[English] THE BURNING SKY

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As she dug the cylindrical container out of the mostly empty satchel, it occurred to her that if she had used her birth chart only months ago, then it could not possibly be in the satchel, the contents of which hadn’t been disturbed in more than a decade.

She’d unrolled only the top six inches of the birth chart earlier, when she’d checked to see that it was a birth chart. Fully unfurled, the three-foot-long chart had no name at the center, only the time of birth, five minutes past two o’clock in the morning on the fourteenth of November, YD 1014.

Something gonged in her ears. “But I was born in September. I’ve seen my chart before—many times—and it’s not this one.”

“And yet this is the one that had been packed, for when the truth came out and you were forced to leave,” said the prince.

“Are you saying that my guardian counterfeited the other? Why?”

“There was a meteor storm that night. Stars fell like rain. Seers from every realm on earth predicted the birth of a great elemental mage. Were I your guardian, I would have most certainly not let it be known that you were born on that night.”

She’d read about that night, when one could not see the sky for all the golden streaks of plummeting stars.

“You think I’m that great elemental mage?” she asked, barely able to hear her own voice.

She couldn’t be. She wanted no part of what was happening now.

“Until you, there has never been anyone who can command lightning.”

“But lightning is useless. I almost killed myself when I called it down.”

“The Bane just might know what to do with such power,” said the prince.

She didn’t know why the idea should make her more frightened than she was already, but it did.

“It has been an exhausting day for you. Take some rest,” the prince suggested. “I must go now, but I will return in a few hours to check on you.”

Go? He was leaving her all alone?

“Are you going back to the Domain?” She sounded weak and afraid to her own ears.

“I am going to my school.”

“I thought you were educated at the castle.” More precisely, at a monastic lodge farther up the Labyrinthine Mountains that was used only for a young prince or princess’s education, or so Iolanthe had learned at school.

“No, I attend an English school not far from London.”

She couldn’t have heard him right. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. The Bane wished it.”

“But you are our prince. You are supposed to be one of our better mages. You won’t get any proper training at such a school.”

“You understand the Bane’s purpose perfectly,” he said lightly.

She was appalled. “I can’t believe the regent didn’t object. Or the prime minister.”

His eyes were clear and direct. “You overestimate the courage of those in power. They are often more interested in holding on to that power than in doing anything worthwhile with it.”

He did not sound bitter, only matter-of-fact. How had he handled it, the utter insult of having the Bane dictate his movements, when he was, on paper at least, the Bane’s peer in power and privilege?

“So . . . what should I do while you are at school?”

“I was hoping to take you to school with me, but it is a boys’ school.” He shrugged. “We will make new plans.”

He couldn’t have been more cordial about it, but she had the distinct sensation it did not please him to have to make new plans.

“I can come with you. I went to a girls’ school for a while, and every term I had the male lead role in the school play. My voice is low, and I do a good imitation of the way a boy walks and talks.” She’d acquitted herself so well some of her classmates’ parents had thought a boy had been brought in to act the part. “Not to mention I can fight.”

Unlike most magelings, who were taught to refrain from violence, elemental magelings were actively encouraged to use their fists—far better they punched someone than set the latter on fire.7

“I am sure you can knock boys out left and right. And I am sure you are perfectly proficient on stage. But playing a boy for a few hours each term is quite different from playing one twenty-four hours a day, day after day, to an audience of agents.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There are agents of Atlantis at my school,” he said. “I am watched.”

She gripped the armrests of her chair. “You live under Atlantis’s surveillance?”

Somehow she’d thought he must be exempt from it.

“I am better off at school than at home—the castle is riddled with the Inquisitor’s informants—but that is no help to us now.”

She could not imagine the life he led.

“You are safer here,” he continued. “The vestibule is accessible by the hotel staff—that is where we vaulted in—but the rest of the suite is protected by anti-intrusion spells.”

Anti-intrusion spells were no guarantee of safety—her house in Little Grind had had its share of those.

“You are entirely anonymous,” he further reassured her. “Atlantis, great as it is, cannot hope to locate you so easily in a city of millions. And should anything alarm you, go into the laboratory and wait. You already know the password; the countersign is the first paragraph on page ten of the book on the demilune table.”8

She would prefer that he quit school to stand guard beside her. If he should be wrong, if Atlantis proved quicker and cleverer than he believed, she would be all too easy a target. He had to stay with her. She’d reason with him—beg him, if she must. Bar the door with her person.

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She opened her mouth and out came “All right.”

Her life hung in the balance and here she was, trying to appear brave and stalwart before this boy.

“Thank you,” he said, and briefly touched her on the arm.

He was impressed. The bright happiness that flared inside her was almost enough to dispel her fear of his absence.

He disappeared a moment inside the laboratory and returned with the brown valise she’d seen earlier and a round-crowned hat. “I will be back after lights-out at school. In the meanwhile, eat and rest. It has been a great deal of trouble finding you; I do not intend to lose you any time soon.”

He had been searching for her? She longed to know more, but that would have to wait until his return.

“May Fortune walk with you, Your Highness.” She dipped into a small curtsy.

He shook his head. “No need to curtsy. And may Fortune abide with you, Miss Seabourne.”

He set the hat on his head and made for the door.

If she hadn’t been staring so intently at him, she wouldn’t have noticed the small, flat disk on his sleeve. She hesitated. Perhaps it was the fashion in England to have such decorations on one’s jacket.

But what had Master Haywood said? You cannot be careful enough.

“One moment, Your Highness. There is something on your left sleeve.”

His expression instantly sobered. He looked down at his arm. “Where?”

She turned her own arm to show him. It was placed at a spot above his elbow where it would be difficult for both he himself and someone else to see it, unless that person was looking squarely at him when he had his arm elevated.

