[English] THE BURNING SKY

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“Yes, they also sent a letter to Mrs. Dawlish to that effect,” answered Mrs. Han****. “You may take a short leave, if you wish.”

“Bother,” said Iolanthe. “Sissy was perfectly fine when I left. I’ll bet she’s only pretending.”

That seemed like something a boy of sixteen who’d been stuck home for three months with his little sister might say.

“Then stay here,” said the prince. “Besides, you are supposed to help me with my critical paper Saturday.”

He sounded enormously peevish.

“I’m afraid you won’t have time Saturday for your critical paper, Your Highness,” said Mrs. Han****. “The embassy has requested leave for you, too. There is a function they would like you to attend.”

“God’s teeth, why do they insist on this charade? I rule nothing, isn’t that punishment enough? Why must I attend their functions and be paraded around?”

“Come, prince, how terrible can it be?” Iolanthe said, playing the part of the affable friend. “There will be champagne and ladies.”

The prince released his bed and plunked himself down on it. “That shows how much you know, Fairfax.”

She knew he was playacting, but still she shot him an irate glance. Mrs. Han****’s sharp eyes took it all in—no doubt exactly as the prince intended.

Iolanthe mustered a smile for Mrs. Han****. “I’m sure by tomorrow His Highness will be in a more receptive mood. Thank you for coming all the way to give me my letter, ma’am.”

“Oh, it was nothing at all, Fairfax. And good day to you too, Your Highness.”

After she left, neither of them spoke for a while.

Then the prince slowly let out a breath. “Saturday evening I meet with the Inquisitor.”

CHAPTER 13

IOLANTHE AND THE PRINCE UNDERTOOK a battery of test vaults and determined that she had a solo range of twenty-seven miles, enough to cover the distance between London and Eton in one vault.

Saturday afternoon, to keep up the pretense of heading home to Shropshire, she took the train to London. From there she vaulted to a broom cupboard at school, where the prince waited.

“Anyone following you?”

She shook her head.

The prince gave her a dose of vaulting aid. “Let us go then.”

Their first vault took them to a musty-smelling, cramped space not very different from the broom cupboard they’d left behind.

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere inside the bell tower of a cathedral in Birmingham. Let me know if you need a few minutes.”

She shook her head, determined not to show any weakness. She lasted two more such vaults before her head spun. It didn’t matter where she was now—another long-disused room by the look of it. She leaned against the wall and fought her nausea.

He checked her pulse, his fingers warm and light on her wrist. Then he gave her a powder as sweet as pure sugar.

“What is it?” she mumbled.

“Something that will make my kisses taste like chocolate.”

Until now, neither of them had referred to the kiss. She had been trying not to remember it—the imminent meeting with the Inquisitor meant she would finally see Master Haywood, and that was plenty to occupy her mind.

But she had relived the kiss. And every time she had, lightning had shot through her.

I wish we had met under different circumstances, he’d said.

Did he wish daily—hourly—that he’d been born someone else, and not burdened with this crushing purpose? She would, but she could not tell about him. His true emotions were buried at the depth of an ocean trench, undetectable to anyone but himself.

“Your kisses will only ever taste like wet dog.”

“Know a lot about that, do you?” he said amicably.

What kind of person are you, to live without honor or integrity?

Obviously, the kind chosen for what others are too decent to do.

She signaled that she was ready to vault again. After two more vaults, despite the remedy, her head pounded in agony.

He helped her sit down. “Put your head between your knees.”

“Why are you still standing?” she asked, grumpily envious, her eyes half-closed.

They were outdoors. The grass beneath her was soft and green, the air cool and moist, with the distinct, salty tang of the sea.

“You might be handsome as a god, but I vault like one.”

She wished she had the energy to glower at him, even though she felt strangely like smiling. “Where are we?”

“Cape Wrath, Scotland.”

“Where is that?”

“The very north of Britain, five hundred some miles from Eton.”

No wonder she felt so awful. Five hundred miles was generally considered the upper limit on daily vaulting range. For them to have come so far in less than a quarter of an hour was something marvelous—and possibly fatal.

She lifted her face. They were on a craggy headland overlooking a gray, restless sea. The wind was so strong she had to remove her hat. Her short hair blew about wildly.

He crouched down, held her chin between his fingers, and peered into her eyes. She knew he was only checking the size of her pupils, but the act was still overwhelmingly intimate, one long locked gaze.

If she weren’t careful, she might delude herself into believing that she could see all the way into his soul.

She drew back from his hand. “Where is the entrance to your laboratory?”

“Over there.” He tilted his head toward a lighthouse in the distance.

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She came to her feet with a wobble. “What are we waiting for?”

The last time they were both in his laboratory, she still had her hair, and her opinion had not yet turned against him. Titus did not miss her hair, but he did miss the way she had looked at him, full of trust and reliance.

She lifted a hand and touched a jar of pearls. Her face was tilted up—he remembered putting on her necktie and brushing the underside of her chin. He remembered the sensation of heat rushing along his nerves, the softness of her skin.

She turned around. “Where’s your canary?” she asked, pointing at the unoccupied birdcage.

He pretended to stir the potion before him. “I sold it at the songbird market in London. It was a prop; I do not need it when I am at school.”

“A prop for what?”

