The Burning Sky tet-1

by Shelly Thomas

  And the oppression of his destiny.

  Two shrill steam blasts announced the train’s arrival in Slough. Dalbert pulled down the window shades and handed Titus his satchel.

  “May Fortune walk with you, sire.”

  “May Fortune heed your wish,” replied Titus.

  Dalbert bowed, Titus inclined his head—and vaulted.

  None of the opening spells Iolanthe knew worked. She did not have power over wood. Water was useless here, as was fire. She could keep herself safe from fire, but were she to set the trunk aflame, either from inside or outside, she’d still succumb to smoke inhalation.

  Unless someone freed her, she was stuck.

  She didn’t often give in to panic, but she could feel hysteria rising in her lungs, squeezing out air, squeezing out everything but the need to start screaming and never stop.

  She forced her mind to go blank instead, to breathe slowly and try for a measure of calm.

  The Inquisitor wants me?

  Badly.

  The Inquisitor was the Bane’s de facto viceroy to the Domain. Once, when Iolanthe had been much younger, she’d asked Master Haywood why mages were so afraid of the Inquisitor. His answer she’d never forgotten: Because sometimes fear is the only appropriate response.

  She shuddered. If only she’d listened to Master Haywood. Then the light elixir would have been safe—and she’d never have brought down the lightning.

  She dropped her face into her hands. Something cold and heavy pressed into the space between her brows: the pendant the prince had given her before he shoved her on her way.

  A new smidgeon of fire revealed the pendant to be a half oval made of a gleaming silver-white metal, with faint tracery on its surface. At first it remained icy to the touch—proximity to her fire made no difference. Then, for no reason she could discern, it warmed to room temperature.

  The prince’s presence had to be one of the most puzzling aspects of the day, second only to Master Haywood’s anguished ignorance.

  Master Haywood had known that she should be kept away from the prying eyes of Atlantis. He had prepared a satchel in the event of an emergency evacuation. How could he not know then where she was going or what was in the satchel?

  The satchel!

  She shoved the pendant into her pocket, called for more fire—taking care that it didn’t come near her hair or her clothes—and searched inside the satchel. Her fingers encountered fabric, leather, a silky pouch with jingling coins, and at last, an envelope.

  The envelope contained a letter.

  My dearest Iolanthe,

  I have just come from your room. You are a week short of your second birthday, sleeping with a sweet gusto under the singing blanket that was still crooning softly to you as I closed the door behind me.

  I want a secure, uneventful future for you. It fills me with dread to think of you someday reading this letter, still a child, yet utterly alone, as you must be.

  (I can’t help but wonder how your power would have manifested itself. By causing the Delamer River to flow in reverse? Or shearing the air of a sunny day into a cyclone?)

  Nightly I pray that we will never come to it. But it has been agreed that for the sake of everyone’s safety, I will give up my knowledge of certain events to a memory keeper. After tomorrow, I will only know that I must guard the extent of your powers from the notice of Atlantis, and that if I were to fail, to distance you from immediate harm.

  You no doubt crave explanations. Yet explanations I dare not set down in writing, for fear that this letter falls into the wrong hands, despite all my precautions. Only remember this: Keep away from any and all agents of Atlantis. Every last mage in pursuit of you seeks to abuse and exploit your powers.

  Trust no one.

  Trust no one, that is, except the memory keeper. She will find you. And she will protect you to her dying breath.

  To help her, remain where you are for as long as you can—I have been assured that the end-portal will be kept at a secure location. But by all means use caution. You cannot be careful enough. And whatever you do, do not repeat the action that brought you to Atlantis’s notice in the first place.

  Be careful, Iolanthe. Be careful. But do not despair. Help will reach you.

  I want nothing more than to take you into my arms and assure you that all will be well.

  But I can only pray ardently that Fortune walks with you, that you discover hitherto unimagined strength in yourself and encounter unexpected friends along this perilous path that you must now tread.

