Necropolis (Royal Sorceress Book 3) (26 page)

There was no one in the corridor between Romulus’ room and Raechel’s suite, much to Gwen’s relief. Inside, Raechel looked up as soon as they entered, her face pale and worried. Gwen wondered, suddenly, just what Lady Standish had said to her niece, perhaps a stern warning against contaminating the maids or even just an order to keep Gwen with her in future. At least Raechel didn’t look to have been beaten herself. She just looked worried.

“Your Aunt wasn’t happy with me,” she said, as soon as she’d checked that they were unobserved. “And I have to stay with you, for the moment.”

“Then we will have to wander the palace together,” Raechel said. She paused, looking down at Gwen. “Are you alright?”

“Magic makes it easier to recover,” Gwen said. It was true enough – and she had a feeling she didn’t want to call Romulus’ mercy to anyone’s attention. “What about you?”

“She just told me off for not keeping an eye on you,” Raechel said. She stood and looked at Gwen. “What do you want to do now?”

“I have to teach you some techniques that might help you keep your thoughts under control,” Gwen said. Someone without magic couldn’t hope to shield their thoughts completely, but they could detect an intrusion and force the spy out. “You never know who might be listening to your thoughts.”

Raechel paled. “I always thought my Aunt knew what I was thinking.”

“I doubt it,” Gwen said. If Raechel’s thoughts were no cleaner than her actions, her Aunt would probably have sent her to a convent by now. There had been one case of a mother reading her children’s minds, one that had ended very badly. “But there are others here who might take a peek into your mind.”

“No,” Raechel said. She paused. “Can
you
do that?”

“Not very well,” Gwen admitted. “I can read emotions, but not thoughts.”

Raechel eyed her, nervously. “You could be lying,” she said. “Or trying to reassure me.”

“I’m not lying,” Gwen said, defensively. She understood precisely how the girl felt, but it was annoying to be accused of something she considered immoral. “Besides, Talkers often have problems coping with more than one or two people close to them at any one time.”

She pulled Raechel over to the carpeted floor, then sat down and crossed her legs. “The key to detecting someone trying to intrude upon your thoughts,” she explained as Raechel sat down, “is to monitor your own thoughts carefully. One must be completely aware of one’s self to detect thoughts and feelings that are not yours. You must become aware of your own mind.”

“I think, therefore I am,” Raechel said. “Or is that the wrong way to go about it.”

Gwen took Raechel’s hands in hers, then smiled. “Close your eyes,” she ordered, “and start breathing regularly, in and out, in and out.”

Raechel giggled. “This feels silly,” she said. “And how will I know if it works?”

“It takes practice,” Gwen agreed. “And it takes more practice to monitor your shields in the midst of a distraction. If someone is talking to you, your mind will be on them, rather than on yourself.”

She paused. “Breathe in ... and breathe out. Breathe in ... and breathe out.”

Irene had told her, back when she’d started more advanced lessons, that there were people who never truly mastered any form of mental discipline. The extroverts like Raechel – and Gwen herself, to some degree – had too many problems maintaining their thoughts in order when they were constantly responding and reacting to the world around them. But Raechel seemed to be managing just fine. Maybe all she needed was a little encouragement.

Gwen squeezed her hand lightly, then opened her mouth. “I’m going to try to touch your mind very lightly,” she warned. “When you feel me, I want you to squeeze my hand. Don’t open your eyes and don’t try to speak. Just concentrate on monitoring your own thoughts.”

She frowned as she saw Raechel stiffen. It wasn’t a surprise – few people liked the thought of having their mind read – but it ensured that Raechel would have to start meditating again from the beginning. Gwen sighed, then carefully talked her back into the semi-trance and then reached out with her mind. Raechel was a glowing ball of emotions and thoughts, all seemingly jumbled together. It would take time and practice for her to school her mind long enough to detect an intrusion.

Gwen let out a gasp as she sensed a sudden wave of emotions, followed by garbled thoughts that refused to resolve in her mind. Raechel’s grip tightened suddenly – Gwen winced in pain – then relaxed; there was a sudden flood of triumph in her mind. Gwen managed to refrain from pointing out that a skilled Talker would already have been monitoring her thoughts for information before she noticed his presence. Irene would probably have learned whatever she wanted to learn and then withdrawn without being detected.

