The Burning Sky (8 page)

“Hundreds of hours.” And half again as much on cobbling. He made a pair of too-big black leather oxfords fit her and handed her a derby hat. “Here in England you never go anywhere without headgear.”

Did she pass for a boy? He was not entirely confident. But assumption was a powerful thing, especially such a big-belief assumption.

She examined herself in the mirror on the door, adjusting the angle of her hat. Suddenly she swiveled around.

“What is it?”

She opened her mouth, only to press her lips together again. “Never mind.”

But he knew what she had realized. That he could have watched her undress in the mirror. They stared at each other. She dropped her eyes and turned her attention back to the mirror.

He walked to the window, parted the curtains a sliver, and looked out. The clouds had begun to dissipate. A few rays of pallid sunlight reached the small meadow behind the house. There were no boys or house staff about—it was near teatime, and everyone must have returned inside. 

She came to stand next to him.

“Vault out from here to behind those trees,” he instructed. “Then come through the front door of the house. I will meet you in the entry hall.”

He did not want her out of his sight. But there was nothing for it: Fairfax's return had to be seen as an event entirely unrelated to the disappearance of one Iolanthe Seabourne. If he produced Fairfax from nowhere, they would both look more suspicious to agents of Atlantis.

“And the other boys will know who I am?”

“When they hear me say your name they will.” He turned toward her. “I know it is my fault you are here. But please be convincing as a boy—or I will have prepared in vain.”

She glanced at him, her gaze half-admiring, half-mystified. “You have prepared a great deal.”

You have no idea.
“And therefore you will not fail me.”

It was as much a prayer as it was a command.

 

Mrs. Dawlish's house was built of weathered red brick, the outlines neat and solid. Above the ground floor, behind a window at the southern end, stood the prince, watching her.

Had he also watched her when she had stripped down nearly to her skin? Was it her imagination or had he looked at her differently afterward? The underside of her chin, where he'd accidentally brushed her, scorched anew at the thought.

He raised his hand in a silent salute and disappeared. All at once she felt exposed. She'd thought her former life precarious; she'd had no idea how sheltered she'd been, protected at an impossible cost to Master Haywood.

She must remain safe, if only so that his sacrifice would not be in vain.

It had rained earlier in this place—everything was soaked. A watery light shone on the damp landscape. In the distance she could make out a grander building than the rest—the school? Farther away, in a different direction, the hulking shadows of what looked to be a squat castle.

She didn't seem to be in a city—there was too much tree and grass and sky. Nor did she seem to be in isolated countryside. There were other houses. Carriages clattered down a nearby street, carriages drawn by—were they?—she squinted—yes, horses.

Real horses, without wings or a horn on the forehead, their hooves clacking wetly. She couldn't help smiling, reminded of the picture books she'd loved as a child, stories of nonmage children who had nothing but their wits, their swords, and their loyal horses to accompany them on their adventures.

The carriages were black and closed, some with curtains drawn. The pedestrians in blacks, browns, and drab blues were entirely preoccupied with their own affairs, with no idea that a fugitive was among them, pursued with the full might of the greatest empire on the face of the earth.

The thought was almost comforting: at least no one paid her any attention.

A breeze almost made off with her hat; she clamped it down and began walking. Her new clothes did not move well—too many layers, the cut restrictive, the material inelastic. And without her hair, her head felt oddly light, nearly weightless.

Gingerly, and trying not to look like a foreigner, she stepped onto the sidewalk, only to be immediately accosted by a grimy boy of indeterminate age, waving pieces of printed paper in the air.

She leaped back, primed to run the other way.

“More details from John Brown's funeral! You want to know about 'em, guv?”

“Ah . . .”
Did she?

“Read all about Her Majesty's sorrow. Read it for a penny.”

She found her breath. A newspaper, that was what the boy was waving—newspapers in the Domain hadn't used actual paper for a very long time.

