Chapter Sixteen
Jaime was so deep in meditation at midnight of the following day that he didn’t feel the light on his cheeks at first.
Slowly, his eyelids parted.
Off in the distance, smoke curled over the dark pines. A plume of yellow tore the sky open, spilled light over the expanse of forest.
Fire!
By habit, his hand darted to the breather in his pocket. Hilaris’s screams flashed back into his head. Paralyzed him. A cold tide of fear rose high, higher into his lungs—the air wouldn’t come inside. It was six months since his last asthma attack, two seasons since he last used his breather, but suddenly, he forgot how to—
Breathe. Breathe deeply, Jaime.
The familiarity of his mother’s voice calmed him. After a few deep breaths, he climbed off the steps, bolted inside Nanos Library.
Please, please, don’t let it be the Archpriestess!
“Achuros!” he screamed. The airpriest was sprawled over the center hall, on ragged blankets like a beggar. Jaime bent down and gripped his shoulders.
“Wake up! There’s a fire outside!”
His mentor’s eyes opened.
“The medallion.” Achuros stretched out his hand.
Jaime fumbled, lifted it over his neck. Achuros’s fist closed over it.
“With me,” he ordered. “Stay close.”
After the airpriest helped him onto his mare, they galloped out of the courtyard and into the direction of the flames. Jaime swallowed down his stirring nightmares. Not now. He couldn’t have an asthma attack right now. The priest looped one arm protectively over Jaime’s midsection.
They reached the wall of fire. Terror twisted inside Jaime’s chest.
Dozens of the City Watch already there, hollering, passing around buckets of water. One of the pines was completely swallowed in flames, its seething branches torching the surrounding trees. This would be impossible to contain—fire was about to bury the southeast.
Achuros dismounted, the medallion’s chain wrapped around his palm.
Breathe, breathe, one two three four, breathe.
Jaime clambered down and held onto the reins to keep the mare from bolting.
A longspear split through the dark. The sigil of the silver swift fluttered from the pennant. Prescilla Menander. Her belly bulged and she wore no cosmetics tonight. Sweat formed the dark hair around her ears into curls.
“My lady!” Achuros yelled, face glowing from the flames. “You shouldn’t be here!”
“Florin ran into the fire!” she shouted back. “Achuros, you have to find him!”
The trees belched flames. The guards cried out, fell backwards. All of their buckets empty now.
Jaime clenched and unclenched his sweaty fists.
You’re a Fire Sage. You raised fire once. Now crush it, help them, do something!
But when his mind searched for The Empyrean to tap energy from, nothing existed but pounding panic and heat.
Achuros stormed up to the line of seething fire. Blue light radiated from the medallion. The edges of the airpriest’s body blazed, outlining him. The night thrummed with energy. One thrust of his palm—
A blade of air sliced through the flames’ cowlicks.
Jaime’s mouth dropped.
Achuros’s hands formed an open V—a tunnel of air charged headlong at the burning pine. The fires hissed and shrank in anticipation.
And the current made impact.
The sheer energy of Achuros’s air current thrust Jaime backwards. His heels dug into the dirt, forming grooves over ten feet long. The mare screamed and galloped away. A whirlwind of air currents swiped out the rest of the fire.
The forests instantly went dark.
Jaime’s chest pressed against the ground. Heaving for air. The other guards let out sighs of relief, but his eyes stayed frozen wide.
So that’s what it’s like to control Air.
Achuros glanced at Prescilla. No words exchanged. Together, they marched into the charred shrubs.
Jaime wrestled to his feet and raced after his mentor.
Florin’s bay gelding was off to the side. A circle of longspears formed behind the remains of the burning pine. The airpriest shoved his way between them. Jaime skidded to a halt behind the guards.
The Mayor was in the middle, gripping the ear of a writhing shape.
Toran.
Jaime hurried to his side, coughing, eyes watering from the flecks of ash. “What’s going on?”
“You might ask him yourself, Prince.”
Fury scorched Florin’s graphite irises. The surrounding smoke overpowered the whiff of stonemist incense on his toga.
Toran threw his hands up. “I told you all, it was an accident! I swear it. I was out here camping, and the fire got out of the pit somehow!”
Camping? What’s he doing out here camping?
“You nearly started a wildfire.” The round edges of Florin’s jaw trembled. “If His Honorable hadn’t put it out, all of South Jaypes would be in flames by morning.”
Achuros spoke up. “What was the boy doing outside the gates, Lord Mayor?”
Jaime grabbed his best friend and pulled their faces up close. “Toran! Why’d you burn up the forest?”
“It was an accident,” Toran snapped back. “You know I wouldn’t try to hurt anybody.”
“But why—”
Toran shoved him away and turned back to the adults, though his eyes stayed down. “I was just lonely with Juno gone, okay? I snuck out here to look for him. When I couldn’t find him, I lit a fire to keep warm. Let’s call it a night and go to bed?”
At Florin’s nod, the guards seized him.
Toran’s brows bounced up.
“Hey! Juno, tell them to let me go! I said it was an accident!”