He found the disk by touch, ripped it off, and stared at it, his eyes shadowed.

Closing his fist, he said, “We are in trouble.”

CHAPTER 6

TITUS YANKED OPEN THE DOOR of the water closet, threw the penny-sized disk into the commode, and tugged a cord to flush.

“What kind of trouble are we in?” asked Miss Seabourne behind him. Her voice was unsteady, but to her cre***, she showed no signs of falling apart.

“I have been tracked.”

Lady Callista. He remembered now: She had put her hand on his arm before she took leave of him. And he had been in too much of a hurry to notice.

If they were lucky—and they had been quite lucky so far this day—then Lady Callista’s lackeys would have a frustrating time following the disk as it traveled through London’s sewers.

But they had run out of luck. Murmurs rose outside the front door and outside the French doors that opened to a narrow balcony.

He beckoned Miss Seabourne to come to him. She did not hesitate. To her further cre***, she already had in hand not only her own satchel, but also the valise he had dropped in his haste to get rid of the disk.

He pulled her into the laboratory, closed the door, and listened. All too soon, there were footsteps in the suite.

“What of your anti-intrusion spells?” she whispered.

“They were to keep nonmages away.” The suite’s anonymity had been his best defense against Atlantis.

Agents of Atlantis would not find anything belonging to him in the suite—he had always been excruciatingly careful about that. And they would not so easily discover a folded space. All the same, the suite’s safety had been hopelessly compromised.

“Exstinguatur ostium,” he said, destroying the connection that anchored the laboratory to the suite.

They were safe, for now. But what would have happened to her had he already left? Yes, she was alert. She would have escaped into the laboratory. She would not, however, have been able to sever the connection. By the time he returned, after lights-out at school, Atlantis’s agents might very well have broken through.

“I apologize.” The words burned his throat. “I should have . . .”

The very first day, and already he had very nearly lost her to Atlantis.

“I should have caught the device before I left the Domain. I thought I had planned for every contingency, but I did not plan for my own carelessness.”

She was tense, her knuckles white about her wand, but she had herself well under control and seemed to be taking their hasty retreat better than he. “How did you know to prepare for anything at all?”

“The prophecies about you—I never doubted their accuracy.” He pulled out a stool for her. “Have a seat.”

She sat down and, betraying more emotion than he had seen from her so far, squeezed her head between her palms. “When I woke up this morning, I mattered to no one except myself. Would that nothing had changed.”

“Fortune cares little for the will of mortals.”

“So I have learned.” Her face still lowered, she said, “Please don’t let me keep you from returning to school.”

Dalbert was required to note the time of Titus’s departure from the Domain. The Inquisitor and her agents knew what time Titus should arrive at school—and he was already running late.

But he could not simply leave the girl in the laboratory, a place that had no food or water, no lavatory, and nowhere for her to lie down and rest except atop the workbench.

She pushed her hair back from her face. She had used the Pears soap the hotel provided, with its subtle fragrance of an English meadow. The laboratory was small; he stood quite close to her. For a moment he was completely distracted by her scent—and the ripple of her still-damp hair.

He had seen her before. Where had he seen her before?

She looked up, her eyes dark as ink. “You don’t need to go anymore?”

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“I cannot leave you here.”

The laboratory had two other exits. One led to Cape Wrath in the Scottish Highlands, where he sometimes visited in warmer weather, the other to an abandoned barn in Kent. Either way, by taking her out of the laboratory, he would be bowing to the inevitable.

He pulled open a drawer and took out a vial of green powder.

“It seems we will be following the original plan after all, Miss Seabourne,” he said. “I hope you enjoy the company of boys.”

The barn was more or less the same as when Titus had seen it last. Fallen beams, missing doors, patches of gray sky visible through the dilapidated roof. Rain puddled on the floor. The smell of rotting wood and ancient muck assailed his nose.

A stiff breeze stirred. Her hair blew about her face. She looked tousled, as if she had just rolled out of bed, the warmth of the quilt still clinging to her. “Where are we?”

He closed the laboratory door behind him. The door promptly disappeared—it let the occupants of the laboratory out, but could not be used to gain entrance. “Southeast England.”

“You don’t have an exit that takes you directly to school?”

“In case the laboratory is breached, I do not want it easily traced to me. Can you vault more than once in a day?”9

“Yes, but I haven’t much of a range. I’ve never tried to vault more than a few miles.”

He took her hand and tapped out a small mound of the green powder into her palm. “Take this vaulting aid. We have to go fifty miles, but you do not need as big a range when you hitch a vault.”

She swallowed the vaulting aid. “You have a fifty-mile range?”

He had a three-hundred-mile range, practically unheard of. She put her hand on his arm, and the next moment they were in Fairfax’s room.

Either his vaulting aid was superlatively effective, or her natural range measured far greater than a few miles: she neither bent over in pain nor stumbled about, disoriented. As if they had merely climbed up a flight of stairs and walked through the door, she let go of his arm and looked about.

Thirty-five pupils, ranging in age from thirteen to nineteen, lived in this house. The junior boys had the smaller rooms on the upper floors. The senior boys enjoyed bigger, better accommodation right above the ground floor.

Fairfax’s room, like those of other senior boys, measured eight feet by ten feet. A writing desk and a chair had been placed near the fireplace. A set of shelves beside the window held books on top and various sporting equipment on the bottom. A chest of drawers and a spare chair by the door rounded out the collection of furniture.

An oval-framed picture of Queen Victoria, looking puffy and disapproving, hung on the blue-papered wall. Six postcards of ocean liners had been arranged in a semicircle under the queen’s image. Scattered about the rest of the room were photographs and etchings of Africa: wavelike dunes, grazing gnus, a leopard at a watering hole, and a round, thatched hut beside a listing shepherd’s tree.

