A dozen trails of hissing, crackling flames, vicious as serpents, attacked the housebreaker, who frantically shouted shielding charms. The girl, now covered in plaster dust, stood in a tall trunk, her arms waving, her face a scowl of concentration.
Some of the housebreaker’s shielding charms took. Behind their barricade, she pointed her wand at the girl.
The prince raised his own wand. The housebreaker fell to the broken floor. The girl gawked at him a moment, raised both hands, and pushed them out. Fire hurtled toward him.
“Fiat praesidium!” The air before him hardened to take the brunt of the fire. “Recall your flames. I am not here to harm you.”
“Then leave.”
With a turn of her wrists, the wall of flame reconfigured into a battering ram.
Good thing he had fought so many dragons. “Aura circumvallet.”
Air closed around the fire. She waved her hands, trying to make her fire obey her, but it remained contained.
She snapped her finger to call forth more fire.
“Omnis ignis unus,” he murmured. All fire is one fire.
The new burst of flame she wanted materialized inside the prison he had already made.
He approached the trunk. Sunlight slanted through the broken walls into the room, sparkling where it caught specks of plaster in the air. One particular ray lit a thin streak of blood at her temple.
She yanked at the trunk lid. He set his own hand against it. “I am not here to harm you,” he repeated. “Come with me. I will get you to safety.”
She glowered. “Come with you? I don’t even know who . . .”
Her voice trailed off; her head jerked with recognition. He was Titus VII, the Master of the Domain.2 His profile adorned the coins of the realm. His portraits hung in schools and public buildings—even though he was not yet of age and would not rule in his own right for another seventeen months.
“Your Highness, forgive my discourtesy.” Her hand loosened its grip on the trunk’s lid; her gaze, however, remained on guard. “Are you here at Atlantis’s behest?”
So she knew from which quarter danger came. “No,” he answered. “The Inquisitor would have to step over my dead body to get to you.”
The girl swallowed. “The Inquisitor wants me?”
“Badly.”
“Why?”
“I will tell you later. We need to go.”
“Where?”
He appreciated her wariness: better wary than naive. But this was no time for detailed answers. Each passing second diminished their chances of getting out unseen.
“The mountains, for now. Tomorrow I will take you out of the Domain.”
“But I can’t leave my guardian behind. He—”
Too late. Overhead Marble emitted a high, keening call: she had sighted the Inquisitor. He untwisted the pendant he wore around his neck and pressed its lower half into her hand.
“I will find you. Now go.”
“But what about Master—”
He pushed her down and slammed the trunk shut.
The moment the trunk closed, its bottom dropped out from underneath Iolanthe. She fell into utter darkness, flailing.
CHAPTER 3
THERE WAS NO TIME TO bring down Marble. Titus had two choices: he could let the Inquisitor see Marble, catch her, and realize that Titus’s personal steed was loose in the vicinity; or he could vault onto the beast, with the latter in midflight.
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.