Free Necropolis (Royal Sorceress Book 3) by Christopher Nuttall

free will, you will be made to help us.”
    “You wouldn’t have such a precise control over my gift,” Olivia said, bracing herself for the beating she was sure would come. Gwen had forbidden her from ever using her talents without direct orders from her or Lord Mycroft. She’d heard stories of Necromancers who had practiced on dead rats and insects, but she’d never disobeyed Gwen’s orders. “If you warped me into your slave, you wouldn’t be able to control it.”
    “I imagined you would need more ... convincing,” Gregory said. He grinned at her – the most disconcerting expression she’d yet seen – and then turned and led her towards the door in the far wall. “Let me show you something of what we’re doing here.”
    Olivia hesitated, but a push from Ivan sent her forward. The smell grew stronger as Gregory opened the door and led the way into a much larger room, crammed with beds and tables. A dull moaning noise filled her ears as she saw men and women lying naked on the beds, tied down with solid chains. They were muttering endlessly in Russian, their bodies twisting and turning as they struggled against their chains. She stopped dead, feeling revolted; she’d heard stories of bedlams in Britain, but surely they weren’t as horrific as the sight before her now.
    “Good, good,” Gregory called, addressing a pale-skinned woman wearing a white gown and a cold dead expression. “I think that last one is showing signs of improvement.”
    The nurse eyed him blankly, then leaned over one of the prisoners and injected her with a noxious-looking liquid. The thrashing girl started to babble in Russian, then urinated helplessly on the bed. Olivia stumbled backwards, horrified and disgusted. Only Ivan’s grip on her arm kept her from running out of the door and trying to escape. Instead, she was pushed through the ward and into the next set of rooms.
    “It is our task to unlock the secrets of magic,” Gregory said, as he closed the door behind them. The moans, screams and endless muttering cut off abruptly. “Those who have gifts can either serve the Father Tsar or wind up here, having their gifts examined. Sometimes we learn something truly interesting.”
    He smiled, then waved them into the room. Instead of living victims, it held dead bodies in various stages of dissection. A handful of men in white robes moved from body to body, carefully drawing samples of blood and brain tissue from the corpses before shipping them onwards to an unknown destination. Olivia had thought herself no stranger to dead bodies – she’d seen more than her share before she’d discovered the true nature of her magic – but this was truly revolting. It reminded her of the story of the doctor who had hired footpads to waylay and kill people for him to dissect in front of his students. She had never been quite sure if there was any truth in it, but she’d seen enough horror to suspect it might be true.
    “There are changes in the brain tissue when someone becomes a magician,” Gregory informed her. He sounded pleased as they walked through the room and passed through a third door. “Some of the stronger magicians may actually have to adapt their brains to handle their powers – and if they fail, they are killed by their own magic.”
    Olivia shuddered. Some of the students at Cavendish Hall had been taken to the bedlam nearby, where they’d been shown magicians who had been driven mad by their own powers and had to be confined for their own safety. Most of them were Talkers, their powers so strong that they couldn’t prevent themselves from reading every mind in range ... and were completely incapable of separating out their own thoughts from everyone else’s. It would be more merciful, she suspected, to kill them outright. They had no hope of ever leading a normal life.
    Gregory smiled at her. “We take samples from magicians and insert them into non-magicians, just to see what will happen,” he said, as they