Sons of Liberty (8 page)

“
Has not recovered,” Gwen said, flatly. She felt another stab of guilt, mingled with bitter frustration. If the idiot had had the sense to follow orders ... “He’s under observation in the ward.”

“
I thought he could be kept under control,” Sir James said. “But he saw the war as a chance to win glory.”

Gwen scowled, remembering the battle. Crawling in the mud was hardly ladylike, but it had kept her alive. If a French sniper had managed to catch sight of her, she might have died before she knew she was under attack. She had tried to keep her magic around her in a protective shroud, but she knew it wasn't easy ... she shook her head. If that was glory, Major Shaw was welcome to it.

“
I'm sure there would have been plenty of opportunities to get himself heroically killed elsewhere,” she said. She had to fight down a sneer. “All he did was get a great many other men killed, for nothing.”

“
I know,” Sir James said. “But he didn't have the experience to know better.”

“
And thought I couldn't tell what to do,” Gwen added. She sighed. Major Shaw had wanted to believe it was time to send in the Hussars. “Idiot.”

She looked back down at her papers, no longer feeling in the right frame of mind to read them. She did have a secretary, thankfully, but there were just too many matters that had to be handled by the Royal Sorceress personally. Sir James would have to cope with them, while she was gone ... in the certain knowledge that the various departmental heads would feel free to ask Gwen to reverse any decisions after she returned. No doubt she’d have a whole pile of petitions to read and answer when she came back.

“
I’ll formally transfer authority tomorrow morning,” she said, rising. “Thank you for coming.”

Sir James looked surprised at her sudden dismissal, but merely rose to his feet and strode out of the room. Gwen watched him go, torn between envy and a bitterness that had grown increasingly common over the last year. She could catch a murderer, a murderer who had also been a traitor and a spy; she could face a maddened undead monster in Russia and win ... and yet, she wasn't considered a suitable replacement for Master Thomas. It wasn't just that she was a girl too, although that was a convenient excuse. Ideally, she would have had years with Master Thomas, learning the ropes as well as where the skeletons were buried, before she took the job.

Jack would have had those years, she thought, sourly. Master Thomas had thought highly of his young protégée. Hell, if he’d stayed loyal, Gwen doubted she would ever have been called to the colours herself. He could have stayed in the corps and made changes from the inside.

She shook her head as she opened the hidden door and made her way down the secret staircase. A year of butting heads with the bureaucracy - and the various vested interests that made up the Royal College - had taught her that change, true chance, came slowly. And if she hadn't managed to find two new talents, the Royal College wouldn't have changed anything like as much as it had. The old men - and they were old men - in charge hated the thought of anything changing.

And Master Thomas could keep them in line, she thought, as she reached the hidden exit in the lower basement. They don’t take me so seriously.

Learning against the wall, she reached out with her mind, testing to make sure no one was there to see her when she opened the door. She had no idea why Master Thomas had converted the servant corridors to secret passages, but she had to admit they made it easy to get around the vast building without being detected. Only Doctor Norwell and Lord Mycroft knew they even existed, although she suspected that some of the aristocratic magicians had guessed. Servant passages were meant to keep the servants out of sight, away from their betters. She opened the door, stepped through into the corridor and closed it hastily behind her. The Healer Ward was just down the corridor.

“
Lady Gwen,” Lucy said, as Gwen stepped through the door. “You are well?”

“
Well enough,” Gwen said. Lucy might be used to irritating men, but Gwen doubted the Healer could do anything to cure her real problem. “Is he still in the ward?”

“
I’m afraid so,” Lucy said. “Even feeding him has been a bit of a problem.”

Gwen nodded, then walked down the corridor. There weren't many patients in the ward, not when it normally took only a few minutes for the Healers to work their magic. Indeed, the only real problem was the shortage of Healers. They were a rare breed, apparently, and every Healer they'd found had been female. Luckily, the prospect of being healed was enough to convince men to visit a female Healer. Male doctors might as well have been butchers for all the good they could do.

