There was frustration in Haywood’s voice, but also relief. The sacrifice of his memories had not been in vain: he could not betray anyone in his ignorance.
“Was it her parents who told you?”
“I cannot recall,” said Haywood.
“Are you her father?”
Fairfax jerked at his question.
“I am not, but I love her like one. Someone please tell her to stay away and not ever come near the Inquisitory. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep her safe. I—”
The wall turned opaque. “Your Highness,” Baslan said smoothly. “We must not keep Her Excellency waiting.”
The prince held her tight, as if afraid she might do something stupid.
She wouldn’t, not after all the sacrifices Master Haywood had made. And certainly not after his most recent pleas from inside the cell.
But for the first time she regretted that she was not yet a great elemental mage. She would tear the Inquisitory from its foundations and crush its walls into powder.
The prince stroked the feathers of her head and back. She wished he would put her back into his overrobe. She wanted to crawl someplace warm and dark and not come out for a very long time.
She was barely aware that they’d stopped again. The captain of the prince’s guards once more proclaimed the presence of their sovereign.
“Who are you?” the prince asked.
“Rosemary Needles, sire,” answered a trembling voice.
Iolanthe nearly jumped out of the prince’s hand. Mrs. Needles?
It was indeed kind, pink-cheeked Mrs. Needles, her face pressed against the transparent wall, a face at once frightened and hopeful.
“Why are you here?”
“I cleaned and cooked for Master Haywood and Miss Seabourne. But I’m only a day maid. I’ve never lived in their house, and I don’t know any of their secrets!”
The prince glanced at Baslan. “Clutching at straws?”
“Straws sometimes lead to other straws,” said the Atlantean.
“Please, sire, please,” cried Mrs. Needles. “My daughter is about to have a baby. I don’t want to die without seeing my grandchild. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in this place!”
Iolanthe turned cold. What had the prince said? Friendship is untenable for people in our position. Either we suffer for it, or our friends suffer for it.
And Mrs. Needles wasn’t even a friend, only a woman unfortunate enough to need the money cooking and cleaning for the schoolmaster would bring.
Mrs. Needles fell to her knees. “Please, sire, please help me get out of here.”
“I will see what I can do,” said the prince.
Tears gushed down Mrs. Needles’s face. “Thank you, Your Highness. Thank you! May Fortune shield and protect you wherever you go!”
The wall turned opaque; they began the long climb up. Iolanthe trembled all the way to the surface.
“Is there time to admire the Fire of Atlantis?” asked Titus, as they reemerged into the courtyard.
“I’m afraid not, Your Highness,” said Baslan. “Her Excellency is already waiting.”
Precisely what Titus did not want to hear.
They crossed the courtyard. Before the heavy doors of the Inquisition Chamber, Lowridge and the guards were allowed to go no farther. Only Titus was conducted inside the enormous, barely lit hall—mind mages performed best in shadowy places.
The Inquisitor awaited, her pale face almost glowing, as if her skin were phosphorescent. From fifty feet away, he sensed her anticipation. A predator ready to strike; a hunter who had at last closed in on her quarry.
Cold skittered down his spine. It seemed the Inquisitor was determined to produce her finest work tonight.
As he approached her, she indicated the desk and two chairs beside her, the only pieces of furniture in the cavernous space. The two chairs were on opposite sides of the desk, one chair low and plain, the other high and elaborate. Either Titus chose the chair denoting greater status, and gave the Inquisitor yet another reason to bring him down a peg, or he submitted to the reality of the situation, selected the lesser chair, and endured the interview being looked down upon by the Inquisitor.
His solution was to step onto the lesser chair and perch on its back. Fortunately, the top of the back was flat. Had it had a few finials, like the dining chairs in which Mrs. Dawlish and Mrs. Hancock sat, he would have had to settle for sitting on the armrest, which would not give nearly the same jaunty, careless impression.
The Inquisitor frowned. Titus had ceded her the greater chair, but now he had the advantage of height.
