The Burning Sky tet-1 Read online

  The long dark hair, half of it standing up from electrical shock, the ruffled white blouse, the green skirt. There was no mistaking it: the elemental mage who had brought down lightning was a girl.

  A girl.

  Archer Fairfax could not be a girl. What in the blazes was he to do with a girl?

  The next moment the girl was no longer alone. A man in a black robe materialized and sprinted toward her.

  Iolanthe stared at the winged beast. It was iridescent blue, with sharp, barely branched antlers on its equine head and a spiked, crimson-tipped tail.

  A Barbary Coast peryton.

  They were very fashionable in the cities, but not in the hinterlands. What was one doing here, immediately after she’d summoned a bolt of lightning?

  “What have you done?”

  Master Haywood! His black schoolmaster’s robe billowed behind him as he raced toward her.

  “I repaired the light elixir,” she said. “And you don’t need to worry about the crater, I’ll take care of it—and put the flagpole back where it belongs.”

  She commanded earth too, if not quite as well as she commanded fire and water—and lightning.

  “My goodness, what happened here?” Mrs. Greenfield, a villager, also appeared. “Are you all right, Miss Iolanthe? You look a fright.”

  Master Haywood drew his wand, yanked Iolanthe behind him, and pointed the wand at Mrs. Greenfield.

  “Obliviscere!” he shouted. “Obliviscere! Obliviscere!”

  Obliviscere was the most powerful spell of forgetfulness—and illegal for mages without a medical license to use. Mrs. Greenfield would lose six months, if not a year, of memories.

  “What are you doing?” Iolanthe cried.

  Mrs. Greenfield dropped to her knees and vomited. Iolanthe started toward her. Master Haywood caught Iolanthe’s sleeve. “You come with me.”

  “But Mrs.—”

  He had a death grip on her arm. “You come with me this moment if you want to live!”

  “What?”

  They both startled at the sound of wings beating above—the peryton. It carried a rider. She squinted for a better look. But the next moment, she was looking at her own front door.

  Master Haywood shoved her inside. She stumbled.

  Mrs. Needles poked her head into the vestibule. “Master Haywood, Miss Seabourne—”

  “Get out!” Master Haywood bellowed. “Leave this instant.”

  “I beg your—”

  Master Haywood pushed Mrs. Needles out of the house and slammed the door shut. He dragged Iolanthe into the parlor and pointed his wand at the ceiling. The tip of the wand shook.

  She swallowed. “Tell me what is going on!”

  A satchel fell from nowhere into his arms. “I already told you. Atlantis is coming after you.”

  From the open windows came the sound of the peryton’s wing beats. The hairs on the back of Iolanthe’s neck stood up.

  “What should I do?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, her hand clenched about her wand.

  A loud knock struck the front door. She jumped.

  “Master Haywood, open the door this minute!” The voice belonged to Mrs. Oakbluff, who also served as the village constable. “You are under arrest for the assault on Mrs. Greenfield, as witnessed by Mr. Greenfield and myself. Miss Seabourne, you come with me too.”

  Master Haywood thrust the satchel into Iolanthe’s arms. “Ignore her. You need to leave.”

  She hurried after him. The satchel was heavy. “What’s in the bag?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never opened it.”

  Why not?

  In a corner of his bedchamber stood a large trunk, which had followed them through many moves. As he unlocked the trunk and lifted the lid, she saw its inside for the first time. It was completely empty—a portal trunk. “Where am I going?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  Her stomach twisted. “What do you know?”

  “That you have put yourself in terrible danger.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Now get inside.”

  The house exploded. Walls caved; debris hurtled. She screamed, threw herself down, and shielded her head with the satchel. Chunks of brick and plaster pummeled her everywhere else.

  When the chaos had died down a little, she looked around for Master Haywood. He was flat on the floor among the wreckage, bleeding from a head wound. She rushed to his side.

  “Are you all right, Master Haywood? Can you hear me?”

