The Perilous Sea (20 page)

Iolanthe started.

“I wear my kurta only to bed—meaning it was past lights-out. It just didn't seem like something I would do, climbing out of a window for mischief in the middle of the night. But when the scene unfolded in reality, it had to do with Trumper and Hogg and their rock throwing. Suddenly it seemed like a very worthwhile thing to do, going after them.”

And by doing so, he had revealed himself to be the “scorpion” the Oracle of Still Waters had spoken about, someone from whom she could seek aid.

“Was I there in your dream?”

“You were speaking just before I climbed out the window. I was never able to recall what you said, but yes, you were there.”

“Gentlemen, I hate to interrupt this engrossing conversation, but practice is about to start,” said West.

It had been an engrossing conversation indeed. Iolanthe hadn't even noticed West's approach. She shook hands with him. “We are drawing a crowd today.”

West glanced at the dozens and dozens of boys gathered at the edge of the playing field. “That's nothing. Wait until the Summer Half.”

“Cooper and Rogers, over there,” said Iolanthe to Kashkari.

Cooper waved. Iolanthe blew him an exaggerated kiss. Both Cooper and Rogers bent over laughing, as if it were the funniest thing they had ever seen.

“Does the prince not come and watch you play?” asked West.

“He has about as much interest in cricket as he has in medieval French grammar,” Iolanthe answered.

“Is that so?”

West's tone seemed casual, but Iolanthe could sense his disappointment—a subtle movement in the set of his jaw, the way he carried his bat closer to his person.

Why should West care whether Titus came to the practice?

Was he an agent of Atlantis, by some chance?

This possibility distracted her so much that it was not until they were twenty minutes into the practice that the significance of what
Kashkari
had said fully made itself understood.

Kashkari had seen her—or Fairfax, rather—several times in dreams in the past two years, while Fairfax was only supposed to have been absent from school for three months, according to the stipulations of the prince's otherwise spell that had created and maintained Fairfax's fictitious identity.

When Iolanthe had finally turned up, under the name Fairfax, Kashkari would have known that Fairfax hadn't been absent for a mere three months, but had never been seen in Mrs. Dawlish's house until that moment.

No wonder at the beginning of their acquaintance he'd asked Iolanthe so many questions and made her so nervous. He had suspected from the first second that some pieces about Fairfax did not fit together.

That Fairfax, who was supposed to have lived under Mrs. Dawlish's roof for the past four years, did not exist until the start of Summer Half.

 

Iolanthe kept glancing at Kashkari as they walked back together to Mrs. Dawlish's. He was possibly even more difficult to read than the prince—and he accomplished it without the haughtiness the latter wore like a suit of spiked armor.

It amazed her now, behind that gentlemanly amiability, how much Kashkari had kept to himself. Not only his own secrets, but hers too, never revealing anything of his inner thoughts, except perhaps an occasional question that left her flailing for an answer.

But why was he divulging all these closely held secrets to her? And why now? Was he trying to tell her something?

Or was it a warning?

The prince came out of his room as she and Kashkari reached the stair landing of their corridor at Mrs. Dawlish's. “Our lackeys have our tea almost prepared.”

They usually had their tea in Wintervale's room. Now that Wintervale was indisposed, the location had temporarily moved to Kashkari's room. Iolanthe didn't want tea, but she also didn't want to drag the prince back into his room to unburden herself, not with Kashkari already saying, “A pleasure to host my friends.”

Kashkari's room was almost as spare as the prince's. A rather ancient-looking rug covered the floor. On the bookshelf gleamed brass plates that bore oil lamps and small heaps of vermilion and turmeric. Above this diminutive altar, the painted image of the god Krishna, sitting with one foot upon the opposite knee, a flute at his lips.

“Nice curtain.” She pointed her chin toward the sky-blue brocade drapery, which provided a splash of color in the otherwise plain room.

“Thank you. Something more substantial on the window for the English winter—otherwise cold air just seeps in.”

Junior boys came, bearing plates of hot beans on toast and eggs. Kashkari poured tea. They talked about Wintervale's condition, the latest news from India, Prussia, and Bechuanaland—this last forcing Iolanthe to participate. The chair might as well have grown thorns. How much longer must they keep this up? And why had the prince come at all? Yesterday he had begged off tea altogether.

She glanced at the clock. Twenty-five minutes had passed. Five more minutes, and she was leaving.

A light knock came at the door.

It was Mrs. Hancock, with a letter for Kashkari. “This just came in the post for you, dear.”

Kashkari rose, took the letter from Mrs. Hancock, thanked her, and returned to the table. The envelope was a brown, square one, with large black letters written across both the front and the back.
PHOTOGRAPH INSIDE. PRAY DO NOT BEND.

Kashkari put the letter aside, sat down, and then, with what for him passed as great agitation, rose again. “It's no use.”

“What?” asked the prince.

“I know what it is: a portrait from my brother's engagement party. I can't avoid it forever so I might as well open it now.”

“If you would like us to give you some privacy—” began Iolanthe.

“I've already unburdened myself to the two of you earlier. It would be silly to pretend otherwise.” He opened the envelope and handed the photograph to Iolanthe. “That's her.”

Three people were in the frame—Kashkari, a young woman in a sari, and a handsome young man who must be Kashkari's brother. The woman's hair was covered by the sari. An enormous nose ring—with a chain attached somewhere in her hair—obscured a good bit of her face. But still it was easy to see that she was extraordinarily lovely.

