The Perilous Sea (39 page)

 

A vein throbbed at her temple. When she had scanned the sea after the maelstrom had come and gone, she too, had seen wreckage, but not bodies.

If the ship that had tumbled into Wintervale's maelstrom had been decommissioned and empty, then there must have been collusion between some of the parties involved. It would mean somebody deliberately sent an old, useless vessel after Wintervale, so as not to waste personnel or ships in active service, because they knew at some point it was going to be destroyed.

Who could have known that the ship would be destroyed? Wintervale, according to both the prince and Kashkari, had been the feeblest of elemental mages, barely able to get a fire going in the grate. Who could have predicted, ahead of time, that he would singlehandedly put an Atlantean ship to ruin?

She bit her lips and reached for the emergency bag.

 

Nobody had returned from Sunday service yet—it was not that unusual for the sermon to run long. Titus stood inside Fairfax's room and looked around.

He had decorated the room years before she arrived, with a picture of the queen on the wall, postcards of ocean liners, and images that represented Bechuanaland, her supposed home. She had replaced the photograph of Queen Victoria with that of a society beauty and put up new curtains, but otherwise left the room more or less as it was.

His gaze fell on the photograph of her that did not look like her at all. She had passed around the photograph the day Sutherland issued his invitation for them all to go to his uncle's house, which seemed an impossibly long time ago.

She materialized next to him, the emergency bag strapped across her shoulders. Alarm pulsed through him.

“Why do you have the bag? What is the matter?”

“What do you think of my eyesight?” she asked, her tone tense.

That was not the question he had expected. “Perfectly good. Now tell me why you are already carrying the emergency bag.”

She ignored his demand. “What do you think of my grasp of Greek?”

He could shout at the top of his lungs for her to answer his question first, but this was Fairfax, who never did anything without a good reason. He held himself back. “Not bad.”

“Do you think it is likely that I have completely misread the name of the ship Wintervale sank?”

“But you just told me last night that you probably did misread it.”

“I mistook it for a similar word—or so I thought. Is it possible that the actual name is nothing like what I thought it to be either time?”

“Anything is possible.” He recalled the skimmer, whirling around on the outer rim of the maelstrom before being pulled under. “But if you were already paying attention, there is no reason you should have been that much mistaken.”

She gripped his arm, hard. “If I am correct about the ship's name, then it must be either
Sea Wolf
or
Ferocious
. Dalbert had confirmed to you—and to me again today—that there is no Atlantean naval vessel called
Sea Wolf
. But there was one called
Ferocious
, and it had been decommissioned three years ago.

“I saw no bodies when I surveyed the sea that day. Wreckage but no bodies. Do you think it is possible that the ship had been empty? That”—she swallowed—“it was all for show?”

He stared at her, beginning to feel as if he too had been caught in an enormous trap, with an undertow too strong to escape. “What do you
mean
?”

“I'm not sure what I mean, and I'm not sure I want to know.” Her hand came up to her throat. “Fortune shield me, that's almost exactly what Lady Wintervale said.”

“What? When?”

“When I visited Lady Wintervale just now, she told me that she and Wintervale had become separated on their way to Grenoble for more than seventy-two hours.”

With the discussion of the Bane still fresh in his memory, a loud gong went off inside Titus's head: seventy-two hours was the threshold for the most powerful contact-requisite spells. “You have to be in direct physical contact with someone for that long in order to . . . to . . .”

A seventy-two-hour disappearance.

And when he returned, the boy who could barely light a candle with his elemental powers had become mighty enough to create a spectacular whirlpool.

Fortune shield him. “The remedy I gave Wintervale, the one that made him go into a seizure—do you know what ‘intangible tenure' means?”

A choked sound issued from her throat. “I have heard of it before—Master Haywood had a colleague at the Conservatory who researched the occult. Isn't saying someone is under an intangible tenure just a wordier way of saying that person is possessed?”

