Sorcerer to the Crown (Sorcerer Royal, #1)

by Zen Cho

“He might as well seek to persuade us that a pig can fly—or a woman do magic!” The friend observed that so could pigs fly, if one could be troubled to make them. “Oh certainly!” replied the first. “And one could teach a woman to do magic, I suppose, but what earthly good would a flying pig or a magical female be to anyone?”

scarlet. Lady Wythe’s eyes were damp, and her nose reddish, for to her own vexation she always wept when she was angry.

fact. Perhaps there had lurked in him the old childhood worry, that if he did not make every effort to please—if he showed any sign of being less than his benefactor desired—he might find he was no longer wanted. But death, in its backhanded kindness, had torn that ancient fear from him, even as it had robbed Lady Wythe of her chief support, and Zacharias of the man he had esteemed most in the world.

“Very well!” said Sir Stephen. “You know I like nothing so well as to be asked my opinion.

profession. In truth magic had always had a slightly un-English character, being unpredictable, heedless of tradition and profligate with its gifts to high and low.

In the common way of men, Cullip’s guilt led him to resent Zacharias for having been kinder to him than he deserved, and Zacharias had no wish to increase the ill feeling between them.

worth. Till then your only defence against impertinence must be patience and courtesy. By such means you may win your enemies over—but it is certain you cannot afford the alternative.”

Cullip was already so purple from claret and temper that he could not turn redder,

Geoffrey Midsomer had recently returned from a year’s sojourn at the Fairy Court, against all expectations, for visits by seemly young gentlemen to the Fairy Queen were rarely curtailed by anything short of their demise.

but he had never managed to inspire in anyone a serious suspicion that he was capable of magic.

“But Prunella, think of the state of the attics!” said Mrs. Daubeney. “You know I said we should be sorry if we did not make haste to clear out the attics, and now here we are, with the Sorcerer Royal nearly upon us, and the attics uncleared!”

If she were a man she might be a thaumaturge, and employ her magical abilities to good purpose. Since she was a female of gentle birth, however, she could not, in propriety, employ her magical talent to any purpose. If she could not marry, her best hope of establishing herself lay in teaching other females afflicted with magical ability how best to avoid using it.

WHEN Prunella entered the classroom, Clarissa Midsomer was trying to bang Emily Villiers’s head against a desk. Emily was resisting this, screeching in a manner fit to bring the ceiling down. “That is quite enough of that!” said Prunella, pushing between the combatants.

It was not a serious question. The girls were given a serviceable education in thaumaturgical history, which contained so many instructive examples of the unfortunate consequences of women’s practising magic: Queen Mary’s horrific blood magics among them, and the outbreak of untrammelled witchery that had caused such chaos in the Middle Ages.

Magic was too strong a force for women’s frail bodies—too potent a brew for their weak minds—and so, especially at a time when everyone must be anxious to preserve what magical resource England still possessed, magic must be forbidden to women.

“She ought to pick better-humoured girls to instruct, or at least teach them to avoid politics once she has them,” Prunella said to herself. “Mrs. D is always saying that a female ought not to know what to think about anything, but ought to do that prettily. Not but what she is shockingly bad at that herself!”

it. “Doubtless it would take a vast time to puzzle out”—(letters were not Prunella’s strong point)—“most likely it is nothing worth reading—scribbles about his day, and what he ate, and what the weather was like.”

imagine—unless it were the cooks, maids, charwomen, herbwives, and other females of the lower classes, who were permitted to practise their craft in peace, because they employed it for the benefit of their betters.

Her silence discomfited Mrs. Daubeney. She was genuinely fond of Prunella, and felt she had been forbearing. Any other woman in her position would have conceded to the Midsomers’ demands, rather than offering them a compromise with which they were only half-satisfied. No doubt Prunella was put out, but she was really very fortunate, and must be taught to take the correct view of the affair.

A woman possessed of a key to magic, however—a woman who might at her pleasure grant or withhold men’s access to power—that was a different matter! Such a woman need never worry about poverty or obscurity.

Receiving no better response to her brave sallies than “Indeed, yes. No. I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Daubeney had finally retired from the field, and waited out the dinner in stony silence.

Sir Stephen was surprised, though he was intimately familiar with the zeal for reform that lurked, unsuspected, within Zacharias. He had done his best to curb these instincts, and when the young Zacharias had protested, “Why, sir, you are a reformer yourself!” he had replied placidly, “But you have not my advantages, you know. Besides, I know my limits, my dear fellow—I know my limits!”

YOU should certainly include a chapter on goety,” said Sir Stephen.

“This is what comes of being acquainted only with missish London females,” said Sir Stephen, who had, not an hour ago, been inveighing against teaching women any magic, for fear it should be too much for them. “Childbirth is no very delicate process, and it is women who lay out the dead, so pray include the study of necromancy, and let us have no more argument. If you insist on instructing females it must be a comprehensive education, and no magical education can be complete without imparting a proper understanding of the darker arts.”

comment. “How did you contrive to enter this room?” “I turned left before the stairs, and opened the second door,” said Prunella. “The maid’s directions were clear enough, and there are not so many rooms that one is easily lost.”

