The Perilous Sea (28 page)

The Sahara Desert

THE GIRL WOKE UP TO
a star-studded sky and the sound of air rushing over her ears.

She was moving, strapped into the saddle on the back of a large flying steed. Someone held her from behind with one arm.

“A star just fell,” said Titus.

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “You saw a meteor?”

“I am beginning to think that perhaps your admirer was not being hyperbolic, but literal, in what he wrote: you could have been born during a meteor shower and you could have made lightning strike on the day you and he met.”

“So he is pardoned for his heinous literary offenses because he was being truthful?”

“The parts having to do with elemental magic, maybe. But it is still the height of unmanliness to mewl ‘you are my hope, my prayer, my destiny.' ”

“May I remind you that is the only way to properly address a girl who wields lightning? Anything less reverent and, poof, one's hair is on fire and one's brain scrambled.”

“All right, my hope—but I am not saying the rest of it—I have something you need to feel.”

She feigned the sound of outrage. “But we barely know each other, sir!”

He laughed softly. “But you must hold it in your hand and feel it change,” he urged, in her ear. “I insist. I can wait no longer.”

She knew they were on a serious subject, but the flutter of his breath on her skin, the low drawl of his words—heat raced along all her nerve endings. “Will I like it?”

“Well, I do have to apologize for its size. It is rather small.” And with that, he pressed something rather small into her hand.

It was a pendant on a chain, and while the chain was cool, the pendant was warm.

“Remember the first day, you asked me what was so cold under my clothes? It was this.”

Then it had been icy; now it was not cold anymore. It must be half of a pair of heat tracers: a heat tracer's temperature increased as distance to its mate decreased. The mate of this particular tracer had been quite far away earlier. But now whoever carried the other half of the pair was much, much closer.

“Before too long, we should land and put the pendant some distance away,” Titus continued, “so we can conceal ourselves and see who is coming before they see us.”

“How much time before this mage catches up with us?” That idea would work better during daylight hours.

“Depends on our relative speed. Just keep an eye on it.”

She nodded and put it back into the bag.

“There is something else you should probably know,” he said.

She couldn't quite decide from his tone whether he was making a silly subject sound serious or making light of a grave one. “Will we be talking about dimensions again?”

“Yes, the eye-poppingly enormous size of my—well, if I must be specific, our—trouble: the Bane is here in the Sahara.”

She shivered. “For us?”

“For now I would assume so, until I learn otherwise.”

“And how did you learn about it to start with?”

He gave a brief account of the additional tracers he had found on the wyvern, which had led Atlantean forces to close in on them, before those battalions were themselves attacked.

“Bewitched spears?” Her jaw dropped. “Which century are we living in?”

“It was like watching a reenactment of a historic battle, no doubt about that.”

“What kind of mages carry hundreds of bewitched spears with them?”

“The kind who does not want Atlantis to find out who they are.”

“And they are helping us?”

“Accidentally, I would imagine. They are probably causing Atlantis trouble because that is what they live for.”

She nodded slowly, digesting everything he had told her. “And this is the same sand wyvern as earlier?”

“Yes.”

“You are sure you have rid it of all Atlantean tracers?”

“Hard to tell. But we have not had trouble in the past hour and—”

He looked at his watch and swore.

“What's the matter?”

“According to the compass built into my watch, we are flying in the wrong direction. I had set a course with a racing funnel for southeast, but now we are headed almost due north.”

A racing funnel was a spell used to keep a wyvern on the straightest possible path during a speed trial. A wyvern in a racing funnel had no reason to deviate from its set course.

He murmured, resetting the racing tunnel. But instead the wyvern turned due north, then gradually, north-northwest.

“Is it taking us to the coast of the Mediterranean?”

His arm tightened around her middle. “No, I think it is taking us in the direction of the Atlantean base.”

“What?”

“Homing elixir.”

For cavalry, and even for large private stables, the practice was fairly common. Beasts raised in those establishments were fed small amounts of elixir that kept them docile and happy. Those elixirs, when formulated specifically for the establishment, also served to prevent lost or stolen beasts from straying too far, because going more than twenty-four hours without will make them automatically turn toward home.

“But I thought this wyvern didn't come from around here. I thought it had to be transported in from central Asia. Besides, we haven't had it for twenty-four hours yet. Twelve hours barely.”

“The Atlanteans may have left an aerosolized trail of its particular homing elixir, to lead it—and us—in the direction of the nearest base.”

“We have to get off, then. Take it down!”

He swore again. “It is refusing to follow directions—and we are half a mile up.”

She swallowed. “Can you blind vault us to the ground?”

“It is still too soon for you to vault. I cannot take that chance.”

She used a far-seeing spell. “But there are armored chariots ahead!”

“I can see that! And I do not want to hear you get all martyrish and tell me to vault off alone—I have not dragged you this far to hand you to Atlantis.”

She could scarcely breathe. “Then what do we do?”

“We will jump.”

“What?”

He was already unbuckling her harness.

“If you can produce enough of an air current to hold a hard-flying sand wyvern in place, then you can produce one to break our fall.”

He came to his feet and pulled her to hers. She was barely able to stand with the force of the wind rushing past.

“What if I don't produce that air current?”

“You will.” He took her hand in his, his tone brooking no dissent. “Now on the count of three. One. Two. Three.”

 

They fell, accelerating toward the ground at thirty-two feet per second squared.