He handed her the potion. It had matured well, the alarming purple goo of the night before now oatmeal-like in color and smelling pleasantly of nutmeg. “For you.”

She eyed the potion warily. “You aren’t trying to turn me into a canary, are you? Human transmogrification spells are hugely unstable, not to mention dangerous to the subject.”16

“I have a workable transmogrification spell.”

“Tested on yourself too?”

“Of course.”

The glance she cast him—he had experienced a great deal of her displeasure of late, but this time she was not angry or averse. Instead she looked . . . pained, almost.

“Are you all right? I promise you it is safe. You know I would never let any harm come to you and—”

“I’m fine.” She took the potion from him and drained it. “Why am I not a canary yet?”

He poured a vial of bright red powder into a glass of water. The water turned vermilion, then clear again. “You need to also drink this.”

She did. Then she glanced at the empty birdcage. “Is it going to be painful?”

“Yes.”

“You could have lied here, too.” She smiled slightly, not looking at him. “I’m ready.”

He pulled out his wand and pointed it at her. “Verte in avem.”

The transformation was sudden and wrenching. He knew it well, having gone through it five times. She flailed. He caught her. A moment later he was holding only a bundle of clothes.

A canary, chirping, almost wailing, streaked about the room, its wings flapping madly.

“Come to me, Fairfax.”

She flew straight into him. He barely caught her.

She lay still and stunned in his palms. He passed his fingers over her wings. “You did well, nothing broken. The first time I tried this, I gave myself a concussion and fractured my elbow.”

He placed her in the cage, atop layers of clean newspaper. “Rest for a few minutes, then we need to go.”

He went around the room gathering what he needed. She wobbled toward the water cup.

“Drink the water if you are thirsty, but do not eat anything from the feed cup. You may look like a bird, but you are not one. You cannot fly very well, and you most certainly cannot digest raw seeds.”

She dipped her beak into the water, drank, and hopped around a little more in her cage.

The door of the cage was still open. He held out his hand. “Come here.”

Her little bird head ****ed to one side, looking almost as suspicious as her human self. But she hopped onto his palm. He raised her to his lips and kissed the top of her downy head.

“It will be you and me against the world, Fairfax,” he murmured. “You and me.”

Dalbert was on time, as always.

“Your Highness.” Dalbert bowed from the waist.

He held open the door of the private rail coach. Titus nodded, gave his satchel to the valet, and mounted the steps into the coach with the birdcage in his hand.

Dalbert brought Titus a glass of hippocras and tipped some waterose seeds into Fairfax’s feed cup.

“Hullo there, Miss Buttercup.”

Titus watched her. She dipped her beak into the feed cup and took out a seed. But when Dalbert had smiled in satisfaction and turned to putter elsewhere in the coach, she dropped the seed back into the feed cup.

Titus breathed again. All the literature had insisted that a mage in a transmogrified state clearly understands language and instructions, but this was the first time he had been able to test the claim for himself.

The train’s whistle shrieked. Its wheels ground against the tracks. They were on their way.

They remained on the rails for only a few minutes. The prince used the time to throw on a tunic and change into a pair of knee-high boots. Then Iolanthe was no longer looking at the English countryside, but at distant mountain peaks.

Which turned out not to be real mountain peaks, but a large mural that adorned the circular room in which the private rail coach now stood.

The prince rose from his seat. In her current size, he appeared immense, his hand the size of a door. He lifted her cage and alit, followed by his manservant.

A set of heavy, tall double doors swung open. She’d anticipated a great room of some sort on the other side, but it was only the stairwell, lit by sconces that emitted a remarkably pure white light.

They descended a long flight of circular stairs—the rail coach was parked at the top of a tower. Another set of doors opened, and they walked down a wide corridor with open arches, looking out to a garden terrace that hung several hundred feet above the courtyard below.

The corridor turned, split, turned again. Now there were attendants everywhere, bowing and scraping as the prince walked by. They went up a few steps, passed a library, an indoor garden with a sculpture fountain in the middle, and a large aviary filled with birds of all descriptions.

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When they finally entered the prince’s apartment, she found it rather sparsely furnished—Master Haywood had a more impressive parlor when he was still at the university. Or so Iolanthe thought, until her gaze landed on the tri-panel screen before the window. Inside each translucent panel, silver-azure butterflies fluttered. As she watched, one butterfly’s color changed into a vibrant yellow, another to a delicate shade of violet, and yet a third an intricate pattern of green and black.

The butterflies must be made from blue argent, a priceless elixir sensitive to the least changes in the heat and intensity of the sun. The prince paid no attention at all to his incalculably precious screen, but charged past. In the next room she caught a glimpse of an enormous vase of ice roses, their pale-blue petals like blown glass. The room after that housed a huge spinning globe. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a thunderstorm going on somewhere in the tropics, with tiny flashes of lightning. The prince ducked under the moon as he marched on.

In his bedchamber he stopped to pull off his boots; then they were in an enormous bathroom that boasted a tub carved out of a single block of amethyst, with fittings and claw-feet of pure gold. Steam curled above the tub, petals and herbs floated atop the water—she smelled orange blossom and mint.

She used to relish long soaks. It had been one of the most enjoyable applications of her elemental power, a gentle fire beneath the tub to keep the water at a constant temperature, while she made elaborate, fanciful sculptures with water droplets in the air.

