The Immortal Heights (15 page)

“I've been wondering, Master Dalbert,” said Kashkari, “when you arrived at Mrs. Dawlish's that day, how were you able to tell that I was a mage? Did you recognize my curtain as a flying carpet?”

“No, I'm sure I didn't, Master Kashkari. What caught my eye was the small altar in your room. You had the usual accoutrements of oil lamps, ghee, and spices. But instead of vermilion, the small heap of red powder on the plate was ground fire moss.”

“Oh, I took it from home. I thought our altars were exactly the same as our nonmage neighbors'.”

“They look quite similar, but ground fire moss is of a slightly
different texture—and a more pungent scent, if one places a pinch close to the nose. So I chose to give the message concerning Lady Callista's confession to you. I didn't know whether you would be able to pass it along to His Highness, but it was a better chance than entrusting it to anyone else in that house.

“As I was leaving, I was detained by agents of Atlantis. Fortunately, I had the authorization, so I could honestly report that I'd simply been following orders. But still, half a dozen agents of Atlantis accompanied me on the way back.

“When I realized that they meant to interrogate me under truth serum, I made a getaway. I had anticipated trouble of the sort and had already removed my end of the message conveyor from the castle. Unfortunately, matters accelerated faster than I'd foreseen, and I hadn't yet had the opportunity to retrieve certain crucial items from the monastery—both the castle and the monastery have been under heavy guard by those in Atlantis's pay since the beginning of the summer.

“That's what I've been doing for the past few days. Getting into the monastery wasn't hard, but getting out proved quite a hassle. It was only last night that I succeeded in leaving undetected.”

He took an item out of the bag he carried and placed it on the dining table. Titus almost rose out of his chair. “Hesperia's wand.”

Which had also been his mother's.

Dalbert nodded and then brought out something else: The
monastery's copy of the Crucible. “Atlantis already confiscated the Citadel's copy and Your Highness's personal copy. I didn't want the last copy still in our possession to be found and taken.”

Titus smoothed his fingers across the aged leather cover. “Thank you, Dalbert. My gratitude is immense. But you must know that it can no longer be used as a portal, not while the other copies are held by Atlantis.”

“I beg to differ, sire. I heard from Miss Seabourne today while Your Highness was still in transit.”

“Is she well?” The question left Titus like a shot.

They were only a thousand miles apart—they had been separated by far greater distances in the time they had known each other, or even during the past forty-eight hours. But this time it was not merely physical space that divided them, but the line between life and death.

He was already dead. But she could still live.

“She made no mention of her health,” answered Dalbert, “but I feel confident in deducing that she is safe, at least.”

Safe, at least.
He supposed that was all he could ask for, though he wanted so much more. “And what did she say?”

“She reported that Master Kashkari received a message in the two-way notebook he had left behind. She begged Master Kashkari's pardon, but under the circumstances she felt she had no choice but to guess the password and read the message.”

“I would have urged her to do the same,” said Kashkari.

“The message was from Mrs. Hancock.”

A collective intake of breath reverberated in the stone chamber.

“According to Miss Seabourne,” Dalbert continued, “about a week ago, on the night of the disappearance of a student named West, the Oracle of Still Waters said to Mrs. Hancock something along the lines of ‘Yes, you have seen it before.'”

“I remember that,” said Titus. “Mrs. Hancock thought the Oracle meant the Crucible, which she had seen many times in my room, before I took it away.”

“As it turned out, the Oracle did mean the Crucible, but a different copy, which Mrs. Hancock now remembers that she had seen in the library at Royalis.”

Royalis was the lavish palatial complex in Lucidias, the capital of Atlantis.

This time Titus did leave his seat. “Fortune shield me. My grandfather told us the fourth copy of the Crucible had been lost. But it never had been.”

Instead, Prince Gaius must have sent the copy as a gift to the Bane. That must be how he had sent in the exceptional spy who had managed to get a good look at the rings of defense outside the Commander's Palace.

