The Burning Sky

by Shelly Thomas

  He flung back the chains, but the trunk lid lifted only a fraction of an inch. What more obstacles stood in his way?

  “Aperi.”

  The sound of something unlatching. He hoisted up the lid. The girl was slumped over, her face invisible beneath her still-wild hair.

  His mind went blank. She could not possibly be dead. Could she?

  Reaching inside, he lifted a limp wrist and searched for a pulse. His heart thudded as he encountered a feeble throb in her vein.

  “Revisce!”

  No reaction.

  “Revisce forte!”

  Her entire person shuddered. Her head slowly rose. Her eyes opened. “Highness,” she mumbled.

  He was weak with relief. But again, no time to indulge. “Hold still, I will get you out. Omnia interiora vos elevate.”

  Everything in the trunk floated: the girl, who gasped and thrashed to find herself airborne; her wand; her satchel; and a great many items of clothing that must have been packed before the trunk was closed the first time. Not a single piece of clothing was nonmage. If the trunk had been entrusted to the Wintervales, it would have been before their exile.

  He caught the girl, her wand, and her satchel, and let everything else fall back into the trunk. A quick swish closed the trunk. An undo spell set the plates and the chains back into place. Then he was easing the two of them out the trapdoor, with an “Omnia deleantur” tossed behind him to erase his footprints and any other traces he might have left in the dust of the attic.

  “Did she hurt you?” he asked at the first stair landing.

  “She siphoned all the air from the trunk.”

  He looked down at the girl in his arms. Her breathing was labored, but she hung on to her composure remarkably well for someone who had just endured an attempt on her life—or perhaps she was simply too breathless for hysteria.

  “Why did she want to kill me?” she rasped.

  “I do not know. But she is disturbed—she lost her father and her sister in the uprising. Her husband also died young.”

  Back in Wintervale’s room two stories below, he sat her on the bed and opened the opposite window. Fog rushed in.

  “What’s that smell?”

  “London.”

  “London, England?”

  He was glad that she had some knowledge of nonmage geography. “Yes. Here. Let me—”

  The unmistakable sound of someone arriving in the wardrobe. Lady Wintervale must have come out of the time freeze, found the trunk empty, and summoned her son. Titus shut the window, yanked the girl off the bed, and pushed her flat against the wall in the blind spot behind the wardrobe.

  She had the sense to keep still and silent.

  The wardrobe opened. Wintervale leaped down. Titus’s heart imploded: the girl’s satchel was in plain sight under the windowsill—he had set it down earlier to open the window. But Wintervale paid no attention to the contents of his room and rushed out to the corridor.

  Titus allowed himself a moment to calm down. “Hurry.”

  The window was set deep in the facade of the house. He reopened the window and lifted the girl to the ledge. Next, her satchel in hand, he climbed out, closed the window, and latched it with a locking charm.

  The fog was pervasive. She was lost in the thick, mustard-colored miasma. He felt for her but only came across a tumble of her hair.

  “Where is your hand?”

  She placed her hand in his, her fingers cold but steady. “I didn’t expect you’d really come.”

  He exhaled. “Then you do not know me very well.”

  He vaulted them both.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  CHAPTER 5

  VAULTING HAD NEVER BEEN A problem for Iolanthe before, whether on her own or hitching along with someone else. But this particular vault was like being crushed between two boulders. She shut her eyes and swallowed a scream of pain.

  At the other end, she stumbled.

  The prince caught her. “I am sorry. I knew vaulting might be difficult for you just now, but I had to get you to safety right away.”

  He shouldn’t apologize. If they were safe, then nothing else mattered.

  They were in some sort of an anteroom. There was a mirror, a console table, two doors, and nothing else. He pointed his wand at the door in front of them. It opened silently, revealing a room beyond with dark red wallpaper, pale yellow chairs, and a large, empty grate before which stood a wrought iron screen with curling vines and clusters of grapes.

  He lifted her again and carried her to a reclining chaise. “I might have a remedy for you,” he said, setting her down.

  He crossed the room to another door. “Astra castra, numen lumen.”

  The stars my camp, the deity my light.

  The door opened. He walked into a room lined with drawers and shelves as far as she could see, shelves holding books, shelves holding vials, jars, and bottles, shelves holding instruments both familiar and exotic. A caged canary sat upon a long table at the center of the room. Also on the table were two valises, one brown, the second a dull red.

  He disappeared briefly from her sight. She heard the sound of drawers opening and closing. He returned, sat down next to her, and cradled her head in the crook of his arm. The bitter tang of the fog clung to the wool of his jacket.

  “That fog,” she mumbled, “is it natural?”

  It had been thick enough to cut with a knife, alarmingly yellow in color, and smelly like pig swill.

  “There is no magic behind it, but it is not entirely natural either—a consequence of Britain’s industrialization. Here: this is to relieve the effects of vaulting.”

  The prince held a vial with a fine midnight-blue powder inside. He took her by the chin, his fingers warm and strong, and tipped the blue powder into her mouth. The flavor reminded her of seawater.

  “There is no counter-remedy for suffocation, exactly, but this is good for your general well-being.”

