by H. G. Parry
“I have,” she said. “I can’t see that deeply. I’m only on the surface of people’s minds—beyond that, it’s just glimpses.”
“Why don’t you try? I’ll try to show you.”
She stared at him. “You’d let me do that?”
“I don’t see how I would be able to stop you.” His mouth gave a wry twist, and she wondered if he was as nervous as she was. For him to be willing to take that step, whatever had driven him to her was more than idle curiosity. He wanted something very badly. “But yes. I would let you.”
She had never slipped behind someone’s eyes when they were sitting directly in front of her, and never when they had known she was there. It would leave her open and vulnerable, outside of her body while Toussaint sat only a few feet away. She felt sick at the thought. But then, she reasoned, she would be inside his head; if he moved to hurt her, she would know as soon as he did. Besides, he could hurt her right now if he so chose, and there would be little she could do about it no matter whose head she was in. They were each vulnerable to the other. Perhaps there was a power in that.
She closed her eyes—not because her magic needed it, but to signal her intentions. Then she was inside Toussaint’s head, looking across at herself in the dim, rain-soaked tent.
It wasn’t the first time she had been in his head, of course. It was familiar to her, even comforting. She was used to the strength of his wiry muscles, the steady beat of his heart, the way the world sharpened through his eyes. (It was a not a matter of eyesight, she thought, as much as attention. People saw the world through different degrees of focus. Toussaint saw it very clearly.) She was used, too, to the vague shape of his thoughts and feelings. But this was different. They were softer this time, more open—he was marshaling them for her. He might not be able to sense her, but he knew she was there, and he was trying to show her who he was.
She saw herself through his eyes: very small and thin, eyes closed, black hair a matted mess of curls. Fina had never seen herself before, even as a faint ghost reflected on water. Toussaint’s eyes rested on her face, with compassion and awe and the slightest trace of fear that he tried very hard to suppress. It made her uncomfortable: she wasn’t used to being the subject of such close attention.
She went deeper.
His emotions solidified around her. It was little she hadn’t felt before, just stronger—she was pushing against the bounds of her magic. She felt his determination, his conviction, his belief in something far greater and more important than revenge. She felt a past made of the texture of books, the feel of a mother’s hand about his own, the flicker of a fire at night. And once, just once, she caught an image: a woman, her face tender and determined, a small tufted-haired baby in her arms and two other children at her side. It was early morning, and there was a carriage waiting to take them away. When the carriage left, her heart wrenched in two.
She opened her own eyes. Toussaint was watching her.
“Are you back?” he asked. There was nothing on his face but curiosity—she supposed there wouldn’t be. He would have felt nothing. “What did you see?”
“Who was the woman? And the three children?”
For the first time, she had startled him. “What woman do you mean? What did she look like?”
“About your age. Dark, with a round face, very beautiful. She had a baby in her arms, and two other children at her side.”
“That was my wife, Suzanne, and our sons. Placide, Isaac, and Saint-Jean.” His mouth softened as he said the names; the corners of his eyes crinkled. He made them almost a caress. “I sent them to safety when I came to join the rebellion. I wasn’t aware I was thinking of them.”
“You weren’t. It isn’t like that—I don’t see thoughts.” She didn’t know how to explain the fragments of emotion, or to say that she had latched on to the anguish of being torn apart because it so closely matched her own. All she could say was “You must care about this rebellion very much not to go with them.”
“I do care very much,” he said. “But it isn’t the rebellion itself. It’s what I believe we can build afterward.”
“What do you want to build?”
It was his turn to hesitate. “You ask a lot of questions for a woman who has already seen inside my head.”
“I want to understand what I’ve seen,” she said. “I saw how much you loved your family. I want to know what could matter so much that you would watch them sail away and not go with them.”
“We won’t be parted for long. I’ll see them again very soon.” He drew a deep breath. “Very well. I believe we can build a new world here, of a kind the world has never seen. I believe that all of us—blacks, whites, mulattoes—can work together to farm the land and trade for a profit, all as equal partners.”