The prince set her down and dismissed his valet. The latter left with a bow and closed the door. Leaning against the wall, the prince pulled off his stockings. As he walked toward the amethyst tub, he yanked his shirt over his head.

He was lean and tightly sinewed. Her little bird heart thudded.

He glanced at her, his lips curved in not quite a smile. The next thing she knew, his shirt had flown through the air and landed on the cage, blocking her view toward the bathtub.

“Sorry, sweetheart. I am shy.”

She chirped indignantly. It was not as if she would have continued to watch him disrobe beyond a certain point.

“I know you would rather inspect my superlative form, but may I recommend admiring the tapestry behind you instead?” continued the prince. “It is a depiction of Hesperia the Magnificent destroying the Usurper’s stronghold. Rumpelstiltskin himself wove the tapestry. Do you know the nonmages have turned him into a villain in their tales? Poor fellow, they have him forcing some poor innocent to spin gold from straw.”

A splash of water, then a sigh as he settled himself in the tub.

She closed her eyes, the absur***y of the situation momentarily overwhelming her. She was a bird in a cage. The prince was stark na**d not six feet from her. And the saintly Rumpelstiltskin, who had willed his life’s savings to help indigent children, slandered as a greedy boor.

He sighed again. “Why am I talking to you? You will not remember anything from your time spent in bird form.” He paused. “I have just answered my own question.

“Do you know what I did one time? I decided to record my time in bird form. In Morse code—a nonmage means of transmitting messages, with dots and dashes to represent letters. I had it all planned: I would use my beak to punch small holes in the paper to represent a dot, and make scratches with my claw for dashes.

“Except when I came to, the sheet of paper was in shreds. So much for that idea.” He was silent for a moment. “And you will draw a similar blank come tomorrow.”

Did this mean he was about to tell her something he wouldn’t normally? Her ears perked—figuratively, since her ears were now feather-covered holes in the sides of her head.

He laughed softly. “You know, you are almost enjoyable to talk to, when you do not say anything back.”

She willed the water in the tub to strike him in the face.

There was a loud splash. “Hey!” He sounded surprised, but not unpleasantly so. “Interesting. You are still capable of elemental powers. But stop—or I will feed you to the castle cats.”

She struck him again.

“All right, all right. I take it back. You are almost enjoyable to talk to, even when you do talk back.”

She wished he would stop speaking—she did not want this glimpse of the kind of rapport they could have had, had things been different.

Say more, thought a less sensible part of her.

He obliged. “You know what I should be worried about? Your inability to control air. Lightning is very dramatic, but armored chariots are built to withstand lightning strikes. You need to generate a cyclone to have a chance against them. It is no good when you cannot create a breeze to save your life.”

Her wings quivered. She was supposed to fight against those machines of death?

“I should be thinking about new and better ways to break through your block. But I cannot think at all when the Inquisitor is going to question me tonight.”

She’d never before heard fear in his voice. So he did experience it. Good. It was a sign of madness to not be afraid when one ought to be.

“The first time I met her face-to-face, I was eight.” He spoke quietly; she had to strain to hear. “My grandfather had died two months before, and my coronation was the next day.

“When you are born to the House of Elberon, you are trained to act serene and superior no matter what you feel. But the Inquisitor was—she has frightening eyes. I tried, and I could not make myself look at her. So as she spoke, I looked down at my cat.

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“Minos was actually my mother’s cat, as gentle and sweet as she. After she died, he went everywhere with me and slept in my bed at night.

“That day he was on my lap. I scratched his head and he purred. At some point he stopped purring. But it was not until the end of the audience, when the Inquisitor rose to take her leave, that I noticed he was—he was dead.”

The catch in his voice shot her through with a violent emotion she could not name.

“I wanted to cry. But because she was watching, I tossed Minos aside and said, the way my grandfather would, ‘One would think a cat of the House of Elberon would have more breeding than to die before an esteemed guest. My apologies.’

“I have only kept birds ever since—birds and reptiles are immune to a mind mage’s powers.17 And I have been terrified of the Inquisitor ever since.”

He fell silent.

She turned around and stared at the tapestry, willing herself to feel no sympathy for him.

And not succeeding.

CHAPTER 14

TITUS DROVE HIMSELF, ACCOMPANIED BY a phalanx of mounted guards. A team of four Pacific golden phoenixes pulled his chariot—the head of the House of Elberon being the only mage in the Domain entitled to use phoenixes as beasts of burden.

There was a possibility, thought Titus, that the edict had been set down so that the ruling prince or princess would not be distracted from the task of governing by the need to invent ever more ostentatious ways to show up at a Delamer gala.

Lady Callista’s spring gala was the worst. One year some idiots decided to arrive in a chariot drawn by hundreds of butterflies, each the size of a handspan. The butterflies began dropping of exhaustion as the chariot approached the landing platform, causing a nasty crash.

The year before that a group of guests came on turuls—giant Magyar falcons. Another set of lords and ladies brought along a pair of imported Chinese water dragons. As it turned out, turuls and Chinese water dragons despised each other with a white-hot passion. A messy spectacle had ensued.

Titus’s cavalcade approached the expe***ed airway, built two hundred years ago during the reign of Apollonia III to facilitate travel between the castle and the capital. Fairfax had been perched on his shoulder, her claws digging lightly into his overrobe. But now he took her in hand and tucked her inside his tunic. “I would hold you,” he said, “but I need both of my hands.”