“Not bad, for a first try,” she said, instead. “But we are going to have to do this again and again until you have mastered it completely.”

Raechel leaned forward. “Who’s the mind-reader?”

Gwen lifted her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

“You wouldn’t be doing this if there wasn’t some reason to worry,” Raechel said. Her voice hardened with anger and a kind of bitter helplessness. “Who might be poking into my thoughts?”

“You remember those dark-clad men around the Tsar?” Gwen asked. She didn’t want to mentioned Simone, not now. “At least two of them were magicians. I suspect they were doing more than just broadcasting mental static to ensure that no one read the Tsar’s mind.”

She shuddered at the memory of watching the monks praying to the picture of the Tsar, wondering just what that portended. Talkers made everyone uncomfortable, even British Ministers. The strongest laws on the books were intended to deal with Talkers as well as Necromancers, although Talkers were far more useful. Did the Tsar make the monks so faithful to him in the hopes of ensuring they didn’t abuse their positions?

“I asked Adam about them,” Raechel said. She looked oddly embarrassed. “You know what he told me?”

Gwen shook her head, impatiently.

“He said they castrated themselves,” Raechel said. She flushed, then giggled. “Can you imagine? They cut off their own manhoods just to serve the Tsar!”

“I’ve seen stupider things,” Gwen said. She frowned. “And
Adam
?”

“I thought I should try to see what he could tell me,” Raechel said. “And I didn’t give him anything more than a smile.”

“Good thinking,” Gwen said, hoping that no one tried to read Raechel’s mind. She knew far too much. “And ...”

There was a sharp tap at the door. Gwen hesitated, then hurried over to her bed and lay down on it, face down. Raechel frowned after her, then opened the door. Her Aunt stood outside, glaring around the palace as if she owned it. For a dreadful moment, Gwen was convinced she wanted to see the scars. But instead she just looked at Raechel.

“Your Uncle and his staff have been invited to Moscow,” she said. “We will be leaving tomorrow morning. You will be woken early in the morning and you will be ready to leave on time. I will not have you embarrassing me any further.”

“Yes, Auntie,” Raechel said.

“And Gwen can get back to work,” Lady Standish added. “She’s had long enough to recover.”

“
Yes
, Auntie,” Raechel said. “Bye, Auntie.”

She closed the door in her Aunt’s face and turned around. “I hate her, sometimes,” she said, to Gwen. “She’s such a ... a bore!”

“It could be worse,” Gwen said, as she sat upright. If Lord Standish was going to Moscow, it suggested he hadn’t rejected the Russian proposal out of hand. “Believe me, it could be a great deal worse.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

W
e have something quite special for you today,” Gregory said, as Ivan led Olivia down into the experimental chambers. “I want you to watch and be ready to assist us, if necessary.”

Olivia scowled at him, bitterly. She’d spent the last few days trying to convince Ivan that the experiments would end in disaster, but the Russian had been reluctant to abandon his loyalty to the Tsar, even if he did think the
Skoptzi
monks were making a dreadful mistake. He’d taken care of her, played chess and cards with her, yet he hadn’t
listened
to her. It was utterly frustrating and the growing whispering in her head only made matters worse.

“And what,” she asked finally, “are you trying to do?”

The Russian smiled at her, the gleam of madness clearly visible in his eyes. She’d seen enough of his experiments through the eyes of the undead to understand just how far he was prepared to go, but the ultimate objective of his research defeated her. He’d injected undead tissue into living subjects, attempted to torture one of the undead, which had been a pointless waste of time, and hundreds of other experiments. And, throughout them all, he’d kept smiling. He genuinely believed they were moving closer and closer to a breakthrough.

“The undead will have a new member today,” Gregory said, finally. “We will see if they can use a magician’s powers, if that magician becomes one of the undead.”

Ivan saw her flinch and looked at her, oddly. “Do you already know the answer?”

