The Burning Sky tet-1

by Shelly Thomas

  Fried smelts, asparagus, and orange jelly were served—what must be strange food to Fairfax. She ate sparingly. Three minutes into supper, she dropped her napkin. She turned in her seat, picked up the napkin, and, as she straightened, finally glanced toward Mrs. Hancock.

  Mrs. Hancock was, in Titus’s opinion, a more attractive woman than she let on. She favored shapeless dresses in infinite varieties of dull brown and always kept her hair covered with a large white cap. But it was the buckteeth that really left a lasting impression—teeth that Titus did not believe to be naturally overlarge.

  To his relief, Mrs. Hancock, speaking with a boy on her left, did not appear to notice Fairfax’s attention. To his further relief, Fairfax did not stare long. In fact, did not stare at all. If Titus had not been specifically looking for it, he might not even have noticed that she had peeked at Mrs. Hancock.

  Fairfax resumed her non-eating, chewing a spear of asparagus as if it were a piece of firewood. Now Mrs. Hancock turned—and gazed at the back of Fairfax’s head.

  Titus quickly looked down. His heart pounded. It was possible a woman would realize sooner that Fairfax was a girl. Did Mrs. Hancock already suspect something, or did she pay attention because Fairfax was nominally Titus’s best friend and must be kept under close watch?

  “Would you pass me the salt?” Wintervale asked Fairfax.

  The saltcellar was right next to Fairfax, a small pewter dish. But dishes from any self-respecting kitchen in the Domain would already be seasoned just right for each person at the table. Unless she helped with the cooking, she wouldn’t even know what salt looked like.

  But before he could act, she reached out with perfect assurance, took a pinch of salt to sprinkle on her fried smelt, and handed the saltcellar to Wintervale.

  Titus stared at her in astonishment. The look she returned was one of pure contempt.

  Soon she and Wintervale were again chin-deep in cricket talk. Titus managed to carry on a creditable conversation with Kashkari. But he could not concentrate, his awareness saturated with the sound of Fairfax and Wintervale relishing each other’s company.

  That, and the more-than-occasional looks Mrs. Hancock cast their way.

  The cricket talk did not stop at the end of supper, but continued in Fairfax’s room, a chat to which Titus was emphatically not invited.

  He opened a cabinet next to his bed. Inside the cabinet was a late-model Hansen writing ball, a typewriter that resembled a mechanical porcupine, with keys arranged on a brass hemisphere. He loaded a sheet of paper into the semicylindrical frame beneath the hemisphere.

  The keys began moving, driving the short pistons beneath them to form the words and sentences that made up Dalbert’s daily report to Titus.

  The report, partly in shorthand, partly in code, would have made no sense to Titus’s schoolmates—or most mages, for that matter. But to Titus, a half page conveyed as much information as an entire English broadsheet.

  Usually he was informed about the decisions of the government, but tonight there were no mentions of the regent or the prime minister. Instead Dalbert supplied what information he had gathered on Fairfax and her guardian.

  Haywood had been born on the largest of the Siren Isles, a picturesque archipelago southwest of mainland Domain. His father had been the owner of a commercial fishing fleet, his mother a fishery conservation expert. The couple had three children: Helena, who died in childhood, Hyperion, who ran away from home at an early age, and at last Horatio, the high-achieving offspring to make any parent proud.

  The records of his education were typical enough for a gifted and ambitious young man, culminating in his admission to the Conservatory, where his brilliance stood out even among a brilliant crowd. At the end of his third year, his parents passed away in rapid succession, and he began to run with a fast set. There were numerous minor infractions on his record, though his academic success remained undiminished.

  The wildness came to an abrupt end when he assumed guardianship of an eleven-month-old baby named Iolanthe Seabourne. The little orphan had been under the care of an elderly great-great-aunt. When the old woman became ill, she had contacted the person named next in the late Seabournes’ will to take charge of the girl.

  Interestingly enough, the guardianship had not been without minor controversy. Another friend of the Seabournes’ had stepped forward and claimed that before the child had been born, the Seabournes had asked to put her name in their will, as the one to care for their child in the unlikely event of their demise.

  The will was brought out. Haywood’s name was in it, hers was not, and that was the end of the matter.

  Everything seemed fine for a while, but seven years ago, Haywood was caught match-fixing intercollegiate polo games. He was relegated to a position at the Institute of Archival Magic, where he plagiarized one of the better-known research papers in recent memory. After he lost that post, he found work teaching at a second-tier school. Still unchastened, he accepted bribes from pupils in exchange for better marks.

  Outrageous actions on his part, yet the memory keeper had not intervened.

  As for the girl, she was a registered Elemental Mage III, uncommon but still far less rare than an Elemental Mage IV, one who controlled all four elements. Judging by her academic record, she had no intention of becoming a street busker—the choice of many elemental mages these days, eating fire before tourists for a living.

  And interestingly enough, the deeper Haywood got himself into trouble, the better her marks became and the more effusive the praise from her schoolmasters. A desirable trait, this, the ability to subsume fear and frustration into a singular focus.

  His door opened, and in charged Wintervale.