Phoenixes were fractious animals and cared not the least for expe***ed airways.

“Brace yourself. It will be a hard slam,” he warned her. Probably unnecessarily. As a native of Delamer, she would have daily used the city’s vast network of expe***ed ways, both on the ground and in the air. And if not daily, certainly more than he, with his upbringing in the mountains.

The thrust came suddenly. He could not breathe. His lungs grew emptier and emptier. Just when he thought he could stand it no more, the chariot was spat out the other end of the airway.

The phoenixes cawed harshly. He yanked them under control, reached for Fairfax, and set her on his shoulder again.

“You all right?”

She was busy gawking at the city that had once been her home.

Delamer was one of the greatest mage metropolises on earth, a glittering spread of pink-marble palaces and stately gardens, from the heights of the Serpentine Hills to the edge of the cool blue sea, aglow in the last rays of sunset.

Its beauty, however, was marred by patches of dense wood that resembled fungal growth from above. Quick pines, they were called: they were not pines at all, but certainly quick, achieving as much height and girth in two years as most trees did in five decades, bred by Atlantis’s botanists to camouflage the blights left behind by death rains.

A familiar column of red smoke rose into the sky, marking the location of the Inquisitory. The Fire of Atlantis had burned steadily since the end of the uprising.

The hour of his meeting with the Inquisitor drew ever nearer.

He turned his face away. They were headed directly into the sunset. The west coast as a whole was rocky and wave-pummeled, especially the stretch along Delamer. Naturally an ambitious, wealthy capital of a great dynasty, full of mages who had enjoyed ********y pleasures of the Me***erranean realms, had decided to make improvements.

During the reign of Hesperia the Magnificent, the city built five peninsulas, collectively known as the Right Hand of Titus. The peninsulas were rugged in appearance—so as not to look out of place against the craggy coast—but their seeming roughness hid a wealth of gentle slopes and beach enclaves, around which sprang hundreds of blue-roofed villas.

Three of the peninsulas comprised some of the most expensive land in all the mage world. One was a beloved public park. And the remaining one, the ring finger, was a princely preserve upon which stood Hesperia’s Citadel.

The original citadel still rose at the center, but the complex had grown into a sprawling palace with vast gardens, ninety-nine fountains, and dozens of floating balconies.

Soon the Inquisitor would find Titus on one of those balconies.

He steered his chariot in the direction of the landing platform. He was not alone: from all points of the sky, chariots converged toward the Citadel. No turuls or Chinese water dragons this year, just the usual assortment of griffins and mock dragons.

Two young men performed flips and somersaults on a beam held aloft by four massive flights of doves. Beneath the beam hung a swing, with a young female acrobat sitting insouciantly upon it.

Titus wanted to enjoy the view—a fine view even for a prince. But already he had to work to keep his breath even and his hands steady.

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The young woman recognized him. She pulled herself to her feet and performed a very cre***able curtsy. Titus, as befitting his arrogant and ill-tempered public persona, ignored her altogether.

The path to the landing platform was demarcated with floating torches. Other guests had pulled aside to clear the way for their sovereign. As Titus’s chariot drew to a stop, every single person on the platform bowed.

Alectus and Lady Callista were at the front of the crowd to welcome him. Titus swept past them without slowing down. But he knew that Lady Callista raised her head from her deep curtsy and regarded him with narrowed eyes.

Her device had followed him to a London hotel where he had no business being. How would he explain not only his presence, but also his precipitous departure, leaving behind a half-consumed tray of tea?

Lady Callista caught up to him. “I see you have brought Miss Buttercup, Your Highness.”

“She is more tolerable company than most.”

Fairfax chirped obligingly.

“And how is she enjoying England?”

“Better than I, no doubt. The very air is noxious.”

“Does she like school?”

“School? One of the boys on my floor has a ferret in his trunk. A ferret. Buttercup lives in fear of her life. She is much happier at my mistress’s.”

Fairfax stopped chirping.

Lady Callista blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“What do you not understand? Surely you, of all people, know what a kept woman is.”

“I did not know that Your Highness had such an arrangement.”

“And why should you? She does not cost me nearly as much as you cost Alectus, and she does not host soirees for me. In fact, she bores me already; I plan to replace her with a livelier girl, one whose tastes in lovemaking are not quite so pedestrian. Now if you will excuse me, I need a drink.”

He pushed past her before she could summon one of the floating trays of sparkling blue beverages. Almost immediately, he was being bowed to by the prime minister and several not-so-prime ministers.

“I thought you did not care for such frivolous events,” Titus said to the prime minister.

“Indeed I do not, sire. But I hear the Inquisitor herself is going to attend, and I hope to speak with her concerning the records,” answered the prime minister. “There has been no progress at all on the talks. Unless we come to an agreement, the Inquisitory will begin to destroy records by the fourth week of June. Ten years of records, most likely including information concerning thousands of your subjects who disappeared after the uprising.”

“How awful,” Titus said, and brushed past.

Not that he was entirely unsympathetic, but what did the prime minister think fueled the Fire of Atlantis, the smoke of which rose so steadily from the Inquisitory?

He was next accosted by the current archmage and her two leading disciples, and a steady stream of matrons who wanted to know whether he would deign to appear at their charitable functions.

