The Burning Sky tet-1

by Shelly Thomas

  “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.

  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 tea 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 said 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 you’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.

  “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 w
ill 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.

  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 chill wind. 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.

  “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 elem
ental 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 to such 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?”

  His gaze was unwavering. “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 used to the idea. 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.

  “You cannot hide forever from Atlantis.”

  She would be found one day, he meant, and must fight or die.