She sat down and placed her hands, laced together, on top of the desk.
He drew a deep breath. And so it begins.
“Now, Your Highness, what have you been doing with Iolanthe Seabourne?”
He had prepared for this exact question, but still it jolted, as if he had gripped a live wire. “You mean the missing elemental mage you are looking for?”
“Last time we met, you did not believe she was an elemental mage.”
“Lady Callista told me Atlantis is seeking her with all its might,” Titus said with as much breeziness as he could muster. “She even encouraged me to look for her, since the girl is, after all, a subject of mine.”
The Inquisitor ignored his insinuation. “You were at the village of Little-Grind-on-Woe immediately after the lightning. After your visit, you changed your plans and left for England half a day earlier than originally scheduled. And when you arrived there, instead of heading directly to your school, you went to London, to a hotel where you maintained a suite of rooms as Mr. Alistair McComb, from which place you departed just as abruptly. Care to explain your movements, Your Highness?”
He wanted to taunt her. And where was I between the time I arrived in London and the time I arrived at the hotel? Care to tell me that also?
“I see you are fixated on the least of my doings,” he said. “Very well, my abrupt departure from the Domain is easily enough explained: I am not at your beck and call, Madam Inquisitor. You cannot simply say to me, ‘May I call on you this evening, Your Highness, to discuss what you have seen?’”
The Inquisitor thinned her lips.
“Besides, if you had taken the time to inquire from my attendants, you would have learned that I had decided to go back to school at an earlier time, before the lightning came down.
“Now, the hotel suite. I am a young man and have needs that must be met. Since that slum of a school Atlantis so strenuously recommended does not allow for such activities, I keep a place outside of school. As for why I left, I cannot imagine why I should remain once the deed is done.”
“And where was your accomplice in . . . the deed?”
“Left before I did. No need for her presence once she had served her purpose.”
“There was no report of anyone coming or going.”
Of course not, since she left with me.
This time he had to swallow the words as they rose on his tongue.
“Were you watching all the service doors? A large hotel has many.”
“Where did you find her?”
In a certain house in Little-Grind-on-Woe. Very well suited to wielding lightning, that girl.
“In a certain—”
What was the matter with him? He was an accomplished liar. Truth should never approach his lips.
“—district of London. Have you ever been to London, Madam Inquisitor? There are nasty parts that teem with girls who must make a living on their backs. The bargains to be had there, you have no idea.” He rubbed his thumb across his chin. “And frankly, after my encounter with you, I was in the mood to punish someone.”
A small muscle leaped at the corner of the Inquisitor’s eye. “I see,” she said. “Your Highness gives precocity a whole new definition.”
Quite the opposite. I cannot afford to get close to anyone. And Fairfax will never have me now, will she?
Alarm pulsed through him. What was the matter
? Why was he overwhelmed with the need to confess?
Truth serum. He had been given a dose of truth serum. But how? He had taken nothing at the gala, not even Aramia’s snapberry punch.
He might not have ingested Aramia’s snapberry punch, but he had most certainly touched the glass—held it in his hand for far longer than he would have, had someone else offered him that glass. The glass had not been ice-cold, as he had thought—he would have realized it had he actually taken a sip of the punch itself. The coldness had come from a gel brushed onto the outside of the glass, and the truth serum had made its way into him via his skin.
That was what Fairfax, pecking at him, had tried to warn him about.
He dreaded being slipped truth serum, so much so that he never took anything but water at the meals Mrs. Dawlish provided and rarely drank tea he hadn’t prepared with his own hands. He even practiced telling lies while under the influence of truth serum. One drop. Tell a lie. Two drops. Another lie. Three drops. Keep lying.
But he had never suspected Aramia. She was the good one, gentle and self-effacing, tolerant, eager to please.
In hindsight everything was blindingly obvious. She longed for her mother’s approval. If she couldn’t be beautiful, she could still exploit Titus’s guilt and make herself useful. She had said as much, had she not? He had felt not the least tingle of alarm, only sympathy so sharp it hurt.
