The Royal Sorceress

Defence of the Empire in the hands of a girl!

It’s 1830, in an alternate Britain where the ‘scientific’ principles of magic were discovered sixty years previously, allowing the British to win the American War of Independence. Although Britain is now supreme among the Great Powers, the gulf between rich and poor in the Empire has widened and unrest is growing every day. Master Thomas, the King’s Royal Sorcerer, is ageing and must find a successor to lead the Royal Sorcerers Corps. Most magicians can possess only one of the panoply of known magical powers, but Thomas needs to find a new Master of all the powers. There is only one candidate, one person who has displayed such a talent from an early age, but has been neither trained nor officially acknowledged. A perfect candidate to be Master Thomas’ apprentice in all ways but one: the Royal College of Sorcerers has never admitted a girl before.

But even before Lady Gwendolyn Crichton can begin her training, London is plunged into chaos by a campaign of terrorist attacks co-ordinated by Jack, a powerful and rebellious magician.

The Royal Sorceress
will certainly appeal to all fans of steampunk, alternate history, and fantasy. As well as the fun of the ‘what-ifs’ delivered by the rewriting of our past, it delights with an Empire empowered by magic – all the better for being one we can recognise. The scheming and intrigue of Jack and his rebels, the roof-top chases and the thrilling battles of magic are played out against the dark and unforgiving backdrop of life in the sordid slums and dangerous factories of London. Many of the rebels are drawn from a seedy and grimy underworld, while their Establishment targets prey on the weak and defenceless. The price for destroying the social imbalance and sexual inequality that underpin society may be more than anyone can imagine.

The Royal Sorceress

Christopher Nuttall

Elsewhen Press

The Royal Sorceress

First published in Great Britain by Elsewhen Press, 2012

An imprint of Alnpete Limited

Copyright © Christopher Nuttall, 2012. All rights reserved

The right of Christopher Nuttall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, telepathic, magical, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Cover art © Alison Buck, 2012

The use of the typeface Goudy Initialen was graciously permitted by the designer, Dieter Steffmann.

Elsewhen Press, PO Box 757, Dartford, Kent DA2 7TQ

www.elsewhen.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-908168-08-5 Print edition

ISBN 978-1-908168-18-4 eBook edition

Condition of Sale

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

Elsewhen Press & Planet-Clock Design are trademarks of Alnpete Limited

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, colleges, and events are either a product of the author’s fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organisations, places or people (living, dead or undead) is purely coincidental.

Converted to eBook format by Elsewhen Press

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Epilogue

Dedication

There are a great many people who have followed my writing from when I started to the present day, too many to name for fear of missing someone out. But one person deserves to be mentioned because she was there at the start.

It was my grandmother, Ellen Nuttall, who gave me my first books and encouraged me to read and – later – write for myself. I therefore dedicate this book to a wonderful person I miss dreadfully.

Christopher Nuttall

Kota Kinabalu, 2012

Chapter One

A
re you paying attention to me?”

Lady Gwendolyn Crichton looked up at her tutor, deliberately allowing a languid expression to cross her face. Henry Morrison was the latest of the tutors her mother had selected for her, a pimply-faced youth who had won a scholarship to Oxford – a scholarship that had paid for lessons and lodging, but very little else. His desperation to make ends meet – and to afford to match the lifestyle of his richer contemporaries – had ensured that he’d accepted the position without asking too many questions. He was the seventeenth tutor Gwen had endured since coming into her powers and, if she had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t be the last.

“I am listening carefully,” she assured him, in the airy voice that irritated her father and drove her mother into fits of rage. Poor Morrison was no match for her. “Pray, continue. I am agog.”

Morrison gave her a long look and then turned back to his book. Gwen sighed inwardly. It was a shame he wasn’t more handsome, or she would have flirted with him in the certain knowledge that it would have impelled her mother to dismiss him at once. But there were some things she couldn’t bring herself to do, even if the rewards seemed likely to be vast. She would just have to find another way of convincing her mother to find another tutor. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.

“As we covered yesterday,” Morrison said, “the American rebels made a serious tactical error when they allowed their ragtag army to be cornered near New York. They were unaware of the Talkers assigned to General Howe’s army, which allowed him to coordinate his activities on a scale the Americans could not begin to comprehend. The traitor Washington’s army was trapped and forced to surrender, bringing the period of outright warfare in the Americas to an end.”