Jaime’s belly twisted. He turned to the Mayor. “He’s my best friend—”
“These forests belong to the King. The penalty for arson on royal property is death. He will be tossed into the barathron. Sojin will carry out the sentence when he returns.”
The barathron.
That was the deep pit west of the akropolis. And Sojin—he would be back any day now; the Kingdom’s air currents were now sweltering by midday.
“Florin,” Jaime clamped onto his arm, “have mercy—”
Achuros hissed in undertone, “When will you learn obedience, boy? Bow your head!”
“Then exonerate him, Prince,” the Mayor replied, “and explain your decision to our region’s royal watchkeepers. They will be investigating the meaning of this burning.”
Jaime balked, startled by Florin’s coldness.
But as his gaze drifted to the hard faces of the Jaypans, he understood. Lord Haigen already attacked Florin and his wife over the mere suspicion that Arcurea was an Air Alliance sympathizer. What would he do if he found out the Arcureans were the rebels?
Jaime turned away from the others, closing his eyes tightly. The night of their lanterns flashed back in their mind.
Light.
Sun.
The shaking of their hands. They’d made a promise to each other. And Jaime would give his life to keep it.
He turned back around.
“I’ll find a way to free you,” Jaime whispered.
The guards dragged him back in the direction of the city. Toran blanched.
As Achuros murmured with the Mayor, Jaime threw one more look back at his best friend. His eyes were round as moons, full of crisp fear. Toran wasn’t stupid. And he certainly wasn’t drunk.
He burned the trees on purpose.
But why?
The next morning, instead of training in the library, Achuros walked them to a hill at the western edge of Arcurea.
This dry, rocky hump was nothing compared to the mountains he’d cut across
in the Krete Forests. But he hadn’t fallen asleep yesterday until the final hours of night. The slightest slope drained his energy.
“Where are we going?” Jaime panted.
“Climbing.”
“Climbing?”
“If you’re to raise mighty air currents one day,” the priest said, “it will require much physical and mental stamina. We must keep your body strong. The best way to do that in Jaypes,” he smiled grimly, “is to climb mountains.”
When they reached the top, Jaime was panting hard, his thighs burning. Snowy clouds shrouded the rest of the Kingdom. Their hill of daisies was the only thing that towered above the white.
Mamá is somewhere out there. And the King.
What else existed out there?
He needed to find a higher hill to climb so he could see. The Townfolders back at home had a slew of saying about mountains:
“Your vision is clearest on a mountain’s peak.”
“It is when you make it to the summit that you understand why you climbed.”
“The measure of a Jaypan hero is not how many valleys he conquers, but how many mountains he defeats.”
But most Jaypans never made it to the top of any mountain. It was too trying. And nobody had the time. Jaime didn’t, either. The Kingdom’s northeastern alpines were too lofty, too steep.
Maybe that’s why Jaypans dreamed up poetic sayings instead. Why no one on Mount Alairus could ever see past the shivering fog that surrounded the mountain, why they could only speculate what existed in the King’s lowlands below. And what existed above Mount Alairus’s clouds, in the direction of his mother’s god?
No one could say, either.
One day, I know. One day, I’ll see everything.
Later that day, while Achuros scribbled his fingertips raw with his quill, Jaime floundered through meditation. After a few minutes, Jaime turned his head around.
“We have to talk about Toran—”
“No,” the priest said flatly. “That silly cornpone is under the Lord Mayor’s jurisdiction now.”
“But he didn’t do anything wrong—”
“He is guilty of arson. In your friend’s home Kingdom, that’s a serious crime, punishable by summary death.”
“It was an accident.”
Achuros clasped his hands slowly, tilting his head in Jaime’s direction. Those shrewd iron eyes. Since they moved out of the city, he smelled less of livestock and manure, and more of torches and ink.
Why doesn’t he ever smell like stonemist incense? He’s an airpriest. I’ve never even seen him pray.
“Boy?”
“Yes?”
“If you are concerned about saving your friend, the best way is to learn Air.”
“I know—”
“Do you? When you can summon currents at will, then you may command high lords and the city watch. Until then, you are just a boy. And my apprentice, unfortunately.”
Jaime rolled his eyes, returning to meditation position. I would be hiding in the mountains if I didn’t want to learn Air.
The shadows of the clouds folded into late afternoon. Jaime shifted his focus into memorizing air currents, but every few minutes that went by, he imagined Toran stooping in the stink of the city prisons.
Achuros is right. Gods, he’s always right.
After another hour of studying, Jaime glanced at the stone airmarker his mentor sat behind. Ancient characters cut into its rock face, just like the one he saw outside Townfold marking the Northwind Current.
“What’s that one say?”
Achuros kept scrawling. “Galìdha. ‘Sun,’ for the Solstice Current.”
Sun.
The same word he’d written on his lantern, of all words. Tingles rushed up Jaime’s limbs. Perhaps it was a sign.
“Have you seen the sun before?”
“Ah, it was always summer when Lairdos and Sarendi reigned. Scarce ever could you see a cloud in the sky. Back when I served in Aeropolis Capital, the windchimes sang the dawn into our avai, all in unison. A man would wake bathed in the sky colors of grapes and windflowers.” He closed his eyes. “Now, with Ottega on the throne, Air tells me the chimes have gone silent.”
