The Burning Sky tet-1

by Shelly Thomas

  A seemingly endless silence followed her command.

  How dare you defy me? Do it NOW.

  There came a dull sound of impact, followed by several sharp crashes and an unearthly shriek. Then all of a sudden, silence. Iolanthe opened her eyes. The Inquisition Chamber was bright as day, the floor aglow with spilled light elixir, its luminance no longer dampened by the opacity of the porcelain spheres.

  Doors burst open. Mages rushed in.

  “Your Excellency!” shouted the Inquisitor’s minions.

  “Your Highness!” cried Lowridge.

  The prince lay crumpled on the floor. Blood smeared his face, his collar, and the floor beneath his head.

  Iolanthe barely avoided being trampled as she hopped toward him. She flapped her largely useless wings, bumped into one guard’s calf, and then shot under another guard’s groin to land, badly, on the prince’s shoulder.

  The captain of the guard checked the prince’s pulse, his face grim with worry.

  “Is he still alive, sir?” asked one of the guards.

  “He is,” said the captain. “We must get him to safety without delay.”

  But Baslan barred the way. “I demand an account of what happened to Madam Inquisitor.”

  Iolanthe noticed for the first time that the Inquisitor, like the prince, was on the floor. Anxious minions surrounded her. Iolanthe couldn’t see her face, but she seemed as unconscious as he.

  The captain rose to his full height and towered over Baslan. “How dare you ask what happened to the Inquisitor? What has she done to our prince? If you do not remove yourself from my path this instant, I will consider this a provocation of war and act accordingly.”

  Iolanthe couldn’t breathe. She’d been frantic with fear for the possibility of irreversible damage the Inquisitor might have caused the prince; it had not even occurred to her what a diplomatic nightmare she’d brought on by interrupting the Inquisition.

  Baslan wavered.

  But Captain Lowridge did not. With two of the guards’ ceremonial spears and his own cape, he concocted a makeshift stretcher. The guards placed the prince onto the stretcher and marched out of the Inquisition chamber behind their captain.

  The chariot was still in the courtyard. Captain Lowridge carefully deposited the prince’s limp person on the floor of the chariot and took the reins himself. Atlantean soldiers blocked the exit. Iolanthe’s wings twitched. If it came to that, did she dare bring down another bolt of lightning?

  “Make way for the Master of the Domain.” Captain Lowridge’s voice was a rumble that seemed to carry for miles. “Or you will have declared war on him. And none of you will ever see Atlantis again.”

  The soldiers looked at one another. Finally, one shuffled a step to the side, and the rest followed. A sergeant opened the triple gates. Captain Lowridge sped the chariot outside, his guards behind on their mounts.

  They cleared the boundaries of the Inquisitory in no time. Captain Lowridge whistled. At his command, the pegasi spread their wings and the chariot became airborne.

  “The Citadel,” he shouted at his subordinates.

  “No,” said the prince. Iolanthe started. She thought him unconscious still. “Not the Citadel. The castle.”

  His eyes remained shut, his voice was low and weak, but he was most certainly lucid.

  “Yes, sire,” answered the captain. He repeated the prince’s order. “We make for the castle without delay.”

  “Canary,” muttered the prince.

  Iolanthe hopped onto his bloodstained palm. His hand closed about her. Another time she’d have protested the hold as too tight, but now she was only fiercely glad he had enough strength left to grip her so.

  They raced for the expedited airway, the night traffic over Delamer yielding to the princely standard flying over the chariot. The kick of acceleration told Iolanthe they had left Delamer. She was never so happy to be almost asphyxiated. The prince grunted in pain as they were spewed out the other end.

  She rubbed her head against the edge of his palm. Almost to safety—they would be all right.

  “Your Highness, if you would,” said the captain, once they were above the Labyrinthine Mountains.

  The prince drew his wand and feebly muttered something. To the southeast a flare shot up in the sky, illuminating the highest towers of the castle.