Olivia shook her head. As far as she knew, the undead in London hadn’t bitten or consumed any magicians, although it was quite likely that they had. But there had been no evidence of the undead using any powers, apart from their natural aggression and growing levels of intelligence. They didn’t seem to have access to the powers their victims had once possessed ... or so she thought. It was quite possible that they’d never worked out how to use the powers.

“Then we shall see,” Gregory said. He turned and opened a door that led down to the cells, then plucked an oil lamp from the walls and walked down the stairs. Olivia followed him, picking her way down the stone stairs carefully. She’d already slipped once and the Russians had laughed at her. “Let us see what we have here.”

He’d stopped outside one of the cells. Olivia followed his gaze and saw a young girl with dirty-blonde hair, lying on the bed with a drugged expression on her face. Merely
looking
at the girl made her feel queasy, as if she was staring at something fundamentally
wrong
. There was a gasp behind her, followed by one of the guards turning and running back up the stairs, fleeing for his life. The girl turned her head to look at Olivia and smiled, very slowly. There was something about the smile that made Olivia want to run too.

“She’s quite a curious specimen,” Gregory said. “We found her on the streets, running her own gang of youths. They were all terrified of her, not without reason. It took fifty men to exterminate them and take her alive.”

He barked a command in Russian. The cell door was opened and the girl dragged out by two of the guards. She made no attempt at resistance. All she did was smile at them, as if her mind was gone. The guards still seemed nervous even to touch her, as if they were handling a poisonous snake or something that might explode at any second. Up close, she smelt of blood and shit and piss, just like someone from the streets of London. Olivia shuddered, remembering that she too had smelt like that, once upon a time.

“Her powers are odd,” Gregory continued. “When we had her here, she actually started to influence the guards. Some of them were made to commit embarrassing acts for her amusement, others were forced to wound themselves or even attack their fellows. Even drugged, she has an influence on the world around her. We don’t understand why.”

Olivia shivered, remembering one of the few times she’d seen Gwen genuinely angry. Two of the boys from Cavendish Hall had been caught in one of the local opium dens, drugged to the eyeballs and their powers spinning out of control. Doctor Norwell had speculated, afterwards, that perhaps they could unlock deeper magic through using drugs to decouple a person’s mind from reality, but Gwen had forbidden all such experiments. Perhaps, she wondered as the girl was hustled down the corridor, she was seeing the result of something similar.

The whispering at the back of her head suddenly grew louder as they stepped into a room holding one of the undead, locked in a cage. Olivia’s vision seemed to blur for a long moment, giving her the odd sense that she was looking at herself through the eyes of one of the undead; she staggered and almost hit the floor. Ivan caught her, then looked over at Gregory and the guards. The girl was being pushed into the cage.

Olivia saw her chance and reached out with her mind, trying to trigger the undead into action. It lunged forward with terrifying speed, ignoring the girl in its desperate haste to get at the guards. Two of them were ripped apart within seconds, but the remaining guards ran forward and used prods to shove the undead back into the cage. Olivia moaned in pain as the beast howled in rage, then fell on the girl. There was a long moment when the girl seemed to be trying to hold it back, before the undead lunged at her. The girl’s neck was rapidly bitten and she sank to the floor, dying.

“Take control of her,” Gregory ordered. He knew that she
could
control the undead, at least to some extent. “Take control of her and use her powers.”

Olivia hesitated, then forced her mind into the girl’s body. The dark power that lay behind Necromancy was already spreading through her, an infection that drew on her remaining life force and used it to convert her into one of the undead. There was a sudden surge of thoughts and feelings – the girl had flown once, Olivia realised – and then there was nothing, but the darkness of death ... and the feelings of the undead. The girl pulled herself to her feet and stared at her captors, now on the other side of the bars. Olivia saw herself looking at her and felt her head swimming.

“Use her powers,” Gregory ordered. “Make her do something.”

Olivia tried, but she honestly wasn’t sure what she was doing. And what
was
the girl, anyway? Influencing people suggested a Charmer – there were Charmers in many criminal gangs, pulling the strings from behind the scenes – but the way she’d used her powers was nothing like Ivan or any of the other Charmers she had met. And if she’d flown ... it suggested multiple powers. And multiple powers meant a Master Magician.