The Perilous Sea Page 15

  Kashkari’s room was almost as spare as the prince’s. A rather ancient-looking rug covered the floor. On the bookshelf gleamed brass plates that bore oil lamps and small heaps of vermillion and turmeric. Above this small altar, the painted image of the god Krishna, sitting with one foot upon the opposite knee, a flute at his lips.

  “Nice curtain,” she pointed her chin toward the sky-blue brocade drapery, which provided a splash of color in the otherwise plain room.

  “Thank you. Something more substantial on the window for the English winter—otherwise cold air just seeps in.”

  Junior boys came, bearing plates of hot beans on toast and eggs. Kashkari poured tea. They talked about Wintervale’s condition, the latest news from India, Prussia, and Bechuanaland—this last forcing Iolanthe to participate. The chair might as well have grown thorns. How much longer must they keep this up? And why had the prince come at all? Yesterday he had begged off tea altogether.

  She glanced at the clock. Twenty-five minutes had passed. Five more minutes, and she was leaving.

  A light knock came at the door.

  It was Mrs. Hancock, with a letter for Kashkari. “This just came in the post for you, dear.”

  Kashkari rose, took the letter from Mrs. Hancock, thanked her, and returned to the table. The envelope was a brown, square one, with large black letters written across both the front and the back. PHOTOGRAPH INSIDE. PRAY DO NOT BEND.

  Kashkari put the letter aside, sat down, and then, with what for him passed as great agitation, rose again. “It’s no use.”

  “What?” asked the prince.

  “I know what it is: a portrait from my brother’s engagement party. I can’t avoid it forever so I might as well open it now.”

  “If you would like us to give you some privacy—” began Iolanthe.

  “I’ve already unburdened myself to the two of you earlier. It would be silly to pretend otherwise.” He opened the envelope and handed the photograph to Iolanthe. “That’s her.”

  Three people were in the frame—Kashkari, a young woman in a sari, and a handsome young man who must be Kashkari’s brother. The woman’s hair was covered by the sari. An enormous nose ring—with a chain attached somewhere in her hair—obscured a good bit of her face. But still it was easy to see that she was extraordinarily lovely.

  “She is beautiful enough to be the girl of anyone’s dreams.”

  Kashkari sighed. “That she is.”

  Iolanthe passed the photograph to the prince, who took a sip of tea as he accepted the photograph from her.

  Almost immediately he began coughing—and kept on coughing.

  Iolanthe was bewildered—the Master of the Domain was not the kind of boy to choke on his tea. Kashkari stood up and struck the prince forcibly between the shoulder blades.

  The prince, panting, returned the photograph to him. “My tea—went down the wrong way. She is—handsome indeed.”

  “She seems to have a strong effect on not just you,” Iolanthe said to Kashkari.

  The prince gave her a strange look. “How did she and your brother meet, Kashkari?”

  “It’s an arranged marriage, of course.”

  “Of course. What I meant was, is she from the same city as you?”

  “No. We belong to the same community, but her family settled years ago in Punjab.” Kashkari smiled weakly. “They could have found any girl to be my brother’s bride, and it had to be her.”

  The prince rose to leave shortly thereafter. Iolanthe stayed a minute longer. Then she was knocking on his door—she must speak to him about the implications of Kashkari’s prophetic dreams—and found herself dragged inside.

  “Kashkari—” she began.

  He cut her off. “That woman in the photograph—she was the one who crashed the garden party at the Citadel. The one who escaped on a flying carpet. The one who asked for you.”

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  CHAPTER ♦17

  The Sahara Desert

  HE WAS STILL SLEEPING, HIS shoulder touching hers, when she woke, perspiring.

  Inside the buried tent, it was dim and prodigiously hot. She called for water, drank her fill, and topped the waterskins. Then she sat up, called for some mage light, and turned her attention to the prince. He was sleeping on his stomach, without his tunic. She sucked in a breath at the sight of the bandage on his back: if it were bright red, it would be one thing, but it was blood mixed with an inky dark substance—an appalling sight.

  “Just my body expelling the poison.” His words were slow and sleepy. “I took every antidote in your bag.”

  She took off the old bandage and destroyed it. “What in the world was it?”

  “It has to be venom of some sort, but I cannot feel any puncture marks.”

  “I don’t see any either.” She handed him a few granules for pain. “It just looks as if your skin has been eaten away by acid, or something.”

  “But this substance is organic, because the antidotes did work.”

  She shook her head. “Such a large area. Almost as if someone had a bucket of venom and just threw it at you.”

  And yet he had walked goodness knew how many miles in this desert, dragging her along.

  She cleaned his wound, sprinkled more topical analgesic, and then spread a regenerative remedy. “Do you know what I am reminded of? Have you ever read the story of Briga’s Chasm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember the pulpwyrms that guard the entrance to the chasm? Those nasty creatures that are big as roads? They are said to spew an endless stream of a black substance that can dissolve a mage down to just teeth and hair.”

  “But pulpwyrms are not real.”

  “Now why must you upset a perfectly good hypothesis with such bothersome things as facts?”

