Titus pulled a chair up next to Iolanthe, sat down, and pressed a cup of tea into her hands. His eyes reflected nothing but ruin—exactly as she remembered, when she’d pulled him in from the fog the night before. She ought to have guessed then and there that Kashkari’s dream concerned her, not him: he had long ago made peace with his own death; it was only hers that could have devastated him to such a degree.
She set aside the saucer and wrapped her hands directly about the cup, needing its scalding heat against her skin. He did the same, his hands clutching his teacup so tightly that it was a wonder he didn’t pulverize it.
“We must go after the Bane,” continued Kashkari. “Only now we have an implacable time constraint—and we must do it without Fairfax, if we’ve learned anything from my vision. Nobody who goes to Atlantis expects to come back alive. But if Fairfax were to fall, everything we’ve ever done would be in vain.”
Iolanthe’s head throbbed. “Then what do I do?”
And who would save Titus?
“You hide. Preferable somewhere none of us can even guess, in case we are captured by Atlanteans.”
She shook her head—this went against the grain of everything she had been taught about prophecies. “We are asking for trouble. You interfere with a prophecy and the end result will always be worse than if you’d let it happen.”
“But what can possibly be worse than your being taken to the Bane’s crypt and sacrificed? And it was the Bane’s crypt I saw; that much there could be no question.”
Beside her Master Haywood gasped softly, but said nothing. She glanced at him, then at Titus, who sat with his neck bent, his breaths shaky.
She shook her head again. She couldn’t think very well, but even so, something about Kashkari’s vision made no sense. “Why wouldn’t either you or His Highness have made sure that Atlantis didn’t take me alive?”
“I’ve taken a blood oath that doesn’t allow me to harm either you or His Highness. I don’t know whether His Highness is capable of lethal acts against you. Besides, we could have become separated as we made our way across Atlantis.”
She took a sip of tea. It was bitter—she never did make very good tea. Titus tasted his and grimaced. He rose, left the room, and came back half a minute later with a small plate of sugar cubes. She dropped two cubes into her cup; he took the rest.
“But perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way. Perhaps my death, far from the worst thing that could happen, was instead the necessary step that allowed the two of you to go as far as you did. You were in the Bane’s crypt. And you were still alive and well. There was nothing to prevent you from finishing the Bane.”
No one said anything. She drank from her tea again and was astonished at the difference in the taste. Whatever had gone into making the sugar cubes gave the tea not only sweetness, but subtle yet delicious hints of citrus and stone fruits.
“I can’t believe that everyone here takes the matter of a vision so cavalierly,” she went on. “I’m all for making a vision prove itself, and even I do not argue the validity of this one. Whereas . . . whereas you all seem to treat it as no different from a mere rumor.”
Again, silence.
“My beliefs in the matter differ from Mohandas’s,” said Amara. “I do understand his point of view, that the future has not yet happened—that every decision we make now has an impact on what will take place down the road.
“Growing up, however, I was very much influenced by my paternal grandmother, who emigrated to the Kalahari from a Nordic realm and was a firm believer that only events that are chiseled in stone are transmitted in visions. The entirety of the future may yet be unwritten, but no one can deny that certain forces and developments are so powerful, trying to stop them would be like a fly getting in the way of an armored chariot.
“But even I, who hold staunchly to the view that no one should try to alter a future that has been revealed, can’t find anything particularly wrong in what Mohandas suggests. After we met again this morning he confessed that he’d lied about having seen you reach Atlantis on your own power and of your own will. Given that, are there actual known visions of you marching onto Atlantis?”
“No,” Iolanthe had to admit.
“Then no one is trying to refute a future that has already been seen.”
Iolanthe set down her empty cup. Something didn’t add up—something one of the mages in the room said or indicated. But she couldn’t seem to think. In fact, she was listing hard to her left.
She clutched at Titus and missed. But his arm banded about her and kept her from toppling over.
“What’s the matter?” came Kashkari’s voice, sounding very distant.
“Iola? Are you all right, Iola?”
Her vision shrank. The last thing she saw was Titus’s eyes, from which all light and hope had fled.
“She is fine,” said Titus, setting her down. “Master Haywood, would you mind getting a blanket from one of the bedrooms?”
Haywood ran out and was back within seconds. Titus tucked the blanket carefully around her. “She will come to on her own in two or three hours, if not sooner.”
He did not need to explain his action any further. He knew Fairfax. She was stubborn and loyal—and she bowed to no prophecies. She would never stand for her friends to brave the perils of Atlantis without her.
So they must leave her behind.
“You will forgive us for not discussing our plans in your hearing, sir,” he said to Haywood.
Haywood nodded—he understood that the moment his ward awakened, she would demand to know where her friends had gone.
“Make sure you build a fire and keep her warm.”
With her falling unconscious, the fire she summoned had dissipated. The grate, the bricks of which still radiated heat, was empty.
Titus looked down at his most stalwart friend for a moment longer, before he made himself head for the laboratory, Kashkari and Amara in tow.
