[English] THE BURNING SKY

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Her tone was even, but her eyes bore into his. He blamed his mother. By all means the Inquisitor should believe in Titus’s frivolousness, but for the fact that the late Princess Ariadne too had once been deemed docile—and had proved anything but.

“My grandfather’s field glass, of course.”

“Of course,” said the Inquisitor. “Your Highness’s vaulting range is commendable.”

“It runs in the family, but you are correct that mine is particularly extensive.”

His immodest self-congratulation brought a twitch to the Inquisitor’s face. Fortunately for him, the ability to vault was considered analogous to the ability to sing: a talent that had no bearing on a mage’s capacity for subtle magic.

“What do you think of the person who brought down the lightning bolt?” asked the Inquisitor.

“A person brought down the lightning?” He rolled his eyes. “Have you been reading too many children’s tales?”

“It is elemental magic, Your Highness.”

“Rubbish. The elements are fire, air, water, and earth. Lightning is none of them.”

“One could say lightning is the marriage of fire and air.”

“One could say mud is the marriage of water and earth,” he said dismissively.

The Inquisitor’s jaw tightened. A bead of sweat rolled down Titus’s back. He played a perilous game. There was a fine line between irritating the Inquisitor and angering her outright.

He set his tone slightly less pompous. “And what is Atlantis’s interest in all this, Madam Inquisitor?”

“Atlantis is interested in all unusual phenomena, Your Highness.”

“What have your people discovered about this unusual phenomenon?”

The Inquisitor had come out of the house. So she would have seen the interior already.

“Not very much.”

He began to walk toward the house.

“Your Highness, I advise against it. The house is structurally unstable.”

“If it is not too unstable for you, it is not too unstable for me,” he said blithely.

Besides, he had no choice. In his earlier hurry to get out, he had not had time to remove all traces he might have left behind. He must go back in and walk about, in case his previous set of boot prints had not been sufficiently trampled by the villagers.

The January Uprising had failed for many different reasons, not the least of which was that its leaders had not been nearly meticulous enough. He could not afford to make the same mistakes.

The Inquisitor in tow, he strolled through the house. Except for the number of books, there was nothing remarkable about it. The Inquisitor’s agents swarmed, checking walls and floors, pulling open drawers and cabinets. Nearly half a dozen agents crowded around the trunk, which, thankfully, seemed to be a one-time portal that kept its destination to itself.

On the front lawn, guarded by more agents, the girl’s guardian and the housebreaker were laid out, both still unconscious.

“Are they dead?” he asked.

“No, they are both very much alive.”

“They need medical attention, in that case.”

“Which they will receive in due time—at the Inquisitory.”

“They are my subjects. Why are they being taken to the Inquisitory?”

He made sure he sounded peevish, concerned not so much about his subjects but about his own lack of power.

“We merely wish to question them, Your Highness. Representatives of the Crown are welcome at any time to see them while they remain in our care,” said the Inquisitor.

No representatives of the Crown had been allowed into the Inquisitory in a decade.

“And may I call on you this evening, Your Highness,” continued the Inquisitor, “to discuss what you have seen?”

Another drop of sweat crept down Titus’s spine. So she did suspect him—of something.

“I have already mentioned everything I saw. Besides, my holidays have ended. I return to school later today.”

“I thought you weren’t leaving until tomorrow morning.”

“And I thought I was quite at liberty to come and go as I wish, as I am the master of all I survey,” he snapped.

They were there in her eyes, the atrocities she wanted to commit, to reduce him to a witless imbecile.

She would not. The pleasure she would derive from destroying him was not worth the trouble it would incite, given that he was, after all, the Master of the Domain.

Or so Titus told himself.

The Inquisitor smiled. He hated her smiles almost more than her stares.

“Of course you may shape your itinerary as you wish, Your Highness,” she said.

He had been let go. He tried not to exhale too loudly in relief.

When they were once again on the field behind the house, she bowed. He remounted Marble. Marble spread her wings and pushed off the ground.

But even after they were airborne, he still felt the Inquisitor’s unwavering gaze on his back.

This was no instantaneous transportation. Iolanthe kept dropping. She screamed for a while and stopped when she realized that no air rushed past her to indicate speed. She might as well have been suspended in place, only thinking that she was falling because there was nothing underneath her.

Suddenly there was. She thudded onto her bottom and grunted with the skeleton-jarring impact.

It remained pitch-black. Her hands touched soft things that smelled of dust and faded lavender—folded clothes. Digging beneath the clothes, she found a lining of smooth, stretched leather. The solid material under the leather was probably wood. Wary of making any unnecessary sounds, she did not knock to find out.

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She continued to explore her new surroundings. Action kept fear—and jumbled emotions—at bay. If she tried to make sense of the events of the afternoon, she might howl in bewilderment. And if she thought about Master Haywood, she’d crumble from panic. Or pure guilt.

He had not been deluded by merixida. He had not even exaggerated. And she had chosen not to believe him.

Leather-covered walls rose shoulder-height about her, ending in a padded, tufted leather ceiling: she was inside another trunk.

The trunk seemed tightly closed. She decided to risk a flicker of fire. It shed a dim, coppery light that illuminated a sturdy latch below the seam of the lid.

The implication of the latch was discomfiting: it was for her to keep the trunk shut. To either side of the latch was a round disc of wood, one marked with an eye, the other, an ear. Reconnoitering was clearly recommended.

She extinguished the fire in her palm—its light might give her away—and felt for the discs.

The first one she found was the ear hole, which conveyed only silence. She moved to the peephole but likewise saw nothing. The room that contained her trunk was as dark as the bottom of the ocean, without even the telltale nimbus of light around a curtained window.

Wherever she was, she seemed to be completely alone. She found and released the latch. Placing her palms against the lid of the trunk, she applied a gentle pressure.

