The Perilous Sea (14 page)

England

TITUS CRASHED INTO THE LABORATORY
and extracted a vial of granules, each one worth his weight in gold.

Panacea.

When he returned to Baycrest House, Kashkari was struggling to keep Wintervale from choking on his own tongue. Titus took hold of Wintervale's head and somehow managed to force a double dose of panacea down the latter's gullet.

Almost immediately, Wintervale's convulsion subsided into mere quivers. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow and his upper lip. He panted, even as a bit of color returned to his face. Within ten minutes, he had dropped off into an exhausted slumber.

Kashkari wiped the perspiration from his own brow. “Now that's German medicine I wouldn't mind keeping around.”

Titus looked at his watch—they needed to be back at Mrs. Dawlish's before lights-out. “We had better get him to the railway station,” he said, still panting with afterfright, “or we will miss our train.”

Kashkari gripped the back of a chair, likewise breathing heavily. “We have all these strong backs—getting him there is the least of our concerns. I just hope the movement of the train won't disagree with him.”

“He will be all right,” said Titus.

Wintervale had enough panacea in him to survive an execution curse, let alone a little rattling from a railway car.

“I hope to God you are right,” said Kashkari. “I hope to God.”

 

Iolanthe shared a rail compartment with Cooper and Sutherland, where they played a game of vingt-et-un, betting halfpennies on the outcome of each hand. In the next compartment, the other three boys maintained an unbroken silence. Before they boarded the train, the prince had pulled her aside and let her know that Wintervale was under the effect of panacea. She had nodded and walked back to Cooper.

Vingt-et-un was the easiest nonmage card game she had played yet, since she had only to worry about the numbers on her cards adding up as close to twenty-one as possible without going over. But even so, she begged off from further rounds after they changed trains in London. Leaving the compartment, she stood in the corridor, staring out of the window as the city's outskirts rushed by, street lamps and illuminated windows growing more and more sparse as they headed into the countryside.

The door of the next compartment opened and closed. Her heart twisted. But the person who came to stand next to her was not Titus, but Kashkari.

“I was sorry to hear that you might leave us,” he said.

He was talking about the Fairfaxes and cattle ranching in Wyoming Territory.

“All I wanted was for everything to continue as before. But changes come and I can't stop them.” She glanced at him. “You know how it is.”

Kashkari smiled faintly. “In my case it was more like, ‘Be careful what you wish for.' I have always wanted to meet the girl of my dreams.”

“Love at first sight, eh?”

“More like astonishment at first sight.”

“She is that beautiful?”

Kashkari had a faraway look in his eyes. “Yes, she is, but I have always known what she looks like. I was shocked to see her in the flesh, when and where I least expected it.”

They must have passed a church; the sound of bells tolling was just audible above the rumble of the train. Iolanthe wondered, half in despair, whether there was anything more for her to say than “I'm sorry.” She truly felt terrible for him—and she wished she had better comfort to offer than tired phrases that had no meaning anymore.

Then she was staring at Kashkari.
I have always known what she looks like
.
The girl of my dreams
. “Do you mean to tell me, you have
literally
seen her at night, as you lie asleep?”

Kashkari sighed. “Except my dreams failed to let me know that she would be engaged to my brother.”

Was Kashkari talking about
prophetic
dreams? “Remember last Half, when you told me that an astrologer advised you to attend Eton? My knowledge of astrology is very shallow, but enough to know that the stars rarely give such specifics. Was the astrologer interpreting a dream for you instead?”

“Good deduction. Yes, he was.”

“What did you see?”

“The first dream had me walking around Eton. I didn't know where I was, but after I'd seen the same dream a few times, I asked my father about this school in an English river town, with the ramparts of a castle visible in the distance. I drew for him the outline of the castle. He didn't recognize it, but when he showed it to a friend who'd been to England several times, the friend did, and said it looked like Windsor Castle.

“I didn't go to the astrologer with that dream—I thought it simply meant I would someday visit the area. But then I started seeing a different dream, of dressing myself in these strange, non-Indian clothes and looking in the mirror. We found out that the clothes were the Eton uniform. That was when we consulted the astrologer, who said my stars proclaimed that I would spend most of my youth away from home. After the consultation, my mother turned to me and said, ‘I guess now we know where you are headed.'”

“That's . . . rather amazing,” said Iolanthe, rather amazed.

She didn't know nonmages dreamed like this about the future, but it was narrow-minded of her to assume that only mages could tap into the flow of time, since visions had nothing to do with either subtle or elemental magic.

“It sounds occult, so I don't go around telling everyone. I mean, people here are very fond of their séances, but still.”

“I understand,” said Iolanthe.

They were nearing Slough when she remembered to ask, “So . . . does this mean you weren't in love with the girl of your dreams, only that you kept seeing her?”

She hoped so for Kashkari's sake.

“I wish.” Kashkari sighed. “I have been in love with her all my life.”

 

Titus knocked on Fairfax's door. “You there, Fairfax?”

A long silence elapsed before her response came. “Yes.”

A high wall of an answer.
Yes, I am here, but you are not welcome.

It was almost lights-out at Mrs. Dawlish's. One last batch of boys was coming out of the lavatory. Hanson asked whether anyone had seen his Greek lexicon, which prompted Rogers to run to his room and get it. Sutherland, whose room was across from Cooper's, called for Cooper to open his door; when Cooper did, a pair of socks flew across the width of the corridor, along with a “You took off your socks in my room again!”

She had loved this: the normalcy and silliness of so many boys squeezed into tight quarters. Titus set his hand against her door and wished that he could force time to flow backward. “Good night,” he said, hating the futility of it all.

She said nothing.

