Shelly Thomas - The Burning Sky

I needed to keep my guardian employed and a roof over our heads.

“I was trying to correct a batch of light elixir. I found in my guardian’s copy of The Complete Potion a note that said a bolt of lightning could right any light elixir, no matter how badly tainted.”

He walked toward the fireplace, his arms full. “Who wrote that note?”

“I don’t know.”

He tossed her discards into the grate. “Extinguamini. Tollamini.”

Her things turned to dust. The dust rose in a column up the flue. The prince braced his elbow on the mantel and waited for all the evidence of destruction to depart. He was all long, elegant lines and—

She realized she was staring at him, in a way she could not remember ever looking at anyone else. Hastily she dropped her gaze.

“It is bizarre that anyone would counsel that,” he said. “Lightning plays no role in potion making. How old is that copy of The Complete Potion ?”

“I’m not sure. My guardian always had it.”

He returned to the door of the laboratory, repeated the password, and went inside. “Mine is a first edition. It was published during the Millennium Year.”

The Millennium Year celebrated one thousand years of the House of Elberon—his house. It was currently Year of the Domain 1031, which meant the copy in Little Grind was at most thirty-one years old. She’d thought the book much older. “Do we need to find out who wrote the note, sire?”

We. Her use of the word further embarrassed her. She was assuming a great deal of common purpose with her sovereign.

“I doubt we would be able to, even if we tried,” said the prince. “Are you well enough to eat something?”

“I think so.” Her stomach had settled down and she was famished, having not touched a bite of the luncheon Mrs. Needles had brought her.

He poured her a cup of tea. “What is your name?”

It so surprised her that he did not already know that she forgot to thank him for the tea. “Seabourne, sire. Iolanthe Seabourne.”

“I am pleased to meet you, Miss Seabourne.”

“Long may Fortune uphold your banner, sire.”

That was what a subject said upon meeting the Master of the Domain. But perhaps she also ought to kneel. Most likely she should curtsy.

As if he read her thoughts, the prince said, “Do not worry about niceties. And no need to keep calling me ‘sire.’ We are not in the Domain, and no one will chastise us for not observing court etiquette.”

So . . . he is also gracious.

Enough. She didn’t even know what had happened to Master Haywood, and here she was, very close to hero-worshipping someone she’d barely met. “Thank you, sire—I mean, thank you. And may I impose upon you to tell me, Your Highness, what happened to my guardian after I left?”

“He is in the Inquisitor’s custody now,” said the prince, sitting down opposite her.

Even the pleasure of his nearness could not dilute her dismay. “So the Inquisitor did come?”

“Not even half a minute after you left.”

She clasped her hands together. That she was in real danger still shocked her.

“You have not touched your tea, Miss Seabourne. Cream or sugar?”

Usually she liked her tea full of sugar and cream, but such a rich beverage no longer appealed. She took a sip of the black tea. The prince pushed a plate of sandwiches in her direction.

“Eat. Hiding from the Inquisitor is hard work. You need to keep up your strength.”

She took a bite of the sandwich—it had an unexpectedly curried taste. “So the Inquisitor wants me.”

“More precisely, the Bane wants you.”

She recoiled. She couldn’t recall when or where she’d first learned of the Bane, whose official title was Lord High Commander of the Great Realm of New Atlantis. Unlike the Inquisitor, whom people did talk about, if in hushed whispers, regarding the Bane there was a conspicuous silence.

“What does the Bane want me for?”

“For your powers,” said the prince.

It was the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever said to her. “But the Bane is already the most powerful mage on earth.”

“And he would like to remain so—which is only possible with you,” said the prince. “You are crushing your sandwich, by the way.”

She willed her stiff fingers to unclench. “How? How do I have anything to do with the Bane remaining powerful?”

“Do you know how old he is?”

She shook her head and raised her teacup to her lips. She needed something to wash down the sandwich in her mouth, which had become a dry paste she couldn’t quite swallow.

“Close to two hundred. Possibly more.”

She stared at him, the tea forgotten. “Can anyone live that long?”

“Not by natural means. Agents of Atlantis watch all the realms under their control for unusually powerful elemental mages. When they locate such a mage, he or she is secretly shipped to Atlantis, never to be heard from again. I am ignorant of how exactly the Bane makes use of those elemental mages, but I do not doubt that he does make use of them.”

If she clutched her teacup any harder, the handle would break. She set it down. “What exactly is the definition of an unusually powerful elemental mage? I have no control over air.”

The prince leaned forward in his chair. “Are you sure? When was the last time you tried to manipulate air?”

She frowned: she couldn’t remember. “Someone tried to kill me by removing all the air from the end portal. If I had any affinity for air, I’d have stopped it, wouldn’t I?”

It became his turn to frown. “Were you not born on either the thirteenth or fourteenth of November 1866—I mean, Year of the Domain 1014?”

“No, I was born earlier, in September.”

Her birthday was a day after his, in fact. It had been fun, when she’d been small, to pretend that the festivities surrounding his birthday had been for her also.

“Show me your birth chart.”

A birth chart plotted the precise alignment of stars and planets at the moment of a mage’s birth. It was once a crucial document, for everything from the choice of school to the choice of mate: the stars must align. In recent years it had become fashionable in places like Delamer to break with tradition and leave one’s birth chart to molder. But not so in Little Grind. When Iolanthe had volunteered to contribute the fire hazards for the village’s annual obstacle course run last autumn, her chart, along with those of all the participants, had been requisitioned to determine the most auspicious date on which to hold the competition.

As she dug the cylindrical container out of the mostly empty satchel, it occurred to her that if she had used her birth chart only months ago, then it could not possibly be in the satchel, the contents of which hadn’t been disturbed in more than a decade.

She’d unrolled only the top six inches of the birth chart earlier, when she’d checked to see that it was a birth chart. Fully unfurled, the three-foot-long chart had no name at the center, only the time of birth, five minutes past two o’clock in the morning on the fourteenth of November, YD 1014.

Something gonged in her ears. “But I was born in September. I’ve seen my chart before—many times—and it’s not this one.”

“And yet this is the one that had been packed, for when the truth came out and you were forced to leave,” said the prince.

“Are you saying that my guardian counterfeited the other? Why?”

“There was a meteor storm that night. Stars fell like rain. Seers from every realm on earth predicted the birth of a great elemental mage. Were I your guardian, I would have most certainly not let it be known that you were born on that night.”