by H. G. Parry
“Go,” Molly whispered to her, as the others started up a song. “This is your chance.”
“I won’t leave you,” she said.
“You will,” Molly said. “You’ll have to.”
London/Paris
September 1791
Pitt never liked going into the Temple Church. This had nothing to do with the church itself, which was as small and exquisite as a miniature jewelry box. On a fine day such as this one, the sunlight warmed the light sand-colored walls and streamed through the stained glass until it felt like a tangible thing in the air. He actually liked the atmosphere of hushed whispers and concentrated thought as the Knights Templar, in their white robes with a red cross stitched on the chest, went about their research and investigations; it reminded him of the libraries at Cambridge. Many of the Cambridge scholars he had studied under had, in fact, been Knights Templar, specializing in Latin and mathematical theory. The Order contained some of the finest scholars in the world—in magic, of course, but also in some surprisingly obscure fields. It was why he was here, after all.
Why Pitt would have preferred to consult with the Knights Templar elsewhere had nothing to do with the Temple Church or its inhabitants and everything to do with the memories both invoked. This, after all, was where he had been brought for examination at the age of three weeks, like every other child whose parents found the London headquarters the most convenient. It was where his blood had been taken from a tiny pinprick in his finger and subjected to a series of spells by a knight of the Order while his family held him and waited. It was where he had been pronounced pure Commoner, no manifest Inheritance, and allowed to leave without a bracelet around his tiny wrist. He didn’t remember this, of course. But he remembered being fourteen, miles from home in his first month at Cambridge, feeling his new abilities blossoming inside him and tearing him apart. He had been in so much pain, and the unfamiliar tangle of bloodlines about him was so overwhelming, that when he was awake, he had been unable to think of very much at all. Yet when he’d managed to drift into feverish sleep, he had very often dreamed of this place. If anybody suspected what was killing him in slow, agonizing degrees, it was here he would be sent and killed instead in one swift stroke of a knife. He wouldn’t have blamed the Temple Church for it. It was the law. In some ways it would have been merciful. Certainly it would have been quicker and less painful than starving to death as the abilities settled; it would have been far less dangerous than trusting him to let himself die. But he had been fourteen, and he hadn’t wanted to die—not at all, but especially not like that. He hadn’t wanted his siblings’ prospects to be blighted by public knowledge of what their bloodline contained, and he hadn’t wanted the last thing he saw to be a strange room and a strange man bringing a blade toward his bare throat. He had woken from those dreams shivering convulsively, and it had taken all his self-control not to let his fear show.
Pitt was thirty-two now, and it had been a long time since he had been afraid of a dream. Still, he couldn’t step into the building without his heart beginning to pound, his blood to rush, and his instincts to scream that he was someplace where he was very, very unwelcome. And he was. Fortunately, none of the Knights Templar knew it.
The senior Templar who was brought to him after a remarkably short wait certainly didn’t seem to suspect anything amiss: he had the distracted look of someone pulled away from hard work and only half-conscious of the person in front of him. Pitt knew the look well because he felt it on his own face frequently.
“Master Forester,” the man introduced himself. He was only slightly older than Pitt himself, despite his rank, and his fair curls and blue eyes lent a boyish air to his intelligent face. Strong alchemist, weaker strains of weather magic and metalmancy, unmanifested empathy, Pitt noted without being able to help it: his own magic was painfully sharp in these surroundings. Forester was braceleted, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t using his Inheritance within the church walls. There were special exemptions for Master Templars. “I’m one of the senior research magicians in the Order. I was told you were coming to discuss the slave revolt at Saint-Domingue?”
“I am,” Pitt said. “Thank you for taking the time to meet me.”
“Not at all,” Forester said. His voice betrayed nothing but politeness. It was hard to know how he felt about being asked to brief the prime minister about something that he probably felt was no business of the government. “Thank you for coming. Shall we step into my office?”
Apart from the telltale squares of stained glass at the window, Forester’s office could have been in any building in London: small, light, well-appointed, walled with bookshelves on which a combination of old leather tomes and more modern pamphlets were arrayed. Pitt could see studies of magic and theology, with the odd volume of astronomy or biography. The atmosphere of business and scholarship was reassuring; he would have quite liked to examine the titles in more detail.
“Your ministers would have told you the situation in Saint-Domingue as far as we know it,” Forester said as he gestured for Pitt to take a seat at the other side of the desk. He folded himself and his white robes into the wooden chair opposite. “In fact, it’s very likely you have information we don’t.”
“We received word yesterday that there had been a slave uprising in one of the French colonies last month,” Pitt said. He knew he had to be very diplomatic: that was one reason he had come in person, and come to the church directly rather than gone to Cambridge or any other institute where magical research was done. The Templars’ power was technically subordinate to Parliament and the Crown, but in areas of magic, it was always necessary to treat them with respect. He did respect them, on the whole. But they could be difficult, and dealing with difficult people wasn’t always his strongest skill. “I assume your order did as well. It will be in the papers by now. Obviously, I hope we can work with you to ascertain the facts, as we do with all other areas of magical crime, but I don’t believe either of us has any more information than the other at this point. The reason I’ve come is to see if your order can explain how, in their opinion, the enchantment failed so utterly at Saint-Domingue that the spellbound slaves there were able to stage a full-scale uprising.”
