She gripped his arm to steady him. “I thought you were drawing your last breath.”
He swayed, but his scowl was fierce. “Understand this: you will never again care whether I live or die, not when your own safety is in danger. My purpose is to guide and protect you for as long as I can, but in the end, only one of us matters, and it is not me.”
He was so close, his heat seemed to soak into her. There was a small patch of dried blood he had not yet managed to wash off, an irregular-shaped smear at the base of his neck. And where he’d loosened his sleeves, she could see a puncture mark on the inside of each wrist, where the extractors had pierced his skin.
A bright pain burned in her heart. She might yet save herself from falling in love with him, but she would never again be able to truly despise him.
“We must get you out of the Domain this instant,” he said, “before the Inquisitor realizes that someone else was in the Inquisition chamber—someone with elemental powers.”
He was already walking—tottering. She braced an arm around his middle.
“I need to go back to my apartment at the castle. The transmogrification potion is in my satchel. Get me to the bathtub upstairs. Then come down here and remove all evidence that might lead anyone to suspect your presence. The Inquisitor dared to come after my sanity; she could just as well invade my sanctuary.”
She nodded tightly and walked faster, pulling him along.
At the bathtub, he bent down to turn on the faucets. “Go. And come back fast.”
She ran and did as he asked. Sprinting back upstairs, she reached the bathtub as he materialized again, this time soaking wet, holding not a flask, but what looked to be a bottle of hair tonic.
“Where’s the potion?”
He climbed out of the tub and pointed his wand at the hair tonic. “In priorem muta.”
The bottle turned into a compartmented flask. She grabbed it. Drinking the potion in big gulps, she pointed her free hand at him and dissipated all the water from his sodden undertunic—the night was cool and he’d begun to shiver. Then she whisked away all the water he’d dripped onto the floor while downing the second solution.
“Clear thinking under pressure, as always,” he murmured.
Assuming bird form was not only unpleasant, but disorienting, everything around her rapidly inflating to mountainous sizes.
He took her in hand. “Time to go.”
“You wish to be on a train headed not into Slough, but into London, sire?” asked Dalbert, sounding doubtful.
“Precisely.” Titus checked his person, his clothes, and his belongings, applying one spell after another to reveal the presence of tracers and other foreign objects. He was clean.
“But sire, in your condition—”
“All the more reason to leave without delay. You saw what the Inquisitor did to me. The House of Elberon means nothing to her. The farther I am from her, the safer I will be.”
Dalbert still did not look convinced, but he acquiesced and lifted Titus’s satchel.
A loud knock rattled the door of Titus’s bedchamber. “Your Highness, Lady Callista to see you,” announced Giltbrace from outside
Exactly what Titus had feared. He grabbed Fairfax’s cage and gestured to Dalbert to keep quiet and follow him.
“Your Highness,” came Lady Callista’s voice. “The regent and I have been most distressed to hear of the seizure you unexpectedly suffered while touring the Inquisitory.”
“Hurry,” Titus whispered to Dalbert. “They will try to confiscate my transport.”
They slipped into a secret passage accessed from Titus’s dressing room and ran, Titus willing his stomach not to rebel again until later. The secret passage ended somewhere below the garret. He took the revolving steps three at a time, growing dizzier with each turn. Beneath came the pounding din of pursuit.
The garret, at last. They threw themselves into the rail coach, Titus bolting the door while Dalbert lurched for the controls. No sooner had Dalbert’s hand fitted around the lever than a phalanx of guards burst through the door.
“Go!” Titus commanded.
Dalbert pulled. The rail coach shuddered and forcefully inserted itself into the pulsating bloodstream that was the English rail works.
The sound of steel wheels grinding on metal rails had never sounded so sweet.
Fairfax was safe. For now.
CHAPTER 17
THE TRAIN HAPPENED TO TAKE them to Charing Cross rail station. Titus decided that one of the big, new hotels near Trafalgar Square frequently patronized by American tourists would serve his purpose very well.
He briefly bewitched a middle-aged lady and her maid. As the two followed dazed and obedient in his wake, he presented himself to the hotel clerk as Mr. John Mason of Atlanta, Georgia, traveling with his mother. Once he had his key in hand, he walked the lady and her maid out a different door, released them from the bewitchment, and bade them a cordial good night.
In his rooms, he applied layer upon layer of anti-intrusion spells, feeling no compunction in using the deadlier ones known to magekind. Deeming it secure enough for Fairfax to resume human form, he left her in the bedroom with a tunic from his satchel and a pair of his English trousers.
She padded out of the bedroom just as the dumbwaiter dinged.
“Your supper,” he mumbled from where he lay slumped on the settee, his arm over his eyes.
She found the door of the dumbwaiter. The aroma of chicken broth and beef pie wafted into the parlor. She set down the tray of food on the low table next to him. “Are you all right?”
He grunted.
“You don’t want to eat anything?”
“No.” He did not want to tax his stomach for the next twelve hours.