  His eyelids fluttered open. He looked at her, his gaze unfocused.

  “It’s me, Iolanthe. Are you all right?”

  “Why are you still here?” he shouted, struggling to his feet. “Get in the trunk! Get in!”

  He grabbed the satchel from her and tossed it into the trunk. She took a deep breath and hauled herself over the trunk’s high sides. He pulled on the lid. She held it open with the palm of her hand. “Wait, aren’t you coming w—”

  He crumpled to the floor.

  “Master Haywood!”

  Through the chalky air, a matronly figure advanced. Mrs. Oakbluff waved her wand. Master Haywood’s inert body went flying, landing with a thud in the next room and missing being impaled upon a broken beam by mere inches.

  Mrs. Oakbluff came at Iolanthe.

  Where had they vaulted?

  The village was not big, but it still had some forty, fifty dwellings of varying sizes. The villagers stopped what they were doing to gawk at Marble, her shadow gliding on rooftops and cobbled streets like a harbinger of doom.

  The prince assessed the situation. Were he the father or the guardian—who obviously understood the implications of what the girl had done—would he have already gone on the run? Unlikely. He would want to return to their home nearby, where he had a bag packed for just such an emergency and a swift means to safety.

  But where was home?

  The prince had zoomed past the small house that sat apart from the rest of the village when a movement caught his eye. He turned his head, hoping it was the man and the girl rematerializing. Only one mage, however, stood before the house—not the long-haired girl, but a squat woman.

  Disappointed, he continued his search. Only to see, a minute later, the same house shaking violently before collapsing on itself.

  He reined Marble as close to a full stop as he dared and vaulted for the now crooked front steps of the house.

  “What are you doing?” Iolanthe wanted to shout in indignation, but her voice was barely above a whimper.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Mrs. Oakbluff smiled, but her square face was without its usual rustic goodwill. “Did you know I once worked in demolition?”

  “You destroyed our house because I damaged the flagpole?”

  “No, because you resisted arrest. And I need the credit for your arrest, young lady—I’ve been in this wretched place too long.”

  Credit for her arrest, not Master Haywood’s. Mrs. Oakbluff, soon-to-be in-law of Atlantis’s staunchest collaborators in all of Midsouth March, clearly believed seizing Iolanthe would bring her special rewards.

  The fear that had been welling up in Iolanthe suddenly boiled over. She yanked on the lid of the trunk, but it refused to lower.

  “Oh, no, I’m not letting you go so easily,” said Mrs. Oakbluff.

  She raised her wand toward Iolanthe. Without thinking, Iolanthe reacted. A wall of fire roared toward Mrs. Oakbluff.

  The prince first secured the house with an impassable circle to keep out other intruders. The front door still stood more or less intact, but the wall around it had crumbled. He stepped over the debris strewn across the vestibule, and barely had time to duck as a tongue of fire roared in his direction.

  But the fire did not reach him. Instead it pivoted midair and shot back where it had come from. He followed it toward the back of the house and stopped in his tracks.

  A dozen trails of hissing, crackling flames, vicious as serpents, attacked the housebreaker, who frantically shouted shieldin
g charms. The girl, now covered in plaster dust, stood in a tall trunk, her arms waving, her face a scowl of concentration.

  Some of the housebreaker’s shielding charms took. Behind their barricade, she pointed her wand at the girl.

  The prince raised his own wand. The housebreaker fell to the broken floor. The girl gawked at him a moment, raised both hands, and pushed them out. Fire hurtled toward him.

  “Esto praesidium!” The air before him hardened to take the brunt of the fire. “Recall your flames. I am not here to harm you.”

  “Then leave.”

  With a turn of her wrists, the wall of flame reconfigured into a battering ram.

  Good thing he had fought so many dragons. “Aura circumvallet.”

  Air closed around the fire. She waved her hands, trying to make her fire obey her, but it remained contained.

  She snapped her finger to call forth more fire.

  “Omnis ignis unus,” he murmured. All fire is one fire.