“Sorry. Never cared for the man,” she said truthfully.

The boy shrugged and continued peddling his wares down the narrow street, which was squeezed in by tightly packed brick houses with steep, pitched roofs.

She came to a stop before the front door of Mrs. Dawlish's house, black and unassuming beneath an arched doorway. There, she'd made it. Now she only had to pass herself off as a boy. For the foreseeable future.

And under the watchful eyes of Atlantis.

 

Titus changed into his school uniform in his own room. As he stepped out into the passage, Wintervale's door opened.

“When did you get here?” asked Wintervale, surprised.

“A while ago,” said Titus. “I have been in my room.”

“Why didn't you join Kashkari and myself?”

“I was in a foul mood—ran into the Inquisitor today. You do not look too pleased either. What is the matter?”

“My mother. I had to go back home just now.”

Titus asked the obvious. “Does she not usually leave for Aix-les-Bains as soon as you return here?”

“Baden-Baden this time, but she hasn't left yet. I found her in the attic in a state. She kept saying she'd killed someone and that this time there would be no forgiveness from the Angels. I checked the house from top to bottom: nothing. If she had truly killed someone, you'd think I'd have found a corpse.”

It was not easy being Lady Wintervale's son. She was not consistently insane. But at times she came close enough.

“Is she still at home?”

“She's gone to stay with the Alhambras.” Wintervale knocked the back of his head against the wall behind him. “Atlantis did this to her. When are you going to lead us to overthrow them?”

Titus shrugged. “You will have to organize the revolt, cousin. If I could, I wouldn't be here.”

Lying to Lady Callista and the Inquisitor was a perennial necessity—Titus took pride in rarely speaking a true word before those two. But lying to his second cousin, equally necessary, had always bothered him. He wished Wintervale were not so trusting.

“Why do you think I'm trying to get into Sandhurst?” said Wintervale. “The British fight lots of wars. Maybe there is something to be learned from them.”

Titus also wished Lady Wintervale had not adamantly adhered to the tradition of having a child from one of the Domain's grandest families study alongside the heir of the House of Elberon. Lady Callista had been his mother's companion—look how well that had turned out.

“Try not to get yourself killed in one of Britain's colonial wars,” he told Wintervale. “It would be the ultimate irony.”

“Do I hear mentions of colonial wars?” said Kashkari, joining them, dapper in his impeccably turned-out uniform and sleek black hair. “Is your stomachache gone, Wintervale? You look better.”

“I'm fine now,” said Wintervale.

Lady Wintervale's unpredictable mental state and penchant for relying on her only child meant that Wintervale often had to invent sudden pains to go back to his room—or clear his room—to use the wardrobe portal.

“Do the two of you want some tea?” Wintervale issued his usual invitation.

“Why not?” said Kashkari.

“I will join you in a minute. I think I saw Fairfax from my window. Let me go down to make sure it is really him.”

“Fairfax!” exclaimed Wintervale. “Are you sure?”

“But your window doesn't face the street. How did you see him?” asked Kashkari.

“He was walking across the grass. Who knows? Maybe he wants to refamiliarize himself with everything.”

“About time,” said Wintervale. “We need him to play.”

“He still does not feel the strength in his leg,” said Titus, moving toward the stairs. The otherwise charm he had created before he first stepped into the school was fairly watertight: no one doubted that Fairfax existed.
¹¹
All the same, he had better reach the ground floor soon. The boys would not recognize her as Fairfax unless someone said the name aloud; and only Titus could do that. “Who knows whether he will still be any good at sports after an injury like that?”

Wintervale's other passion, besides returning the barony of Wintervale to its former glory, was cricket. He had convinced himself—and a fair number of other boys—that Archer Fairfax was the veriest cricket prodigy whose return would propel the house team to the school cup.

“Strange. He's been gone only three months, and already I can't remember what he looks like,” said Wintervale.