The free fall seemed to push Titus's heart and lungs upward, compressing them into half their size against the top of his ribcage. The air roaring past made his eyes water, but he dared not close them.

Where was the air current that would save them?

“Do something!” he shouted.

“Shut up! I'm trying!”

They bumped into little pockets of air that did nothing to decelerate their plunge, but made them flip and tumble. The starry night and the dark desert chased across his vision as he spun in every which direction.

The ground rose toward them at terrifying speeds. They screamed.

And kept on screaming.

CHAPTER
26

England

AT HER DESK IN THE
reading room, Iolanthe stared at the image of a young Commander Rainstone, looking dashing as a pirate wench, a cutlass in hand. The picture was from a different article Iolanthe had found about the Argonin tricentennial fancy-dress ball, evidence that Commander Rainstone had indeed been part of the duo that attended as the visualization the Argonin quote
Oysters give pearls, but only if you are armed with a knife and willing to use it
.

It was easier to dig up information about Commander Rainstone's youth than to find out about her in the present. The current her made no news and stirred no controversies. She never married or had children—at least none on record. And she lived a simple life outside of her work, preferring quiet evenings spent at home to the glamorous social life of the Citadel.

That she lived alone could be a result of her already having a secret life. That secret life was also made easier by the fact that she had no family. And the signs had always pointed to the memory keeper being well-placed in life and close to the center of power, which certainly could be said about Commander Rainstone.

“Show me everything that has Penelope Rainstone and either Baron or Lady Wintervale,” Iolanthe asked the help desk.

On the day she had revealed her powers, Master Haywood had put her into a portal trunk. She had been transported to its twin, located in the attic of the Wintervales' residence in Exile, in a fashionable part of London. Which meant there must be some connection between Commander Rainstone and the Wintervales.

And which was confirmed by an image of Commander Rainstone standing next to Baron Wintervale, who had been the one to give her the distinguished graduate award she had received at the end of her studies at the Titus the Great Center of Martial Learning.

Iolanthe rubbed her temples. All the pieces she found were useful, of course. But none of them took her anyplace definite.

“No progress?” said the prince from across the table. He had been helping her with her search for the past hour, once he returned from his mysterious purpose in France.

She blew out a breath. “It's so hard to find . . .” She trailed off. The light of excitement on his face—
he
had unearthed something useful. “What do you have?”

“The second time my mother saw a vision about me, standing on the balcony, she mentioned someone named Eirene, who lost her trust by reading her diary without her permission.”

Iolanthe had a very vague recollection of it. She had not read those visions under optimal conditions.

“I just asked the help desk for anything that mentioned both Commander Rainstone and Eirene,” Titus went on. “And this is what I found.”

“This” was a different interview young Penelope Rainstone gave, also around the time of her being named an outstanding graduate from the officers' school, but to the student newspaper of her old academy, located in a less affluent area of Delamer.

Titus pointed at a specific paragraph.

 

Q: Do you have a nickname?

A: Some of my friends call me Eirene, for fun. Eirene is the goddess of peace, but I study the art of war.

 

Iolanthe's fingertips prickled. What she did remember from reading Princess Ariadne's visions was that the first time it had been seen on the day of the prince's birth, and the second time, in the hours immediately preceding Iolanthe's birth.

“Do you remember what your mother was doing the second time she saw the vision?”

“Yes,” said Titus. “She was at someone's confinement.”

At Eirene's confinement. And Eirene had read her diary, a vision which probably made no sense to Princess Ariadne, but which Eirene had recognized as being about herself and her child, and which had led her to go to such extremes to ensure that her child would not be found by Atlantis.

And Eirene was Commander Rainstone.

“I checked,” said Titus. “At that time Penelope Rainstone had been on my mother's personal staff, but within weeks was reassigned to the Citadel's general staff: she had lost my mother's trust.”

It felt strangely disheartening to hear this of Commander Rainstone. Iolanthe supposed it was because she still couldn't quite connect Commander Rainstone to the faithless memory keeper.

“Commander Rainstone has no children. She would have had to disguise an entire pregnancy. And if she passed off her own child as Iolanthe Seabourne, what would she have done with the Seabournes' baby, the real Iolanthe Seabourne?”

“It has been done before, a woman hiding a pregnancy from everyone. And she could have found foster parents for the baby.”

The real Iolanthe Seabourne had been born at the Royal Hesperia Hospital, near the end of September. Her birth had been two and a half months premature. For weeks she remained at the hospital, her anxious parents visiting every day and staying as long as they could.

At the end of one particular visit, driving home in a borrowed chariot, they had collided in midair with a much larger vehicle full of drunken tourists. According to Master Haywood, both Jason and Delphine Seabourne had died instantly.

On the fateful night of the meteor storm, the real Iolanthe Seabourne had been six weeks old, but would have easily passed for a newborn. And a switch had taken place. She had gone . . . somewhere. And Commander Rainstone's baby had been brought up by Master Haywood as Iolanthe Seabourne.

Titus was before the help desk again.

“What are you getting?”

“Records from the Royal Hesperia Hospital around that time.” He scanned various volumes. “Nothing about a Rainstone giving birth. Someone, however, did pay for the hospital's best maternity suite and request complete anonymity. That expectant mother did not even use the hospital's staff. But listen to this, half an hour after the baby was born, it was taken to the nursery, and not brought back to the mother until several hours later, at dawn.”