Down the hall, Kashkari emerged from Wintervale's room—despite Titus's reassurance that Wintervale's condition would not worsen while he slept, Kashkari had elected to remain by Wintervale's side.

Titus walked over to Kashkari. “How is he?”

“Same. Sleeping soundly, vitals strong—as far as I can tell.” Kashkari hesitated a moment. “Are you absolutely sure you did not give him anything with bee venom as an ingredient?”

“Yes, I am sure,” said Titus, not particularly caring whether Kashkari believed him. “Good night.”

His head throbbed as he walked once more into his laboratory after lights-out. He had a three-hundred-mile one-time vaulting range and had never yet vaulted enough to establish the upper limit for a personal daily range. But with all these trips to the laboratory in the past twenty-four hours, he might be approaching that boundary.

He had brought with him all the remedies that he had taken out of the laboratory: the panacea and the miscellany of remedies that had given Wintervale so much trouble. Titus preferred to be neat—he had very little time to lose to disorganization—but this night he could not handle the otherwise simple task of reshelving the remedies, beyond collecting the vials into a pouch and shoving the pouch into an empty drawer.

The panacea, however, could not be so cavalierly treated. That particular vial he put back into its proper place in the emergency bag he had prepared for Fairfax.

He traced his fingers along the strap of the bag, one of the places where he had left hidden messages for her. He had better erase the messages, which dealt not with their task but with sentiments that were easier to set down in writing than to speak out loud. But he did not want to; it would be almost like erasing her wholesale from his life.

Exhaustion washed over him—not just fatigue, but the loss of hope.

He took a dose of vaulting aid to help with his headache, sat down at the long worktable at the center of the laboratory, and opened his mother's diary. It was the cruelest master he had ever known, but it remained his only trusted guide in an ever-shifting landscape.

 

February 25, YD 1021

 

I hate death visions. I especially hate death visions of those I love.

 

Titus almost closed the diary. He did not want to be reminded of the details of his death, details that made it real and inescapable.

But he could not help reading on.

 

Or, for that matter, a death that would distress someone I love. But I suppose there is no way around it. Death comes when it pleases and the survivors must always grieve.

 

He exhaled. It was not his death. Whose was it then?

 

Fog, a thick yellowness, like butter that had been dropped in dirt. A few seconds pass before I can distinguish a face in the fog. I recognize it immediately as belonging to Lee, dear Pleione's son.

 

Wintervale.

 

He is still a young boy, but several years older than he is now, staring out from behind a closed window at the dense, shifting fog that seemed to be pushing against the glass, looking for a way in.

He is in a bedroom. His, perhaps. I cannot tell, as it is furnished with a great deal of somberness, in a style foreign to my eyes.

No sounds inside or outside the house. I begin to think this might be a silent vision when he sighs audibly, a sound too wistful, too heavy with loss and yearning for a child so young, a child who should want for nothing.

A shriek shatters the quiet. Lee recoils, but runs to the door of his room and shouts, “Are you all right, Mama?”

He is answered by another blood-curdling shriek.

He runs into a corridor—it is a fine house, I am sure, but feels too shabby and cramped for someone of Baron Wintervale's fabulous wealth.

Now he is in a larger, more ornate bedroom. Pleione has thrown herself over the body of her husband. She is sobbing uncontrollably.

“Mama? Papa?” Lee stands by the door, as if afraid to move. “Mama? Is Papa . . .”

Pleione trembles—Pleione, who has always been so composed, so in control of herself. “Go downstairs and tell Mrs. Nightwood to take you to Rosemary Alhambra's house. And when you get there, ask Miss Alhambra to come and to bring the best physician she can find among the Exiles.”

Lee remains where he is.

“Go!” Pleione shouts.

He runs, his footsteps echoing through the corridor.

Pleione returns to her inert husband. Tenderly she cups his face and kisses him on his lips. Her hand trails up and lifts the hair at his temple. I gasped as I saw the faint red dot at his temple, the telltale sign of the execution curse.

 

So it was true, then. The cause of Baron Wintervale's death had been given as a catastrophic failure of the heart, but rumor had circulated for years that he had died of an execution curse ordered by Atlantis.

 

He must have been dead for hours, given how muted the red dot had become. By the time Lee returns with Rosemary Alhambra and a competent physician, the dot—and its twin on the other temple—would have disappeared altogether.

Pleione's gaze turns hard. She grips his lifeless hand. “Perhaps the Angels will have mercy. But I will not. I will not forget and I will not forgive.”

And then she collapses again upon him and weeps.

My vision ended there. I came out to see Titus playing by himself, tracing a small twig on the surface of the fishpond.

I rushed over and hugged him tight. This surprised him, but he let me go on hugging him for a long time.

I had wondered why, in my vision of Baroness Sorren's funeral, it had been so sparsely attended. Granted she is more admired than beloved, but she commands such extraordinary respect that I had always found the emptiness of her funeral both upsetting and ominous.

Now I understood.

This uprising of ours is going to fail. Few will dare to come and pay their last respects to Baroness Sorren because she will have been executed by Atlantis. And Baron Wintervale, while he might escape in the meanwhile, before long he too will succumb to Atlantis's vengeance.

And me, what about me? Should our effort collapse, would the secret of my involvement be revealed? If so, what would be the consequences?

“Want to come feed the fishies with me, Mama?” Titus asked.

I kissed the top of his head, my sweet, wonderful child. “Yes, darling. Let us do something together.”

While we still could.

 

Titus remembered that afternoon. They had not only fed the fish, but played several games of siege and gone for a long walk in the mountains. He had felt quite giddy—it was not often that he was the recipient of his mother's undivided attention. But beneath his pleasure, there had been a sense of unease. That somehow it could all be taken away from him.