“Lucky you,” said Titus. “Fairfax is one of the most ferociously ugly blokes I have ever met.”

Kashkari chuckled, catching up with Titus on the steps down. “I'll tell him you said that.”

“Please do.”

Mrs. Dawlish's house, despite its overwhelming majority of male occupants, had been decorated to suit Mrs. Dawlish's tastes. The wallpaper in the stairwell was rose-and-ivy. Frames of embroidered daisies and hyacinths hung everywhere.

The stairs led down to the entry hall, with poppy-chintz-covered chairs and green muslin curtains. A vase of orange tulips nodded on the console table beneath an antique mirror—a boy was required to examine himself in the mirror before he left the house, lest his appearance disgrace Mrs. Dawlish.

Titus was two steps above the newel post when Fairfax came into the entry hall, a slim, tall-enough figure in the distinctive tailed jacket of an Eton senior boy. Immediately he was appalled by his abysmal judgment. She did not look like a boy at all. She was much, much too pretty: her eyes, wide-set and long-lashed; her skin, needlessly smooth; her lips, red and full and all but shouting girlishness.

She saw him and smiled in relief. The smile was the worst yet: it brought out deep dimples he had not even suspected she possessed. 

Dread engulfed him. Any moment now someone was going to shout,
What is a girl doing here?
And since everyone knew Fairfax as his closest friend, it would take no time for the agents stationed at Eton to put two and two together and conclude that there was far more than just cross-dressing going on. 

“Fairfax,” he heard himself speak—his voice almost did not quiver. “We thought you were never coming back.”

Almost immediately Kashkari said, “My goodness, it is you, Fairfax!”

“Welcome back, Fairfax!” hollered Wintervale.

With the repetition of her name, other boys swarmed out of the woodwork and took up the chorus of “Look, Fairfax is back!”

At the sight of so many boys, her smile disintegrated. She did not say anything, but looked from face to face, her hand tightening upon the handle of the valise. Titus could not breathe. For eight years he had lived in a state of slow-simmering panic. But he had never known real terror until this moment. He had always depended on himself; now everything depended on her.

Come on, Fairfax,
he implored under his breath. But he knew it. It was too much. She was going to drop the valise and bolt. All hell would break loose, eight years of work would circle the drain, and his mother would have died for nothing.

She cleared her throat and beamed, a smug, lopsided grin. “It's good to see all your ugly faces again.”

Her voice. Lurching from one emergency to another, he had paid no mind. Now he truly heard it for the first time: rich, low-pitched, and slightly gravelly. 

But it was her grin, rather than her voice, that steadied his heartbeat. There was no mistaking the cockiness of that grin, absolutely the expression of a sixteen-year-old boy who had never known the taste of defeat. 

Wintervale bounced down the rest of the steps and shook her hand. “You haven't changed a bit, Fairfax, as charming as His Highness here. No wonder you two were always thick as thieves.”

Her brow lifted at the way Wintervale addressed Titus. Wintervale knew who Titus was, but to the rest of the school, Titus was a minor Continental prince.

“Do not encourage him, Wintervale,” said Titus. “Fairfax is insufferable enough as it is.” 

She looked askance at him. “Takes one to know one.”

Wintervale whistled and slapped her on the arm. “How's the leg, Fairfax?”

One of Wintervale's thwacks could snap a young tree. She managed not to topple over. “Good as new.”

“And is your Latin still as terrible as your bowling?”

The boys snickered good-naturedly. 

“My Latin is fine. It's my Greek that's as ghastly as your love-making,” she retorted. The boys howled, including Titus, who laughed out of sheer shock—and relief. 

She was good. 

Brilliant, in fact.

CHAPTER 7

AFTER RUNNING THE GAUNTLET OF
handshakes, backslaps, and general greet-and-insults, Iolanthe hoped for a moment to breathe. But it was not to be.

“Benton!” Wintervale called. “Take Fairfax's bag to his room. And make sure you light a good fire there. Fairfax, come with us for tea.”

