The Burning Sky tet-1

by Shelly Thomas

  A tornado materialized directly in his path.

  This was not natural weather. An incredibly powerful elemental mage was at work.

  The Bane.

  Why had Titus not known that the Bane was an elemental mage himself?

  He yanked the wyvern to the left just as a second tornado appeared, also to the left. He swore. Urging the wyvern to the right, he narrowly fitted them between the two tornadoes, ducking as a chunk of debris hurtled by mere inches from his head.

  Fairfax might someday be the greatest elemental mage in the world, but today that title belonged to the Bane, who delighted in toying with him.

  The finger poking inside his head abruptly disappeared. He peered over his shoulder and deployed a new far-seeing spell, just in time to see the Inquisitor topple from her giant peregrine.

  The Bane’s mouth rounded with a scream. The Inquisitor’s body stopped falling and rose instead, all the way into the Bane’s arms. And then it disappeared.

  What if you die while you are using the Crucible as a portal? Would your body not rot inside, since you can’t get out? he’d once asked Hesperia in the teaching cantos. The Crucible keeps no dead, Hesperia had replied. It will expel the body.

  His mother’s vision had proved true again. In the library at the Citadel, Atlantean soldiers would surround their superior’s corpse while Alectus and Lady Callista spoke words of shock concerning her death.

  He had done it. He had killed the Inquisitor after all. He straightened, relief and nausea rising within him, entwined. He didn’t know whether to cry or to vomit.

  A hissing, crackling rumble behind him, however, made him forget both. He wrenched the wyvern higher and barely avoided a trail of fire as broad as a highway.

  The phantom behemoth was still half a mile behind him. No real dragon spewed its fire so far, so fast. But that was the advantage of mythological creatures: they were a law unto themselves.

  Fire fell like a meteor storm. The grassland below burned. Rising smoke racked him with coughs and made his eyes water. It was only by his sense of hearing that he dodged the next tornado; and only by the hair standing on the back of his neck that he somehow evaded a quieter tongue of flame that had stolen upon him.

  In front and to either side, walls of tornadoes towered, howling with violence. Behind him bellowed a mountain of fire, so much of it, as if a portion of the sun had been torn loose.

  Was this it—fire, smoke, and dragons? Would he fall to his end, as his mother had foreseen?

  He had done what he needed to do. He had lived long enough.

  Be safe, Fairfax. Live forever.

  The fire the phantom behemoth breathed! The mass was staggering. The beauty. The splendor. As a lover of fire, Iolanthe had never see finer. That was, until she realized the fire was directed at Titus, her Titus. His wyvern weaved between the raging torrents, clinging to safety by a hairbreadth.

  Helgira sank to her knees. “The will of the Angels is a joy to behold,” she murmured.

  You mud-eating primitive! That is no Angel; that is Atlantis.

  Iolanthe said nothing; she only lifted her wand to render Helgira unconscious.

  I will not let you die. Not while I have a breath left.

  Huge tornadoes reared like a cliff, obscuring her view of him. The phantom behemoth emitted a roar that made windowpanes rattle, then spewed forth fire enough to melt Purple Mountain.

  She strode onto the terrace outside Helgira’s bedchamber and raised her hands. All the power that had been building inside her raced toward her fingertips.

  The fire would irreparably damage the wyvern’s wings, leading to certain death. The tornadoes? Almost certain death, but people had been known to survive tornadoes.

  Titus urged the wyvern forward. Perhaps they’d find a gap.

  Or perhaps not: the tornadoes formed an unbroken barrier.

  And then the barrier was no longer so unbroken. One tornado weakened, then dissipated altogether, leaving a cloud of falling debris.

  He wheeled the wyvern toward the gap.

  No, they were not going to make it before the gap closed.

  A tailwind—so freakishly strong it almost sheared him off the wyvern’s back—threw them through the gap.

  Another elemental mage was at work.

  Helgira.

  He reapplied the far-seeing spell. There she was, in her long white dress, standing on the terrace atop her fort, her black hair whipping in the wind. In the light from the fort’s torches, she resembled Fairfax exactly.

