The Perilous Sea (9 page)

She pointed that out.

He moved his lips in an eloquent representation of a shrug. “Are you telling me you do not know how to make a potion?”

Did she? At the question, she began to recall all kinds of recipes—clarifying potion, bel canto draught, light elixir. She rubbed her temples. “Do you know why you are in the guise of a nonmage?”

“I could be an Exile. The clothes I was wearing came from a place in London, England, and I recognized it as a street known for tailor shops.”

“Savile Row?” The named rolled easily off her tongue, surprising her.

Surprising him as well. He shifted—and winced in pain. “How do you know?”

“When you said a street known for tailors in London, it just came to mind.” And yet she could not recall her own name.

“So we retain knowledge and skills we have acquired,” he said, “but we have no personal memories.”

This implied the use of precision memory spells. Blunt-force memory spells required only the will to do damage, but precision memory spells were contact requisite: the mage who had so neatly cut away her memories must have accumulated many hours of direct physical contact with her, in order to be able to wield such spells over her.

Most contact-requisite spells required thirty-six hours of contact; the more powerful ones needed seventy-two hours. Except infants being held by parents or siblings, or lovers who could not leave each other's embrace, mages simply did not touch one another enough to be able to deploy contact-requisite spells. Of course there were ways around it, but in general the contact-requisite threshold ensured that a great many potentially dangerous spells were not used willy-nilly by anyone with a grudge.

In this case, however, that contact-requisite threshold raised thorny questions: it meant her memory had not been taken by an enemy, but quite possibly someone she knew very, very well.

That someone had made sure that she retained her fear of Atlantis. And whoever had applied the memory spells to the boy had done the same.

“Do you—do you think we knew each other?”

He looked at her a long moment. “What do you think are the odds that two completely unconnected strangers ended up in the middle of the Sahara Desert, within a stone's throw of each other, both missing their memories?”

The idea was an uncomfortable one, that she might be linked to this boy in some significant manner.

“But it remains to be seen whether we were allies or enemies,” the boy added. He checked his watch. “Shall we get going?”

 

It would be ridiculous to describe rock as soft, yet the next section of bedrock she tunneled through most certainly felt softer to her, easier to manipulate.

They advanced more rapidly, which should have pleased her, yet the closer they drew to the one-mile boundary, the more uneasy she grew.

“We must be almost there,” said Titus. “Ten, fifteen yards left at most.”

She stopped.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Our progress has been too easy, don't you think?”

“What do you suspect?”

She shook her head. “I can't be sure. But the armored chariots knew exactly where to find us, so it stands to reason that the soldiers looking for us know that I am an elemental mage. They should realize that I can make my way through rock, and yet they have been content to just comb the sand.”

“I can vault to the surface and check.”

“No, that would be too dangerous.”

“Do you want to stay here for some time, and see if anything develops?”

She stared at the end of the tunnel, twelve inches from her face. It looked as if it had been gouged by a beast with steel claws.

“Never mind. Let's just keep going.”

“You should not ignore your instinct.”

“Well, there is no other way out, and it can't be a good idea to stay here waiting for something to happen.”

Chunks of rocks broke off. The end of the tunnel receded by a few inches, and then a few more inches—her elemental powers at work.

“Move us forward,” she told him.

After a second or so, he did as she requested.

“The memory spells that have been used on us—quite sophisticated, wouldn't you say?” she asked, after they had advanced several more feet.

They had been largely silent during the excavation, so she could concentrate on the task at hand. But now she needed something to distract her.

“And quite illegal,” he answered.

“I don't understand the point of it all. The memory spells were tailored specifically so that we do our best to stay out of Atlantis's grasp, but wouldn't that be easier if we knew why?”

“You are assuming the one who applied the spells wanted to help.” He pushed her forward again. “But if—”

Pain struck deep inside her head, pain like a burning stake being driven through her skull.

She barely recognized the deafening scream as her own.

CHAPTER
8

England

WINTERVALE'S ENTIRE PERSON SHOOK. HIS
lips moved—whether with curses or prayers, Titus could not tell. And he kept looking back, at the enemy ship closing in on him.

Titus swore. Five minutes ago, if anyone had asked him, he would have said that Fairfax was the only one for whom he would risk anything. But he could not simply let Wintervale fall into Atlantis's grasp, not when the whole thing was unfolding before his eyes.

He took a deep breath. Before he could vault, however, Wintervale spun around and pointed his wand at the skimmer.

The surface of the sea seemed to shudder. Then it turned eerily calm, like a sheet that been stretched perfectly flat across a mattress. The next moment, Titus had the strangest sensation that the sea was caving. It was: a whirlpool formed, enormous currents of water churning around a central eye.

The skimmer, caught by the edge of this maelstrom, attempted to navigate its way out. But the maelstrom expanded with terrifying speed, its eye ever deepening and widening, exposing the actual seafloor hundreds of feet below.

The skimmer fell into this colossal crater. Immediately, the maelstrom ceased its rotation. All the water that had been spun outward rushed back in, crushing the skimmer under its volume and weight.

Titus clutched the railing, agape.

“Fairfax, what are you looking at?” came Cooper's voice. “It's your turn.”

Fairfax, had she caused the maelstrom? But she was gazing up at him, her expression as stunned as he felt.

“Play your turn, Fairfax,” he said, a reminder to her that she must keep playing her part.