  “Thank you, sire.”

  The captain steered toward the direction of the flare. Iolanthe had forgotten that with the arrhythmic shifting of the mountains, even those who lived in the castle must look for it each time they left and came back.

  The prince asked to be let off at the landing arch at the top of the castle, rather than in the courtyard. He allowed the captain to help him out of the chariot and leaned on the latter to walk.

  His valet, his attendants, and a horde of pages ran up. They pressed in around him. He ordered them to leave him alone, sounding peevish in that way he did so well.

  “Stand back, you idiots. I cannot breathe.”

  “The court physician is on his way,” said an attendant.

  “Send him away.”

  “But sire—”

  “Send him away or I will send you away. I will not have people say I needed to be patched up after a mere conversation with that gorgon.”

  But of course he needed to be patched up. He’d bled so much—and from his ears.

  Nevertheless the prince prevailed. He barred the majority of the crowd outside the doors of his apartment. Most of the rest were allowed no farther than the anteroom.

  The court physician, who had disregarded his wishes and come all the same, was not only denied entrance to the prince’s bedchamber, but also awarded a tirade.

  “Do you dare insinuate that I cannot talk to the Inquisitor for ten minutes without needing medical attention? What kind of a weakling do you take me for? I am the bloody heir of the bloody House of Elberon. I do not need a know-it-all sawbones after a chitchat with that Atlantean witch.”

  Even the valet was given the boot after he helped the prince take off his overrobe. “Go.”

  “But sire, at least allow me to clean you.”

  “Who do you think cleans me when I am at school? I am not one of those old-time princes who cannot wipe their own arses. Leave.”

  The valet protested. The prince pushed him out of the bedchamber and shut the door in his face.

  He swayed, caught himself on a small fruit tree that grew in a glazed pot, staggered into the water closet, and vomited.

  Iolanthe chirped unhappily where she’d been left—just outside the closed door of the water closet. Faucets ran. Sounds of splashes came. The prince emerged ashen, but with most of the blood on his face washed off.

  He picked her up and wobbled as he straightened. “You wanted to be in the bath with me earlier today, darling, did you not? Well, now you get your wish.”

  Once the amethyst tub had been filled, Titus climbed in fully clothed. He washed the blood from Fairfax’s feathers, then recited the password. The next instant, he was sitting in a different tub, an empty one, his clothes and her feathers perfectly dry.

  “Welcome to where I am supposed to go to school,” he murmured.

  The former monastery was a place of solitude and contemplation, a refuge from the pressures of the throne. It was also used as a site of learning, its clear air and distance from worldly distractions judged helpful to the studies of a princeling.

  Titus did spend months here every year between Eton halves, reading, practicing, and experimenting. For someone who must keep secrets, it was a haven, as free from spies and surveillance as it was possible to be these days. There was no indoor staff except for those he chose to bring, and the outdoor staff came only once a week to maintain the grounds.

  He climbed out of the tub, as clumsy as a sleepy toddler. One hand on the wall to steady himself, he inched down long, echoing corridors, stopping every minute or so to close his eyes and catch his breath.

  Every time he did so, an ominous scen
e played upon the inside of his lids, of wyverns and armored chariots crisscrossing the sky in a choreography of deadly gracefulness. The vision had first come to him in the Inquisition Chamber, supplanting the image of his mother and her canary, just before a surge of horrendous pain rendered him unconscious.

  And now it repeated itself whenever he closed his eyes for more than a few seconds.

  Fairfax chirped as he opened the door of the repository. “Yes, I modeled my laboratory after this place. But this is much grander, isn’t it?”

  The repository was ten times bigger, its shelves holding every substance known to magekind. He opened drawers and squinted—his headache gave him double vision.

  “We are in trouble.” He wished he would shut up, but the truth serum still pulsed in his veins and he was too weak to fight it. In any case, she would not remember a thing once she resumed human form. “I am afraid I have not convinced the Inquisitor of anything except my willingness to go to extraordinary lengths to conceal the truth from her.”