  Titus crumpled the report and threw it into the grate. “We do not knock anymore?”

  Wintervale grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the window. “What the hell are those?”

  The armored chariots were still there, motionless in the night air.

  “Atlantis’s aerial vehicles. They have been there since before supper.”

  “Why are they here?”

  “I told you I met the Inquisitor today—must have run afoul of her,” said Titus. “Go ahead. Throw a rock at them and start your revolution.”

  “I would if I could throw a rock that high. Aren’t they worried about being seen?”

  “Why should they be? If anything, the English will think the Germans are up to no good.”

  Wintervale shook his head. “I’d better go check on my mum again.”

  “Give her my best.”

  Titus waited a minute, then left his room to knock on Fairfax’s door. “It is Titus.”

  “Come in,” she said, to his surprise.

  She was in a long nightshirt, sitting barefoot on her bed, her back against the wall, playing with fire. The fire was in the form of a Chinese puzzle ball, one openwork sphere nestled inside another, and yet again another.

  “You should not play with fire,” he said.

  “Neither should you.” She did not look up. “I assume you are here to discuss freeing my guardian?”

  Her voice was even. There was an almost preternatural calm about her, as if she knew precisely what she wanted to do with him.

  When he was nowhere as certain what to do with her.

  “Are you?” she pressed the point.

  He had to remind himself that having sworn a blood oath to always tell the truth, he could no longer lie to her—at least not when asked a direct question.

  “I came to get my spare wand back and to discuss your training. But we can talk about your guardian, too.”

  She pulled the wand out from under her mattress and tossed it at him. “So let’s talk about him.”

  “I am going back to the Domain in a few days. While I am there, I will arrange a visit to the Inquisitory to see how he is getting along.”

  “Why don’t you order him released?”

  She had asked the question to needle him. He had no such powers, not
even if he were of age. “My influence over the Inquisitor is severely limited.”

  “What can you do then?”

  “I need to first see whether he is still in rescuable shape—he may or may not be, depending on what the Inquisitor has done to him.”

  “What do you define as not being in rescuable shape?”

  “If his mind has been completely destroyed, I will not run the risk of physically removing him from the Inquisitory. You will have to accept that you have lost him.”

  “And if he is still all right?”

  “Then I will need to plan—my goal has been to stay out of the Inquisitory, not to get in.”

  “You can find out what you need easily enough, can’t you?”

  “I can. But I would rather not be known to ask about it.”

  “You don’t have anyone you can trust?”

  He hesitated. “Not about you or any plans involving you—everyone has something to gain by betraying us.”

  “I imagine a deceitful person such as you would see deceit everywhere,” she said, her voice sweet. “I can also imagine why no one would voluntarily risk anything for you.”

  Her words pierced deep, like arrows from an English longbow.

  Part of him wanted to shout that he longed for nothing more than trust and solidarity. But he could not deny the truth of her words. He was a creature of lies, his entire life defined by what others did not and could not know of him.

  But things were supposed to be different with her—with Fairfax. They were to be comrades, their bond forged by shared dangers and a shared destiny. And now of all the people who despised him, she despised him the most.

  “You see the difficulties involved in removing your guardian from the Inquisitory then,” he answered, hating how stiff he sounded. “That is, if he is found to be still sentient.”

  “I will decide whether he still has enough mental capacity left to warrant a rescue.”

  “And how will you do that?”

  “I will accompany you to the Inquisitory. You must have ready means to transport me back to the Domain—otherwise where would you stow Fairfax during school holidays?”

  “You do understand you could be walking into a trap, to enter the Inquisitory so baldly?”

  “I will take that risk,” she said calmly.

  He realized with a flash of insight that he was dealing with no ordinary girl. Of course, with her potential, she had never been ordinary. But the ability to manipulate the elements was an athletic gift—almost. Great elemental power did not always coincide with great presence of mind.

  But this girl had that force of personality, that steeliness. At a time when a less hardy girl—or boy, for that matter—would have been wrecked by the calamity, or incoherently angry, she had decided to push back against him, and to take charge of as much of the situation as possible.

  She would have made a formidable ally—and an equally formidable foe.

  “All right,” he said. “We will go together.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now what did you want to tell me about my training?”

  “That we must begin soon—tomorrow morning, to be exact—and that you should expect it to be arduous.”

  “Why so soon and why so arduous?”

  “Because we do not have time. An elemental mage has control of as many elements in adulthood as she has at the end of adolescence. Are you still growing?”

  “How can I know for certain?”

  “Precisely. We have no time. Since today has been a difficult day, I will expect you at six o’clock in the morning. Day after tomorrow it moves to half past five. And then, five for the rest of the Half.”

  She said nothing.

  “It will be to your advantage to get up early. You do not want to use the lavatory when everyone else is there.”

  Her lips thinned; she again said nothing. But the fire in her hand merged into a solid ball, and then a ball full of barbs. No doubt she wished to shove it down his throat.

  “As for bathing, you might want to stay away from the communal baths. I will tell Benton you want hot water in your room.”

  “How kind of you,” she murmured sarcastically.

