It was stupid to vault onto a moving object. It was suicidal when the moving object was two hundred feet in the air. But if his presence was to be deduced no matter what, then he preferred to be caught flying, which would allow him to claim that he had never set foot on the ground.
He sighted Marble, sucked in a deep breath, and vaulted where he hoped she would be.
He rematerialized in thin air, with nothing under him. His heart stopped. A fraction of a second later, he crashed onto something hard—Marble’s back. Relief tore through him. But there was no time to indulge in the shaking exhaustion of having cheated death. He was too far aft. Shouting at Marble to keep steady, he scrambled forward along her smooth spine, even as he pointed his wand at the house to erase the impassable circle.
Already there had been a cluster of villagers gathered outside the circle, discussing among themselves whether they ought to go in. The removal of the circle lifted all such inhibitions. The villagers rushed into the house.
Titus had no sooner grabbed the reins than the Inquisitor and her entourage arrived. A moment later, her second in command raised a formal hail.
Titus took his time descending, applying miscellaneous cleaning spells to his person as he did so: it would defeat the purpose of his stunt to appear before the Inquisitor with the detritus of the house still clinging to him.
There was an open field behind the house. Marble’s wings swept close to the ground, forcing the Inquisitor’s retainers to throw themselves down, lest they be impaled by the spikes that protruded from the front of those wings—natural spikes that Titus’s grooms had polished into stiletto-sharp points.
Marble was now on her feet, but Titus did not dismount: the Inquisitor, in a deliberate slight, was not yet present to receive him. He took out two apples from the saddlebag, tossed one to Marble, and took a bite of the other. His heart, which had not yet slowed to normal, began to beat faster again.
The Inquisitor was an extractor of secrets, and he had too many of them.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Inquisitor emerge from the rear door of the house. Marble hissed—of course a beast as intelligent as Marble would hate the Inquisitor. Titus kept on eating the apple—at a leisurely pace—and dismounted only after he tossed aside the core.
The Inquisitor bowed.
Appearances were still kept—Atlantis enjoyed pretending that it was not a tyrant, but merely first among equals. Therefore Titus, despite not having a dram of real power, reigned nevertheless as the Master of the Domain; and the Inquisitor, a representative of Atlantis, was officially of no more importance than any other ambassador from any other realm.
“Madam Inquisitor, an unexpected pleasure,” he addressed her.
His palms perspired, but he kept his tone haughty. His was a lineage that stretched back a thousand years to Titus the Great, unifier of the Domain and one of the greatest mages to ever wield a wand. The Inquisitor’s parents had been, if he was not mistaken, traders of antique goods—and not necessarily genuine ones.
Ancestry was an indicator of little importance when it came to a mage’s individual abilities—archmages often came from families of otherwise middling accomplishment. But ancestry mattered to the average mage, and it especially mattered to the Inquisitor, though she was no average mage. Titus reminded her as often as he could that he was a vain, self-important boy who would have been nothing and no one had he not been born into the once-illustrious House of Elberon.
“Unexpected indeed, Your Highness,” replied the Inquisitor. “The Midsouth March is remote from your usual haunts.”
She was in her early forties, pale, with thin, red lips, almost invisible eyebrows, and eerily colorless eyes. He had first received her at age eight and had been frightened of her ever since.
He forced himself to hold her gaze. “I saw the sustained lightning from the castle and had to have a look, naturally.”
“You arrived fast. How did you locate the precise spot of the lightning so quickly?”
Her tone was even, but her eyes bore into his. He blamed his mother. By all means the Inquisitor should believe in Titus’s frivolousness, but for the fact that the late Princess Ariadne too had once been deemed docile—and had proved anything but.
“My grandfather’s field glass, of course.”
“Of course,” said the Inquisitor. “Your Highness’s vaulting range is commendable.”
“It runs in the family, but you are correct that mine is particularly extensive.”
His immodest self-congratulation brought a twitch to the Inquisitor’s face. Fortunately for him, the ability to vault was considered analogous to the ability to sing: a talent that had no bearing on a mage’s capacity for subtle magic.
“What do you think of the person who brought down the lightning bolt?” asked the Inquisitor.
“A person brought down the lightning?” He rolled his eyes. “Have you been reading too many children’s tales?”
“It is elemental magic, Your Highness.”
“Rubbish. The elements are fire, air, water, and earth. Lightning is none of them.”
“One could say lightning is the marriage of fire and air.”
“One could say mud is the marriage of water and earth,” he said dismissively.
The Inquisitor’s jaw tightened. A bead of sweat rolled down Titus’s back. He played a perilous game. There was a fine line between irritating the Inquisitor and angering her outright.
He set his tone slightly less pompous. “And what is Atlantis’s interest in all this, Madam Inquisitor?”
“Atlantis is interested in all unusual phenomena, Your Highness.”
“What have your people discovered about this unusual phenomenon?”
The Inquisitor had come out of the house. So she would have seen the interior already.
“Not very much.”
He began to walk toward the house.
“Your Highness, I advise against it. The house is structurally unstable.”
“If it is not too unstable for you, it is not too unstable for me,” he said blithely.
Besides, he had no choice. In his earlier hurry to get out, he had not had time to remove all traces he might have left behind. He must go back in and walk about, in case his previous set of boot prints had not been sufficiently trampled by the villagers.
The January Uprising had failed for many different reasons, not the least of which was that its leaders had not been nearly meticulous enough. He could not afford to make the same mistakes.
The Inquisitor in tow, he strolled through the house. Except for the number of books, there was nothing remarkable about it. The Inquisitor’s agents swarmed, checking walls and floors, pulling open drawers and cabinets. Nearly half a dozen agents crowded around the trunk, which, thankfully, seemed to be a one-time portal that kept its destination to itself.
On the front lawn, guarded by more agents, the girl’s guardian and the housebreaker were laid out, both still unconscious.
“Are they dead?” he asked.
“No, they are both very much alive.”
“They need medical attention, in that case.”
“Which they will receive in due time—at the Inquisitory.”
“They are my subjects. Why are they being taken to the Inquisitory?”
He made sure he sounded peevish, concerned not so much about his subjects but about his own lack of power.
“We merely wish to question them, Your Highness. Representatives of your government are welcome at any time to see them while they remain in our care,” said the Inquisitor.
No representatives of the Domain had been allowed into the Inquisitory in a decade.