Titus narrowed his eyes.
“You were to have your interview with the Inquisitor as soon as she arrived,” Lady Callista went on. “She would see the drink in your hand and know that you’d been dosed. But the serum would have no effect on you for almost an hour, by which time you would be done with her and no worse off than when you’d begun. Then I could ask you questions just as the truth serum began acting, and find out my daughter’s whereabouts.”
“But you didn’t have your chat with her at the Citadel. Instead, over everyone’s objections you went to the Inquisitory. And didn’t begin your Inquisition until after the truth serum had taken effect.”
Something still didn’t make sense for Iolanthe. “You were there at our school on the Fourth of June. The Inquisitor could have hauled me away. You just sat there. You did nothing.”
“What could I have done? I was there, as you said. I had to suppress all my memories to not give myself away. And I risked everything to get him out of the Citadel that night, didn’t I?”
Lady Callista pointed to Master Haywood, who looked completely stunned by the goings-on.
“Only because you yourself were in danger of being unmasked,” Iolanthe shot back, growing angrier with each word. “You were afraid that if the Inquisitor could really see past the memory spells, your own position would be in jeopardy. If you cared about him at all you would not have escrowed his memory in such a way as to never allow him access.”
Lady Callista’s features hardened. “Difficult decisions must be made sometimes. You are too young and you don’t know men. When they want you they will say and do just about anything, but you can’t expect constancy on their part. How could I trust that if I let him remember, he would still continue to keep my secret, or to keep you safe?”
Iolanthe’s fingers clenched into a fist. “Is that how you treat people who love you, who give up everything for the love of you?”
“Yes. Because he”—Lady Callista again jabbed a finger in Master Haywood’s direction—” “does not love me. He loves a figment of his own imagination. The real me uses people, discards them, and has absolutely no regrets. Does he love that?”
Iolanthe was speechless.
“And you, you little ingrate.” Lady Callista was only becoming more vehement. “Do you have any idea how difficult it was, how frightful, to figure out how to do everything my future self was telling Haywood we needed to do?”
A clanking sound. The prince opened his hand and his wand, which had fallen to the floor, returned to his palm. Iolanthe stared at him: he was no more likely to drop his wand than he was to lose his mother’s diary.
“And for what?” Lady Callista went on. “Never have I had a single thank you from you. All you do ever is whine about how I am not helping your precious Master Haywood.”
There was no arguing with self-justification of such magnitude and Iolanthe did not bother to try. “Break the fear circle. You let him go, we will let you go. It’s a fair enough trade.”
“Absolutely not. I will not have you keep running about and causing me trouble. You will come with me. You will lie low. And you will not be heard from again until either the world ends or I go to the Angels.”
The prince tapped Master Haywood on the arm and whispered in his ear. Master Haywood looked irresolute. But Titus spoke again. And Master Haywood nodded at last.
He came before Lady Callista and began to chant a long series of spells.
“How dare you?” shouted Lady Callista.
She fired various spells to stun and silence him, but the containment dome rendered them ineffectual.
“How dare you!” she shouted again.
But Master Haywood went on doggedly with his spells. And when he fell silent, Lady Callista dropped to the floor, unconscious.
Titus put her under another time freeze before he undid the containment dome. Lifting her from underneath her arm, he began dragging her toward the front door.
“What did you do to her?” Iolanthe asked Master Haywood.
“The prince asked me to put away all her memories having to do with you. When she comes to, she will know how to return to the Citadel. But she will not think to come back and pursue you.”
“Not that she would, in any case,” said Titus. “All her memories having to do with the two of you have probably been suppressed for a while, since Atlantis has been interrogating her day in and day out.”
Iolanthe shook her head a little. “Then how did she know to come here?”
“You can make special provisions. For me, my memory of reading the vision of my death will return in full force when I step onto Atlantis itself.” He propped Lady Callista up against the door and placed her hand on the handle.
“What are you doing now?” Iolanthe asked.
“I need her hand on the door to break the fear circle. Thank goodness she didn’t set a blood circle—that would not be so easy to break. But then again, the authorship of a blood circle can be verified, so she probably would not take that kind of a chance unless she felt she had no other choice.”
He murmured the necessary incantations. Iolanthe watched him carefully, wondering what exact had Lady Callista said earlier to cause him to drop his wand. He looked a little grim to her, but other than that, he seemed normal enough.
When he was done, he and Master Haywood together carried Lady Callista to the chaise longue in the sitting room.
“Master Haywood,” Iolanthe said. “Is there any chance you might have changed your mind about leaving this place?”
Master Haywood began to shake his head, but then he stopped. A smile slowly broke out on his face. “Now that you asked again, Iola, I do believe I have had quite enough of this place.”
Lady Callista remained unconscious after the time freeze expired.
“Not to worry,” said Titus. “As memory spells take effect, it is quite uncommon for a mage to remain unconscious for up to an hour.”
Master Haywood sighed. “Alas, I had thought her so very charming.”
