The Perilous Sea Page 2

  He and Fairfax had discussed dozens of contingency plans, but nothing close to this scenario, where she would be stranded in the Labyrinthine Mountains by herself. For days he could scarcely eat or sleep, until he saw a three-line advertisement at the back of The Delamer Observer, announcing the availability of various bulbs for autumn planting: It was her, informing him that she would meet him back at Eton, at the start of Michaelmas term.

  He had nearly burst with relief—and pride: trust Fairfax to always find a way, no matter how dire the situation. From then it was one long, excruciating wait for the end of summer, for the moment when they would meet again.

  But end of summer had come at last. He had permission to leave for England immediately following the reception. He didn’t know how he held himself together, speaking to group after group of guests. One minute he would be short of breath at the thought of holding her tight, the next minute dizzy with dread—what if she did not walk into Mrs. Dawlish’s house?

  “. . . before you will rule in your own right. I must admit I had hoped to see you at some of my briefings this summer.”

  Two seconds passed before Titus realized he was expected to respond to Commander Rainstone, the regent’s chief security adviser.

  “According to court tradition, I should be seventeen before I sit in at council meetings and security briefings,” he said.

  And he was not due to turn seventeen for several weeks.

  “What difference does a few days make?” asked Commander Rainstone, sounding vexed. “Your Highness will come to age at a most unstable time and will need all the experience you can muster. Were I His Excellency, I would have insisted that Your Highness be made familiar with the running of the state much sooner.”

  His Excellency was Prince Alectus, the regent who ruled in Titus’s stead. Alectus also happened to be Lady Callista’s protector.

  “What would you have me know?” Titus asked Commander Rainstone.

  She had been a member of his mother’s personal staff, long ago, before he was old enough to remember anything. He knew Commander Rainstone primarily from her occasional trips to the castle in the Labyrinthine Mountains, to brief him on matters having to do with the realm’s security, or at least those matters she thought he was old enough to understand.

  Commander Rainstone glanced at the crowd and lowered her voice. “We have intelligence, sire, that the Lord High Commander of New Atlantis has left his fortress in the uplands.”

  This was news to Titus—news that sent a frisson of chill down his spine. “I understand he dined here at the Citadel not long ago. So it can’t be all that unusual for him to leave the Commander’s Palace.”

  “But that event in and of itself was extraordinary: it was the first time he had stepped out of the Commander’s Palace since the end of the January Uprising.”

  “Does this mean Lady Callista should expect him for dinner again?”

  Commander Rainstone frowned. “Your Highness, this is no joking matter. The Lord High Commander does not lightly depart his lair and—”

  She stopped. Aramia, Lady Callista’s daughter, was approaching.

  “Your Highness, Commander,” said Aramia amiably, “I apologize for the intrusion, but I do believe the prime minister would like a word with you, Commander.”

  “Of course.” Commander Rainstone bowed. “If you will excuse me, Your Highness.”

  Aramia turned to Titus. “And you probably have not seen the new addition to the Defeat of the Usurper fountain, Your Highness, have you?”

  Nearly five months ago, at the party not unlike this one, Lady Callista had administered truth serum to Titus on behalf of Atlantis—and she had done so via Aramia, whom Titus had considered a friend. If Aramia had any regrets concerning her action, Titus had not been able to sense it. “I have seen the new addition,” he said coolly. “It was completed two years ago.”

  Aramia reddened, but her smile was persistent. “Allow me to point out some features you may not have noticed. Won’t you come with me, sire?”

  He considered refusing outright. But a stroll away from the canopy did have some merits—at least he would not have to speak to anyone. “Lead the way.”

  Defeat of the Usurper, the largest and most elaborate of the ninety-nine fountains of the Citadel, was the size of a small hill, featuring scores of wyverns being felled by Hesperia the Great’s elemental powers. The long reflecting pool before it extended almost to the edge of the manmade headland on which the Citadel sat. Cliffs dropped three hundred feet straight down to the pounding surf of the Atlantic. In the distance, a pleasure craft, all its sails furled, bobbed upon the sunlit sea.

  Aramia glanced back. Titus’s retinue, eight guards and four attendants, had followed them. But now, with a wave of his hand, they slowed and stayed out of earshot.

  “Mother will be angry with me if she knew what I am about to do.” Aramia reached inside the fountain and flicked the rippling surface. “And she won’t admit it but she is quite frightened by all the meetings with investigators from Atlantis. They make her take truth serum and they are . . . they are not nice at all.”

  “That is what it is like to run afoul of Atlantis.”

  “But isn’t there something you can do for her, after what she has done for you?”

  Titus raised a brow. After what Lady Callista had done for him? “You overestimate my influence.”

  “But all the same—”

  “There you are!” came a clear, musical voice. “I have been looking for you all over.”

  The young woman who approached from the far side of the fountain was eye-wateringly beautiful—skin the color of brown sugar, a face of almost exaggerated perfection, and a cascade of black hair that reached to the backs of her knees.