Friendship is untenable for people in our position, he had told Fairfax. Had he thought it applied only to Fairfax?
The Inquisitor stared at him. “Your Highness, where is Iolanthe Seabourne?”
Right here in this room.
He was on guard, very, very much on guard. Yet he still felt his lips part and form the shape necessary to pronounce the first syllable of the truth. “I thought we had already established that I have neither interest in nor knowledge of your elemental mage.”
“Why are you protecting her, Your Highness?”
Because she is mine. You will have her over my dead body.
“Because—”
He yanked himself from the precipice. A sharp pain slashed through his head, nearly tumbling him off his perch on the chair. He righted himself; the chair wobbled with his effort. “Because I have nothing better to do than run afoul of Atlantis, apparently?”
The Inquisitor’s brow knitted.
“There is something you should know about me, Madam Inquisitor. I do not give a damn for anyone except myself. I dislike Atlantis. I despise you. But I am not going to harm a hair on my head over mere irritants such as yourself. Why should I care whether you find the girl or not? No matter what happens, I am still the Master of the Domain.”
The words hurt. His throat burned. The inside of his mouth felt as if he had been chewing nails. And the pain in his head distorted the vision in his left eye.
The Inquisitor considered him. Gazing into her eyes was like looking at blood running down the street. “You mentioned Lady Callista a minute ago, Your Highness. I’m sure you are aware that Lady Callista and your late mother were close friends. Do you know what Lady Callista told me just after your coronation? She said your mother fancied herself a seer.”
Titus swallowed with difficulty. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“One of the things Princess Ariadne predicted was that I would be the Inquisitor of the Domain.”
“You are,” said Titus.
The Inquisitor smiled. “I am, but Her Highness played a crucial part.”
Titus narrowed his eyes. He had never heard anything of the sort.
“About eighteen years ago, a new Inquisitor named Hyas was appointed to the Domain. He was young, energetic, outstandingly capable, and superbly loyal to the Lord High Commander. The Lord High Commander couldn’t have been more pleased with his performance. It seemed to everyone that Hyas was set for a long tenure.
“But three years into his appointment, he was abruptly dismissed. No one knew why—we serve at the Lord High Commander’s pleasure. His replacement, Zeuxippe, was just as skilled and loyal. She held the post for only eighteen months, her removal no less abrupt and unceremonious. After that, I was promoted.”
“For years, I remained as puzzled as everyone else concerning the events that led to my appointment. Yesterday I had an audience with the Lord High Commander. While I was in Atlantis, I called on my two predecessors and persuaded them to tell me their stories.”
Titus made no comment on her “persuasion.”
“Hyas was dismissed on charges of graft and corruption. He strenuously protested his innocence, but as some of the greatest treasures of the House of Elberon were found in his keeping, his objections fell on deaf ears. Zeuxippe’s tale was even more ignominious, if that was possible. She was accused of improper advances against the Princess Ariadne.
“It was a pernicious charge. It destroyed not only Zeuxippe’s career, but also her personal happiness: the love of her life left her after learning of the accusations. Now I am cynical—if mages were honest, there would be no need for Inquisitions. But I came away convinced of both Hyas’s and Zeuxippe’s innocence in their respective debacles. Which led me to the only conclusion possible, that Princess Ariadne was a deluded madwoman willing to do anything to make her so-called prophecies come true.”
Titus leaped off his chair. “I did not come here to listen to such drivel.”
He was furious. He could only hope his fury was sufficient to mask his dismay.
Everything—everything—rested on the accuracy of his mother’s visions. If she had been a fraud who cheated to fulfill her prophecies—he could not even follow the thought to its logical conclusion.
The Inquisitor smiled slightly. “Lady Callista also told me that when they were children, Her Highness had a vision that one day she would die at the hand of her own father.”
He blenched. His mother’s death left wounds that had yet to heal. The Inquisitor was tearing off the scabs one by one.