He drew a soundproof circle. “Welcome to Eton College. We are in Mrs. Dawlish’s house. And this is your room.”

“Who’s Mrs. Dawlish? And why do I have a room here?”

“Boys at Eton live in resident houses—this particular house is run by Mrs. Dawlish. You have a room here because you are a pupil here. Your name is Archer Fairfax, and you have been home these past three months with a broken femur. Your family has a home in Shropshire, but you have spent most of your life in Bechuanaland—an area near the Kalahari Realm.”

“Where is the real Archer Fairfax?” She sounded alarmed.

“There was never a real Archer Fairfax. Since I had to be here, I made a place for you—when I thought you were a boy.”

She frowned. “And people here know me, even though I have never set foot here?”

“Yes.”

“That’s impressive,” she murmured.

He seldom impressed anyone on his merits alone—the sensation was more than a little dizzying.

“We need to cut your hair now,” he said rather abruptly, not wanting her to sense his headiness.

She expelled a breath. “Right.”

He stepped behind her, gathered her hair, lifted it—it was smooth and surprisingly heavy—and lopped it off at the nape with a severing spell. “Sorry.”

“Hair grows back.”

A shame they would need to keep it short for the foreseeable future. He trimmed the remainder of her hair as best as he could, leaving it just long enough so that the wound at her temple would not be visible. She did not quite look like a boy. But then neither was she obviously a girl.

He collected the shorn hair and destroyed it in the unlit fireplace. From the chest of drawers he brought out the items of an Eton boy’s uniform.

“You have prepared for everything.”

“Hardly. If I had any foresight at all, I would have prepared for a girl.”

The vision of his death had mentioned a boy by his side, lamenting his passing. Such was the peril of visions—they must be interpreted by the seer and were therefore subject to human errors. In this case a short-haired girl had been mistaken for a boy. And despite all Titus’s preparations, he now found himself swimming in uncertainty.

He knocked on what looked like wall cabinets and a narrow bed flipped down, startling her. From the sheet he ripped a long white strip of linen, hemmed it with a quick spell, and handed it to her.

“For . . . resizing your person,” he said as he rehemmed the sheet with another spell.

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How else to describe something meant to bind her chest?

She cleared her throat. “Thank you.”

“Once you are ready, the clothes are not that tricky.” He spoke briskly to cover his own embarrassment. And to think, this was only the beginning of the complications of bringing a girl to an all-boys school. “The shirt studs go into the buttonholes. Everything else is as you would expect.”

He turned around to give her privacy. Behind him came the soft shushing of her disrobing. There was no reason for his pulse to accelerate. Nothing was going to happen, and henceforth he would treat her as just another boy. In fact, for her safety and his, he would not even think of her as anything but Archer Fairfax, school chum.

All the same, his pulse raced, as if he had just sprinted the length of a playing field.

Then he glanced up and saw her reflection in the small mirror on the door. She stood with her back to him, na**d to the top of her pajama trousers, her head bent, puzzling over her binding cloth. The contour of her slender neck, the smoothness of her back, the tapering of her waist—he jerked his head away and stared at the spare chair.

After what seemed an eternity—an eternity during which he forgot all about what the agents of Atlantis would think of his continued absence—she asked, “How should I hold it in place, the binding cloth?”

“Say Serpens caudam mordens. It is a simple spell—no need for a wand.”10

“Not even for the first time?”

“No.”

“All right then.” She did not sound convinced. “Serpens caudam mordens.”

A long moment of silence. He had by now completely memorized the form of the lyre-shaped slat on the back of the spare chair.

“Serpens caudam mordens,” she said again. “It’s not working.”

There was no time for her to keep trying. He took a deep breath and turned around. She was now facing him, holding on to the ends of the binding cloth that she had wrapped about her chest. He lowered his gaze: above the too-loose pajama trousers, her waist indented sharply; her navel was deep and perfectly round.

He was going to step closer to her, but now he changed his mind. Remaining precisely where he was, he said, “Serpens caudam mordens.”

The cloth visibly tautened. She emitted a muffled grunt. “Thank you. That’s perfect.”

She had not flattened to anything resembling a plane. “Once more,” he said.

“No, no more. I can barely breathe.”

“You are sure it is tight enough?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

He should not, but his eyes again dipped to her navel. He realized what he was doing and looked up, only to see her flush. She had caught him staring.

He turned away to examine the chair some more. “Move and make sure it stays in place.”

The next time she called him, she already had on the white shirt and the black trousers he had handed her. As expected, the clothes did not fit her. He set to work with an assortment of spells. The shirt needed its sleeves shortened and the width of the shoulders taken in. For the trousers he nipped the waist and raised the cuffs three inches—he had acquired everything big, as it was much easier to make clothing smaller than the other way around.

“If all else fails, you can always find employment as a tailor,” she murmured while he knelt on one knee before her, making sure the trouser cuffs were even.

“You should see my lacework,” he said. “As fine as a spiderweb.”

Above him she laughed softly. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”

“Not often,” he said, with more candor than usual.

Perhaps he would not need to lie to her, the way he lied to everyone else.

He rose to his feet. The waistcoat came with straps on the back and was easily enough cinched to fit her. The jacket required its armholes shrunk, the bagginess at the shoulders and the middle taken in.

But that was not the end of it. The shirt needed a collar attached and the necktie had to be fastened. Because she had no experience with either, he put them on for her.

They stood nose to nose, so close he could see the small pulse at her throat. The clothes smelled of the lavender sachets he had put in Fairfax’s drawers. Her breath brushed the tops of his fingers.

As he pulled her necktie into shape, his knuckles grazed the underside of her chin. She bit her lower lip. Something in him shifted out of place: his concentration.