  “My munificence knows no bounds. I also brought you something to eat.” He dropped a paper-wrapped package on her desk. She had not eaten much either at tea or at supper, and he did not imagine it would have been very different at the inn. “Good-night cake—eat it and you will have no trouble sleeping.”

  The cake was for his insomnia. It would be a long night for him.

  “Right,” she said. “So that I won’t have trouble waking up for the training.”

  Abruptly she jerked, her shoulders bracing forward as if she had been punched in the stomach. Her fingers clawed into fists. The fireball turned the blue of pure flame.

  “Thinking about how you will slack off during your training?”

  The oath called for her to do her utmost.

  She grimaced and straightened, saying nothing.

  He could not afford to have her bottled up like this. Much better that she took it out on him periodically.

  A thought occurred to him. “I know you want to punish me, so here is your permission. Do your worst.”

  “I will only punish myself.”

  “Not when you have my consent. Think about burning me to cinders every minute of the day, if it pleases you. And as long as you do not actually kill me, you can think and mete out whatever abuses you want.”

  She snorted. “What’s the catch?”

  “The catch is that I am allowed to defend myself. You want to hurt me? You have to be good enough.”

  She looked up at him for the first time, her eyes alight with speculation.

  “Go ahead, try it.”

  She hesitated a second, then her index finger moved in a circle. The fireball transformed into a firebird, shot high in the air, and swooped down at him.

  “Esto ventus.”

  The firebird’s wings beat valiantly, but could not advance against the air current generated by his spell.

  She snapped her finger and the firebird quadrupled in size: she took all the fire from the fireplace.

  “Ignis remittatur.”

  His spell sent the fire back to the grate.

  Her eyes narrowed. “And what would you do now, bring out the old shield charm again?”

  The entire room was suddenly ablaze.

  “Ignis suffocet.” The fire went out, suffocated under the weight of the spell.

  He flicked a nonexistent speck of ash from his sleeve. “There is more than one way to snap a wand, Fairfax.”

  She had underestimated him.

  He was cunning and ruthless. But she’d failed to perceive that he was also a mage of great ability. An elemental mage’s fire was not easy to divert by subtle magic, and yet he did it effortlessly—without even the aid of a wand.

  You seem to have prepared a great deal for this. She’d had no idea how much. He was not a normal boy of sixteen, but a demi-demon in a school uniform.

  “You are no match for me yet, Fairfax. But you will be, someday. And the more diligently you train, the sooner you can penalize me at will. Think about it: the fearful look in my eyes when I beg for mercy.”

  She was being very adroitly maneuvered. He wanted her to slave for his goal, holding out his debasement as a carrot before her. But that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted only to—

  She yanked sharply away from any thought of freedom.

  “Please leave,” she said.

  He pulled out his wand. “Incendia.”

  A small fireball blazed into being. He waved it toward her. “Your fire, Fairfax. I will see you in the morning.”

  CHAPTER 10

  THE LAVATORY WAS NOT, THANKFULLY, as nasty a place as the prince had led Iolanthe to believe. Still, one look at the long urinal trough and she resolved to visit as infrequently as possible.

  The corridor, like the rest of the house, had walls papered in ivy and roses. The la
vatories and the baths occupied the northern end. Directly opposite the stair landing was a large common room. South of the common room were the individual rooms for the sixteen senior boys—fifteen senior boys and Iolanthe.

  She and the prince occupied two adjacent rooms at the southern end of the floor. Across from their rooms was a smaller common room reserved for the house captain and his lieutenants. And just north of the prince’s room was the galley where the junior boys did some of the cooking for the senior boys’ afternoon tea. As a result, she and the prince were isolated from the rest of the floor.

  As he’d intended, no doubt.

  A seam of light shone underneath his door. Memories came unbidden: herself in the dark, looking up at the window of her room, yearning for the light. For him.

  She reentered her room, closed the door, and dressed. The evening before, she’d disrobed with excruciating care, extricating the shirt studs, studying the attachment of the collar, and making sure she could duplicate the same knot with her necktie. She did not go to bed until she’d managed the serpens caudam mordens spell seven consecutive times.

  No trouble with it this morning: the figurative serpent that was the binding cloth bit into itself and tightened to the limits of her endurance. The rest of the clothes went on easily enough. The necktie refused to look as crisply knotted as it had earlier, but it was acceptable.

  When she was done, she checked her appearance in the mirror.

  She’d always thought that if one looked carefully, it was possible to detect the cynicism beneath her sunny buoyancy. Now there was no need to look carefully at all. Mistrust and anger burned in her eyes.

  She was not the same girl she had been twenty-four hours ago. And she never would be again.

  The prince knelt before the grate, already dressed. At her entrance, he pulled a kettle from the fire.

  “Did you sleep well?”

  She shrugged.

  He glanced at her, then bent to pour water into a teapot. For a moment he appeared strangely normal—young and sleep-tousled—and it made her acutely unhappy.

  She looked away from him. Unlike her room, which had been carefully decorated to convey Archer Fairfax’s colonial upbringing, his was plain except for a flag on the wall, which featured a sable-and-argent coat of arms with a dragon, a phoenix, a griffin, and a unicorn occupying the quadrants.