“So what now? Are we going on the run?”
He removed his arm from his face and opened his eyes. She was sitting on the carpet before the low table, wearing his gray, hooded tunic, but not his trousers. Her legs were bare below mid-thigh.
The sight jolted him out of his lethargy. “Where are your trousers?”
“They had no braces and won’t stay up. Besides, it’s warm enough in here.”
He was feeling quite hot. It was not unusual to see girls in short robes come summertime in Delamer. But in England skirts always skimmed the ground and men went mad for a glimpse of feminine ankles. So much skin—boys at school would faint from overexcitement.
He might have been a bit unsteady too, if he were not already lying down.
“You never answered my question,” she said, as if the view of long, shapely legs should not scramble his thoughts at all. “Are we going on the run?”
“No, we go back to school tomorrow.”
“What?”
“Had they managed to take you before we left the Domain, you would have been doomed. But now that danger is past, we must do everything in our power to preserve your current identity. As long as it remains intact, Atlantis can suspect me as much as it wants, but cannot prove anything.”
“But you said you hadn’t managed to convince the Inquisitor of anything. She will come after you again.”
“She will, but not immediately. That interruption of yours was a blow to her. She will need some time to recover. Besides, I cannot disappear just like that. It is the law of the land that the throne cannot be left unoccupied. Alectus would be named the ruling prince.”
And that would be the end of the House of Elberon.
She ladled herself a bowl of soup and dug into the beef pie. “So we have no choice but to carry on at school?”
“For as long as we can.”
“And when we can’t anymore?”
“Then we will be put to the test.”
This earned him a look that was almost pure stoicism—except for a flash of sorrow. She had such beautiful eyes, this girl, and . . .
His thoughts slowed as he realized her eyes might be the last thing he saw before he died.
“You wouldn’t have been involved in this at all i
f it weren’t for your mother,” she said, yanking him back to the present. “What if the Inquisitor is right?”
What if the Inquisitor had been? Much of his mother’s brief life was a mystery to him, as were many of her visions. “Bear in mind the Inquisitor wanted to destabilize my mind as much as possible.”
“Did your grandfather kill your mother?”
His face burned. “Yes.”
Her gaze was steady. “Why?”
“To preserve the House of Elberon—he refused to go down as the last prince of the dynasty.”
When given the choice by Atlantis between abolishing the crown altogether or offering his daughter, an active participant in the January Uprising, as a sacrifice, Prince Gaius had chosen the latter. It was not the most shameful secret of the House of Elberon’s long history, but it came close enough.
“Did your mother really foresee her own death when she was a child?”
“I do not know.”
“Did she tell you anything before she died?”
“Only that if I ever wanted to see my father, I had to bring down the Bane.”
He would never have brought his father into the discussion, but the blood oath obliged him to tell the truth.
She chewed contemplatively. “If you don’t mind my asking, who is your father?”
His cheeks scalded hotter, if possible. “I do not know that either.”
“Your mother never mentioned him?”
“She mentioned him a great deal.” His love of books, his beautiful singing voice, his smiles that could raise the sun at midnight. “But nothing that can be used to identify him.”
How excited he had been at the possibility his mother’s question implied. Do you want to see your father? He had thought it a question like Do you want a slice of cake?—with the cake to be produced within the minute.
Fairfax swirled a spoon in her soup bowl. “What did you say when you heard that you had to bring down the Bane?”
He had not been able to say much for the fear and disappointment that jostled within him. And the anger—that his own mother would trick him so.
“I said I was not going to fight the Bane because I did not want to die.”
His mother had broken down and sobbed, tears streaming down her face to splatter upon her lovely sky-blue shawl. He had never seen her cry before.
“But you agreed eventually,” said Fairfax quietly, her eyes almost tender.
He could still see his mother’s tearstained face. Still hear her muffled voice as she answered his bewildered question.
Why are you crying, Mama?
Because I hate myself for what I ask of you, sweetheart. Because I will never forgive myself, in this life or the next.
Something in him had broken apart at those words.
“I was six,” he said. “I would have done anything for her.”
There existed something in this world that bound a mage tighter than a blood oath: love. Love was the ultimate chain, the ultimate whip, and the ultimate slave driver.
He reached into the satchel, which he had placed on the floor next to the chaise, and pulled out a thick book.
“I’ve seen that book. You brought it all the way from school?” asked Fairfax.
“In priorem muta,” he said. The book undisguised itself and became a plain, leather-bound journal. “My mother’s diary. She recorded all her visions in here.”
“It’s empty,” Fairfax said, after he had turned some thirty, forty pages.
“It will only show what I must see.”
The diary had been left to him when his mother died, with the inscription My dearest son, I will be here when you truly need me. Mama.
He had opened it daily and come across absolutely nothing. Only after he had learned the truth of her death—that it had been murder, not suicide—had the first entry appeared. The one about him, on the balcony, witnessing the phenomenon that would and did change everything.
