The Burning Sky

by Shelly Thomas

  Titus listened to him prattle as he pretended to drink Aramia’s ice-cold punch. He did not distrust Aramia, but one never knew what Lady Callista might be up to.

  “Have a glass of Aramia’s punch,” he said to Alectus. “It will quite restore you.”

  “Ah, you like it then?” said Alectus.

  “I do. And why do you look so surprised?”

  Alectus laughed awkwardly. “Well, it is just that Your Highness does not like very many things.”

  “Yes, the burden of having been born with exquisite taste.”

  “I believe that is indeed the c—”

  “Stop that! No, not you, Alectus, you may carry on. I am speaking to my bird.”

  Fairfax had been acting strange. Pecking on his shoulders, chirping directly into his ears, and just now, taking a sharp snip at his neck.

  “Perhaps Miss Buttercup is hungry?” Alectus suggested.

  It had been a while since Fairfax ate, and there was a great deal of food being passed around. Titus took out a wrapped biscuit from inside his robe—he did not trust Lady Callista’s food either—and held it up to Fairfax.

  She pecked his hand—hard enough to hurt.

  “What the—”

  “Oh dear, I do believe that is the Inquisitor arriving,” said Alectus breathlessly. “She said she might make an appearance, but I had not quite believed it. She socializes so rarely, Madam Inquisitor.”

  Titus turned cold. He had thought he would have a little more time.

  The Inquisitor’s chariot was plain black, unadorned except for the whirlpool emblem of Atlantis. The Inquisitor herself was also in black, her hair sleeked back into a knot at the top of her head.

  She looked like death walking.

  “If you will excuse me, Your Highness,” said Alectus, and rushed off to personally welcome the Inquisitor.

  Aramia came back to his side. “I shouldn’t say this, but she gives me the jitters.”

  “I am surprised your mother tolerates her. She would have disowned you if you went anywhere in such an ugly overrobe.”

  Aramia chuckled softly. “Unfortunately, Uncle Alectus is very fond of the Inquisitor. Mother says the Inquisitor is the one woman Uncle Alectus would choose over her, so she has no choice but to be very convivial.”

  Indeed Lady Callista smiled most graciously as she greeted the Inquisitor. As the Inquisitor began to walk up the steps from the landing platform, Alectus hovered about her, like a child stalking an unopened present, entirely unashamed of his devotion.

  The Inquisitor came directly at Titus, cutting a swath through the assembly. Nearly half of the guests bowed.

  Aramia frowned. “Don’t they know what they are doing? They are bowing down to a foreign power.”

  “It is practical,” said Titus. “In their shoes, I might do the same.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  She had such a rosy view of him; it almost made him want to be a better person.

  The Inquisitor was now before him. She bowed stiffly. Titus returned an equally rigid nod.

  “Madam Inquisitor.”

  “Good evening, Your Highness.”

  “Have you met Miss Aramia Tiberius?”

  “I have already had that pleasure. Now, Miss Tiberius, I would like a word with His Highness.”

  “Of course, Madam Inquisitor. May I offer you a drink before I go?”

  “That will be quite unnecessary.”

  Aramia pursed her lips and left.

  For a supposed diplomat, your talent for diplomacy is abysmal, Madam Inquisitor.

  Titus did not give in to the impulse: right before a private interview was no time to antagonize the Inquisitor.

  “Lady Callista has arranged a room here where we may have privacy,” said the Inquisitor.

  “Good. We shall need it when we return.”

  “Return?”

  “Was it not you yourself who said that representatives of my government are welcome to inspect my subjects currently held at the Inquisitory?”

  “Surely that can be arranged l—”

  “I am a perfectly adequate representative of my government. And I am ready to see them now.”

  Behind the Inquisitor, Alectus all but trembled at Titus’s interruption. The Inquisitor said coldly, “Now is not quite the time.”

  Before the menace in her eyes, Titus wanted to quail as Alectus did. “Any time, you said,” he forced himself to speak. “And you have already inconvenienced me greatly with your demands upon my time.”

