The Burning Sky (14 page)

She popped a piece of walnut into her mouth to buy herself some time. “I do miss the weather when it gets too drizzly here. And of course the big-game hunting.”

“Are the natives friendly?”

She was beginning to perspire. She had to believe that if her nonexistent parents would return there, the situation could not be too dire. “No more hostile than they are elsewhere, I suppose.”

“In India the population isn't always happy about the British presence. In my father's youth, there was a great mutiny.”

How had he drawn her into a discussion about the political situation of the nonmage world, of which she had only the sketchiest of ideas? What she did know was that the mage realms of the subcontinent had also risen up against Atlantis, twice in the past forty years.

“An occupier should always consider itself despised,” she said. “Is there ever a population that is happy to be subjugated?”

Kashkari stopped midstride. She tensed. What had she said?

“You have very enlightened views,” he mused, “especially for someone who grew up in the colonies.”

Unsure whether she'd put her foot in her mouth, she decided to brazen it out. “That's what I think.”

“You two! I've been looking for you.”

Iolanthe looked up, surprised to find herself only fifteen feet from Mrs. Dawlish's front door.

Wintervale leaned out of his open window. “Change quickly. I've already rounded up the other lads. Time to play cricket.”

 

There was a book in Iolanthe's room that gave the rules of popular games. The night before, she'd skimmed through the section on cricket. But she'd been so tired and distracted, nothing had made any sense.

“Come on,” said Kashkari.

She was doomed. It was one thing to nod and pretend to be engrossed as Wintervale pontificated on the game, quite another to pass herself off as an experienced cricketer. The moment she stepped on the pitch—that was what a playing ground was called, wasn't it?—it would be obvious she had no idea what to do.

All too soon, she arrived upstairs. Wintervale was in the corridor, dressed in a light-colored shirt of sturdy material and similarly light-colored trousers.

“Hurry,” he said.

The prince was nowhere in sight. Kashkari was already shrugging out of his coat and waistcoat. Iolanthe had no choice but to also start unbuttoning, although she kept all her clothes firmly
on
until she was behind closed doors.

In her wardrobe she found garments similar to those worn by Wintervale. They fit her well, as did a pair of rugged brogues. When had the prince altered them? Never mind, she had more pressing concerns.

Wintervale knocked on her door. “What's taking you so long, Fairfax?”

She opened the door a crack, her hand tight on the doorknob. “My trousers are ripped. I need to patch them. You go on, I'll catch up with you.”

“Hanson is handy with a needle.” Wintervale pointed at a shorter boy behind him. “Want him to help?”

“Last time he helped me, he used my left testicle for a pincushion,” she said.

The boys in the passage laughed and left, stomping down the stairs like a herd of rhinoceros.

She slipped into Wintervale's room to see the direction the boys went. Then she knocked on the prince's door. No one answered. She opened the door to an empty room.

Where was he when she needed him?

She could pretend to fall victim to a sudden abdominal complaint, but what if Wintervale, or someone else in the house—Mrs. Hancock, for instance—insisted on medical attention for her? The last thing she wanted was a scrutiny of her body.

She paced in the prince's room, torn. If she didn't go soon, Wintervale might send someone to fetch her—another undesirable outcome.

Had she the opportunity to spy on the game for some time, she might grasp its essence. But what if the playing field was entirely open, with nowhere for her to conceal herself?

There was no perfect solution. She'd better return to her room and study the rules of cricket again—if she could study with her heart hammering away—and then try to approach the pitch unobserved.

But as she stepped back into the corridor, Kashkari came out from his room.

“Shall we go then?” he asked amiably.

She was caught.

CHAPTER 11

TITUS RAN.

He hated unanticipated events. The unanticipated should happen only to the
unanticipating
. It was not fair that he, who spent all his waking hours actively preparing for everything the future could lob at him, should be caught short like this.

Yet from the moment Fairfax burst into his life, he had lurched from one unforeseen event to the next. He should have told her to walk around with a limp, well enough to attend school but not eligible for sports.

It had come as a shock to him, his first Summer Half at Eton, hearing Fairfax discussed as a cricketer. But with the popular consensus already formed, it was too late for him to intervene and convince the other boys that Fairfax was instead a rower.

He had meant to give her a few surreptitious lessons in cricket, but there had not been time. And damn it, Wintervale was not supposed to call a practice today.

His lungs hurt, but he forced himself to run even faster. She had no idea what to do. She would flounder and betray her ignorance.

Wintervale might begin to question things. Of course he would not immediately conclude that Fairfax had never existed before yesterday, but it was dangerous to have anyone question anything.

When the individuals on the pitch became distinguishable, he saw that it was Kashkari bowling. Kashkari took a short run, wound his arm, and bowled. The ball flew fast, but Wintervale, at the crease, was ready for it. He knocked it low and straight, toward the exact middle of the gap between the mid-wicket fielder and the square-leg fielder.

It was a good hit. The ball would zip past the fielders and roll out of bounds, giving Wintervale's team an automatic four runs.

A white blur: someone sprinting at tremendous speed. That someone dove to the grass. When he again stood straight, he lifted his hand to show that he had scooped the ball out of midair.

