Necropolis (Royal Sorceress Book 3) (20 page)

Olivia frowned. She had no idea who her father had been and her mother had died when she was six, barely old enough to take care of herself on the streets. If she hadn’t had some help from her mother’s old friends, she wouldn’t have survived the year. As it was, she knew she wouldn’t have lasted much longer if she hadn’t encountered Jack and Gwen. Gwen was her mother, legally speaking, but it wasn’t the same. How could someone just discard his own father?

“You never knew him,” Ivan said, correctly interpreting Olivia’s expression. “My father was a very unpleasant man. He beat my mother until she died, sent my sister into an unwanted marriage, beat me ... whipped the serfs on his farm for the slightest infraction, had fun with their women ... I haven’t seen him in years. And I am
much
happier without him.”

“I’m sorry,” Olivia said, although she wasn’t sure what she was actually being sorry
for
. If she’d had a real family, she wouldn’t have given it up so easily. “How did you discover your powers?”

“One of the
Skoptzi
noticed me,” Ivan said. “He took me to his master, who invited me to serve the Father Tsar as his agent. I had no choice.”

Olivia nodded in understanding. The Royal Sorcerers Corps conscripted powerful magicians, regardless of their social origins, or killed them if they refused to cooperate. These days, the magical underground was almost completely dormant. Between Jack’s willingness to use them and Gwen’s offer to take anyone who was prepared to work with her, there was no longer any need for a separate organisation. And the farms were long gone.

“You were a Charmer,” she said. “What did they have you do?”

“I can’t talk about it,” Ivan said. He shook his head, ruefully. “You don’t want to know just how much I have done for the Father Tsar.”

Olivia took a breath, wondering if she was about to be slapped again. “Do you worship the Father Tsar?”

Ivan eyed her for a long moment. “I’ve seen him at Court,” he said. “The Father Tsar is just a man.”

Olivia hesitated, then pushed onwards. “Do the
Skoptzi
” – she stumbled over the Russian word – “have any real idea just how dangerous their experiments actually are?”

“I believe they think they have no choice,” Ivan said, carefully. He studied her, dispassionately. “My uncle’s manor was burned to the ground only four weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Olivia lied. “What happened?”

“His serfs revolted and attacked him,” Ivan said. The pain in his voice surprised her. “The revolt spread to a dozen other serf-run farms, sending hundreds of aristocrats fleeing for their lives. There were reports of women – and even men – being raped by serfs, trampled by animals, then abandoned to die on the frozen ground. Hundreds of years of work torched overnight and left as ashes.”

Olivia found it hard to feel sorry for the noblemen of Russia. She’d heard similar lamentations during the Swing, when a handful of aristocratic women had been raped during the worst hours of the uprising. Such accounts rarely included the harassment of female servants or even several rapes carried out by soldiers counterattacking against the rebels. If the Duke of India hadn’t been in charge, it would have been considerably worse. Somehow, she doubted whoever was in charge of the military force sent to restore order in Russia would be so considerate as to hang any rapists among his troops.

But she knew better than to say it out loud. Unlike almost anyone else at Cavendish Hall, certainly among the girls, she’d been born in the gutters. She’d lived the life of the very poor, then the life of the very wealthy ... and knew just how lucky she’d been. God alone knew how many girls, very much like her, hadn’t been so fortunate. But none of the other girls at Cavendish Hall had her experience. They would weep and moan for hours over a dead horse, yet they wouldn’t see the blighted lives of the very poor. It was an alien and invisible world to them.

“One revolt isn’t a major problem,” she said, instead. “Surely you can restore order quickly.”

“It isn’t just one,” Ivan said. Oddly, saying as much as he already had seemed to unlock the floodgates, allowing him to talk openly. “There have been revolts over the past five years as the weather has worsened, some in the countryside and some in the cities. I saw a mutiny in a Guards Regiment outside St Petersburg herself, while several warships mutinied against their commanders and set sail for the outside world. In Court, powerful factions are gathering around the different princes, each one promising a different solution to the country’s woes.”

