The Burning Sky

by Shelly Thomas

  Except this time, it really was the abyss, the end of life as she knew it.

  What should she do?

  As if to answer her question, her stomach grumbled—she’d been too nervous at tea and too distracted by her thoughts in the inn. She almost laughed. She was still alive, so she must eat—and downstairs supper awaited.

  This she was accustomed to: carrying on no matter what; making the best of a terrible situation.

  What else was there to do?

  Titus knocked on her door and received no answer.

  “You do not want supper?”

  Still no answer.

  He went down by himself. To his surprise, when he arrived outside the dining room, she was already there, deep in conversation with Wintervale. Or rather, Wintervale analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of rival houses’ cricket teams, and she listened attentively.

  Wintervale must have said something funny. She threw back her head and laughed. The sight stopped Titus cold: she was terrifyingly pretty. He did not understand how Wintervale could stand so close and not realize a thing.

  Wintervale continued talking. She gazed upon him with a frank appreciation. The urge came upon Titus to smash Wintervale into a china cabinet. It was difficult to believe that he’d known her only mere hours: she had already turned his life upside down.

  He approached them. She gave him a cursory nod before returning her attention to Wintervale. Kashkari arrived beside Titus, and they spent a minute talking of the liquefaction of oxygen, a new nonmage scientific achievement about which Kashkari had just read in the papers.

  The dining room’s door opened. With pushes and shoves, the boys entered, then settled themselves at two long tables, self-segregated by age. Mrs. Dawlish sat down at the head of the senior boys’ table, Mrs. Hancock, the junior boys’ table.

  “Will you say grace, Mrs. Hancock?” Mrs. Dawlish asked.

  At the mention of Mrs. Hancock’s name, Fairfax, across the table from Titus, tensed. Titus could see that she wanted to turn around and have a good look at Mrs. Hancock, but she was careful enough to imitate the other boys and bow her head instead.

  “Our Heavenly Father,” began Mrs. Hancock, “assist us in your boundless mercy as we embark on a new Half in this ancient and splendid school. Guide the boys to be industrious and fruitful in their studies. Keep them strong and healthy in body and mind. And may 1883 be the year you bless them at last with victories upon the cricket pitch—for Almighty Lord, you know how sorely we have been tried in Summer Halves past.”

  The boys groaned and snickered. Mrs. Dawlish, half smiling herself, shushed them.

  Fairfax raised her head, surprise written all over her face. Did she imagine that the agents of Atlantis could not be perfectly charming individuals? Mrs. Hancock was beloved in this house, almost more so than Mrs. Dawlish.

  “We give our thanks for the bounty of this meal, O Lord,” continued Mrs. Hancock. “For Mrs. Dawlish, our stalwart dame. Even for the boys, whom we love dearly but, if history is any indication, will wish to throttle with our bare hands before the week is out.”

  More laughter.

  “All the same we are overjoyed that all of our boys have returned safely to us, especially Fairfax. May he refrain from climbing trees this Half.”

  Fairfax’s hands tightened on the table. She bowed her head again, as if to hide her unease at being singled out by an enemy.

  “But above all other things may we attain the knowledge of thee, O Lord, and serve thee with every breath and every deed. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.”

  “Amen,” echoed the boys.

  Fried smelts, asparagus, and orange jelly were served—what must be strange food to Fairfax. She ate sparingly. Three minutes into supper, she dropped her napkin. She turned in her seat, picked up the napkin, and, as she straightened, finally glanced toward Mrs. Hancock.

  Mrs. Hancock was, in Titus’s opinion, a more attractive woman than she let on. She favored shapeless dresses in infinite varieties of dull brown and always kept her hair covered with a large white cap. But it was the buckteeth that really left a lasting impression—teeth that Titus did not believe to be naturally overlarge.

  To his relief, Mrs. Hancock, speaking with a boy on her left, did not appear to notice Fairfax’s attention. To his further relief, Fairfax did not stare long. In fact, did not stare at all. If Titus had not been specifically looking for it, he might not even have noticed that she had peeked at Mrs. Hancock.

  Fairfax resumed her non-eating, chewing a spear of asparagus as if it were a piece of firewood. Now Mrs. Hancock turned—and gazed at the back of Fairfax’s head.

  Titus quickly looked down. His heart pounded. It was possible a woman would realize sooner that Fairfax was a girl. Did Mrs. Hancock already suspect something, or did she pay attention because Fairfax was nominally Titus’s best friend and must be kept under close watch?

  “Would you pass me the salt?” Wintervale asked Fairfax.

  The saltcellar was right next to Fairfax, a small pewter dish. But dishes from any self-respecting kitchen in the Domain would already be seasoned just right for each person at the table. Unless she helped with the cooking, she wouldn’t even know what salt looked like.

  But before he could act, she reached out with perfect assurance, took a pinch of salt to sprinkle on her fried smelt, and handed the saltcellar to Wintervale.

  Titus stared at her in astonishment. The look she returned was one of pure contempt.