The lid moved a fraction of an inch and stopped. She pushed harder and heard a metallic scrape, but the lid did not lift any higher. Frowning, she put the latch back and tried again. This time, the lid moved not at all. So the latch in place prevented the trunk from opening. What had caused the trunk to open only a crack after the latch had been released?

The tips of her fingers turned cold. The trunk was secured from the outside.

A second vault in such a short time unsettled even a steed as disciplined as Marble. She screeched as they materialized above the Labyrinthine Mountains, her eyes shut tight in distress. Titus had to yank the reins with all his strength to avoid crashing into a peak that suddenly reared in their path—the constant motion of the mountains meant that even one as familiar with them as he must always take care.

“Shhhhhh,” he murmured, his own heart pounding hard at the near miss. “Shhhhh, old girl. It is all right.”

He guided her higher, clear of any summits that might decide to sprout ad***ional spurs. She obeyed his commands, her prodigious muscles contracting with each rise of her wings.

Beneath him, the Domain stretched in all directions, the Labyrinthine Mountains bisecting the island like the plated spine ridge of a prehistoric monster. To either side of the great mountain range, the countryside was a fresh, luminous green dotted by the pinks and creams of orchards in bloom.

You are the steward of this land and its people now, Titus, Prince Gaius, his grandfather, had said on his deathbed. Do not fail them as I did. Do not fail your mother as I did.

Had he known then what he knew now, he would have told the old bastard, You chose to put your own interests above that of this land and its people. You chose to fail my mother. I hope you suffer long and hard where you are going.

Quite the family, the House of Elberon.

Since the Inquisitor already knew he had visited the location of the lightning strike, there was no more need to be stealthy. As the castle came into sight, he wheeled Marble directly toward the landing arch at the top.

Marble cried plaintively at his dismount. He gave the rubbery skin of her wing a quick caress. “I will have the grooms take you for more exercise. Go now, my love.”

Strong winds buffeted the pinnacle of the castle. Titus fought his way inside and sprinted down two flights of stairs into his apartment.

He greeted the usual huddle of attendants with a snarled, “Am I ready to depart yet?” and waved away those still foolhardy enough to follow him.

The apartment was vast. Even with the aid of secret passages, it still took him another minute to emerge in the globe room, where a representation of the Earth, fourteen feet across, hovered in midair.

With a swish of his wand, doors shut, drapes drew, and a dense fog rose from the floor. Only the air between the globe and his person remained transparent. Carefully, he touched the half pendant he still wore to the globe. His fingers brushed against something hot and grainy—the Kalahari Desert, probably.

A pulse passed between the pendant and the globe. He drew back and looked up. A bright red dot appeared on the globe, a thousand miles east northeast of where he stood—and very much in the middle of a nonmage realm.

To limit the influence of Exiles,3 Atlantis had placed a chokehold on travel between mage realms and nonmage realms. Most portals would have been rendered useless. The girl’s trunk must employ startlingly unusual magic—or someone had made sure a loophole had been left open for it.

She could have been taken anywhere. But Fortune smiled upon him today, and her current location was within twenty-five miles of his school. With luck, he would find her in the next hour.

Waving away the fog, he summoned Dalbert, his valet and personal spymaster. He must leave immediately, before the Inquisitor put more agents on his tail.

“Your Highness.” Dalbert appeared at the door, a middle-aged man whose round, pleasant face hid a ferocious talent for intelligence gathering.

He had supplied facts and rumors to Titus in a timely and discreet manner for the past eight years, keeping his master apprised of everything that went on in the Domain and around the world while looking after Titus’s personal comforts. The prince, however, had never taken Dalbert into his confidence.

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“There is a train getting into Slough in twenty minutes. I plan to be on it. Make it happen.”

“Yes, sire. And, sire, Prince Alectus and Lady Callista await below. They request an audience with Your Highness.”

The regent and his mistress resided in Delamer, the capital, and rarely called upon Titus’s mountain keep.

Titus swore under his breath. “Show them into the throne room—and have Woodkin exercise Marble.”

Dalbert hurried off. Titus took himself two levels below, shrugging into a day coat as he went. He rarely entered the throne room except on the most public of occasions—it was ridiculous for him, essentially a puppet, to be in a room meant to symbolize the justness and might of his position. But today he wished to get rid of his visitors fast, and the throne room discouraged small talk.

The ceiling of the throne room rose fifty feet on two rows of white marble pillars. The obsidian throne was set upon a waist-high dais. Titus walked past it to the arched windows. Beneath him was a drop of a thousand feet to a ravine cut by a blue, glacier-fed river. Beyond, purple peaks shifted like slow waves.

Alectus and Lady Callista appeared on two of the four low pedestals that transported audience seekers from the reception room to the throne room.

Alectus was the youngest brother of Titus’s grandfather, a handsome, morally flexible man of fifty-eight. Lady Callista was a beauty witch—the greatest beauty witch of her generation. Of the last three hundred years, it had been argued.4

She was on the brink of forty. Unlike many other beauty witches, she had not resorted to questionable magic to keep herself looking half her age. Instead, she had aged gracefully, allowing a few wrinkles to spread here and there while maintaining her sway over legions of hearts.

Ever since Alectus had been appointed regent, she had been his mistress. Some whispered that Alectus had even proposed to her, but she had declined. She was the capital’s leading hostess, its arbiter of style, a generous patron of the arts—and an agent of Atlantis.

Alectus bowed. Lady Callista curtsied.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” asked Titus, offering neither seats nor refreshment.

His bluntness surprised Alectus, who looked toward his mistress: Alectus had no appetite for confrontation, or any kind of unpleasantness.

Lady Callista smiled. It was said that to this day, love letters arrived for her by the wheelbarrowful. There was a great deal of skill in her smile, a smile meant to make a boy who had done nothing with his life feel accomplished and remarkable—virile, even.

Titus felt only revulsion—she was most likely the one who had betrayed his mother, informing the Inquisitor of the latter’s secret participation in the January Uprising.

“We received a note from the Inquisitor,” she said, her voice a dulcet murmur. “Her Excellency is concerned that she doesn’t see enough of you. She’s quite fond of you, Your Highness.”

