The Burning Sky (4 page)

Some of the housebreaker's shielding charms took. Behind their barricade, she pointed her wand at the girl. 

The prince raised his own wand. The housebreaker fell to the broken floor. The girl gawked at him a moment, raised both hands, and pushed them out. Fire hurtled toward him.

“Fiat praesidium!”
The air before him hardened to take the brunt of the fire. “Recall your flames. I am not here to harm you.”

“Then leave.”

With a turn of her wrists, the wall of flame reconfigured into a battering ram.

Good thing he had fought so many dragons.
“Aura circumvallet.”

Air closed around the fire. She waved her hands, trying to make her fire obey her, but it remained contained. 

She snapped her finger to call forth more fire.

“Omnis ignis unus,”
he murmured.
All fire is one fire.

The new burst of flame she wanted materialized
inside
the prison he had already made.

He approached the trunk. Sunlight slanted through the broken walls into the room, sparkling where it caught specks of plaster in the air. One particular ray lit a thin streak of blood at her temple.

She yanked at the trunk lid. He set his own hand against it. “I am not here to harm you,” he repeated. “Come with me. I will get you to safety.”

She glowered. “Come with you? I don't even know who . . .”

Her voice trailed off; her head jerked with recognition. He was Titus VII, the Master of the Domain.
²
His profile adorned the coins of the realm. His portraits hung in schools and public buildings—even though he was not yet of age and would not rule in his own right for another seventeen months.

“Your Highness, forgive my discourtesy.” Her hand loosened its grip on the trunk's lid; her gaze, however, remained on guard. “Are you here at Atlantis's behest?”

So she knew from which quarter danger came. “No,” he answered. “The Inquisitor would have to step over my dead body to get to you.”

The girl swallowed. “The
Inquisitor
wants me?”

“Badly.”

“Why?”

“I will tell you later. We need to go.”

“Where?”

He appreciated her wariness: better wary than naive. But this was no time for detailed answers. Each passing second diminished their chances of getting out unseen.

“The mountains, for now. Tomorrow I will take you out of the Domain.”

“But I can't leave my guardian behind. He—”

Too late. Overhead Marble emitted a high, keening call: she had sighted the Inquisitor. He untwisted the pendant he wore around his neck and pressed its lower half into her hand.

“I will find you. Now go.”

“But what about Master—”

He pushed her down and slammed the trunk shut.

 

The moment the trunk closed, its bottom dropped out from underneath Iolanthe. She fell into utter darkness, flailing.

CHAPTER 3

THERE WAS NO TIME TO
bring down Marble. Titus had two choices: he could let the Inquisitor see Marble, catch her, and realize that Titus's personal steed was loose in the vicinity; or he could vault onto the beast, with the latter in midflight.

It was stupid to vault onto a moving object. It was suicidal when the moving object was two hundred feet in the air. But if his presence was to be deduced no matter what, then he preferred to be caught flying, which would allow him to claim that he had never set foot on the ground.

He sighted Marble, sucked in a deep breath, and vaulted where he hoped she would be. 

He rematerialized in thin air, with nothing under him. His heart stopped. A fraction of a second later, he crashed onto something hard—Marble's back. Relief tore through him. But there was no time to indulge in the shaking exhaustion of having cheated death. He was too far aft. Shouting at Marble to keep steady, he scrambled forward along her smooth spine, even as he pointed his wand at the house to erase the impassable circle.

Already there had been a cluster of villagers gathered outside the circle, discussing among themselves whether they ought to go in. The removal of the circle lifted all such inhibitions. The villagers rushed into the house.

Titus had no sooner grabbed the reins than the Inquisitor and her entourage arrived. A moment later, her second in command raised a formal hail. 

Titus took his time descending, applying miscellaneous cleaning spells to his person as he did so: it would defeat the purpose of his stunt to appear before the Inquisitor with the detritus of the house still clinging to him. 

There was an open field behind the house. Marble's wings swept close to the ground, forcing the Inquisitor's retainers to throw themselves down, lest they be impaled by the spikes that protruded from the front of those wings—natural spikes that Titus's grooms had polished into stiletto-sharp points.

Marble was now on her feet, but Titus did not dismount: the Inquisitor, in a deliberate slight, was not yet present to receive him. He took out two apples from the saddlebag, tossed one to Marble, and took a bite of the other. His heart, which had not yet slowed to normal, began to beat faster again.

The Inquisitor was an extractor of secrets, and he had too many of them.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Inquisitor emerge from the rear door of the house. Marble hissed—of course a beast as intelligent as Marble would hate the Inquisitor. Titus kept on eating the apple—at a leisurely pace—and dismounted only after he tossed aside the core.

The Inquisitor bowed. 

