Sons of Liberty (14 page)

“
I’ll see you soon, I hope,” Jackson said, holding out a hand. “I have to get the men offloaded, then report to the General. We’ll probably be back on the ships within a day or two.”

Gwen blinked in surprise, then shook his hand firmly. “Good luck,” she said. Getting the troops to the borders would be far quicker if they stayed on the water, despite the risk of French raiders. “Maybe I’ll see you later.”

She watched him go, then shook her head as the ship came to a halt. The voyage had grown boring very quickly, despite the brief excitement when the French had attacked, but now she felt almost tired. And yet, she knew she couldn't delay, not even long enough for a wash and a change of clothes. They were four days overdue, after having been out of contact for over three weeks. God alone knew what might have happened along the borders, or in New York itself. She turned and walked down to the gangplank, which was being tied firmly to the jetty. No doubt she wasn't the only passenger relieved to be finally off the boat.

“
Your luggage will be sent after you, Lady Gwen,” Fredrick Hauser said. He didn't look too put out by the coming separation from Raechel, Gwen noted, although he could just be hiding his feelings well. She didn't want to know what Raechel and he had said to one another after she’d caught them together. “And we thank you for sailing with us.”

“
It was a pleasure,” Gwen lied. Maybe she hadn't gotten seasick, unlike some of the other passengers, but she’d been very bored. “Please give my regards to your captain.”

“
I will, My Lady,” Fredrick said. He gestured towards a horse-drawn brougham waiting at the bottom of the gangplank. A young man in a black suit was standing next to it, looking up at the ship. “Your carriage awaits you.”

Gwen nodded, then walked down the gangplank. The young man straightened up when she reached dry land, then opened the carriage door. Gwen climbed inside; he closed the door, then scrambled up behind the horses as Gwen pulled back the curtains. She wanted to see New York, rather than hiding in the coach. The carriage jerked into motion as the driver cracked the whip, rocking backwards and forewords as it headed into the city. Gwen stared out of the window as they left the docks. New York was teeming with life.

The natives were large, she realised; the average man looked bigger than his London counterpart, his clothes far more colourful than anyone outside the landed aristocracy or the military. She wondered, for a moment, if they were all rich, before deciding it was impossible. They couldn't all be wealthy, could they? No, it was just the fashion. She shook her head - it would never catch on in London - and then started as a line of black men came into view, carrying boxes down towards the docks. They were hardly the first black men she’d seen - there was a fashion for black servants in London - but there were so many of them! And there were red-skinned men and women walking around too.

There have to be more people in this island than there are in London, she thought, as the coach turned onto a long street leading north. The smell of horse manure was growing stronger, a problem that blighted London too. Or maybe fewer people but more concentrated in a smaller space.

She forced herself to keep watching as the carriage headed down the street. New York throbbed with life, unlike so many British cities. There was a strange energy in the air that delighted and frightened her at the same time. Even now, with war breathing down their necks, the citizens seemed more animated than anyone she’d seen in London, at least outside the ballrooms. She couldn't help noticing that young women seemed unaccompanied, even the ones who were clearly upper-class. Their dresses were so tight in the right places that they would have shocked London society to the core. Gwen couldn't help thinking that Raechel would probably love New York.

The carriage came to a halt outside a large palace, set within high stone walls. Gwen admired it as the driver chatted briefly to the guards; the palace looked rather like an aristocratic mansion in Britain, but smaller. She puzzled over it for a long moment before recalling that land was in short supply on Manhattan. The palace was probably as large as it could be without causing massive disruption. She pushed the thought aside as the carriage lurched back into motion, heading through the gate and up to the main doors. A young woman was already standing there, wearing a long pink dress.

“
Welcome to Howe Palace, My Lady,” the driver said, as he opened the door and invited Gwen to step out. “I will collect your luggage and transport it to the Sorcerers Hall.”

“Thank you,” Gwen said.