Major Shaw was sleeping in a metal chair, straps wrapped around his wrists and ankles. He looked normal at first, Gwen thought, until she saw his eyes. They were twitching backwards and forwards under the eyelids, as if they were on the verge of popping out of his head. She took a step forward, unsure what - if anything - she should do. If there was a way to cure his mind through magic, Lucy would have found it by now.

“
You inflicted a great deal of harm,” Lucy said, quietly. “Did you know ...?”

“
No,” Gwen said. “I ...”

Major Shaw jerked awake, his blue eyes flickering from side to side before focusing on Gwen. He opened his mouth and screamed, a high-pitched sound that was so loud Gwen stumbled backwards, covering her ears. Lucy pointed a finger towards the door; Gwen nodded and hurried back out of the ward. Behind her, the screams continued to echo until one of the orderlies slammed the heavy door closed.

Gwen cursed under her breath, feeling yet another stab of guilt. Charmers had been known to cause mental breakdowns, when their victim was unable to hide from reality any longer, but such breakdowns rarely lasted long. Even a weak-willed man could come to terms with what had happened to him, if he tried. But Major Shaw seemed to have been completely broken, perhaps for the rest of his life. He had been an arrogant bastard who’d gotten over a hundred good men killed ...

... And yet he doesn't deserve to be broken, Gwen thought, bitterly. It was her fault. In hindsight, there were plenty of other options she could have used. But in her frustration and anger she’d made a mistake. And now he has to pay the price.

She wandered slowly back up to her office, glancing into the empty training rooms as she passed. The training cadre had done a good job of stripping the building of everything necessary to train young magicians, although most of the equipment would be easy to replace. Her lips quirked; no one on the outside would believe it, if they saw the room. It was commonly believed that magicians needed staffs, wands and potions made from fancy ingredients to do their work ...

A thought struck her and she scowled. Jack, no doubt, had taught the French precisely how to construct their own training facility.

Not that it would have been that hard, once they stopped thinking of magicians as demons, she thought, coldly. The basic principles of magic aren’t hard to deduce, even without a teacher.

“
Lady Emily,” Doctor Norwell called, when she walked past his office. It was right next to hers, one of Master Thomas’s arrangements she’d never bothered to change. “There are two of Lord Mycroft’s men, here to see you. They’re waiting in the visitor’s room.”

Gwen frowned in puzzlement. Lord Mycroft had sent her an immense stack of files to read, but nothing else. She hadn't been expecting to see him until shortly before her departure, still three days away. But something might have come up. Shaking her head, she walked down the corridor and peered into the visitor’s room. Two young men were seated on the sofa, wearing the bland suit and tie of government servants. There was something odd about their faces.

“
Lady Gwen,” the first man said, rising to his feet. “May I say what a great pleasure it is to meet the Royal Sorceress face to face?”

Gwen felt her eyes narrow. That was hardly a common form of address. She looked at both men, puzzled. There was definitely something odd about them ...

Understanding clicked. “Irene?”

The young man smirked. “Got you that time,” he - she - said. There was a hint of cockney in her voice. “How do we look?”

“
Raechel,” Gwen said, looking at the other figure. Now she knew who she was looking at, it was easy to see the subtle clues that the person wasn't remotely masculine. “You look ... different.”

“
I wasn't expecting to fool you for long,” Irene said, as she sat back on the sofa. “But you wouldn't have looked twice at us if you’d met us on the streets.”

“
Probably not,” Gwen conceded. She knew better than to dismiss civil servants as unimportant, but they were still very much part of the background. “How is Raechel coming along?”

“I’m right here,” Raechel said.

“
She is doing better than I expected when playing a female role,” Irene said, ignoring her in favour of Gwen. “She’s still having some problems playing a male role, I’m afraid. That generally takes longer to learn.”