The first young woman to approach him was a beauty witch.

“Your Highness,” she said with a bright smile.

“Have we met?”

“Diana Fairmyth, Your Highness.”

He was wary of beauty witches; anyone who tried to seduce him could also be spying on him. “What is a girl like you doing at this dreadful party?”

She laughed. “Oh, is it dreadful? I haven’t noticed yet.”

“Alas, you are very beautiful, but I see our tastes diverge too much.”

A few more young women tried, but he dispensed of them with similar efficiency. Then came the one girl he could not dismiss so easily—Aramia, Lady Callista’s daughter.

She held out her hands to him. “Titus,” she said, “it’s good to see you again.”

They had known each other many years—Lady Callista had sometimes brought Aramia to the castle so that Titus would have someone his own age to play with. They should have made perfect playmates: She was patient, uncomplaining, willing to try new things. Not to mention that, like him, she had never known her father. But Titus, a demon child in the years immediately after the loss of his mother, had tormented her instead.

He locked her into cupboards when they played hide-and-seek, snuck stinkbugs under her blouse when they played outside, and asked her why she was ugly when her mother was so beautiful.

But she had only shrugged and said, “Maybe my father was not so beautiful.”

In recent years their paths had not crossed often. But guilt was like a bog. Whenever he did see her, he would realize he was still neck-deep in it.

He kissed her on both cheeks. “How have you been, Aramia?”

“Oh, same as usual. You know Mother, still trying to make a swan out of me,” she answered, not managing to be completely dismissive about it.

She had never been ugly—plain, perhaps, but not ugly. But even otherwise attractive women faded into insignificance next to Lady Callista. He could not imagine what it must be like to live entirely in the shadow of her beauty.

“But you are already a swan,” he said, trying to cheer her up.

“I don’t think inner beauty counts for much with Mother.”

“Who said I was talking about inner beauty?”

This made Aramia smile. “That is very sweet, Titus, thank you. Would you like some snapberry punch? It’s my own recipe, just a drop of snowmint essence as the secret ingredient.”

He wished she had not called him sweet. He sank a little deeper into his bog. “You still enjoy tinkering with recipes?”

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“I might as well be useful.”

Since she could not be beautiful, she meant.

It was heartbreaking how much she wanted her mother’s approval.

“I will have a glass.”

She squeezed his hand. “Let me see what I can do so Mother doesn’t pester you too much.”

Aramia left to fetch the punch herself. By the time she returned, Alectus and Lady Callista had found Titus. Aramia, true to her word, drew her mother away on the pretense of something that needed the latter’s attention.

Alectus by himself was easier to take. With the enthusiasm of an overgrown child, he recounted the epic quest that had been his search for a new overrobe, entailing five emergency fittings in the past two days.

Titus listened to him prattle as he pretended to drink Aramia’s ice-cold punch. He did not distrust Aramia, but one never knew what Lady Callista might be up to.

“Have a glass of Aramia’s punch,” he said to Alectus. “It will quite restore you.”

“Ah, you like it then?” said Alectus.

“I do. And why do you look so surprised?”

Alectus laughed awkwardly. “Well, it is just that Your Highness does not like very many things.”

“Yes, the burden of having been born with exquisite taste.”

“I believe that is indeed the c—”

“Stop that! No, not you, Alectus, you may carry on. I am speaking to my bird.”

Fairfax had been acting strange. Pecking on his shoulders, chirping directly into his ears, and just now, taking a sharp snip at his neck.

“Perhaps Miss Buttercup is hungry?” Alectus suggested.

It had been a while since Fairfax ate, and there was a great deal of food being passed around. Titus took out a wrapped biscuit from inside his robe—he did not trust Lady Callista’s food, either—and held it up to Fairfax.

She pecked his hand—hard enough to hurt.

“What the—”

“Oh dear, I do believe that is the Inquisitor arriving,” said Alectus breathlessly. “She said she might make an appearance, but I had not quite believed it. She socializes so rarely, Madam Inquisitor.”

Titus turned cold. He had thought he would have a little more time.

The Inquisitor’s chariot was plain black, unadorned except for the whirlpool emblem of Atlantis. The Inquisitor herself was also in black, her hair sleeked back into a knot at the top of her head.

She looked like death walking.

“If you will excuse me, Your Highness,” said Alectus, and rushed off to personally welcome the Inquisitor.

Aramia came back to his side. “I shouldn’t say this, but she gives me the jitters.”

“I am surprised your mother tolerates her. She would have disowned you if you went anywhere in such an ugly overrobe.”

Aramia chuckled softly. “Unfortunately, Uncle Alectus is very fond of the Inquisitor. Mother says the Inquisitor is the one woman Uncle Alectus would choose over her, so she has no choice but to be very convivial.”

Indeed Lady Callista smiled most graciously as she greeted the Inquisitor. As the Inquisitor began to walk up the steps from the landing platform, Alectus hovered about her, like a child stalking an unopened present, entirely unashamed of his devotion.

The Inquisitor came directly at Titus, cutting a swath through the assembly. Nearly half of the guests bowed.

Aramia frowned. “Don’t they know what they are doing? They are bowing down to a foreign power.”

“It is practical,” said Titus. “In their shoes, I might do the same.”

“You wouldn’t.”

