The Burning Sky (7 page)

She took a bite of the sandwich—it had an unexpectedly curried taste. “So the Inquisitor wants me.”

“More precisely, the Bane wants you.”
⁶

She recoiled. She couldn't recall when or where she'd first learned of the Bane, whose official title was Lord High Commander of the Great Realm of New Atlantis. Unlike the Inquisitor, whom people did talk about, if in hushed whispers, regarding the Bane there was a conspicuous silence.

“What does the Bane want me for?”

“For your powers,” said the prince.

It was the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever said to her. “But the Bane is already the most powerful mage on earth.”

“And he would like to remain so—which is only possible with you,” said the prince. “You are crushing your sandwich, by the way.”

She willed her stiff fingers to unclench. “How? How do I have anything to do with the Bane remaining powerful?”

“Do you know how old he is?”

She shook her head and raised her teacup to her lips. She needed something to wash down the sandwich in her mouth, which had become a dry paste she couldn't quite swallow.

“Close to two hundred. Possibly more.”

She stared at him, the tea forgotten. “Can anyone live that long?”

“Not by natural means. Agents of Atlantis watch all the realms under their control for unusually powerful elemental mages. When they locate such a mage, he or she is secretly shipped to Atlantis, never to be heard from again. I am ignorant of how exactly the Bane makes use of those elemental mages, but I do not doubt that he does make use of them.”

If she clutched her teacup any harder, the handle would break. She set it down. “What precisely is the definition of an unusually powerful elemental mage? I have no control over air.”

The prince leaned forward in his chair. “Are you sure? When was the last time you tried to manipulate air?”

She frowned: she couldn't remember. “Someone tried to kill me by removing all the air from the end portal. If I had any affinity for air, I'd have stopped it, wouldn't I?”

It became his turn to frown. “Were you not born on either the thirteenth or fourteenth of November 1866—I mean, Year of the Domain 1014?”

“No, I was born earlier, in September.”

Her birthday was a day after his, in fact. It had been fun, when she'd been small, to pretend that the festivities surrounding his birthday had been for her also.

“Show me your birth chart.”

A birth chart plotted the precise alignment of stars and planets at the moment of a mage's birth. It was once a crucial document, for everything from the choice of school to the choice of mate: the stars must align. In recent years it had become fashionable in places like Delamer to break with tradition and leave one's birth chart to molder. But not so in Little Grind. When Iolanthe had volunteered to contribute the fire hazards for the village's annual obstacle course run last autumn, her chart, along with those of all the participants, had been requisitioned to determine the most auspicious date on which to hold the competition.

As she dug the cylindrical container out of the mostly empty satchel, it occurred to her that if she had used her birth chart only months ago, then it could not possibly be in the satchel, the contents of which hadn't been disturbed in more than a decade.

She'd unrolled only the top six inches of the birth chart earlier, when she'd checked to see that it
was
a birth chart. Fully unfurled, the three-foot-long chart had no name at the center, only the time of birth, five minutes past two o'clock in the morning on the fourteenth of November, YD 1014.

Something gonged in her ears. “But I was born in September. I've seen my chart before—many times—and it's not this one.”

“And yet this is the one that had been packed, for when the truth came out and you were forced to leave,” said the prince. 

“Are you saying that my guardian counterfeited the other? Why?”

“There was a meteor storm that night. Stars fell like rain. Seers from every realm on earth predicted the birth of a great elemental mage. Were I your guardian, I would have most certainly
not
let it be known that you were born on that night.”

She'd read about that night, when one could not see the sky for all the golden streaks of plummeting stars. 

“You think I'm that great elemental mage?” she asked, barely able to hear her own voice.

She couldn't be. She wanted no part of what was happening now.

“Until you, there has never been anyone who can command lightning.”

“But lightning is useless. I almost killed myself when I called it down.”

“The Bane just might know what to do with such power,” said the prince.

She didn't know why the idea should make her more frightened than she was already, but it did.

“It has been an exhausting day for you. Take some rest,” the prince suggested. “I must go now, but I will return in a few hours to check on you.”