  He urged the wyvern toward her.

  The air whistled. Boulders the size of houses flew at him. They must already be in the foothills of the Purple Mountain, not too far to go.

  But the boulders were relentless, a storm coming from all sides. He steered the wyvern blindly, relying more on intuition than sight.

  I’m so close. Help me!

  Something struck the wyvern on the head, a smaller rock, but enough to send it plunging, and he with it.

  I won’t let you fall.

  She did not. She held the wyvern aloft and propelled it with a tailwind the Angels would be pleased to have breathed.

  As for the phantom behemoth and the would-be murderer who sat upon it—enough was enough.

  She raised her hand toward the overcast sky. The clouds crackled with electric charge. Blue flashes leaped from cloud to cloud. From the farthest horizon, lines of energy rushed toward Purple Mountain, meeting at the zenith of the sky, seething, roiling.

  Waiting for her.

  She pointed her finger at the phantom behemoth.

  Down the lightning came, beyond beautiful, beyond powerful.

  All the boulders in the air fell. The phantom behemoth fell, striking ground with a force that jolted her entire person.

  After another minute, the hardy little wyvern regained consciousness and, finding itself still airborne, began to flap its wings again.

  Titus landed on Helgira’s terrace, kissed the wyvern on its scaly neck, and dismounted. Helgira, panting, regarded him with both tenderness and fury. All at once he knew she was not Helgira, but Fairfax. She had come, his most stalwart friend, and she had saved him.

  He closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around her. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I thought this was the night the prophecy came true.”

  “No, not tonight.” One of her hands was in his hair, the other tracing his jaw. “Not ever, if I can help it. But not tonight, at least.”

  He could not begin to describe the sensation of being alive, being safe, and being here, with her.

  His lips hovered barely an inch above hers. Their breaths mingled.

  “Love will make you weak and indecisive, remember?” she murmured.

  What a fool he had been. For a journey like theirs, love was the only thing that would make him strong enough.

  “Don’t ever listen to an idiot like me,” he answered.

  “Well,” she said, “I guess it doesn’t count if it happens in the Crucible.”

  With that, she pulled him to her and kissed him. Tears stung the back of his eyes. He had survived. They had survived. He held tightly on to her, on to life itself.

  Titus would have liked to remain forever—or at least another minute—in this state of euphoric closeness. But with a sigh, Fairfax let go of him. “I’ve got boys running all over Eton to cover our tracks. I need to get them back to bed.”

  Titus made sure he left behind Helgira’s cuff. And just to be careful, after they returned to the Black Bastion in his copy of the Crucible, he sealed the portal: he still preferred to err on the side of caution, even in the midst of risking his life.

  In this fort, where he had caused such a ruckus, there was consternation at his reappearance, followed by flabbergasted looks as Fairfax climbed onto a wyvern behind him. But that was the advantage of being mistaken for the lightning-wielding mistress of Black Bastion: she didn’t need to explain herself to anyone.

  Even better, as the wyve
rn took to the air, she wrapped her arms about him and laid her head on his shoulder.

  Was this what happiness felt like?

  She recounted how she had managed to pass before the Inquisitor unscathed, and that Kashkari had been “the scorpion.” He told her what he had seen and heard in the Citadel, including Horatio Haywood’s mysterious disappearance.

  “Thank you,” she said, banding her arms tighter around him.

  “What for?”

  “For being willing to rescue my guardian.”

  “Now we no longer know where he is.”

  “We’ll find out,” she said, her voice scratchy with fatigue. She ruffled his hair. “And you—you are all right with having killed the Inquisitor?”

  “I would rather someone else had taken her life. But I will not miss her.”

  They dismounted on the meadow before Sleeping Beauty’s castle. She shed the wig and the gown she had borrowed and turned once again into a lithe, cocky boy.

  He drew her to him and rested his cheek against her hair. “Is it true that if it happens in the Crucible, it doesn’t count?”

  She held him tight. “My rescue, my rules.”