“You want your rebels to work with the people who enslaved them?”
“As free men and women—free to own our own land, wield our own magic, raise our own families. Yes, I do.”
Surprise made her outspoken, for perhaps the first time in her life. “You can’t. Even if you could make those men and women out there accept it, the whites never would. They hate us too much. Besides, they already have those things. Why would they share them with you?”
“Because this colony won’t survive any other way.” He had recovered his equilibrium now. His eyes met hers openly. “The whites had those things once; they don’t have them anymore. We’re not slaves anymore—we’re free people, like them. They need to negotiate, and so do we, before this island is no good to anyone.”
“They won’t.” She had never felt more certain of anything. “It’s madness. They’ll just keep trying to kill you.”
“Then we’ll keep trying to kill them.” He shrugged. “But sooner or later, there needs to be an end to it. What that end looks like is anyone’s guess at the moment. I have my preferred end, that’s all. And I mean to do all I can to bring it about.”
She wasn’t fooled by his careful nonchalance. His caution was very understandable—his vision was not likely to be shared by many out there, and many would be actively repulsed by it. Bullet’s cruelty had been extreme; his people had turned away from it now, after the first excesses of their revenge. That didn’t mean they were willing to work with their former captors, or even those of the same class and color as their former captors. If Toussaint proposed any such thing, he would have very few willing to follow him, no matter how well-liked he was. But she had been inside his head and felt the depth of his conviction. He meant every word.
“Now you know what I left the people I love most for,” Toussaint said. “Why did you leave yours?”
She could still have refused to answer. But all at once, she was tired of being afraid. She had been afraid for so long.
“I came here because I heard a voice that night,” she said. “I heard it all the way across the water. It wasn’t a spirit, or a god: it was a human voice, but like none I’ve ever heard before. It spoke in your heads. I overheard it, the way I might hear a shout in the next field. It told you to rise up, and take revenge.”
Toussaint considered her for a long time. “None of us heard it,” he said at last. He was telling the truth. “No one on the entire island has ever, to my knowledge, mentioned such a voice. I certainly never heard anything of the kind.”
“But you believe me.” For once, she wasn’t afraid.
“I do,” he said. “You broke free of the spellbinding—that takes truly powerful magic. I believe you. And you’ve come to look for this voice?”
“Whoever it is,” she said, “he must be a very powerful magician. And if he enabled this rebellion, perhaps he could help us in Jamaica too.”
“Nobody enabled this rebellion, Fina. We did it ourselves. I saw it form. It was very carefully planned from the beginning by Boukman and the others. The only thing we didn’t bring about ourselves was the breaking of the spellbinding, and we knew of that in advance. A letter came from an alchemist in England, advising us that it would take pla
ce; we saw the new shipments arrive in the north and knew that if the alchemist had succeeded, it would happen soon. And it did. But we know the identity of the alchemist now. He doesn’t have the powers you claim.”
“Thomas Clarkson.” She had heard the name since coming to Saint-Domingue. “The English abolitionist. It isn’t him. The stranger is still here in some way. I can feel him in the soil. Sometimes, when I’m asleep, I can almost see him. If he didn’t bring the rebellion about, he shaped it in some other way. Perhaps he still does. I want to know how.”
“So do I.” She felt she knew some of the expressions on Toussaint’s face now, simply by having been inside his head. Like her, he showed his feelings least when he felt most strongly, but his eyes were troubled. “It was a strange, dark night, the night you speak of. As I said, the rebellion was planned. We knew what would happen, and when. But when it came, it was like a storm tearing the island apart. Everything was madness and flames and blood, and when the sun came up, we were standing in a different world.”
“Celeste told me there was a storm that night,” Fina said. “She said a group of you met, under the guidance of a voodoo houngan. They say you made a sacrifice, and the loa came and took possession of you all.”