Go? He was leaving her all alone?

“Are you going back to the Domain?” She sounded weak and afraid to her own ears.

“I am going to my school.”

“I thought you were educated at the castle.” More precisely, at a monastic lodge farther up the Labyrinthine Mountains that was used only for a young prince or princess's education, or so Iolanthe had learned at school.

“No, I attend an English school not far from London.”

She couldn't have heard him right. “You can't be serious.”

“I am. The Bane wished it.”

“But you are our prince. You are supposed to be one of our better mages. You won't get any proper training at such a school.”

“You understand the Bane's purpose perfectly,” he said lightly. 

She was appalled. “I can't believe the regent didn't object. Or the prime minister.”

His eyes were clear and direct. “You overestimate the courage of those in power. They are often more interested in holding on to that power than in doing anything worthwhile with it.”

He did not sound bitter, only matter-of-fact. How had he handled it, the utter insult of having the Bane dictate his movements, when he was, on paper at least, the Bane's peer in power and privilege?

“So . . . what should I do while you are at school?”

“I was hoping to take you to school with me, but it is a boys' school.” He shrugged. “We will make new plans.”

He couldn't have been more cordial about it, but she had the distinct sensation it did not please him to have to make new plans.

“I can come with you. I went to a girls' school for a while, and every term I had the male lead role in the school play. My voice is low, and I do a good imitation of the way a boy walks and talks.” She'd acquitted herself so well some of her classmates' parents had thought a boy had been brought in to act the part. “Not to mention I can fight.”

Unlike most magelings, who were taught to refrain from violence, elemental magelings were actively encouraged to use their fists—far better they punched someone than set the latter on fire.
⁷

“I am sure you can knock boys out left and right. And I am sure you are perfectly proficient on stage. But playing a boy for a few hours each term is quite different from playing one twenty-four hours a day, day after day, to an audience of agents.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There are agents of Atlantis at my school,” he said. “I am watched.”

She gripped the armrests of her chair. “You live under Atlantis's surveillance?”

Somehow she'd thought he must be exempt from it.

“I am better off at school than at home—the castle is riddled with the Inquisitor's informants—but that is no help to us now.”

She could not imagine the life he led.

“You are safer here,” he continued. “The vestibule is accessible by the hotel staff—that is where we vaulted in—but the rest of the suite is protected by anti-intrusion spells.”

Anti-intrusion spells were no guarantee of safety—her house in Little Grind had had its share of those. 

“You are entirely anonymous,” he further reassured her. “Atlantis, great as it is, cannot hope to locate you so easily in a city of millions. And should anything alarm you, go into the laboratory and wait. You already know the password; the countersign is the first paragraph on page ten of the book on the demilune table.”
⁸

She would prefer that he quit school to stand guard beside her. If he should be wrong, if Atlantis proved quicker and cleverer than he believed, she would be all too easy a target. He had to stay with her. She'd reason with him—beg him, if she must. Bar the door with her person.

She opened her mouth and out came “All right.”

Her life hung in the balance and here she was, trying to appear brave and stalwart before this boy.

“Thank you,” he said, and briefly touched her on the arm.

He
was
impressed. The bright happiness that flared inside her was almost enough to dispel her fear of his absence.

He disappeared a moment inside the laboratory and returned with the brown valise she'd seen earlier and a round-crowned hat. “I will be back after lights-out at school. In the meanwhile, eat and rest. It has been a great deal of trouble finding you; I do not intend to lose you any time soon.”

He had been searching for her? She longed to know more, but that would have to wait until his return.

“May Fortune walk with you, Your Highness.” She dipped into a small curtsy.

He shook his head. “No need to curtsy. And may Fortune abide with you, Miss Seabourne.”

He set the hat on his head and made for the door.

If she hadn't been staring so intently at him, she wouldn't have noticed the small, flat disk on his sleeve. She hesitated. Perhaps it was the fashion in England to have such decorations on one's jacket.

