The Perilous Sea (38 page)

Iolanthe's jaw slackened. Her, nearing the Commander's Palace
voluntarily
? And why did Kashkari present a mere dream as if it had any significance?

But it certainly gave Amara pause. “You are sure that is what you dreamed?”

“Without a doubt. And believe me, our resistance against the Bane would be of little use if we cannot strike directly inside his lair.”

“Very well then, Mohandas.” Amara squeezed Kashkari's shoulder. “It's time for me to go down and muster the riders. Look after our guests for me.”

Ishana and Shulini left with her, leaving Kashkari, Titus, and Iolanthe by themselves on top of the massif.

“Is it true, what you said about Fairfax? And about your uncle?” asked Titus, sounding doubtful.

“No, I made up everything.”

“Oh,” said Iolanthe. She hadn't believed Kashkari completely but he had sounded so impassioned, so certain of himself, that she had very much wanted what he had said to be true.

“At least you are safe for the moment.” Kashkari laid a hand over his chest. “My heart hasn't pounded so hard since that business with Wintervale.”

Iolanthe and Titus exchanged a glance.

“I'm more than a bit embarrassed to tell you,” said Iolanthe, “but His Highness and I are under a memory spell and we remember nothing from before the desert.”

“What!” Kashkari exclaimed. He looked from Iolanthe to Titus and back. “How do you not remember Wintervale?”

They both shrugged.

Kashkari gaped. “I don't believe this. Have you really forgotten
everything
?”

CHAPTER
32

England

THE NEXT DAY WAS SUNDAY
and morning service was mandatory for all the boys.

The chapel at Eton, though impressive-looking, had become too small for the student population. Usually the senior boys were given seats in the pews, and the junior boys had to stand in the aisles, at the back, and even spilling out the door of the sanctuary. Today Titus and Fairfax made sure they were standing at the very rear of the crowd, and when no one noticed, they slipped away.

Fairfax went to see Lady Wintervale—she thought the latter ought to know her son would not be at the school much longer. Titus returned to the laboratory to perform one last sweep for items that he might wish to put into the emergency bag.

He came across a pouch in an otherwise empty drawer—the remedies he had taken from the laboratory to give to Wintervale, when the latter's condition suddenly worsened, that day at Sutherland's uncle's house overlooking the North Sea. Unfortunately, every remedy Titus administered had made matters worse, the very last one sending Wintervale into convulsions that required a double dose of panacea to subdue.

Usually Titus never left remedies lying about. But when he came back to the laboratory that night, he had been in the depths of despair. Instead of putting the remedies back where they belonged, he had shoved the whole pouch aside so he would not have to look at it again.

But now that he and Fairfax had repaired their rift, there was no more reason for avoidance. He opened the drawer that held abdominal remedies and set the vials from the pouch back in their places, one after another.
Vertigo. Appendicitis. Bilious complaint. Infection-related emesis. Inflammation of the stomach lining
.

The last,
Foreign expulsion
, was the very one that had sent Wintervale into a seizure. Titus turned it around in his fingers, shaking his head at the mayhem it had caused.

He stilled. He had chosen the remedy because he had thought it would precipitate and expel harmful substances from the body, but that was the province of a remedy by the name of foreign extraction. Foreign expulsion, on the other hand, was meant for getting rid of parasites and such.

Or was it?

He pulled out a thick volume of pharmacological reference and looked up the remedy.

 

Foreign expulsion. An older remedy, now no longer common. Good for the purging of parasites. Can also be used to expel swallowed objects and objects stuck in various bodily orifices. May aid in the divestiture of intangible tenure.

 

What in the world was intangible tenure?

He wanted to look it up. But a quick pulse from his pocket watch reminded him that that morning service was almost finished. Kashkari would bring Wintervale back to Mrs. Dawlish's, and Titus was to give Wintervale the vertices of the quasi-vaulter to carry on his person, with a suitably dire report of the dangers rising all about them, without mentioning anything specific.

He made a mental note to look up intangible tenure later and left the laboratory.

 

“Things are moving so fast, we don't know what will happen in the next hour. Or even in the next minute,” said Iolanthe, seated in the drawing room at Windsor Castle that Lady Wintervale had appropriated for her own use. “Likely we will have to take your son away from school—and likely soon—for his safety. I thought you might like to know that.”

Lady Wintervale looked out the window toward Eton, just across the Thames River. Her voice had a faraway quality to it. “You mean, after this, I might not see him for a while, perhaps ever?”

“It's quite possible.”

Iolanthe waited for Lady Wintervale to exert her parental right, something along the lines that if they were taking Wintervale out of school, then he might as well be under the protection of his mother. But Lady Wintervale only continued to stare out of the window.

“Would you like to see him before he leaves? We can make sure no one traces his physical movements to you. And I daresay he would not speak of your whereabouts to anyone. He has become more circumspect of late—certainly he has managed to keep the fact that he is now a great elemental mage to himself.”

Lady Wintervale clenched her hand and again gave no reply.

Iolanthe was counting the hours until she and Titus had all the precautions in place, so she could have him vault her to Paris to see Master Haywood, who had to be anxious for her news. After that, there was no telling when they would meet again. Or if.

The distance Lady Wintervale insisted on keeping from her child made no sense at all.

“May I ask, ma'am, why you do not want to see your son?”

Lady Wintervale moved to a different window. Her jaw worked, but she remained silent. Against the deep vermilion drapes, she was pale as a wraith and almost as insubstantial.