He kept turning the pages, but they remained stubbornly blank. Something cold and terrible gnawed at his guts.
I need you now. Do not abandon me. Do not.
A few pages from the very end of the diary, writing at last appeared in her familiar, slanted hand. His hand tightened on the binding so his fingers would not shake from relief.
“You might as well read along with me,” he said to Fairfax. “Many of her visions have to do with our task.”
Fairfax left the low table and crouched down next to him.
4 April, YD 1021
While Titus and I played in the upper gardens this morning, I had a vision of a coronation—one could not mistake those particular banners of the Angelic Host, flown only at coronations and state funerals. And judging by the colorful attire of the spectators thronging the street, I was witnessing no funeral.
But whose coronation is this? I caught three minutes of a long parade, that was all.
I came back to Titus tugging at my sleeve. He had found a ladybug he wanted me to admire. The poor child. I do not know why he loves me. Whenever he wants my attention, I always seem to be caught in another vision.
“The date—it’s just after the end of the January Uprising, isn’t it?” asked Fairfax.
Titus nodded. Baroness Sorren had been executed the day before.
They read on.
10 April, YD 1021
The vision returned. This time I was able to see, at the very end of Palace Avenue, the arrival of the state chariot. But I could not make out its occupant, except to see the sun dancing upon his or her crown.
For the rest of the day I could not concentrate on anything else. Poor Titus brought me a glass of pompear juice. After holding it for some time, I handed it back without taking a sip.
I need to know. I must know. The day after this vision occurred for the first time, Father requested that I exchange my life for Titus’s future on the throne. I asked for time to consider it. He gave me three weeks.
If I am the person in the state chariot, then I will take Titus and go into hiding. The Labyrinthine Mountains are full of impenetrable folds and valleys. The nonmage world likewise offers plenty of means to disappear.
But what if I am not the person in the chariot?
12 April, YD 1021
I am not the person in the chariot.
Titus is. And he is tiny, barely bigger than he is now.
This time the vision lasted and lasted. I saw the entirety of his coronation, as well as the ceremony that invested Alectus with the powers of regency.
Either I have gone into exile by myself, or I am dead.
Because Titus is so young, many festivities that would otherwise take place are postponed until he comes of age. Still, for hours on end he receives well-wishers. My son, small, solemn, and all alone in the world.
Finally he is by himself. He takes out a letter from inside his tunic, tears it open, and reads. I could not see the writing on the letter, but the discarded envelope bears my personal seal.
The letter has a dramatic effect on Titus. He looks as if he has been kicked in the chest. He reads it again, then runs to take something out of his drawer.
My diary. This diary, which has never left my side.
He opens the diary. The first page reads My dearest son, I will be here when you truly need me. Mama. The date beneath the inscription is two weeks from today.
He turns the pages.
Shock. My diary is empty—pages upon pages of nothing.
When something finally appears on the page, I am shocked again. It was the vision about a young man on a balcony, seen from the back, witnessing something that stuns him. I had experienced the vision several times but never sensed any significance to it.
Apparently I shall feel quite different about it in the near future. The description of the vision, less than half a page long when I last added to it, now stretches the full four pages I allot any one vision. Even the margins are packed with words.
The vision itself began to fade at this point, but I was able to re
ad bits and pieces of my writing, which concern elemental magic, of all things. In the crammed paragraphs I reference other visions, which appear to have nothing at all to do with this one, even recounting a conversation with Callista, during which she told me in strict confidence what she had learned about Atlantis’s interest in elemental mages, from the then-Inquisitor herself, no less, who had been quite enamored of her beauty and charm.
The vision has faded completely. It is now past five in the morning. The sky outside my window shows the faintest trace of orange. I realize with a wrenching pain in my heart that my days are numbered.
But there is no time to wallow in self-pity. In the next two weeks I will write passionately about elemental magic, but I barely know anything about it.
I must quickly find out not only a great deal more about elemental magic, but why I should care.
But first I weep—because I will not see my son grow up. I will not even see him reach his next birthday. And he will only remember me as the dotty woman who did not drink the juice he had specially brought for me.
The Inquisitor was the liar, not his mother.
A hot shame gripped Titus, that he’d doubted his mother so harshly. That he’d hated her as often and as much as he did.
He excused himself and hurried to the water closet, where he lost his battle with tears. He was still wiping them away when Fairfax called out, “Come here. I found another vision!”
“Are you sure? I have never seen more than one at a time,” said the prince.
His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying. She immediately looked back at the diary. “I was randomly flipping pages. I’m almost sure these pages were blank earlier when you looked at them, but they are not anymore.”
He sat next to her. “This one is from almost a decade before the other one.”
He began to read. She stole a glance at him, then did the same.
7 May 1012
A new vision today.
The vision is of a library—or a bookshop. A woman, who has her back to me, wanders through the shelves and appears to be searching for a specific title.
She stops and reaches for a tome that requires two hands to lift. The title on the spine reads The Complete Potion.
The Burning Sky tet-1 Page 21