A smallish boy, wearing not a tailed coat but one that stopped at the waist, whisked the valise away.

“Work him hard.” Wintervale smiled at her. He was as tall as the prince, blond and strapping, almost spinning in place with nervous energy. “Benton hasn't done much in your absence.”

She didn't ask why she had to work Benton hard—the prince would explain everything later. She only grinned at Wintervale. “I'll make him regret that I ever came back.”

Before Little Grind, Master Haywood had taught at a school for boys. Each evening, after sports practice, a group of them would walk past Iolanthe's window, chatting loudly. She'd paid particular attention to the most popular boy, carefully noting his cheerful swagger and good-natured insults.

Now she was acting the part of that happy, affably cocky boy.

The prince, walking a pace before her, turned his head and slanted her an approving look. Her heart skipped a beat. She didn't think he was the kind to approve easily.

Entering Wintervale's room, however, stopped her dead. On his windowsill bloomed a sizable weathervine—terribly useful for knowing when an umbrella would be required for the day.

Only it couldn't be a weathervine, could it? The weathervine was a mage plant. What was it doing in—

The prince put his arm about her shoulder. “Forgot what Wintervale's room looks like?”

She let him ease her inside, knowing that she shouldn't have stopped to gawk. “I was just wondering whether the walls were always so green.”

“No, they weren't,” said Wintervale. “I changed the wallpaper just before the end of the last Half.”

“You are lucky—and good,” the prince whispered in her ear.

His breath against her skin sent a jolt of heat through her entire person. She couldn't quite look at him.

The room was soon filled to capacity. Two small boys crouched before the fire, one making tea, the other scrambling eggs with surprising expertise. A third delivered buttered toast and baked beans.

She observed the goings-on carefully: the young boys, no question about it, acted as minions to the older boys.

Benton, who'd earlier been tasked with taking her valise to her room, now returned with a plate of still-sizzling sausages.

“You didn't burn them again, did you, Benton?” Wintervale asked.

“I almost never burn them,” Benton responded indignantly.

Wintervale poked Iolanthe with his elbow. “The new boys, they do get so ornery by the third Half.”

His elbow rammed a very tender spot in her chest. She would always be proud that she only sucked in a breath in reaction. “They'll learn their places yet.”

She walked to the plant and fingered its soft, ferny leaves. A weathervine, no doubt about it. “Did you always have this?”

“I raised it from a seedling,” Wintervale answered. “It was probably only three inches tall when you went home with the broken limb.”

Perhaps the prince gave one to him? “It doesn't seem as if I've been gone quite that long.”

“How was Somerset?” Kashkari asked.

Somerset
?
Instinctively she moved closer to the prince, as if his proximity made her less likely to make mistakes. “You mean Shropshire?” 

The prince, who'd taken a place on Wintervale's bed, gave her another approving look.

Acacia Lucas, one of Master Haywood's pupils in Little Grind, had been quite keen to marry the prince. One day, during a practical under Iolanthe's supervision, Acacia had pointed at his portrait and whispered to her friend,
He has the face of an Angel
. Iolanthe had looked up at the prince's coldly haughty features and snorted to herself.

Acacia was not entirely right—or entirely wrong. He was nothing like a sublimated Angel. But a sublunary one, perhaps: the dangerous kind that made those gazing upon them see only what they wished to see.

She saw a stalwart protector. But was that what he truly was, or merely what she desperately wanted? As much as she did not wish to, somewhere deep inside she understood that he had not risked everything purely out of the goodness of his heart.

“Sorry, is it Shropshire?” Kashkari shook his head. “How was Shropshire then?”

He had straight blue-black hair, olive skin, intelligent eyes, and an elegant, if slightly forlorn mouth—an outstandingly handsome boy.

