The Burning Sky

by Shelly Thomas

  The canary sang, urgently, beautifully.

  Now he was truly hallucinating. Had the Inquisitor dug down deep enough to extract his memories? The pain in his head made his stomach burn.

  The canary sang again.

  Fairfax. It was Fairfax. They would get their hands on her within the hour, if he did not get her out of here.

  But she was still free. She could do something: poke out the Inquisitor’s eyes, or empty the contents of her bowels on the Inquisitor’s head.

  He laughed. But even to himself, he sounded quite deranged.

  He raised his head and opened his eyes. Fairfax was right in front of him, fluttering madly.

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  CHAPTER 16

  THE PRINCE’S HEAD THUDDED AGAINST the floor.

  Iolanthe cried, a hoarse chirp.

  She’d been flabbergasted by the Inquisitor’s revelations. Then terrified—what if the prince gave her up? Then pain had burst upon her, as if someone wielded a firebrand inside her skull. She’d convulsed, her wings twitching uselessly.

  He remembered to take her out of his overrobe before he fell.

  Until then, she’d thought that she was the only one who suffered, that he’d been wrong about the Inquisitor being unable to affect the minds of birds and reptiles. But as his knees gave out before her, she realized that she was not the Inquisitor’s target, he was.

  He was being tortured and she, perhaps because of the bond of the blood oath, shared his agony.

  The sight of his hands clawing mindlessly at the marble floors—the way a man buried alive clawed the lid of the coffin—momentarily loosened the hold the pain had on her: he was in far worse shape than she was.

  His glazed eyes frightened her. She’d never believed that he of all people, exquisitely controlled and perfectly prepared, could be so vulnerable.

  Not only vulnerable: helpless.

  Unless she helped him.

  But she wasn’t strong enough to disturb the foundation of the Inquisitory or even the walls of the Inquisition Chamber. And were she to unleash either fire or water, it would be obvious an elemental magic was at work.

  Could she poke out the Inquisitor’s eyes with her beak? The very thought made her gag. It was also impractical. She could get off the ground, but she couldn’t fly fast or straight, which made her useless as a weapon.

  She looked about desperately. A chandelier hung from a wrought-iron chain overhead. It had four branches, each holding a porcelain light sphere on a shallow cup.

  An anti-shatter spell had been invented for glass, but not for porcelain. If she swung the chandelier, the light spheres would roll out—and plummet thirty feet to crash where the Inquisitor sat.

  But she must not create too strong a gust, or the Inquisitor would immediately suspect the presence of an elemental mage.

  Too strong a gust—she who couldn’t even float a piece of paper.

  A concentrated blast of air that wouldn’t be felt at floor level. And all in one go, so that by the time the Inquisitor noticed anything awry, Iolanthe would have already accomplished the deed.

  Could she do it?

  A shard of pain slashed through her left eye. She shuddered. The prince jerked on the floor. He clamped his hands on either side of his ears. Blood oozed out from between his fingers.

  The sight shocked Iolanthe senseless. She must get him out of here.

  She tried to clear her mind, to concentrate until she was nothing but a singular purpose. But doubt retained its stubborn hold. She had never managed it, whispered a soft voice. She couldn’t even when she was drowning in honey. What made her think she could now?

  The honey had been make-believe. But this was real. His sanity was at stake. She might accuse him of lunacy, but she would peck the Inquisitor’s eyes out before she’d let the woman destroy his mind.

  Iolanthe blocked out everything else and allowed herself only to remember what it felt like when she manipulated fire—or lightning. That absolute conviction. That bone-deep sense of connection.

  Uncertainty still licked at the edges of her mind.

  Time was running out. The Inquisitor rose, her menace a thing that choked the air from Iolanthe’s lungs.

  Iolanthe closed her eyes. Do it. Now. And do it exactly as I will you.

  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 scene 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.