  “You are young and headstrong, Your Highness, and your demands ill-considered. Let us have no more of this foolishness.”

  Any sane person would have backed away. But he had no choice. The blood oath bound him to do his utmost. And utmost, of course, was synonymous with suicidal.

  “I see I should have expected someone of your particular . . . background to display such untrustworthiness.” The Inquisitor’s teeth clenched at Titus’s reference to her forger parents. “I have correspondingly changed my mind about speaking to you in private.”

  He walked away and approached a trio of young beauty witches. “I see all the most beautiful women present tonight are already acquainted with one another.”

  The three beauty witches exchanged looks among themselves. The apparent leader of the group smiled at Titus. “You are a very handsome stranger, sir. But we really are after the prince.”

  “That conceited prick? You are lucky he is too full of himself to notice you. Can you imagine the absolute bore he would be?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, but you, Your H—I mean, sir, are anything but a bore.”

  He lifted a curl of her dark hair, feeling nothing of its texture, aware only of the force of the Inquisitor’s anger, like needles upon his back. “Let me guess, your name is Aphrodite, after the goddess of love.”

  She laughed softly. “Excellent guess, sir, but it’s Alcyone.”

  “A celestial nymph, I like that.” He turned to one of her friends. “And you must be a Helen, the one mortal woman as beautiful as any goddess.”

  “Alas, I’m only a Rhea.”

  “Daughter of Earth and Sky, even better. And you,” he said to the third beauty witch, “a Persephone who so overwhelms a god with desire that he is driven to abduction.”

  All the girls laughed. “That is indeed her name,” said Alcyone. “Well done, sir.”

  “I am never wrong in these matters.”

  “May I ask, sir,” ventured Persephone, “why do you have a canary with you?”

  “Miss Buttercup? She is an exceptional judge of character. Has she made a peep since you welcomed me into your group?”

  “No, she hasn’t.”

  “Then you have her approval. Ah, I see from Miss Alcyone’s expression that she sees a gorgon. Now watch, Miss Buttercup is turning around. She will lay eyes on the gorgon, and she will express her disapproval.”

  Fairfax issued a series of furious peeps. Was she warning him that he had gone too far?

  “Your Highness,” said the Inquisitor directly behind him.

  Her tone. His stomach roiled—she was livid.

  The beauty witches all curtsied. He did not turn around. “I trust you can see I am busy, Madam Inquisitor.”

  “I have changed my mind. Shall we to the Inquisitory?”

  It was the last place he wanted to go. He hoped Fairfax was happy.

  “My apologies, ladies,” he said to the beauty witches. “I must desert you for a short time. I hope you are not leaving immediately.”

  He did not hear what they said in return.

  It was time for his first Inquisition.

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  CHAPTER 15

  BEING A BIRD GAVE IOLANTHE the freedom to look anywhere she liked. What she found out was that everyone watched them. Him.

  At first she put it do
wn to his rank and his attire—his deep-blue overrobe, heavily embroidered with silver thread, was magnificent. But this was an occasion that overflowed with magnificent clothes on men and women of superior rank. And the way they looked at him, footmen and prime minister, serving maids and baronesses alike, it was as if he’d cast a spell on them.

  He had Presence.

  The moment he stepped off his chariot, it was obvious that he was no ordinary adolescent. He was rude and inaccessible, but he exuded an enigmatic charisma that could not be ignored.

  He would never convince Atlantis—or anyone for that matter—to take him lightly.

  Perhaps he knew that. His heart pounded next to her—he’d put her inside his overrobe for the trip to the Inquisitory. The tunic he wore beneath the overrobe was of very fine silk, redolent of the herbs with which it had been stored, warm with the heat of his body.

  She burrowed deeper against him.

  “I will keep you safe,” he murmured.

  He meant it.

  As long as he was safe, she was safe.

  But how long would he remain safe?