“We need to check you for any tracers that might be on your person,” Titus said to Master Haywood.
As they searched, Iolanthe asked, “How did you meet Lady Callista, Master Haywood?”
“Through my friend Eirene. You might know her as Commander Rainstone, the regent’s chief security adviser, Your Highness,” said Master Haywood, with a deferential half bow toward the prince.
Strange how she knew both men so well, yet they were essentially strangers to each other. And Master Haywood, at least, seemed determined to observe every etiquette.
“I do know her in that capacity. Please go on,” said Titus.
“I met Eirene—Commander Rainstone—for coffee and she told me that she was meeting her friend Lady Callista at Eugenides Constantinos’s bookshop afterward and asked if I’d like to come along. I said I did, so that was how it happened.”
Iolanthe removed Master Haywood’s shoes and socks to make sure they were free of tracers. “And what was Lady Callista doing at the bookshop? She does not strike me as someone with a keen interest in books.”
“She said she was there to buy a book that a friend of hers had defaced. Her company was such a pleasure, I volunteered to buy the book for her.”
“The Complete Potion.”
“Yes, how did you guess?”
Iolanthe bit the inside of her cheek. “You always hauled that book everywhere with us, even though you said it was a terrible book.”
“Yes, sentimental value. She was beautiful, but I was struck by the vividness of her presence. I always thought it was a shame that I never saw her again, though I had every intention of doing so.” Master Haywood fell silent as he realized that he was speaking from incomplete memories. “Perhaps it would have been better if I really never saw her again.”
“Speaking for myself, this is the most charming I have ever seen her,” said Titus. “At least she was truthful, for once. My guess is there is still truth serum remaining in her system from her
latest interrogation.”
Once they were satisfied that Master Haywood did not have any tracers on his person, and that they themselves had not picked up any either, Iolanthe suddenly realized she had not planned for where to take him.
“Should we put you up at a different hotel for now, until we find a more permanent lodging?” she asked.
“I have a place that I would gladly put at your disposal,” said Titus to Master Haywood. “If you do not mind that it is on the other side of the English Channel.”
On the other side of the English Channel?
Paris.
Paris in autumn bore little resemblance to its counterpart in London. The air was cool but crisp, the sky blue, and the tall, clear windows up and down the quiet boulevard ablaze with the light of the lowering sun. The apartment the prince had chosen had spacious rooms, high ceilings painted a soft gold, and enormous paintings of nonmages dressed in clothes from a different era, frolicking in a nostalgia-tinged countryside.
Iolanthe, even with her headache from having been vaulted nearly a hundred fifty miles—though split into three segments—was enchanted. “It’s a lovely place.”
Titus gave her another dose of vaulting aid. “The concierge below is under the impression that there are several people in the family—an uncle and a niece and a nephew who are twins. So she will not be surprised to see either a young man or a young woman come by—or an older man.”
He opened a drawer and pulled out cases of calling cards for Mr. Rupert Franklin, Mr. Arthur Franklin, and Miss Adelia Franklin. “The bakery around the corner is quite good. The brasserie likewise. Three times a week there is a market on the square below. And the Franklin family has an account with the Banque de Paris that should last you years.”
“So this is what you have been doing in Paris,” Iolanthe said softly, more than a little bowled over by everything he had done.
“Part of it.”
“Part of it? What was the other part, then?”
He led them down a corridor toward another room. It had been set up with a large desk at the center, and shelves on the walls. Iolanthe recognized some of the equipment on the desk as having come from the laboratory.
“Once I realized that your memories might not resurface again, I wanted to protect you against damages brought on by permanent suppression. Which meant I had to find a way to bring back your memories.
“I decided to duplicate the kind of protection that had been placed on me. If someone tampers with my memory, and someone who meets the contact requisite threshold still could, my memory will recover within weeks, if not days. But some of the ingredients required for the potion base do not travel well—they must be used very fresh, and they lose their effectiveness if they are vaulted.
“So I set up a temporary laboratory here in Paris—it is the nearest place with a master mage botanist who can supply my needs. And while I looked for such a place, I decided that I might as well make it a place where the two of you can live together comfortably, after you are reunited.”
Master Haywood bowed deeply. Iolanthe did nothing—she didn’t know what to do.
Titus waved them toward the desk. “Anyway, I did not tell you earlier because I did not have the potion base ready yet and I did not want you to think I was making it easier for you to leave Eton. I mean—” He shrugged. “You know you I mean.”
He brought out two glasses and poured them each half-full from a pitcher that he said contained seawater. “It needs water from the first ocean in which you had set foot—which I assume is the Atlantic for the two of you. And then you must add three drops of your own blood, and three drops of voluntarily given blood from someone who loves you. Would you mind giving us some fire, Miss Seabourne?”
She called forth a small sphere of flame.
The prince opened his pocketknife, passed the blade through the fire, and handed it to Iolanthe. She let fall three drops of blood into each glass, passed the knife through the fire again, and gave it to Master Haywood.