  He kissed the shell of her ear. “Then let me tell you this: I live for you, and you alone.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Kashkari had followed Fairfax’s directions beautifully. He had tied, blindfolded, and gagged Trumper and Hogg with strips of their own clothes. Then, once they had regained consciousness, he had thrown a barrage of German at them, as Fairfax had asked, in order to make them think that he was Titus, generally known to be a native speaker of German.

  When Fairfax and Titus arrived on the scene, he shook their hands and then left with Fairfax to join the other boys. Titus did the same after rendering Trumper and Hogg unconscious again and dropping them on the front steps of their house, stripped to their drawers.

  All the boys stood together and admired his handiwork. Now that their night’s task—and fun—was done, they started back for their own beds, yawning. At Mrs. Dawlish’s, the front door was open, the downstairs lights on, and Mrs. Dawlish and Mrs. Hancock both waiting. Mrs. Dawlish wearily waved them up. “Go to bed now. We’ll deal with the lot of you tomorrow.”

  “Except you, Your Highness,” said Mrs. Hancock. “Would you mind coming with me to my office?”

  Fairfax stepped in front of him. “We all went. The prince shouldn’t be singled out.”

  Titus briefly rested his hand on her shoulder. “Go. I will be fine.”

  In Mrs. Hancock’s office, it was Baslan’s spectral projection again, pacing into shelves and walls.

  “You may leave us,” Baslan said to Mrs. Hancock.

  “I would like to remind you, sir, that I am a special envoy of the Department of Overseas Administration, not your subordinate,” Mrs. Hancock said, smiling.

  Baslan gave Mrs. Hancock a cold stare.

  Titus plunked himself down on Mrs. Hancock’s best chair. He enjoyed squabbles between agents of Atlantis. “What do you want this time, Baslan?”

  “You will address me as Inquisitor, Your Highness.”

  Inquisitor. So Titus’s nemesis was truly dead. He gave his stomach a moment to settle. “Inquisitor, Baslan? Is everybody at the Inquisitory called the Inquisitor these days?”

  Baslan flinched at Titus’s suggestion. “Madam Inquisitor can no longer carry out her duties. She has departed this earth.”

  Titus found that he did not need to pretend to be shocked. He was shocked, still. “It cannot be true. I last saw her only hours ago. Right here at Eton. She showed no signs of imminent death.”

  “To our lasting regret, it is quite true.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “That is strictly private. I need Your Highness to give an account of your whereabouts tonight.”

  “And that is not strictly private?”

  “No,” said Baslan without any sense of irony.

  Titus crossed his arms before his chest. “After your lot finally let me go in the evening, I retreated to my room to enjoy a little peace and quiet. I was there until lights-out. Not long after lights-out, two boys threw a rock into my window. I chased them down, gave them what-for, and dragged them to the front door of their house.”

  “Are there corroborating eyewitnesses?”

  The question was for Mrs. Hancock. “The prince was in his room at lights-out—I knocked myself. Both the prince and his neighbor’s windows were broken. As for the rest, I will go check right now.”

  “And you will confiscate all the prince’s books,” ordered Baslan.

  Mrs. Hancock rolled her eyes but did not remind him again about their separate jurisdictions.

  Titus exhaled. A very good thing that Fairfax had his mother’s diary. And that he had stowed his copy of the Crucible, disguised as a volume of devotional poetry in medieval French, at the school library, until he could move it to the laboratory.

  Baslan held up the Citadel’s copy of the Crucible. “What do you know about this book?”

  “Oh, that. I play Big Bad Wolf to Little Red Riding Hood. She likes it rough, did you know? I did not.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What else are you going to do with such a contraption? Of course Sleeping Beauty is probably prettier, but I am not going to fight dragons for any girl. And the chit who lives in the woods is agreeable enough, but those dwarfs in her cottage are perverts. They always want to watch.”

  Baslan’s face turned splotchy. “Did you use such a book as a portal to get into the Citadel tonight and make away with Horatio Haywood?”

  Titus laughed. “Listen to yourself, Baslan. Are you mad?”