  He held out a second vial. The wellness remedy, silver-gray granules, tasted unexpectedly of oranges.

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” she murmured.

  He was already walking away, back into the room full of shelves.

  “What is that room?” she asked.

  “My laboratory,” he answered, opening a drawer.

  “What do you do there?”

  With his back to her, he shrugged. “What anyone does in a laboratory—potions, distillations, elixirs, things of that sort.”

  She conducted practicals at the village school for Master Haywood—practicals, in one form or another, were compulsory until a pupil reached fourteen. But it wasn’t as if mages made their own potions at home. Commercial distilleries and potion manufacturers adequately supplied their needs. In fact, many households didn’t even possess the necessary implements to make the recipes she taught.

  Was it just princely eccentricity that had him equip an entire laboratory for himself, or was it something else?

  The prince came out of the laboratory and closed the door behind him. He was tall and lean—not thin, but tightly built. When she first saw him in her collapsed house, he’d had on a plain blue tunic and dark trousers tucked into knee-high boots. Simple country attire, nothing like the elaborate state robes he donned for his official portraits.

  Now he wore a black jacket with a hunter green waistcoat, black trousers, and shoes of highly polished black leather—the jacket was more formfitting than the tunics men wore in the Domain, the trousers, less so.

  Her gaze returned to his face. Official portraits were notorious unreliable. But in this case, the pictures hadn’t lied. He was handsome—dark hair, deep eyes, and high cheekbones.

  In his portraits he always sneered. She had once remarked to a classmate that he came across as mean-spirited, the kind of boy who would not only tell a girl she looked like a bumpkin but deliberately spill a d
rink on her. In person he appeared less cynical. There was a freshness to his features, an appealing boyishness, and—as far as she could see—no malice at all.

  Their eyes met. Her stomach fluttered.

  Without a word, he opened the door behind him again. But instead of the laboratory, he walked into what appeared to be a bathroom.

  “What happened to your laboratory?”

  Sound of water running. “That is a folded space, not part of this hotel suite.”

  “Is that where we are, in a hotel?” She’d thought, for some reason, that they were at one of his lesser estates, a hunting lodge or a summer cabin.

  The sound of even more water running. “We are less than two miles from where you were when you came out of the trunk.”

  “We are still in London?”

  “Very much so.”

  Now that he mentioned it, she saw that real flame—rather than light elixir—shone behind the frosted glass mantles of the wall sconces. She’d have noticed sooner had she been less preoccupied.

  He emerged from the bath with a towel. Crouching before her, he pressed the damp towel against her temple.

  “Oww!”

  “Sorry. The blood is a bit caked on by now. But you should not need more than a good cleaning.”

  She endured the discomfort. “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

  Why was she here? Why was he here? Why was the sky falling today of all days?

  “Later. I would be remiss as your host if I did not offer you the use of a tub first.”

  She’d forgotten the state she must be in, dirty and battered.

  “Your bath is filling as we speak. You will be all right in there by yourself?”

  He’d asked a perfectly legitimate question, given that he’d had to carry her a great deal of late. But all the same, what a thing to ask.

  “And if I’m not all right?”

  She immediately regretted her question. It was far too cheeky. And before her sovereign, no less. She might not have received much parental guidance of late, but she still liked to think of herself as better brought up than that.

  He tapped his fingers against the armrest of the chaise. “Then I suppose I will have to watch over you.”

  There was no inflection to his tone; not even a flicker of anything in his expression. Yet the air between them drew taut. She heated.

  “Now, will you be all right—or will you not?” asked the prince.

  She became aware for the first time that his eyes were blue gray, the color of distant hills.

  Now she had no choice but to brazen it out. “I’m sure I will be fine,” she answered. “But should I need you, sire, please don’t hesitate.”

  The gaze of her sovereign swept over her. She’d seen that look of interest from boys. But his was so swift that she wasn’t quite certain she hadn’t imagined it.

  Then he inclined his head, all pomp and formality. “I am at your service, madam.”

  Even without the caked blood, when Iolanthe finally caught sight of herself in a mirror, she still flinched. She looked awful, her face filthy and scratched, her hair coated in dust and bits of plaster, her once-white blouse the color of an old rag.

  At least she was safe. Master Haywood . . . Her heart tightened. Her intuition had been exactly right: it had been on her account that everything had gone wrong for him.

  She washed quickly. Afterward, she dressed in the change of clothes the prince had supplied—slippers, undergarments, a blue flannel shirt, and a pair of matching trousers, everything for a boy four inches taller and a stone and a half heavier.

  When she came out of the bath, her battered clothes in a bundle in her hand, there was a tray of food waiting in the parlor and a fire in the grate. So it really was true, fireplaces were not mere decorations in the nonmage world.

  The prince looked at her oddly, as if seeing her for the first time. “Have we met before? You look . . . familiar.”

  Every year there were children selected to meet him, but she’d never been among the chosen. “No, we haven’t, sire. I’d have remembered.”

  “I could have sworn . . .”

  “You are probably thinking of someone else.” She extended her hand. “Here’s your pendant.”

