The Perilous Sea (30 page)

As he turned away from the window, the idea that had yanked him out of his uneasy sleep returned: it had to do with his mother's vision of Baron Wintervale's death.

And
her misinterpretation of it
.

Most of the time Princess Ariadne did not offer her own view on the significance of her visions, trusting that a long enough, detailed enough vision was its own best explanation. But with the vision of Baron Wintervale's death she had immediately construed the execution curse to have been ordered by Atlantis, never suspecting that his grieving wife, a skilled and powerful mage in her own right, could be his killer.

And if Princess Ariadne was wrong once, who was to say she could not have made another mistake somewhere else, in a vision that had far greater impact on Titus's life?

 

Iolanthe had wanted to go to Claridge's the day they met with Lady Wintervale, to see whether the memory keeper was still making use of it. Titus persuaded her to wait until he had Dalbert check Commander Rainstone's schedule, so that they could choose a time during which Commander Rainstone would be otherwise occupied.

That opportunity came a few days later: Commander Rainstone was expected to be handing out awards at her alma mater all afternoon, and Titus and Iolanthe had a short day at school and no cricket practice requiring her attendance.

Claridge's, a large hotel located in the Mayfair area of London, brimmed with respectability and Englishness. While the prince did his reconnaisance inside the hotel—he was still reluctant to let her be seen anywhere except school—Iolanthe waited at a newsagent's stand around the corner, pretending to browse the selection.

The day was cold and overcast. The grayish leaves that still remained on the trees shook and shivered. A trio of street musicians on the opposite side of the intersection played an incongruously cheerful tune on their fiddles. Pedestrians, dressed almost invariably in coats of black or brown, rushed to and fro, paying little attention to the playbills that two boys were pasting onto a lamppost or the sandwich-board man advertising Mrs. Johansson's Miraculous Slimming Tonic.

Presently the prince appeared at her elbow. “I found a suite from which I cannot proceed beyond the anteroom.”

The soles of her feet tingled. She paid the newsagent for a map of London and stuffed it into her coat pocket. “Let's go, then.”

“Let me go first to make sure it is safe,” he said, after they were out of the newsagent's hearing.

“I want to come with you.” The memory keeper had gone through a great deal of trouble to keep her out of Atlantis's reach, so she should not be in danger from that quarter. And in any case, if Dalbert was correct, Commander Rainstone would be busy all afternoon. “Your safety is at least as important as mine—I'm not sure Wintervale can last five minutes on Atlantis without you.”

“All right,” he relented. “But do not let your guard down.”

From an empty alley nearby, he vaulted her to the anteroom of the hotel suite. The small space was covered with crimson wallpaper—Iolanthe remembered somebody, probably Cooper, telling her that there was no point making interior walls in London anything except dark colored; the quality of the air was such that one was guaranteed to have dark-colored walls in a few years, no matter what.

The prince set to work, unwinding the anti-intrusion spells. She didn't know enough of the techniques to help him, so she kept herself in a corner, out of his way, and tried to breathe slowly and evenly. To not grow too excited, or let her hopes get away from—

Footsteps approached from the other side of the door.

Titus leaped back and immediately began putting up shields. Iolanthe had his spare wand out, pointed at the door, fear and a sensation of giddiness taking turns accelerating her pulse.

The footsteps stopped. The door handle turned and slowly the door opened a crack, revealing the familiar face of Master Haywood.

 

Master Haywood's hair had been cut short, and he sported a funny-looking mustache, but there could be no doubt it was him.

It was him.

And then Iolanthe could hardly see him for the tears in her eyes. She launched herself at him. “Forgive me! Forgive me for taking so long to find you.”

He banded his arms tightly about her. “Iola. Fortune shield me, it
is
you. I thought I would never see you again,” he said, sounding dazed.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Baron Wintervale might have provided the biological beginning to her existence, but Master Haywood was her true father, the one who sat by her bedside when she was ill, checked her homework, and took her to Mrs. Hinderstone's on summer days for pinemelon ice and then to the zoo to look at the dragons and the unicorns.

“I'm so glad you are safe,” he said hoarsely. “So very, very glad.”

Only then did he look up and notice that she had not come alone. He let go of her and bowed hastily to the Master of the Domain. “Your Highness.”

“Master Haywood,” Titus acknowledged him. “With your permission, I should like to search the premises for translocators.”

“Of course, sire. Shall I ring for some tea, sire?”

“No, no need. You may be at your ease.”

Titus moved off to the interior of the suite. Master Haywood gaped at him for a second longer, and then turned to Iolanthe and drew her into the sitting room. “So all along you have been at that nonmage school they took me to, the prince's school?”

“Yes, yes, and I'll tell you everything,” Iolanthe said. “But first tell me, how did you disappear from the Citadel that night?”

“I wish I had a better idea of what had happened. All evening long Atlantean guards around me kept whispering to one another about the Lord High Commander. It made me quite afraid, thinking the Bane himself might interrogate me.

“I was at the Citadel for almost an hour before I was marched into the library. My knees knocked. I could barely feel the floor beneath my feet. The next thing I knew, I was inside this hotel suite, with a note on the table that instructed me to never leave the perimeters, if I wanted to stay out of the Inquisitory. And this is where I have been ever since.”

“Have you really not stepped out once?”

The sitting room, with the same crimson-colored walls, was of a decent size. And the bedroom, which she could see through its open door, likewise. But still, to not leave this limited space for four entire months . . .

