A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians (The Shadow Histories, #1)

by H.G. Parry

exultant.

exchequer

“I was approached recently by a Mr. Thomas Clarkson,” Wilberforce admitted. “An unbraceleted Commoner, from Cambridge, about our age. He’s a passionate campaigner against—” “Slavery,” Pitt finished. He looked characteristically thoughtful. “I know of him, actually. He wrote an essay against the practice when he was at university, and found his own argument so convincing he devoted his life to abolition.”

“Which is why,” Pitt added, with a touch of embarrassment, “I gave your name to Clarkson when he wrote to me six months ago asking me to recommend someone who might be sympathetic to his cause.” Wilberforce stared at him. “You gave him my name?” “I mentioned it. I knew you already had an interest in the matter of magical legislation—ow!”

The third member, the alchemist, was more of a surprise. It was Thomas Clarkson.

There was nothing terribly unusual about the magic: alchemy was a common enough Inheritance, after all. But Pitt had spoken to Clarkson—often, in the months when Wilberforce had been ill. He would have sworn that Clarkson was a Commoner, with a few strains of latent magic that hadn’t awoken. Either he had been astonishingly unobservant, or something had changed that wasn’t supposed to be able to change.

The Mountain, Robespierre and Danton’s faction,

More troubling to Robespierre were the undesirable elements of the Mountain, those who gave their party a rather disreputable edge: Jean-Paul Marat, a druid strikingly disfigured by a curse that had gone awry, whose aggressive rhetoric chilled the blood of the most hardened Republicans; and Jacques Hébert, a fire-mage whose pamphlets were written in the language of the street and called for violence in the filthiest terms.

Across the room were Brissot’s supporters, the Girondins. They supported the war with Austria and had nearly all opposed the total freedom of magic that had won the day; even now, while they supported many of the same reforms as the Mountain, they sought to limit the magicians’ legal rights.

Power was entirely in the hands of the Mountain now. Within six days, the constitution that had been tossed back and forth between the Mountain and the Girondins for a year had been drafted, finalized, and set down as law. It was, as Robespierre had intended, the most democratic constitution the world had yet seen, and everybody knew that it was his. All men, regardless of class, were allowed to vote. State education and welfare assistance were promised to all. Total freedom of magic was acknowledged for the first time as a right of blood, regardless of class, race, or sex. After three exhausting years, the France in his head at last existed on paper and in law.