  Aramia stared, agape, as if unable to believe that there existed one who rivaled her mother in sheer loveliness.

  Titus, who had always been wary of beauty of such magnitude, thanks to his proximity to Lady Callista growing up, had moved past the woman’s features to examine her overrobe. One sometimes heard overrobes ridiculed as resembling upholstery, but this one looked to be actually made from upholstery—from an elaborate lampshade, he corrected himself, with all the tassels and fringes still attached.

  “Would you mind giving me a moment with His Highness?” She spoke to Aramia, her tone courteous but unmistakably firm.

  Aramia hesitated, glancing at Titus.

  “You may leave us,” said Titus. He had nothing more to say to her.

  Aramia walked away, looking back all the while.

  “Your Highness,” said the young woman.

  She had addressed him without first being addressed by him. Titus did not hold to such nonsense when he was at school, but here he was in his own palace, at a diplomatic reception, no less, where the guests loved such etiquette almost as much as they loved their own mothers, possibly more.

  It occurred to him that while she could pass for a member of the Kalahari ambassador’s entourage, he had not seen her earlier, among the crowd under the canopy—and a woman who looked as she did would not have gone unnoticed.

  Not that it had never happened before, a mage crashing a palace party without proper credentials. But the Citadel was on high alert, was it not, after the events of early June?

  “How did you get in?”

  The woman smiled. She was not much older than Titus, twenty or twenty-one. “A man immune to my charms—I like that, Your Highness. Let me get to the point then. I am interested in the whereabouts of your elemental mage.”

  He had to fight against his shock, to not point his wand at her and do something rash. So he rolled his eyes instead. “Your masters have already asked me all the questions. They have even put me under Inquisition. Must we go through more of the same?”

  Her hair streamed in the breeze coming off the sea, like a pirate banner. She extended an arm and rolled up her sleeve. On her forearm, a mark in stark white lines, a four-tusked elephant crushing a whirlpool underfoot—a
symbol of resistance in many realms near or south of the equator. “I am not an agent of Atlantis.”

  “And why should that change my answer? I have no knowledge of the whereabouts of that girl.”

  “We know she is the prophesied one—an elemental mage more powerful than has been seen in centuries. We also know it would be disastrous for those of us who yearn for freedom if she fell into the Bane’s hands. Let us help her. We can make sure the Bane never comes near her.”

  What would you do if the Bane did come near her? Would you kill her so that he never gains her? And what would stop you from killing her from the very beginning, if your sole aim is to keep her away from him?

  “Good luck finding her, then.”

  She leaned closer to him, obviously not about to give up “Your Highness—”

  Shouts erupted. Titus turned around. Guards were running down the steps. His own retinue came sprinting toward him.

  “Oh dear,” said the young woman. “It appears I must take leave of Your Highness.”

  With one pull, her ridiculous overrobe came off entirely. A swift shake and it smoothed and flattened into—of course—a flying carpet, much bigger and finer than the one Titus possessed.

  The young woman, now clad in close-fitting tunic and trousers the color of storm clouds, leaped onto the flying carpet, and with a mock salute at Titus, sped off toward the waiting boat in the distance.

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  CHAPTER ♦3

  The Sahara Desert

  THE GIRL SHOVED THE MAP into her pocket, grabbed the bag, and sprinted toward the body. But instincts she didn’t even know she possessed halted her halfway. Her loss of memory, the trauma remedies in the emergency bag, the note on the map—the worst has happened and I can safeguard you no more—everything about her situation shouted serious and, perhaps, relentless danger. The person in the sand was just as likely to be an enemy as an ally.

  She pulled out her wand, applied a protective shield to herself, and advanced more cautiously. The prone body wore a black jacket and black trousers, a band of white shirt cuff peeking out from underneath a jacket sleeve—nonmage clothes for a man. Nonmage clothes for a man from a different part of the world.

  He was lanky in build, his hair dark despite a coating of dust, his head turned away from her. Her stomach tightened. Was he the one? If she saw his face, if he called her name and clasped her hand in his, would everything come rushing back, like the happiness and good fortune that one always regained at the end of a heroic tale?

  Despite his nonmage attire, he had a wand in hand. The back of his jacket had been ripped, exposing a somber-colored waistcoat underneath—had he tried to protect her? As she drew nearer, his fingers flexed and then tightened on the wand. A wave of relief washed over her: he was still alive and she was not entirely alone in the vastness of the Sahara.

  It was with a good deal of difficulty that she restrained herself from going right up to him. Instead she stopped ten feet away. “Hullo?”

  He didn’t even look in her direction.

  “Hullo?”

  Again, no response.

  Had he lost consciousness? Was the movement of his fingers she’d spied earlier but the involuntary motions of someone suffering from a concussion? She picked up a few grains of sand and tossed them gently in his direction—a tentative knock, so to speak. Five feet from him, the sand hit an invisible barrier in the air.

  The boy turned his head toward her and raised his wand. “Come no closer.”