Titus rolled his eyes. “She is getting above herself. What do I care whether she is fond of me? She was a nobody before the Bane plucked her out of obscurity.”

“But now she is the Inquisitor, and can cause much unpleasantness.”

“Why would she do that? Does she wish to incite a new uprising?”

At the word “uprising,” Lady Callista’s smile faltered slightly, but she was quickly all warmth and concern again. “Your Highness, of course she does not want that. Once you come of age, the two of you will see a great deal of each other. She hopes for a respectful, productive, and mutually beneficial association.”

“I appreciate your diplomacy,” he said, “but there is no use gilding a turd. I cannot stand that upstart, and she is jealous and resentful of me. Save me the time and tell me what she really wants.”

Alectus choked at Titus’s language. Alectus never had problems being deferential to the Inquisitor. He was ill suited to wield power himself, but he yearned toward it as a vine reaches for a higher branch. And parasite that he was, he was probably happier the more powers the Inquisitor concentrated onto herself.

Lady Callista’s next smile was strained. Had the Inquisitor been nasty to her? Usually Lady Callista’s smiles were entirely effortless.

“The Inquisitor would like to speak to you about what you saw this afternoon.”

“I saw nothing—I already told her.”

“Nevertheless, she believes that with her help, you might remember more.”

“Will I still be continent when I emerge from her ‘help’?” The Inquisitor’s methods were widely feared.

“I’m sure she would treat you with utmost courtesy and consideration, sire.”

Titus assessed his situation. He must leave without delay. Yet the Inquisitor must also be placated somehow.

“Your spring gala is to take place in a few days. I will attend as the guest of honor. You may invite the Inquisitor. I will grant her a brief audience during the course of the evening.”

He made appearances at various state and charitable functions during the year, usually those involving children and young people. A gala was not quite the same thing, but he would stir curiosity, not controversy.

Lady Callista opened her mouth. Titus preempted her. “I trust you are grateful that I will take the trouble.”

It was time she remembered that he was still her sovereign.

“Of course,” she murmured, conjuring another smile.

Now they were down to mere formalities before he dismissed them. “Is there anything else that requires my attention?”

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“My choice of a new overrobe for the gala,” said Alectus, jolly now that his task had been discharged by his mistress. “I cannot make up my mind, and Lady Callista claims to be far too busy.”

“Thousands of details need to be seen to before the gala,” said Lady Callista, in her you-silly-man-but-of-course-I-love-you-madly tone.

“Close your eyes and make a random selection,” Titus said, forcing himself not to sound too impatient.

“Indeed, indeed,” Alectus agreed, “as good a method as any.”

“I wish you both a good day,” said Titus, his jaw hurting with the strain of remaining civil.

Alectus bowed. Lady Callista curtsied. They stepped on the pedestals and disappeared to the reception room below.

Titus let out a breath. He glanced at his watch: still ten minutes to make the train.

But Lady Callista reappeared, looking suitably apologetic. “I beg your pardon, sire, I seem to have left my fan behind. Ah, there it is.”

What did she want now?

“Do you know what curious news I just heard, sire?” she asked. “That by the bolt of lightning you saw, a great elemental mage has revealed herself—a girl of about your age.”

Of course she would ask him about the girl—what good minion of the Inquisitor’s would not? He acted bored. “Should I care?”

“She could be very important, this girl.”

“To whom?”

“Atlantis does not expend its wherewithal on needless concerns. If the Inquisitor is after the girl, she must be valuable in some way.”

“And why are you telling me this, my lady?”

Lady Callista approached him and placed a hand on his arm. This close she smelled of the subtle yet potent fragrance of narcissus. “Does it not concern you, sire, that the Inquisitor is halfway to finding this possibly very significant young woman?”

Very few of his subjects touched him without express permission. Lady Callista dared take the liberty because she had once been Princess Ariadne’s dearest friend. Her touch was warm and maternal, her person present and interested in a way that his perpetually preoccupied mother had never been.

Titus yanked away. “Madam, if you seek someone to stand up to the Inquisitor, you are looking at quite the wrong man. I am the heir of a princely house well past its hour of glory. That is burden enough. I am not going to spearhead some quixotic cause for which I have neither the desire nor the talent.”

Lady Callista laughed softly. “Don’t be silly, sire. I’m looking for nothing of the sort. My goodness, why should I want anything to destabilize the current situation, which favors me so?”

She walked backward until she was on the pedestal and curtsied again. “However, should you ever decide to spearhead a quixotic cause, sire, you must let me know. Stability does grow tedious after a while.”

CHAPTER 4

A CURIOUS VEHICLE OCCUPIED THE highest garret of the castle: a black-lacquered private rail coach. Inside, the walls of the coach were covered in sky-blue silk. A pair of padded chairs were upholstered in cream brocade. A porcelain tea service, with steam curling from the spout of the teapot, sat on a side table.

Canary cage in hand, Titus entered the rail coach, the link to his other life. He could almost smell the coal burning at the heart of the yet-distant steam engine, feel the rumble of the wheels on the tracks.

Dalbert brought his luggage, then closed the door of the coach. “Something to drink for the journey, sire?”

“Thank you, but hardly necessary.”

Dalbert glanced at his watch. “Brace yourself, sire.”

He pulled a large lever. The coach shook. The next moment it was no longer in placid storage in the castle’s uppermost reach, but a thousand miles away on English soil, part of a train that had departed from Mansion House station, London, three quarters of an hour before.

“Slough in five minutes, sire.”

“Thank you, Dalbert.”

Titus rose from his seat to stand before the window. Outside it drizzled—another wet English spring. The land was green and foggy, the train’s motions rhythmic, almost hypnotic.

How strange that when he had first arrived in this nonmage realm, he had hated everything about it—the sooty, offensive smells, the flavorless food, the inexplicable customs. Yet now, after nearly four years at his nonmage school, this world had become a refuge, a place to escape, as far as escape was possible, from the oppression of Atlantis.