“As long as they are placed into power,” Olivia guessed. She’d heard Gwen grumble about Members of Parliament who had visited Cavendish Hall, seeking the Royal Sorceress’s support for their political games. The principle seemed the same. “And the factions are tearing the country apart?”

“Precisely,” Ivan said. “Everyone is just waiting for the Father Tsar to die. But when he does, all hell will break loose.”

Olivia stared at him, then reached out and touched his hand. “It will break loose too if the undead get free,” she said. In the back of her mind, the whispering was growing louder and louder. “The more you create, the more capable they will be and the more capable they become, the easier they will find it to escape.”

Ivan looked at her pale hand, then tapped it lightly. “We have you to control them, don’t we?”

“I have never tried to control more than a few of the undead,” Olivia said, stretching the truth a little. She’d managed to put Master Thomas’s undead to sleep, but only after he’d died and the creatures had started to run amok. It could easily have been a complete disaster. “What happens if there are too many of them for me to control?”

She gritted her teeth, wishing she knew how to be more persuasive. Gregory might be a dangerously insane fanatic, but he wasn’t stupid. By the time he unleashed his army of undead monsters, he’d have Olivia – his one Necromancer – Charmed to the point where she obeyed orders without question, all independent thought and feeling gone. Ivan wasn’t a fanatic, she hoped; he could help her, if she managed to convince him of the looming disaster. But if he believed that Russia was doomed regardless ...

“We won’t let it get out of hand,” Ivan said, finally. “The undead aren’t unstoppable.”

Olivia remembered the horrors of London and glared at him, throwing caution to the winds. “A single undead is fast, savage and feels no pain,” she snapped. “You have to cripple one completely to stop it, even though their behaviour is predicable. But a group of them will be fast, ruthless and very intelligent. You have to burn them all to stop them, yet they’ll keep coming until you burn them to ash. If a few hundred of the undead forced the destruction of several miles of London, what will it do if you unleash a few hundred thousand?”

She shuddered, recalling the days after the Swing. Some undead had survived long enough to escape the first purge, popping up in London or even outside the city, where they’d started to build new swarms of undead. They’d been hunted down and destroyed, but there was always a quiet nagging doubt. Had they
really
destroyed
all
of the undead? There was no way to know for sure.

“I think you’re wrong,” Ivan said. “I hope you’re wrong.”

“So do I,” Olivia said. She batted her eyelashes at him again. “Can I go for a walk?”

“I can take you through the complex,” Ivan said. He gave her a reproving look. “I’m afraid I can’t take you outside.”

Olivia nodded, unsurprised. She needed the exercise ... and she needed a chance to try to learn more about the interior of the complex. If she managed to figure out where the doors were, she would be one step closer to escape. Ivan might join her – he clearly had his doubts – but if he didn’t, she could try to make it out on her own. If worst came to worst, perhaps the guards would kill her, forcing Gregory to destroy the undead he kept in cages. They couldn’t be controlled without a Necromancer.

She gritted her teeth, steeling her resolve. This time, she promised herself, she wouldn’t make any mistakes. She couldn’t afford them.

Chapter Seventeen

T
hat was foolish and reckless,” Sir Sidney said.

Gwen scowled. It was bad enough that the only way she could meet him alone was through sneaking into his cabin after the lamps had been dimmed for sleep, raising the spectre of being caught and accused of ideas above her station. She wasn’t in the mood to be told off by Sir Sidney, who didn’t have to pose as a maid to gain admittance to Russia.

“There wasn’t much choice,” she said, tartly. “Raechel already knew that something wasn’t quite right about me.”

“You didn’t bend the knee enough,” Sir Sidney growled. “You should have made her forget.”

Gwen sighed. “I can’t
make
someone forget anything,” she said. “Charm doesn’t work like that, not really. I could have tried to Charm her into obedience or merely keeping her mouth shut, but it might well not have worked. Raechel is bright, clever enough to figure out who I am; she’d have enough mental keys to undo any Charm I used on her. And then we would have a new enemy.”

She sighed, again. Raechel was bright enough to be useful, but also woefully untrained for any kind of sensitive mission. Given time, Gwen was sure she’d be as useful as Irene, even without magic, yet there was no time for any proper training. She’d half-hoped that Raechel could be convinced to stay in the embassy, out of the way, while Gwen carried out her mission, but Raechel was adamant that she needed to help. At least it was a more productive use of her intelligence than allowing men to chase her, while carefully not running very fast.

