The Perilous Sea (21 page)

She grabbed the satchel.
“Revela omnia.”

Words appeared.
The night you were born, stars fell. The day we met, lightning struck. You are my past, my present, my future. My hope, my prayer, my destiny.

Her protector.

“The man is mad about you,” said Titus.

She looked back at him, the grime, the exhaustion, his lips cracked from the sheer desiccation of the desert. Her own lips were in nowhere near as terrible shape—he had taken better care of her than he had of himself.

“You could be him, for all we know,” she said, securing a new piece of bandaging to his person.

He shifted. “I could not possibly write anything like that. I am sorry, but there ought to be a law against such sentences as ‘The day we met, lightning struck.'”

With a wave of her hand, she got rid of the grit that had become stuck in his hair. A few other cleaning spells and he was almost spotless. “Maybe you were too busy packing for every eventuality to polish your words.”

“We former muck-shoveling stable boys can pack and produce deathless prose at the same time.”

The mage light caught a few specks of discoloration on his shoulders: a smattering of freckles, which she had not noticed before. Quite an appealing detail on an otherwise strong, tight frame, like a constellation for the fingertip to explore, to move from point to point and—

The texture of his skin—and the fact that he started—made her realize that she
was
touching him.

“You skin is a bit sticky,” she said quickly, though it wasn't at all. “All that perspiration doesn't come off just with spells. Let me wash you with some water. You'll feel more refreshed.”

“That might be too much trouble. You should take more rest.”

“Fortune shield me, I have literally been sleeping for days.”

The globule of water she summoned spun furiously in the air, reflecting her agitation. What was the matter with her? She should take the excuse he offered her and leave him alone. But she couldn't seem to stop.

She wetted his hair and used the washing bar from the satchel, which produced a soft, fat lather. Her fingertips pressed into his scalp, working the lather into every strand. She summoned more water to pour over his hair. The water that sluiced down she sent back out of the tent, toward the center of the nearby dune.

When she was done, she drew out the water that still clung to his hair and waved it away. With her fingertips, she patted his hair, making sure that it had dried properly.

And now, she would lift her hand and tell him,
All done
.

Instead, her palm slid down to his nape. Then, as she watched, half horrified, her fingers spread out where his shoulder joined his neck.

He sucked in a breath.

She opened her mouth to tell him that none of it was happening, that it had to be a hallucination on his part—and hers. But the warmth of his skin beneath her hand was no illusion. And curiously, that skin grew cooler as her hand traveled to the edge of his shoulder and down his arm.

All of a sudden he was on his knees, facing her. They stared at each other. His eyes were blue-gray, she noticed for the first time, the color of oceans of unfathomable depths.

She loved her abstract protector, but she knew only this boy, who gave her more water than he gave himself. She traced a finger down his cheek. He caught her hand. She held her breath, not knowing whether he would push her hand away or press his lips into her palm.

A ground-shaking roar shattered the moment.

CHAPTER
18

England

“THAT MAKES SENSE.”

Whatever reaction Titus had expected from Fairfax, upon being told that Kashkari's beloved was a mage who wanted her handed over, this was not it.

“What do you mean?”

She told him about her two separate conversations with Kashkari concerning his prophetic dreams, culminating with the dream about her, long before she had ever stepped into Mrs. Dawlish's house. “It's fairly safe to assume that Kashkari is from a mage family, probably one in Exile.”

“You should have told me much sooner. Anything that affects you I must know right away.”

Everything had changed, yet nothing had changed. He still lay awake at night, worrying about her safety. And when he woke up each morning, she was still the one he thought of first and foremost.

She tapped her fingers on the top of a chair—the one in which she used to sit, when they trained in the Crucible together in the Summer Half. “Kashkari has not betrayed me, so for now we can assume he means neither of us harm. What we need to know is why, after keeping his own identity a secret for so long, he now chooses to reveal himself to us.”

The inside of Titus's skull throbbed. He could not believe that he had lived in the same house as Kashkari for so long without ever guessing the truth. What else had he missed? “I need to consult my mother's diary first.”

That was the wrong thing to say to her, but she gave no reaction other than turning down one corner of her lips.

“I would prefer to make my decision after I have gathered all the available intelligence. It would be criminal to ignore what she might have foreseen.” He hated that he felt compelled to defend how he chose to proceed.

She smiled slightly—or was it a grimace? “You must do as you see fit, of course.”

“I am not looking forward to it, you know. I am—”

She gripped him by the front of his shirt. “Don't. You have made your choice. Now commit to it! If you are going to ask Wintervale to face the Bane, then he deserves at least that much from you.”

Her voice, halfway between anger and anguish. Her eyes, dark and ferocious. Her lips, full and red, parted with her agitated breaths.

He should not, but he cupped her face and kissed her. Because they were past the point when words were any use. Because he was once again afraid to die. Because he loved her as much as he loved life itself.

A loud knock had them hurriedly pulling apart.

“Are you there, prince?” Kashkari called. “Wintervale is awake and he wants to see you.”

 

Wintervale was sitting up in bed, a big smile on his face.

“Titus, good to see you. You too, Fairfax. How did the cricket practices go? Did they miss me?”

“Desperately,” said Fairfax, smiling convincingly. “Boys threw themselves down, howling and beating the earth, when your absence was made clear.”