  He was young and good-looking. But his face failed to trigger a flood of memories. It did not even bring about any vague twinge of recollection, except to make her wonder whether she was as young as he.

  “I mean you no harm,” she said.

  “Then let us part as friendly strangers.”

  Her heart pinched at the word “strangers.” Then her eyes widened: what she had thought to be his waistcoat, beneath his torn jacket, was actually flesh that had been—what? Burned? Infected? Whatever had happened, it looked horrifying. “You are hurt.”

  “I can look after myself.”

  He was still civil, but his meaning was quite unmistakable: Go. You are not welcome here.

  She did not want to force her company on him, even if he were the only person in a hundred mile radius. But that wound of his—he could die of it. “I have remedies that might help you.”

  He exhaled, as if the effort required to speak exhausted him. “Then leave them behind.”

  What she would have liked was for him to tell her things in exchange for the remedies—how had he come to be in the desert, who or what had injured him, and did he, by any chance, know a way for them to reach safety again. Perhaps his lack of reciprocity indicated that he wasn’t as desperately injured as he appeared to be; if she were so badly hurt, she wouldn’t be so fastidious about accepting help.

  Or so she supposed. In truth she had no idea how she would have acted, since she had no memory to guide her choices.

  She shook her head a little and dug into her satchel. “It would help me decide which remedies to give you if you can tell me what kind of injury you have.”

  “I need remedies that relieve pain, disinfect, expel toxin, and regenerate skin and tissue,” he answered, his tone clipped and aloof.

  She was beginning to regret her offer to help. How did she know she herself wouldn’t need those remedies in the very near future? But she extracted the remedies he’d asked for, along with a quantity of food cubes, and sent them to the edge of his shield with a levitation spell.

  “Are you an elemental mage with power over water?” she asked.

  His reply was a half grimace followed by silence.

  “Are you or are you not?” she persisted. All the remedies in the world wouldn’t do him any good when thirst killed him in a few days.

  “How long are you going to draw out this good-bye?”

  She almost took a step back. He snarled as if he had been born for it, the disdain in his voice sharper than wyvern teeth.

  She yanked out a pair of waterskins from the satchel and willed water from underground rivers and oasis lakes to flow to her, while suppressing the urge to utter a wildly mean-spirited retort. He might be surly, but her conscience couldn’t simply abandon him without any water—and no point calling him names when he was already at a disadvantage.

  Water, however, did not materialize on command. She told herself that water, an actual substance, would take its time arriving, and in uncertain quantities, depending on the distance and abundance of the nearest source.

  But what if she had no power over water? Then she was as doomed as the boy.

  A minute passed before the first drop materialized, suspended in midair—she briefly closed her eyes in relief. The boy watched as the water globule grew, remaining utterly unimpressed.

  She filled the waterskins and threw them in his direction. One landed directly on the sand with a gurgle and a plop. The other, which she hurled a little harder, made his shield shimmer slightly before falling to the ground.

  That caught her attention. The waterskin would have bounced off a normal shield. But here, if her eyes did not deceive her, the shield, which was in the shape of a dome, had absorbed the impact.

  A tensile dome. If the boy made it himself, he must be quite the mage.

  “Now that you have displayed your prodigious kindness, will you just go?” the boy all but growled.

  “Yes, I will,” she shot back, “now that you have shown your immense gratitude.”

  He had the decency not to respond.

  She muttered under her breath as she secured all the flaps inside and outside the satchel and strapped it shut. So much for the hope that this sweet-faced boy might be her protector—the only one who would ever matter to him was himself.

  Her heart ached with grief for the stalwart ally she could no l
onger remember. Her fingers spread over the satchel, the physical manifestation of the meticulous care he had taken with her. But how she wished she could recall just one detail about him. His laughter, she thought, if nothing else, that was the memory she would like to carry with her for—

  Her ears pricked. The sandstorm howled as it ever did. But now it sounded as if it was striking large objects in the air—large objects approaching at tremendous speed.

  Was rescue on the way? Or further danger? In either case, she had better see who was coming before deciding whether to let them see her. Earlier she had cleared the air for almost a hundred feet around her; now she allowed the sandstorm to take over, except for the space between her and the boy.

  He, too, listened carefully, his brow furrowed with concentration.

  There were no vibrations in the ground so they had to be aerial vehicles, which implied the presence of mages, as the nonmages’ hot-air balloons and flimsy airships would not be able to advance against a sandstorm of such magnitude.

  The boy hissed. For the first time, his expression betrayed fear. “Armored chariots.”

  Her heart dropped. He was right, the sounds were metallic. Only Atlantis had such vehicles. And at all costs, she must stay away from Atlantis’s grasp.

  She didn’t know why, she only knew that it was imperative. Otherwise, all would be lost.

  The din of sand striking metal diminished, then disappeared altogether. The sandstorm had not abated; the Atlanteans were clearing the air as she had done earlier.

  “Let me in under your dome,” she demanded.

  She would be quite defenseless out here, if the armored chariots decided to dispense death rain—she could whip air into motion, but she could not purify it.