  The corner of his lips lifted—and disrupted her train of thought. She stared at his profile, longer than she ought to, before she remembered that she had a task at hand.

  “How long have you been up?” he asked.

  She pull out two other vials. “Five minutes or so. I filled the water bottles.”

  “You actually sound awake, for once.”

  “I’m slightly groggy, but I don’t feel as if I’ll start snoring in the next minute.”

  He hissed as she sprinkled the contents of one vial onto his back. “Good. I was about to go deaf from your snoring.”

  “Ha!” She decanted another remedy onto his wound, counting the drops carefully. “Speaking of being important, isn’t the Master of the Domain named Titus? It isn’t a very common name.”

  He thought for a moment. “It is quite common among the Sihar.”

  Her brows lifted, but it almost made sense—the Sihar were known for their enthusiasm for and mastery of blood magic. “You think you are Sihar?”

  “I have not the slightest idea. I just did not want to be one of those people who lose their memories and decide they must be the Master of the Domain.” His brows knitted together. “On the other hand, night before last I set off two beacons. Two huge phoenix beacons. And the phoenix does stand for the House of Elberon.”

  She put away all the remedies and rebandaged his back. “Maybe you were a lowly stable boy in one of the prince’s households, where you acquired a love of phoenixes. Having had enough of shoveling muck day in and day out, you set out on an adventure that took you across oceans. You slew dragons, met beautiful girls, and won accolades for your courage and chivalry—”

  “And ended up half-crippled in the middle of a desert?”

  “Every story must have such a terrible moment, or it wouldn’t be interesting.”

  He blew out a breath of air. “I think I have had quite enough of adventures. In the last thirty-six hours, at least three times I thought I would expire of fright. I am ready to beg His Highness to take me back into his employment, so I can shovel muck out of his s
tables in peace and quiet for the remainder of my natural life.”

  She grinned. “I love a man of ambition.”

  He smiled again. And again she was quite, quite distracted.

  “I have to admit,” he said, “the desert night sky is stunning. I would not mind an opportunity to enjoy it without Atlantis on my tail—a camp fire, a cup of something hot, and the entire cosmos for my view pleasure.”

  “A man of ambition—and simple tastes.”

  “What would you do, if Atlantis weren’t chasing us from one end of the Sahara to the other?”

  She thought about it. “You might laugh, but if Atlantis wasn’t in the picture, I would wonder whether I am falling behind in my classes by being in the Sahara in the middle of an academic term.”

  He did laugh.

  “Laugh all you want. I am not going to apologize for my burning desire to succeed in my studies.”

  “Please do not. Besides, I will wager that is what your beau loves most about you.”

  She sat back on her haunches. “How do you know about him?”

  “The hidden writing on the strap of your bag.”

  She grabbed the satchel. “Revela omnia.”

  Words appeared. The night you were born, stars fell. The day we met, lightning struck. You are my past, my present, my future. My hope, my prayer, my destiny.

  Her protector.

  “The man is mad about you,” said Titus.

  She looked back at him, the grime, the exhaustion, his lips cracked from the sheer desiccation of the desert. Her own lips were nowhere near in as terrible shape—he had taken better care of her than he had of himself.

  “You could be him, for all we know,” she said, securing a new piece of bandaging to his person.

  He shifted. “I could not possibly write anything like that. I am sorry, but there ought to be a law against such sentences as ‘The day we met, lightning struck.’”

  With a wave of her hand, she got rid of the grit that had become stuck in his hair. A few other cleaning spells and he was almost spotless. “Maybe you were too busy packing for every eventuality to polish your words.”

  “We former muck-shoveling stable boys can pack and produce deathless prose at the same time.”

  The mage light caught a few specks of discoloration his shoulders: a smattering of freckles, which she had not noticed before. Quite an appealing detail on an otherwise strong, tight frame, like a constellation for the fingertip to explore, to move from point to point and—

  The texture of his skin—and the fact that he started—made her realize that she was touching him.

  “You skin is a bit sticky,” she said quickly, thought it wasn’t at all. “All that perspiration doesn’t come off just with spells. Let me wash you with some water. You’ll feel more refreshed.”

  “That might be too much trouble. You should take more rest.”

  “Fortune shield me, I have literally been sleeping for days.”

  The globule of water she summoned spun furiously in the air, reflecting her agitation. What was the matter with her? She should take the excuse he offered her and leave him alone. But she couldn’t seem to stop.

  She wetted his hair and used the washing bar from the satchel, which produced a soft, fat lather. Her fingertips pressed into his scalp, working the lather into every strand. She summoned more water to pour over his hair. The water that sluiced down she sent back out of the tent, toward the center of the dune.

  When she was done, she drew out the water that still clung to his hair and waved it away. With her fingertips, she patted his hair, making sure that it had dried properly.

  And now, she would lift her hand and tell him, All done.

  But nothing of the sort happened. Instead, her palm slid down to his nape. Then, as she watched, half horrified, her fingers spread out where his shoulder joined his neck.

  He sucked in a breath.

  She opened her mouth to tell him that none of it was happening, that it had to be a hallucination on his part—and hers. But the warmth of his skin beneath her hand was no illusion. And curiously, that skin grew cooler as her hand traveled to the edge of his shoulder and down his arm.