And the oppression of his destiny.

Two shrill steam blasts announced the train’s arrival in Slough. Dalbert pulled down the window shades and handed Titus his satchel.

“May Fortune walk with you, sire.”

“May Fortune heed your wish,” replied Titus.

Dalbert bowed. Titus inclined his head—and vaulted.

None of the opening spells Iolanthe knew worked. She did not have power over wood. Water was useless here, as was fire. She could keep herself safe from fire, but were she to set the trunk aflame, either from inside or outside, she’d still succumb to smoke inhalation.

Unless someone freed her, she was stuck.

She didn’t often give in to panic, but she could feel hysteria rising in her lungs, squeezing out air, squeezing out everything but the need to start screaming and never stop.

She forced her mind to go blank instead, to breathe slowly and try for a measure of calm.

The Inquisitor wants me?

Badly.

The Inquisitor was the Bane’s de facto viceroy to the Domain. Once, when Iolanthe had been much younger, she’d asked Master Haywood why mages were so afraid of the Inquisitor. His answer she’d never forgotten: Because sometimes fear is the only appropriate response.

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She shuddered. If only she’d listened to Master Haywood. Then the light elixir would have been safe—and she’d never have brought down the lightning.

She dropped her face into her hands. Something cold and heavy pressed into the space between her brows: the pendant the prince had given her before he shoved her on her way.

A new smidgen of fire revealed the pendant to be a half oval made of a gleaming silver-white metal, with faint tracery on its surface. At first it remained icy to the touch—proximity to her fire made no difference. Then, for no reason she could discern, it warmed to room temperature.

The prince’s presence had to be one of the most puzzling aspects of the day, second only to Master Haywood’s anguished ignorance.

Master Haywood had known that she should be kept away from the prying eyes of Atlantis. He had prepared a satchel in the event of an emergency evacuation. How could he not know then where she was going or what was in the satchel?

The satchel!

She shoved the pendant into her pocket, called for more fire—taking care that it didn’t come near her hair or her clothes—and searched inside the satchel. Her fingers encountered fabric, leather, a silky pouch with jingling coins, and at last, an envelope.

The envelope contained a letter.

My dearest Iolanthe,

I have just come from your room. You are a week short of your second birthday, sleeping with a sweet gusto under the singing blanket that was still crooning softly to you as I closed the door behind me.

I want a secure, uneventful future for you. It fills me with dread to think of you someday reading this letter, still a child, yet utterly alone, as you must be.

(I can’t help but wonder how your power would have manifested itself. By causing the Delamer River to flow in reverse? Or shearing the air of a sunny day into a cyclone?)

Nightly I pray that we will never come to it. But it has been agreed that for the sake of everyone’s safety, I will give up my knowledge of certain events to a memory keeper. After tomorrow, I will only know that I must guard the extent of your powers from the notice of Atlantis, and that if I were to fail, to distance you from immediate harm.

You no doubt crave explanations. Yet explanations I dare not set down in writing, for fear that this letter falls into the wrong hands, despite all my precautions. Only remember this: keep away from any and all agents of Atlantis. Every last mage in pursuit of you seeks to abuse and exploit your powers.

Trust no one.

Trust no one, that is, except the memory keeper. She will find you. And she will protect you to her dying breath.

To help her, remain where you are for as long as you can—I have been assured that the end-portal will be kept at a secure location. But by all means use caution. You cannot be careful enough. And whatever you do, do not repeat the action that brought you to Atlantis’s notice in the first place.

Be careful, Iolanthe. Be careful. But do not despair. Help will reach you.

I want nothing more than to take you into my arms and assure you that all will be well.

But I can only pray ardently that Fortune walks with you, that you discover hitherto unimagined strength in yourself and encounter unexpected friends along this perilous path that you must now tread.

All my love,

Horatio

P.S. I have applied an Irreproducible Charm to you. No one can capture your likeness—and therefore Atlantis will not be able to disseminate your image.

P.P.S. Do not worry about me.

How could she not worry about him? The Inquisitor would be furious when she realized that he’d deliberately given up his memories to foil her. And if—

A thump in the floor—a vibration that shot up Iolanthe’s spine—scattered her thoughts. She shoved the letter back into the satchel and extinguished her fire. For a moment she could hear nothing, and then it came again, the thump. Her fingers closed around her wand.

She lifted the disc covering the peephole. Part of the floor lifted. A trapdoor—she was in an attic. Light wafted up from the opening, illuminating crates, chests, and shelves upon which crowded ranks and rows of dusty curiosities.

The trapdoor rose farther, accompanied by a squeak of the hinge. A lantern made its way into the attic, followed by a woman with a wand. She raised the lantern. It glowed brighter and brighter, rivaling the blinding brilliance of noonday.

Iolanthe squinted against the glare. The woman was about forty and quite lovely: deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, and wide lips. Her hair was very fair, almost white in the eye-watering light, swept up to the top of her head. Her pale-blue gown was of a fashion Iolanthe had never seen. It buttoned all the way to her chin and cinched to a tiny handspan at the waist, with tight sleeves that ended below her elbows in swishes of lace.

Who was the woman? Was she, by happy chance, the memory keeper who should find Iolanthe?

“So, you are finally here,” the woman said, speaking as if through clenched teeth.

Iolanthe’s stomach dropped. The woman’s tone was grim, hostile even.

The woman pointed her wand at the trunk. Things snapped and clanked to the floor. Locks? No, chains. Iolanthe could see thick metal links from the peephole.

“Aperi,” said the woman, using the simplest opening spell now that the restraints had been removed.

Some deep-seated instinct made Iolanthe clutch at the latch. She had not moved three times in seven years without learning a thing or two about reading people: whoever this woman was, she did not mean well.

The latch twitched against Iolanthe’s hand, but she kept it in place.

“Aperi,” the woman repeated.

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Again the latch fidgeted.