  Fairfax trembled in his hand. Or perhaps it was just him, shaking.

  He poured an array of remedies down his gullet, followed by two bottles of tonics. They tasted like water that had been left out for a fortnight, thick with growing scum. He had not bothered to make them less disgusting, thinking he would be manly enough, in times of necessity, not to quibble over such minor details as flavor and texture.

  He was wrong, as evidenced by another trip to the water closet to vacate the contents of his stomach.

  Stumbling back out, he collected Fairfax from the counter where he had deposited her and headed for a different section of the repository, leaning against counters along the way to preserve his strength.

  “I need to turn you back,” he said, showing Fairfax a glass vial of white granules he had located. “You would have turned back on your own sometime during the night, but better you do it while I am still lucid.”

  He counted out three granules. She reached eagerly toward them. He blocked her beak. “No, not now, unless you plan to appear naked before me. Wait, that is your plan, is it not?”

  He meant to leer at her but had to grimace when his head throbbed again.

  She pecked hard at the outside of his hand.

  “‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks,’” he quoted. “Never mind. You do not know any Shakespeare, you ignoramus.”

  Fairfax in hand, he zigzagged to an adjacent room, where he sometimes slept when he stayed too late in the repository. He pulled out the sheet covering the thin mattress, placed her on the cot, laid the three granules before her, and spread the sheet over the whole cot again, burying her beneath it. His tunic and boots he peeled off so she would have something to wear. The tunic had not entirely escaped his bleeding, but considering the circumstances, it was pristine enough.

  “Remember, it will be unpleasant and you will not be able to move immediately afterward. I will wait in the repository.”

  She chirped after a few seconds, perhaps trying to make sure he had vacated the premises.

  “I am still here, shuffling along,” he answered.

  She chirped again. She was most likely telling him to hurry, but he chose to have a little fun with her—there was a severe scarcity of fun in his life. “You are anxious? Imagine how I feel, darling.”

  She chirped twice in a row. He wished he did not feel so wretched—carrying on an imaginary conversation with her would otherwise have been a highly rewarding use of his time.

  “How can you help? If you will only . . .” He stopped.

  He had been trying, with no apparent success, to bridge the chasm between them. But that was not all he wanted, was it? No, he was far more ambitious than even he had realized. He wanted her to . . .

  “Fall in love with me.” He heard, loud and clear, the words the truth serum compelled from him. “If you loved me, everything would be so much easier.”

  The transformation was horrendous, as if a hundred rodents were trying to gnaw their way out from underneath Iolanthe’s skin.

  Afterward, she lay in place, unable to move—and not merely because of her physical feebleness.

  The things that boy wanted frightened her.

  She should laugh at such ambitions on his part: nothing about him held any romance for her, not his crown, not his black heart, not his beautiful liar’s face.

  Yet she trembled inside, for what he wanted was not impossible.

  It was not even improbable.

  “I am not dead—or about to die,” said Titus in response to Fairfax’s gasp from the door.

  She was at his side, her breaths ragged. “Then why are you on the floor?”

  He had lost consciousness again after retaking most of the remedies. And it had seemed easier, after he had come to, to simply remain on the ground. “You had the nearest bed. How was the transformation, by the way?”

  She did not answer, but only pulled him to his feet and half carried, half dragged him to the cot next door. “Are you sure you are not dying this instant?”

  “I am very certain. I will die by falling, not lying comfortably in a bed.”

  “What?”

  Damn the truth serum still raging through his veins. He should have censored himself—she was no longer a bird. “Make me some tea, would you? Everything you need you will find in the the repository, in the cabinet underneath the globe.”

  She gave him a narrow-eyed glance but left, returning a few minutes later with two steaming mugs and a tin of everwell biscuits.

  He tried to sit up.