Forester nodded. He didn’t seem surprised—the Knights Templar had obviously been expecting it, given that they had assigned a research magician to talk to him.
“I don’t know how much you know about spellbinding?” Forester said, his voice rising at the end to imply a question.
As he’d carried the abolition cause through Parliament on Wilberforce’s behalf for many long months, and listened to Wilberforce carry it for several more, Pitt thought he knew rather a lot, but didn’t say so. The Templar presumably knew of his part in the debates, and Pitt knew from experience that experts in any field didn’t consider “rather a lot” to be very much at all.
“I know that it’s part alchemical and part mesmeric,” he said instead. “The slaves’ food is mixed with a compound that is said to render them mindless and unaware. It’s been firmly established, I think, that this is not actually what happens. The slaves are awake throughout the process and fight it constantly. But in this state, they find it very difficult to move without command, and very difficult to disobey a command given to them. In particular, they become extremely susceptible to mesmerism: quite a weak mesmer can easily command a spellbound slave, and a strong mesmer can move entire armies of them with a thought. Having said that, I believe they respond to voice commands as well.”
“They do,” the Templar confirmed. “But the hold of a mesmer is far stronger. If a strong mesmer were to take control of a group of slaves—”
“Their orders would supersede any verbal commands,” Pitt finished. “Such as, for example, someone begging a slave not to kill them. Is that what happened at Saint-Domingue? Somebody took control of them?”
Forester shook his head. “We’re looking into that possibility, and it’s still a possibility. But we’re almost certain that the
insurgents are acting alone, not by any orders. No mesmerism was involved. They are free people now. This was the alchemy.”
“Someone removed the alchemical compound from the food?”
“Someone sabotaged it,” the Templar said firmly. “If those slaves were being fed plain food, the magic would have passed from their system slowly. They would have woken slowly, over a day or so. The overseers would have noticed. No, they were given something that broke the spell completely, and all at once.”
“How?”
“A new shipment of the compound arrived from France in early August. It traveled north, where supplies were scarce. That was where it all started: one tainted shipment. Apparently a few of the larger plantations had opened it within days—that was when the first of the fighting broke out. By sunrise, the affected slaves had stormed their masters’ houses. Before word could spread about the tainted compound, more plantations followed—within days, it was widespread across the island. Once the freed slaves took a plantation, they could free the slaves within it simply by withholding the spellbinding compound from them. The last we heard, there were some hundred thousand slaves in revolt, and four thousand slave owners dead.”
Pitt nodded. “So it was an alchemist.”
Alchemy was a strange magic, at times as much science as supernatural. Very basic alchemy could be undertaken by people with no alchemical Inheritance at all—though some insisted that kind of work should more properly be called chemistry. True alchemists felt the elements in their blood and could combine or transmute them with a touch. This was usually on a small scale: some turned solids into gases or worked with small amounts of particular metals. With slow, patient study, others could stretch their abilities into more ambitious forms. Many medicines were made by alchemists, as were other chemical spells. The compound that spellbound was one of the most powerful and most complex of its kind to date, and only the very strongest were able to produce it.
“It was a very strong alchemist,” Forester confirmed, or corrected. “And one with a good deal of talent. That spell is difficult enough to achieve in the first place; it’s supposed to be impossible to break, or even to alter. I couldn’t do it myself, and I’ve studied it for years. And the scale of it—this was no small sample in a mortar and pestle they altered. It was an entire shipment. This needed a true touch.”
“Where did the shipment of the compound come from?” Pitt asked. “The alchemy isn’t carried out in the West Indies, as I understand?”
Forester shook his head. “The ingredients are too delicate. The compound for the French colonies comes direct from Paris, as ours does from Liverpool. And, because I can see where your mind is going, yes, this very likely has something to do with the powerful magicians released from the Bastille two years ago.”
“From memory, there were twenty-three strong alchemists in that prison,” Pitt said. “That’s not, of course, including those from other prisons or those who have emerged from hiding since.”
“We’re corresponding with the Order in Paris over the daemon-stones,” Forester said. “But really, there’s very little they can do. The new regime in France is not sympathetic to the Knights Templar.”
“The Assembly hasn’t broken with the Temple Church yet, to my knowledge.”
“Not officially—not yet. But you must know, even though most of the Knights won’t talk to the government about it so openly, that we’ve all but been forced out of Paris. Most of the Order have been forced to flee the cities for the provinces or even the borders; those who remain have no recognized power and hold their position solely through the tolerance of the mob. That tolerance won’t last very long.”