But what had Master Haywood said?
You cannot be careful enough.

“One moment, Your Highness. There is something on your left sleeve.”

His expression instantly sobered. He looked down at his arm. “Where?”

She turned her own arm to show him. It was placed at a spot above his elbow where it would be difficult for both he himself and someone else to see it, unless that person was looking squarely at him when he had his arm elevated. 

He found the disk by touch, ripped it off, and stared at it, his eyes shadowed.

Closing his fist, he said, “We are in trouble.”

CHAPTER 6

TITUS YANKED OPEN THE DOOR
of the water closet, threw the penny-sized disk into the commode, and tugged a cord to flush.

“What kind of trouble are we in?” asked Miss Seabourne behind him. Her voice was unsteady, but to her credit, she showed no signs of falling apart.

“I have been tracked.”

Lady Callista. He remembered now: She had put her hand on his arm before she took leave of him. And he had been in too much of a hurry to notice.

If they were lucky—and they had been quite lucky so far this day—then Lady Callista's lackeys would have a frustrating time following the disk as it traveled through London's sewers. 

But they had run out of luck. Murmurs rose outside the front door and outside the French doors that opened to a narrow balcony.

He beckoned Miss Seabourne to come to him. She did not hesitate. To her further credit, she already had in hand not only her own satchel, but also the valise he had dropped in his haste to get rid of the disk. 

He pulled her into the laboratory, closed the door, and listened. All too soon, there were footsteps in the suite.

“What of your anti-intrusion spells?” she whispered.

“They were to keep nonmages away.” The suite's anonymity had been his best defense against Atlantis.

Agents of Atlantis would not find anything belonging to him in the suite—he had always been excruciatingly careful about that. And they would not so easily discover a folded space. All the same, the suite's safety had been hopelessly compromised. 

“Exstinguatur ostium,”
he said, destroying the connection that anchored the laboratory to the suite.

They were safe, for now. But what would have happened to her had he already left? Yes, she was alert. She would have escaped into the laboratory. She would not, however, have been able to sever the connection. By the time he returned, after lights-out at school, Atlantis's agents might very well have broken through.

“I apologize.” The words burned his throat. “I should have . . .”

The very first day, and already he had very nearly lost her to Atlantis.

“I should have caught the device before I left the Domain. I thought I had planned for every contingency, but I did not plan for my own carelessness.”

She was tense, her knuckles white about her wand, but she had herself well under control and seemed to be taking their hasty retreat better than he. “How did you know to prepare for anything at all?”

“The prophecies about you—I never doubted their accuracy.” He pulled out a stool for her. “Have a seat.”

She sat down and, betraying more emotion than he had seen from her so far, squeezed her head between her palms. “When I woke up this morning, I mattered to no one except myself. Would that nothing had changed.”

“Fortune cares little for the will of mortals.”

“So I have learned.” Her face still lowered, she said, “Please don't let me keep you from returning to school.”

Dalbert was required to note the time of Titus's departure from the Domain. The Inquisitor and her agents knew what time Titus should arrive at school—and he was already running late.

But he could not simply leave the girl in the laboratory, a place that had no food or water, no lavatory, and nowhere for her to lie down and rest except atop the workbench.

She pushed her hair back from her face. She had used the Pears soap the hotel provided, with its subtle fragrance of an English meadow. The laboratory was small; he stood quite close to her. For a moment he was completely distracted by her scent—and the ripple of her still-damp hair.

He had seen her before. Where had he seen her before?

She looked up, her eyes dark as ink. “You don't need to go anymore?”

“I cannot leave you here.”

The laboratory had two other exits. One led to Cape Wrath in the Scottish Highlands, where he sometimes visited in warmer weather, the other to an abandoned barn in Kent. Either way, by taking her out of the laboratory, he would be bowing to the inevitable.

He pulled open a drawer and took out a vial of green powder.

“It seems we will be following the original plan after all, Miss Seabourne,” he said. “I hope you enjoy the company of boys.”

