Authors: Sherry Thomas
Stars were out, bright and innumerable. He squinted, looking for dark moving spots in the skyâwithout flying sands hitting them and giving away their locations, armored chariots could be descending right above him and he might not know. But for now, no danger loomed overhead.
Their options were remarkably few. She was in no shape to be vaultedâin her current condition, vaulting ten feet could kill her. They had no vehicles and no beasts of burden. Staying in place was out of the question: they were still too close to the blood circle. The farther away they were, the less likely Atlantis would be to find them.
He made ready to walk.
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The wind was sharp as icicles. Temperatures had plunged; Titus's nose and cheeks were numb with cold.
His lightweight tunic, however, kept him warm. The hood of the tunic protected the back of his neck and the top of his head; his hands he kept inside the sleeves, only reaching out occasionally to check Fairfax's pulse.
She floated in the air alongside him, her hands tucked in to her own sleeves, most of her head covered by a scarf he had found, and a heat sheet wrapped over her trousers and boots, which were not made of mage material. Around her middle was a hunting rope, mooring her to him.
She slept peacefully.
Every minute or so he pointed his wand behind himself to delete his footprints from the sand. Every thirty seconds he scanned the sky with a far-seeing spell. He was headed southwest. The first squadron of armored chariots he spied flew at top speed toward the northeast, away from them. The next squadron was more inconveniently placed several miles to the south. While not exactly in his path, there was a chance that they might circle around and pass overhead.
He had been walking for about three hours when he spied tors erupting from the ground, like pillars of a ruined palace. He veered toward them. Fairfax was beginning to sink, the levitation spell wearing off. The night was moonless, but the mass of stars overhead gave the air a faint luminosity; in the pitch-black shadows of the rock pillars, it would be safe for him to put her down and rest for a few minutes.
Soon his boots no longer sank inches with every step. But his calves protested with a different sort of strainâthe land was rising, slowly but unmistakably. And the rock pillars, which from a distance had seemed remarkably straight and uniform, up close resolved into zigzagging, windblown shapes, some with boulder-like tops that balanced precariously on their sand-worn stems.
Fairfax now floated no higher than his knees, the hem of her tunic occasionally brushing against the ground. He wanted her to stay airborne until they were inside the rock formation. But she was sinking too fast to last the rest of the distance. He untied the hunting rope that connected them and set her down.
Her temperature was fineâno hypothermia setting in. Her pulse was also fine, slow but steady. When he coaxed her awake to drink some water, she smiled at him before returning to sleep.
Did she dream? Her breathing was deep and regular. No frowns or fluttering of the eyelids marred the tranquility of her features, almost invisible except for a slight sheen on her cheek and the ridge of her nose. She did not remotely look like a rebel who wanted to topple empires. He would have guessed her to be an upper academy student, the sort whose competence and dedication would annoy her classmates, were it not for her willingness to help them prepare for their examinations.
He turned her hand in his, staring through the dark at her palm, as if lines he could not even see delineated the events that had led her to this time and place. He raised her hand to his lips. The next moment he realized what he was about to do and dropped her hand in a hurry, embarrassed.
Another far-seeing spell revealed that what he had earlier thought to be a single squadron of three armored chariots to the south were actually three different squadrons. Now that he was standing at a much higher vantage point, he could see the light flooding from their bellies, illuminating every square foot of desert in their path as they circled, searching.
They were drawing nearer. He needed to move Fairfax and himself inside the rock formation, or they would be all too visible to that cold, sharp light.
Most likely, there were other creatures that lived inside the shelter offered by the rock formation. Morning dew that gathered on the underside of stones might provide enough moisture to last a well-adapted creature for days. And when there were lizards and tortoises, there would also be scorpions and snakes. Better that he investigate the terrain, to make sure that he would not put her down on top of a nest of vipers.
Leaving Fairfax under a tensile dome, he headed toward the rock formation. His breath steamed. The ground beneath his feet was slippery, a layer of sand on top of hard stone. And above, a spectacular nightscape, the Milky Way slanting across the arc of the sky, a luminous, silver-blue river of stars.
Against this backdrop reared the nearest of the rock columns. At the top of the column rested a bulbous, impossibly balanced boulder. He stopped and squinted. Something seemed to be swaying on the boulder. A snake? A dozen snakes?
His blood ran cold. Hunting ropes. Of course Atlantis would have placed hunting ropes in such a place, in probably all such places in a fifty-mile radius, shelters that he would gravitate toward when he realized how difficult it would be to remain hidden in the open.
He had stopped in the nick of time. The hunting ropes had just begun to stir, sensing his movement. Now he and they were at an impasse. If he moved, they would come after himâand hunting ropes enjoyed speeds far superior to that of a mage on foot. But if he did not move, he and she would both be caught in the glare of the armored chariots' search lights.
He ran. Behind him, dozens of hunting ropes dropped down, one solid plop after another. His feet pounded; his heavy breaths filled his ears. Yet still he could hear them slithering, far lighter and faster than any real snakes.
He slid into the tensile dome just as they reached him. But his safety was temporary. Already they were digging. The ground beneath the dome was hard and compact, but still, it would only be a matter of time before they came up from under him.
He reached for the emergency bag. As he did so, the edge of his hand brushed against something long and flexible. He jumped, a scream rising to his throat, before he realized that it was the hunting rope fastened to Fairfax's person,
their
hunting rope, and not one about to attack him.
A quick untying spell and the hunting rope loosened from Fairfax, separating into three lengths. He took one length and rubbed it end to end three times. “Bring back a scorpion.”