Possessed
.

“Fortune shield us all.” Her voice was hoarse. “Did you give Wintervale an
exorcism
aid?”

Had he? “What happens if you give someone an exorcism aid by accident?”

“Nothing. That was how they used to tell whether someone is really possessed or just pretending. You slip an exorcism aid in their food and if they show no reaction, it's just an act. But if they start seizing—”

They gaped at each other in horror. That was exactly what had happened to Wintervale.

And then, in a panic, Titus had forced a king's ransom of panacea down Wintervale's gullet. The only goal of panacea was the stabilization of the entire system. It stopped the exorcism and it stopped any other battle Wintervale's body might have been pitching to rid itself of—of whatever had taken possession of him.

Titus remembered the nautical distress signal he received, alerting him to Wintervale's presence. He also remembered what Fairfax had said to him:
Had I been Lady Wintervale, I would have disabled the distress signal on the lifeboat. That was probably what allowed Atlantis to track him down.

What if the distress signal had been deliberately
enabled
, to make sure that Titus saw everything?

They had already deduced that the Bane was capable of “driving” other bodies that looked like his. Who was to say he could not take command of one that did not resemble his original self?

“The mental instability the Kno-it-all gauge detected in Wintervale,” he heard himself say, his voice almost flat. “What if it was exactly right?”

“And Wintervale's inability to walk unassisted—that must be because he looks nothing like the one driving his body,” said Fairfax. “There is a reason that until now the Bane only used similar-looking bodies—the mind probably can't trick itself enough into fully controlling everything if the face looks that different.”

“And the guards outside Mrs. Dawlish's house—they were not there at the beginning of the Half. They only came after Wintervale's maelstrom.”

They had not been posted to watch Titus, as he had assumed, but most likely to ensure someone else's safety.

Fairfax pulled on her collar, as if it had become too tight. “I always did think it was miraculous that Atlantis let you return to school this Half. I wouldn't have.”

Icarus Khalkedon had been correct. After the great comet had come and gone, the Bane had indeed walked into Mrs. Dawlish's house, and he had done so in Wintervale's body. And West had disappeared because he unfortunately resembled the Bane—and the Bane could always use yet another spare.

“What I still don't understand is what it is all for,” Fairfax continued. “What is the Bane trying to accomplish by doing all this?”

Titus gripped her. “It is all for
you
, do you not see? He had failed to find you earlier, so all this trickery is to get into
my
mind, because if he could do that, all my secrets would be open to him. After what happened last time, there was no way he could put me under Inquisition again without first provoking a war—nor does he have anywhere near as powerful a mind mage at his disposal these days, after I killed the Inquisitor. And run-of-the-mill memory or mind-control spells do not work on me because the heirs of the House of Elberon are protected from birth against such shenanigans. His only way into my mind was via contact-requisite means.”

She shook. “That's why he always wanted
you
to support him when he walked places. And that's why he attacked Kashkari with the book and the roof tiles, because Kashkari hindered his efforts at trying to accumulate enough hours of direct contact with
you
.”

“But he does not have those hours yet. So I am still safe. And you are still safe. And—”

The door burst open. Titus nearly blasted a hole through the house before he realized it was only Kashkari.

“I know who you are,” said Kashkari, to Fairfax.

She reeled, but recovered fast. “I already told you who I am. I am the prince's bodyguard.”

Kashkari closed the door. “You are the girl who brought down lightning.”

Titus stepped in front her, wand drawn. “If you—”

“Of course not. I was just in a state of shock and I had to confirm it.”

“Did you just guess all of a sudden?” Titus demanded sharply. “And where is Wintervale? Is he here?”

“No, he is still milling about outside the chapel—Mrs. Hancock is watching over him. And I guessed because Roberts was passing around photographs taken several weeks ago.”

“Who is Roberts and what photographs?” Titus demanded.