 

The barn was more or less the same as when Titus had seen it last. Fallen beams, missing doors, patches of gray sky visible through the dilapidated roof. Rain puddled on the floor. The smell of rotting wood and ancient muck assailed his nose.

A stiff breeze stirred. Her hair blew about her face. She looked tousled, as if she had just rolled out of bed, the warmth of the quilt still clinging to her. “Where are we?”

He closed the laboratory door behind him. The door promptly disappeared—it let the occupants of the laboratory out, but could not be used to gain entrance. “Southeast England.”

“You don't have an exit that takes you directly to school?”

“In case the laboratory is breached, I do not want it easily traced to me. Can you vault more than once in a day?”
⁹

“Yes, but I haven't much of a range. I've never tried to vault more than a few miles.”

He took her hand and tapped out a small mound of the green powder into her palm. “Take this vaulting aid. We have to go fifty miles, but you do not need as big a range when you hitch a vault.”

She swallowed the vaulting aid. “You have a fifty-mile range?”

He had a three-hundred-mile range, practically unheard of. She put her hand on his arm, and the next moment they were in Fairfax's room. 

Either his vaulting aid was superlatively effective, or her natural range measured far greater than a few miles: she neither bent over in pain nor stumbled about, disoriented. As if they had merely climbed up a flight of stairs and walked through the door, she let go of his arm and looked about.

Thirty-five pupils, ranging in age from thirteen to nineteen, lived in this house. The junior boys had the smaller rooms on the upper floors. The senior boys enjoyed bigger, better accommodation right above the ground floor.

Fairfax's room, like those of other senior boys, measured eight feet by ten feet. A writing desk and a chair had been placed near the fireplace. A set of shelves beside the window held books on top and various sporting equipment on the bottom. A chest of drawers and a spare chair by the door rounded out the collection of furniture.

An oval-framed picture of Queen Victoria, looking puffy and disapproving, hung on the blue-papered wall. Six postcards of ocean liners had been arranged in a semicircle under the queen's image. Scattered about the rest of the room were photographs and etchings of Africa: wavelike dunes, grazing gnus, a leopard at a watering hole, and a round, thatched hut beside a listing shepherd's tree.

He drew a soundproof circle. “Welcome to Eton College. We are in Mrs. Dawlish's house. And this is your room.”

“Who's Mrs. Dawlish? And why do I have a room here?”

“Boys at Eton live in resident houses—this particular house is run by Mrs. Dawlish. You have a room here because you are a pupil here. Your name is Archer Fairfax, and you have been home these past three months with a broken femur. Your family has a home in Shropshire, but you have spent most of your life in Bechuanaland—an area near the Kalahari Realm.”

“Where is the real Archer Fairfax?” She sounded alarmed.

“There was never a real Archer Fairfax. Since I had to be here, I made a place for you—when I thought you were a boy.”

She frowned. “And people here know me, even though I have never set foot here?”

“Yes.”

“That's impressive,” she murmured.

He seldom impressed anyone on his merits alone—the sensation was more than a little dizzying.

“We need to cut your hair now,” he said rather abruptly, not wanting her to sense his headiness.

She expelled a breath. “Right.”

He stepped behind her, gathered her hair, lifted it—it was smooth and surprisingly heavy—and lopped it off at the nape with a severing spell. “Sorry.”

“Hair grows back.”

A shame they would need to keep it short for the foreseeable future. He trimmed the remainder of her hair as best as he could, leaving it just long enough so that the wound at her temple would not be visible. She did not quite look like a boy. But then neither was she obviously a girl. 

He collected the shorn hair and destroyed it in the unlit fireplace. From the chest of drawers he brought out the items of an Eton boy's uniform. 

“You have prepared for everything.”

“Hardly. If I had any foresight at all, I would have prepared for a girl.” 

The vision of his death had mentioned a boy by his side, lamenting his passing. Such was the peril of visions—they must be interpreted by the seer and were therefore subject to human errors. In this case a short-haired girl had been mistaken for a boy. And despite all Titus's preparations, he now found himself swimming in uncertainty.

