As it turned out, Fairfax was not the last boy from Mrs. Dawlish’s house to be brought before the Inquisitor, nor the second to last. A junior boy had slipped away to buy tobacco in town. A boy in his final year was found in a compromising position with a maid in the headmaster’s household—and dragged back for his inspection.
But even after all the boys had been accounted for, the wait continued as the absent kitchen maid remained absent. Lady Callista had come prepared with snow-white linen and a picnic grand enough for a state banquet. Titus touched nothing, not even a drop of water.
At six o’clock, he rose to join the other rowers for the procession of boats that was to take place at half past. A company of the Inquisitor’s lackeys followed him, jogging along the bank, never letting him leave their sight.
Upstream, the boats were pulled ashore, and the rowers tucked into a special supper. Titus forced himself to eat, so as to appear unconcerned before his minders. Afterward, the rowers took to the boats again to row back downstream. Upon their return, the fireworks would begin.
Night had fallen. The trees along both banks of the river had been lit with miniature candles; the water glittered with their reflections. It would have been a pretty sight had he been in the mood to appreciate it.
Halfway down the river he realized that the mages who had shadowed him were gone. He veered between a bone-melting relief and a stark suspicion that this was the beginning of some new trickery.
Only when he saw that the white canopy had also disappeared did he allow himself to exhale. If the Inquisitor had planned to take him in tonight, she’d have waited for him.
Pushing past the throngs of spectators gathered for the fireworks, he headed back to Mrs. Dawlish’s.
Fairfax was not in her room—the entire floor was empty. But she did leave him a note on her desk. Off to the fireworks. The boys insist.
He returned to his own room, set the kettle to boil, pulled out a tin of biscuits from his cabinet, and slumped down on his bed.
For now, he was safe. But the next Inquisition would happen sooner or later. To protect Fairfax, he must go on the run. The only question was whether she would be safer coming with him or staying behind at Eton.
The kettle boiled. He looked into his cupboard for his favorite leaf, grown in the mist-covered mountains of the West Ponives, a mage realm in the Arabian Sea—and remembered that he had already finished his store. On an ordinary day, he would have settled for a bit of Fairfax’s Earl Grey. But tonight he wanted—needed—the comfort of the familiar before he made decisions that would affect what remained of his life.
He went to Fairfax’s room to vault to his laboratory—and could not. His shock was almost as great as what she must have felt when he tossed her into Ice Lake. Going into the empty house officers’ lounge, he tried again—and again found himself in the same spot. He ran downstairs into the street—and still could not vault.
This was Atlantis’s doing. It went without saying that if he managed to find the boundary of this no-vaulting zone, he would find it heavily guarded. And his flying carpet had been packed away as part of Fairfax’s survival kit, now beyond his reach.
He took a deep breath and told himself he had no need to lose hope. There was always the wardrobe in Wintervale’s room.
But when he opened the door of the wardrobe, he saw a note pasted on the inside. Dear Lee, I am blocking this portal for now, until I find a more secure means for you to access the house. Love, Mother.
His last option, ripped from him. He stumbled back into his room, numb with panic.
Distantly there came the sound of fireworks exploding and enthusiastic cheering. Like a sleepwalker, he drifted to his window, only to see Trumper and Hogg on the grass, each with a brick in hand, getting ready to throw them at his and Fairfax’s window.
His anger boiling over, he slashed his wand in the air. They promptly fell over. He clenched his hand, willing himself not to do anything else. In his current state of mind, he might maim them permanently.
He turned around. “Bastards. They need their heads shoved up their—”
He froze. It was exactly what he had said in his mother’s vision. He hurried to his copy of Lexikon der Klassischen Altertumskunde. In his hands it turned back to Princess Ariadne’s diary. Almost immediately he located the rest of the entry.
It is evening, or perhaps night, quite dark outside. Titus turns back from the window, clearly incensed. “Bastards,” he swears. “They need their heads shoved up their—”
He freezes. Then rushes to take a book down from his shelf, a book by the name of Lexikon der Klassischen Altertumskunde.
Everything blurred.
When I could make out clear images again, I was no longer looking at the same small room, but at the library of the Citadel. Is it the same evening? I cannot be sure. Titus appears again, this time in a gray, hooded tunic, moving stealthily through the stacks. (Someday he will be the Master of the Domain. Why the furtiveness in his own palace?)
Again everything dissolves—to coalesce once more into the interior of the Citadel’s library. Many more mages are present, most of them soldiers in Atlantean uniform—how far the fortunes of the House of Elberon will have fallen—surrounding what looks to be a body on the floor. Alectus and Callista are there too.
“I can’t believe it,” Callista murmurs.
Alectus looks as if he’d lost his own sister. “The Inquisitor, dead. It is not possible. It is not possible.”
Did this mean if Titus took himself to the Citadel tonight, it would somehow result in the Inquisitor’s death? The prospect was dizzying.
What had the Oracle said? You must visit someone you’ve no wish to visit and go somewhere you’ve no wish to go.
To go to the Citadel, he would have to pass through Black Bastion, Helgira’s fortress.
My visions are usually not so disjointed. At this point I am not sure whether this is one vision or three separate ones. I will record them as one for now and hope for clarification later.
He turned the page. There was no more text. He turned another page and froze. At the bottom right corner of this page, there was a small skull mark.
He had left the mark, on the page that bore the vision of his death.
Were these two visions but part of the same larger vision? By going to the Citadel this night, was he going to his end?
Think no more on the exact hour of your death, prince. That moment must come to all mortals. When you will have done what you need to do, you will have lived long enough.
He set his hand on the Crucible, bowed his head, and began the password.
CHAPTER
IOLANTHE WAS DRAGGED OUT OF Mrs. Dawlish’s by boys who had come back to the house for supper. They could not understand why she wanted to stay in her room, and she, preoccupied, had failed to complain early on of headaches or fatigue.
She made sure she always stood or walked where it was darkest, kept a wary eye for the presence of Atlanteans, and an even warier one for the possibility of Master Haywood and Mrs. Oakbluff being led about like a pair of bloodhounds.
But no one arrested her. She made it back to Mrs. Dawlish’s house and headed directly for the prince’s room.
He was not there. She spent a petrified moment thinking he’d been taken after all, until she noticed his uniform jacket on the back of a chair—and the still warm kettle next to the grate.
So he’d come back, taken off his jacket, boiled water for tea, and then—she felt the kettle again—between a quarter to a half hour ago, gone somewhere else.