The Immortal Heights (17 page)

Had he enraged her this much last time? Did it matter?

“Forgive me, my lady,” he croaked, not even certain what he was saying.

She slapped him so hard he was sure his neck snapped. Then she slapped him again, backhand, on his other cheek.

As he reeled, she growled, “You may rise and follow me, the four of you.”

The sound of her voice stunned him. He remembered Helgira's voice, high and sharp. But the syllables that issued from the woman before him were low, almost gravelly.

She was not Helgira. She was
Fairfax
.

CHAPTER
14

THE LETTER FROM LADY WINTERVALE
to the Master of the Domain, dating from the beginning of his very first Half at Eton, read,

Your Noble, Serene Highness,

It is with both pleasure and sadness that I welcome you to England. I should not be here and neither should you. But since we are, we must make the best of it.

We Exiles have had to abandon a great many traditions, which probably explains the fervor with which I made a place at Eton for my son, Leander. You may not remember him, but he does remember you from his childhood days in the Domain, and he is very much looking forward to being your companion at school—a role my uncle served for your grandfather, and Lady Callista for your mother.

I always loved your mother dearly—many, many people loved her dearly. It was impossible not to be drawn to her kindness and the depth of her sincerity. Her death devastated me. And it devastates me to this day that no matter what I or anyone else does, she cannot be brought back.

But I see in Your Highness a spark of the greatness that she never had the chance to realize. I pray Leander can help you achieve that greatness—he aches for a purpose in life and longs to prove himself in the wider world. For now, I hope you will be good friends and faithful companions at Mrs. Dawlish's house.

The house is one step above a hovel, but changes that shake the world have come from unlikelier places.

Your humble servant,

Pleione Wintervale

P.S. Before he passed away, Baron Wintervale had commissioned a hot air balloon for Leander's tenth birthday, forgetting that his son is terrified of being that high above the ground. If Your Highness should be so inclined, the apparatus can be found in the main carriage house of Windsor Castle—before he passed away, Baron Wintervale and I often entertained at the English queen's home; his funeral, too, was held there.

Perhaps Your Highness will find the hot air balloon amusing. Consider it a gift, from someone who has never stopped mourning the loss of your mother.

As agents of Atlantis swarmed over Windsor Castle, Iolanthe said to Master Haywood, “I think I've got it. On my count, one, two, three.”

She struck a match. It flared to life. At the same time, Master Haywood worked a force pump that was attached to two cans of paraffin oil, driving the fuel into an overhead cistern. Flames shot up into the opening of the hot air balloon's envelope. The balloon ascended farther.

“All right. Let's practice it a few more times.”

They did. Then they practiced some more with Master Haywood striking the match. When he no longer looked as if these nonmage fire sticks were entirely foreign to him, they let the balloon go on rising as they strapped down the contents of the gondola.

They were high above Salisbury Plain, more than a hundred miles west of Windsor Castle. It had been Master Haywood who had pointed out that Iolanthe was being far too optimistic in thinking of going to Lady Wintervale for help getting back into the Domain.

“What's the first thing Atlantis would have done?” he'd asked her. “I've been in a similar situation, and I don't think the protocol has changed in the past six months. They would have interrogated her under truth serum, and she would have told them about every last interaction she'd had with you, including where you last met.

“And if they still keep Eton under a no-vaulting zone, do you think they wouldn't have kept a similar watch on that room in Windsor Castle, especially after they lost your trail in the desert?”

His doubts made all too much sense. But from what other quarter could she ask for help? Iolanthe had turned to Princess Ariadne's diary, which gave her nothing. In desperation, she reread the letter from Lady Wintervale to Titus, which she had only glanced at before.

The detail that leaped out at her was the location of Baron Wintervale's funeral, which affirmed Master Haywood's suspicions. Even if Lady Wintervale had been released from Atlantean custody in time to plan for her son's last rites, she would not have held his memorial in some little-known church in London, as stated in the notice in the
Times
, not when she had set her husband's pyre in the middle of the English queen's castle.

It was only as Iolanthe was once again restlessly pacing in the laboratory that it struck her: she ought to at least go and see whether the hot air balloon was still at Windsor Castle. When mages stowed their belongings among nonmages, such belongings remained undisturbed until either the original owner came for them or another mage searched specifically for those items. She had never heard Titus mention having gone on a hot air balloon ride, so there was a chance that the hot air balloon Baron Wintervale had commissioned for his son had remained undisturbed in the carriage house at Windsor.

And so it had. She and Master Haywood wove a series of otherwise spells, which compelled the castle's staff to transport the balloon and everything it came with to the railway station and into a luggage car. Meanwhile Iolanthe found a footman who knew
the location of the parlor where she used to meet Lady Wintervale. About two hours after Iolanthe and Master Haywood's train departed Windsor and Eton Central Station, the footman delivered a small stone bust to the room.

The prince had had such a bust in his room at Mrs. Dawlish's, which would answer for him at lights-out when he was away elsewhere. Iolanthe dug up a similar bust in the laboratory and put it to good use: as they began their ascent in the hot air balloon, she wanted Atlantis's attention focused squarely on Eton, seeking her frantically in the vicinity, instead of widening the scope of the search.

With all the cargo in the gondola secured, Iolanthe donned a pair of goggles that had come with the hot air balloon and handed another pair to Master Haywood. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

She gathered a fierce current of air and propelled the balloon toward the Atlantic.

Iolanthe sat in a corner of the gondola, her eyes half-closed, a pocket watch from the laboratory in hand. The watch, much like the one Titus carried on his person, worked as a timepiece. But more importantly, it also gave readings on their direction, altitude, and velocity. At one point she pushed the balloon to nearly 190 miles an hour, but that had proved too taxing even for the mage-reinforced lines that held the gondola—and for her too. After that she settled into a speed somewhere around 150 miles an hour.

