The Immortal Heights

by Sherry Thomas

  West held an animated conversation with Fairfax. Then he, Fairfax, and Titus together spoke for a while. When he left to join a conversation between Sutherland and Birmingham, Fairfax whispered in Titus’s ear that West and Birmingham were “together.”

  He whispered back, “Do you think I am blind?”

  She laughed, the sound of which was drowned out by an overjoyed squeal from Cooper. “Gentlemen, our friend from the subcontinent has arrived!”

  Titus and Fairfax both exclaimed. They had, of course, met Kashkari numerous times in the intervening years—spent months together on campaigns, even. But this was special, to stand with him where it all began.

  They ate, laughed, and reminisced. At some point in the afternoon, Titus, Fairfax, and Kashkari bade good-bye to the other friends and vaulted to London for a very long tea. They had much to talk about, as Kashkari was also planning to reveal the truth about his and Amara’s involvement in the Last Great Rebellion.

  The day was fading when Titus and Fairfax made their way to the house on Serpentine Hills where his parents used to meet. In the past six years, it had become a refuge for them too, a safe haven where they could shed their responsibilities and simply enjoy each other’s company.

  “You know how we always go to the Queen of Seasons’ summer villa?” he asked, collapsing onto a long sofa in the solarium.

  “Far be it from me to tire of the most beautiful place in the Crucible,” she teased, sitting down next to him. “But go on.”

  He set their clasped hands on top of his copy of the Crucible. “Well, recently I went into the Queen of Seasons’ spring villa and saw something unexpected.”

  The spring villa, on a high alpine meadow with riots of pink and mauve wildflowers, was every bit as beautiful as the summer villa. Titus pointed at a pair of travelers walking across the meadow, their faces glowing in the light of a brilliant sunset. “Look at them.”

  Fairfax sucked in a breath. “But they are your parents.”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “She kept a record of his likeness after all, for me to find someday. And for me to see them happy and together.”

  They watched the young couple, their arms around each other, stroll past the villa and disappear beyond a bend in the path.

  Then Fairfax took his hand. “I’m ready for whatever the future brings.”

  “Me too,” he told her. “Me too.”

  NOTES

  1. Redhull, Bernard

  YD 967–1014. Seer.

  Known more for prolificacy than significance. Claimed to have never had a single vision about himself, but always about complete strangers. Sent out batches of letters every month to those who his visions concerned, when he could discover their identity. Best remembered as the one whose vision of a conversation between Lady Callista Tiberius and a friend spurred her to action, to duplicate all the measures enumerated in that foreseen exchange. See Lady Callista Tiberius, Horatio Haywood, Iolanthe Seabourne, Aramia Tiberius, Prince Titus VII.

  —From Biographical Dictionary of the Domain

  2. THE FOLLOWING is an excerpt from Hancock’s written account:

  Two months later I came across one more mention of Pyrrhos Plouton, in a letter by a remote acquaintance, exclaiming how he had not aged a single day in twenty-five years. It would appear that the first feat of sacrificial magic Plouton performed was so powerful it gave him not only unnatural longevity, but also seemingly unfading youth. This might be the reason he moved far away to become Palaemon Zephyrus: to avoid the kind of speculation brought on by his apparent agelessness.

  Judging by all the sources I’d collected, both Pyrrhos Plouton and Palaemon Zephyrus—before the latter’s encounter with the “giant serpent,” at least—were fine physical specimens, suffering from no handicaps and missing not even a small toe. Which led me to conclude that Plouton must have powered his first sacrifice with a kidney. Organs are highly valued in sacrificial magic, but one could live a normal life with only one kidney and, perhaps equally important, give the impression of being whole and unmaimed.

  —From A Chronological Survey of the Last Great Rebellion

  3. THE TEXT of the note Seabourne left in Titus VII’s laboratory before she departed Britain is as follows:

  Your Highness,

  I am going to kill you—eagerly and with great satisfaction. Perhaps I am speaking figuratively; perhaps not. You will find out. Likely too late.

  But if it should be that both I and Fate somehow spare you, and you return here one day, victorious and in one piece, know that I meant what I said: I have no regrets about going to Atlantis, deadly prophecies notwithstanding.

  And know that I have loved you all along, even while I plot your imminent demise. Maybe especially as I do so.

  Now and always,

  The one who walks beside you

  —From A Chronological Survey of the Last Great Rebellion

  4. THE PRACTICE of wearing troth bands goes back almost a millennium. Once a pair of lovers seals their pledge to each other and puts on the troth bands, the bands cannot be taken off unless one or both of the wearers pass away.

  This irreversibility is likely the reason troth bands never became popular. Even the most sincerely devoted couples could drift apart over time. What, then, to do about this no longer meaningful symbol that cannot be removed unless one is willing to give up an arm too in the process?

  —From Encyclopedia of Cultural Customs

  5. THE TEXT of the entries Commander Rainstone read in Princess Ariadne’s diary:

  6 May, YD 1012

  Why do I so seldom see good news? The lonely finding love and friendship. The just and brave rewarded for their courage and sacrifice. Or even a rapturously received new play—at least that would be something to look forward to.

