The prince drew his wand and feebly muttered something. To the southeast a flare shot up in the sky, illuminating the highest towers of the castle.
“Thank you, sire.”
The captain steered toward the direction of the flare. Iolanthe had forgotten that with the arrhythmic shifting of the mountains, even those who lived in the castle must look for it each time they left and came back.
The prince asked to be let off at the landing arch at the top of the castle, rather than in the courtyard. He allowed the captain to help him out of the chariot and leaned on the latter to walk.
His valet, his attendants, and a horde of pages ran up. They pressed in around him. He ordered them to leave him alone, sounding peevish in that way he did so well.
“Stand back, you idiots. I cannot breathe.”
“The court physician is on his way,” said an attendant.
“Send him away.”
“But sire—”
“Send him away or I will send you away. I will not have people say I needed to be patched up after a mere conversation with that gorgon.”
But of course he needed to be patched up. He’d bled so much—and from his ears.
Nevertheless the prince prevailed. He barred the majority of the crowd outside the doors of his apartment. Most of the rest were allowed no farther than the anteroom.
The court physician, who had disregarded his wishes and come all the same, was not only denied entrance to the prince’s bedchamber, but also awarded a tirade.
“Do you dare insinuate that I cannot talk to the Inquisitor for ten minutes without needing medical attention? What kind of a weakling do you take me for? I am the bloody heir of the bloody House of Elberon. I do not need a know-it-all sawbones after a chitchat with that Atlantean witch.”
Even the valet was given the boot after he helped the prince take off his overrobe. “Go.”
“But sire, at least allow me to clean you.”
“Who do you think cleans me when I am at school? I am not one of those old-time princes who cannot wipe their own arses. Leave.”
The valet protested. The prince pushed him out of the bedchamber and shut the door in his face.
He swayed, caught himself on a small fruit tree that grew in a glazed pot, staggered into the water closet, and vomited.
Iolanthe chirped unhappily where she’d been left—just outside the closed door of the water closet. Faucets ran. Sounds of splashes came. The prince emerged ashen, but with most of the blood on his face washed off.
He picked her up and wobbled as he straightened. “You wanted to be in the bath with me earlier today, darling, did you not? Well, now you get your wish.”
Once the amethyst tub had been filled, Titus climbed in fully clothed. He washed the blood from Fairfax’s feathers, then recited the password. The next instant, he was sitting in a different tub, an empty one, his clothes and her feathers perfectly dry.
“Welcome to where I am supposed to go to school,” he murmured.
The former monastery was a place of solitude and contemplation, a refuge from the pressures of the throne. It was also used as a site of learning, its clear air and distance from worldly distractions judged helpful to the studies of a princeling.
Titus did spend months here every year between Eton halves, reading, practicing, and experimenting. For someone who must keep secrets, it was a haven, as free from spies and surveillance as it was possible to be these days. There was no indoor staff except for those he chose to bring, and the outdoor staff came only once a week to maintain the grounds.
He climbed out of the tub, as clumsy as a sleepy toddler. One hand on the wall to steady himself, he inched down long, echoing corridors, stopping every minute or so to close his eyes and catch his breath.
Every time he did so, an ominous scene played upon the inside of his lids, of wyverns and armored chariots crisscrossing the sky in a choreography of deadly gracefulness. The vision had first come to him in the Inquisition Chamber, supplanting the image of his mother and her canary, just before a surge of horrendous pain rendered him unconscious.
And now it repeated itself whenever he closed his eyes for more than a few seconds.
Fairfax chirped as he opened the door of the repository. “Yes, I modeled my laboratory after this place. But this is much grander, isn’t it?”
The repository was ten times bigger, its shelves holding every substance known to magekind. He opened drawers and squinted—his headache gave him double vision.
“We are in trouble.” He wished he would shut up, but the truth serum still pulsed in his veins and he was too weak to fight it. In any case, she would not remember a thing once she resumed human form. “I am afraid I have not convinced the Inquisitor of anything except my willingness to go to extraordinary lengths to conceal the truth from her.”
Fairfax trembled in his hand. Or perhaps it was just him, shaking.
He poured an array of remedies down his gullet, followed by two bottles of tonics. They tasted like water that had been left out for a fortnight, thick with growing scum. He had not bothered to make them less disgusting, thinking he would be manly enough, in times of necessity, not to quibble over such minor details as flavor and texture.
He was wrong, as evidenced by another trip to the water closet to vacate the contents of his stomach.
Stumbling back out, he collected Fairfax from the counter where he had deposited her and headed for a different section of the repository, leaning against counters along the way to preserve his strength.
“I need to turn you back,” he said, showing Fairfax a glass vial of white granules he had located. “You would have turned back on your own sometime during the night, but better you do it while I am still lucid.”
He counted out three granules. She reached eagerly toward them. He blocked her beak. “No, not now, unless you plan to appear naked before me. Wait, that is your plan, is it not?”
He meant to leer at her but had to grimace when his head throbbed again.
She pecked hard at the outside of his hand.
“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks,’” he quoted. “Never mind. You do not know any Shakespeare, you ignoramus.”
Fairfax in hand, he zigzagged to an adjacent room, where he sometimes slept when he stayed too late in the repository. He pulled out the sheet covering the thin mattress, placed her on the cot, laid the three granules before her, and spread the sheet over the whole cot again, burying her beneath it. His tunic and boots he peeled off so she would have something to wear. The tunic had not entirely escaped his bleeding, but considering the circumstances, it was pristine enough.
“Remember, it will be unpleasant and you will not be able to move immediately afterward. I will wait in the repository.”
She chirped after a few seconds, perhaps trying to make sure he had vacated the premises.
“I am still here, shuffling along,” he answered.
She chirped again. She was most likely telling him to hurry, but he chose to have a little fun with her—there was a severe scarcity of fun in his life. “You are anxious? Imagine how I feel, darling.”
She chirped twice in a row. He wished he did not feel so wretched—carrying on an imaginary conversation with her would otherwise have been a highly rewarding use of his time.
“How can you help? If you will only . . .” He stopped.
He had been trying, with no apparent success, to bridge the chasm between them. But that was not all he wanted, was it? No, he was far more ambitious than even he had realized. He wanted her to . . .
“Fall in love with me.” He heard, loud and clear, the words the truth serum compelled from him. “If you loved me, everything would be so much easier.”