She tipped the driver, then turned her attention to the young woman. It was easy to recognise her from the files; Lady Arielle Franklin-Rochester, the Viceroy’s fifteen-year-old niece. She was already a beauty, Gwen had to admit, although there was something oddly forward in the way she wore her dress. Her long dark hair hung down to the small of her back.

“
My Lady,” Arielle murmured. Her voice was strangely-accented, as if she wasn't quite used to talking like an aristocrat. “Welcome to Howe Palace. My uncle is waiting for you, but if you would like some time to freshen up first ...?”

“Please,” Gwen said.

Arielle led her into the palace. Gwen glanced around with interest, unable to escape the impression that whoever had designed the palace had wanted a monument to British triumphs in the war. A large painting of the scene when George Washington had surrendered to General Howe dominated the inner chamber, surrounded by smaller pen-portraits of notable British officers and administrators who’d served in the war. She couldn't help thinking that there was really too much dignity in the painting of Washington, for a man who had ended his life on the scaffold. But then, even General Howe had admitted that Washington would have been a great man, if he’d had a chance to learn his trade.

She turned her attention back to Arielle as the younger girl showed her a washroom. Gwen stepped inside gratefully and splashed water on her face, silently relieved that the girl had stayed outside. The Viceroy’s wife had died years ago, she recalled; it wasn't unusual for a man in his position to arrange for a female relative to run his household, even if she was surprisingly young. But then, family came first. And it would give Arielle a chance at finding a match among the best men in American society. Gwen straightened up, checked her appearance in the mirror, then walked back through the door. Arielle was patiently waiting for her.

She must be used to women taking longer to wash, Gwen thought, wryly. One distant advantage of the male clothes she wore was that they were easy to get on at speed, without assistance. There were girls she knew back home who literally could not get dressed without help from the maids, a kind of learned helplessness that made her sick. I don't know why their mothers let them get away with it.

“
My uncle is waiting in his study,” Arielle said. She led the way up the stairs, then stopped outside the door. “I hope I will have a chance to speak with you later, Lady Gwen.”

“
Me too,” Gwen said. She would like to talk to Arielle, if only because she might have noticed problems that would have escaped her uncle. “And thank you!”

“
It was no trouble,” Arielle said, as she opened the door. “I should be thanking you for insisting on a lack of ceremony.”

Gwen smirked. The next viceroy, when he was appointed, would have five whole days of ceremonies before he formally replaced the current viceroy. Thankfully, Lord Mycroft had made certain that there wouldn't be a welcoming ceremony for her. She knew hundreds of aristocratic women who would be offended, if the entire palace staff wasn't assembled to bow and scrape in front of her, but she’d always hated such affairs. Far too many people knew her as a devil-child.

“
My Lady Gwen,” Thomas Rochester said. He shook her hand without noticeable hesitation, then motioned her to a comfortable chair. “Welcome to America.”

“
Thank you, Your Excellency,” Gwen said. She sat, resting her hands in her lap. “It’s good to be here.”

She studied the viceroy with some interest. His Excellency Thomas Rochester, Marquess of Swanhaven, Viceroy of British North America, looked surprisingly healthy, compared to some of the other aristocrats she’d met. He would be in his early forties, according to the files, but he definitely looked as though he could go on campaign at a moment’s notice. If she recalled correctly, he had gone campaigning in the hinterlands several times during his first four years as Viceroy. His dark hair was cropped close to his scalp, his face had the bruised look of someone who’d been in too many fistfights for his own good ...

Not a handsome man, she decided, finally. But very definitely a formidable one.

“
I will have tea and cakes served, momentarily,” Rochester said. “My servants are already preparing a small repast for us.”

“
Thank you,” Gwen said, fighting down a flicker of impatience. She’d never enjoyed meaningless social formalities. “I was given to understand that the situation was urgent ...”