  No, instead I see death and misfortune. And when I am lucky, things that I cannot quite interpret one way or the other.

  Now on to the vision. It is a hospital—or at least it looks like the maternity ward of a hospital, with a number of newborns in rows of bassinets. A man, in a nurse’s white overrobe and white cap, his face covered by a protective mask, checks all the babies one by one.

  He stops before two bassinets and looks at the babies inside for a long time. Then, with a glance to the window that looks out to the corridor, he quickly switches the babies.

  So frustrating—the man is clearly committing a terrible misdeed. Yet because it has not taken place yet, I cannot do anything. Nor can I recognize the hospital, though I toured a number of hospitals last summer, especially in the provinces.

  I will wait for the vision to come back and hope for more identifying information.

  19 August, YD 1012

  The vision came again. This time I could see that there are fireworks out the window, a steady shower of golden streaks.

  Father’s birthday or a feast day?

  —From A Chronological Survey of the Last Great Rebellion

  6. Commander Penelope Rainstone:

  Sometimes the reports make it seem that my rupture with Princess Ariadne was permanent. That wasn’t quite the case. Her Highness did dismiss me, since I read her diary without authorization and then refused to give a reason. But six months later I went to see her.

  I made it clear that I could never confess why I’d snooped—Callista didn’t want anyone to know that we were related, that her mother had indulged in an affair with a gardener during her marriage. But I asked Her Highness to please understand my dilemma, as a woman who also had secrets she couldn’t tell the world.

  She was silent for a long time, but then she nodded slowly.

  I can’t tell you how much that meant to me, her forgiveness. I offered to take a blood pledge, as a gesture of my gratitude and loyalty. She declined it, but said if I wished to, I could make that same pledge to her infant son.

  I did. At the time I had no idea that years later the pledge, which bound me to His Highness, would enable me to break through the siege of the bell jar dome in the
Sahara Desert.

  The threads of Fortune weave mysteriously.

  —From The Last Great Rebellion: An Oral History

  7. Vasudev Kashkari:

  I was twenty when I left home for the Sahara Desert. There was never any question that I wanted to be part of the resistance—even if my uncle hadn’t been Akhilesh Parimu, I would still have wanted to contribute.

  Not long after I arrived at my first rebel base, in the western Sahara, a courier came from another base. I watched her at lunch, speaking to and laughing with some of my friends. I wasn’t in the habit of approaching girls, but there was something irresistible about her warmth and vivacity—and she had a lovely smile. At the next meal I mustered the courage and took the seat next to hers.

  We got to talking. As it turned out, her mother was from the Ponives, my grandparents’ native realm. So we talked more—and more. We were the last two to leave the canteen that evening. The next morning we met again for breakfast and talked until she had to leave.

  When she was gone I walked around in a fog for the rest of the day. That night I wrote her, a few lines in my two-way notebook. She replied immediately and we kept on writing for hours. That became a pattern: every night we wrote to each other, about what happened that day and everything else under the sun. [Smiles] I had to get a new notebook every few weeks because we chatted so much.

  I suggested many times that we should meet again. But she always found some excuse to demur. After four months, I had had enough and wrangled myself an assignment to improve the irrigation system at her base. But when I got there, no one on the premise knew who I was talking about. They all took turns with courier duties and nobody used the nom de guerre of Durga Devi. When I mentioned her connection to the Ponives, they pointed to this intimidatingly beautiful young woman as the only one with a mother from that realm.

  My repeated questions in the notebook went unanswered. I didn’t know what to do. I felt as if I’d been the biggest fool. I was also completely unsettled: I like solving problems, and problems that presented no rational solutions made me restless and irritable.

  When I finished my assignment and was about to leave, a message came from her at last, begging me to stay at her base, even though she wasn’t there and nobody knew anything about her. If I stayed, I would find answers, she said.

  I agonized over my decision but in the end I stayed. I loved her and I needed to see her again. If staying at her base was going to lead me back to her, then that was what I’d do, despite my misgivings.

  In the meanwhile, Amara was promoted to oversee supplies and logistics for the base, which meant we interacted at regular intervals. I found those occasions awkward: she was usually quite curt and never looked me in the eye.

  And needless to say, my evening conversations with the one I loved had also become stilted and uncomfortable. I couldn’t just pretend that everything was the same as before.

  Three weeks in I told her that she had to see me face-to-face and tell me everything before another month was out. We argued back and forth and finally agreed to meet on a day six months in the future.

  A week before our rendezvous, I saw her across the canteen, chatting with a group of carpet weavers as if she hadn’t a care in the world. I stared at her. She looked up at me and smiled—a friendly smile, but one without any hint of recognition.

  Next thing I knew, Amara had her hand on my arm and was dragging me away from the canteen. We almost came to blows, she pulling on me and me trying to get back to the girl whose absence had consumed me for months.

  “That’s my cousin Shulini.” Amara spoke directly into my ear. “You have never met her nor she you. I took her form when I went to your base.”

  I couldn’t speak for my shock—mutables are so rare in real life that the possibility never crossed my mind. She explained that when she traveled away from the base she often took on Shulini’s appearance because her own face made people stare. But she had to stop because she was becoming too old to ’mute at will, at least not without fear of ending up looking permanently like someone else.