“There was a ceremony,” Toussaint agreed cautiously. “They say that a pact was made that night with the spirits of our homeland. Perhaps it was. I have never had much belief in voodoo, but I was there when Boukman called the loa, and I can’t deny there was a power in him that night. But that didn’t frighten me. What I saw that night, from both sides, did. That degree of hatred and cruelty, so concentrated in such a short space, was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
“The whites have earned our hatred,” she said. “And they don’t need any reason to hate us.”
“That’s true. Perhaps it was natural and purifying. And if that’s all, then we can hope that it will burn away, and we can start to rebuild on the ashes. But I don’t like the sound of the voice you mention, and its message. It sounds as though it wants the burning to continue.”
Fina said nothing. Deep down, she wasn’t at all sure she didn’t want the burning to continue as well.
“I came to see you because I was interested to see if you had strong magic,” Toussaint said after a pause. “Now that I know what it is, I’m more interested yet. I have a band of some five hundred men and women, many of whom I’ve chosen for their magic. Yours could be very useful to us.”
She had known something was coming, but she hadn’t expected this. “A war band?”
“A very particular kind of war band. I will be honest with you, Fina: I think that Biassou, and almost every other military commander on our side, is fighting this conflict wrongly. We have no order and little discipline—just passion and cruelty. My father used to talk about how Europe is able to do so much harm to Africa, despite the fact that we have free magic and they don’t. Part of it is because their officers at least do bring their own magic to the battlefield, of course. Their Concord, as they call it, doesn’t apply in Africa, any more than it applies to their treatment of the slaves here. Part of it is that some of their magic is more advanced: their alchemists, for instance, have developed amulets for protection and spellbinding for control that we don’t have. We can deal with these things as they come. But the most dangerous thing of all is that they work together like a machine.”
“So you want us to fight like them?”
“Not entirely. We need to learn from the commanders from the ancient world, as do the French garrisons that fight us, or they will win. But we also need to find a way to retain our own strengths: free magic, of course, being one of the most important. I think an army that combines the two modes—discipline with ferocity, strategy with magic—will be able to hold this island. To this end, I want as many magicians with us as possible. And speaking for myself, I certainly wouldn’t mind knowing what my enemy was seeing before I rode into his view.”
She smiled a little, but said nothing. Her heart had quickened.
“I know you didn’t come here to fight for Saint-Domingue,” Toussaint said. He was watching her face very closely. “But I think we can help each other. I can’t tell you anything more about the voice you heard, though I’m very much interested in helping you find it. As for Jamaica—I can do nothing to free your plantation now, as I’m sure you’re aware. We’re very far from free ourselves. I can’t even give you my promise that I will one day help you to free it—the future is too uncertain. But I can promise you that if it becomes at all possible, I will do what I can.”
Still, Fina said nothing. She knew Toussaint’s war band already—they were handpicked, not for reasons that were readily apparent to others, but they rode out with him often, and they came back alive more often than could be explained by luck. They were in the thick of the deadliest of skirmishes, traversing great distances in a day and appearing where they were least expected. It was a dangerous offer. But then, nowhere in Saint-Domingue was very safe these days. Perhaps the space at Toussaint’s side, paradoxically, was safer than most. At least she would have no fears of being thrown out of the camp without protection. More than that, she liked him. She had liked him from the outside of his head; from the inside, she liked him better still. She liked his kindness, his steel discipline, his quiet that was so different from her own. She was a storm of fear and anger behind her still face; Toussaint’s stillness went so much deeper. It was comforting, in a world turned to noise and chaos.
“Would I have to go into battle?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “The way I see your magic, it would be of far more use outside the battlefield. You could tell us the positions of the enemy long before they come into view, give us the shape of enemy terrain without needing to ride it—even give us some glimpses of the enemy’s strategies, if we’re fortunate. I don’t think I need to ask you to stand by my side—if I do, then you’ll have fair warning of it, and I’ll accept your refusal without question. I’d like you to promise me something in return, though.”