Rochester’s face darkened. “Losing all of our sorcerers, bar one, in a single day was a mighty blow against us,” he said. “So far, we have had very little trouble along the line, but I imagine that will change shortly.”

He waved a hand towards the map mounted on the office wall. Gwen turned to study it, noting the red outline of British North America ranging from the icy wastelands of the Canadian North to the lower reaches of Florida. Beyond it, great swathes of territory were green for the Franco-Spanish Empire or blue for Russia. She’d heard that the Russian settlements in Alaska had declared themselves independent, in the wake of the Tsar’s madness and death, but very little had come of it. Russia had too many problems to do something about the rebels.

“
The map lies, Lady Gwen,” Rochester warned. He stood and drew a line with his finger, roughly a hundred miles to the west of New York. “We don’t control half of the territory we formally claim.”

Gwen frowned. “Who does?”

Rochester snorted. “Whoever is there,” he said. “Beyond the mountains, we have hundreds of illicit settlements, ranging from runaway slave villages to the remains of the rebels we crushed back in 1777. And there are no shortage of Indian settlements too ... many of our frontier villages trade with the hidden colonies, despite laws against any contact. They think we can't stop them and the hell of it is that they’re right.”

He shrugged. “The French have the same problem, of course,” he added. “There are great swathes of territory they don’t control.”

Gwen nodded, slowly. It wasn’t a problem she'd expected, but in hindsight it should have been obvious. America was vast. And while Britain had been governed, reasonably consistently, for over a thousand years, America had barely been settled for over two hundred. The British Empire might be greater than Alexander’s had ever been, but it had never been fully charted.

She turned as she heard the door opening behind her, just in time to see a dark-skinned woman carrying a large silver tea tray. There had to be some white blood in her, Gwen reasoned; her skin was a rich chocolate brown, rather than black. The maid put the tray down on the table, curtseyed politely to Rochester and then backed out of the room. Her movements showed no trace of emotion at all.

And if she wants to poison us, Gwen thought, she has plenty of opportunity.

“
I’m planning to hold a ball tomorrow night,” Rochester said, as he poured the tea. “I trust you will be attending?”

Gwen blinked in surprise, distracted from her worries. “A ball? There’s a war on!”

“
Yes, there is,” Rochester said. “We need to make a show of confidence, Lady Gwen. A ball - a succession of balls - will help keep the Tories loyal and convince the Whigs that attempting to work outside the system is futile. I dare not show weakness on the eve of a continent-wide war.”

He smiled. “And besides, quite a few people want to meet you,” he added. “They’ve heard a great many tales about your career.”

“
All untrue,” Gwen hazarded. If she'd done half the things she knew she was credited with doing, thanks to the stories growing in the telling, she would probably have taken over the government by now. She shook her head, dismissing the thought. “Your Excellency ... how do you know your maids can be trusted?”

“
She was ... tested ... by a Talker,” Rochester said. “They were all tested for loyalty. I believe they know better than to betray me.”

Gwen eyed him, doubtfully. Having one’s mind read tended to cause resentment, even in someone who’d been wholeheartedly loyal beforehand. It was a gross invasion of privacy ... and, somehow, she doubted the servants had been given much choice. Hell, the servants might have mastered the art of lying to a mind-reader. The mental discipline they needed to tolerate slights - and worse - from their masters would lend itself well to fooling an overconfident magician.

I should ask Irene to watch for trouble, she thought. It was a shame that Irene couldn't come with her, but they weren't officially travelling together. She’ll have ample opportunity at the ball.

“
I hope you’re right,” she said, out loud. “Do you expect trouble?”

“
Unfortunately,” Rochester said. “I always expect trouble.”

He sighed. “I got this job, Lady Gwen, because I was married to an American and half my family is American,” he added. “Or so I was told.”

Gwen nodded. “It make sense,” she said. It was how Lord Mycroft - and aristocrats in general - thought. Family ties were more important than paper contracts. “And you’ve kept the ship of state on an even kneel.”