  Baslan’s throat worked. “As you are no doubt aware, Atlantis is seeking a young woman who can summon lightning. We encountered her tonight.”

  “Why did you not take her into custody?”

  “She was in this book. We want to know where she is now.”

  “Still in there, obviously. Have you never heard of Helgira?”

  “Who?”

  Titus rolled his eyes. “Helgira the Merciless, one of the most famous mythological, folkloric characters known to magekind. Oh, I forgot, Atlanteans don’t know anything.”

  Baslan clenched his teeth. “Atlanteans are not ignorant, but we do not pay attention to stories of lesser lands.”

  “Well, then, how did you enjoy your encounter with Helgira?”

  Baslan fumed, but had nothing else to ask Titus. Mrs. Hancock returned shortly with Trumper and Hogg, still mostly naked.

  There followed a scene of great comedy, at least to Titus. Trumper and Hogg, half-frightened, half-opportunistic, neither quite noticing they were speaking to a phantom projection, accused Titus of not only abduction, but of innumerable acts of violence and perverse cruelty on their persons, and therefore providing incontrovertible evidence that if anyone had killed the Inquisitor, it could not have been Titus.

  Mrs. Hancock returned once more, carrying an armload of books. “I have His Highness’s collection here, Inquisitor. Will you send a courier for them or shall I?”

  Titus rose. “I will leave you two to discuss details. Good night, Inquisitor. Good night, Mrs. Hancock. And good night, Messrs. Trumper and Hogg—it was my pleasure.”

  The no-vaulting zone was gone in the morning. And when the prince’s spymaster returned, reports flew out of the writing ball.

  The Inquisitor was indeed dead. As was, apparently, the Bane—though no intelligence on whether he had been killed outright by Iolanthe’s lightning or by the subsequent fall. The double deaths caused both panic and rejoicing in the Citadel—which turned into ashen fear a short while later, as the Bane walked back into the Citadel looking younger and more vibrant for having been resurrected a third time.

  Inquisitory personnel initially accused Lady Callista of tampering with evidence—the blood that came out of the Crucible had all been cleared away by the time they’d arrived. But she’d wept over how awful the blood looked on the f
loor, and all of a sudden everyone agreed that of course she had every right to keep her own home free of such upsetting sights.

  The news that mattered most to Iolanthe, however, concerned the punishments that were to be meted out to the boys who’d left Mrs. Dawlish’s home that night: twenty lashes to Titus, five each to everyone else. What if she’d be required, as she’d heard rumored sometimes, to lower her trousers in the course of the punishment? She’d lasted this long; she did not want to be found out as a girl for such a silly reason.

  But Titus came out of his punishment smiling. Birmingham not only didn’t require the removal of trousers, he didn’t even hit Titus—the lashes were given to a rug instead. In addition, Birmingham congratulated him warmly on making Trumper and Hogg into laughingstocks before the whole school.

  Still Iolanthe practiced her memory and confusion charms. But her time with Birmingham turned out to be very pleasant. They had a cup of tea together and a lively chat on Homerian epics—something near and dear to Birmingham’s heart.

  The rest of the term passed just as agreeably. The house cricket team did not win the school cup, but it contended for the first time in years. Wintervale made the roster for the school match against Harrow, which thrilled the entire house. Iolanthe, to the prince’s head-shaking amazement, won ten quid for writing the best Latin essay in the entire school. She promptly spent the money on ices and fancy cakes for everyone—and a very nice monogrammed shaving set for Kashkari, toward which the prince chipped in half of the cost.

  The last Sunday before the end of Summer Half, Kashkari finally organized the tennis tournament he had been talking about for a while, in honor of Birmingham and a few other senior boys who were leaving to attend university.

  There was one trophy for the junior boys and another for the senior boys. A group of Iolanthe’s friends watched the junior boys from her room. When it was time for the senior boys to compete, they left en masse, eager to defeat one another.

  The prince was the last person remaining.

  She tilted her head at the door. “Shall we?”

  He closed the door and took out a plate from her cabinet. “Flamma nigra,” he said. A black flame crackled into being.