The woman frowned. “Aperi maxime.”

This time the latch twisted and bucked like a caught animal bent on escape. Iolanthe’s fingers hurt with the strain of keeping it from disengaging.

At last the latch stilled. But she barely caught a breath before the woman called, “Frangare!”

Frangare was a mason’s spell, used for cleaving boulders in two. The trunk must have been protected: it did not crack open, not even the smallest of fractures.

“Frangare!” the woman cried again. “Frangare! Frangare! Frangare!”

Iolanthe’s fingers were icy with fear. The trunk remained intact. But for how much longer? She tried to vault—and moved not an inch: no self-respecting mage dwellings allowed vaulting within its perimeters.5

The woman set down the lantern and clutched the bodice of her dress, as if exhausted. “I forgot,” she said slowly. “He made the trunk indestructible so I could not get rid of it.”

So there was a man about. Could he help Iolanthe?

“On his deathbed he asked me to swear a blood oath that I would protect you as I would my own child, from the moment I first saw you,” the woman said softly. Then she laughed, a sound that chilled Iolanthe’s blood. “He wanted much, did he not?”

The woman lifted her head; her face was cold and blank, her eyes burning with fervor. “For you he gave up his honor,” she said. “For you he destroyed us all.”

Who was this madwoman? And why had anyone believed this house to be a secure location?

The woman raised her wand. The chains slammed back into place around the trunk. Her lips moved silently, as if she were praying.

Iolanthe held her breath. For a long minute, nothing seemed to happen. Then the ends of her hair fluttered. The trunk was shut, she herself was still—how could air move? Yet it moved. In only one direction: out of the trunk.

The woman intended *****ffocate Iolanthe right in the trunk.

And air was the only element over which Iolanthe had no control whatsoever.

Titus’s pendant had warmed appreciably as he reached England. It had warmed further after he materialized in London.

Many Exiles from the Domain, accustomed to the urban life of Delamer, had chosen to settle in London, the closest thing Britain had to an equivalent. The girl had likely arrived at the home of an Exile.

The city was in the throes of one of its infamous fogs. He saw well enough with his fog glasses, but no one on the ground could spot him on his flying carpet.

Flying carpets were once the fastest, most comfortable, and most luxurious mode of travel. In this age of expe***ed channels, however, they had become antiques, much admired but little used. Titus’s carpet, measuring four feet in length, two in width, and barely a quarter of an inch in thickness, was actually a toy—and not meant for any child to ride on, but for dolls.

He flew over the town house of Rosemary Alhambra, the Exiles’ leader, but the pendant did not react further. Next he tried the house of the Heathmoors, considered the most powerful mages among the Exiles—still nothing. He was on his way to the home of Alhambra’s lieutenant when the pendant heated abruptly.

He had just passed Hyde Park Corner. The only mage family who lived nearby were the Wintervales. Surely not. No one in their right mind would entrust this girl to Lady Wintervale.

But as he circled above the Wintervale house, the pendant grew so hot he had to pull it outside his shirt so it would not scald his skin.

Wintervale House was one of the most tightly secured private dwellings Titus knew. Fortunately—most fortunately—Leander Wintervale, the son of the house, was Titus’s schoolmate, and there was a way to access the house from the former’s room at school.

Titus landed on a nearby roof, took off his fog glasses, and rolled the carpet into a tight bundle to carry under his arm. From there he vaulted to his resident house at school. Specifically, into Archer Fairfax’s perennially unoccupied room.

A glance out of Fairfax’s window showed Wintervale and Mohandas Kashkari, an Indian boy and Wintervale’s good friend, behind the house. The rain had reduced to a mist. Kashkari, the calmer of the two, stood in place; Wintervale paced around him, talking and gesticulating.

Excellent—now Titus did not need to devise a way to get Wintervale away from his room. He opened Fairfax’s door a fraction of an inch and peered out.

Many of the boys had returned. A cluster stood talking at the far end of the passage. But they decided to go to Atkins’ to buy some foodstuff and stomped down the stairs.

Once the corridor was empty, Titus dropped the flying carpet on the floor of his own room—after much tinkering he had fortified it enough to carry his weight, but the combined weight of both himself and the girl would keep the carpet grounded. Next he slipped into Wintervale’s room four doors down, squeezed inside Wintervale’s narrow wardrobe, and closed the door.

“Fidus et audax.”

He opened the wardrobe again to step into Wintervale’s room at the family’s London town house. The corridor outside was empty. He made for the stairs. Descending turned the pendant cooler. Ascending, hotter.

He sprinted up the steps.

There was still air in the trunk; it whished softly as it left. But breathing already felt like heaving a boulder with her lungs.

Soon the madwoman would have Iolanthe sealed in a vacuum. Her fingers shook. She looked out of the peephole, searching frantically for something she could use to help herself.

There! On a shelf in the recesses of the attic, among dusty metal instruments, stood one lone statuette of stone.

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She could not manipulate ceramic—cooking the earth changed its properties—but she did have power over stone. She elevated the statuette. It hovered a few inches above the shelf. She swung her arm. The statuette smashed into the back of the woman’s head.

The woman cried. Her wand clattered to the floor. She did not, however, lose consciousness as Iolanthe had hoped, but only stumbled until she banged into crates piled against the wall.

Iolanthe hesitated. Should she attack the woman again in the latter’s weakened state?

But the woman already had her wand back in her hand. “Exstinguare.”

The stone statuette turned into dust. “Now what are you going to use?” said the woman, with a chilling smile.

Suddenly the air inside the trunk was so thin Iolanthe became light-headed. It felt as if someone had pushed her face into wet cement. Try as she did, she could not draw a single breath.

Faintly, very faintly, she became aware that something burned against her left thigh. Then everything went black.

As he arrived below the open trapdoor, Titus heard Lady Wintervale speaking.

“What have you done?” Her voice was low yet frantic. “Never again, remember? You were never, never to kill again.”