  All my love,

  Horatio

  P.S. I have applied an Irreproducible Charm to you. No one can capture your likeness—and therefore Atlantis will not be able to disseminate your image.

  P.P.S. Do not worry about me.

  How could she not worry about him? The Inquisitor would be furious when she realized that he’d deliberately given up his memories to foil her. And if—

  A thump in the floor—a vibration that shot up Iolanthe’s spine—scattered her thoughts. She shoved the letter back into the satchel and extinguished her fire. For a moment she could hear nothing, and then it came again, the thump. Her fingers closed around her wand.

  She lifted the disc covering the peephole. Part of the floor lifted. A trapdoor—she was in an attic. Light wafted up from the opening, illuminating crates, chests, and shelves upon which crowded ranks and rows of dusty curiosities.

  The trapdoor rose farther, accompanied by a squeak of the hinge. A lantern made its way into the attic, followed by a woman with a wand. She raised the lantern. It glowed brighter and brighter, rivaling the blinding brilliance of noonday.

  Iolanthe squinted against the glare. The woman was about forty and quite lovely: deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, and wide lips. Her hair was very fair, almost white in the eye-watering light, swept up to the top of her head. Her pale blue gown was of a fashion Iolanthe had never seen. It buttoned all the way to her chin and cinched to a tiny handspan at the waist, with tight sleeves that ended below her elbow in swishes of lace.

  Who was the woman? Was she, by happy chance, the memory keeper who should find Iolanthe?

  “So, you are finally here,” the woman said, speaking as if through clenched teeth.

  Iolanthe’s stomach dropped. The woman’s tone was grim, hostile even.

  The woman pointed her wand at the trunk. Things snapped and clanked to the floor. Locks? No, chains. Iolanthe could see thick metal links from the peephole.

  “Aperi,” said the woman, using the simplest opening spell now that the restraints had been removed.

  Some deep-seated instinct made Iolanthe clutch at the latch. She had not moved three times in seven years without learning a thing or two about reading people: whoever this woman was, she did not mean well.

  The latch twitched against Iolanthe’s hand, but she kept it in place.

  “Aperi,” the woman repeated.

  Again the latch fidgeted.

  The woman frowned. “Aperi maxime.”

  This time the latch twisted and bucked like a caught animal bent on escape. Iolanthe’s fingers hurt with the strain of keeping it from disengaging.

  At last the latch stilled. But she barely caught a breath before the woman called, “Frangare!”

  Frangare was a mason’s spell, used for cleaving boulders in two. The trunk must have been protected: it did not crack open, not even the smallest of fractures.

  “Frangare!” the woman cried again. “Frangare! Frangare! Frangare!”

  Iolanthe’s fingers were icy with fear. The trunk remained intact. But for how much longer? She tried to vault—and moved not an inch: no self-respecting mage dwellings allowed vaulting within its perimeters.

  The woman set down the lantern and clutched the bodice of her dress, as if exhausted. “I forgot,” she said slowly. “He made the trunk indestructible so I could not get rid of it.”

  So there was a man about. Could he help Iolanthe?

  “On his deathbed he asked
me to swear a blood oath that I would protect you as I would my own child, from the moment I first saw you,” the woman said softly. Then she laughed, a sound that chilled Iolanthe’s blood. “He wanted much, did he not?”

  The woman lifted her head; her face was cold and blank, her eyes burning with fervor. “For you he gave up his honor,” she said. “For you he destroyed us all.”

  Who was this madwoman? And why had anyone believed this house to be a secure location?

  The woman raised her wand. The chains slammed back into place around the trunk. Her lips moved silently, as if she were praying.

  Iolanthe held her breath. For a long minute, nothing seemed to happen. Then the ends of her hair fluttered. The trunk was shut, she herself was still—how could air move? Yet it moved. In only one direction: out of the trunk.

  The woman intended to suffocate Iolanthe right in the trunk.

  And air was the only element over which Iolanthe had no control whatsoever.