Pitt had known that, from the reports they had coming in from France. But it was startling to hear it from a Templar. “You’re right. Most of your order wouldn’t have told me that so openly.”
“You knew.” It wasn’t a question. “The Templars in Rome are afraid of letting the governments of the world realize how weak we’ve become. But everyone knows. Three hundred years ago, we had the power to force the vampire kings off two thrones and bring order to Europe. Now we’re scholars and clergymen, wholly reliant on the support of the countries we’re meant to protect. And times are growing dangerous.”
“In the meantime, our investigation is being confounded by others’ revolutions on two fronts,” Pitt said with a wry smile. “France and the West Indies.”
“The revolution will reach here soon enough,” Forester said grimly. “If we’re not careful.”
“Careful, how?”
Forester shook his head. “Nothing.”
“No, really. Go on.”
“France’s alchemical compound is the same as ours,” Forester said. It was as though a dam had been broken through. “If somebody can free French slaves, they or somebody else can free British slaves as well. And that isn’t all. I can hear the sentiments forming on the streets here. Many are afraid of what’s happened in France, but many others are inspired by it. We need to tighten our grip on unregistered magic under these circumstances.”
“I’ll take that into consideration.” He understood the sentiment, but the fervor with which it was delivered chilled him. “But I’m not sure that won’t cause more trouble, especially since the colony sabotaged wasn’t even one of ours. Don’t forget, it was by holding too tight a grip that the French Aristocrats brought about the Revolution.”
“Well, that’s the decision of the government, of course.” There was a touch of irony in Forester’s voice. “Our order exists to regulate magic and fight dark magic, not decide national policy—not anymore, in any case. But I would be very careful, Mr. Pitt, if I were you.”
“Thank you.” Pitt’s own voice may not have been entirely free from irony either. “I do try to be that, as a general guide.”
The news had reached Wilberforce only half an hour before. He had spent the morning in a dusty room with barely a handful of MPs, all but two of them out to prove that the evidence he and his friends had spent years collecting was nothing but lies. The hearings of evidence against the slave trade had dragged on for so long in the House and been so frequently postponed that Wilberforce had finally moved to have them passed over to a committee that would include himself and anyone with a mind to attend. It had worked—the process was moving faster—but it was hard, soul-grinding work. The meetings could stretch up to nine hours in a day, and it was painfully obvious that the minds who did attend were there to delay, not expedite, the process.
When he and Thornton had finally emerged, wincing in the bright sunlight, he was startled to see his friend Hannah More waiting for him. She had arrived in town only the previous afternoon; he had written to her and promised to see her at the Abolition Society that night, but not before.
“You need to talk to Pitt,” she said bluntly. She all but took him by his thin shoulders and pushed him toward his waiting carriage. “I’d come with you, but I need to call on Clarkson. There’s been a slave uprising in the West Indies.”
By the time Pitt returned to Downing Street, Wilberforce was already there and waiting. He knew Pitt’s office almost as well as his own—it resembled his own more than most people would think, with its Sisyphean mounds of unanswered correspondence—but this time he couldn’t settle in it. He paced the floor, his stomach a cold knot of fear. Harriot had been able to fill him in on a few more particulars about the scale and violence of the rebellion, and his imagination supplied more still. The daemon-stone gleamed in the center of the desk, half-shielded by paper. It might have brought the news that morning, not from Saint-Domingue, of course—the messages couldn’t traverse that expanse of ocean—but perhaps from Paris. It set his nerves on edge; the scar along his side throbbed. He wondered if the shadows bound to daemon-stones bore any resemblance at all to the one that had been bound to the undead.
“Well,” Pitt said, by way of greeting. “Forgive my saying so, but you look rather worse than the French ambassador I spoke to this morning.”
“Selectively helpful, intermittently alarming, thank you for asking. How are you?”
“Exhausted,” he said frankly. Pitt sat down at his desk; he slipped into the chair opposite. “I’ve just endured four hours listening to a merchant explain that the Africans really enjoy being enslaved, they have a comfortable passage across the sea, and dances on deck. I told him they were spellbound and whipped, the only dancing they have is forced upon them when the captains decide that exercise would help them get a better price, and I almost told him that if that was his idea of enjoyment, he would probably benefit from it far more than the poor emaciated children in the holds of his ships, but Thornton kicked me under the table. Hannah More told me about Saint-Domingue,” he added. “We all hoped you could tell us what’s true and what isn’t.”
“Always a fraught proposition,” Pitt said. He had laughed at Wilberforce’s account of the merchant, but his face was grave again now. “What would you like to know?”
“How many slaves are free?”
“Nearly a quarter of the population, as far we know, but that information is weeks old. More will have followed: I doubt any shipments of the compound will even make it to the island now. The rebellion seems to have armed itself very efficiently. I would assume, too, though we’ve heard nothing of it, that many of the ex-slaves will be magicians in their own right.”
Wilberforce shook his head. “Obviously, I can’t claim to be upset that they’ve succeeded. But it sounds horrific.”