He knocked on what looked like wall cabinets and a narrow bed flipped down, startling her. From the sheet he ripped a long white strip of linen, hemmed it with a quick spell, and handed it to her. 

“For . . . resizing your person,” he said as he rehemmed the sheet with another spell.

How else to describe something meant to bind her chest?

She cleared her throat. “Thank you.”

“Once you are ready, the clothes are not that tricky.” He spoke briskly to cover his own embarrassment. And to think, this was only the beginning of the complications of bringing a girl to an all-boys school. “The shirt studs go into the buttonholes. Everything else is as you would expect.”

He turned around to give her privacy. Behind him came the soft shushing of her disrobing. There was no reason for his pulse to accelerate. Nothing was going to happen, and henceforth he would treat her as just another boy. In fact, for her safety and his, he would not even
think
of her as anything but Archer Fairfax, school chum.

All the same, his pulse raced, as if he had just sprinted the length of a playing field.

Then he glanced up and saw her reflection in the small mirror on the door. She stood with her back to him, naked to the top of her pajama trousers, her head bent, puzzling over her binding cloth. The contour of her slender neck, the smoothness of her back, the tapering of her waist—he jerked his head away and stared at the spare chair.

After what seemed an eternity—an eternity during which he forgot all about what the agents of Atlantis would think of his continued absence—she asked, “How should I hold it in place, the binding cloth?”

“Say
Serpens caudam mordens
. It is a simple spell—no need for a wand.”
¹⁰

“Not even for the first time?”

“No.”

“All right then.” She did not sound convinced.
“Serpens caudam mordens
.
”

A long moment of silence. He had by now completely memorized the form of the lyre-shaped slat on the back of the spare chair. 

“Serpens caudam mordens,”
she said again. “It's not working.”

There was no time for her to keep trying. He took a deep breath and turned around. She was now facing him, holding on to the ends of the binding cloth that she had wrapped about her chest. He lowered his gaze: above the too-loose pajama trousers, her waist indented sharply; her navel was deep and perfectly round.

He was going to step closer to her, but now he changed his mind. Remaining precisely where he was, he said,
“Serpens caudam mordens
.
”

The cloth visibly tautened. She emitted a muffled grunt. “Thank you. That's perfect.”

She had not flattened to anything resembling a plane. “Once more,” he said.

“No, no more. I can barely breathe.”

“You are sure it is tight enough?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

He should not, but his eyes again dipped to her navel. He realized what he was doing and looked up, only to see her flush. She had caught him staring. 

He turned away to examine the chair some more. “Move and make sure it stays in place.”

The next time she called him, she already had on the white shirt and the black trousers he had handed her. As expected, the clothes did not fit her. He set to work with an assortment of spells. The shirt needed its sleeves shortened and the width of the shoulders taken in. For the trousers he nipped the waist and raised the cuffs three inches—he had acquired everything big, as it was much easier to make clothing smaller than the other way around.

“If all else fails, you can always find employment as a tailor,” she murmured while he knelt on one knee before her, making sure the trouser cuffs were even.

“You should see my lacework,” he said. “As fine as a spiderweb.”

Above him she laughed softly. “I didn't know you had a sense of humor.”

“Not often,” he said, with more candor than usual.

Perhaps he would not need to lie to her, the way he lied to everyone else.

He rose to his feet. The waistcoat came with straps on the back and was easily enough cinched to fit her. The jacket required its armholes shrunk, the bagginess at the shoulders and the middle taken in.

But that was not the end of it. The shirt needed a collar attached and the necktie had to be fastened. Because she had no experience with either, he put them on for her.

They stood nose to nose, so close he could see the small pulse at her throat. The clothes smelled of the lavender sachets he had put in Fairfax's drawers. Her breath brushed the tops of his fingers.

As he pulled her necktie into shape, his knuckles grazed the underside of her chin. She bit her lower lip. Something in him shifted out of place: his concentration.

He took two steps back. “Let me get your shoes.”

“How much practice with tailoring spells have you had?” she asked.