And that copy of the Crucible had remained on the shelf of the library at Royalis all these years, gathering dust.

Dalbert also came to his feet. “I see the news pleases you, sire.”

It did. And it terrified him too.

But he only nodded. Then he turned to Kashkari and Amara. “It would appear that we have found another way into Atlantis.”

After they had gone over the logistics, Amara wished to spend some time in prayer and asked Kashkari to join her. This left Titus and Dalbert alone.

“Miss Seabourne asked that I keep an eye on your back, sire,” said Dalbert. “May I take a look at it?”

Titus had nearly forgotten about his injury. Despite his strenuous day, his back had not hurt. Dalbert too pronounced himself satisfied—apparently the remedies had worked as they ought to and he did not need to be bandaged anymore.

They sat down again around the dining table. “Any more questions I can answer for you, sire?”

Dalbert knew him very well—something else Titus had failed to appreciate. He exhaled. He might as well, as the opportunity would not come again. “I encountered mentions of my father in my mother's diary for the first time this morning. You served my mother during the time of their courtship. What can you tell me about him?”

Dalbert seemed to be considering his choice of words. “He was . . . a simple man, simple in the best sense of the word—frank, kind, and lively without being silly or irresponsible. Had I a daughter or a sister, I would have been pleased if she'd brought home such a young man.”

“But?”

“But my daughter or sister would not someday become the Mistress of the Domain. She would not be expected to face complicated and difficult situations—or deal with a hostile enemy that required the most careful and delicate of handling. Your father would not have been an asset to a woman in such an environment—but a liability. A princely house is no place for a man who does not understand treachery or deceit.”

“Are you certain he does not understand such things? He is Sihar, is he not? Is it possible for a Sihar man to come of age without understanding something of the complexity and cruelty of the world?”

The Sihar, for their practice of blood magic, had long been shunned by the rest of the mage community. And though it was no longer acceptable to openly discriminate against the Sihar, the old bigotry had endured in subtler and sometimes more insidious new guises.

“You would think that the prejudice that surrounds them would breed bitterness in every Sihar heart. And yet I have found that is not always the case. Sometimes the response of those who receive a disproportionate share of the world's ugliness is a startling beauty of character, a warmth and joie de vivre that one cannot help but be attracted to and moved by. Yet I was convinced that he would wither if she were to make him her consort—it requires a certain sternness, a certain ruthlessness, if I may say so, to successfully wear the crown. Her Highness, as such, did not possess enough sangfroid. If she were to ally herself in marriage with a man even more
temperamentally unsuited to rule . . .

“In any case, I recommended that she go about it the old-fashioned way: marry one of her barons to strengthen her position and keep her lover away from the gaze of the public. But Her Highness was an idealist. She didn't want to follow my advice, even though she acknowledged that it was sound.

“We disagreed strongly over the matter—it was probably the most strained our relationship had ever been. Then one day she came, distraught, and asked that I never seek to harm her beloved. I was hurt that she thought I would overstep my bounds to such an execrable extent, and I told her so.

“For the first time in all the years I'd known her, she wept. She told me that something terrible would befall him and begged me to promise her that it would not be at my hand or my instigation—as I was the only one in whom she had confided his identity, who had the means and motive to remove him from her life.

“To put her at ease, I volunteered to take a blood oath. She declined to bind me with one, saying that my word was good enough. She next agonized over what to do about her father. He was not opposed to a youthful indiscretion or two on her part, but she had kept her affair in extraordinary secrecy because she feared what he might do if he were to find out that her lover was Sihar. In the end she decided not to say anything to Prince Gaius and to marry only after she ascended to the throne, when no one could gainsay her—or arrange for her beloved to meet with an unfortunate accident.