Gwen nodded. It had taken her time to learn to walk and act like a man, even though too many people knew she was a woman for her to try to pretend otherwise. But then, men did tend to react better to people they thought were other men. The more masculine she looked, the better the reception.

“
She’s also quite intelligent, if unfocused and untrained,” Irene added. “She definitely has the right attitude for this sort of work, although she might have done better if she’d been raised in a lower-class household. Her tolerance for the simple brutalities of life is alarmingly low.”

“
Noted,” Gwen said. She would have to sit down with Raechel, once they were on the ship, and talk about her progress. Right now, there were other matters to worry about. “Do you have her covered?”

Irene nodded. “Officially, Lady Standish is still in a madhouse,” she said. “Russia certainly did a great deal of damage to her mind, I’m afraid. Raechel Slater-Standish will therefore have the distant honour of accompanying Lady Irene Darlington” - she waved a lazy hand at her chest - “to the Americas. Lady Irene will serve as chaperone during this long affair, as she is a distant relation of Lady Standish.”

“
Very good,” Gwen said. “And Lord Standish?”

“
Has given his approval,” Irene said. “He does not want the burden of a young ward when there is no shortage of work in the Foreign Office.”

Gwen smiled in approval. If a young lady could not be chaperoned by her mother, for whatever reason, it was not uncommon for a more distant female relative to take on the burden of escorting and protecting the girl. She had no doubt there was a Lady Irene Darlington somewhere in the tangled web of families that made up polite society, although she might be surprised by what was being done in her name. Lord Mycroft had quite a few false identities floating around, just waiting for the moment to use them.

“
I could just have stayed in London,” Raechel pointed out. “It’s going to look as though I’m in trouble, isn't it?”

“
Hardly anyone in America will care,” Irene assured her. “And besides, who could possibly blame Lord Standish for wanting to keep you out of danger?”

“He took me to Russia,” Raechel snapped.

“
It wasn't meant to be dangerous,” Gwen reminded her. In truth, she doubted Lord Standish had been offered a choice. “Still, if you don’t want to go ...”

“I do,” Raechel said.

“
Then meet us at the ship, as planned,” Gwen ordered. “And make sure you have enough to occupy yourself for three weeks. It’s going to be a long voyage.”

“
Don’t worry,” Irene said. She smiled, rather unpleasantly. “I’ll keep her occupied.”

Chapter Seven

“
I hope you have a pleasant voyage, Lady Gwen,” Lord Mycroft said, as the carriage rolled to a halt. “And that you reach New York safely.”

Gwen nodded, unable to keep from feeling a little nervous. She’d been on boats before, but she’d never sailed on the ocean. An airship would have been nicer, she was sure, yet she understood why they couldn't take the risk. The chances of surviving an accident at sea were far greater than surviving an airship crash.

“
I won’t let you down,” she promised him. “And thank you for driving me down to the docks.”

Lord Mycroft gave her a flicker of a smile. “I can't stay,” he said. He held out a hand, which she shook firmly. “But I do wish you every success.”

Gwen reached out and drew back the curtains. The driver had taken them through the two checkpoints, right up to the docks themselves. HMS Duke of India rose up in front of her, her masts towering up towards the sky. Steam rose from her rear, reminding Gwen that the ship was both a sailing ship and a steamship. Beyond her, four other troopships floated, the troops having been loaded aboard last night. She shuddered, thinking of the cramped conditions the common soldiers would have to endure. Their horses wouldn’t have a good time of it either.

“
Thank you,” she said, as she opened the door. “I’ll see you soon.”

She dropped neatly to the ground and walked towards the gangplank. The docks were far up the river, just in case the French tried a repeat of the Dutch raid on the Medway, but the ship was rising up and down slowly anyway. She nodded to the soldier on guard at the bottom of the gangplank, then forced herself to walk up onto the ship. It felt odd beneath her feet, even though she was used to flying through the air. She hoped, desperately, that she wouldn’t fall seasick. The last thing she wanted was to spend the voyage in her cabin, praying desperately for calm seas.