He took two steps back. “Let me get your shoes.”

“How much practice with tailoring spells have you had?” she asked.

“Hundreds of hours.” And half again as much on cobbling. He made a pair of too-big black leather oxfords fit her and handed her a derby hat. “Here in England you never go anywhere without headgear.”

Did she pass for a boy? He was not entirely confident. But assumption was a powerful thing, especially such a big-belief assumption.

She examined herself in the mirror on the door, adjusting the angle of her hat. Suddenly she swiveled around.

“What is it?”

She opened her mouth, only to press her lips together again. “Never mind.”

But he knew what she had realized. That he could have watched her undress in the mirror. They stared at each other. She dropped her eyes and turned her attention back to the mirror.

He walked to the window, parted the curtains a sliver, and looked out. The clouds had begun to dissipate. A few rays of pallid sunlight reached the small meadow behind the house. There were no boys or house staff about—it was near teatime, and everyone must have returned inside.

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She came to stand next to him.

“Vault out from here to behind those trees,” he instructed. “Then come through the front door of the house. I will meet you in the entry hall.”

He did not want her out of his sight. But there was nothing for it: Fairfax’s return had to be seen as an event entirely unrelated to the disappearance of one Iolanthe Seabourne. If he produced Fairfax from nowhere, they would both look more suspicious to agents of Atlantis.

“And the other boys will know who I am?”

“When they hear me say your name they will.” He turned toward her. “I know it is my fault you are here. But please be convincing as a boy—or I will have prepared in vain.”

She glanced at him, her gaze half-admiring, half-mystified. “You have prepared a great deal.”

You have no idea. “And therefore you will not fail me.”

It was as much a prayer as it was a command.

Mrs. Dawlish’s house was built of weathered red brick, the outlines neat and solid. Above the ground floor, behind a window at the southern end, stood the prince, watching her.

Had he also watched her when she had stripped down nearly to her skin? Was it her imagination or had he looked at her differently afterward? The underside of her chin, where he’d accidentally brushed her, scorched anew at the thought.

He raised his hand in a silent salute and disappeared. All at once she felt exposed. She’d thought her former life precarious; she’d had no idea how sheltered she’d been, protected at an impossible cost to Master Haywood.

She must remain safe, if only so that his sacrifice would not be in vain.

It had rained earlier in this place—everything was soaked. A watery light shone on the damp landscape. In the distance she could make out a grander building than the rest—the school? Farther away, in a different direction, the hulking shadows of what looked to be a squat castle.

She didn’t seem to be in a city—there was too much tree and grass and sky. Nor did she seem to be in isolated countryside. There were other houses. Carriages clattered down a nearby street, carriages drawn by—were they?—she squinted—yes, horses.

Real horses, without wings or a horn on the forehead, their hooves clacking wetly. She couldn’t help smiling, reminded of the picture books she’d loved as a child, stories of nonmage children who had nothing but their wits, their swords, and their loyal horses to accompany them on their adventures.

The carriages were black and closed, some with curtains drawn. The pedestrians in blacks, browns, and drab blues were entirely preoccupied with their own affairs, with no idea that a fugitive was among them, pursued with the full might of the greatest empire on the face of the earth.

The thought was almost comforting: at least no one paid her any attention.

A breeze almost made off with her hat; she clamped it down and began walking. Her new clothes did not move well—too many layers, the cut restrictive, the material inelastic. And without her hair, her head felt oddly light, nearly weightless.

Gingerly, and trying not to look like a foreigner, she stepped onto the sidewalk, only to be immediately accosted by a grimy boy of indeterminate age, waving pieces of printed paper in the air.

She leaped back, primed to run the other way.

“More details from John Brown’s funeral! You want to know about ’em, guv?”

“Ah . . .” Did she?

“Read all about Her Majesty’s sorrow. Read it for a penny.”

She found her breath. A newspaper, that was what the boy was waving—newspapers in the Domain hadn’t used actual paper for a very long time.

“Sorry. Never cared for the man,” she said truthfully.

The boy shrugged and continued peddling his wares down the narrow street, which was squeezed in by tightly packed brick houses with steep, pitched roofs.

She came to a stop before the front door of Mrs. Dawlish’s house, black and unassuming beneath an arched doorway. There, she’d made it. Now she only had to pass herself off as a boy. For the foreseeable future.

And under the watchful eyes of Atlantis.

Titus changed into his school uniform in his own room. As he stepped out into the passage, Wintervale’s door opened.

“When did you get here?” asked Wintervale, surprised.

“A while ago,” said Titus. “I have been in my room.”

“Why didn’t you join Kashkari and myself?”

“I was in a foul mood—ran into the Inquisitor today. You do not look too pleased either. What is the matter?”

“My mother. I had to go back home just now.”

Titus asked the obvious. “Does she not usually leave for Aix-les-Bains as soon as you return here?”

“Baden-Baden this time, but she hasn’t left yet. I found her in the attic in a state. She kept saying she’d killed someone and that this time there would be no forgiveness from the Angels. I checked the house from top to bottom: nothing. If she had truly killed someone, you’d think I’d have found a corpse.”

It was not easy being Lady Wintervale’s son. She was not consistently insane. But at times she came close enough.

“Is she still at home?”

“She’s gone to stay with the Alhambras.” Wintervale knocked the back of his head against the wall behind him. “Atlantis did this to her. When are you going to lead us to overthrow them?”

Titus shrugged. “You will have to organize the revolt, cousin. If I could, I wouldn’t be here.”

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Lying to Lady Callista and the Inquisitor was a perennial necessity—Titus took pride in rarely speaking a true word before those two. But lying to his second cousin, equally necessary, had always bothered him. He wished Wintervale were not so trusting.