Fairfax! And by catching the ball before it had landed, she had dismissed Wintervale, one of the best batsmen in the entire school.

Wintervale emitted a jubilant shout. “What did I tell you? What did I tell you? All we needed was for Fairfax to come back.”

Titus belatedly realized that Wintervale was addressing
him
. He had stopped running at some point and was staring, agape. He gathered himself and shouted back, “One lucky catch does not a cricket prodigy make!”

This earned him a disdainful glance from Fairfax. For some reason, his heart beat even faster than a minute ago, when he had feared that his entire scheme would be going up in smoke.

The practice resumed. Not even two overs later—each over being a set of six balls bowled consecutively—she dismissed Sutherland by striking one of the bails above the stumps while he was still running.

Wintervale was beside himself. He had Fairfax replace Kashkari as the bowler and set Kashkari to bat. The moment the ball left Fairfax's hand, everyone on the field knew that the team at last had the bowler they desperately needed: she threw with an astonishing velocity.

Kashkari, not expecting the ball to hurtle at him so swiftly, barely managed to hit it. A fielder near him quickly scooped up the ball, and Kashkari could not score any runs.

Wintervale shouted directions at Fairfax. “Higher!” “Lower!” “Put some spin to it.”

She spun the ball very decently for someone with such attack to her throw. Kashkari wiped his brow as she readied herself to bowl again.

“Take him out, Fairfax,” Titus heard himself yelling, enthused beyond what he had ever thought possible for cricket. “Take him out!”

She did, by knocking off one of the bails above the stumps of the wicket. The team roared with approval. Titus shook his head in amazement. She was gifted: fast, strong, and marvelously coordinated.

Of course she was. How could he have forgotten that elemental mages were almost invariably great athletes?

She turned around to face Titus, raised her right hand, and, with her forefinger and middle finger pressed together, passed her hand before her face.

It was a boasting gesture. But there were boasting gestures and there were boasting gestures. She had just told him to go bugger himself.

He laughed, then his laughter froze. Had Wintervale seen the gesture, by any chance? It was emphatically not one used in the nonmage world, at least not in this country.

No, Wintervale was behind her, thank goodness. She turned to shake hands with Kashkari, that most gracious of sportsmen.

The practice resumed. She continued to excel, so much so that when the teams switched sides and she took her turn at bat, she could laugh off her otherwise grievous mistake of using the wrong side of the bat—the side with the slight V in profile rather than the flat one—as the result of too much excitement.

They carried on until the college clock sounded for evening chapel. At which point every boy grabbed his equipment and broke into a run—lockup was in ten minutes.

It was a festive rush, the boys ribbing one another for mistakes made during practice. Fairfax wisely refrained—except to chortle when expected.

They were within sight of Mrs. Dawlish's house when Wintervale suddenly exclaimed, “What the hell!”

Titus had already seen them. Fairfax glanced up. By the tightening of her expression, he knew she had spied the formation of armored chariots. They were almost invisible now, disappearing into the darkening eastern sky.

“What is it?” asked several of the boys.

Wintervale shook his head. “Never mind. Just the clouds. My eyes were playing a trick on me.”

“What did you think you saw?” Kashkari persisted.

“Your sister kissing the chai-wallah,” said Wintervale.

Kashkari punched Wintervale in the arm. The other boys laughed, and that was the end of it.

Except for Fairfax. She had been both exhausted and exulted; now she looked only exhausted.

 

You will become accustomed to it,
the prince had said to her.

She had not yet. The feeling of naked vulnerability was an iron fist at her throat.

“Are you all right?” asked the prince. They'd made it back to Mrs. Dawlish's before lockup. He'd slipped into her room with her.

She shrugged. At least she didn't need to pretend with him—the boys had not dispersed immediately upon reaching the house, forcing her to maintain her cheery facade for another quarter hour.

“I lied,” he said softly. “The truth is you will never get used to it. The taste of fear always chokes.”

She flattened her lips. “That isn't what I need to hear now. You should have kept lying.”

“Believe me, I would like to. Nothing sounds more unsettling than truth rolling off my tongue.” He put a kettle in the grate, opened her cupboard, lifted out a tin box, and pressed a piece of cake into her hand. “I had the foodstuff delivered today. Eat—you will be less afraid on a full stomach.”

She took a bite of the cake. She didn't know whether it made her less afraid, but at least it was moist and buttery, everything a cake ought to be.

“How did you learn to play cricket so quickly?” he asked.

She had suggested to Kashkari that they run to catch up with the other boys. She then pretended, as they reached the pitch, to suffer from a muscle cramp. That bought her time to sit on the sidelines. Watching the other boys, her hasty reading on cricket the evening before began to make sense. The terminology of cricket had confused her, but the game in play was a bat-and-ball game, and she was familiar with those.

She rested her hip against the edge of her desk and shrugged again. “It isn't that hard.”

He flipped down her cot and took a seat, his back against the wall, his hands behind his head. “Lucky for us. Wintervale was convinced you were an exceptional player. That was the problem with my trick: the mind finds ways to fill a blank—and Archer Fairfax was a perfect blank.”

