moment, he was too exhausted to push the matter. “Of course. I’m sorry; I don’t think I ever thanked you for getting me to safety.”
“You know you don’t have to,” Pitt said seriously. He very rarely slept badly—he was faintly notorious for it. Wilberforce could be kept up until dawn by even minor worries; Pitt, whenever he finally managed to get to bed, went out like a candle and, like a candle, tended to stay out. The night after Wilberforce had been hurt, he had woken no fewer than seven times, each time more reluctant to close his eyes again. The image of the shadowy form dissipating to reveal his friend lying contorted with pain on the ground had been vivid in his mind.
He hoped that was all that had shaped his suspicions. The night in Westminster Abbey had been very dark, and his senses had been heightened in ways he could not quite understand. He didn’t trust his own thoughts, much less his own feelings. But a shadow seemed to be hanging over London, and over France, and he couldn’t deny that he would be relieved to have Wilberforce out from under it.
The royal residence at Kew was really more of a house than a palace. Everything about it was intimate and gentle: the redbrick front that welcomed visitors, the white-shuttered windows, the vast expanse of green around it, even the winding nine-mile road from Westminster that led to its gates. It was a domestic haven for the royal family, rather than a center of pomp and grandeur. Pitt had called on the king there a few times. Dr. Anthony Addington, beside him in the carriage, had never been. His eyes behind their spectacles surveyed the building with eager criticism as the carriage pulled up.
“It’s not a bad mansion,” he allowed. “Still, you’d expect more from His Majesty. Your father’s house isn’t much smaller.”
“He has more,” Pitt pointed out. “This is the most private, and it’s close to London.”
“It’s also heavily shielded.” Addington had been an experienced practitioner in magical ailments when he had saved Pitt’s life at fourteen. The doctor was in his midseventies now but missed nothing. “Did you see that, coming in the gate? Those crests were silver and ash. Designed to ward away shadows. The king is a shadowmancer, I believe?”
“He is.” Somewhere, deep where he usually kept it hidden, Pitt’s own magic was beginning to stir. The carriage was colder, suddenly, than it had been. He pushed it aside, as he would a headache or an unwanted thought. “All the palaces are bespelled against magic—to the extent that those spells ever work.”
“The question is,” Addington said, “in this case, are they keeping something out, or something in?”
He felt it the moment he stepped from the coach. As he had once told Wilberforce, Pitt was used to sensing the bloodlines of those around him. They flickered somewhere between his mind and his blood and his magic: dark strands of unmanifested abilities, glowing shards of weather magic or shadowmancy or fire magic. Usually they were a whisper on the edge of his awareness, like a faint breeze or a blur of conversations at a club he had no interest in eavesdropping upon. This was a scream.
“What is it?” Dr. Addington asked. He was looking at Pitt very shrewdly. He, out of everyone in England, probably knew exactly what it was.
“Nothing,” Pitt said firmly. He drew himself together; magic roared dizzyingly in his ears. “Nothing at all.”
But of course it was.
His Majesty King George III was in a darkened bedchamber on the ground floor. Alone among the plain, homely rooms of the rest of the house, the walls gleamed with gilded designs, ornate and beautiful. The sight could have been one of grandeur, had Pitt not known that the designs were, like those on the gate, symbols wrought from silver and ash bespelled to contain powerful magic. Besides, the king was in no way dressed for court. A dirty smock hung from his emaciated frame; the leather straps that bound him to his chair cut into thin wrists and bony ankles. George’s eyes were wide as if in horror or surprise, while his mouth moved in a soundless monologue. The two doctors—one in black, the other in a Templar’s robes—stood well back.
The room was alive with shadows. They spiraled out from the king’s chair, some light gray and formless, others darker and almost with the appearance of men. They writhed in the corners of the ceiling and wreathed the walls like smoke. The air had the filthy, frigid haze of a London winter.
Pitt stood very still. He didn’t, at that moment, trust himself to speak.
“I don’t believe,” Dr. Addington said, “my diagnosis is going to be needed.”
England
The Regency Crisis
The madness of a powerful mage-king isn’t the same as the madness of an ordinary person. The madness of a mage-king means the entire country convulses.