“Why do you think I’m trying to get into Sandhurst?” said Wintervale. “The British fight lots of wars. Maybe there is something to be learned from them.”

Titus also wished Lady Wintervale had not adamantly adhered to the tra***ion of having a child from one of the Domain’s grandest families study alongside the heir of the House of Elberon. Lady Callista had been his mother’s companion—look how well that had turned out.

“Try not to get yourself killed in one of Britain’s colonial wars,” he told Wintervale. “It would be the ultimate irony.”

“Do I hear mentions of colonial wars?” said Kashkari, joining them, dapper in his impeccably turned-out uniform and sleek black hair. “Is your stomachache gone, Wintervale? You look better.”

“I’m fine now,” said Wintervale.

Lady Wintervale’s unpredictable mental state and penchant for relying on her only child meant that Wintervale often had to invent sudden pains to go back to his room—or clear his room—to use the wardrobe portal.

“Do the two of you want some tea?” Wintervale issued his usual invitation.

“Why not?” said Kashkari.

“I will join you in a minute. I think I saw Fairfax from my window. Let me go down to make sure it is really him.”

“Fairfax!” exclaimed Wintervale. “Are you sure?”

“But your window doesn’t face the street. How did you see him?” asked Kashkari.

“He was walking across the grass. Who knows? Maybe he wants to refamiliarize himself with everything.”

“About time,” said Wintervale. “We need him to play.”

“He still does not feel the strength in his leg,” said Titus, moving toward the stairs. The otherwise charm he had created before he first stepped into the school was fairly watertight: no one doubted that Fairfax existed.11 All the same, he had better reach the ground floor soon. The boys would not recognize her as Fairfax unless someone said the name aloud; and only Titus could do that. “Who knows whether he will still be any good at sports after an injury like that?”

Wintervale’s other passion, besides returning the barony of Wintervale to its former glory, was cricket. He had convinced himself—and a fair number of other boys—that Archer Fairfax was the veriest cricket prodigy whose return would propel the house team to the school cup.

“Strange. He’s been gone only three months, and already I can’t remember what he looks like,” said Wintervale.

“Lucky you,” said Titus. “Fairfax is one of the most ferociously ugly blokes I have ever met.”

Kashkari chuckled, catching up with Titus on the steps down. “I’ll tell him you said that.”

“Please do.”

Mrs. Dawlish’s house, despite its overwhelming majority of male occupants, had been decorated *****it Mrs. Dawlish’s tastes. The wallpaper in the stairwell was rose-and-ivy. Frames of embroidered daisies and hyacinths hung everywhere.

The stairs led down to the entry hall, with poppy-chintz-covered chairs and green muslin curtains. A vase of orange tulips nodded on the console table beneath an antique mirror—a boy was required to examine himself in the mirror before he left the house, lest his appearance disgrace Mrs. Dawlish.

Titus was two steps above the newel post when Fairfax came into the entry hall, a slim, tall-enough figure in the distinctive tailed jacket of an Eton senior boy. Immediately he was appalled by his abysmal judgment. She did not look like a boy at all. She was much, much too pretty: her eyes, wide-set and long-lashed; her skin, needlessly smooth; her lips, red and full and all but shouting girlishness.

She saw him and smiled in relief. The smile was the worst yet: it brought out deep dimples he had not even suspected she possessed.

Dread engulfed him. Any moment now someone was going to shout, What is a girl doing here? And since everyone knew Fairfax as his closest friend, it would take no time for the agents stationed at Eton to put two and two together and conclude that there was far more than just cross-dressing going on.

“Fairfax,” he heard himself speak—his voice almost did not quiver. “We thought you were never coming back.”

Almost immediately Kashkari said, “My goodness, it is you, Fairfax!”

“Welcome back, Fairfax!” hollered Wintervale.

With the repetition of her name, other boys swarmed out of the woodwork and took up the chorus of “Look, Fairfax is back!”

At the sight of so many boys, her smile disintegrated. She did not say anything, but looked from face to face, her hand tightening upon the handle of the valise. Titus could not breathe. For eight years he had lived in a state of slow-simmering panic. But he had never known real terror until this moment. He had always depended on himself; now everything depended on her.

Come on, Fairfax, he implored under his breath. But he knew it. It was too much. She was going to drop the valise and bolt. All hell would break loose, eight years of work would circle the drain, and his mother would have died for nothing.

She cleared her throat and beamed, a smug, lopsided grin. “It’s good to see all your ugly faces again.”

Her voice. Lurching from one emergency to another, he had paid no mind. Now he truly heard it for the first time: rich, low-pitched, and slightly gravelly.

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But it was her grin, rather than her voice, that steadied his heartbeat. There was no mistaking the ****iness of that grin, absolutely the expression of a sixteen-year-old boy who had never known the taste of defeat.

Wintervale bounced down the rest of the steps and shook her hand. “You haven’t changed a bit, Fairfax, as charming as His Highness here. No wonder you two were always thick as thieves.”

Her brow lifted at the way Wintervale addressed Titus. Wintervale knew who Titus was, but to the rest of the school, Titus was a minor Continental prince.

“Do not encourage him, Wintervale,” said Titus. “Fairfax is insufferable enough as it is.”

She looked askance at him. “Takes one to know one.”

Wintervale whistled and slapped her on the arm. “How’s the leg, Fairfax?”

One of Wintervale’s thwacks could snap a young tree. She managed not to topple over. “Good as new.”

“And is your Latin still as terrible as your bowling?”

The boys snickered good-naturedly.

“My Latin is fine. It’s my Greek that’s as ghastly as your love-making,” she retorted. The boys howled, including Titus, who laughed out of sheer shock—and relief.

She was good.

Brilliant, in fact.