She almost didn't hear what he was saying. The way he sat, all strong shoulders and long limbs—it was . . . distracting. “Is that why Kashkari thinks I'm going back to Bechuanaland with my parents?”

“That is the least alarming of misconceptions. You will be surprised what people thought of you. Last year there was a rumor going around that you had not hurt your leg at all, but had been sent away because you had impregnated a maid.”

“What?”

“I know,” said the prince with a straight face. “I was impressed by the extent of your virility.”

Then he smiled, overcome by the humor of the situation. Bright mischief lit his face and he was just a gorgeous boy, enjoying one hell of a joke.

It was a few seconds before she realized that, astounded by his transformation, she'd stopped chewing. She swallowed awkwardly. “Kashkari asked me a great number of questions.”

This sobered him. The smile, like a brief glimpse of the sun in rainy season, disappeared. “What kind of questions?”

She was almost relieved not to see his smile anymore. “He wanted to know what I thought of the relationship between the British Empire and lands under her influence abroad.”

“Ah.” He relaxed visibly. “Kashkari would want to know your opinions.”

“Why?”

The kettle sang. He rose, lifted it off its hook, poured boiling water into a teapot, and swished the teapot. “Kashkari has ambitions. He does not state it, but he wants to free India from British rule in his lifetime. Wintervale is sympathetic. I am known to be apolitical, so he is secure in the knowledge that at least I am not antagonistic toward his goals. But he is less sure about you.”

“Wouldn't he have conjured Fairfax as someone more sympathetic to his views, the way Wintervale believes I'd help him win cricket games?”

He discarded the water from the warmed teapot, tossed in some tea leaves, and poured more boiling water on top. “Fairfax was born and brought up overseas. There are other such boys here at school, and they are the most fervent imperialists of all. Kashkari had no reason to think you would be different.”

He set aside the kettle and placed the lid on the teapot for the tea to steep. “So what
did
you think of the relationship between the empire and her colonies?”

She still couldn't quite comprehend the sight of the Master of the Domain making tea—for her. “I said an empire shouldn't be too surprised that her colonies are unhappy with their overlord.”

“And Kashkari was pleasantly surprised by your attitude, no doubt.”

“He thought my thinking very unusual.”

“It is. And do not broadcast it. The last thing we want is to have you labeled as a radical.”

“What is that?”

“Someone whose parents had better explain why their son thinks as he does. Imagine an Atlantean youth piping up at school and saying that Atlantis should let go of all the realms under its control. The reaction here probably would not be quite as extreme, but better not test it.”

She nodded—she saw the point.

He filled a teacup and brought it to her. She wasn't sure whether she wanted him so near. “Thank you, though you don't need to ply me with food and drink all the time.”

“You would do the same for the most important person in your life.”

She set down the teacup harder than she needed to. In the wake of that resounding thud, an uneasy silence spread—uneasy for her, at least, caught between the dark allure of his words and the harshness of her own common sense. And he was so close, she could smell the silver moss with which his clothes had been stored, the clean, crisp scent of it made just slightly peppery by the heat of his body.

“I need to go back to the laboratory,” he said, taking a step back. “Stay safe in my absence.”

 

From his laboratory, Titus returned to Mrs. Dawlish's for supper, then to his own room to test the trial he planned for Fairfax. He emerged from the Crucible disoriented and nauseous, to knocks on his door.

Wintervale charged in. “What the hell is going on out there? Why are there armored chariots everywhere all of a sudden? Is there a war going on I haven't heard about?”

Titus gulped down a glass of water. “No.”

“Then what?
Something
is going on.”

Wintervale's family, even in exile, was well-connected. He would learn sooner or later. And if Titus lied to a direct question, it would appear as if he were hiding something.

“Atlantis is hunting for an elemental mage who brought down a bolt of lightning.”

“You mean, like Helgira?”

The name still made Titus squeamish. “You could say that.”

“That's poppycock. No one can do that. What's next? Mages riding comets?”

A burst of masculine laughter came from Fairfax's room next door. Who else had become her friend now?

Friends,
he mentally corrected himself, as more boys joined in the uproarious laughter.

“You know what I think?” Wintervale set two fingers under his chin. “I think it's just an excuse for Atlantis to get rid of some Exiles they don't like. I'd better tell my mother to be extra careful.”

“We can all stand to be a bit more careful.”

“You are right,” said Wintervale.

Now why could Fairfax not be more like Wintervale, respectful and willing to take advice?

“How is Lady Wintervale, by the way?” he asked.

“Gone to her spas. I hope they calm her down. I haven't seen her so jumpy in a while.”

Wintervale left only when it was nearly lights-out. But Fairfax's room, when Titus pushed open her door, was still full. She sat cross-legged on her bed, Sutherland next to her, Rogers and Cooper, two other boys from the house cricket squad, straddling chairs pulled up to the bed. They were playing cards.

“Come and help me, prince,” she said casually. “I'm terrible at cards.”

“He really is,” said Sutherland.

“Good thing I'm a brilliant athlete
and
handsome as a god,” she said, with that affable cockiness she did so astonishingly well.