  Soon she and Wintervale were again chin-deep in cricket talk. Titus managed to carry on a creditable conversation with Kashkari. But he could not concentrate, his awareness saturated with the sound of Fairfax and Wintervale relishing each other’s company.

  That, and the more-than-occasional looks Mrs. Hancock cast their way.

  The cricket talk did not stop at the end of supper, but continued in Fairfax’s room, a chat to which Titus was emphatically not invited.

  He opened a cabinet next to his bed. Inside the cabinet was a late-model Hansen writing ball, a typewriter that resembled a mechanical porcupine, with keys arranged on a brass hemisphere. He loaded a sheet of paper into the semicylindrical frame beneath the hemisphere.

  The keys began moving, driving the short pistons beneath them to form the words and sentences that made up Dalbert’s daily report to Titus.

  The report, partly in shorthand, partly in code, would have made no sense to Titus’s schoolmates—or most mages, for that matter. But to Titus, a half page conveyed as much information as an entire English broadsheet.

  Usually he was informed about the decisions of the government, but tonight there were no mentions of the regent or the prime minister. Instead Dalbert supplied what information he had gathered on Fairfax and her guardian.

  Haywood had been born on the largest of the Siren Isles, a picturesque archipelago southwest of mainland Domain. His father had been the owner of a commercial fishing fleet, his mother a fishery conservation expert. The couple had three children: Helena, who died in childhood, Hyperion, who ran away from home at an early age, and at last Horatio, the high-achieving offspring to make any parent proud.

  The records of his education were typical enough for a gifted and ambitious young man, culminating in his admission to the Conservatory, where his brilliance stood out even among a brilliant crowd. At the end of his third year, his parents passed away in rapid succession, and he began to run with a fast set. There were numerous minor infractions on his record, though his academic success remained undiminished.

  The wildness came to an abrupt end when he assumed guardianship of an eleven-month-old baby named Iolanthe Seabourne. The little orphan had been under the care of an elderly great-great-aunt. When the old woman became ill, she had contacted the person named next in the late Seabournes’ will to take charge of the girl.

  Interestingly enough, the guardianship had not been without minor controversy. Another friend of the Seabournes’ had stepp
ed forward and claimed that before the child had been born, the Seabournes had asked to put her name in their will, as the one to care for their child in the unlikely event of their demise.

  The will was brought out. Haywood’s name was in it, hers was not, and that was the end of the matter.

  Everything seemed fine for a while, but seven years ago, Haywood was caught match-fixing intercollegiate polo games. He was relegated to a position at the Institute of Archival Magic, where he plagiarized one of the better-known research papers in recent memory. After he lost that post, he found work teaching at a second-tier school. Still unchastened, he accepted bribes from pupils in exchange for better marks.

  Outrageous actions on his part, yet the memory keeper had not intervened.

  As for the girl, she was a registered Elemental Mage III, uncommon but still far less rare than an Elemental Mage IV, one who controlled all four elements. Judging by her academic record, she had no intention of becoming a street busker—the choice of many elemental mages these days, eating fire before tourists for a living.

  And interestingly enough, the deeper Haywood got himself into trouble, the better her marks became and the more effusive the praise from her schoolmasters. A desirable trait, this, the ability to subsume fear and frustration into a singular focus.

  His door opened, and in charged Wintervale.

  Titus crumpled the report and threw it into the grate. “We do not knock anymore?”

  Wintervale grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the window. “What the hell are those?”

  The armored chariots were still there, motionless in the night air.

  “Atlantis’s aerial vehicles. They have been there since before supper.”

  “Why are they here?”

  “I told you I met the Inquisitor today—must have run afoul of her,” said Titus. “Go ahead. Throw a rock at them and start your revolution.”

  “I would if I could throw a rock that high. Aren’t they worried about being seen?”

  “Why should they be? If anything, the English will think the Germans are up to no good.”

  Wintervale shook his head. “I’d better go check on my mum again.”

  “Give her my best.”

  Titus waited a minute, then left his room to knock on Fairfax’s door. “It is Titus.”

  “Come in,” she said, to his surprise.

  She was in a long nightshirt, sitting barefoot on her bed, her back against the wall, playing with fire. The fire was in the form of a Chinese puzzle ball, one openwork sphere nestled inside another, and yet again another.

  “You should not play with fire,” he said.

  “Neither should you.” She did not look up. “I assume you are here to discuss freeing my guardian?”

  Her voice was even. There was an almost preternatural calm about her, as if she knew precisely what she wanted to do with him.

  When he was nowhere as certain what to do with her.

  “Are you?” she pressed the point.

  He had to remind himself that having sworn a blood oath to always tell the truth, he could no longer lie to her—at least not when asked a direct question.

  “I came to get my spare wand back and to discuss your training. But we can talk about your guardian, too.”

  She pulled the wand out from under her mattress and tossed it at him. “So let’s talk about him.”

  “I am going back to the Domain in a few days. While I am there, I will arrange a visit to the Inquisitory to see how he is getting along.”

  “Why don’t you order him released?”

  She had asked the question to needle him. He had no such powers, not even if he were of age. “My influence over the Inquisitor is severely limited.”