Appearances were still kept—Atlantis enjoyed pretending that it was not a tyrant, but merely first among equals. Therefore Titus, despite not having a dram of real power, reigned nevertheless as the Master of the Domain; and the Inquisitor, a representative of Atlantis, was officially of no more importance than any other ambassador from any other realm. 

“Madam Inquisitor, an unexpected pleasure,” he addressed her. 

His palms perspired, but he kept his tone haughty. His was a lineage that stretched back a thousand years to Titus the Great, unifier of the Domain and one of the greatest mages to ever wield a wand. The Inquisitor's parents had been, if he was not mistaken, traders of antique goods—and not necessarily genuine ones. 

Ancestry was an indicator of little importance when it came to a mage's individual abilities—archmages often came from families of otherwise middling accomplishment. But ancestry mattered to the average mage, and it especially mattered to the Inquisitor, though she was no average mage. Titus reminded her as often as he could that he was a vain, self-important boy who would have been nothing and no one had he not been born into the once-illustrious House of Elberon.

“Unexpected indeed, Your Highness,” replied the Inquisitor. “The Midsouth March is remote from your usual haunts.”

She was in her early forties, pale, with thin, red lips, almost invisible eyebrows, and eerily colorless eyes. He had first received her at age eight and had been frightened of her ever since.

He forced himself to hold her gaze. “I saw the sustained lightning from the castle and had to have a look, naturally.”

“You arrived fast. How did you locate the precise spot of the lightning so quickly?”

Her tone was even, but her eyes bore into his. He blamed his mother. By all means the Inquisitor should believe in Titus's frivolousness, but for the fact that the late Princess Ariadne too had once been deemed docile—and had proved anything but.

“My grandfather's field glass, of course.”

“Of course,” said the Inquisitor. “Your Highness's vaulting range is commendable.”

“It runs in the family, but you are correct that mine is particularly extensive.”

His immodest self-congratulation brought a twitch to the Inquisitor's face. Fortunately for him, the ability to vault was considered analogous to the ability to sing: a talent that had no bearing on a mage's capacity for subtle magic.

“What do you think of the person who brought down the lightning bolt?” asked the Inquisitor.

“A person brought down the lightning?” He rolled his eyes. “Have you been reading too many children's tales?”

“It is elemental magic, Your Highness.”

“Rubbish. The elements are fire, air, water, and earth. Lightning is none of them.”

“One could say lightning is the marriage of fire and air.”

“One could say mud is the marriage of water and earth,” he said dismissively. 

The Inquisitor's jaw tightened. A bead of sweat rolled down Titus's back. He played a perilous game. There was a fine line between irritating the Inquisitor and angering her outright.

He set his tone slightly less pompous. “And what is Atlantis's interest in all this, Madam Inquisitor?”

“Atlantis is interested in all unusual phenomena, Your Highness.”

“What have your people discovered about this unusual phenomenon?”

The Inquisitor had come out of the house. So she would have seen the interior already.

“Not very much.”

He began to walk toward the house. 

“Your Highness, I advise against it. The house is structurally unstable.”

“If it is not too unstable for you, it is not too unstable for me,” he said blithely.

Besides, he had no choice. In his earlier hurry to get out, he had not had time to remove all traces he might have left behind. He must go back in and walk about, in case his previous set of boot prints had not been sufficiently trampled by the villagers.

The January Uprising had failed for many different reasons, not the least of which was that its leaders had not been nearly meticulous enough. He could not afford to make the same mistakes.

The Inquisitor in tow, he strolled through the house. Except for the number of books, there was nothing remarkable about it. The Inquisitor's agents swarmed, checking walls and floors, pulling open drawers and cabinets. Nearly half a dozen agents crowded around the trunk, which, thankfully, seemed to be a one-time portal that kept its destination to itself.

On the front lawn, guarded by more agents, the girl's guardian and the housebreaker were laid out, both still unconscious. 

“Are they dead?” he asked.

“No, they are both very much alive.”

“They need medical attention, in that case.”

“Which they will receive in due time—at the Inquisitory.”

“They are
my
subjects. Why are they being taken to the Inquisitory?”

He made sure he sounded peevish, concerned not so much about his subjects but about his own lack of power.

“We merely wish to question them, Your Highness. Representatives of the Crown are welcome at any time to see them while they remain in our care,” said the Inquisitor.

No representatives of the Crown had been allowed into the Inquisitory in a decade. 

“And may I call on you this evening, Your Highness,” continued the Inquisitor, “to discuss what you have seen?”

Another drop of sweat crept down Titus's spine. So she did suspect him—of
something
.

“I have already mentioned everything I saw. Besides, my holidays have ended. I return to school later today.”

“I thought you weren't leaving until tomorrow morning.”