  The new burst of flame she wanted materialized inside the prison he had already made.

  He approached the trunk. Sunlight slanted through the broken walls into the room, sparkling where it caught particles of plaster in the air. One particular ray lit a thin streak of blood at her temple.

  She yanked at the trunk lid. He set his own hand against it. “I am not here to harm you,” he repeated. “Come with me. I will get you to safety.”

  She glowered. “Come with you? I don’t even know who . . .”

  Her voice trailed off; her head jerked with recognition. He was Titus VII, the Master of the Domain. His profile adorned the coins of the realm. His portraits hung in schools and public buildings—even though he was not yet of age and would not rule in his own right for another seventeen months.

  “Your Highness, forgive my discourtesy.” Her hand loosened its grip on the trunk’s lid; her gaze, however, remained on guard. “Are you here at Atlantis’s behest?”

  So she knew from which quarter danger came. “No,” he answered. “The Inquisitor would have to step over my dead body to get to you.”

  The girl swallowed. “The Inquisitor wants me?”

  “Badly.”

  “Why?”

  “I will tell you later. We need to go.”

  “Where?”

  He appreciated her wariness: better wary than naive. But this was no time for detailed answers. Each passing second diminished their chances of getting out unseen.

  “The mountains, for now. Tomorrow I will take you out of the Domain.”

  “But I can’t leave my guardian behind. He—”

  Too late. Overhead Marble emitted a high, keening call: she had sighted the Inquisitor. He untwisted the pendant he wore around his neck and pressed its lower half into her hand.

  “I will find you. Now go.”

  “But what about Master—”

  He pushed her down and slammed the trunk shut.

  The moment the trunk closed, its bottom dropped out from underneath Iolanthe. She fell into utter darkness, flailing.

  CHAPTER 3

  THERE WAS NO TIME TO bring down Marble. Titus had two choices: he could let the Inquisitor see Marble, catch her, and realize that Titus’s personal steed was loose in the vicinity; or he could vault onto the beast, with the latter in midflight.

  It was stupid to vault onto a moving object. It was suicidal when the moving object was two hundred feet in the air. But if his presence was to be deduced no matter what, then he preferred to be caught flying, which would allow him to claim that he had never set foot on the ground.

  He sighted Marble, sucked in a deep breath, and vaulted where he hoped she would be.

  He rematerialized in thin air, with nothing under him. His heart stopped. A fraction of a second later, he crashed onto something hard—Marble’s back. Relief tore through him. But there was no time to indulge in the shaking exhaustion of having cheated death. He was too far aft. Shouting at Marble to keep steady, he scrambled forward along her smooth spine, even as he pointed his wand at the house to erase the impassable circle.

  Already there had been a cluster of villagers gathered outside the circle, discussing among themselves whether they ought to go in. The removal of the circle lifted all such inhibitions. The villagers rushed into the house.

  Titus had no sooner grabbed the reins than the Inquisitor and her entourage arrived. A moment later, her second in command raised a formal hail.

  Titus took his time descending, applying miscellaneous cleaning spells to his person as he did so: it would defeat the purpose of his stunt to appear before the Inquisitor with the detritus of the house still clinging to him.

  There was an open field behind the house. Marble’s wings swept close to the ground, forcing the Inquisitor’s retainers to throw themselves down, lest they be impaled by the spikes that protruded from the front of those wings—natural spikes that Titus’s grooms had polished into stiletto-sharp points.

  Marble was now on her feet, but Titus did not dismount: the Inquisitor, in a deliberate slight, was not yet present to receive him. He took out two apples from the saddlebag, tossed one to Marble, and took a bite of the other. His heart, which had not yet slowed to normal, began to beat faster again.

  The Inquisitor was an extractor of secrets, and he had too many of them.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Inquisitor emerge from the rear door of the house. Marble hissed—of course a beast as intelligent as Marble would hate the Inquisitor. Titus kept on eating the apple—at a leisurely pace—and dismounted only after he tossed aside the core.