A blade of fear plunged into Titus’s heart. Lady Wintervale’s paranoia ran deep, and her sanity was not always reliable. Was he too late?

He wrapped a muffling spell about the rickety steps and climbed up. The moment he had Lady Wintervale in view, he pointed his wand. Tempus congelet, he mouthed, not wanting her to hear his voice before the time-freeze spell took effect.

If the spell took effect. He had never used it in the real world.

Lady Wintervale stilled. He darted past her to the trunk.

“Are you there? Are you all right?”

The trunk was as silent as a coffin.

He swore. The chains did not respond to the first few spells he tried. He swore again. If he had more time, he could coax the chains. But there was no time: the time-freeze spell lasted three minutes at most. And the girl, if she was still alive, must be let out right away.

He looked about. There was nothing he could use. A moment later, however, he saw that the chains did not go around the trunk all the way, but were instead fastened to plates bolted to the side of the trunk. And the magic that anchored the plates to the trunk was ordinary enough that a stronger-than-usual unfastening cant did the trick.

He flung back the chains, but the trunk lid lifted only a fraction of an inch. What more obstacles stood in his way?

“Aperi.”

The sound of something unlatching. He hoisted up the lid. The girl was slumped over, her face invisible beneath her still-wild hair.

His mind went blank. She could not possibly be dead. Could she?

Reaching inside, he lifted a limp wrist and searched for a pulse. His heart thudded as he encountered a feeble throb in her vein.

“Revisce!”

No reaction.

“Revisce forte!”

Her entire person shuddered. Her head slowly rose. Her eyes opened. “Highness,” she mumbled.

He was weak with relief. But again, no time to indulge. “Hold still, I will get you out. Omnia interiora vos elevate.”

Everything in the trunk floated: the girl, who gasped and thrashed to find herself airborne; her wand; her satchel; and a great many items of clothing that must have been packed before the trunk was closed the first time. Not a single piece of clothing was nonmage. If the trunk had been entrusted to the Wintervales, it would have been before their exile.

He caught the girl, her wand, and her satchel, and let everything else fall back into the trunk. A quick swish closed the trunk. An undo spell set the plates and the chains back into place. Then he was easing the two of them out the trapdoor, with an “Omnia deleantur” tossed behind him to erase his footprints and any other traces he might have left in the dust of the attic.

“Did she hurt you?” he asked at the first stair landing.

“She siphoned all the air from the trunk.”

He looked down at the girl in his arms. Her breathing was labored, but she hung on to her composure remarkably well for someone who had just endured an attempt on her life—or perhaps she was simply too breathless for hysteria.

“Why did she want to kill me?” she rasped.

“I do not know. But she is disturbed—she lost her father and her sister in the uprising. Her husband also died young.”

Back in Wintervale’s room two stories below, he sat her on the bed and opened the opposite window. Fog rushed in.

“What’s that smell?”

“London.”

“London, England?”

He was glad that she had some knowledge of nonmage geography. “Yes. Here. Let me—”

The unmistakable sound of someone arriving in the wardrobe. Lady Wintervale must have come out of the time freeze, found the trunk empty, and summoned her son. Titus shut the window, yanked the girl off the bed, and pushed her flat against the wall in the blind spot behind the wardrobe.

She had the sense to keep still and silent.

The wardrobe opened. Wintervale leaped down. Titus’s heart imploded: the girl’s satchel was in plain sight under the windowsill—he had set it down earlier to open the window. But Wintervale paid no attention to the contents of his room and rushed out to the corridor.

Titus allowed himself a moment to calm down. “Hurry.”

The window was set deep in the facade of the house. He reopened the window and lifted the girl to the ledge. Next, her satchel in hand, he climbed out, closed the window, and latched it with a locking charm.

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The fog was pervasive. She was lost in the thick, mustard-colored miasma. He felt for her but only came across a tumble of her hair.

“Where is your hand?”

She placed her hand in his, her fingers cold but steady. “I didn’t expect you’d really come.”

He exhaled. “Then you do not know me very well.”

He vaulted them both.

CHAPTER 5

VAULTING HAD NEVER BEEN A problem for Iolanthe before, whether on her own or hitching along with someone else. But this particular vault was like being crushed between two boulders. She shut her eyes and swallowed a scream of pain.

At the other end, she stumbled.

The prince caught her. “I am sorry. I knew vaulting might be difficult for you just now, but I had to get you to safety right away.”

He shouldn’t apologize. If they were safe, then nothing else mattered.

They were in some sort of an anteroom. There was a mirror, a console table, two doors, and nothing else. He pointed his wand at the door in front of them. It opened silently, revealing a room beyond with dark-red wallpaper, pale-yellow chairs, and a large, empty grate, before which stood a wrought-iron screen with curling vines and clusters of grapes.

He lifted her again and carried her to a reclining chaise. “I might have a remedy for you,” he said, setting her down.

He crossed the room to another door. “Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.”

I will either find a way or make one.

The door opened. He walked into a room lined with drawers and shelves as far as she could see, shelves holding books, shelves holding vials, jars, and bottles, shelves holding instruments both familiar and exotic. A caged canary sat upon a long table at the center of the room. Also on the table were two valises, one brown, the second a dull red.

He disappeared briefly from her sight. She heard the sound of drawers opening and closing. He returned, sat down next to her, and cradled her head in the crook of his arm. The bitter tang of the fog clung to the wool of his jacket.

“That fog,” she mumbled, “is it natural?”

It had been thick enough to cut with a knife, alarmingly yellow in color, and foul like pig swill.

“There is no magic behind it, but it is not entirely natural either—a consequence of Britain’s industrialization. Here: this is to relieve the effects of vaulting.”

The prince held a vial with a fine midnight-blue powder inside. He took her by the chin, his fingers warm and strong, and tipped the blue powder into her mouth. The flavor reminded her of seawater.

“There is no counter-remedy for suffocation, exactly, but this is good for your general well-being.”