Master Haywood, wrapped in an enormous fur coat, his eyes almost invisible behind the goggles, watched the skies, moving every few seconds from one side of the gondola to another, and from time to time murmuring a new far-seeing spell.

They were some three hundred miles southwest of Land's End when he shouted, without turning around, “I see something!”

Iolanthe exhaled and gradually—but not too slowly—let up on the air currents she had been herding. The balloon, subject to atmospheric conditions, began to drift northward.

“You are absolutely certain the Irreproducible Charm is intact?”

“Yes.”

The Irreproducible Charm that had been set on her when she was an infant made it impossible for her image to be captured or transmitted outside the Crucible. As long as the charm remained intact, only those who had met her in person could recognize her.

“My God, what are those?” he shouted. “Come look, Miss Franklin!”

The act had begun, even though the enemy was still some distance away—in case anyone incoming could read lips.

Iolanthe rose to her feet, grabbed a rifle, and joined him at the side of the gondola. “Good gracious, are those Haast's eagles?”

“Can't be. Haast's eagles have been extinct for centuries—and they never inhabited any islands this far north.”

They stared, agape, at the fast-approaching wyverns, the sound of whose wingbeats echoed in her ears, their brimstone odor already
drifting into her nostrils. She shook without having to try.

“Christ almighty, what the hell?” Master Haywood's voice trembled too. “Are those . . . are they . . .
dragons
?”

With a thump, he fell to the floor of the gondola—it had been decided earlier that he should pretend to faint at the sight of any wyverns or Atlantean aerial vehicles. The rebels Titus had met in the desert oasis had done that, and Titus had never once questioned their authenticity as caravanists. Not to mention it would also spare Master Haywood, who had been in the Inquisitory for weeks and did not have an Irreproducible Charm protecting his image, from as much of the Atlanteans' attention as possible.

She aimed her rifle—another trick borrowed from the rebels of the Sahara—at the rider in the lead, whose steed now hovered only ten feet from the gondola.

“Come no closer or I'll shoot!” she cried, her voice cracking. “Who are you?
What
are you?”

“Who we are is none of your concern. Identify yourself and your companion and state where you are headed in this vessel.”

“I am Adelia Franklin and this is John McDonald, my father's old batman. We are balloonists traveling from the Azores to England, to claim a— Keep your beasts away from the envelope of my balloon! We cannot have any scratches or burns.”

“For what purpose do you undertake such a journey?”

“For money, what else?” she bellowed. “There is a prize of a thousand pounds for the first team to complete a thousand-mile
journey without touching down before the end of the year. And we are not that far from England now. So if you would just get out of our—”

The lead wyvern rider waved a hand. Two of his subordinates urged their mounts forward, until they hovered just below the gondola. Getting up from their saddles, they grabbed the cables that wrapped all around the gondola and started climbing.

Iolanthe aimed her rifle at them. “You have no permission to come inside!”

“Put away that primitive weapon of yours, if you do not wish your balloon burned to a cinder,” the leader of the wyvern riders said coldly.

The two Atlanteans inside the now-crowded gondola examined the burner, the ballasts, the additional containers of fuel, which had all been part and parcel of Baron Wintervale's commission. They also looked at the trunk of clothes, the tins of biscuits and potted meat, and the cooking and eating implements—Iolanthe had raided the kitchen, the pantry, and the laundry department at Windsor Castle, as well as borrowing a few rifles that belonged to the queen.

One of the Atlanteans nudged Master Haywood with a boot.

“What happened? Who are these ruffians disarranging our things? Where are my glasses? Let me put them on. Dear God in heaven, there is a—”

Master Haywood wilted again, his face conveniently pressed into the side of the gondola.

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” shouted Iolanthe. “Look what you have done to the poor man. I can't operate this apparatus all by myself from here to England—it needs attention round the clock. Careful that you don't do anything rash with the fuel—it's highly combustible. And don't even think about throwing out one of the ballasts—it will make my balloon jump up right into the talons of your dragons overhead!”

How closely were the Atlanteans going to search everything? She wasn't worried about her watch. But their emergency bags, which she'd secured to the top of the balloon's inside envelope, would give them away immediately.

She summoned just enough air to jostle the gondola. The Atlanteans stumbled. She grabbed on to the side of the gondola too.

“Careful! Over the open ocean it's full of rogue air currents.”

“What is this?” asked an Atlantean, pointing at the typing ball, which she had decided was worth the effort to drag along.

“Don't you know anything? It's a typewriter. Up so high fountain pens leak, so we use a typewriter for our daily logs.”

But she had not thought to create a logbook ahead of time. What if they were to ask to see it?

She had better go on the offensive. “Anyway, who are you people? Those dragons of yours, mind if I snap a photograph of them? This is going to take the scientific world by storm—it'll make the Loch Ness Monster about as interesting as a lizard in a tub. My God, I could sell the negative to the
Times
! Where is my camera?”

She had also swiped one of those from the castle. The Atlantean nearest her yanked the apparatus from her hand.

“Hey, hey! You can't just toss my camera overboard.”

The Atlanteans returned to their mounts and left without another word, while she screamed after them, “Where are you going? Come back here. You must compensate me for the destruction of my camera. That cost me twenty-five American dollars to buy when I was in New York City last!”

The flapping of dragon wings grew more distant. She kept on shouting for some time. Presently Master Haywood got up and came to stand next to her, staring at the retreating backs of the wyvern riders—to do anything else would be out of character for nonmages who'd been brought up on the idea that dragons were strictly fictional.