“What did the sun look like?”
Pause.
“Lairdos Ascaerii was the sun.” His voice thinned with the gusts. “My King would wake before the rest of the Old Senate. Each morning I found him, he was aloft the tallest parapet, singing to the blazing, heavens-bright skyline. He had a voice that made even the great eagles fall silent. In those days, the night was so bright, so short, I began to believe mankind had no shadow.”
Jaime started when the old man’s eyes misted.
“And he always told me, ‘One day, when my firstborn is here, Sarendi and I will teach him to catch the sun.’” The priest lifted his hand and cupped his gnarled fingers into a sphere. Today, the gap between them showed marbled clouds. “‘If you can do that, my son, this Kingdom of Song, and the hearts of her people, will belong to you.’”
Achuros slumped forward, his hand pressed to his brows. “Gods, how I miss those times. The day the last Ascaerii died, daylight left this Kingdom, and all the Kingdoms, forever.”
This was more words than he ever heard the priest speak altogether.
Achuros does care about something, after all.
The weight and depth and height of the old man’s pain smothered Jaime—he knew this. This is what he’d felt the first morning after Hilaris’s burning. And the way it was bleeding out of Achuros urged Jaime to sprint away and hide behind the pines where no one could see him cry.
But Jaime stood up, wrapping his arms around the priest’s shoulders.
A pause.
Achuros reached up for one of Jaime’s wrists, holding on tight.
“I should have been there to stop him,” his mentor whispered. “I saw him walk off the cliffs from the other side of the palace. And the Queen—” Bright beads bled from his eyes. “I left her alone in the Capital two months before Ottega’s invasion. She told me to go. I shouldn’t have. I should have stayed behind to protect her.”
“Lairdos’s death wasn’t your fault. Or—” Jaime closed his eyes, swallowing. “Or my blood-mother’s. But I’ll bring them back.”
“They are dead. You can’t bring them back.”
“I can. I’ll bring them back for you, Achuros. I’ll do it by showing the families of Jaypes what the sun looks like again.”
Jaime let him go.
“If Usheon didn’t become King,” he added, “I never would’ve met you.”
Achuros shielded a hand over his eyes. “Ah, what a mess I am. No more talk, boy.”
“It’s okay to admit you care about something. Or someone. I cared about Hilaris, a lot. I just didn’t know until after he was gone.”
The priest fell into a silent contraction. After a long silence, when his mouth could form words again, Achuros said:
“I haven’t been treating you as I should. I am sorry, Jaime. That your father is Usheon Ottega poisoned my behavior.”
Jaime glanced away at the sky. His chest hurt. The tears stayed stuck in his eyes, but he wouldn’t let them fall. The winds did not cry, and he wouldn’t either, not anymore.
“I forgive you, Achuros.”
He turned around, forcing a grin.
“But only if you let me hit you on the head with that fan of yours.”
The old man broke into a gale of laughter.
That night in the library, as Jaime lied down for sleep, the airpriest drank double his dose of wine until the quill he held to his ledger flailed and fell flat to the ground. And while Jaime pretended sleep, Achuros stumbled into the woods.
In the deepest hours of night, the trees echoed with the unending howls of sobs.
Chapter Seventeen
J
aime dreamed he was careening over the southern edge of the akropolis.
Shackles immobilized his arms. The barathron waited for him a thousand feet below. In the deep darkness of its pit, bodies of executed criminals writhed, festered.
Cold beads gathered on his skin. He glanced behind him. The Archpriestess’s blank, milky eyes stared back at him.
“Jump.”
Her voice was hoarser than dry winds blowing through a crypt.
Jaime turned back around. His mouth opened in a scream—
Sojin, now in front, shoved him off the akropolis.
His innards lurched up into his throat. The pitch-darkness of the barathron grew closer, closer—till a sheet of hellfire exploded into life. Hilaris, reaching up from under, skin melting off the bone, hot white eyes pouring out of his sockets, formed a soundless word with his mouth.
Juuuuuuump.
Jaime’s hands transformed. Enlarged. Instead of seeing himself reflected in his brother’s eyes, an older man fell in his place. In his dream state, he instinctively knew who: Lairdos, the last of the Ascaeriis, who committed suicide by jumping off the cliffs of the royal palace.
He woke upright.
Sweat drenched his chiton.
He rolled over and shook Achuros awake.
“We have to save Toran! Please! Before Sojin gets back—”
Eyes flicking open, his mentor’s hand shot towards the medallion. “Holy Lord Jaypes! What—”
“I said, we have to save Toran—”
Achuros slumped forward, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Go back to sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t. Every time I close my eyes, I see Hilaris in the fire. I thought—I should be over it by now. Why can’t I get over it, Achuros?” Jaime buried his face in his hands. “The nightmares are getting worse. Toran can’t die—” The memory of his dream suffocated his body under shivers. “If they make him jump, I’m jumping with him. They made King Lairdos jump, too!”
Sighing, the priest pressed him into his shoulder. “Shh. Just your dreams. Where is the oil lamp?”
“No—no, fire!”
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