“Then you should have spanked her like a schoolgirl and told her to do as she was told,” Sir Sidney added. “We don’t need complications.”

“Raechel is old enough to understand what is going on,” Gwen said. “We can use her.”

“She’s also desperate to find a role for herself,” Sir Sidney said. “That could be dangerous.”

Gwen lifted an eyebrow. “Find a role for herself?”

“It happens,” Sir Sidney explained. “Someone is born to a role that doesn’t suit them – like you, for instance. They start acting badly while trying to find a place where they actually belong. Raechel is too smart to fit into the life of the average young aristocratic woman, yet she’s also trapped and constrained by both society and her relatives. Acting out seems to be the only solution for her.”

Gwen felt her blood run cold. “But what if she’d managed to get pregnant?”

“It would certainly have changed her social standing,” Sir Sidney pointed out, dryly. “Perhaps she would have been happier as a mother, even if the child was born out of wedlock.”

“I doubt it,” Gwen said.

She sighed, yet again. It was one of the other great social injustices of the post-Swing British Empire. Bastardy carried one hell of a social stigma, even though the bastard child was the sole innocent in the affair. Sir Charles’ bastardy – well, not exactly bastardy, but close enough – had undone his life when he’d discovered the truth. Bastard children couldn’t inherit or claim any ranks or titles ... most of the boys had commissions quietly purchased for them and went into the army. The girls often went into convents.

“Maybe not,” Sir Sidney agreed. He looked forward, darkly. “You keep an eye on her, Lady Gwen. And make sure she doesn’t say anything stupid at the wrong time.”

He paused. “And there’s another problem,” he added. “What happens if someone reads her mind?”

Gwen muttered a curse under her breath. Talleyrand had been accompanied, in Britain, by a female magician who had passed as his daughter, a young girl called Simone. She’d been a Talker, reading the minds of everyone she encountered, until Gwen had arranged for her to be escorted by other British magicians. It wasn’t technically legal to allow a Talker to accompany a diplomatic mission – as far as Gwen knew, she was the only magician attached to Lord Standish’s party – but the rule had been bent more often than it had been upheld.

“I’ll teach her some basic meditation techniques,” Gwen said. Raechel would probably benefit from the lessons in any case. She was a bundle of energy, strong enough to overwhelm any of the older nannies and governesses Lady Standish had tried to assign to her. “But we may just have to hope that her mind remains unread.”

“I don’t like relying on anything of the sort,” Sir Sidney growled. “And you should know better too.”

Gwen shrugged, wishing she could go back to her bunk and sleep. Answering Raechel’s questions, serving the family at dinner and putting the girl to bed had been exhausting. She had the distinct feeling that whoever Raechel ended up marrying was going to be bent to her will, even if he was the most unpleasant old bachelor in England. Or he’d invoke very old rights and keep his wife a prisoner, in all but name.

“They will know something’s wrong if they read
my
mind,” she pointed out. Irene could slip through Gwen’s mental shields, at least when Gwen wasn’t on the alert, but other Talkers would feel different to her. She would sense their intrusion ... and they would sense her reaction to their intrusion. There would be some hard questions when they reported it to their superiors. “I can’t lower my mental shields for them.”

“That’s why you’re a maid,” Sir Sidney reminded her. “They won’t bother reading your mind.”

Gwen had her doubts about
that
. The aristocracy might, as a general rule, pay no attention to the help, but people as smart as Lord Mycroft or Talleyrand wouldn’t allow prejudice to prevent them from employing servants as spies. She rather doubted the Russians would feel any differently. Would they understand that Lord Mycroft might have hidden an operative in with the help? It seemed quite possible. And what would they do if they realised Gwen was much more than just a Talker?

And will the Captain have anything to say to Lord Standish
? She asked herself. It seemed unlikely – Lord Standish was hardly likely to thank him for making love to Raechel – but it was something she would need to watch.
If he tells him that I passed through a locked door ... and someone reads that from his mind ...