  She placed her palm firmly against his chest. “Stay down.”

  “How do I drink tea on my back?”

  “Have you forgotten who I am?” A globule of tea the color and translucency of smoky quartz floated toward him. “This is how you will drink tea lying down.”

  Her expression was somewhere between anger and grief, but closer to which he could not tell. “I can sit up for a cup of tea,” he said.

  “Don’t. I was there. I knew what the Inquisitor did to you. I saw you bleed from the ears.”

  He sucked in a breath. “You remembered?”

  “Yes.”

  Before he attempted his first transmogrification, he had read all the extant literature on the subject. Transmogrification was fairly old magic, so even though it had always been frowned upon and at times outlawed, there was no lack of records and studies.

  In fifteen hundred years, there had been only two accounts of mages claiming memory from time spent in animal form. Most scholars considered those mages to have been either exaggerating or lying outright.

  But Fairfax was clearly not lying—there was no other way she could have known what happened to him in the Inquisition Chamber except to rely on her own memory.

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure. I wonder if it has anything to do with the blood oath—that I had to maintain a continuity of consciousness so that I am never in danger of betraying my word.”

  He almost did not hear a thing she said as he recalled what he had said. If you loved me, everything would be so much easier.

  She was still speaking, berating him for his stupidity in refusing to let the court physician treat him even though he had bled from his ears.

  “I was not bleeding from the ears.”

  “Don’t lie. I saw you.”

  “I cannot lie to you while under the blood oath, remember? The blood came from the veins on my wrists—I had extractors hidden inside my cuff braces. The court physician would have realized. That was why I could not see him. I cannot allow word to get back to the Inquisitor that I am not as badly hurt as I appeared to be.”

  The way she gaped at him, he could not tell whether she wanted to punch him or to hug him. Probably the former. He missed those brief hours when she would have hugged him. He never liked himself as much as when she had liked—even admired—him.

  “How did you know you’d need extractors?” she asked, still suspicious.

  “Before their
minds broke, Inquisition subjects often bled from various orifices. I had hoped that when I bled, the Inquisitor would think she had gone far enough.”

  She clamped her teeth over her upper lip. “Did she stop?”

  “No.” He shook his head—and grimaced at the sharp pain brought on by the motion. “What happened in there? Did Captain Lowridge take it upon himself to break down the doors?”

  Interruptions during Inquisition were never allowed. If Captain Lowridge had indeed cut in, for the man’s own safety Titus would need to dismiss him immediately, so he could hide from the Inquisitor’s wrath.

  “No,” said Fairfax. “Her minions rushed in first when they heard her scream. Captain Lowridge followed very closely on their heels, though.”

  He frowned. “What made her scream then?”

  Iolanthe recounted her tactic, barely paying attention to her own story, still reeling from the revelation that the prince had planned the bleeding-from-the-ears part.

  She ought to be more concerned that he was trying to make her fall in love with him, but all she could think about was the boy whose cat was killed on his lap, and who grew up terrified of the day he would be subject to the power of that same mind mage.

  She recalled the precision of his spells, the result of endless, feverish practice. What of this nonspell, this pretense of bleeding? How many times had he rehearsed with extractors in his sleeves, falling down on the cold granite floors of the monastery, hoping that should an Inquisition come to pass, he would have a prayer of saving his mind?

  “I moved the chandelier. The light elixir spheres fell out. My eyes were closed, but I believe one of the spheres struck the Inquisitor’s person directly—I heard a thud before the crashes came. And then it was all to Captain Lowridge’s credit for getting you out of the Inquistory.”

  She didn’t expect him to be grateful, but she did expect him to be pleased. After all, he’d been deeply concerned about her inability to command air. Now she’d not only saved him, but proved herself that rarest of creatures, an elemental mage who controlled all four elements.

  But his expression, after an initial shock, turned grim. He pushed the sheet aside and struggled to get up. “Why did you not tell me sooner?”