Unfortunately, the length of the line would not matter when Fairfax arrived. She would be instantly swept to the front.
If his heart pounded any harder it was going to crack one of his ribs.
Was that Cooper back at the head of the line again? Had he not already been presented? This was fun for Cooper. The ostentation-loving dunce was having a ball.
Titus wanted to throttle him.
Or—perhaps he could make use of the idiot.
As Cooper bowed before Lady Callista again, Titus called out loudly, “What are you doing here, Nettle Oakbluff? And you too, Haywood. Does the Inquisitory give holidays to its detainees now?”
Then he sneered at Cooper. “Stop being such a useless twit, Cooper. You are taking someone else’s place. Scram. No, wait. Go find Birmingham and Sutherland. Why are they not back yet? They are insulting me with their incompetence.”
Sutherland could not stop talking of Lady Callista’s beauty. Birmingham was unimpressed with Sutherland’s effusiveness.
“I won’t deny she is beautiful, but she must be our mothers’ age and probably more.”
“So what?” Iolanthe said, giving Sutherland a nudge. “As long as she is not my mother.”
“Exactly.” Sutherland laughed. “Fairfax here is a man after my own heart. Although I do wish they hadn’t sat her next to that witch. That woman makes the soles of my feet cold.”
Iolanthe almost came to a standstill. That woman. “You mean the prince’s wet nurse?”
Birmingham and Sutherland snickered.
“A rock would give milk before she does,” said Birmingham.
“My balls would have permanently shriveled if I’d had to drink from her teats,” declared Sutherland.
Iolanthe approximated the sound of chuckling. The Inquisitor. When had she recovered? And what was she doing at such a public forum, receiving the prince’s friends, no less? Could she take a sledgehammer to his mind when there were thousands of people swirling around?
Cooper barreled into sight. “Ah, there you are. I’ve been tasked to find you.”
“Did Frampton send you too?” Birmingham sounded none too pleased at this implied snub against his competence.
“No, the prince himself sent me,” said Cooper proudly.
Iolanthe’s alarm instantly tripled. The prince never did anything without a reason. He must be well aware that Sutherland and Birmingham had already been dispatched. Why Cooper in addition?
“Quite the day for you, Cooper,” she said. “You’ve always liked him being princely.”
“Words cannot describe how grand he has been. The man was born to lord over others.”
Birmingham snorted.
“Did anyone else come from the court of Saxe-Limburg besides his great-uncle, the beautiful lady, and the hair-raising lady?” Iolanthe asked.
“Yes, hordes of lackeys.” Cooper thought about it. Iolanthe could almost hear the gears of his brain rattling. “Maybe not all of them are servants. The prince addressed two of them by name and said something like, ‘When did the transitory let out its detainees?’ You reckon some of them could be political prisoners?”
“You idiot.” Birmingham had had enough of Cooper’s prattling. “Who would bring political prisoners to a school function? And what in the world is a transitory, anyway?”
“I’m just telling you what he said.”
Iolanthe could not hear anything else over the roar in her head. This was the prince’s message: Master Haywood and Mrs. Oakbluff had been brought to Eton to identify her. And the moment her disguise was stripped, she would be taken away.
Run! bellowed her voice of self-preservation. Vault somewhere. Anywhere. Get away.
But what would happen to him if she ran? Should his closest chum disappear from the face of the earth just as witnesses arrived to identify Iolanthe Seabourne, even Prince Alectus might be able to put two and two together. It would be back to the Inquisitory with him. And this time, there would be no one to intervene when the Inquisitor began cutting through his mind.
Unless—
No. The very idea was insane.
But she had to. She had no other choice. There was no one else to help her.
“Ahhh!” she cried, and cupped her abdomen with both hands.
“What is it?” said the boys simultaneously.
“My stomach. I shouldn’t have had that ginger beer. I’ll bet that hag made it out of ditch water.”
“Run for the lavatory,” Birmingham advised. “When ginger beer turns on you, it turns on you hard.”
“Want me to come with you?” Cooper asked cheerfully.
“And do what? Wipe my arse? You are the prince’s personal envoy, so you’ve got to personally take my message to him. Tell him I’ll be along as soon as I’ve had my rendezvous with the crapper.”
She started running before she’d finished speaking.
Only to barrel into Trumper and Hogg a minute later, blocking her way.
“Oh, look who doesn’t have any friends or cricket bats today?” said Trumper.
Hogg sneered, smashing one fist against the palm of his other hand. “You can kiss your pretty face good-bye, Fairfax. After we’re done with you today, you’ll look like chopped liver.”
She swore—and punched Trumper in the stomach. He howled. Hogg threw himself at her and closed his arm around her throat in a chokehold. She rammed her elbow into his kidney. He yelped in pain and stumbled back. To Trumper, again joining the fray, she delivered a knee to the groin. Trumper emitted a high-pitched shriek and collapsed in a heap.
She ran again and ducked into an empty alley between two houses. Hands braced against the rough brick wall behind her back, she vaulted.
Only to open her eyes and find that she hadn’t moved an inch.
Her destination was within her vaulting range. There was no reason she should have failed. She tried again. And again. And again.
To no avail.
Atlantis had turned the entire school into a no-vaulting zone.
CHAPTER
IOLANTHE SPRINTED.
If Kashkari had been telling the truth—and she had no reason to doubt him—then Atlantis had not only established a no-vaulting zone, but also made sure that one would not be able to simply walk out.
But not all no-vaulting zones were created equal. Permanent ones, like the one the prince had established in his room, took tremendous time and effort. A completely new, and most likely temporary, no-vaulting zone sometimes had areas of incomplete denial that could be exploited—or so she’d recently learned in the teaching cantos.
She did not stop until she was before the wardrobe in Wintervale’s room. Paired portals, unless specifically allowed, did not work inside a no-vaulting zone. When one was inside and the other out, however, they were sometimes overlooked by a first-iteration no-vaulting zone, especially one that covered such a huge area.
She opened the wardrobe, pushed Wintervale’s coats aside, squeezed in. and closed the door. But when she opened the door again, she was still in Wintervale’s room at Mrs. Dawlish’s.
Her fingertips shook.
Unless . . . unless the portal had a password. Most didn’t: the magic undergirding portals and that which governed the use of passwords were not terribly compatible. But the prince had definitely used one for the bathtub portals connecting the castle to the monastery.
But how was she to find out the password now? The prince was out of reach. And were she to set out to search for Wintervale, there was every chance she’d be seen and brought to the Inquisitor before she could come back and use the portal.
She perspired—it was dark and stuffy inside the wardrobe. Her lungs felt as if they were about to collapse. Her hands, braced on either side of her person, barely kept her upright.
Like a bright flare at night, the Oracle’s counsel came to her. You will best help him by seeking aid from the faithful and bold. She’d thought of those words daily, and never had they made any sense.