The Burning Sky

a broken femur. Your family has a home in Shropshire, but you have spent most of your life in Bechuanaland—an area near the Kalahari Realm.”

“Where is the real Archer Fairfax?” She sounded alarmed.

“There was never a real Archer Fairfax. Since I had to be here, I made a place for you—when I thought you were a boy.”

She frowned. “And people here know me, even though I have never set foot here?”

“Yes.”

“That’s impressive,” she murmured.

He seldom impressed anyone on his merits alone—the sensation was more than a little dizzying.

“We need to cut your hair now,” he said rather abruptly, not wanting her to sense his headiness.

She expelled a breath. “Right.”

He stepped behind her, gathered her hair, lifted it—it was smooth and surprisingly heavy—and lopped it off at the nape with a severing spell. “Sorry.”

“Hair grows back.”

A shame they would need to keep it short for the foreseeable future. He trimmed the remainder of her hair as best as he could, leaving it just long enough so that the wound at her temple wouldn’t be visible. She didn’t quite look like a boy. But then she was no longer immediately and obviously a girl neither.

He collected the shorn hair, deposited it in the unlit fireplace, and destroyed it. From the chest of drawers he brought out the items of an Eton boy’s uniform.

“You have prepared for everything.”

“Hardly. If I had any foresight at all, I’d have prepared for a girl.”

The vision of his death had mentioned a boy by his side, lamenting his passing. Such was the peril of visions—they must be interpreted by the seer and were therefore subject to human errors. In this case a short- haired girl had been mistaken for a boy. And despite all Titus’s preparations, he now found himself swimming in uncertainty.

He knocked on what looked like wall cabinets and a narrow bed flipped down, startling her. From the sheet he ripped a long white strip of linen, hemmed it with a quick spell, and handed it to her.

“For . . . resizing your person,” he said as he rehemmed the sheet with another spell.

How else to describe something meant to bind her chest?

She cleared her throat. “Thank you.”

“Once you are ready, the clothes aren’t that tricky,” he spoke briskly to cover his own embarrassment. And to think, this was only the beginning of the complications of bringing a girl to an all-boys school. “The shirt studs go into the buttonholes. Everything else is as you would expect.”

He turned around to give her privacy. Behind him came the soft shushing of her disrobing. There was no reason for his pulse to accelerate. Nothing at all was going to happen, and he would henceforth treat her as another boy. In fact, for her safety and his, he would not even think of her as anything but Archer Fairfax, school chum.

All the same, his pulse raced, as if he’d just sprinted the length of a playing field.

Then he glanced up and saw her reflection in the small mirror on the door. She stood with her back to him, naked to the top of her pajama trousers, her head bent, puzzling over her binding cloth. The contour of her slender neck, the smoothness of her back, the tapering of her waist—he jerked his head away and stared at the spare chair.

After what seemed an eternity—an eternity during which he forgot all about what the agents of Atlantis would think of his continued absence—she asked, “How should I hold it in place, the binding cloth?”

“Say serpens caudam mordens. It is a simple spell—no need for a wand.”

“Not even for the first time?”

“No.”

“All right then.” She did not sound convinced. “Serpens caudam mordens.”

A long moment of silence. He had by now completely memorized the form of the lyre-shaped slat on the back of the spare chair.

“Serpens caudam mordens,” she said again. “It’s not working.”

There was no time for her to keep trying. He took a deep breath and turned around. She was now facing him, holding on to the ends of the binding cloth that she had wrapped about her chest. His lowered his gaze: above the too-loose pajama trousers, her waist indented sharply; her navel was deep and perfectly round.

He was going to step closer to her, but now he changed his mind. Remaining precisely where he was, he said, “Serpens caudam mordens.”

The cloth visibly tautened. She emitted a muffled grunt. “Thank you. That’s perfect.”

She had not flattened to anything resembling a plane. “Once more,” he said.

“No, no more. I can barely breathe.”

“You are sure it is tight enough?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

He should not, but his eyes again dipped to her navel. He realized what he was doing and looked up, only to see her flush. She had caught him staring.

He turned away to examine the chair some more. “Move and make sure it stays in place.”

The next time she called him, she already had on the white shirt and the black trousers he had handed her. As expected, the clothes did not fit her. He set to work with an assortment of spells. The shirt needed its sleeves shortened and the width of the shoulders taken in. For the trousers he nipped the waist and raised the cuffs three inches—he had acquired everything big, as it was much easier to make clothing smaller than the other way around.

“If all else fails, you can always find employment as a tailor,” she murmured while he knelt on one knee before her, making sure the trouser cuffs were even.

“You should see my lacework,” he said. “As fine as a spiderweb.”

Above him she laughed softly. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”

“Not often,” he said, with more candor than usual.

Perhaps he would not need to lie to her, the way he lied to everyone else.

He rose to his feet. The waistcoat came with straps on the back and was easily enough cinched to fit her. The jacket required its armholes shrunk, the bagginess at the shoulders and the middle taken in.

But that was not the end of it. The shirt needed its collar attached and the necktie had to be fastened. Because she had no experience with either, he put them on for her.

They stood nose to nose, so close he could see the small pulse at her throat. The clothes smelled of the lavender sachets he had put in Fairfax’s drawers. Her breath brushed against the tops of his fingers.

As he pulled her necktie into shape, his knuckles grazed the underside of her chin. She bit her lower lip. Something in him shifted out of place: his concentration.

He took two steps back. “Let me get your shoes.”

“How much practice with tailoring spells have you had?” she asked.

“Hundreds of hours.” And half again as much on cobbling. He made a pair of too-big black leather oxfords fit her and handed her a derby hat. “Here in England you never go anywhere without headgear.”

Did she pass for a boy? He was not entirely confident. But assumption was a powerful thing, especially such a big-belief assumption.

She examined herself in the mirror on the door, adjusting the angle of her hat. Suddenly she swiveled around.

“What is it?”

She opened her mouth, only to press her lips together again. “Never mind.”

But he knew what she had realized. That he could have watched her undress in the mirror. They stared at each other. She dropped her eyes and turned her attention back to the mirror.

He walked to the window, parted the curtains a sliver, and looked out. The clouds had begun to dissipate. A few rays of pallid sunlight reached the small meadow behind the house. There were no boys or house staff about—it was near teatime, and everyone must have returned inside.