Gwen smiled and pretended to listen. There was only one subject she wanted to study and Morrison, whatever his other qualities, was not permitted to teach it. Indeed, as far as she could tell, he had no magic whatsoever. He certainly didn’t know much about the history of magic, or how it had flourished since it was put to work in the service of George III. Women, as a general rule, were not expected to study magic, let alone apply it. As the eldest daughter of Lord Rudolph, Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Gwen’s course had been set a long time before she’d grown into maturity. She would learn how to be a respectable aristocratic housewife, marry a man her parents chose for her and bear his children. No one had anticipated that Gwen would develop magic, or that the rumours surrounding her would make it impossible to find a proper suitor. At seventeen years old, she knew that she should already be married.

She ran a hand through her long golden hair, her lips thinning into a frown. She didn’t want a husband, or a family; she wanted to learn about magic. But it was not a career path for a respectable young woman, or so she had been told. There was no way that her parents would allow her to set out on her own path. They wanted her to serve them by marrying someone who could help her father’s career, or – failing that – to die an old maid. Gwen couldn’t expect anything better from life, magic or no magic. For a highly intelligent young woman, it promised to be a fate worse than death.

Morrison cleared his throat again. “Please pay attention to me, Lady Gwen,” he said. “I still have to cover the aftermath of the rebellion in the colonies.”

“I am paying attention to you,” Gwen said. She gave him a smile that should have chilled his blood. “You’re very…interesting to watch.”

“I just said that you had a leg growing out of your chest,” Morrison said, with some irritation.

“I thought you were being metaphorical,” Gwen said. Her smile widened, to the point where Morrison looked away, unable to meet her gaze. There was a reason Gwen hadn’t been allowed to go to school, even the expensive finishing schools that turned young ladies brains into mush. Her father knew better than to turn her loose on other young ladies, or tutors who couldn’t devote all of their time to her. “It was an interesting parable to the case of the Americans…”

“It was not,” Morrison said, hotly. He was only a year or two older than her, but he was already schooled in not allowing his betters to irritate him. It was just a shame that he hadn’t met anyone like Gwen before. “You’re not paying attention to me.”

Gwen sighed inwardly and drew on her powers. Her skin seemed to glow with bright light, before flames appeared around her, illuminating her body. Morrison stumbled backwards in shock, one hand reaching for the decanter of water before he caught himself. To someone utterly unfamiliar with magic, it would have looked if Gwen had spontaneously burst into flames. The heat would scorch the chair, the table and Morrison himself if he got too close.

He stared at her for a long moment, and then almost ran out of the door. Gwen watched him go, slowly pulling the magic back inside herself. It wasn’t his fault, she told herself, even though part of her felt a guilty thrill at how she’d scared him half to death. He was just her mother’s tool in the endless battle to turn Gwen into a proper young lady, one who could make her mother proud. But a life spent as the wife and helpmeet of a suitably aristocratic young man was Gwen’s worst nightmare.

She pulled herself to her feet and headed over to the desk. Morrison had left his books behind him and she opened one of them at random. At least he hadn’t been
that
bad a history teacher. History was also not a subject for young ladies, but her mother had reluctantly agreed to allow her to study it in exchange for an hour’s practice with the harp every day. Music was
the
thing in High Society these days and a young woman who could play was assured of finding a husband, or so Lady Mary believed. Gwen doubted that anyone could play the harp well enough for a prospective husband to overlook her other failings.

The book was written in dull tones, somehow sucking the excitement out of the Anglo-Spanish War of 1799, yet Gwen was midway through a description of the Battle of Cuba when the door burst open and Lady Mary stormed into the room. Gwen’s mother had the same blonde hair as her daughter but, where Gwen was slim, her mother was alarmingly fat and energetic. Lady Mary had always said that she’d married beneath herself, even if Lord Rudolph had been an up and coming politician in government. The Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs wasn’t exactly a powerless post.

“Gwen,” her mother snapped. “What did you do to poor Henry?”

Gwen sighed inwardly. Her mother always brought out the worst in her. “I was bored, mother,” she said, sardonically. “His lessons were driving me insane.”