“Cricketer. Never made the eleven. Wanted to counterfeit photographic evidence for posterity that he was part of the school team. I was included in some of the photographs on the periphery and next to me was someone with”—Kashkari looked about the room and grabbed Fairfax's picture, the one that did not look anything like her—“this face. I didn't understand what I was seeing at first. I remember it was Fairfax sitting next to me that day. There was no reason for him to look so different—until I remembered the photograph in his room.

“Then I remembered that Atlantis has trouble finding the girl who brought down lightning because her image cannot be painted or otherwise captured. And that was also when I remembered that the day Fairfax first arrived at this school was the day the girl manifested her powers.”

Fairfax gasped.

Titus instantly had his arm around her shoulders. “What is it?”

“Wintervale. Someone is going to pass those pictures to him, sooner or later.”

“So?” said Kashkari.

“
Wintervale
is the Bane, or he has been since the day he came to Sutherland's uncle's house.”

Kashkari shivered. “No. Please, no.”

Mrs. Hancock materialized among them. Before anyone could demand why she wasn't watching Wintervale, she said, “Something is wrong with Wintervale. He was looking at these pictures then he suddenly started laughing—and wouldn't stop.”

“Wintervale is the Bane. And I'm the one who brought down lightning. He has been trying to reach a contact-requisite threshold with the prince, so he can find out where I am,” said Fairfax. “But those photographs he was looking at let him know that he has already found me, and I've been under his nose all along.”

Mrs. Hancock stumbled back a step. “Now I finally understand.” She turned to Kashkari. “By staying close to Wintervale, you saved
him
—His Highness, not Wintervale.”

Kashkari gawked at her, thunderstruck.

“We must go,” Titus said to Fairfax. “Right now.”

She gripped the emergency bag already strapped to her shoulders. “Let's.”

But they could not vault. The Bane must have come to the same conclusion Kashkari had. And if he had been at Eton this long, the no-vaulting zone must have been at the ready for almost as long, waiting for his command to be put into effect.

Kashkari rushed to the window. “You can't use a flying carpet either. There are armored chariots outside.”

The armored chariots were high above, circling like a flock of birds. They would swoop down in an instant, should Titus and Iolanthe dare to make an escape on Kashkari's spare carpet. Not to mention, an armored chariot's top speed was much higher than the carpet's one hundred and twenty miles an hour.

“The quasi-vaulter, then,” said Fairfax.

“We will save that until we have no other choice. For now we still have this.” Titus set the Crucible on the table.

“You two had better leave this room,” said Fairfax, to Kashkari and Mrs. Hancock. “You have not been compromised yet. The Bane does not know you are involved with us, so do what you can to keep yourselves safe.”

“Will we meet again?” asked Kashkari.

Titus untwisted half of his pendant and gave it to Kashkari. “We can hope.”

Kashkari and Mrs. Hancock left. Titus and Fairfax each laid a hand on the Crucible, hers over his.

Titus began the password.

 

“How far is Forbidden Island?” Iolanthe shouted, over the air rushing over the carpet at one hundred twenty miles an hour.

“Ninety miles,” Titus shouted back.

Forty-five minutes, then.

They were a tight fit on the carpet, which was no more than three and a half feet wide and five feet long. At this speed there was only one way to ride: flat on one's stomach, hands tightly gripped onto the front of the carpet, a safety harness clipped over the torso.

Below, the ground rushed by. She recognized the Plain of Giants. And somewhere to the north, Briga's Chasm, made faintly visible by the vapor of miasma rising out of the depths of its deep ravine, a vapor that writhed and shifted, almost like a fog, under the sunlight.

There was also a portal at Briga's Chasm, but that one led to the copy of the Crucible that had been lost, and without knowing where that copy of the Crucible was, Titus had not been willing to take the risk. So they were headed for Forbidden Island, to access the copy of the Crucible in the monastery, which was still a safe place for the Master of the Domain, if he could get to it.