The hunting rope shot out of the tensile dome in the direction of the rock formation. All the other hunting ropes that had been climbing over the tensile dome, or trying to dig underneath, sprinted after it.
What ensued sounded like the ground being whipped with a dozen riding crops.
His hunting rope, while in pursuit, would not stop trying to reach its objective, even if it had been tackled by two dozen other hunting ropes trying to pin it down and tie it up. The hullabaloo should attract all the other hunting ropes in the area, if there were more of them lying in wait, and keep their attention off him.
He gripped Fairfax's hand in relief.
Only to recoil in alarm as a beam of light came around the rock formation, followed by another, and yet another. Above them, silent and dark, armored chariots cut through the night, like beasts of the deep.
England
IOLANTHE WAS STANDING BY THE
window, peeking out from a gap in the curtain, when the prince came into her room.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It's possible I saw someone watching the house from behind the trees in the morning. I couldn't be sure.”
“I would not be surprised. As far as Atlantis is concerned, I am still their sole lead to your whereabouts. If I were them, I too would have me under watch.”
It made sense. She stepped back from the window. “Shall we go then?”
He offered her his arm so she could hitch a vault with him. She bit the inside of her lower lip: she had not touched him since he had broken the news of his mistake in selecting her as his partner.
But this was life: no matter how dramatic the rift, at some point, the daily mundanities took over again, and they must go on living next door to each other, dining at the same table nightly, and even, occasionally, coming into physical contact.
She set her hand on his forearm and he vaulted them to the interior of a small, empty building, a locked brewery on the grounds of a country house. Apparently it wasn't unusual for the butler of an English estate to brew his own ale, especially as the beverage often figured as part of the servants' compensation. But the current master of the house was a leader of the temperance movement. As a result, the brewing equipment had been scrapped and the facility shuttered.
Titus gave her the password and the countersign. She turned the handle of a broom cupboard door, and walked back into the laboratory for the first time in months. It looked more or less the same: books, equipment, and ingredients neatly arranged on shelves, with many cupboards and drawers the contents of which she had yet to explore, since she had visited so infrequently.
Three times in total, in fact: the first time on the day they met; the next time, when he turned her into a canary; the third time, at the end of Summer Half, just before they traveled back to the Domain together.
She had been incandescent with happiness that last time. They had both beenâthey had overcome so much and grown so close. She remembered running hand-in-hand with him toward the laboratory, giddy with hope and fearlessness.
It had been a different age of the world altogether.
“Fairfax,” he said softly.
She turned around. Their gaze held for a moment. He looked drained; she, probably worse.
He set down the Crucible on the worktable. “Here you go. It is yours for as long as you need.”
He spoke with such care, as if she were infinitely fragile and one wrong syllable could shatter her. But she was not fragileâshe was a wielder of lightning and flames.
Someday your strength will overturn the world as we know it,
he had once said.
What was she to do now with all that strength, all that power? Pack it away like an overrobe that had gone out of fashion?
“And feel free to make use the laboratory anytime,” he added, “now that you can get here easily.”
In time she might become less bitter, but now all she heard was the offering of lesser gifts, as if that might make up for his taking away the one thing she truly wanted. “Thank you,” she said woodenly, “most kind of you.”
An uncomfortable silence followed.
She bit the inside of her cheek, sat down at the worktable, and put her hand on the Crucible. “I'll be off, then.”
“If you do not mind me asking, what are you hoping to find in the reading room?”
“The identity of the memory keeper.” The one who had defrauded Master Haywood. Iolanthe had no doubt the woman was involved in his disappearance.
Titus looked alarmed. “You will not do anything rash, will you? You are still the one Atlantis wants.”
Just no longer the one he needed. All the nuisance of the fugitive life and none of the satisfaction of actually mattering.
“I can't do anything rash until I have the information,” she told him.
But she did not go directly to the reading room. Instead, she visited the “The Dragon Princess,” one of the most apocalyptic tales in the entire Crucible. Ruins smoldered under a flame-roiled sky; the air was all smoke and ash. High upon the rampart of the last fortress standing, half deafened by dragon screeches, she called down one thunderbolt after another, littering the scorched earth with dead wyverns and unconscious cockatrices.
An elemental mage was always more powerful in a state of emotional turmoil.
The effort depleted herâshe had never called down so many bolts of lightning in such a short time. Her fatigue wrapped about her, like a cocoon, and made her feel safe, because she was too tired to feel.
And that was how she made the decision to go to the Queen of Seasons' summer villa.
It was a stunning place, ocher roofs and terraced gardens against the backdrop of a steep, rugged massif. Bright red flowers bloomed in stone urns that must be centuries old; fountains splashed and burbled, feeding into a pond from which rose dozens of pale lavender water lilies, their petals held together like hands at prayer.
The air was fragrant with the scent of honeysuckle, mingled with the sun-warmed, resinous note of the cedar forest that sprawled in the surrounding hills. The temperature was that of a perfect summer day, with enough of a breeze that one was never hot, but also enough heat for a cold beverage to be enjoyable.
On a terrace shaded by climbing vines, such beverages had already been laid out, along with an assortment of ices. She tried one that looked like a pinemelon ice, and was shocked to realize, as the tart, fresh flavors burst upon her tongue, that it was indeed pinemelon ice, which she hadn't tasted in years, since it was a specialty of Mrs. Hinderstone's sweets shop, on University Avenue, just minutes from the campus of the Conservatory of Magical Arts and Sciences, where she and Master Haywood had lived.