When Master Haywood had squeezed three drops of his blood into one glass and was about to do the same for the second glass, the prince stopped him. “I would like to have the honor for Miss Seabourne’s glass.”
Blood from someone who loves you.
Master Haywood glanced at Iolanthe, not so much shocked as thoughtful.
Now Titus brought out a vial of gray powder, divided it between the glasses, and stirred until the potion turned bright and golden.
It tasted of sunlight and chamomile tea.
Master Haywood again bowed deeply to Titus, who took him to yet another room and showed him where a supply of cash was kept. “This should last you until you can go to the bank. You also have credit at most of the nearby shops, if you would care to use that.”
He turned to Iolanthe. “Almost time for another blasted Absence at school. We had better head back.”
“Head count,” Iolanthe explained to Master Haywood. “They are always counting the boys.”
“But I haven’t heard your story yet,” Master Haywood protested.
“Another day,” she said, hugging him. “I will come and see you as often as I can.”
Back in her room at Mrs. Dawlish’s, Titus turned to her and said, “These are for you.”
“These” were calling cards for A. G. Fairfax, of Low Creek Ranch, Wyoming Territory.
“Before you leave Mrs. Dawlish’s, give these cards to your friends. When they write to this address, the letters will go to the safe house. And the letters you send out from the safe house will reach them as if having come all the way from the American West.”
“Thank you.” More words wouldn’t express her feelings better.
“No need,” he answered softly. “It is a compulsion on my part to give you everything, while I still can.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER ♦29
The Sahara Desert
THE NEWCOMER WAS UNBELIEVABLY FAST on his carpet. Titus had to put in real effort to not fall more than a body length behind.
And whereas Titus set his carpet on an approximately ten-degree angle, with the front of the carpet rolled underneath, the newcomer’s carpet was tilted at an incline of at least thirty degrees, with two creases in the body so that in profile it looked like an elongated, backward Z.
A dragon could keep its own course, but a carpet relied exclusively on the distribution of the rider’s weight for directions. A new rider, while learning, could accidently set the carpet into a tailspin by doing nothing more than trying to look over a shoulder. This young man, however, casually turned around, one hand holding the carpet to its course, the other raised in spell-casting.
Distance spell-casting—as the nearest pursuers were still miles behind—and with amazing accuracy. The boy was sniper to behold.
Titus turned to Fairfax, who was still gaping at the newcomer, and said, “Is there any chance he is your admirer?”
At his question, she squinted. “Probably not. Since he already came off his carpet to get us onto ours, he could have easily given me a kiss. But he just shoved me onto the carpet like a sack of potatoes.”
“But what if he is?”
“Hmm.” Her tone turned teasing. “Are you asking me to make a choice right now between the two of you?”
“Now you will choose me, of course. But what about after you remember?” The question made him more nervous than he cared to admit.
“Can’t you do something about the armored chariots, Fairfax?” shouted the subject of their discussion. “They are closing in fast.”
“All right!” she shouted back. “I’ll try.”
Then, into Titus’s ear, “I don’t think he even knows—or cares—that I’m a girl.”
Titus had to agree with her on that account—and he was glad for it.
“Hold the carpet steady,” she told him, and t
urned halfway around.
After a minute or so, she lay back down. “I can’t destabilize the armored chariots. Let me try something else. Hold on tight!”
The last few words were shouted for the other boy to hear. A second later, a tailwind very nearly blew Titus off the carpet altogether. Both the carpets accelerated as if they had suddenly been set on rockets. And behind them, barely visible in the dark of the night, sand rose like a curtain, obscuring them from the view of the Atlanteans.
The other boy signaled for them to descend. “My carpet has almost reached the limits of its range.”
Once a carpet neared the limits of its flight range, it had to be set down, or it would drop out of the sky like a rock. And once on the ground, it needed some time before it could take to the air again.
“Would you like some water?” asked Fairfax. The sphere of water she had summoned shimmered just barely under the starlight
The boy held out a canteen. “Yes, I would, thank you.”
“Some food or a heat sheet?” asked Titus, placing his arm around Fairfax’s shoulder.
If the boy was her admirer, then he ought to either come forward to contest her affections or relinquish them forever.
The boy looked at them a moment, with neither dismay nor jealousy, but something rather like wonder. “No, thank you. These clothes are meant for the desert and water is all I need.”
A small silence fell. Titus was just about to tell the boy that they had no idea who he was when he spoke again.
“The pendant was so cold at the beginning I had to put it away from my person. And since I wasn’t looking for you specifically, but just traveling to meet my brother, I didn’t make it a point to check the pendant. Imagine my surprise when I came across it about noon yesterday and it was almost lukewarm.
“I had a two-way notebook on me so I contacted my brother and—his fiancée. They wrote back immediately saying phoenix beacons had been seen in the desert a few nights before, and their scouts were already on the lookout for you. And not a few hours later you walked into an oasis leading a sand wyvern.”
The Perilous Sea Page 23