He retreated into his room and reapplied the far-seeing spell. The displacement of that much water had caused violent waves, tossing Wintervale's dinghy about. Wintervale seemed not to notice at all. His arms were wrapped about the small mast, his face wet with seawater—or was it tears? And his expression was one not of confusion, but of wonder and incredulity, as if he knew exactly how the whirlpool that swallowed his pursuers had come about, but simply could not believe it had in truth happened.

A particularly large wave buffeted the dinghy. The next one capsized it entirely. Titus gritted his teeth and vaulted. As expected, he landed in the frigid waters of the North Sea, the cold like shards of glass.

Blind vaulting—paradoxically named, as one blind vaulted with one's eyes wide open, using only visual clues as a guide, rather than personal memory—was notoriously inaccurate. He could have rematerialized a mile away. But fortunately, in this instance, he was only a hundred feet or so from the upside-down dinghy.

Wintervale surfaced, gasping and flailing.

“
Eleveris
,” Titus shouted, swimming toward Wintervale, not daring to vault again for fear of finding himself farther away.

Wintervale screamed at being suddenly airborne. He thrashed, turning over and over a few feet above the waves, as if he were rotating on a spit.

The waves battered Titus. But at least Wintervale, held above water, could not drown. Titus's muscles protested as he fought toward Wintervale. Fifty feet. Twenty-five feet. Ten feet.

“Titus!” Wintervale shouted. “Thank goodness. Fortune is no longer spitting in my face.”

Titus closed the last few feet of distance between them, grabbed Wintervale's arm, and vaulted them both to the beach beneath Sutherland's uncle's house.

Wintervale promptly vomited.

Titus waited until he was done, kicked sand and pebbles over the mess, and led him ten feet away. Wintervale crumpled to the ground. Titus crouched beside him, cleaned him with a few spells, and checked his pulse and pupils.

“What were you trying to do?” Wintervale rasped. “You know I can't vault more than half a mile.”

“Unless you could swim five miles to land, vaulting was our only choice.”

Wintervale was already shivering.

“Wait here.” Titus vaulted to his room, grabbed a towel and a change of clothes, and vaulted back down. “You need to change out of those clothes.”

Wintervale's fingers shook as he tried to undo the buttons of his jacket.

“
Exue
,” said Titus.

Wintervale's jacket flew off. As Titus repeated the spell, Wintervale's waistcoat and shirt also made themselves scarce.

“S-smashing spell, that,” stuttered Wintervale, his teeth chattering.

“The ladies agree with you,” said Titus.

He turned around before doing away with Wintervale's trousers. Then he vaulted back to Baycrest House to change out of his own dripping clothes, scanning the sea for signs of other Atlantean forces as he did so. A familiar knock came at his door as he was buttoning his new shirt.

Fairfax.

“Come in,” he said, shrugging into another waistcoat.

Her face was pale as she closed the door behind her. “What's going on? Where's Wintervale?”

He thrust his arms into a jacket. “On the beach, changing his clothes. I will find out what is going on.”

She came nearer. “Are
you
all right?”

He thought it a strange question until she took his hand: he was shaking without being aware of it.

“Must have been the cold—the water was freezing,” he said, extracting a vial from the emergency remedy pack in his luggage.

But as he spoke, he was thinking not of the frigidness of the sea, but of those moments just before the nautical distress signal came: rising from his bed, glancing at the clock, noting the time—fourteen minutes after two—then stepping out onto the balcony.

There was a terrifying familiarity to the chain of actions. And
that
, as much as his sodden clothes, had made him tremble.

He pulled her in and pressed his lips to her cheek. “Keep the boys on the side of the house away from the beach. Keep an eye on the sea. And do nothing that would reveal yourself to anyone—do not even think about using your powers to dry those clothes of mine, for instance. If Wintervale is not safe, then neither are we.”

 

Wintervale had put on dry clothes but he was still shivering. Titus gave him the warming remedy he had brought.

“I need to get you somewhere you can rest. Think carefully: Did the Atlanteans know where you were headed?”

“No,” said Wintervale, his voice hoarse. “They didn't even know who I am.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes.”

Titus was far from assured, but he did not have many choices. “In that case, I will take you up to Sutherland's uncle's house.”

Wintervale blanched. “Please don't vault me again.”

Wintervale was in no shape to be vaulted again just now. In fact, he could scarcely stand. Titus glanced at the steep cliff and the rickety ladders, and sighed. “We can do without vaulting.”

Wintervale was about the same height as Titus, but at least a stone heavier. As Titus started his ascent, Wintervale on his back, he felt like Atlas, carrying the weight of the whole world. “Why was Atlantis chasing you? We thought you were home with your mother.”

“They weren't chasing
me
. And we weren't at home. My mother and I were in France. In Grenoble.”

Titus clambered over a protrusion of rocks to reach the next ladder, straining not to tilt backward. “Grenoble?”

As far as he knew, the town did not host an Exile community of any appreciable size.

“Do you know who Madame Pierredure is?” asked Wintervale.

“Old lady who fought Atlantis?” Madame Pierredure had indeed been an old lady, but she had also been the chief strategist for the rebellion in the Juras ten years ago, and had been responsible for a series of brilliant victories. No one had heard of her since the end of that spate of rebellions and insurrections. If she was still alive, she must be quite ancient. “I thought she was dead.”

“That's what we all thought,” said Wintervale. “Then Mother heard news that Madame was in Grenoble. She was keen to see for herself that Madame was still alive—they had known each other back in the day. And she wanted me to come along to meet Madame in person, if the rumors turned out to be true.