She had such a rosy view of him; it almost made him want to be a better person.

The Inquisitor was now before him. She bowed stiffly. Titus returned an equally rigid nod.

“Madam Inquisitor.”

“Good evening, Your Highness.”

“Have you met Miss Aramia Tiberius?”

“I have already had that pleasure. Now, Miss Tiberius, I would like a word with His Highness.”

“Of course, Madam Inquisitor. May I offer you a drink before I go?”

“That will be quite unnecessary.”

Aramia pursed her lips and left.

For a supposed diplomat, your talent for diplomacy is abysmal, Madam Inquisitor.

Titus did not give in to the impulse: right before a private interview was no time to antagonize the Inquisitor.

“Lady Callista has arranged a room here where we may have privacy,” said the Inquisitor.

“Good. We shall need it when we return.”

“Return?”

“Was it not you yourself who said that representatives of the Crown are welcome to inspect my subjects currently held at the Inquisitory?”

“Surely that can be arranged l—”

“I am a perfectly adequate representative of the Crown. And I am ready to see them now.”

Behind the Inquisitor, Alectus all but trembled at Titus’s interruption. The Inquisitor said coldly, “Now is not quite the time.”

Before the menace in her eyes, Titus wanted to quail as Alectus did. “Any time, you said,” he forced himself to speak. “And you have already inconvenienced me greatly with your demands upon my time.”

“You are young and headstrong, Your Highness, and your demands ill-considered. Let us have no more of this foolishness.”

Any sane person would have backed away. But he had no choice. The blood oath bound him to do his utmost. And utmost, of course, was synonymous with suicidal.

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“I see I should have expected someone of your particular . . . background to display such untrustworthiness.” The Inquisitor’s teeth clenched at Titus’s reference to her forger parents. “I have correspondingly changed my mind about speaking to you in private.”

He walked away and approached a trio of young beauty witches. “I see all the most beautiful women present tonight are already acquainted with one another.”

The three beauty witches exchanged looks among themselves. The apparent leader of the group smiled at Titus. “You are a very handsome stranger, sir. But we really are after the prince.”

“That conceited prick? You are lucky he is too full of himself to notice you. Can you imagine the absolute bore he would be?”

“I wouldn’t know about that, but you, Your H—I mean, sir, are anything but a bore.”

He lifted a curl of her dark hair, feeling nothing of its texture, aware only of the force of the Inquisitor’s anger, like needles upon his back. “Let me guess, your name is Aphro***e, after the goddess of love.”

She laughed softly. “Excellent guess, sir, but it’s Alcyone.”

“A celestial nymph, I like that.” He turned to one of her friends. “And you must be a Helen, the one mortal woman as beautiful as any goddess.”

“Alas, I’m only a Rhea.”

“Daughter of Earth and Sky, even better. And you,” he said to the third beauty witch, “a Persephone who so overwhelms a god with desire that he is driven to abduction.”

All the girls laughed. “That is indeed her name,” said Alcyone. “Well done, sir.”

“I am never wrong in these matters.”

“May I ask, sir,” ventured Persephone, “why do you have a canary with you?”

“Miss Buttercup? She is an exceptional judge of character. Has she made a peep since you welcomed me into your group?”

“No, she hasn’t.”

“Then you have her approval. Ah, I see from Miss Alcyone’s expression that she sees a gorgon. Now watch, Miss Buttercup is turning around. She will lay eyes on the gorgon, and she will express her disapproval.”

Fairfax issued a series of furious peeps. Was she warning him that he had gone too far?

“Your Highness,” said the Inquisitor directly behind him.

Her tone. His stomach roiled—she was livid.

The beauty witches all curtsied. He did not turn around. “I trust you can see I am busy, Madam Inquisitor.”

“I have changed my mind. Shall we to the Inquisitory?”

It was the last place he wanted to go. He hoped Fairfax was happy.

“My apologies, ladies,” he said to the beauty witches. “I must desert you for a short time. I hope you are not leaving immediately.”

He did not hear what they said in return.

It was time for his first Inquisition.

CHAPTER 15

BEING A BIRD GAVE IOLANTHE the freedom to look anywhere she liked. What she found out was that everyone watched them. Him.

At first she put it down to his rank and his attire—his deep-blue overrobe, heavily embroidered with silver thread, was magnificent. But this was an occasion that overflowed with magnificent clothes on men and women of superior rank. And the way they looked at him, footmen and prime minister, serving maids and baronesses alike, it was as if he’d cast a spell on them.

He had Presence.

The moment he stepped off his chariot, it was obvious that he was no ordinary adolescent. He was rude and inaccessible, but he exuded an enigmatic charisma that could not be ignored.

He would never convince Atlantis—or anyone for that matter—to take him lightly.

Perhaps he knew that. His heart pounded next to her—he’d put her inside his overrobe for the trip to the Inquisitory. The tunic he wore beneath the overrobe was of very fine silk, redolent of the herbs with which it had been stored, warm with the heat of his body.

She burrowed deeper against him.

“I will keep you safe,” he murmured.

He meant it.

As long as he was safe, she was safe.

But how long would he remain safe?

Titus drove one of Alectus’s pegasus-drawn chariots—the phoenixes were too sensitive to be brought near a place as sinister as the Inquisitory. Lowridge, his captain of the guards, and six soldiers from the castle rode behind him, each on a white pegasus.