  “What can you do then?”

  “I need to first see whether he is still in rescuable shape—he may or may not be, depending on what the Inquisitor has done to him.”

  “What do you define as not being in rescuable shape?”

  “If his mind has been completely destroyed, I will not run the risk of physically removing him from the Inquisitory. You will have to accept that you have lost him.”

  “And if he is still all right?”

  “Then I will need to plan—my goal has been to stay out of the Inquisitory, not to get in.”

  “You can find out what you need easily enough, can’t you?”

  “I can. But I would rather not be known to ask about it.”

  “You don’t have anyone you can trust?”

  He hesitated. “Not about you or any plans involving you—everyone has something to gain by betraying us.”

  “I imagine a deceitful person such as you would see deceit everywhere,” she said, her voice sweet. “I can also imagine why no one would voluntarily risk anything for you.”

  Her words pierced deep, like arrows from an English longbow.

  Part of him wanted to shout that he longed for nothing more than trust and solidarity. But he could not deny the truth of her words. He was a creature of lies, his entire life defined by what others did not and could not know of him.

  But things were supposed to be different with her—with Fairfax. They were to be comrades, their bond forged by shared dangers and a shared destiny. And now of all the people who despised him, she despised him the most.

  “You see the difficulties involved in removing your guardian from the Inquisitory then,” he answered, hating how stiff he sounded. “That is, if he is found to be still sentient.”

  “I will decide whether he still has enough mental capacity left to warrant a rescue.”

  “And how will you do that?”

  “I will accompany you to the Inquisitory. You must have ready means to transport me back to the Domain—otherwise where would you stow Fairfax during school holidays?”

  “You do understand you could be walking into a trap, to enter the Inquisitory so baldly?”

  “I will take that risk,” she said calmly.

  He realized with a flash of insight that he was dealing with no ordinary girl. Of course, with her potential, she had never been ordinary. But the ability to manipulate the elements was an athletic gift—almost. Great elemental power did not always coincide with great presence of mind.

  But this girl had that force of personality, that steeliness. At a time when a less hardy girl—or boy, for that matter—would have been wrecked by the calamity, or incoherently angry, she had decided to push back against him, and to take charge of as much of the situation as possible.

  She would have made a formidable ally—and an equally formidable foe.

  “All right,” he said. “We will go together.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now what did you want to tell me about my training?”

  “That we must begin soon—tomorrow morning, to be exact—and that you should expect it to be arduous.”

  “Why so soon and why so arduous?”

  “Because we do not have time. An elemental mage has control of as many elements in adulthood as she has at the end of adolescence. Are you still growing?”

  “How can I know for certain?”

  “Precisely. We have no time. Since today has been a difficult day, I will expect you at six o’clock in the morning. Day after tomorrow it moves to half past five. And then, five for the rest of the Half.”

  She said nothing.

  “It will be to your advantage to get up early. You do not want to use the lavatory when everyone else is there.”

  Her lips thinned; she again said nothing. But the fire in her hand merged into a solid ball, and then a ball full of barbs. No doubt she wished to shove it down his throat.

  “As for bathing, you might want to stay away from the communal baths. I will tell Benton you want hot water in your room.”

  “How kind of you,” she murmured sarcastically.

  “My munificence knows no bounds. I also brought you something to eat.” He dropped a paper-wrapped package on her desk. She had not eaten much either at tea or at supper, and h
e did not imagine it would have been very different at the inn. “Good-night cake—eat it and you will have no trouble sleeping.”

  The cake was for his insomnia. It would be a long night for him.

  “Right,” she said. “So that I won’t have trouble waking up for the training.”

  Abruptly she jerked, her shoulders bracing forward as if she had been punched in the stomach. Her fingers clawed into fists. The fireball turned the blue of pure flame.

  “Thinking about how you will slack off during your training?”

  The oath called for her to do her utmost.

  She grimaced and straightened, saying nothing.

  He could not afford to have her bottled up like this. Much better that she took it out on him periodically.

  A thought occurred to him. “I know you want to punish me, so here is your permission. Do your worst.”

  “I will only punish myself.”

  “Not when you have my consent. Think about burning me to cinders every minute of the day, if it pleases you. And as long as you do not actually kill me, you can think and mete out whatever abuses you want.”

  She snorted. “What’s the catch?”

  “The catch is that I am allowed to defend myself. You want to hurt me? You have to be good enough.”

  She looked up at him for the first time, her eyes alight with speculation.

  “Go ahead, try it.”

  She hesitated a second, then her index finger moved in a circle. The fireball transformed into a firebird, shot high in the air, and swooped down at him.

  “Esto ventus.”

  The firebird’s wings beat valiantly, but could not advance against the air current generated by his spell.

  She snapped her finger and the firebird quadrupled in size: she took all the fire from the fireplace.

  “Ignis remittatur.”

  His spell sent the fire back to the grate.

  Her eyes narrowed. “And what would you do now, bring out the old shield charm again?”

  The entire room was suddenly ablaze.

  “Ignis suffocet.” The fire went out, suffocated under the weight of the spell.