  Titus’s pendant had warmed appreciably as he reached England. It had warmed further after he materialized in London.

  Many Exiles from the Domain, accustomed to the urban life of Delamer, had chosen to settle in London, the closest thing Britain had to an equivalent. The girl had likely arrived at the home of an Exile.

  The city was in the throes of one of its infamous fogs. He saw well enough with his fog glasses, but no one on the ground could spot him on his flying carpet.

  Flying carpets were once the fastest, most comfortable, and most luxurious mode of travel. In this age of expedited channels, however, they had become antiques, much admired but little used. Titus’s carpet, measuring four feet in length, two in width, and barely a quarter of an inch in thickness, was actually a toy—and not meant for any child to ride on, but for dolls.

  He flew over the town house of Rosemary Alhambra, the Exiles’ leader, but the pendant did not react further. Next he tried the house of the Heathmoors, considered the most powerful mages among the Exiles—still nothing. He was on his way to the home of Alhambra’s lieutenant when the pendant heated abruptly.

  He had just passed Hyde Park Corner. The only mage family who lived nearby were the Wintervales. Surely not. No one in their right mind would entrust this girl to Lady Wintervale.

  But as he circled above the Wintervale house, the pendant grew so hot he had to pull it outside his shirt so it would not scald his skin.

  Wintervale House was one of the most tightly secured private dwellings Titus knew. Fortunately—most fortunately—Leander Wintervale, the son of the house, was Titus’s schoolmate, and there was a way to access the house from the former’s room at school.

  Titus landed on a nearby roof, took off his fog glasses, and rolled the carpet into a tight bundle to carry under his arm. From there he vaulted to his resident house at school. Specifically, into Archer Fairfax’s perennially unoccupied room.

  A glance out of Fairfax’s window showed Wintervale and Mohandas Kashkari, an Indian boy and Wintervale’s good friend, behind the house. The rain had reduced to a mist. Kashkari, the calmer of the two, stood in place; Wintervale paced around him, talking and gesticulating.

  Excellent—now Titus did not need to devise a way to get Wintervale away from his room. He opened Fairfax’s door a fraction of an inch and peered out.

  Many of the boys had returned. A cluster stood talking at the far end of the passage. But they decided to go to Atkins’ to buy some foodstuff and stomped down the stairs.

  Once the corridor was empty, Titus dropped the flying carpet on the floor of his own room—after much tinkering he had fortified it enough to carry his weight, but the combined weight of both himself and the girl would keep the carpet grounded. Next he slipped into Wintervale’s room four doors down, squeezed inside Wintervale’s narrow wardrobe, and closed the door.

  “Fidus et audax.”

  He opened the wardrobe again to step into Wintervale’s room at the family’s London town house. The corridor outside was empty. He made for the stairs. Descending turned the pendant cooler. Ascending, hotter.

  He sprinted up the steps.

  There was still air in the trunk; it whished softly as it left. But breathing already felt like heaving a boulder with her lungs.

  Soon the madwoman would have Iolanthe sealed in a vacuum. Her fingers shook. She looked out of the peephole, searching frantically for something she could use to help herself.

  There! On a shelf in the recesses of the attic, among dusty metal instruments, stood one lone statuette of stone.

  She could not manipulate ceramic—cooking the earth changed its properties—but she did have power over stone. She elevated the statuette. It hovered a few inches above the shelf. She swung her arm. The statuette smashed into the back of the woman’s head.

  The woman cried. Her wand clattered to the floor. She did not, however, lose consciousness as Iolanthe had hoped, but only stumbled until she banged into crates piled against the wall.

  Iolanthe hesitated. Should she attack the woman again in the latter’s weakened state?

  But the woman already had her wand back in her hand. “Exstinguare.”

  The stone statuette turned into dust. “Now what are you going to use?” said the woman, with a chilling smile.

  Suddenly the air inside the trunk was so thin Iolanthe became light-headed. It felt as if someone had pushed her face into wet cement. Try as she did, she could not draw a single breath.

