Unless—
No. The very idea was insane.
But she had to. She had no other choice. There was no one else to help her.
“Ahhh!” she cried, and cupped her abdomen with both hands.
“What is it?” said the boys simultaneously.
“My stomach. I shouldn’t have had that ginger beer. I’ll bet that hag made it out of ditch water.”
“Run for the lavatory,” Birmingham advised. “When ginger beer turns on you, it turns on you hard.”
“Want me to come with you?” Cooper asked cheerfully.
“And do what? Wipe my arse? You are the prince’s personal envoy, so you’ve got to personally take my message to him. Tell him I’ll be along as soon as I’ve had my rendezvous with the crapper.”
She started running before she’d finished speaking.
Only to barrel into Trumper and Hogg a minute later, blocking her way.
“Oh, look who doesn’t have any friends or cricket bats today?” said Trumper.
Hogg sneered, smashing one fist against the palm of his other hand. “You can kiss your pretty face good-bye, Fairfax. After we’re done with you today, you’ll look like chopped liver.”
She swore—and punched Trumper in the stomach. He howled. Hogg threw himself at her and closed his arm around her throat in a chokehold. She rammed her elbow into his kidney. He yelped in pain and stumbled back. To Trumper, again joining the fray, she delivered a knee to the groin. Trumper emitted a high-pitched shriek and collapsed in a heap.
She ran again and ducked into an empty alley between two houses. Hands braced against the rough brick wall behind her back, she vaulted.
Only to open her eyes and find that she hadn’t moved an inch.
Her destination was within her vaulting range. There was no reason she should have failed. She tried again. And again. And again.
To no avail.
Atlantis had turned the entire school into a no-vaulting zone.
CHAPTER 22
IOLANTHE SPRINTED.
If Kashkari had been telling the truth—and she had no reason to doubt him—then Atlantis had not only established a no-vaulting zone, but also made sure that one would not be able to simply walk out.
But not all no-vaulting zones were created equal. Permanent ones, like the one the prince had established in his room, took tremendous time and effort. A completely new, and most likely temporary, no-vaulting zone sometimes had areas of incomplete denial that could be exploited—or so she’d recently learned in the teaching cantos.22
She did not stop until she was before the wardrobe in Wintervale’s room. Paired portals, unless specifically allowed, did not work inside a no-vaulting zone. When one was inside and the other out, however, they were sometimes overlooked by a first-iteration no-vaulting zone, especially one that covered such a huge area.
She opened the wardrobe, pushed Wintervale’s coats aside, squeezed in, and closed the door. But when she opened the door again, she was still in Wintervale’s room at Mrs. Dawlish’s.
Her fingertips shook.
Unless . . . unless the portal had a password. Most didn’t: the magic undergirding portals and that which governed the use of passwords were not terribly compatible. But the prince had definitely used one for the bathtub portals connecting the castle to the monastery.
But how was she to find out the password now? The prince was out of reach. And were she to set out to search for Wintervale, there was every chance she’d be seen and brought to the Inquisitor before she could come back and use the portal.
She perspired—it was dark and stuffy inside the wardrobe. Her lungs felt as if they were about to collapse. Her hands, braced on either side of her person, barely kept her upright.
Like a bright flare at night, the Oracle’s counsel came to her. You will best help him by seeking aid from the faithful and bold. She’d thought of those words daily, and never had they made any sense.
Now they did.
“Fidus et audax,” she said, Latin for “faithful and bold.”
And this time, when she opened the door of the wardrobe, she was in Wintervale’s house in London.
Iolanthe stepped down. The dark-blue wallpaper and the rich Oriental carpet both looked unfamiliar—she’d remembered very little of the decor. The space behind the wardrobe, where the prince had shoved her when Wintervale came at his mother’s summons, was tiny. She and the prince must have been pressed together like a pair of shirts going through a clothes wringer.
But the window and its deep ledge looked exactly right—except she’d thought it faced the street, when in fact it overlooked a small garden in the rear of the house.
The corridor outside was thickly carpeted, the walls covered in a pale-gold silk. There were several other bedrooms on the floor, but they were all empty.
“Lee, is that you?” came a feminine voice behind her. “What is the matter? Why are you home?”