Night had fallen. All the streetlamps and houses had been lit, which only emphasized the dark, desolate stretches of quick pine. The column of red smoke that marked the location of the Inquisitory glowed bright and eerie, a display of power that dominated the skyline night and day.

The original Inquisitory had been leveled during the January Uprising. Since its rebuilding, security had been airtight. The Inquisitor received no callers and gave no parties. The only way to get in, it was sometimes said, was to be dragged in.

The pair of pegasi that pulled Titus’s borrowed chariot certainly wanted to bolt—almost as much as he did. One could not fly over territory under the Inquisitor’s direct control; once they crossed its boundary, the pegasi had to trot on the ground. They whinnied, shied, and slapped each other with their tough wings. Titus cracked the whip near their ears to stop their jumpy antics.

Would that all he needed was a not-quite-lashing to pull himself together.

The new Inquisitory was a circular structure, the exterior one solid black wall, unbroken by a single window. Three sets of heavy gates led to an enclosed courtyard enveloped by an uncomfortably red-tinted light.

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The Inquisitor’s second in command, Baslan, was on hand to greet Titus. Titus could not decide whether he ought to be happy about the Inquisitor’s absence or frightened that she was even now preparing for his Inquisition.

He tossed aside his reins and froze. Not ten feet from where he had pulled his chariot to a stop, a human skeleton poked out of the ground; the bony remains of its hand, the tips of the phalanges dark red, reached skyward as if seeking help from above.

“Interesting choice of decoration,” he said, blood roaring in his ears.

“Half of the courtyard has been allowed to remain in ruins—a reminder for the servants of Atlantis to stay ever vigilant,” answered Baslan.

The ruined half was pockmarked and strewn with blasted chunks of wall and broken pieces of glass that glittered red in the light. There were no other human skeletons, but Titus saw a dog skeleton and the top half of a doll, which made him recoil until he realized it was not a mutilated baby.

At the center of the courtyard stood a hundred-foot-tall tower. From the top of the tower, red smoke billowed.

Titus exhaled with relief when their path at last led away from the courtyard into the building. He stripped off his driving gloves. His palms were damp with perspiration.

They descended immediately; the aboveground rooms were obviously too good to waste on prisoners. The air below was musty, as was usually the case for subterranean interiors, but every surface was scrupulously clean.

All the hygienic measures in the world, however, could not diminish the oppressiveness of the place. With every step he took, the walls seemed to close in another inch. The air grew warmer and denser. It suffocated.

Three flights down, a desire to flee seized him. Thousands and thousands of mages had been held here in the first few years after the January Uprising. No one knew what had happened to them. But their despair had seeped into the very walls. Invisible filaments of it curled around Titus’s ankles, driving chills up his tendons.

Three more flights down they emerged into a large circular space with eight corridors leading from it. The corridor they followed went on for a hundred and fifty feet. There were no bars, only solid walls and steel doors that were far too close together.

The cells could not be more than four feet wide.

Baslan stopped halfway down the corridor. With a tap of his hand, a narrow section of the wall turned transparent. A small, dimly lit cell appeared before them, empty except for a thin cot on the stone floor. A woman sat on the cot, sobbing—the housebreaker.

“Rise,” proclaimed Lowridge, as his subordinates clicked their heels smartly. “You are in the presence of the Master of the Domain, His Serene Highness Titus the Seventh.”

The woman looked up in shock. Then contempt. She spat. “You lie!”

This amused Titus, if grimly. “Can she see us?”

“No, Your Highness,” answered Baslan. “The transparency is only one way.”

“Who is she?”

“Her name is Nettle Oakbluff. She is the registrar of Little Grind-on-Woe.”

Titus addressed the woman. “Why are you here?”

“I shouldn’t be!” the woman cried. “I was trying to help Atlantis. I was trying to get them the girl!”

Titus glanced at Baslan, whose expression remained perfectly composed.

“You are a subject of the Domain. Why do you seek to help Atlantis?”

“There is money in it.” Obviously a great deal of truth serum still flowed through the woman’s veins. “I overheard my in-laws-to-be talking about it all hush-hush. They said Atlantis was itching for a really powerful elemental mage and that the agent who brought in this mage stood to gain a huge reward.”

“And have you received said reward?”

Nettle Oakbluff blew her nose into a handkerchief. “No. All I got for my trouble is hours and hours of questioning. I want gold. I want servants. I want a villa overlooking the ocean in Delamer.”

Her voice rose. “Do you hear me, Atlantis? You owe me that reward. If it weren’t for me, Iolanthe Seabourne and her guardian would have disappeared without a trace. You owe me!”

She struggled to her feet. “You can’t keep me here forever. My in-laws-to-be are important people. Oh, Fortune take pity on me, the wedding! Someone tell me what happened to the wedding. I need my daughter to marry the Greymoors’ son and I demand—”

“She seems in fine fettle,” Titus said to Baslan. “Next.”

The wall was instantly opaque and soundproof, cutting off Nettle Oakbluff mid-tirade.

They walked some fifty feet down the corridor. The next cell Baslan revealed was similarly bare. A man sat on the cot, his back against the wall. He was unshaven, thinner and older than Titus remembered. But there was no question: he was Fairfax’s guardian.