The royal families in Europe were deliberately bred from strong magicians, and while, as Louis had proved, that was no guarantee of strong magic manifesting, in George the lines of shadowmancy had run very pure indeed. Even Bethlem Hospital, with its shielded rooms for containing the more dangerous magicians whose powers were outside their control, couldn’t have kept London safe from him. In any case, no member of the royal family would ever be subjected to the privations of a common asylum. Instead, the king was confined to the palace at Kew, and everyone but his doctors and their helpers were sent a safe distance away. Thrill-seeking crowds came to the gates to see what they could spy. There were occasional bursts of fire or lightning in the vicinity—George’s latent bloodlines awakening at odd times. For the most part, though, the palace walls swarmed with a veil of light-gray shadows.
In theory, none of these shadows were quite powerful enough to kill on contact. In theory, they were contained by the alchemy, and by the king. In practice, only the most loyal would chance it.
The shadows weren’t the only things that swarmed. So did the king’s enemies.
George was clearly in no state to rule the kingdom, much less protect it from theoretical magical threats. He was a danger to it and those around him. His eldest son, the Prince of Wales, was all too eager to step in as regent until—he said—his father was fit to return. He was a strong magician in his own right: a weather-mage, from his mother’s side of the bloodline, with weaker strands of shadowmancy. He was also a rake, a spendthrift, and the despair of his quiet, pious father, not to mention the close friend and drinking partner of Charles Fox and the Whig opposition. Fox rushed home from Italy, where he had been closeted with his mistress Mrs. Armistead. Parliament opened later in the year than usual, but to a storm of excitement.
“What will happen if there’s a regency?” Pitt’s sister Harriot asked him at the breakfast table. The Eliots, as usual, were staying in Downing Street while Parliament was in session. They had given up the pretense of looking for a house of their own by now, when the prime minister’s residence was large enough for several of them.
“Then the Prince of Wales takes the throne,” Pitt replied. “If he has his way with the agreement, it will be very, very difficult for the king to take it back again. He’ll certainly replace the government—his supporters have already claimed the roles between them. Fox will be prime minister, apparently.”
Harriot knew this, of course. She had grown up as steeped in politics as he had. “I meant what will happen to you? Will they ask you to be part of the new government?”
“I wouldn’t give them the opportunity. I have no desire to serve under Fox—and frankly, I don’t see the point of it. I wouldn’t be able to do much good there.”
“So you’d go into opposition?”
“Maybe.” The idea wasn’t particularly appealing. “Or I’d leave politics entirely. I’m still qualified to practice law, after all.”
She burst out laughing. “You’d never do it.”
“I would.”
“Oh, you would for a while, to prove a point to yourself. But you wouldn’t be able to
stay away from the House of Commoners. It’s all you have.”
“It isn’t all I have.”
“What else do you have? Friends don’t count. You have some very good friends, but they’re all in politics. Our entire family is in politics, frankly, since you made John lord of the admiralty.”
“I have… oh, I don’t know. Books. Riding. Landscape gardening.”
“Those are distractions from politics. You’d get bored with them very quickly if you had nothing else.”
“Well, then,” Pitt said. “I’d better make sure I don’t lose all I have.”
There was no need to hurry into a regency so quickly, Pitt maintained that night, to a swell of support on one side of the House of Commoners and derision on the other. At present, the king’s illness looked to be only temporary. There was no reason whatsoever to think he wouldn’t recover. In the meantime, a committee was appointed to examine the records of the last time a similar regency occurred, just in case, to determine the proper form such a regency might take.
The last case was more than four hundred years earlier, before the Vampire Wars. It was a delaying tactic, but it was also just the way Pitt thought.
The gossip and speculation and fears weren’t confined to Parliament, or even London. They spilled across the quiet common at Clapham where Wilberforce was recovering with his cousin Thornton, and crept into every nook and cranny of the house.
“The opposition are claiming that without a mage-king on the throne, the country is open to attack,” Hannah More said when she came to visit. “Which if they knew anything about magic, they’d know was superstition. There’s no spell that links a king and the country—the idea that the king needs powerful magic is merely tradition stemming back from the days before the Concord, when a king used to ride into battle at the head of an army of magicians. At least Fox is being honest. He just wants the Prince of Wales on the throne.”