“The second week of January 1014, your father went on his annual volunteering trip abroad. The Sihar community of the Domain is far wealthier than those in many other realms, and the young people of the community often traveled overseas to help their less fortunate kin—this was in the years before the January Uprising, when mages still had the freedom of instantaneous interrealm travel. Though Her Highness missed him desperately, she was glad he was away from the Domain, away from her father's caprices.

“He was expected to return in a fortnight, before the start of spring term, but he never did. When he was confirmed missing, I spoke to everyone who knew him. His friends who had gone abroad with him agreed that he started his return journey before they did, with every intention of resuming his everyday life in Delamer. But somewhere along the way he disappeared.

“I reported my findings to Her Highness. She rose, pale and shaken, and told me that she had already seen a snippet of my report in a vision—except she'd thought she would have more time.

“She asked me to keep searching. When every avenue of inquiry came to a dead end, she confronted her father at last. They had an awful row. He was adamant that he'd had nothing to do with it—that had he known, he would have indeed done something, but there would have been no secrecy, at least not between father and daughter. He would have let her see exactly how he'd deal with this unsuitable young man.

“She did not believe him. She told him that the child of ‘this
unsuitable young man' would sit on the throne. Well, you are the Master of the Domain, sire.”

Titus gripped his hands together. “Do you believe Prince Gaius?”

“I don't know that I do. He certainly took pleasure in telling the ugly truth, but he was not above a convenient lie or two. After all, if he had been behind it, what was the point in confessing at that late stage?”

Titus nodded slowly. “Do I . . . do I look like him at all, my father?”

“You have something of his aspect, sire; but in the main, you bear a far greater resemblance to Her Highness.”

“Did my mother keep any images of him?” Would he at last have a glimpse of his father? Would he recognize something of himself in the smile that his mother had loved so much?

“If she did, I did not find any among her belongings after her passing.”

Disappointment cut sharp and deep—it was not to be, then. Titus should be accustomed to yet one more of his heart's desires not being granted, but the feeling of emptiness inside Titus only intensified.

He pushed aside the sensation of loss. “You said he was expected to return before the start of spring term. Was he a student?”

“Yes, sire. At the Royal Hesperia Institute.” The Royal Hesperia Institute, situated at the other end of University Avenue from the Conservatory, had been built by the Sihar so that their children too could receive an advanced education. “He was a student of botany.”

Realization dawned. “The vine that my mother loved to sit under? Did he give it to her?”

“Yes, sire.”

How often had he seen his mother, caressing the stem or a leaf from the vine? And when was her room without a garland of the small golden flowers, draped over a mirror or a bedpost?

Titus swallowed the lump in his throat. “Am I named after him?”

“Yes, sire, you are. His name was Titus Constantinos. His father—”

“Was Eugenides Constantinos, who ran the Emporium of Fine Learning and Curiosities on University Avenue.” Now it all made sense. “What happened to him?”

What happened to my grandfather?

“Titus was his only child, and I'm afraid the loss was too much. He sold his shop and moved back to Upper Marin March. He died a few years later.”

And Mrs. Hinderstone had bought the place and opened her sweets shop, where Fairfax loved to go for pinemelon ice, not knowing that she was sitting in the very same spot where her fate was first written. And where his parents had met and fallen in love.

“Thank you, Dalbert,” he said. “Let me not keep you with any more questions.”

Much still needed to be done before they left the mountains.

Dalbert rose to his feet. “If I may, sire, I would like to accompany you.”

It was tempting, terribly tempting, to say yes. “I would give my wand arm to have you. But war and destruction are coming to these shores, and you will be desperately needed here. You know who can be trusted. Help them to protect my people.”

Dalbert inclined his head. “I understand, sire.”

Titus rose and touched his forehead to Dalbert's. “Thank you, Master Dalbert. Thank you for everything all these years.”

Dalbert, with a sheen of tears in his eyes, bowed and left.

Titus wiped the heels of his hands across his eyes as he watched the departure of the man who was the closest thing he had to a father figure.