“Compared to the Inquisitory, this is heaven. Plenty of room to stretch my legs, no one to question me, and all the nonmage books and newspapers I can ask for to be delivered. Except for a lack of your news, I really can't complain.”

Her heart constricted as she remembered his tiny cell at the Inquisitory. “But can you leave this hotel if you wanted to?”

Master Haywood blanched. “I . . . I don't want to. It is too dangerous out there. I'm much better off here, inside.”

“But if you walked out of here, then no one will know where you are. You will be completely anonymous and that will protect you better than any anti-intrusion spells.”

“No, no. It's unthinkable.” Master Haywood clenched the back of a chair. “It was because I destroyed that batch of light elixir that you called down lightning—and now you will never be safe. By staying here at least I will cause you no more trouble.”

His adamancy baffled Iolanthe. Was it yet another symptom of the harm the memory spells had caused?

“By the sound of it, Fairfax, I would say your guardian has been placed inside a fear circle,” said the prince, coming out from the bedroom.

“What is that?” Iolanthe had never heard of such a thing.

“An old spell from when wars were more intimate affairs. If you can set a fear circle around your enemies, you can practically starve them to death within.”

Iolanthe glanced at Master Haywood, who was trying to absorb the news that what he feared most was fear itself.

She turned back to the prince. “Did you find any portals?”

“There are two armoires and a bathtub; I set alerts for—”

His expression changed. Taking Iolanthe by the arm, he concealed them both behind the heavy blue curtains.

Iolanthe peeked out. Master Haywood was just turning toward the open bedroom door. The edge of what looked to be a brown cloak appeared for a moment near the floor—on the other side of the wall, someone was hiding, waiting to reconnoiter the situation in the sitting room.

The prince quietly opened the French window that led out to the narrow balcony. Iolanthe held the air still so the curtains would not flutter with the draft coming in. He disappeared from the balcony. A few seconds later, he rematerialized, looking slightly dazed.

“She is here,” said the prince. “I put her under a time freeze from outside the window of the bedroom—but I could not get in that way because it still has anti-intrusion spells.”

“You mean Commander Rainstone?” Iolanthe's voice sounded like a squeak.

“Go and see. She cannot harm anyone now.”

A time freeze lasted at most three minutes. Iolanthe took a deep breath and entered the bedroom—and almost fell backward in shock as she stared into the beautiful face of Lady Callista.

CHAPTER
27

The Sahara Desert

STARS WHEELED ACROSS TITUS'S VISION,
bright, cold streaks. Fairfax's hand threatened to slip from his. He instinctively tightened his grip, even as he tumbled head over heels.

The next moment he realized that he was no longer falling as fast. He had thought that should she succeed, they were sure to suffer injuries, slamming into a powerful current of air blasting in the exact opposite direction of their acceleration. But she had summoned multiple streams of air, so he felt harnessed—cuddled almost—and at just enough velocity to slow them down instead of making them come to a dead stop.

As the ground rose to meet them, they decelerated steadily, and then more sharply as the distance to impact decreased. When he fell face-first onto cold, hard sand, it was as if he had jumped from a height of ten feet, instead of nearly three thousand feet.

Pushing up to his knees, he began to laugh. Oh, it was the most marvelous feeling to be alive. “You did it. Fortune shield us, you actually did it.”

She was also on her knees, clutching her chest. “My heart is going to explode. It is going to burst open from my chest and spray blood over a ten-mile radius.”

“We are fine. We are
fine
. You were magnificent.”

“Magnificent, my behind. You were not responsible for saving us while in free fall, you frigging idiot. Toward the end we must have been nose-diving at more than two hundred miles an hour. How do you expect someone to just counter that with mere air? What sort of stupidly blithe assumption was that? If I didn't die of fright, I would have died of shame of failure!”

Her irateness only seemed to build as she inveighed against him. “It was the rashest, dumbest, most arrantly thoughtless, most—”

Words failed her. But her fist did not: it connected with his solar plexus and knocked him flat.

Right. One should never anger an elemental mage, who would have been specifically taught violence as an emotional outlet from an early age.

But he only laughed again, giddy to be safe. His mirth infuriated her further. She leaped on top of him, seized him by his collar, and raised her fist.

He yanked her down and kissed her instead. A shudder went through her.

He raised her face and repeated himself. “You were magnificent.”

She panted as if she had run a footrace. Her finger traced over his lower lip. Her other hand clutched his upper arm. His heartbeat, already unsteady, turned completely erratic.

He plunged his hands into her hair, pulled her close, and kissed her again.

“And the armored chariots will be here in three, two, one . . .” she murmured, her breaths more ragged than ever.

The armored chariots did not come on schedule.

“Well,” she said, “this is vexing. Just when I thought my kisses had the power to alert Atlantis to my presence anywhere in the world.”

“I am now willing to write very bad verses for you. Does that not testify to the power of your kisses?”

“How bad?”

“Ecstasy will be forced to rhyme with destiny.”

She laughed and rose to her feet. “That is, I must admit, satisfyingly atrocious. Have it framed before you present it to me.”

He took the hand she offered him and got up also. “Framed? I will have it chiseled into a fifty-ton slab that even you would have trouble moving.”

“Hmm, I might have to build a house on that and call it the Maison de Doggerel.”

Hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, they scanned the sky.

“And there they come,” he said. “Would you believe it, they brought back our sand wyvern to sniff us out, in case we hide underground or inside dunes.”

Not the best idea in any case. If she fell asleep again, they would be stuck inside bedrock. Or worse, buried under a mountain of sand. “Do you think the Bane is with them?”