Chapter 1

1

Aster

Woolwich, March 1812

“Dougal, your breath could incapacitate a vampyre.”

The noxious odour assaulted Aster’s nose and roused her from sleep. It was so foul she suspected even a creature that flouted the laws of Nature would have been stopped in its tracks. She screwed up her face and rolled over, but the smell leapt over her and continued its assault. “Honestly, your breath could be a secret weapon against the French and their undead warriors. No need for cannon, just equip each man at the front with his own Dougal.”

Although, she’d heard the French ingested large amounts of garlic, so perhaps that would be an antidote to Dougal’s breath? Either way, she could take it no longer. She pushed Dougal away, but the irritating creature kept licking at her exposed flesh.

The wet raspy tongue made her sit up. “Dougal, no! I don’t want whatever foul concoction you have eaten all over my hands.”

The little Scottish terrier cocked his head to one side. He tried to blink away the long black hair obscuring his vision, but it didn’t work. He yapped and went back to licking Aster.

“Why exactly do I share a home with you?” she asked the tenacious canine. A rhetorical question, since Dougal was certain of his place in Aster’s affections, based on his obvious magnificence and ability to wake her early in the morning. Light had only just begun to sneak between the curtains and creep across the floor. Its path illuminated the worn timbers and faded rug she’d bought to add some warmth for her toes in winter.

The landlady had almost denied Aster a room, not wanting a filthy dog in her house—a somewhat ironic stance, given the sad state of the establishment. Then Dougal had bounced off with a bark and a snarl, and returned a minute later with a very dead rat between his jaws. His ability to sniff out and deal with the rodent population had earned him, and Aster, a roof over their heads and a small space to call their own. That was two years ago, but little had changed in their daily routine since. The orderly days soothed some part of Aster’s mind. Their life might not be exciting, but it was predictable and simple.

“Come along, then.” She rose from bed and stretched.

She pushed aside the curtains to admit the dawn, and cast an eye over her room. The single bed was up against one wall. Spread over it was a quilt in shades of green and pink, made from leftover scraps purchased cheaply from a local seamstress. Against the wall opposite the bed stood a wardrobe. Its dark wood and ornately carved panels made it look like it belonged elsewhere; Aster suspected the landlady had found it discarded outside a much grander house. A lone maidenhair fern sat on a dresser, injecting a spot of greenery to the décor. A pile of books rested on the floor next to the bed. Their edges were lined up exactly, and all their spines faced the same way. At the top of the pile was the recent novel by A. Lady,

Sense and Sensibility

. Not exactly high literature, but Aster couldn’t help dreaming of her own quiet hero who would one day cast longing looks her way.

At twenty-two, Aster had no one in the world to support her, and no family to worry over her. There was no warm country home to shelter her, nor a dowry to entice some capable lad to offer for her hand. Only by dint of her intelligence did she keep herself from the poorhouse or other less salubrious occupations. She well understood the forces that drove other women to sell their bodies; one winter she had teetered on that edge herself.

Her decision not to pursue the oldest occupation was a practical one—Aster just didn’t think she would fetch much of a price. What man would pay for her angular body, plain face, and lack of experience? She would have to bore the other party with a multitude of questions about what exactly he intended to place where. Far better to use the gift God had endowed her with: her mind.

Serendipity had intervened that frigid night when an elderly gentleman dropped a parcel near where Aster and Dougal were sheltering in a doorway. When she returned the wrapped package, the subsequent lively conversation—about what kinds of creatures lurked in the dark—prompted him to extend an offer of employment. An elderly mage in frail health, he needed a secretary who could answer his correspondence but who was unafraid of a mystical employer. Some years later, his letter of recommendation had been pivotal in securing her current role.

Dougal had been an extravagance and another mouth to feed. Yet the day she’d spotted the scruffy black pup sticking out of a basket on the roadside, she couldn’t walk away. Her heart ached for another creature to share her life with, and the little terrier brought joy into her darkest moments—not to mention warmth during those long nights she’d slept outside, and protection from the beings that scuttled about in the night. She could never begrudge the meals she shared with him, even if he did wake her early by breathing

eau de rat

over her face.

She ruffled his fur and then dressed quickly. Winter lingered in the morning chill pervading her room, and her teeth were chattering by the time she’d donned a sturdy brown cotton dress and pulled on woollen stockings. With Dougal at her heels, she headed down the rickety stairs to the overgrown garden out back. While the dog cavorted and explored the wilderness, Aster went back inside to the kitchen for a bowl of porridge. No other tenant had yet roused. Some of the other women were shop girls or seamstresses, and they kept slightly later hours. She helped herself from the pot on the stove and warmed her hands around the bowl. Her rent paid for two meals a day; it was plain food, but enough to sustain her.