Titus took Fairfax out of the folds of his overrobe, keeping a tight grip on her tiny body. His other hand rested against the pocket where his wand was concealed. No one was going to snatch her from him—not without a fight to the death.

“I want him to see whom he is speaking to,” Titus ordered. “I will not have another subject of mine think it is permissible to sit in my presence.”

Reluctantly, Baslan complied.

Horatio Haywood blinked at the influx of light. He squinted at his visitors. There was apprehension in his eyes, but not yet the instinctive, cringing fear of the tortured.

“Rise,” Lowridge again proclaimed. “You are in the presence of the Master of the Domain, His Serene Highness Titus the Seventh.”

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Haywood blinked again, rose unsteadily to his feet, and bowed. Only to lose his balance and stumble sideways into the wall. Fairfax was very still in Titus’s hand, but her claws dug into his palm, and her heart hammered beneath the warm down of her chest.

Titus asked for Haywood’s name, age, and occupation. Haywood answered obediently, a hint of hoarseness to his voice.

“How have you spent your time since your arrival at the Inquisitory?”

“I was hit with a paralysis curse before I was brought here and recovered only this morning. Since then I have been answering questions.”

“Do you know why you are being held here?”

Haywood glanced at Baslan. “The Inquisitor is interested in the whereabouts of my ward.”

“Certain parties in the know told me that your ward is nowhere to be found.”

Was it Titus’s imagination or did Haywood relax almost imperceptibly? His shoulders did not seem as tightly hunched. “I was unconscious, sire, and did not witness her escape.”

“What was the means of her escape, exactly?”

“A pair of linked trunk portals that can be used only once, going only one way.”

“Going where?”

“I do not know, sire.”

“How do you know the other trunk is not buried at the bottom of the ocean?”

Haywood gripped his hands together. “I trust it is not. It is my understanding that it leads to safety, not calamity.”

It had very nearly led to calamity.

Titus made an exasperated sound. “Not very productive to question you, is it?”

“There are many things I cannot recall, sire.”

“This much memory erasure would cause undesirable side effects. You seem not *****ffer from them. Did you entrust your memories to a memory keeper then?”

Haywood jolted only slightly. The Inquisitor must have already asked him the same question. “It would appear so, sire, though I cannot recall who, or when.”

“But you know why.”

“To keep my ward safe.”

“I had no idea Atlantis was in need of a great elemental mage, and I should know these things. How did you know?”

“Someone told me. But I can’t remember who.”

There was frustration in Haywood’s voice, but also relief. The sacrifice of his memories had not been in vain: he could not betray anyone in his ignorance.

“Was it her parents who told you?”

“I cannot recall,” said Haywood.

“Are you her father?”

Fairfax jerked at his question.

“I am not, but I love her like one. Someone please tell her to stay away and not ever come near the Inquisitory. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep her safe. I—”

The wall turned opaque. “Your Highness,” Baslan said smoothly. “We must not keep Her Excellency waiting.”

The prince held her tight, as if afraid she might do something stupid.

She wouldn’t, not after all the sacrifices Master Haywood had made. And certainly not after his most recent pleas from inside the cell.

But for the first time she regretted that she was not yet a great elemental mage. She would tear the Inquisitory from its foundations and crush its walls into powder.

The prince stroked the feathers of her head and back. She wished he would put her back into his overrobe. She wanted to crawl someplace warm and dark and not come out for a very long time.

She was barely aware that they’d stopped again. The captain of the prince’s guards once more proclaimed the presence of their sovereign.

“Who are you?” the prince asked.

“Marigold Needles, sire,” answered a trembling voice.

Iolanthe nearly jumped out of the prince’s hand. Mrs. Needles?

It was indeed kind, pink-cheeked Mrs. Needles, her face pressed against the transparent wall, a face at once frightened and hopeful.

“Why are you here?”

“I cleaned and cooked for Master Haywood and Miss Seabourne. But I’m only a day maid. I’ve never lived in their house, and I don’t know any of their secrets!”

The prince glanced at Baslan. “Clutching at straws?”

“Straws sometimes lead to other straws,” said the Atlantean.

“Please, sire, please,” cried Mrs. Needles. “My daughter is about to have a baby. I don’t want to die without seeing my grandchild. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in this place!”

Iolanthe turned cold. What had the prince said? Friendship is untenable for people in our position. Either we suffer for it, or our friends suffer for it.

And Mrs. Needles wasn’t even a friend, only a woman unfortunate enough to need the money cooking and cleaning for the schoolmaster would bring.

Mrs. Needles fell to her knees. “Please, sire, please help me get out of here.”

“I will see what I can do,” said the prince.

Tears gushed down Mrs. Needles’s face. “Thank you, Your Highness. Thank you! May Fortune shield and protect you wherever you go!”

The wall turned opaque; they began the long climb up. Iolanthe trembled all the way to the surface.

“Is there time to admire the Fire of Atlantis?” asked Titus, as they reemerged into the courtyard.

“I’m afraid not, Your Highness,” said Baslan. “Her Excellency is already waiting.”

Precisely what Titus did not want to hear.

They crossed the courtyard. Before the heavy doors of the Inquisition Chamber, Lowridge and the guards were allowed to go no farther. Only Titus was conducted inside the enormous, barely lit hall—mind mages performed best in shadowy places.