“And
I
thought I was quite at liberty to come and go as I wish, as I am the master of all I survey,” he snapped.

They were there in her eyes, the atrocities she wanted to commit, to reduce him to a witless imbecile.

She would not. The pleasure she would derive from destroying him was not worth the trouble it would incite, given that he was, after all, the Master of the Domain.

Or so Titus told himself.

The Inquisitor smiled. He hated her smiles almost more than her stares.

“Of course you may shape your itinerary as you wish, Your Highness,” she said.

He had been let go. He tried not to exhale too loudly in relief.

When they were once again on the field behind the house, she bowed. He remounted Marble. Marble spread her wings and pushed off the ground.

But even after they were airborne, he still felt the Inquisitor's unwavering gaze on his back.

 

This was no instantaneous transportation. Iolanthe kept dropping. She screamed for a while and stopped when she realized that no air rushed past her to indicate speed. She might as well have been suspended in place, only thinking that she was falling because there was nothing underneath her.

Suddenly there was. She thudded onto her bottom and grunted with the skeleton-jarring impact.

It remained pitch-black. Her hands touched soft things that smelled of dust and faded lavender—folded clothes. Digging beneath the clothes, she found a lining of smooth, stretched leather. The solid material under the leather was probably wood. Wary of making any unnecessary sounds, she did not knock to find out.

She continued to explore her new surroundings. Action kept fear—and jumbled emotions—at bay. If she tried to make sense of the events of the afternoon, she might howl in bewilderment. And if she thought about Master Haywood, she'd crumble from panic. Or pure guilt.

He had not been deluded by merixida. He had not even exaggerated. And she had chosen not to believe him.

Leather-covered walls rose shoulder-height about her, ending in a padded, tufted leather ceiling: she was inside another trunk.

The trunk seemed tightly closed. She decided to risk a flicker of fire. It shed a dim, coppery light that illuminated a sturdy latch below the seam of the lid.

The implication of the latch was discomfiting: it was for her to keep the trunk shut. To either side of the latch was a round disc of wood, one marked with an eye, the other, an ear. Reconnoitering was clearly recommended.

She extinguished the fire in her palm—its light might give her away—and felt for the discs. 

The first one she found was the ear hole, which conveyed only silence. She moved to the peephole but likewise saw nothing. The room that contained her trunk was as dark as the bottom of the ocean, without even the telltale nimbus of light around a curtained window. 

Wherever she was, she seemed to be completely alone. She found and released the latch. Placing her palms against the lid of the trunk, she applied a gentle pressure.

The lid moved a fraction of an inch and stopped. She pushed harder and heard a metallic scrape, but the lid did not lift any higher. Frowning, she put the latch back and tried again. This time, the lid moved not at all. So the latch in place prevented the trunk from opening. What had caused the trunk to open only a crack
after
the latch had been released?

The tips of her fingers turned cold. The trunk was secured
from the outside
.

 

A second vault in such a short time unsettled even a steed as disciplined as Marble. She screeched as they materialized above the Labyrinthine Mountains, her eyes shut tight in distress. Titus had to yank the reins with all his strength to avoid crashing into a peak that suddenly reared in their path—the constant motion of the mountains meant that even one as familiar with them as he must always take care.

“Shhhhhh,” he murmured, his own heart pounding hard at the near miss. “Shhhhh, old girl. It is all right.”

He guided her higher, clear of any summits that might decide to sprout additional spurs. She obeyed his commands, her prodigious muscles contracting with each rise of her wings.

Beneath him, the Domain stretched in all directions, the Labyrinthine Mountains bisecting the island like the plated spine ridge of a prehistoric monster. To either side of the great mountain range, the countryside was a fresh, luminous green dotted by the pinks and creams of orchards in bloom. 

You are the steward of this land and its people now, Titus,
Prince Gaius, his grandfather, had said on his deathbed.
Do not fail them as I did. Do not fail your mother as I did.

Had he known then what he knew now, he would have told the old bastard,
You
chose
to put your own interests above that of this land and its people. You
chose
to fail my mother. I hope you suffer long and hard where you are going.

Quite the family, the House of Elberon.

Since the Inquisitor already knew he had visited the location of the lightning strike, there was no more need to be stealthy. As the castle came into sight, he wheeled Marble directly toward the landing arch at the top.

Marble cried plaintively at his dismount. He gave the rubbery skin of her wing a quick caress. “I will have the grooms take you for more exercise. Go now, my love.”

Strong winds buffeted the pinnacle of the castle. Titus fought his way inside and sprinted down two flights of stairs into his apartment. 

He greeted the usual huddle of attendants with a snarled, “Am I ready to depart yet?” and waved away those still foolhardy enough to follow him.