The Royal Sorceress by Christopher Nuttall Read Free Book Online

walked out of the other end a labourer, carrying the cloak under one arm. It wouldn’t arouse suspicion; anyone who saw it would think that it was a blanket, like the one carried by many homeless men who had found themselves trapped in London. Jack’s lips twitched as he smelt the stench of alcohol and tobacco smoke outside a pub. The working men would be inside, having a few pints before they returned home to their wives. Their pay packets, meagre as they were, would be depleted quite a bit before they left the pub. Jack knew that their children would be lucky to survive the coming winter. It had only been last year that London had suffered an outbreak of cholera and hundreds of the urban poor had died.
    The streets were still alive with people, although many of the shops were closing before the drunkards started pouring out of the pubs. He saw a little girl selling matches and another girl selling flowers and felt his heart break, just before he saw what had to be their older sister, who was selling herself. The poor often had no recourse but to sell their children into slavery, or worse. Few of them could be proud when they lived permanently on the edge of starvation. He caught sight of a black-clad preacher and scowled inwardly. The Church railed against the desperate straits of the poor, but it rarely did anything effective to help. And its preachers claimed tithes from those who could scarcely afford to pay.
    He wandered down the darkest streets, waiting for what he knew would happen. There was no point in going to any of the addresses he’d known last time he’d been in London. His friends would be long gone. The Bow Street Runners turned a blind eye to prostitution, gambling and drinking – at least when the Church wasn’t breathing down their necks – but they broke up socialist meetings with great energy. His old friends would be well hidden. It didn’t matter that much. He would find someone who would know where they were, or knew someone who would know. It was very difficult to hide in London if one wanted to run a criminal or underground enterprise.
    The touch, when it came, was so light that he would have missed it altogether if he hadn’t been waiting for it. His hand snapped down and caught the hand of a grubby little street urchin who had been trying to pick his pocket – and the wallet Jack had placed inside, knowing that it would tempt someone to try his luck. The child struggled against his grip, but couldn’t break free as Jack hauled him into the alleyway. No one would notice, or care if they did. There were hundreds of children running wild on London’s streets. The lucky ones died early, before they matured.
    He used a touch of magic as he gripped the boy’s shirt and lifted him into the air. It would seem an impressive demonstration of strength to anyone without the ability to sense magic. The child kicked and struggled, but it was useless. Up close, he stank of the streets, a stench that would put the hardiest of souls to flight. It was self-protection as much as anything else, but it still disgusted him. How could anyone live like that?
    The boy – no; he looked at the face and realised that he was holding a girl, dressed as a boy – stopped struggling and stared at him. Jack read hopelessness in her gaze, the awareness that her luck had run out. If he handed her over to the Bow Street Runners, she would be condemned to transportation as convict labour, if she were lucky. And there were people who had far darker ideas about what to do with a young girl. She couldn’t be older than eight, perhaps nine, but her eyes were already old. Jack knew she would be lucky to survive into her teens.
    “You tried to steal from me,” he said, evenly.
    “I didn’t mean to, master,” the girl pleaded. Her attempt at producing a masculine voice wasn’t perfect, but it would probably fool someone in the dark. It had been a long time since Jack had visited the places where the street children