Amara inhaled deeply as she took a seat before the worktable. “What is this lovely fragrance in the air?”
It was from the butterfly tableau of the night before, the scent of a meadow in bloom. He remembered how Fairfax had looked, with both laughter and tears in her eyes.
His heart felt as if it had been branded, a scalding pain through which he could barely breathe. This task was always going to take everything from him in the end—but he always woke up each morning hoping he had at least another day.
After this day, there would be no more reprieve.
“I have more bad news,” he said, ignoring Amara’s question.
When he had come into the laboratory to fetch the “sugar cubes,” he had spied a new message from Dalbert. The first paragraph explained that Dalbert had had some trouble accessing his end of the transmission device, but had since managed to move it to a different spot—and that was the only good news the message contained.
Half of the rest dealt with the massacre in the Kalahari Realm and the threat that had been left for Titus, which was as Amara had reported. The other half conveyed developments that were almost as dire.
“There was a raid last night on the armory underneath the Serpentine Hills—the one Durga Devi was taken to see. All the war engines were destroyed, including a large number of annihilators—the machines that can bring down armored chariots.”
Leaving the Domain defenseless when the forces of Atlantis arrived in six and half days.
This was what Titus had feared: that by tipping their hand in the desert, his allies courted disaster.
Now it became ever more imperative that they succeed in bringing down the Bane.
Without Fairfax.
In the long, dark shadow of her prophesied death.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Amara.
Titus turned to the typing ball and tapped out a message to Dalbert. An answer came almost immediately.
“What more news does he have?” Kashkari’s voice was tense. The way things were going, any news would almost
inevitably be bad news.
“I did not ask for further news. I asked whether he had ever prepared a means for me to return to the Domain, without the aid of our usual translocator.”
“And?”
Titus exhaled. “He had.”
Haywood rose as Titus reentered the parlor. “Sire.”
“We are leaving.” The words lacerated him, as if he spoke with pieces of broken glass on his tongue. “And so we have come to say our farewells.”
Haywood bowed. “May Fortune ever smile upon you, sire.”
“Fortune already did, when your ward became my friend.”
And now everything that had been given would be taken away.
As Haywood wished the kindness of Fortune upon Kashkari and Amara, Titus knelt down by Fairfax and took her hand in his. She looked peaceful, unencumbered by care, like Sleeping Beauty in her hundred-year slumber. Yet the image that flashed across his mind was one of himself prostrate before her lifeless body.
Even now he had no hope. He was certain that no matter what he did, disaster was barreling toward her. But he had to do something, had to at least make an attempt, however idiotic, to keep her safe.
To keep her alive.
Let this be their final farewell. Let him not see her again, ever. He could handle leaving her behind, if he must. He could not bear walking into a future in which she had been murdered by the Bane—the end of everything worthwhile, the beginning of all his nightmares.
“Live forever,” he said softly.
And then, to Haywood, “Long may Fortune walk beside the two of you. And when she awakens, tell her that I do not regret my decision this day, only—only that we will never share a picnic basket from Mrs. Hinderstone’s.”
CHAPTER 11
THE LABORATORY HAD ONE MORE exit than it had entrances, and that exit led to a dilapidated barn in southeast England. From there, Titus vaulted his companions to London.
They made their way to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Among the exhibits of Renaissance France, there stood a large and elaborate wardrobe with marquetry doors and ormolu trims.
“This is the one,” said Titus.
It was early in the day and late in the year; the museum was not crowded. They had no trouble clearing out that particular gallery with a few keep-away spells. The wardrobe was big enough that the three of them—and Amara’s bulky coat—had no trouble fitting inside.
Titus murmured the password and the countersign Dalbert had given him. Almost instantly they found themselves in a more cramped space, bumping up against stacks of crates and buckets. When Titus opened the door a crack, the tang of the sea greeted him, as well as the sound of waves.
He waited a minute to make sure there was no ambush, before he opened the door more fully. They were in a large, natural cavern. The mouth of the cavern was hidden behind an outcrop, but there was light slanting in from outside, glinting on the tips of the wavelets.
A twenty-foot-long sloop, swaying slightly, was suspended from the ceiling of the cavern.
“So we sail?” asked Amara.
“We sail,” answered Titus.
He called for mage light. With the help of the blue illumination, he was able to find where Dalbert had wound the chain that kept the boat up high. Together, the three of them lowered the boat down into the water.
Titus took out the map from his satchel and placed it against the damp cavern wall. A red dot appeared on the silky map, just outside the Domain’s maritime borders.
As he had thought. Dalbert, unlike Lady Callista with her connection to Atlanteans, could not create a loophole through the barriers Atlantis had erected around the Domain against unauthorized entries and exits by instantaneous means. So he had opted to get them as close as possible.
In the small structure that served as the portal, which looked more like a nonmage bathing machine than anything else—except without wheels—they found oars, poles, and fishing implements, as well as food cubes, water, and changes of clothing.
