“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 he 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.
He flicked a nonexistent speck of ash from his sleeve. “There is more than one way to snap a wand, Fairfax.”
She had underestimated him.
He was cunning and ruthless. But she’d failed to perceive that he was also a mage of great ability. An elemental mage’s fire was not easy to divert by subtle magic, and yet he did it effortlessly—without even the aid of a wand.
You seem to have prepared a great deal for this. She’d had no idea how much. He was not a normal boy of sixteen, but a demi-demon in a school uniform.
“You are no match for me yet, Fairfax. But you will be, someday. And the more diligently you train, the sooner you can penalize me at will. Think about it: the fearful look in my eyes when I beg for mercy.”
She was being very adroitly maneuvered. He wanted her to slave for his goal, holding out his debasement as a carrot before her. But that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted only to—
She yanked sharply away from any thought of freedom.
“Please leave,” she said.
He pulled out his wand. “Incendia.”
A small fireball blazed into being. He waved it toward her. “Your fire, Fairfax. I will see you in the morning.”
CHAPTER
THE LAVATORY WAS NOT, THANKFULLY, as nasty a place as the prince had led Iolanthe to believe. Still, one look at the long urinal trough and she resolved to visit as infrequently as possible.
The corridor, like the rest of the house, had walls papered in ivy and roses. The lavatories and the baths occupied the northern end. Directly opposite the stair landing was a large common room. South of the common room were the individual rooms for the sixteen senior boys—fifteen senior boys and Iolanthe.
She and the prince occupied two adjacent rooms at the southern end of the floor. Across from their rooms was a smaller common room reserved for the house captain and his lieutenants. And just north of the prince’s room was the galley where the junior boys did some of the cooking for the senior boys’ afternoon tea. As a result, she and the prince were isolated from the rest of the floor.