CHAPTER 7

AFTER RUNNING THE GAUNTLET OF handshakes, backslaps, and general greet-and-insults, Iolanthe hoped for a moment to breathe. But it was not to be.

“Benton!” Wintervale called. “Take Fairfax’s bag to his room. And make sure you light a good fire there. Fairfax, come with us for tea.”

A smallish boy, wearing not a tailed coat but one that stopped at the waist, whisked the valise away.

“Work him hard.” Wintervale smiled at her. He was as tall as the prince, blond and strapping, almost spinning in place with nervous energy. “Benton hasn’t done much in your absence.”

She didn’t ask why she had to work Benton hard—the prince would explain everything later. She only grinned at Wintervale. “I’ll make him regret that I ever came back.”

Before Little Grind, Master Haywood had taught at a school for boys. Each evening, after sports practice, a group of them would walk past Iolanthe’s window, chatting loudly. She’d paid particular attention to the most popular boy, carefully noting his cheerful swagger and good-natured insults.

Now she was acting the part of that happy, affably ****y boy.

The prince, walking a pace before her, turned his head and slanted her an approving look. Her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t think he was the kind to approve easily.

Entering Wintervale’s room, however, stopped her dead. On his windowsill bloomed a sizable weathervine—terribly useful for knowing when an umbrella would be required for the day.

Only it couldn’t be a weathervine, could it? The weathervine was a mage plant. What was it doing in—

The prince put his arm about her shoulder. “Forgot what Wintervale’s room looks like?”

She let him ease her inside, knowing that she shouldn’t have stopped to gawk. “I was just wondering whether the walls were always so green.”

“No, they weren’t,” said Wintervale. “I changed the wallpaper just before the end of the last Half.”

“You are lucky—and good,” the prince whispered in her ear.

His breath against her skin sent a jolt of heat through her entire person. She couldn’t quite look at him.

The room was soon filled to capacity. Two small boys crouched before the fire, one making tea, the other scrambling eggs with surprising expertise. A third delivered buttered toast and baked beans.

She observed the goings-on carefully: the young boys, no question about it, acted as minions to the older boys.

Benton, who’d earlier been tasked with taking her valise to her room, now returned with a plate of still-sizzling sausages.

“You didn’t burn them again, did you, Benton?” Wintervale asked.

“I almost never burn them,” Benton responded indignantly.

Wintervale poked Iolanthe with his elbow. “The new boys, they do get so ornery by the third Half.”

His elbow rammed a very tender spot in her chest. She would always be proud that she only sucked in a breath in reaction. “They’ll learn their places yet.”

She walked to the plant and fingered its soft, ferny leaves. A weathervine, no doubt about it. “Did you always have this?”

“I raised it from a seedling,” Wintervale answered. “It was probably only three inches tall when you went home with the broken limb.”

Perhaps the prince gave one to him? “It doesn’t seem as if I’ve been gone quite that long.”

“How was Somerset?” Kashkari asked.

Somerset? Instinctively she moved closer to the prince, as if his proximity made her less likely to make mistakes. “You mean Shropshire?”

The prince, who’d taken a place on Wintervale’s bed, gave her another approving look.

Acacia Lucas, one of Master Haywood’s pupils in Little Grind, had been quite keen to marry the prince. One day, during a practical under Iolanthe’s supervision, Acacia had pointed at his portrait and whispered to her friend, He has the face of an Angel. Iolanthe had looked up at the prince’s coldly haughty features and snorted to herself.

Acacia was not entirely right—or entirely wrong. He was nothing like a sublimated Angel. But a sublunary one, perhaps: the dangerous kind that made those gazing upon them see only what they wished to see.

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She saw a stalwart protector. But was that what he truly was, or merely what she desperately wanted? As much as she did not wish to, somewhere deep inside she understood that he had not risked everything purely out of the goodness of his heart.

“Sorry, is it Shropshire?” Kashkari shook his head. “How was Shropshire then?”

He had straight blue-black hair, olive skin, intelligent eyes, and an elegant, if slightly forlorn mouth—an outstandingly handsome boy.

“Cold and wet for the most part,” said Iolanthe, figuring that was always an acceptable weather for spring on a North Atlantic island. And then, remembering herself, “But of course I spent all of my time inside, driving our housekeeper batty.”

“How was Derbyshire?” the prince asked Kashkari, moving the topic away from Archer Fairfax.

Iolanthe let out the breath she’d been holding. The prince had shown remarkable foresight in making Fairfax someone who’d spent most of his life abroad: it could be used to excuse his lack of knowledge concerning Britain. But it was the barest piece of luck that she’d remembered his mention of Shropshire. No matter how unfamiliar with England an expatriate was, he should still know where he lived.

“I wish there were enough time between terms for me to go back to Hyderabad. Derbyshire is beautiful, but life in a country house becomes repetitive after a while,” Kashkari replied.

“Good thing you are back in school now,” said the prince.

“True, school is more unpredictable.”

“Is that so? School is predictable for me, and I like it that way,” said Wintervale. “We should have a toast. To school, may it always be what we want it to be.”

Tea was ready. Wintervale shooed out the young lackeys and poured for his guests. They clinked their teacups. “To dear old school.”

Tea at home was usually accompanied by a few bites of pastry. But here tea—the table was laden with eggs, sausages, beans, and toast—constituted a meal on its own. Iolanthe hoped this meant that the boys would concentrate on their food. Any more questions and she was bound to betray herself.

“Make sure you eat enough,” said Wintervale. “We need you ready for cricket.”

What cricket? Grasshopper? “Ah—I’m as ready as I will ever be.”

“Excellent,” said Wintervale. “We are in desperate need of a superior bowler.”

A what? At least Wintervale did not expect her to define what a bowler was. He only extended his hand to her. “To a season to remember.”