While the boarding house looked neglected from the outside, inside was a tightly run ship. All the rooms and the kitchen were clean, the girls were expected to be respectable, and lively conversations kept the shades from lingering in the corners.

Aster kept her own company, and having different working hours to the other girls made that easier. She had tried in her awkward way to befriend the others, but they giggled behind their hands and she lost patience with their inane chatter. While she smiled and could exchange a few pleasant words, none of the women had ever settled into friendship with her.

Perhaps her inability to acquire or maintain female friends meant she was defective. She stared at the pine table and empty chairs. What would it be like to be surrounded by the bustle and noise of a large, friendly household? To share in laughter over a meal, or even to have companions with whom she could discuss the course of the war, literature, or politics?

No, she could no more imagine that than she could imagine life as a noblewoman, having her every need catered to. There were those in life destined for greatness, and those who would pass through the world and not leave the faintest shadow to show they’d ever been. Aster was the latter.

After a sustaining but somewhat bland breakfast consumed alone, she darted upstairs. She grabbed a grey wool redingote against the biting chill outside, her bonnet, and a pair of dark glasses to protect her sensitive eyes against the sun. Back in the yard she whistled for Dougal, who broke free from a dead shrub and shook a few leaves from his fur. With her constant companion at her feet, Aster set off at a brisk walk.

The role of secretary to Sir John Warrington of the Records Office within the Board of Ordnance might not sound exciting, but it provided a steady income to pay for her small room in the boarding house. Her wages kept food in her stomach and clothes on her back, and she had a tiny amount left over to stash away for her elderly years. The position also allowed Aster to indulge her love of puzzles and crosswords, a habit Sir John encouraged as he trained her in cryptography.

The Royal Arsenal was a huge, sprawling complex of buildings. Some housed the artillery and undertook the manufacturing of armaments. The Royal Carriage Department produced carriage guns. The War Mages, who crafted magic to aid England, had their own separate stone building with a permanent thundercloud tethered above it, which emitted the occasional lightning bolt. Further activity came from the Military Academy. Overall it was a bustling and industrious site. It even sported a huge open space used as a testing range for both physical and magical weapons, although it was mercifully quiet this morning.

Aster skirted the lively grounds and headed off to the southwest corner of the complex, where a lonely wooden one-storey building housed the records, stores, and Sir John.

As she pushed open the door to her domain, Aster was enveloped by quiet. Within, order governed, in contrast to the loud chaos outside. Books covered one wall, their spines aligned with regimental precision. The other wall was a honeycomb of small drawers, containing the collected knowledge of ordnances, down to how many pencils each enlisted man used to scratch out his letters home. Everything was detailed on cream cards within the little wooden drawers—thousands upon thousands of cards pressed tightly together. Having all that information at her fingertips soothed Aster. Like quiet music playing in the background, the ordered environment lulled her brain and washed away the discordant notes of the soldiers out in the yard.

Dougal trotted off to a basket behind her desk and under the window, where he turned three times before settling down. His head rested on his paws, and his large brown eyes watched his mistress as she removed her redingote and bonnet and hung them on a rack behind the door. Aster brushed out her skirts and surveyed her domain. It was a highly unusual place of employment for a woman, even though the army had a woman War Mage. Most on the base assumed Aster was a maid, if they ever thought about her at all.

It had been more than two years since she stood in the office and uttered the words, “Aster Simmons reporting for duty, Sir John.” At the time, she’d fought an overwhelming urge to salute him as a display of gratitude for the opportunity. It would have been a terribly inappropriate thing for a civilian to do, but the chance he extended her seemed to warrant it. Very few people would employ a woman unless she had otherworldly skills to offer. An ordinary woman in such a position of responsibility was extraordinary. Loyalty burned in her heart for Sir John, for hiring her based on her ability and disregarding her gender.

In Europe, the war raged against France. Though the Records Office was a tiny and unremarkable division within the Ordnance Office, they still played their role in supporting the army. Outwardly, they laboured quietly and unnoticed, maintaining all the army’s records and ordering new uniforms. They also had a covert task: deciphering enemy messages and reports.

The War Office funnelled more work to their door as they sought to understand and catalogue the Unnatural creatures that walked English soil. There was even a movement agitating for them to have all the rights of other Englishmen.

Their isolation from the rest of the base suited Aster, for the fewer the visitors to their little corner of the world, the fewer there were to remark upon or complain about the role she played. It gave her free range to delve into fiendish ciphers and to compile dossiers on the magical happenings that needed to be understood and harnessed for the war effort.

A cough from behind closed doors reminded Aster that her employer waited on the other side.

“Stay there, Dougal.” She raised a hand to reinforce the command, and began her morning routine.