Nothing needed less explanation to Zacharias than a professed love of magic and a desire to know more of it.

Zacharias looked at her in surprise. But he could not fail to understand her meaning. Prunella was not nearly so dark as he—perhaps Sultan Ahmad would not recognise her as anything but a European—but to Zacharias, and more importantly, to any Englishman or -woman, it was evident that she was not—could not be—altogether English.

emancipated. Sir Stephen had got around to signing the necessary papers when Zacharias turned thirteen—a curious birthday present for a thirteen-year-old boy.

There was an undertone in her voice that made Zacharias glance warily at her, but Prunella knew her audience. Mrs. Daubeney was too wound up to take any notice of her interjections.

Zacharias nodded, though he felt wretchedly uncomfortable. Having set his hand to the plough, however, he could hardly turn back.

It required a rapid readjustment of her notions for Mrs. Daubeney to absorb the idea of Prunella as the honoured guest of Lady Maria Wythe. In justice to Mrs. Daubeney’s heart, however—a genuine living, beating article, even if it was on occasion shouted down by her head—not two minutes had passed before she had assimilated the idea, and began to think it an excellent thing for dear Prunella. There was no doubt it was to Mrs. Daubeney’s credit that it had happened, and Prunella ought to be grateful to her for this sudden elevation.

“I do not deny she is a bold-faced hussy,” though Sir Stephen spoke more admiringly than not.

To her surprise Prunella found that she was still attached to Mrs. Daubeney. She would never trust her again—no! But one could nonetheless be very fond of someone in whom one had no confidence whatsoever.

It might serve for a time, but I could not sustain it for long; indeed, I would not wish to. I must make as good a fist of being female as I can, and secure my position by the means permitted to my sex. What could not I accomplish with the support of an indulgent and monied husband? I fancy I should like patronising a girls’ school. I could set up as a rival to Mrs. D, and hire poor Miss Liddiard and the rest, and let the girls work as many enchantments as they desired.

If Zacharias’s air of melancholy increased his appeal to susceptible young ladies, a relaxation in that melancholy scarcely injured it.

Zacharias observed to his relief that there seemed to be limitations to the concern a man could feel at the burdens loaded upon him. His organ of anxiety was already so exercised that this new complication only provoked irritation.

Not that there is much sense in it, for I believe this man is saying he thinks familiars come from Heaven, not Fairyland at all, thought Prunella. Which I think must be blasphemy, and I know is silliness!

The thaumaturge who had spoken first hesitated. “Yes?” he said, but another said at the same time:

Midsomer had not thought to receive anything but unwavering courtesy from a Sorcerer Royal he had repeatedly insulted. He had no more expected such plain speech from Zacharias than he would have accepted a pert answer from his black footman.

“Very right too. It is a just punishment for your officious interference in other people’s affairs.”

The employment of familiars is all very well for infidels, I suppose, and you are a godless creature enough, Prunella.” Prunella acceded to this description of herself cheerfully: “I had no one to teach me better, you see.”

“So you have found someone to teach you worse!” said Mak Genggang. “Well, you are a pretty, insinuating child, and you will come to a bad end, no doubt.” But she spoke with grudging approval. Mak Genggang might decry Prunella’s ways all she liked, but the same disregard of order and authority which Prunella possessed animated Mak Genggang’s own heart.

dormitories—but it hit Zacharias full in the face. He tripped over a chair and fell on the floor, noting as he went the clever design of the spell.

It was a charming scene. It was also unprecedented in the history of Britain. In one fell stroke Prunella had become the most powerful sorcerer who had ever lived.

“You must not let him persuade you to do anything you dislike,” she said. An extraordinary noise issued from the long-suffering Zacharias. “I, compel Miss Gentleman to do what she would not like to do!”

two. But first I must know what lies I am to tell them. Who is this girl?

“Oh!” The glowing topaz of the dragon’s eye swung closer to Zacharias. The pupil was a narrow black slit like a cat’s. “Why, you are the new Sorcerer Royal! How very droll! I must say you are much handsomer than I expected. Some of the Sorcerers Royal I have seen I would have eaten in the egg.”

“It would be an end to all peace if they returned,” he said, with a sigh. “We should give them our first-born child if that would persuade them to stay away. Indeed, we made the offer, but they would not look at poor Cuthbert. No, you will have to make do without fresh magic, Mr. Wythe,

“All that is needed is for a gentlemanlike creature of independent means to fall violently in love with me,” she declared. “Then he will not give a fig if I have a duke for a father, or no father at all. And I do not see why I should not persuade at least one gentleman to fall in love with me—indeed, I hope to persuade several!” She was a protégé after Damerell’s own heart.

“I shall not soon stop being pretty and saucy,” she explained, “so I need not worry about losing the interest of the gentlemen. But I must have the good opinion of the women, for their word is all the capital I have, and I am lost if they take it into their heads to disapprove of me.”