The Great Game (Royal Sorceress) by Christopher Nuttall Read Free Book Online

father hadn’t been so well-connected, Gwen might well have ended up a prisoner herself, drugged to keep her docile while she produced child after child until her body gave out. Hell, there had been no need, according to the files, to kidnap children. Poor parents of magical kids would have been happy to take a few coins in exchange for never having to see their witch-touched children again.
    And besides, losing one child might allow them to keep the rest alive.
    She turned and walked towards the entrance. The heavy wooden door had been left ajar, allowing her to step inside without hindrance. Inside, everything of value had been stripped from the walls; they’d even taken the carpet from the floors. The building felt as if it had been abandoned years ago, rather than a mere four months. It had taken that long to organise the distribution of the surviving women and children from the farms.
    The clerks who managed finances for the Corps had complained about the cost. Giving each magician a stipend to keep them loyal wasn’t too big a drain, it seemed, but ensuring that every woman from the farms didn’t have to go onto the streets was too much. Gwen had eventually ended up adding funds from Master Thomas’s legacy to ensure that the girls were safe, even though she’d been warned that most of them would probably lose it quickly. And many children had been left orphaned... she’d had to arrange for their adoption too. They’d be the last of the farm generation.
    She stopped outside an opened door and peered into the room. It was bare, apart from a single bed in one corner. Manacles hung from each corner, ready to hold someone down if they resisted... some of the girls, she’d read in the files, had been particularly determined to escape, even after the drugs and beatings. The chains looked strong enough to hold an elephant.
    Bracing herself, she opened her mind...
    The images assailed her at once, blasting through her mind so powerfully that they drove her to her knees. They blurred together into a single liturgy of horror and torment; there were so many of them that she couldn’t pick out specific images. If she’d been a Sensitive, she might have been driven mad by the exposure... as it was, it took her several minutes to bring her mind back under control. No wonder that so many Sensitives, particularly those who developed their powers in isolation, ended up in Bedlam. They didn’t stand a chance.
    Damn you , she thought. A very unladylike word – and one her mother would have slapped her for using, if she’d said it in public. How could you do this to anyone ?
    She walked through the rest of the building, keeping her mind tightly closed. Most of the beds had been abandoned, even the bedding, such as it was, had been left there. The women would have been permanently trapped, without even books to keep them distracted. She’d hated her life, hated the restrictions that being born female put on her, yet she’d been far luckier than the girls in the farm. They would have given their souls to trade places with her.
    Master Thomas had taught her to pay attention to small details. Something caught her eye as she glanced into the final room, drawing her towards the wall. Someone had chipped into the stone, bit by bit, a pair of names and a message. ALI AND PRU, 1827. GOD SAVE OUR SOULS. Gwen felt a lump in her throat as she stared down at the sole memento of two girls who had shared the room, both probably long dead by now, only remembered in the files. If they could write, no matter how badly, they might not have been lower class at all. Where had they come from?
    You can’t stay here , she told herself, angrily. The building was deserted. All that were left were the ghostly images burned into the surroundings, just waiting for a Sensitive to pick up.
    Carefully, feeling oddly unsteady, she walked back down to the lobby and closed her eyes, drawing on her magic. It swirled inside her, ready to be used, just like it