The equipment was moved easily enough to the boat with levitation spells. They themselves managed to board without falling into the water. Since it had long been Titus’s plan to approach Atlantis via its coast, he had trained himself to sail in a number of the stories in the Crucible that involved sea voyages.
But it was one thing to steer a vessel in open ocean, quite another to get it out of the narrow and cramped cavern, with waves rushing in and creating unpredictable currents that threw the sloop this way and that. They rowed. They pushed with oars and poles. At one point, Titus and Kashkari jumped into the frigid water to get the boat unstuck.
The cost of leaving their elemental mage behind.
But the far greater cost was the emptiness within Titus. It was as if he were somewhere outside himself, watching the struggle with the boat. His muscles worked, diligently and tirelessly, but he did not care anymore.
He remained in his icy wet clothes for a good long while afterward, until he was sure the boat was far enough from the cliffs of the uninhabited island that he did not have to worry about it being blown back and dashed to pieces on those unforgiving rocks during the time he changed.
If only—
He cut off the direction of his thoughts. What he had done, he had done for himself, because he could not live in a world without her. If this was the universe punishing him for his hubris and stupidity, then so be it.
Iolanthe’s head felt as if someone had stuffed an entire English boiled pudding inside: a wobbling mass. Her eyelids were as heavy as bricks, resisting all attempts at lifting them. Strange: she wasn’t as fanatic an early riser as the prince, but usually when she awakened, she felt refreshed and ready to face the day, and not drugged, as if she were stuck in a woolly abyss, unable to pry herself out.
Drugged.
Titus—the futility in his eyes. The tea with its wonderfully evocative flavors. The sugar cubes. Titus, putting all the remaining sugar cubes into his own tea, and then never taking another sip.
She groaned and sat up, her muscles as limp as the macaroni served at Mrs. Dawlish’s house.
“Iola! Are you all right?”
Master Haywood’s face slowly swam into focus before her, his expression as guilty as it was anxious.
She didn’t even bother to ask whether everyone else had gone. “How are they getting to the Domain?”
“They didn’t discuss it within my hearing.”
She pinched the ridge of her nose. “And you were glad for it, weren’t you, when the prince told you that he would hold his discussions elsewhere, so that you couldn’t possibly relay any information to me?”
“Iola—”
She held up a hand. She didn’t want to argue with him. What she did want was to put her hands around Titus’s throat and throttle him to within an inch of his life. How dare he make a decision of such magnitude for her? And how dare he make it in such a cowardly manner? She might yet acquiesce to the group’s consensus, if they absolutely felt they could not have her along—but not until after she had made a proper case for herself.
She got to her feet and staggered to the laboratory. The place was as neat as ever, not a single item out of place. She was familiar enough with its contents to see what they had taken: vaulting aids, sailing aids, all kinds of other remedies for trauma and injuries. But her ability to inventory the missing items did not give her any idea of how they had gone back to the Domain—or from where.
Only as she turned away from the shelves and cabinets did she notice the few things that had been left on the worktable. Kashkari and Amara’s two-way notebooks lay side by side, with a note from Kashkari underneath.
Dear Fairfax,
These notebooks contain intelligence that affects the safety of many. Since the pages cannot be adequately secured, we have decided to leave them behind, rather than risk their falling into the wrong hands. If you would be so kind, please send them both to my parents and ask that my sister-in-law’s be given into my brother’s keeping.
&n
bsp; I am sorry we cannot say a proper good-bye. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to know you. Long may Fortune guard your path.
Fondly,
M.K.
On the other side of the worktable sat Titus’s most prized possession. And he too had left her a note.
Beloved,
I debated fiercely whether I should take my mother’s diary with me. In the end I chose not to, because I do not wish for it to become lost or destroyed, and because the time for prophecies has come and gone. Please keep it well, for in it is written your story too. Our story.
And please forgive me my trespass. I love you with every breath and I always will.
Titus
It was a measure of her love for him that she did not burn his note then and there. But she did scream, calling him names that would have melted a hole in the paper were she to set them down in writing.
When she was hoarse from shouting, Master Haywood, who had followed her into the laboratory, said tentatively, “My, living in a boys’ school has certainly changed your language.”
“I hate to shatter your innocence, sir,” she answered curtly, “but I didn’t utter any words I didn’t already know since I was twelve.”
She laid her elbows on the worktable and buried her face in her hands, as exhausted as she was furious. Was this it? After everything they had been through, he expected her to sit quietly and wait for The Delamer Observer to tell her when half the city’s population had been destroyed by death rain? And when his state funeral was held, assuming that Atlantis would even bother to return his body—did he expect her to learn that from the papers too?
“Iola, my dear—”
“Please leave me alone.” She hated to be rude to Master Haywood. But he was glad that she hadn’t gone, and she couldn’t face that gladness now.
“I’ll be happy to give you all the space you wish. But do please remember that we must decamp at some point, if only to the inn. You can’t stay here forever.”
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