Wintervale placed a hand over his chest. “Now that warms the cockles of my heart.”

Flinging aside his blanket, he set his feet on the floor. Both Titus and Fairfax sprang forward to help him. But Wintervale raised one palm to indicate that he wanted to stand up himself.

Fairfax, strong as she was, barely caught him when he tipped over. “God almighty, Wintervale. There must be full-grown steer in Wyoming less heavy than you are.”

Surprise was written all over Wintervale's face. “What is this? I felt perfectly fine just now.”

“You have been bedridden two entire days,” said Titus. “Hardly surprising that your legs are wobbly.”

“Guess one of you will have to help me to the lavatory then.”

“That is a task for a real man,” said Titus. “I am afraid you will have to step aside, Fairfax.”

“I knew it. You are still bitter from the time we compared our bollocks.”

Wintervale tittered as he shuffled out, his arm over Titus's shoulders.

He was warmly greeted up and down the corridor. On the way back, they stopped several times to talk to boys who wanted to know how he was getting along.

“Gentlemen, let Wintervale go back to bed,” came Mrs. Hancock's firm voice. “If you wish to visit him and chitchat, do it in a way that will not tax him.”

“Mrs. Hancock wanted to see you as soon as you woke up,” said Kashkari, who must have gone to fetch her.

Wintervale grinned at the woman. “Of course you would, dear Mrs. Hancock.”

Fairfax was still there in Wintervale's room when they returned. She helped Wintervale settle back into bed. But as more and more boys trickled in, she slipped away, largely unnoticed.

 

Iolanthe opened the door to the laboratory to the sound of a typewriter clacking.

The prince had a typing ball, which transmitted messages from Dalbert, his personal spymaster. The typing ball had once been stored in a cabinet in his room at Mrs. Dawlish's, but he had moved it to the laboratory for safekeeping.

The brass keys, looking like chunky quills on a very nonthreatening porcupine, stopped pistoning up and down as she reached it. She rolled out the piece of paper that had been set on the tray underneath.

The message would appear to be gibberish, but he had taught her to decipher the code. She had asked him to, she remembered with a pang, the day she first decided that she would actually help him with his impossible goal.

A strange thought burbled up from the depths of her mind. She had condemned his love as weak, because he would not choose her over his mother's words, but what of
her
love? Was it of any greater strength or constancy? He was, as ever, headed toward ruinous peril, and she would let him go to it with nothing more than a
Fortune shield you
.

She stood for a minute with her fingers on her nape, trying to relieve a tension in her neck that simply would not go away. Then she sighed and started Dalbert's report.

 

Your Most Serene Highness,

Per your instruction, I have looked into the events in Grenoble, France. According to my sources in Lyon and Marseille, the Exile communities in those cities had been warned against going to Grenoble, because of intelligence suggesting that it might be a trap.

Exiles from those communities did make the trip to Grenoble, but with the express purpose of warning mages who had come from as far as the Caucasus, drawn by rumors of Madame Pierredure's return. They report that they did successfully turn away a number of mages, though there were others they could not locate ahead of time or persuade to leave.

The raid on Grenoble is the latest Atlantean trap, using Madame Pierredure as a lure. Convincing reports have emerged of Madame's death eight and a half years ago, which had never been publicized because she took her own life. (It was well known during the rebellions of ten years ago that Atlantis had captured her children and grandchildren, then tortured and eventually killed them.)

But many of the traps, before the truth came out, had been quite effective. The death of the late Inquisitor and the rumored death of the Bane had been seen as an opening, a sign of weakness on the part of Atlantis. New underground resistance groups formed; older ones were roused out of dormancy. The Bane's apparent subsequent resurrection did not dampen their enthusiasm—the common thinking was that he could not go on resurrecting.

Now many of these resistance groups, old and new, have been decimated, their boldest and most enthusiastic members taken into Atlantean custody.

I tender my humble good wishes for Your Highness's health and well-being.

Your Highness' dutiful subject and servant,

Dalbert

 

Having spent her summer in near-complete isolation, Iolanthe had no idea that what she and the prince had accomplished the night of the Fourth of June would inspire so many others to organize against Atlantis, nor that Atlantis had already swiftly and ruthlessly responded to quell these new ambitions.

Her heart ached with a dismay that had nothing to do with her own dismissal from the narrow path of destiny, but for the crushed hopes of all those who had believed that the first light of dawn was at last upon them.

She set down the message from Dalbert on the worktable. Already on the table was a copy of
The Delamer Observer
, made of a fine yet hardy silk, which could be folded up and carried around in the pocket. The newspaper was open to the very last page, thick with three-line advertisements for unicorn colts, beauty tonics, and cloaks that promised to make one almost impossible to see at night.

What had the prince been looking for?

Then she saw it, buried near a corner, an advertisement for
Large Bird Sightings
.
Curious and unusual birds, last seen in Tangier, Grenoble, and Tashkent
.

As she read, the text changed to
last seen in Grenoble, Tashkent, and St. Petersburg.

With the exception of Grenoble, all the other nonmage cities had sizable Exile populations. Atlantis was far from finished with its crackdown.

She entered the reading room with a heavy heart and stood before the help desk, still distracted.

Perhaps it was good and right that Wintervale came along. If the vortex that sank the
Sea Wolf
was any indication, his powers put hers to shame. And one needed power of that magnitude to pit oneself against Atlantis.