“She is beautiful enough to be the girl of anyone's dreams.”

Kashkari sighed. “That she is.”

Iolanthe passed the photograph to the prince, who took a sip of tea as he accepted the photograph from her.

Almost immediately he began coughing—and kept on coughing.

Iolanthe was bewildered—the Master of the Domain was not the kind of boy to choke on his tea. Kashkari stood up and struck the prince forcibly between the shoulder blades.

The prince, panting, returned the photograph to him. “My tea—went down the wrong way. She is—handsome indeed.”

“She seems to have a strong effect on not just you,” Iolanthe said to Kashkari.

The prince gave her a strange look. “How did she and your brother meet, Kashkari?”

“It's an arranged marriage, of course.”

“Of course. What I meant was, is she from the same city as you?”

“No. We belong to the same community, but her family settled years ago in Punjab.” Kashkari smiled weakly. “They could have found any girl to be my brother's bride, and it had to be her.”

The prince rose to leave shortly thereafter. Iolanthe stayed a minute longer. Then she was knocking on his door—she must speak to him about the implications of Kashkari's prophetic dreams—and found herself dragged inside.

“Kashkari—” she began.

He cut her off. “That woman in the photograph—she was the one who crashed the garden party at the Citadel. The one who escaped on a flying carpet. The one who asked for
you
.”

CHAPTER
17

The Sahara Desert

HE WAS STILL SLEEPING, HIS
shoulder touching hers, when she woke, perspiring.

Inside the buried tent, it was dim and prodigiously hot. She called for water, drank her fill, and topped the waterskins. Then she sat up, called for some mage light, and turned her attention to the prince. He was sleeping on his stomach, without his tunic. She sucked in a breath at the sight of the bandage on his back: if it were bright red, it would be one thing, but it was blood mixed with an inky dark substance—an appalling sight.

“Just my body expelling the poison.” His words were slow and sleepy. “I took every antidote in your bag.”

She took off the old bandage and destroyed it. “What in the world was it?”

“It has to be venom of some sort, but I cannot feel any puncture marks.”

“I don't see any either.” She handed him a few granules for pain. “It just looks as if your skin has been eaten away by acid, or something.”

“But this substance is organic, because the antidotes did work.”

She shook her head. “Such a large area. Almost as if someone had a bucket of venom and just threw it at you.”

And yet he had walked goodness knew how many miles in this desert, dragging her along.

She cleaned his wound, applied more topical analgesic, and then spread a regenerative remedy. “Do you know what I am reminded of? Have you ever read the story of Briga's Chasm?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the pulpwyrms that guard the entrance to the chasm? Those nasty creatures that are big as roads? They are said to spew an endless stream of a black substance that can dissolve a mage down to just teeth and hair.”

“But pulpwyrms are not real.”

“Now why must you upset a perfectly good hypothesis with such bothersome things as facts?”

The corner of his lips lifted—and disrupted her train of thought. She stared at his profile, longer than she ought to, before she remembered that she had a task at hand.

“How long have you been up?” he asked.

She pull out two other vials. “Five minutes or so. I filled the waterskins.”

“You actually sound awake, for once.”

“I'm slightly groggy, but I don't feel as if I'll start snoring in the next minute.”

He hissed as she sprinkled the contents of one vial onto his back. “Good. I was about to go deaf from your snoring.”

“Ha!” She decanted another remedy onto his wound, counting the drops carefully. “Speaking of being important, isn't the Master of the Domain named Titus? It isn't a very common name.”
11

He thought for a moment. “It is quite common among the Sihar.”
12

She was taken aback, but it almost made sense—the Sihar were known for their enthusiasm for and mastery of blood magic. “You think you are Sihar?”
13

“I have not the slightest idea. I just did not want to be one of those people who lose their memories and decide they must be the Master of the Domain.” His brows knitted together. “On the other hand, night before last I set off two beacons. Two huge phoenix beacons. And the phoenix does stand for the House of Elberon.”

She put away all the remedies and rebandaged his back. “Maybe you were a lowly stable boy in one of the prince's households, where you acquired a love of phoenixes. Having had enough of shoveling muck day in and day out, you set out on an adventure that took you across oceans. You slew dragons, met beautiful girls, and won accolades for your courage and chivalry—”

“And ended up half-crippled in the middle of a desert?”

“Every story must have such a terrible moment, or it wouldn't be interesting.”

He blew out a breath of air. “I think I have had quite enough of adventures. In the last thirty-six hours, at least three times I thought I would expire of fright. I am ready to beg His Highness to take me back into his employment, so I can shovel muck out of his stables in peace and quiet for the remainder of my natural life.”

She grinned. “I love a man of ambition.”

He smiled again. And again she was quite, quite distracted.

“I have to admit,” he said, “the desert night sky is stunning. I would not mind an opportunity to enjoy it without Atlantis on my tail—a campfire, a cup of something hot, and the entire cosmos for my viewing pleasure.”

“A man of ambition—and simple tastes.”

“What would
you
do, if Atlantis were not chasing us from one end of the Sahara to the other?”

She thought about it. “You might laugh, but if Atlantis weren't in the picture, I'd wonder whether I am falling behind in my classes by being in the Sahara in the middle of an academic term.”

He did laugh.

“Laugh all you want. I am not going to apologize for my burning desire to succeed in my studies.”

“Please do not. Besides, I will wager that is what your beau loves most about you.”

She sat back on her haunches. “How do you know about him?”

“The hidden writing on the strap of your bag.”