She shook his hand. “A season to remember.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Kashkari.

The prince did not look nearly as thrilled. What exactly had she committed herself to with that handshake? But before she could pull him aside and ask, Kashkari had another question for her.

“I don’t know why, Fairfax,” he said, “but I have a hard time remembering how you broke your leg.”

Her stomach plunged. How did she fudge a question like that?

“He—” Wintervale and the prince began at the same time.

“Go ahead,” the prince said to Wintervale.

She drank from her cup, trying not to appear too obviously relieved. Of course the prince would take care of her.

“He climbed the tree at the edge of our playing field and fell off,” Wintervale answered. “The prince had to carry him back here. Didn’t you, Your Highness?”

“I did,” said the prince, “with Fairfax crying like a girl all the way.”

Oh, she did, did she? “If I wept, it was only because you were so pitiful. I weigh barely nine stone. But one’d think I were an elephant the way Your Highness moaned. ‘Oh, Fairfax, I cannot take another step.’ ‘Oh, Fairfax, my legs are turning into pudding.’ ‘Oh, Fairfax, my knees are buckling. And you are crushing my delicate toes.’”

Kashkari and Wintervale chuckled.

“My back is still hurting to this day,” said the prince. “And you weighed as much as the Rock of Gibraltar.”

Their exchange was almost flirtatious. But she could not help notice that in the midst of the general jollity, he remained apart—had she never met him she’d have considered him moody. She wondered why he was utterly alone when he was among mates.

Her, of course, she realized with a start. She was the reason. She was his great secret.

And now they were in this secret together.

She flashed him a smile. “What are friends for, prince?”

“I am sorry I did not have the time to tell you that Wintervale is an Exile,” Titus said. “He is an elemental mage, in fact, but any nonmage with a match can produce a more impressive flame than he.”

They stood some distance from the house, near the banks of the brown and silent Thames. Titus had rowed on the river for years. The repetition, the perspiration, and the good, clean exhaustion quieted his mind beautifully.

Eton was not always a pleasant place: many boys had a difficult time finding their place in the hierarchy, and there were senior boys who roundly abused their powers. But for him, the school, with its drafty classrooms, its grueling sports, its thousand boys—and even its agents of Atlantis—was the closest thing to normalcy he had ever known.

“Are there other mages here?” she asked.

The day was fleeing. And so were the clouds, leaving behind a clear sky that had turned a deep twilight blue, except for the western horizon, still glowing with the last embers of sunset.

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“Besides Wintervale, only the agents of Atlantis.”

She had been almost giddy with relief upon leaving Wintervale’s room, but this reminder of Atlantis’s omnipresence sobered her mood. Her eyes lowered. Her shoulders hunched. She seemed to grow smaller before his eyes.

“Afraid?”

“Yes.”

“You will become accustomed to it.” Not true at all. He never had, but learned to carry on in spite of it.

She took a deep breath, snapped a leaf from a weeping willow, and rolled it into a green tube in her hand. Her fingers were slender and delicate—very much a girl’s.

“Wintervale calls you ‘Your Highness’ and nobody bats an eye. Do they all know who you are?”

“Wintervale does. But to everyone else, I am a minor Germanic princeling from the House of Saxe-Limburg.”

“Is there such a house?”

“No, but anyone who has ever heard of the name will find it on a map and in history books as a principality of Prussia—the regent’s mage-in-chief made sure of it.”

“That is a highly illegal otherwise spell, it is not?”

“Then do not tell anybody that is also how I made a place for Archer Fairfax here.”

This earned him a long glance from her, half-approving, half-disquieted.

At the edge of the river they stopped. The water was a dark ripple, with a few daubs of reddish gold.

“The Thames,” he said. “We row on it, those of us who do not play cricket.”

He thought she might ask what exactly cricket was, but she only nodded slowly.

“Across the river is Windsor Castle, one of the English queen’s homes,” he added.

She looked south for a moment at the ramparts that dominated the skyline. He had the distinct feeling that she was only half listening to him.

“Is there something on your mind?” he asked.

She glanced at him again, reluctant admiration in her eyes. He rarely cared what others thought of him. But with this girl who observed him carefully and unobtrusively, who was as perceptive as she was capable . . .

“We spoke of my guardian earlier, did we not?”

Her decision to confide in him pleased him—and turned him oddly anxious. “We did, at the hotel.”

She dropped the willow leaf into the river; it swirled in a small eddy. “For the past several years I have been frustrated with him. He had been a scholar of great promise. But then he made one terrible mistake after another and became a nobody in the middle of nowhere.

“I learned today that, fourteen years ago, to keep me safe, he gave up certain crucial memories of his past to a memory keeper. Since then he has lived without knowing the events that brought him to where he was.”

Titus could scarcely imagine how the man had managed for so many years. It was the current medical consensus that memory escrow was eminently unsuitable for the long term. After a few years the mind started to hunt for the missing memories. They became an obsession.

“That was probably the reason he turned to merixida,” she went on. “Now that I think about it, all those choices that cost him his career and even his respectability—he must have been trying, however subconsciously, to force the memory keeper to intervene.”

She picked up a pebble from the ground and tossed it with a flick of her wrist. The pebble skipped four times on the surface of the river before disappearing beneath the currents. She watched the river a moment longer, then squared her shoulders and stood taller, as if she had come to an important decision.

“My case is different, of course. I’m in full possession of my memories. But like him, I’m in the dark. And I don’t want to be.”

“Am I keeping you in the dark?”

She bit her lower lip. “Please don’t mistake me. I am enormously grateful for everything you’ve done. Were I a better person, I’d let myself be guided by gratitude and only gratitude. But I have to ask, why? Why have you placed yourself at such risk? Why do you defy the Inquisitor? Why are you involved at all?”