“Cold and wet for the most part,” said Iolanthe, figuring that was always an acceptable weather for spring on a North Atlantic island. And then, remembering herself, “But of course I spent all of my time inside, driving our housekeeper batty.”

“How was Derbyshire?” the prince asked Kashkari, moving the topic away from Archer Fairfax.

Iolanthe let out the breath she'd been holding. The prince had shown remarkable foresight in making Fairfax someone who'd spent most of his life abroad: it could be used to excuse his lack of knowledge concerning Britain. But it was the barest piece of luck that she'd remembered his mention of Shropshire. No matter how unfamiliar with England an expatriate was, he should still know where he lived.

“I wish there were enough time between terms for me to go back to Hyderabad. Derbyshire is beautiful, but life in a country house becomes repetitive after a while,” Kashkari replied.

“Good thing you are back in school now,” said the prince.

“True, school is more unpredictable.”

“Is that so? School is predictable for me, and I like it that way,” said Wintervale. “We should have a toast. To school, may it always be what we want it to be.”

Tea was ready. Wintervale shooed out the young lackeys and poured for his guests. They clinked their teacups. “To dear old school.”

Tea at home was usually accompanied by a few bites of pastry. But here tea—the table was laden with eggs, sausages, beans, and toast—constituted a meal on its own. Iolanthe hoped this meant that the boys would concentrate on their food. Any more questions and she was bound to betray herself.

“Make sure you eat enough,” said Wintervale. “We need you ready for cricket.”

What cricket? Grasshopper? “Ah—I'm as ready as I will ever be.”

“Excellent,” said Wintervale. “We are in desperate need of a superior bowler.”

A what? At least Wintervale did not expect her to define what a bowler was. He only extended his hand to her. “To a season to remember.”

She shook his hand. “A season to remember.”

“That's the spirit,” said Kashkari.

The prince did not look nearly as thrilled. What exactly had she committed herself to with that handshake? But before she could pull him aside and ask, Kashkari had another question for her.

“I don't know why, Fairfax,” he said, “but I have a hard time remembering how you broke your leg.”

Her stomach plunged. How did she fudge a question like that?

“He—” Wintervale and the prince began at the same time.

“Go ahead,” the prince said to Wintervale.

She drank from her cup, trying not to appear too obviously relieved. Of course the prince would take care of her.

“He climbed the tree at the edge of our playing field and fell off,” Wintervale answered. “The prince had to carry him back here. Didn't you, Your Highness?”

“I did,” said the prince, “with Fairfax crying like a girl all the way.”

Oh, she did, did she? “If I wept, it was only because you were so pitiful. I weigh barely nine stone. But one'd think I were an elephant the way Your Highness moaned. ‘Oh, Fairfax, I cannot take another step.' ‘Oh, Fairfax, my legs are turning into pudding.' ‘Oh, Fairfax, my knees are buckling. And you are crushing my delicate toes.'”

Kashkari and Wintervale chuckled.

“My back is still hurting to this day,” said the prince. “And you weighed as much as the Rock of Gibraltar.”

Their exchange was almost flirtatious. But she could not help notice that in the midst of the general jollity, he remained apart—had she never met him she'd have considered him moody. She wondered why he was utterly alone when he was among mates.

Her, of course, she realized with a start.
She
was the reason. She was his great secret.

And now they were in this secret together.

She flashed him a smile. “What are friends for, prince?”

 

“I am sorry I did not have the time to tell you that Wintervale is an Exile,” Titus said. “He is an elemental mage, in fact, but any nonmage with a match can produce a more impressive flame than he.”

They stood some distance from the house, near the banks of the brown and silent Thames. Titus had rowed on the river for years. The repetition, the perspiration, and the good, clean exhaustion quieted his mind beautifully.

Eton was not always a pleasant place: many boys had a difficult time finding their place in the hierarchy, and there were senior boys who roundly abused their powers. But for him, the school, with its drafty classrooms, its grueling sports, its thousand boys—and even its agents of Atlantis—was the closest thing to normalcy he had ever known.