The correspondence was collected from a locked box mounted on the wall next to the door. Then she headed to the small galley with its diminutive, chugging range, and set out a tea tray. Finally, she sorted the mail. Envelopes for Sir John were stacked neatly, all facing the same way. He was afflicted with the same need for order that Aster suffered, although to a far greater extent. At times his need for order crippled him and he was unable to continue his work until the perceived wrongs were righted. She had found him some mornings with a ruler in hand, crawling around the floor to ensure everything in his office was a certain distance from the walls or other pieces of furniture. She often wondered why he didn’t speak to one of the mages about casting an enchantment over his office so everything would return to its assigned spot if moved.

Tea tray in her hands, she pushed into the main office. “Good morning, Sir John.”

She crossed the dark patterned rug to his desk and placed the tray on one corner. Where her office was ordered, his was tightly regimented. The rug was in the exact middle of the room. Everything on his desk was one inch from the edge, and one inch from any other item. The books on his shelves were perfectly placed in descending order of height. When there were two books of equal height, they were shelved according to thickness of the spine. In the rare occasion of same height and same thickness, hue was the determinant for placement. Sir John became agitated if anything fell out of order. Luckily Aster understood the source of his discomfort, and had no issue maintaining strict control over the furniture.

“Good morning, Aster.” He raised his head and smiled. He had the most unusual eyes, so dark blue that they bordered on either black or violet, depending on the light. “I have another communiqué for you to puzzle over.” He pulled a wicker basket from the corner and flicked through the sheets it contained, then extracted one and held it out.

Aster swapped the teacup for the paper. The page was full of strange symbols. “A paragraph of standard text?” Her brain saw the spacing that defined words within the lines.

“Yes. I wager it will take you until Friday to translate.” The corners of his eyes wrinkled with a smile as he moved the basket back to its original position, and then frowned. The ruler came out as he measured each side and made minute adjustments to its placement.

She assessed the paragraph in her hand. Already the symbols swam before her vision, wanting to transform themselves into neatly ordered letters and words. This was the closest she came to possessing magic—being able to see the patterns in language. A one-letter word was either

a

or

I

. The most common three-letter word was

the

. These were clues that allowed a keen mind to chip away at the rest of a paragraph until the true meaning was revealed. “Two days.”

“Done,” he said, then waved her away. “No interruptions until two p.m. please, Aster. I am close with something and want to try to crack it before afternoon tea.”

She returned to her desk and the pile of tasks. Which to tackle first, the new cipher or the reports to catalogue and track the Unnaturals? She decided to work through the reports that had arrived overnight. It was slow work but some fascinating insights were developing. Aster found that wights, also known as ghosts or shades, had a higher concentration around mages, as though the magical work attracted wights like moths to a flame.

Aster laboured alone and rarely saw another person. Even her piles of dispatches were dropped in a locked box, without any human contact. Only the occasional mutter from behind Sir John’s closed doors, or the rustle of his papers, reminded her that she was not completely by herself. If a day passed and not another soul remarked on her existence, did she still live? Perhaps if no one ever noticed her, she would fade away and become just another shade haunting the earth. They were foolish thoughts, but they gnawed at her when loneliness pressed down.

Twice during the day she got up to stretch and take Dougal for a quick stroll. She nodded to the soldiers they passed, but didn’t stop to converse. She was not the sort of woman to attract the attention of men. She was long used to their gazes sliding over her, as though she were a ghost invisible to the living. Was it too much to ask for someone to see her, to acknowledge that she breathed and possessed a mind?

The day wore on until the light from the window faded to dusk and the pencilled words before her blended with the grey paper. Aster could linger no longer if she wanted to make it back to her room before full dark claimed the rural town. The work of the mages over hundreds of years had weakened and torn the veil between worlds, and unnatural creatures leaked into England and other countries. Aster had no desire to encounter such beings on her walk home—one never knew if they were harmless or malicious.

She rose from her desk, crossed to the double doors, and poked her head through.

Sir John was bent over his desk, a pencil in his hand as he scratched out words and started over, muttering to himself.

She coughed into her hand. “Goodnight, Sir John. I shall see you in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Aster. Don’t let the night wights bite,” he called without looking up. His sole focus lay on the document before him. His glasses rested perilously close to the end of his nose as he peered through the lenses.

She worried that the night wights would get

him

. He worked too many long hours and didn’t take care of himself, but she understood the lure that kept him there. Life offered him the same choice that lay before her: to keep one’s mind focused on a task, or return to an empty home.

On the street, she set a clipping pace and Dougal trotted to keep up. She kept her gaze set to the middle distance so as not to attract the attention of other pedestrians. Not that anyone would look her way, just one plain working girl scurrying home before the other working girls emerged.