  Faintly, very faintly, she became aware that something burned against her left thigh. Then everything went black.

  As he arrived below the open trapdoor, Titus heard Lady Wintervale speaking.

  “What have you done?” Her voice was low yet frantic. “Never again, remember? You were never, never to kill again.”

  A blade of fear plunged into Titus’s heart. Lady Wintervale’s paranoia ran deep, and her sanity was not always reliable. Was he too late?

  He wrapped a muffling spell about the rickety steps and climbed up. The moment he had Lady Wintervale in view, he pointed his wand. Tempus congelet, he mouthed, not wanting her to hear his voice before the time-freeze spell took effect.

  If the spell took effect. He had never used it in the real world.

  Lady Wintervale stilled. He darted past her to the trunk.

  “Are you there? Are you all right?”

  The trunk was as silent as a coffin.

  He swore. The chains did not respond to the first few spells he tried. He swore again. If he had more time, he could coax the chains. But there was no time: the time freeze spell lasted three minutes at most. And the girl, if she was still alive, must be let out right away.

  He looked about. There was nothing he could use. A moment later, however, he saw that the chains did not go around the trunk all the way, but were instead fastened to plates bolted to the side of the trunk. And the magic that anchored the plates to the trunk was ordinary enough that a stronger-than-usual unfastening cant did the trick.

  He flung back the chains, but the trunk lid lifted only a fraction of an inch. What more obstacles stood in his way?

  “Aperi.”

  The sound of something unlatching. He hoisted up the lid. The girl was slumped over, her face invisible beneath her still-wild hair.

  His mind went blank. She could not possibly be dead. Could she?

  Reaching inside, he lifted a limp wrist and searched for a pulse. His heart thudded as he encountered a feeble throb in her vein.

  “Revisce!”

  No reaction.

  “Revisce forte!”

  Her entire person shuddered. Her head slowly rose. Her eyes opened. “Highness,” she mumbled.

  He was weak with relief. But again, no time to indulge. “Hold still, I will get you out. Omnia interiora vos elevate.”

  Everything in the trunk floated: the girl, who gasped and thrashed to find herself airborne; her wand; her satchel; and a great many items of clothing that must have been packed before the trunk was closed the first time. Not a s
ingle piece of clothing was nonmage. If the trunk had been entrusted to the Wintervales, it would have been before their exile.

  He caught the girl, her wand, and her satchel, and let everything else fall back into the trunk. A quick swish closed the trunk. An undo spell set the plates and the chains back into place. Then he was easing the two of them out the trapdoor, with an “Omnia deleantur” tossed behind him to erase his footprints and any other traces he might have left in the dust of the attic.

  “Did she hurt you?” he asked at the first stair landing.

  “She siphoned all the air from the trunk.”

  He looked down at the girl in his arms. Her breathing was labored, but she hung on to her composure remarkably well for someone who had just endured an attempt on her life—or perhaps she was simply too breathless for hysteria.

  “Why did she want to kill me?” she rasped.

  “I do not know. But she is disturbed—she lost her father and her sister in the uprising. Her husband also died young.”

  Back in Wintervale’s room two stories below, he sat her on the bed and opened the opposite window. Fog rushed in.

  “What’s that smell?”

  “London.”

  “London, England?”

  He was glad that she had some knowledge of nonmage geography. “Yes. Here. Let me—”

  The unmistakable sound of someone arriving in the wardrobe. Lady Wintervale must have come out of the time freeze, found the trunk empty, and summoned her son. Titus shut the window, yanked the girl off the bed, and pushed her flat against the wall in the blind spot behind the wardrobe.

  She had the sense to keep still and silent.

  The wardrobe opened. Wintervale leaped down. Titus’s heart imploded: the girl’s satchel was in plain sight under the windowsill—he had set it down earlier to open the window. But Wintervale paid no attention to the contents of his room and rushed out to the corridor.