She was embarrassed to be asking these questions—her foot scuffed the soft ground of the bank, as fidgety as he had ever seen her. But all the same, her voice was wary.

The exchange he would ask for had always seemed fair and simple to him. He kept the elemental mage safe; and in return, the elemental mage lent him the great powers he needed. But would she see it that way?

Perhaps he needed to use her guardian as a bargaining chip: she could not infiltrate the Inquisitory on her own. Neither could he, but she did not know that.

He, however, did know. He was a liar by necessity, but could he lie to her, knowing that he was very possibly asking for her life in return?

That he did not answer immediately discomfited her. She ran her hand through her hair, only to pull her fingers back in surprise, as if she had forgotten that most of her hair had been shorn and destroyed.

She shook her head slightly, her eyes wistful. He stared at her, this girl who would never again be safe anywhere.

No, he would not lie, not to her. Going forward, it would be the two of them against the world, an alliance that would define what remained of his days on this earth.

And be his only chance for something true and meaningful.

For a minute Iolanthe thought the prince would not tell her anything at all. Then he made a double impassable circle around them.

One did not make a double impassable circle unless one absolutely did not want to be overheard. The breeze coming off the river suddenly felt raw.

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The prince gazed across the water at a narrow strip of an island. His profile was familiar—it graced every coin of the realm—yet she couldn’t look away. Handsome boys she’d met before. He was more than handsome; he was striking. And there was a nobility to his bearing that had little to do with his bloodline and everything to do with the sense of purpose he radiated.

“I am going to bring down the Bane.”

His quiet words brushed over her and departed on a cold gust. She shivered and waited for him to tell her that it was a joke—since he did have a sense of humor.

He met her eyes squarely, his gaze unwavering.

This was mad. He might as well bring down the Labyrinthine Mountains—it would be easier. The Bane was invincible. Untouchable.

“Why?” Her voice was hoarse.

“Because that is what I am meant to do.”

Despite her incredulity—or perhaps because of it—she found his conviction awe-inspiring.

“How—how do you know that is what you are meant to do?”

“My mother told me so.”

When people talked about Princess Ariadne, it was usually to speculate on the mysterious liaison that had produced the prince. No one could recall another instance in the whole history of the House of Elberon when a ruling prince’s paternity remained unknown.12

“Was your mother a seer?”

“She was.” What was the emotion underlying his reply? Anger, resignation, sadness—or a mix of all three? “At her wish, it was never revealed to the public.”

True seers were few and far between. “What did she prophesy that has come true?”

Without bending down he had a pebble in hand. He weighed it. “Twenty-five years ago, she and my grandfather received a delegation of Atlantean youth. There was a girl of seventeen who was not a delegate, but a mere assistant. My mother pointed out the girl to my grandfather and said that one day the girl would be the most powerful person in the Domain.”

“The Inquisitor?”

He tossed the pebble. It skipped far. “The Inquisitor.”

That was scarily impressive. “What else?”

“She knew the exact date of Baroness Sorren’s funeral, years before the baroness even took up the charge against Atlantis.”

This unnerved Iolanthe. No wonder Princess Ariadne hadn’t wanted it known that she was a seer, if funeral dates were the sort of things she foresaw.

The prince skipped another pebble. “She also said that it was on my balcony that I would first learn of your existence. And so it was.”

A flicker of hope ignited in Iolanthe’s heart. “And she said that you would bring down the Bane?”

He did not answer immediately.

“Did she or did she not?”

“She said that I must be the one to try, to set things into motion.”

“That’s not a guarantee of success, is it?”

“No. But we will never accomplish anything worthwhile in life if we require the guarantee of success at the onset.”

His audacity took her breath away. Compared to him, she had lived on the smallest scale, concerned only with the well-being of herself and Master Haywood. While he, who could have led a life of unimaginable luxury and privilege, was willing to give it all up for the sake of the greater good.

“What is my part in your plan?”

“I need you,” he said simply. “Only with a great elemental mage by my side will I have a prayer of a chance.”

When she’d been a child, enthralled by her reading of The Lives and Deeds of Great Elemental Mages, she’d wondered what it would be like for her own powers to grow *****ch fearsome immensity, to hold the fate of entire realms in the palm of her hand. Listening to him, she felt a stirring of that old excitement, that electric charge of limitless possibilities.

“Are you really sure I am that great elemental mage?”

The certainty in his eyes was absolute. “Yes.”

If he was convinced, and Atlantis too, and Master Haywood so much so as to give up his memories—she supposed they could not all be wrong. “So . . . how will we bring down the Bane?”

“We will have to pit ourselves against him someday.”

She felt dizzy. Surely they could find some clever way of defeating the Bane from a distance.

“Face-to-face?” Her voice quavered.

“Yes.”

The froth of imagined valor in her heart dissipated, leaving behind only dregs of stark fear.

But the prince thought so highly of her. And risked so much. She’d hate for him be disappointed in her. She’d hate for her to be disappointed in her. In the four Great Adventures and all seven Grand Epics, books she’d cherished as a child, this was the moment the protagonist rose to the occasion and embarked on the legendary journey. No one in the stories ever said, Thank you, but no thank you, this really isn’t for me.

Yet this really wasn’t for her. Thoughts of heroics might stir her soul for a minute, but no more than that. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the Bane, let alone take part in some sort of match to the death.

If she were dead, she’d never become a professor at the Conservatory and live on that beautiful campus again.

Besides, the Domain had long been under the shadow of Atlantis. She was inured to the reality of it. She had no burning desire to topple the Bane and no wish—unless it was to free Master Haywood—to ever cross paths with the Inquisitor.

“I thought—I thought I was here to hide,” she said, hating how feeble she sounded.