“Are there other mages here?” she asked.

The day was fleeing. And so were the clouds, leaving behind a clear sky that had turned a deep twilight blue, except for the western horizon, still glowing with the last embers of sunset.

“Besides Wintervale, only the agents of Atlantis.”

She had been almost giddy with relief upon leaving Wintervale's room, but this reminder of Atlantis's omnipresence sobered her mood. Her eyes lowered. Her shoulders hunched. She seemed to grow smaller before his eyes.

“Afraid?”

“Yes.”

“You will become accustomed to it.” Not true at all. He never had, but learned to carry on in spite of it.

She took a deep breath, snapped a leaf from a weeping willow, and rolled it into a green tube in her hand. Her fingers were slender and delicate—very much a girl's.

“Wintervale calls you ‘Your Highness' and nobody bats an eye. Do they all know who you are?”

“Wintervale does. But to everyone else, I am a minor Germanic princeling from the House of Saxe-Limburg.”

“Is there such a house?”

“No, but anyone who has ever heard of the name will find it on a map and in history books as a principality of Prussia—the regent's mage-in-chief made sure of it.”

“That is a highly illegal otherwise spell, it is not?”

“Then do not tell anybody that is also how I made a place for Archer Fairfax here.”

This earned him a long glance from her, half-approving, half-disquieted.

At the edge of the river they stopped. The water was a dark ripple, with a few daubs of reddish gold.

“The Thames,” he said. “We row on it, those of us who do not play cricket.”

He thought she might ask what exactly cricket was, but she only nodded slowly.

“Across the river is Windsor Castle, one of the English queen's homes,” he added.

She looked south for a moment at the ramparts that dominated the skyline. He had the distinct feeling that she was only half listening to him.

“Is there something on your mind?” he asked.

She glanced at him again, reluctant admiration in her eyes. He rarely cared what others thought of him. But with this girl who observed him carefully and unobtrusively, who was as perceptive as she was capable . . .

“We spoke of my guardian earlier, did we not?”

Her decision to confide in him pleased him—and turned him oddly anxious. “We did, at the hotel.”

She dropped the willow leaf into the river; it swirled in a small eddy. “For the past several years I have been frustrated with him. He had been a scholar of great promise. But then he made one terrible mistake after another and became a nobody in the middle of nowhere.

“I learned today that, fourteen years ago, to keep me safe, he gave up certain crucial memories of his past to a memory keeper. Since then he has lived without knowing the events that brought him to where he was.”

Titus could scarcely imagine how the man had managed for so many years. It was the current medical consensus that memory escrow was eminently unsuitable for the long term. After a few years the mind started to hunt for the missing memories. They became an obsession.

“That was probably the reason he turned to merixida,” she went on. “Now that I think about it, all those choices that cost him his career and even his respectability—he must have been trying, however subconsciously, to force the memory keeper to intervene.”

She picked up a pebble from the ground and tossed it with a flick of her wrist. The pebble skipped four times on the surface of the river before disappearing beneath the currents. She watched the river a moment longer, then squared her shoulders and stood taller, as if she had come to an important decision.

“My case is different, of course. I'm in full possession of my memories. But like him, I'm in the dark. And I don't want to be.”

“Am I keeping you in the dark?”

She bit her lower lip. “Please don't mistake me. I am enormously grateful for everything you've done. Were I a better person, I'd let myself be guided by gratitude and only gratitude. But I have to ask, why? Why have you placed yourself at such risk? Why do you defy the Inquisitor? Why are you involved at all?”

She was embarrassed to be asking these questions—her foot scuffed the soft ground of the bank, as fidgety as he had ever seen her. But all the same, her voice was wary.

The exchange he would ask for had always seemed fair and simple to him. He kept the elemental mage safe; and in return, the elemental mage lent him the great powers he needed. But would
she
see it that way?