He held out a second vial. The wellness remedy, silver-gray granules, tasted unexpectedly of oranges.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” she murmured.

He was already walking away, back into the room full of shelves.

“What is that room, sire?” she asked.

“My laboratory,” he answered, opening a drawer.

“What do you do there, if I may ask?”

“What anyone does in a laboratory—potions, distillations, elixirs, things of that sort.”

She conducted practicals at the village school for Master Haywood—practicals, in one form or another, were compulsory until a pupil reached fourteen. But it wasn’t as if mages made their own potions at home. Commercial distilleries and potion manufacturers adequately supplied their needs. In fact, many households didn’t even possess the necessary implements to make the recipes she taught.

Was it just princely eccentricity that had him equip an entire laboratory for himself, or was it something else?

The prince came out of the laboratory and closed the door behind him. He was tall and lean—not thin, but tightly built. When she first saw him in her collapsed house, he’d had on a plain blue tunic and dark trousers tucked into knee-high boots. Simple country attire, nothing like the elaborate state robes he donned for his official portraits.

Now he wore a black jacket with a hunter-green waistcoat, black trousers, and shoes of highly polished black leather—the jacket was more formfitting than the tunics men wore in the Domain, the trousers, less so.

Her gaze returned to his face. Official portraits were notoriously unreliable. But in this case, the pictures hadn’t lied. He was handsome—dark hair, deep eyes, and high cheekbones.

In his portraits he always sneered. She had once remarked to a classmate that he came across as mean-spirited, the kind of boy who would not only tell a girl she looked like a bumpkin but deliberately spill a drink on her. In person he appeared less cynical. There was a freshness to his features, an appealing boyishness, and—as far as she could see—no malice at all.

Their eyes met. Her stomach fluttered.

Without a word, he opened the door behind him again. But instead of the laboratory, he walked into what appeared to be a bathroom.

“What happened to the laboratory, sire?”

Sound of water running. “That is a folded space, not part of this hotel suite.”

“Is that where we are, in a hotel?” She’d thought, for some reason, that they were at one of his lesser estates, a hunting lodge or a summer cabin.

The sound of even more water running. “We are less than two miles from where you were when you came out of the trunk.”

“We are still in London?”

“Very much so.”

Now that he mentioned it, she saw that real flame—rather than light elixir—shone behind the frosted glass mantles of the wall sconces. She’d have noticed sooner had she been less preoccupied.

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He emerged from the bath with a towel. Crouching before her, he pressed the damp towel against her temple.

“Oww!”

“Sorry. The blood is a bit caked on by now. But you should not need more than a good cleaning.”

She endured the discomfort. “Your Highness, will you please tell me what’s going on?”

Why was she here? Why was he here? Why was the sky falling today of all days?

“Later. I would be remiss as your host if I did not offer you the use of a tub first.”

She’d forgotten the state she must be in, dirty and battered.

“Your bath is filling as we speak. You will be all right in there by yourself?”

He’d asked a perfectly legitimate question, given that he’d had to carry her a great deal of late. But all the same, what a thing to ask.

“And if I’m not all right, sire?”

She immediately regretted her question. It was far too cheeky. And before her sovereign, no less. She might not have received much parental guidance of late, but she still liked to think of herself as better brought up than that.

He tapped his fingers against the armrest of the chaise. “Then I suppose I will have to watch over you.”

There was no inflection to his tone; not even a flicker of anything in his expression. Yet the air between them drew taut. She heated.

“Now, will you be all right—or will you not?” asked the prince.

She became aware for the first time that his eyes were blue gray, the color of distant hills.

Now she had no choice but to brazen it out. “I’m sure I will be fine,” she answered. “But should I need you, sire, please don’t hesitate.”

The gaze of her sovereign swept over her. She’d seen that look of interest from boys. But his was so swift that she wasn’t quite certain she hadn’t imagined it.

Then he inclined his head, all pomp and formality. “I am at your service, madam.”

Even without the caked blood, when Iolanthe finally caught sight of herself in a mirror, she still flinched. She looked awful, her face filthy and scratched, her hair coated in dust and bits of plaster, her once-white blouse the color of an old rag.

At least she was safe. Master Haywood . . . Her heart tightened. Her intuition had been exactly right: it had been on her account that everything had gone wrong for him.

She washed quickly. Afterward, she dressed in the change of clothes the prince had supplied—slippers, undergarments, a blue flannel shirt, and a pair of matching trousers, everything for a boy four inches taller and a stone and a half heavier.

When she came out of the bath, her battered clothes in a bundle in her hand, there was a tray of food waiting in the parlor and a fire in the grate. So it really was true, fireplaces were not mere decorations in the nonmage world.

The prince looked at her oddly, as if seeing her for the first time. “Have we met before? You look . . . familiar.”

Every year there were children selected to meet him, but she’d never been among the chosen. “No, we haven’t, sire. I’d have remembered.”

“I could have sworn . . .”

“You are probably thinking of someone else, sire.” She extended her hand. “Here’s your pendant.”

“Thank you.” The prince shook his head, as if to clear it. He pointed at her clothes. “If you do not mind, we need to destroy them—I would prefer as little evidence of your mage origins lying about as possible. Same with the contents of the satchel. Is there anything you particularly wish to keep?”

A reminder that she wasn’t quite as safe as she would like to be. She didn’t know how the prince remained so calm. But she was grateful for his aplomb—it made her less afraid.

He motioned her to sit down and handed her the satchel. Master Haywood’s letter she set aside. Digging through the clothes, she found the pouch of coins she’d felt earlier—pure Cathay gold, acceptable tender in every mage realm.

“I think there is a false bottom,” she said, feeling along the linings, her fingers discerning the shape of something cylindrical.

The prince produced a spell that neatly removed the cover of the false bottom to reveal a hidden tube.

He astounded her—not so much the spell, though it was deft, but his demeanor. Had he been an orphan who’d had to fend for himself from the youngest age, perhaps she would not be surprised at his maturity and helpfulness. But his must have been the most privileged upbringing in all the Domain; yet here he was, always thinking one step ahead, always anticipating her needs.

