His cheeks scalded hotter, if possible. “I do not know that either.”
“Your mother never mentioned him?”
“She mentioned him a great deal.” His love of books, his beautiful singing voice, his smiles that could raise the sun at midnight. “But nothing that can be used to identify him.”
How excited he had been at the possibility his mother’s question implied. Do you want to see your father? He had thought it a question like Do you want a slice of cake?—with the cake to be produced within the minute.
Fairfax swirled a spoon in her soup bowl. “What did you say when you heard that you had to bring down the Bane?”
He had not been able to say much for the fear and disappointment that jostled within him. And the anger—that his own mother would trick him so.
“I said I was not going to fight the Bane because I did not want to die.”
His mother had broken down and sobbed, tears streaming down her face to splatter upon her lovely sky-blue shawl. He had never seen her cry before.
“But you agreed eventually,” said Fairfax quietly, her eyes almost tender.
He could still see his mother’s tearstained face. Still hear her muffled voice as she answered his bewildered question.
Why are you crying, Mama?
Because I hate myself for what I ask of you, sweetheart. Because I will never forgive myself, in this life or the next.
Something in him had broken apart at those words.
“I was six,” he said. “I would have done anything for her.”
There existed something in this world that bound a mage tighter than a blood oath: love. Love was the ultimate chain, the ultimate whip, and the ultimate slave driver.
He reached into the satchel, which he had placed on the floor next to the chaise, and pulled out a thick book.
“I’ve seen that book. You brought it all the way from school?” asked Fairfax.
“In priorem muta,” he said. The book undisguised itself and became a plain, leather-bound journal. “My mother’s diary. She recorded all her visions in here.”
“It’s empty,” Fairfax said, after he had turned some thirty, forty pages.
“It will only show what I must see.”
The diary had been left to him when his mother died, with the inscription My dearest son, I will be here when you truly need me. Mama.
He had opened it daily and come across absolutely nothing. Only after he had learned the truth of her death—that it had been murder, not suicide—had the first entry appeared. The one about him, on the balcony, witnessing the phenomenon that would and did change everything.
He kept turning the pages, but they remained stubbornly blank. Something cold and terrible gnawed at his guts.
I need you now. Do not abandon me. Do not.
A few pages from the very end of the diary, writing at last appeared in her familiar, slanted hand. His hand tightened on the binding so his fingers would not shake from relief.
“You might as well read along with me,” he said to Fairfax. “Many of her visions have to do with our task.”
Fairfax left the low table and crouched down next to him.
4 April, YD 1021
While Titus and I played in the upper gardens this morning, I had a vision of a coronation—one could not mistake those particular banners of the Angelic Host, flown only at coronations and state funerals. And judging by the colorful attire of the spectators thronging the street, I was witnessing no funeral.
But whose coronation is this? I caught three minutes of a long parade, that was all.
I came back to Titus tugging at my sleeve. He had found a ladybug he wanted me to admire. The poor child. I do not know why he loves me. Whenever he wants my attention, I always seem to be caught in another vision.
“The date—it’s just after the end of the January Uprising, isn’t it?” asked Fairfax.
Titus nodded. Baroness Sorren had been executed the day before.
They read on.
10 April, YD 1021
The vision returned. This time I was able to see, at the very end of Palace Avenue, the arrival of the state chariot. But I could not make out its occupant, except to see the sun dancing upon his or her crown.
For the rest of the day I could not concentrate on anything else. Poor Titus brought me a glass of pompear juice. After holding it for some time, I handed it back without taking a sip.
I need to know. I must know. The day after this vision occurred for the first time, Father requested that I exchange my life for Titus’s future on the throne. I asked for time to consider it. He gave me three weeks.
If I am the person in the state chariot, then I will take Titus and go into hiding. The Labyrinthine Mountains are full of impenetrable folds and valleys. The nonmage world likewise offers plenty of means to disappear.
But what if I am not the person in the chariot?
12 April, YD 1021
I am not the person in the chariot.
Titus is. And he is tiny, barely bigger than he is now.
This time the vision lasted and lasted. I saw the entirety of his coronation, as well as the ceremony that invested Alectus with the powers of regency.
Either I have gone into exile by myself, or I am dead.
Because Titus is so young, many festivities that would otherwise take place are postponed until he comes of age. Still, for hours on end he receives well-wishers. My son, small, solemn, and all alone in the world.
Finally he is by himself. He takes out a letter from inside his tunic, tears it open, and reads. I could not see the writing on the letter, but the discarded envelope bears my personal seal.
The letter has a dramatic effect on Titus. He looks as if he has been kicked in the chest. He reads it again, then runs to take something out of his drawer.
My diary. This diary, which has never left my side.
He opens the diary. The first page reads My dearest son, I will be here when you truly need me. Mama. The date beneath the inscription is two weeks from today.
He turns the pages.
Shock. My diary is empty—pages upon pages of nothing.
When something finally appears on the page, I am shocked again. It was the vision about a young man on a balcony, seen from the back, witnessing something that stuns him. I had experienced the vision several times but never sensed any significance to it.
Apparently I shall feel quite different about it in the near future. The description of the vision, less than half a page long when I last added to it, now stretches the full four pages I allot any one vision. Even the margins are packed with words.
The vision itself began to fade at this point, but I was able to read bits and pieces of my writing, which concern elemental magic, of all things. In the crammed paragraphs I reference other visions, which appear to have nothing at all to do with this one, even recounting a conversation with Callista, during which she told me in strict confidence what she had learned about Atlantis’s interest in elemental mages, from the then-Inquisitor herself, no less, who had been quite enamored of her beauty and charm.
The vision has faded completely. It is now past five in the morning. The sky outside my window shows the faintest trace of orange. I realize with a wrenching pain in my heart that my days are numbered.