Iolanthe's bafflement turned into uneasiness—for now she could feel the fear radiating from Lady Wintervale.

“Please, my lady, I beg of you. If there is something that matters, do not hold it back. There are lives at stake here, many lives.”

“You think I do not know that?” Lady Wintervale snarled.

But nothing followed. After a fraught, interminable interval, Iolanthe had to accept that she would get nothing else out of Lady Wintervale. “Thank you for seeing me, ma'am. Long may Fortune walk with you.”

As she rose, Lady Wintervale said, “Wait.”

Iolanthe sat down again, tense with anticipation—and no small amount of dread.

Another minute passed before Lady Wintervale said, “I lost Lee on our last trip.”

Iolanthe blinked. “I don't quite understand.”

“Among the Exiles communities, we have built our own network of translocators. But since spring, Atlantis had actively interfered with the working of those translocators. By early September, when Lee and I set out, all the translocators the Exiles in London had depended on for years were out of service.

“We had a choice between using carpets or taking a steamer across the English Channel. Lee cares for neither. But nowadays there are excellent remedies for seasickness, so he decided on the steamer. Once I had seen him settled in his bunk—the remedy allowed him to sleep through the crossing—I went above to take in some fresh air, as I enjoy ocean travel.

“When the steamer docked in Calais, I went to wake him up. He was no longer in his bunk, and his suitcase too was gone. I thought we had missed each other, that he was now on the deck looking for me. But no, he was not on the deck either. And he was not on the pier, waiting. I enlisted the help of both the steamer's staff and the harbormaster's staff, but nobody could find him.

“I wrote frantically in my two-way notebook, but he did not answer. At last I went to the railway station, and there someone remembered a young man of his description, buying a ticket to Grenoble. I immediately started for Grenoble, asking at all the stations along the way. And when I reached Grenoble, I inquired at all the likely and unlikely lodging places, to no avail.

“Not knowing what else to do, I went back home. Only to receive a telegram, of all things, from Lee, from Grenoble, asking where I was. So I rushed back, and there he was, safe and sound. He said that when he couldn't find me on the steamer, he thought I must have been in a rush to catch the train, and so he'd dashed off to the railway station. But in Paris, where he was to change trains, he realized his mistake and went back to Calais, only to learn that I had indeed taken a train to Grenoble. So he started again for Grenoble, and probably reached the city just after I had left for home.

“I was terribly relieved to see him. The subsequent events you already know. We ended up on a ship in the North Sea, pursued by Atlantis. He didn't have his carpet with him—just as he didn't have his two-way notebook with him. So I had to put him on a lifeboat. I meant to go in the lifeboat with him, but we were under attack and I couldn't get away immediately. When I did, on my carpet, I was pursued all the way back to France. And I would have been caught, were it not for a tremendous fog that rolled in from the Channel.

“It took me several days to get back to England. If he had made it, he would have gone either home or to Eton. I didn't dare go home, so I tried Eton. And found Mrs. Dawlish's house guarded around the clock.”

“It's the Atlanteans watching the prince,” said Iolanthe.

“I thought so too. But then I remembered that Lee had been away from me for seventy-two hours on that trip.”

Lady Wintervale looked at Iolanthe, as if Iolanthe should come to some meaningful deduction from what she had just said.

Iolanthe drew a blank. “I am not sure I grasp the significance of your words, ma'am.”

“I am not sure I understand what I am saying either. I am not sure I want to.” Lady Wintervale crossed the room to stand before the roaring fireplace, as if the drafts from the windows had chilled her. “But you are right. I should go and see Lee. It might be my last chance.”

Iolanthe waited for her to say more, but Lady Wintervale only waved her hand. “Please leave me.”

 

Iolanthe rushed into the laboratory. The conversation with Lady Wintervale had unsettled her deeply, and she needed to speak to Titus.

He was not there, but his typing ball was clacking away. When it stopped, she pulled out the message.

 

Your Most Serene Highness,

 

With regard to your query concerning the Atlantean naval ship the
Ferocious—
ΛΑΒΡΟΣ
in the original Greek—a vessel belonging to the Atlantean Coastal Defense once bore the name. From what records I can unearth, it was decommissioned three years ago and recently scrapped.

 

Your faithful servant,

Dalbert

 

Iolanthe scanned the message again, and a third time, her confusion growing with each additional read. She had not heard anything about Atlantis being short on seaworthy crafts. Why was a decommissioned ship sent out when there were plenty of vessels in active service?

She sent back a message to Dalbert.
Can you confirm again that there is no Atlantean ship named
Sea Wolf
?

Dalbert's response came promptly.

 

Your Most Serene Highness,

 

I can confirm that there is no Atlantean vessel, naval or civilian, by the name of
Sea Wolf
(or
ΛΑΒΡΑΞ
, to use the original Greek).

 

Your faithful servant,

Dalbert

 

Something rattled in her memory. What had she read in that travelogue the first time?

She entered the reading room and ran to the help desk. The travelogue was in her hand in seconds. She flipped through the pages with suddenly clumsy fingers.

The tourists from nearly two centuries ago had sailed to Atlantis to see the demolition of a floating hotel that had been condemned. The method of condemnation had been none other than the dropping of the floating hotel into the maelstrom of Atlantis.

 

As spectacular as the destruction itself was, leaving Atlantis, we would come upon the not-so-pretty sight of the hotel's wreckage across our path, a current of rubbish. But at least, unlike a true maritime disaster, there would be no dead bodies carried alongside pieces of hull and deck.