  Titus drove one of Alectus’s pegasus-drawn chariots—the phoenixes were too sensitive to be brought near a place as sinister as the Inquisitory. Lowridge, his captain of the guards, and six soldiers from the castle rode behind him, each on a white pegasus.

  Night had fallen. All the streetlamps and houses had been lit, which only emphasized the dark, desolate stretches of quick pine. The column of red smoke that marked the location of the Inquisitory glowed bright and eerie, a display of power that dominated the skyline night and day.

  The original Inquisitory had been lleveled during the January Uprising. Since its rebuilding, security had been airtight. The Inquisitor received no callers and gave no parties. The only way to get in, it was sometimes said, was to be dragged in.

  The pair of pegasi that pulled Titus’s borrowed chariot certainly wanted to bolt—almost as much as he did. One could not fly over territory under the Inquisitor’s direct control; once they crossed its boundary, the pegasi had to trot on the ground. They whinnied, shied, and slapped each other with their tough wings. Titus cracked the whip near their ears to stop their jumpy antics.

  Would that all he needed was a not-quite-lashing to pull himself together.

  The new Inquisitory was a circular structure, the exterior one solid black wall, unbroken by a single window. Three sets of heavy gates led to an enclosed courtyard enveloped by an uncomfortably red-tinted light.

  The Inquisitor’s second in command, Baslan, was on hand to greet Titus. Titus could not decide whether he ought to be happy about the Inquisitor’s absence or frightened that she was even now preparing for his Inquisition.

  He tossed aside his reins and froze. Not ten feet from where he had pulled his chariot to a stop, a human skeleton poked out of the ground; the bony remains of its hand, the tips of the phalanges dark red, reached skyward as if seeking help from above.

  “Interest choice of decoration,” he said, blood roaring in his ears.

  “Half of the courtyard has been allowed to remain in ruins—a reminder for the servants of Atlantis to stay ever vigilant,” answered Baslan.

  The ruined half was pockmarked and strewn with blasted chunks of wall and broken pieces of glass that glittered red in the light. There were no other human skeletons, but Titus saw a dog skeleton and the top half of a doll, which made him recoil until he realized it was not a mutilated baby.

  At the center of the courtyard stood a hundred-foot-tall tower. From the top of the tower, red smoke billowed.

  Titus exhaled with relief when their path at last led away from the courtyard into the building. He stripped off his driving gloves. His palms were damp with perspiration.

  They descended immediately; the aboveground rooms were obviously too good to waste on prisoners. The air below was musty, as was usually the case for subterranean interiors, but every surface was scrupulously clean.

  All the hygienic measures in the world, however, could not diminish the oppressiveness of the place. With every step he took, the walls seemed to close in another inch. The air grew warmer and denser. It suffocated.

  Three flights down, a desire to flee seized him. Thousands and thousands of mages had been held here in the first few years after the January Uprising. No one knew what had happened to them. But their despair had seeped into the very walls. Invisible filaments of it curled around Titus’s ankles, driving chills up his tendons.

  Three more flights down they emerged into a large circular space with eight corridors leading from it. The corridor they followed went on for a hundred and fifty feet. There were no bars, only solid walls and steel doors that were far too close together.

  The cells could not have been more than four feet wide.

  Baslan stopped halfway down the corridor. With a tap of his hand, a narrow section of the wall turned transparent. A small, dimly lit cell appeared before them, empty except for a thin cot on the stone floor. A woman sat on the cot, sobbing—the housebreaker.

  “Rise,” proclaimed Lowridge, as his subordinates clicked their heels smartly. “You are in the presence of the Master of the Domain, His Serene Highness Titus the Seventh.”

  The woman looked up in shock. Then contempt. She spat. “You lie!”

  This amused Titus, if grimly. “Can she see us?”

  “No, Your Highness,” answered Baslan. “The transparency is only one way.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Nettle Oakbluff. She is the registrar of Little Grind-on-Woe.”

  Titus addressed the woman. “Why are you here?”

  “I shouldn’t be!” the woman cried. “I was trying to help Atlantis. I was trying to get them the girl!”