  All of a sudden he was on his knees, facing her. They stared at each other. His eyes were blue-gray, she noticed for the first time, the color of oceans of unfathomable depths.

  She loved her abstract protector, but she knew only this boy, who gave her more water than he did to himself. She traced a finger down his cheek. He caught her hand. She held her breath, not knowing whether he would push her hand away or press his lips into her palm.

  A ground-shaking roar shattered the moment.

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  CHAPTER ♦18

  England

  “THAT MAKES SENSE.”

  Whatever reaction Titus had expected from Fairfax, upon being told that Kashkari’s beloved was a mage who wanted her handed over, this was not it.

  “What do you mean?”

  She told him about her two separate conversations with Kashkari concerning his prophetic dreams, culminating with the dream about her, long before she had ever stepped into Mrs. Dawlish’s house. “It’s fairly safe to assume that Kashkari is from a mage family, probably one in Exile.”

  “You should have told me much sooner. Anything that affects you I must know right away.”

  Everything had changed, yet nothing had changed. He still lay awake at night, worrying about her safety. And when he woke up each morning, she was still the one he thought of first and foremost.

  She tapped her fingers on the top of a chair—the one in which she used to sit, when they trained in the Crucible together in the Summer Half. “Kashkari has not betrayed me, so for now we can assume he means neither of us harm. What we need to know is why, after keeping his own identity a secret for so long, he now chooses to reveal himself to us.”

  The inside of Titus’s skull throbbed. He could not believe that he had lived in the same house as Kashkari for so long without ever guessing the truth. What else had he missed? “I need to consult my mother’s diary first.”

  That was the wrong thing to say to her, but she gave no reaction other than turning down one corner of her lips.

  “I would prefer to make my decision after I have gathered all the available intelligence. It would be criminal to ignore what she might have foreseen.” He hated that he felt compelled to defend how he chose to proceed.

  She smiled slightly—or was it a grimace? “You must do as you see fit, of course.”

  “I am not looking forward to it, you know. I am—”

  She gripped him by the front of his shirt. “Don’t. You have made your choice. Now commit to it! If you are going to ask Wintervale to face the Bane, then he deserves at least that much from you.”

  Her voice, halfway between anger and anguish. Her eyes, dark and ferocious. Her lips, full and red, parted with her agitated breaths.

  He should not, but he cupped her face and kissed her. Because they were past the point when words were any use. Because he was once again afraid to die. Because he loved her as much as he loved life itself.

  A loud knock had them hurriedly pulling apart.

  “Are you there, prince?” Kashkari called. “Wintervale is awake and he wants to see you.”

  Wintervale was sitting up in bed, a big smile on his face.

  “Titus, good to see you. You too, Fairfax. How did the cricket practices go? Did they miss me?”

  “Desperately,” said Fairfax, smiling convincingly. “Boys threw themselves down, howling and beating the earth, when your absence was made clear.”

  Wintervale placed a hand over his chest. “Now that warms the cockles of my heart.”

  Flinging aside his blanket, he set his feet on the floor. Both Titus and Fairfax sprang forward to help him. But Wintervale raised one palm to indicate that he wanted t
o stand up himself.

  Fairfax, strong as she was, barely caught him when he tipped over. “God almighty, Wintervale. There must be full-grown steer in Wyoming less heavy than you are.”

  Surprise was written all over Wintervale’s face. “What is this? I felt perfectly fine just now.”

  “You have been bedridden two entire days,” said Titus. “Hardly surprising that your legs are wobbly.”

  “Guess one of you will have to help me to the lavatory then.”

  “That is a task for a real man,” said Titus. “I am afraid you will have to step aside, Fairfax.”

  “I knew it. You are still bitter from the time we compared our bollocks.”

  Wintervale tittered as he shuffled out, his arm over Titus’s shoulders.

  He was warmly greeted up and down the corridor. On the way back, they stopped several times to talk to boys who wanted to know how he was getting along.

  “Gentlemen, let Wintervale go back to bed,” came Mrs. Hancock’s firm voice. “If you wish to visit him and chitchat, do it in a way that will not tax him.”

  “Mrs. Hancock wanted to see you as soon as you woke up,” said Kashkari, who must have gone to fetch her.

  Wintervale grinned at the woman. “Of course you would, dear Mrs. Hancock.”

  Fairfax was still there in Wintervale’s room when they returned. She helped Wintervale settle back into bed. But as more and more boys trickled in, she slipped away, largely unnoticed.

  Iolanthe opened the door to the laboratory to the sound of a typewriter clacking.

  The prince had a typing ball, which transmitted messages from Dalbert, his personal spymaster. The typing ball had once been stored in a cabinet in his room at Mrs. Dawlish’s, but he had moved it to the laboratory for safekeeping.

  The brass keys, looking like chunky quills on a very nonthreatening porcupine, stopped pistoning up and down as she reached it. She rolled out the piece of paper that had been set on the tray underneath.

  The message would appear to be gibberish, but he had taught her to decipher the code. She had asked him to, she remembered with a pang, the day she first decided that she would actually help him with his impossible goal.