“Thank you, sire,” she said.

Could he detect the admiration in her voice? She did, and it embarrassed her. Hurriedly she reached for the tube, which contained her rolled-up birth chart—she recognized the elaborate painted night sky at the top of the scroll.

She put the letter, the pouch of coins, and the birth chart back into the satchel. He scooped up everything else. “May I ask why you called down the lightning today?”

I needed to keep my guardian employed and a roof over our heads.

“I was trying to correct a batch of light elixir. I found in my guardian’s copy of The Complete Potion a note that said a bolt of lightning could right any light elixir, no matter how badly tainted.”

He walked toward the fireplace, his arms full. “Who wrote that note?”

“I don’t know, sire.”

He tossed her discards into the grate. “Extinguamini. Tollamini.”

Her things turned to dust. The dust rose in a column up the flue. The prince braced his elbow on the mantel and waited for all the evidence of destruction to depart. He was all long, elegant lines and—

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She realized she was staring at him, in a way she could not remember ever looking at anyone else. Hastily she dropped her gaze.

“It is bizarre that anyone would counsel that,” he said. “Lightning plays no role in potion making. How old is that copy of The Complete Potion?”

“I’m not sure, sire. My guardian always had it.”

He returned to the door of the laboratory, repeated the password, and went inside. “Mine is a first e***ion. It was published during the Millennium Year.”

The Millennium Year celebrated one thousand years of the House of Elberon—his house. It was currently Year of the Domain 1031, which meant the copy in Little Grind was at most thirty-one years old. She’d thought the book much older. “Do we need to find out who wrote the note, sire?”

We. Her use of the word further embarrassed her. She was assuming a great deal of common purpose with her sovereign.

“I doubt we would be able to, even if we tried,” said the prince. “Are you well enough to eat something?”

“I think so.” Her stomach had settled down and she was famished, having not touched a bite of the luncheon Mrs. Needles had brought her.

He poured her a cup of tea. “What is your name?”

It so surprised her that he did not already know that she forgot to thank him for the tea. “Seabourne, sire. Iolanthe Seabourne.”

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Seabourne.”

“Long may Fortune uphold your banner, sire.”

That was what a subject said upon meeting the Master of the Domain. But perhaps she also ought to kneel. Most likely she should curtsy.

As if he read her thoughts, the prince said, “Do not worry about niceties. And no need to keep calling me ‘sire.’ We are not in the Domain, and no one will chastise us for not observing court etiquette.”

So . . . he is also gracious.

Enough. She didn’t even know what had happened to Master Haywood, and here she was, very close to hero-worshipping someone she’d barely met. “Thank you, sire—I mean, thank you. And may I impose upon you to tell me, Your Highness, what happened to my guardian after I left?”

“He is in the Inquisitor’s custody now,” said the prince, sitting down opposite her.

Even the pleasure of his nearness could not dilute her dismay. “So the Inquisitor did come?”

“Not even half a minute after you left.”

She clasped her hands together. That she was in real danger still shocked her.

“You have not touched your tea, Miss Seabourne. Cream or sugar?”

Usually she liked her tea full of sugar and cream, but such a rich beverage no longer appealed. She took a sip of the black tea. The prince pushed a plate of sandwiches in her direction.

“Eat. Hiding from the Inquisitor is hard work. You need to keep up your strength.”

She took a bite of the sandwich—it had an unexpectedly curried taste. “So the Inquisitor wants me.”

“More precisely, the Bane wants you.”6

She recoiled. She couldn’t recall when or where she’d first learned of the Bane, whose official title was Lord High Commander of the Great Realm of New Atlantis. Unlike the Inquisitor, whom people did talk about, if in hushed whispers, regarding the Bane there was a conspicuous silence.

“What does the Bane want me for?”

“For your powers,” said the prince.

It was the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever said to her. “But the Bane is already the most powerful mage on earth.”

“And he would like to remain so—which is only possible with you,” said the prince. “You are crushing your sandwich, by the way.”

She willed her stiff fingers to unclench. “How? How do I have anything to do with the Bane remaining powerful?”

“Do you know how old he is?”

She shook her head and raised her teacup to her lips. She needed something to wash down the sandwich in her mouth, which had become a dry paste she couldn’t quite swallow.

“Close to two hundred. Possibly more.”

She stared at him, the tea forgotten. “Can anyone live that long?”

“Not by natural means. Agents of Atlantis watch all the realms under their control for unusually powerful elemental mages. When they locate such a mage, he or she is secretly shipped to Atlantis, never to be heard from again. I am ignorant of how exactly the Bane makes use of those elemental mages, but I do not doubt that he does make use of them.”

If she clutched her teacup any harder, the handle would break. She set it down. “What precisely is the definition of an unusually powerful elemental mage? I have no control over air.”

The prince leaned forward in his chair. “Are you sure? When was the last time you tried to manipulate air?”

She frowned: she couldn’t remember. “Someone tried to kill me by removing all the air from the end portal. If I had any affinity for air, I’d have stopped it, wouldn’t I?”

It became his turn to frown. “Were you not born on either the thirteenth or fourteenth of November 1866—I mean, Year of the Domain 1014?”

“No, I was born earlier, in September.”

Her birthday was a day after his, in fact. It had been fun, when she’d been small, to pretend that the festivities surrounding his birthday had been for her also.

“Show me your birth chart.”

A birth chart plotted the precise alignment of stars and planets at the moment of a mage’s birth. It was once a crucial document, for everything from the choice of school to the choice of mate: the stars must align. In recent years it had become fashionable in places like Delamer to break with tra***ion and leave one’s birth chart to molder. But not so in Little Grind. When Iolanthe had volunteered to contribute the fire hazards for the village’s annual obstacle course run last autumn, her chart, along with those of all the participants, had been requisitioned to determine the most auspicious date on which to hold the competition.