  I became angry. We’d known each other ten months by then. At any point she could have told me. Instead she chose to let me simmer in my own anxiety. She said she was afraid of losing me, since I never showed the slightest interest in her.

  “How about this? You’ve lost me anyway,” I said, and stormed out.

  For a few days I showed Shulini around the base. She was a nice girl but there was no spark between us whatsoever, which made me even more incensed. Amara I ignored altogether.

  But she didn’t give up on me. She got us assigned to night patrol duty together. In the dark, when I couldn’t see her face, but only hear her voice—that was why she’d spoken so little to me since I came to live at her base, because she still had the same voice. And I loved her voice, the sound of her laughter, the precision of her vowels, and especially the way she sometimes hummed a little to herself.

  From there we started our reconciliation. It took me a while to fall in love with her face—I used to start every time I saw it, especially if we’d been sitting side by side for a while, talking without looking at each other. Later she would joke that she wanted to marry me because I was the only man who preferred her in the dark.

  [Smiles again.]

  And there you have it, our story.

  Interviewer:

  After you were reconciled, how long were you together?

  V. Kashkari:

  Three years eleven months.

  Interviewer:

  Too short a time.

  V. Kashkari:

  All good years are short, as are all full lives.

  —From The Last Great Rebellion: An Oral History

  8. Prince Titus VII:

  The morning of the state funeral, I was informed that the Atlanteans had handed over Miss Aramia Tiberius. That afternoon, I had her brought in along with Alectus and Lady Callista.

  In the short time since the Bane’s downfall, Alectus had become an old man: he stooped and wore an expression of perpetual confusion. Lady Callista seemed to have lost much of the elegance for which she had been so admired—it was a twitchy woman who curtsied to me. Aramia simply looked terrified.

  I addressed her first. “I see you are safe and sound, Miss Tiberius.”

  She had the sense to not say anything.

  “Your Highness, why was I not allowed to attend my daughter’s funeral?” Lady Callista interjected. “Why, indeed, was I not mentioned at all in the account you gave of how the Bane was brought down? My daughter was the great heroine of her generation, and you would have the populace believe that she was the child of those paupers from the Conservatory?”

  I stared at her until she fidgeted and curtsied again. “I apologize for my outburst. Please forgive me, sire.”

  “Miss Seabourne was not your daughter,” I told her.

  “I might not have raised her, but I gave birth to her. My blood ran in hers and so did the blood of Baron Wintervale, the greatest hero of my generation.”

  “Baron Wintervale betrayed my mother.”

  “No, that is not possible.”

  “Ask his widow about it, if she will condescend to meet with you. As for your kinship with one of the bravest mages this realm has ever known . . .”

  A blood assay had already been readied. I picked up the glass beaker. “Sanguis densior aqua.”

  The clear liquid in the beaker turned jellylike and slightly opaque. “I require a drop of blood from you and from Miss Tiberius.”

  They hesitated. Miss Tiberius pricked her finger first, squeezing out a drop of blood. The blood drop fell through the jellylike substance as a pebble in water, reaching the bottom of the beaker with an audible plink.

  Lady Callista did the same.

  I swirled the beaker. “If you are unrelated, your blood will not react.”

  The drops of blood, like two tiny marbles, tumbled along the bottom of the beaker. And then, as if they were magnets, they moved towa
rd each other until they had joined into a single oval.

  “Very close kinship, I would say.”

  “This—this can’t be true. Perhaps through some coincidence we are distantly related.”

  Without a word, I performed another blood assay, this time using blood from myself and Alectus. Our two drops of blood also approached each other, but instead of merging together, formed something in the shape of a dumbbell.

  “He is my great-uncle. And your kinship is far closer than ours.”

  “No,” mumbled Lady Callista. “No.”

  She collapsed into a chair.

  Miss Tiberius held completely still, staring at her mother, the woman for whose love she had committed treason.

  I could have told her time and again not to bother to win Lady Callista’s approval: Lady Callista disdained all who loved her—the only one to whom she had ever been devoted was Baron Wintervale, a man who only thought of himself, who took and took from those around him.

  Earlier I had been of a mind to recommend a particularly harsh penalty for Miss Tiberius. But now I knew nothing I meted out could punish her as much as her mother’s indifference—indeed, revulsion—at the thought of being related to her after all.

  “Each of you can be charged with treason. I will, however, recommend to the High Council a less punitive course of action. Like all collaborators, you will have the chance to confess and seek pardon. Detail your dealings with Atlantis, and you will most likely receive a pardon. Conceal anything . . .”

  I did not need to finish the sentence. “In the meanwhile, I will seek the High Council’s assent in stripping Alectus of his princely appellation and privileges. All three of you are to pack up and leave the Citadel within twenty-four hours.”

  “But—but—what are we to do? Where will we go?” cried Alectus.

  “I could but I am not seizing your personal assets. So you will have more than enough to find a place to live. I believe the same is true of Lady Callista.”

  “Can we not receive some leniency?” Alectus beseeched. “We are your family, after all.”