“The common mage believes Her Highness’s death to be the result of illness—her health had always been delicate and her passing at age twenty-seven unexpectedly early, but not implausible. You and I, however, both know that Prince Gaius, to demonstrate his desire to keep peace with Atlantis, executed Her Highness himself as a gesture of goodwill and submission. But now I wonder if Her Highness didn’t participate in the uprising with an eye toward being punished, so that she could preserve the integrity of her prophecy.”
He wanted to shout that his mother had never enjoyed her gift—that it had been a crushing burden. But did he believe it?
The Inquisitor smiled again. “I can’t help but think what you are doing now has something to do with Princess Ariadne’s wishes. Did she predict some magnificent destiny for you that would require you to risk life and liberty? Because as you said, Your Highness, you are too sensible a young man. I cannot believe you would throw away the best years of your life on your own initiative.”
His heart pounded—from more than the upheaval of the Inquisitor’s words. There was the truth serum, punishing him for not giving in to it, for not telling everything the Inquisitor wished to know. But there was something else also. Something that made him dizzy. He grabbed the back of the chair and looked at the Inquisitor.
“You should have been a playwright, Madam Inquisitor. Our theaters suffer from a shortage of sensational plots.”
Her eyes locked onto his. “Such a loyal son. Was she as loyal to you? Or did she see you as but a means to an end?”
He hardened his grip so his hands would not shake. “You ascribe far too many motives to a simple woman. My mother was neither clever nor scheming. And she was nowhere near ruthless enough to use her only child as a pawn in some grand chess match with destiny.”
“Are you sure?”
His head hurt, as if someone had scored his brain with broken glass. But nothing hurt as much as the possibility that his mother might have orphaned him to prove herself right.
Wrong. Something would hurt more: th
e idea that she was not yet done proving herself right, that from beyond the grave she was still manipulating Titus to justify the choices she had made in life.
“I am as sure as you are of Lady Callista’s truthfulness.”
“But you are not. I can see you are not. Her arrant disregard injures you. And why shouldn’t you be distressed and indignant? A son’s love for his mother ought not be perverted thus.”
Was that what his mother had done? Exploited and defiled his love for her not for a noble goal that was greater than their individual lives, but for the mere fixation of being right?
He had always been alone in this. And he had always struggled against his own private doubts. Now doubts and loneliness threatened to swallow him whole.
He wanted to say something. But the sensation in his head—as if the rim of his skull was liquefying. He swayed. His hands clutched tighter onto the chair.
This was how the Inquisitor operated, he dimly understood. A calm, collected mind was far more resistant to her probing, so she first destroyed her subjects’ composure. When they became distraught, she acted.
Her sobriquet among Atlanteans was the Starfish. A starfish inserted its stomach between the shells of a mussel and digested the poor bivalve in place. The Inquisitor did the same with the contents of a person’s memory: dissolving the boundaries of the poor sod’s mind, sucking all his scrambled recollections into her own, and sorting the wreckage at her leisure.
“Only fools stand in the way of Atlantis. Where is Iolanthe Seabourne?”
He would not allow her to get anything from him. He could not. If she had any suspicion he was not merely hiding Fairfax to thwart the Bane, but aimed for the Bane’s complete overthrow, Atlantis would not suffer him to live. And Fairfax—Fairfax would disappear off the face of the earth.
But he felt the beginning of the Inquisitor’s inimical surgery. Her powers sawed thick and jagged at his cranium. He tried to repel her. Tried to return himself to some measure of his usual coolness. He could not. All he could think was that his mother had done this to him.
“Where is the girl who brought down the lightning? Tell me!”
He did not realize until his nails were screaming in protest that he was clawing at the marble floors. He did not know when he had fallen down, only that he could not get up. His vision was turning black. No, it was narrowing into a tunnel. And at the very end of it was his mother, sitting on her balcony, absentmindedly stroking her canary through the bars of its cage.
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