“What is it?”
His mouth twisted ruefully. “Please stop looking through my eyes from now on. Your magic is your own, to do with as you please. But I would rather not have to avert my gaze from private moments.”
Heat rose in her cheeks, but her smile grew more certain. “I promise.”
“Thank you. I’d like you to promise me something else, as well.”
She waited.
“If you ever hear this voice again,” Toussaint said, “tell me at once.”
Perhaps, in the end, that decided her. “I will,” she said. “And I’ll join you, as you’ve asked. But I have a condition of my own, aside from your promise to help Jamaica.”
“What is it?”
“If you ever hear the voice yourself,” she said, “you will tell me too.”
Paris
August 1792
News of Thomas Clarkson’s conviction caused a stir in the French Assembly of Magicians. For a while, it looked indeed as though France could declare war on England, despite the British ambassador’s assurances that the revolution on Saint-Domingue had been wholly unsupported by the British government. If the warmongers had been able to blame anyone other than Clarkson, perhaps they would have done it. But Brissot, still the strongest proponent of war in the Assembly, was also president of France’s abolition society—which, moreover, he had founded after visiting Clarkson in London. The society had never been very successful, and was largely inactive now, but it would still look very strange for the Girondins to demand retaliation for an act committed by Brissot’s friend in accordance with his own principles. Besides, the Girondins were cautious about free magic. They wanted to declare war on Britain, but not in a way that might entail the breaking of the Concord, as accusing the British government of an act of magic against France would almost certainly do.
Robespierre was inclined to think the Saint-Domingue rebellion was indeed supported by the British governme
nt, but for once he wasn’t inclined to argue. He had emerged as the leader of the antiwar movement. Despite having no official presence in the Assembly, his voice was one of the most powerful in France. He and Brissot had been friends not so long ago; now they were carrying out an exhausting, dragged-out war of public opinion by speech and by pamphlet. The worst of it was that Robespierre was still doing so with very little mesmerism—enough to keep him in the public eye, but not enough to change things. His benefactor had not budged on the death of the king.
“You want to end the warmongering and turn France’s energies elsewhere,” his benefactor said late one night. “You won’t end it by words.”
“I might,” Robespierre said. “If you gave me more magic.”
“You won’t. The king himself has written to the major European powers in secret, asking them to invade and reinstate him. He won’t let the war stop as long as he has a say in the matter.”
“I know.” Robespierre had no proof of this, but he believed it was true, and for him that was the same thing. “I’ve told everyone that. They don’t believe me—at least, not enough of them.”
“If we lose the war, with France as it stands, we’ll have a monarchy again. Everything you’ve achieved will be lost. You know this.”
“I know,” Robespierre repeated. He folded his arms tightly and tried not to shiver. The garden in his dreams was always so cold now. Presumably, that was his benefactor’s anger. It seeped into his bones and stayed there throughout the hot summer’s days.
He still wasn’t ready to overthrow the monarchy, much less kill the king. He was the Incorruptible. The power he held was based on his own image of himself as a pillar of virtue. The idea of committing an act of violence against the royal family was unthinkable. But he found himself looking more closely at people who might think of it. In particular, he started to look at Georges-Jacques Danton.
Danton had been a lawyer in the city before the Revolution came, more successful than Camille, better connected than Robespierre. He was officially an unmagical Commoner, but the Knights Templar had been looking askance at him for years. He simply didn’t seem quite canny. For one thing, he was the largest and ugliest man Robespierre had ever seen. His colossal frame took up the space of two men; his barrel chest could broadcast with the volume of three. When he was a child, his face had been ravaged by smallpox and a series of wild animals, but it could hardly have been pleasing to begin with. Periwinkle-blue eyes peered out from under a coarse brow amid a landscape of scars and crevices. His ugliness had a fascination that mere good looks could not hope to match; combined with his booming voice and sharp intellect, it made him hypnotic. He could play a room like a finely tuned violin.