The Burning Sky

home with the broken limb.”

Perhaps the prince gave one to him? “It doesn’t seem as if I’ve been gone quite that long.”

“How was Somerset?” Kashkari asked.

Somerset? Instinctively she moved closer to the prince, as if his proximity made her less likely to make mistakes. “You mean Shropshire?”

The prince, who’d taken a place on Wintervale’s bed, gave her another approving look.

Acacia Lucas, one of Master Haywood’s pupils in Little Grind, had been quite keen to marry the prince. One day, during a practical under Iolanthe’s supervision, Acacia had pointed at his portrait and whispered to her friend, He has the face of an Angel. Iolanthe had looked up at the prince’s coldly haughty features and snorted to herself.

Acacia was not entirely right—or entirely wrong. He was nothing like a sublimated Angel. But a sublunary one, perhaps: the dangerous kind that made those gazing upon them see only what they wished to see.

She saw a stalwart protector. But was that what he truly was, or merely what she desperately wanted? As much as she did not wish to, somewhere deep inside she understood that he had not risked everything purely out of the goodness of his heart.

“Sorry, is it Shropshire?” Kashkari shook his head. “How was Shropshire then?”

He had straight blue-black hair, olive skin, intelligent eyes, and an elegant, if slightly forlorn mouth—an outstandingly handsome boy.

“Cold and wet for the most part,” said Iolanthe, figuring that was always an acceptable weather for spring on a North Atlantic island. And then, remembering herself, “But of course I spent all of my time inside, driving our housekeeper batty.”

“How was Derbyshire?” the prince asked Kashkari, moving the topic away from Archer Fairfax.

Iolanthe let out the breath she’d been holding. The prince had shown remarkable foresight in making Fairfax someone who’d spent most of his life abroad: it could be used to excuse his lack of knowledge concerning Britain. But it was the barest piece of luck that she’d remembered his mention of Shropshire. No matter how unfamiliar with England an expatriate was, he should still know where he lived.

“I wish there were enough time between terms for me to go back to Hyderabad. Derbyshire is beautiful, but life in a country house becomes repetitive after a while,” Kashkari replied.

“Good thing you are back in school now,” said the prince.

“True, school is more unpredictable.”

“Is that so? School is predictable for me, and I like it that way,” said Wintervale. “We should have a toast. To school, may it always be what we want it to be.”

Tea was ready. Wintervale shooed out the young lackeys and poured tea for his guests. They clinked their teacups. “To dear old school.”

Tea at home was usually accompanied by a few bites of pastry. But here tea—the table was laden with eggs, sausages, beans, and toast—constituted a meal on its own. Iolanthe hoped this meant that the boys would concentrate on their food. Any more questions and she was bound to betray herself.

“Make sure you eat enough,” said Wintervale. “We need you ready for cricket.”

What cricket? Grasshopper? “Ah—I’m as ready as I will ever be.”

“Excellent,” said Wintervale. “We are in desperate need of a superior bowler.”

A what? At least Wintervale did not expect her to define what a bowler was. He only extended his hand to her. “To a season to remember.”

She shook his hand. “A season to remember.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Kashkari.

The prince did not look nearly as thrilled. What exactly had she committed herself to with that handshake? But before she could pull him aside and ask, Kashkari had another question for her.

“I don’t know why, Fairfax,” he said, “but I have a hard time remembering how you broke your leg.”

Her stomach plunged. How did she fudge a question like that?

“He—,” Wintervale and the prince said at the same time.

“Go ahead,” the prince said to Wintervale.

She drank from her cup, trying not to appear too obviously relieved. Of course the prince would take care of her.

“He climbed the tree at the edge of our playing field and fell off,” Wintervale answered. “The prince had to carry him back here. Didn’t you, Your Highness?”

“I did,” said the prince, “with Fairfax crying like a girl all the way.”

Oh, she did, did she? “If I wept, it was only because you were so pitiful. I weigh barely nine stone. But you’d think I were an elephant the way Your Highness moaned. ‘Oh, Fairfax, I cannot take another step.’ ‘Oh, Fairfax, my legs are turning into pudding.’ ‘Oh, Fairfax, my knees are buckling. And you are crushing my delicate toes.’”

Kashkari and Wintervale chuckled.

“My back is still hurting to this day,” said the prince. “And you weighed as much as the Rock of Gibraltar.”

Their exchange was almost flirtatious. But she could not help notice that in the midst of the general jollity, he remained apart—had she never met him she’d have considered him moody. She wondered why he was utterly alone when he was among mates.

Her, of course, she realized with a start. She was the reason. She was his great secret.

And now they were in this secret together.

She flashed him a smile. “What are friends for, prince?”

“I am sorry I did not have the time to tell you that Wintervale is an Exile,” Titus said. “He is an elemental mage, in fact, but any nonmage with a match can produce a more impressive flame than he.”

They stood some distance from the house, near the banks of the brown and silent Thames. Titus had rowed on the river for years. The repetition, the perspiration, and the good, clean exhaustion quieted his mind beautifully.

Eton was not always a pleasant place: many boys had a difficult time finding their place in the hierarchy, and there were senior boys who roundly abused their powers. But for him, the school, with its drafty classrooms, its grueling sports, its thousand boys—and even its agents of Atlantis—was the closest thing to normalcy he had ever known.

“Are there other mages here?” she asked.

The day was fleeing. And so were the clouds, leaving behind a clear sky that had turned a deep twilight blue, except for the western horizon, still glowing with the last embers of sunset.

“Besides Wintervale, only the agents of Atlantis.”

She had been almost giddy with relief upon leaving Wintervale’s room, but this reminder of Atlantis’s omnipresence sobered her mood. Her eyes lowered. Her shoulders hunched. She seemed to grow smaller before his eyes.

“Afraid?”

“Yes.”

“You will become accustomed to it.” Not true at all. He never had, but learned to carry on in spite of it.

She took a deep breath, snapped a leaf from a weeping willow, and rolled it into a green tube in her hand. Her fingers were slender and delicate—very much a girl’s.

“Wintervale calls you ‘Your Highness’ and nobody bats an eye. Do they all know who you are?”

“Wintervale does. But to everyone else, I am a minor Germanic princeling from the House of Saxe- Limburg.”

“Is there such a house?”

“No, but anyone who has ever heard of the name will find it on a map and in history books as a principality of Prussia—the regent’s mage-in-chief made sure of it.”

“That is a highly illegal otherwise spell, it is not?”

“Then do not tell anybody that is also how I made a place for Archer Fairfax here.”

This earned him a long glance from her, half-approving, half-disquieted.

At the edge of the river they stopped. The water was a dark ripple, with a few daubs of reddish gold.