  Titus glanced at Baslan, whose expression remained perfectly composed.

  “You are a subject of the Domain. Why do you seek to help Atlantis?”

  “There is money in it.” Obviously a great deal of truth serum still flowed through the woman’s veins. “I overheard my in-laws-to-be talking about it all hush-hush. They said Atlantis was itching for a really powerful elemental mage and that the agent who brought in this mage stood to gain a huge reward.”

  “And have you received said reward?”

  Nettle Oakbluff blew her nose into a handkerchief. “No. All I got for my trouble is hours and hours of questioning. I want gold. I want servants. I want a villa overlooking the ocean in Delamer.”

  Her voice rose. “Do you hear me, Atlantis? You owe me that reward. If it weren’t for me, Iolanthe Seabourne and her guardian would have disappeared without a trace. You owe me!”

  She struggled to her feet. “You can’t keep me here forever. My in-laws-to-be are important people. Oh, Fortune take pity on me, the wedding! Someone tell me what happened to the wedding. I need my daughter to marry the Greymoors’ son and I demand—”

  “She seems in fine fettle,” Titus said to Baslan. “Next.”

  The wall was instantly opaque and soundproof, cutting off Nettle Oakbluff mid-tirade.

  They walked some fifty feet down the corridor. The next cell Baslan revealed was similarly bare. A man sat on the cot, his back against the wall. He was unshaven, thinner and older than Titus remembered. But there was no question: he was Fairfax’s guardian.

  Titus took Fairfax out of the folds of his overrobe, keeping a tight grip on her tiny body. His other hand rested against the pocket where his wand was concealed. No one was going to snatch her from him—not without a fight to the death.

  “I want him to see whom he is speaking to,” Titus ordered. “I will not have another subject of mine think it is permissible to sit in my presence.”

  Reluctantly, Baslan complied.

  Horatio Haywood blinked at the influx of light. He squinted at his visitors. There was apprehension in his eyes, but not yet the instinctive, cringing fear of the tortured.

  “Rise,” Lowridge again proclaimed. “You are in the presence of the Master of the Do
main, His Serene Highness Titus the Seventh.”

  Haywood blinked again, rose unsteadily to his feet, and bowed. Only to lose his balance and stumble sideways into the wall. Fairfax was very still in Titus’s hand, but her claws dug into his palm, and her heart hammered beneath the warm down of her chest.

  Titus asked for Haywood’s name, age, and occupation. Haywood answered obediently, a hint of hoarseness to his voice.

  “How have you spent your time since your arrival at the Inquisitory?”

  “I was hit with a paralysis curse before I was brought here and recovered only this morning. Since then I have been answering questions.”

  “Do you know why you are being held here?”

  Haywood glanced at Baslan. “The Inquisitor is interested in the whereabouts of my ward.”

  “Certain parties in the know told me that your ward is nowhere to be found.”

  Was it Titus’s imagination or did Haywood relax almost imperceptibly? His shoulders did not seem as tightly hunched. “I was unconscious, sire, and did not witness her escape.”

  “What was the means of her escape, exactly?”

  “A pair of linked trunk portals that can be used only once, going only one way.”

  “Going where?”

  “I do not know, sire.”

  “How do you know the other trunk is not buried at the bottom of the ocean?”

  Haywood gripped his hands together. “I trust it is not. It is my understanding that it leads to safety, not calamity.”

  It had very nearly led to calamity.

  Titus made an exasperated sound. “Not very productive to question you, is it?”

  “There are many things I cannot recall, sire.”

  “This much memory erasure would cause undesirable side effects. You seem not to suffer from them. Did you entrust your memories to a memory keeper then?”

  Haywood jolted only slightly. The Inquisitor must have already asked him the same question. “It would appear so, sire, though I cannot recall who, or when.”

  “But you know why.”

  “To keep my ward safe.”

  “I had no idea Atlantis was in need of a great elemental mage, and I should know these things. How did you know?”

  “Someone told me. But I can’t remember who.”