  The Inquisitor bowed.

  Appearances were still kept—Atlantis enjoyed pretending that it was not a tyrant, but merely first among equals. Therefore Titus, despite not having a dram of real power, reigned nevertheless as the Master of the Domain; and the Inquisitor, a representative of Atlantis, was officially of no more importance than any other ambassador from any other realm.

  “Madam Inquisitor, an unexpected pleasure,” he addressed her.

  His palms perspired, but he kept his tone haughty. His was a lineage that stretched back a thousand years to Titus the Great, unifier of the Domain and one of the greatest mages to ever wield a wand. The Inquisitor’s parents had been, if he was not mistaken, traders of antique goods—and not necessarily genuine ones.

  Ancestry was an indicator of little importance when it came to a mage’s individual abilities—archmages often came from families of otherwise middling accomplishment. But ancestry mattered to the average mage, and it especially mattered to the Inquisitor, though she was no average mage. Titus reminded her as often as he could that he was a vain, self-important boy who would have been nothing and no one had he not been born into the once-illustrious House of Elberon.

  “Unexpected indeed, Your Highness,” replied the Inquisitor. “The Midsouth March is remote from your usual haunts.”

  She was in her early forties, pale, with thin, red lips, almost invisible eyebrows, and eerily colorless eyes. He had first received her at age eight and had been frightened of her ever since.

  He forced himself to hold her gaze. “I saw the sustained lightning from the castle and had to have a look, naturally.”

  “You arrived fast. How did you locate the precise spot of the lightning so quickly?”

  Her tone was even, but her eyes bore into his. He blamed his mother. By all means the Inquisitor should believe in Titus’s frivolousness, but for the fact that the late Princess Ariadne too had once been deemed docile—and had proved anything but.

  “My grandfather’s field glass, of course.”

  “Of course,” said the Inquisitor. “Your Highness’s vaulting range is commendable.”

  “It runs in the family, but you are correct that mine is particularly extensive.”

  His immodest self-congratulation brought a twitch to the Inquisitor’s face. Fortunately for him, the ability to vault was considered analogous to the ability to sing: a talent that had no bearing on a mage’
s capacity for subtle magic.

  “What do you think of the person who brought down the lightning bolt?” asked the Inquisitor.

  “A person brought down the lightning?” He rolled his eyes. “Have you been reading too many children’s tales?”

  “It is elemental magic, Your Highness.”

  “Rubbish. The elements are fire, air, water, and earth. Lightning is none of them.”

  “One could say lightning is the marriage of fire and air.”

  “One could say mud is the marriage of water and earth,” he said dismissively.

  The Inquisitor’s jaw tightened. A bead of sweat rolled down Titus’s back. He played a perilous game. There was a fine line between irritating the Inquisitor and angering her outright.

  He set his tone slightly less pompous. “And what is Atlantis’s interest in all this, Madam Inquisitor?”

  “Atlantis is interested in all unusual phenomena, Your Highness.”

  “What have your people discovered about this unusual phenomenon?”

  The Inquisitor had come out of the house. So she would have seen the interior already.

  “Not very much.”

  He began to walk toward the house.

  “Your Highness, I advise against it. The house is structurally unstable.”

  “If it is not too unstable for you, it is not too unstable for me,” he said blithely.

  Besides, he had no choice. In his earlier hurry to get out, he had not had time to remove all traces he might have left behind. He must go back in and walk about, in case his previous set of boot prints had not been sufficiently trampled by the villagers.

  The January Uprising had failed for many different reasons, not the least of which was that its leaders had not been nearly meticulous enough. He could not afford to make the same mistakes.

  The Inquisitor in tow, he strolled through the house. Except for the number of books, there was nothing remarkable about it. The Inquisitor’s agents swarmed, checking walls and floors, pulling open drawers and cabinets. Nearly half a dozen agents crowded around the trunk, which, thankfully, seemed to be a one-time portal that kept its destination to itself.