  “Thank you.” The prince shook his head, as if to clear it. He pointed at her clothes. “If you do not mind, we need to destroy them—I would prefer as little evidence of your mage origins lying about as possible. Same with the contents of the satchel. Is there anything you particularly wish to keep?”

  A reminder that she wasn’t quite as safe as she would like to be. She didn’t know how the prince remained so calm. But she was grateful for his aplomb—it made her less afraid.

  He motioned her to sit down and handed her the satchel. Master Haywood’s letter she set aside. Digging through the clothes, she found the pouch of coins she’d felt earlier—pure Cathay gold, acceptable tender in every mage realm.

  “I think there is a false bottom,” she said, feeling along the linings, her fingers discerning the shape of something cylindrical.

  The prince produced a spell that neatly removed the cover of the false bottom to reveal a hidden tube.

  He astounded her—not so much the spell, though it was deft, but his demeanor. Had he been an orphan who’d had to fend for himself from the youngest age, perhaps she would not be surprised at his maturity and helpfulness. But his must have been the most privileged upbringing in all the Domain; yet here he was, always thinking one step ahead, always anticipating her needs.

  “Thank you, sire,” she said.

  Could he detect the admiration in her voice? She did, and it embarrassed her. Hurriedly she reached for the tube, which indeed contained her rolled-up birth chart—she recognized the elaborate painted night sky at the top of the scroll.

  She put the letter, the pouch of coins, and the birth chart back into the satchel. He scooped up everything else. “May I ask why you called down the lightning today?”

  I needed to keep my guardian employed and a roof over our heads.

  “I was trying to correct a batch of light elixir. I found in my guardian’s copy of The Complete Potion a note that said a bolt of lightning could right any light elixir, no matter how badly tainted.”

  He walked toward the fireplace, his arms full. “Who wrote that note?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He tossed her discards into the grate. “Extinguamini. Tollamini.”

  Her things turned to dust. The dust rose in a column up the flue. The prince braced his elbow on the mantel and waited for all the evidence of destruction to depart. He was all long, elegant lines and—

  She realized she was staring at him, in a way she could not remember ever looking at anyone else. Hastily she dropped her gaze.

  “It is bizarre that anyone would counsel that,” he said. “Lightning plays no role in potion making. How old is that copy of The Complete Potion?”

  “I’m not sure. My guardian always had it.”

  He returned to the door of the laboratory, repeated the password, and went inside. “Mine is a first edition. It was published during the Millennium Year.”

  The Millennium Year celebrated one thousand years of the House of Elberon—his house. It was currently Year of the Domain 1031, which meant the copy in Little Grind was at most thirty-one years old. She’d thought the book much older. “Do we need to find out who wrote the note, sire?”

  We. Her use of the word further embarrassed her. She was assuming a great deal of common purpose with her sovereign.

  “I doubt we would be able to, even if we tried,” said the prince. “Are you well enough to eat something?”

  “I think so.” Her stomach had settled down and she was famished, having not touched a bite of the luncheon Mrs. Needles had brought her.

  He poured her a cup of tea. “What is your name?”

  It so surprised her that he did not already know that she forgot to thank him for the tea. “Seabourne, sire. Iolanthe
Seabourne.”

  “I am pleased to meet you, Miss Seabourne.”

  “Long may Fortune uphold your banner, sire.”

  That was what a subject said upon meeting the Master of the Domain. But perhaps she also ought to kneel. Most likely she should curtsy.

  As if he read her thoughts, the prince said, “Do not worry about niceties. And no need to keep calling me ‘sire.’ We are not in the Domain, and no one will chastise us for not observing court etiquette.”

  So . . . he is also gracious.

  Enough. She didn’t even know what had happened to Master Haywood, and here she was, very close to hero-worshipping someone she’d barely met. “Thank you, sire—I mean, thank you. And may I impose upon you to tell me, Your Highness, what happened to my guardian after I left?”

  “He is in the Inquisitor’s custody now,” said the prince, sitting down opposite her.

  Even the pleasure of his nearness could not dilute her dismay. “So the Inquisitor did come?”

  “Not even half a minute after you left.”

  She clasped her hands together. That she was in real danger still shocked her.

  “You have not touched your tea, Miss Seabourne. Cream or sugar?”

  Usually she liked her tea full of sugar and cream, but such a rich beverage no longer appealed. She took a sip of the black tea. The prince pushed a plate of sandwiches in her direction.

  “Eat. Hiding from the Inquisitor is hard work. You need to keep up your strength.”

  She took a bite of the sandwich—it had an unexpectedly curried taste. “So the Inquisitor wants me.”

  “More precisely, the Bane wants you.”

  She recoiled. She couldn’t recall when or where she’d first learned of the Bane, whose official title was Lord High Commander of the Great Realm of New Atlantis. Unlike the Inquisitor, whom people did talk about, if in hushed whispers, regarding the Bane there was a conspicuous silence.

  “What does the Bane want me for?”

  “For your powers,” said the prince.

  It was the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever said to her. “But the Bane is already the most powerful mage on earth.”