Titus stood a long time outside Prince Gaius’s door. Beyond awaited his mother’s murderer, who had died comfortably in his bed, in the full of old age.
Even now anger and hatred simmered in him. But the Oracle had said that he must visit someone he had no wish to visit, and he could not think of anyone, other than the Inquisitor, whose presence repelled him more.
He shouldered open the heavy door. Music spilled out, notes as sweet and succulent as summer melons. A handsome young man sat on a low white divan, surrounded by plump blue cushions, plucking at the strings of a lute.
“Where is Prince Gaius?” Titus demanded.
“I am he,” answered the young man.
But you are supposed to be an old man. All the other princes and princesses looked as they had close to the end of their lives. Hesperia in particular, though the gleam in her eyes remained undiminished, was as wrinkled as a shelled walnut. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
Only a few years older than Titus. “And you are qualified to teach everything you listed outside your door?”
“Of course. I am a prodigy. I was finished with volume two of Better Mages by the time I was sixteen.”
Titus had not yet progressed halfway through volume one of Better Mages, the definitive text on higher magic. Gaius teased another few bars of music from his lute, each chord more plummy than the last.
“How can I help you?” asked Gaius, who clearly believed in his own superiority, but was not particularly tedious about it. In fact, there was a glamour to his assurance—a charm, even.
The hard, grim old man Titus remembered had once been this winsome, carefree youth.
“Do you know anything about your daughter, Ariadne?”
“Please,” laughed Gaius, “I am not married yet. But Ariadne is a lovely name. I should like a daughter someday. I will groom her to be as great as Hesperia.”
He had hated the petitions that landed on his door yearly for him to abdicate in her favor. There had been a huge chasm between father and daughter.
“Do you know anything of your future?”
“No, except I am set to knock Titus the Third out of the triumvirate of greats. There is nothing anyone can do to dislodge the first Titus and Hesperia, but I should easily surpass the third Titus’s achievements. What do you think they will call me? Gaius the Grand? Or perhaps Gaius the Glorious?”
They had called him Gaius the Ruinous. And he had known it.
“Care to hear a piece I wrote myself?” asked Gaius.
He began without waiting for a reply. The piece was very pretty, as light and sweet as a spring breeze. His face glowed with enjoyment, blissfully ignorant that he would later ban music from court and destroy his priceless instruments one by one.
When he was done, he looked expectantly at Titus. Titus, after a moment of hesitation, clapped. It was good music.
The prince—who would someday have no music, no child, and only tatters of his youthful dreams—graciously inclined his head, acknowledging the applause.
“Now, Your Highness,” said Titus, “I would like to ask you some questions about Atlantis.”
CHAPTER 20
IN THE DISTANCE, SWORDS, MACES, and clubs bewitched by the Enchantress of Skytower continued to hurtle toward Risgar’s Redoubt. Titus went through a cascade of spells to lock, steady, amplify, and focus his aim. The missiles must be struck down when they were more than three miles out, beyond the outer defensive walls of the redoubt. The moment they crossed over the walls, they would dive to the ground to wreak havoc on lives and property.
It was enjoyable, the repetition of the spells. It would have been meditative had his aim been perfect. But his success with moving objects hovered stubbornly at 50 percent. He would hit a few targets in a row, then miss the next few.
“That’s it for this flock,” shouted the captain. “Eat something quick if you need to. Visit the privy. The next flock will be here in no time.”
Fairfax appeared next to him on the rampart, paying little attention to the soldiers rushing about. “Sorry it took so long. Rogers’ verses were in terrible shape.”
He had heard an Eton education described as something that taught boys to write bad verses in Latin and just as awful prose in English.
“You ought to charge a fee for your help.”
“Next Half I will. You wanted to see me?”
He always wanted to see her. Even when they were both in the Crucible together, the sad truth was that they saw far too little of each other, with most of her time spent in the practice cantos, and most of his in the teaching cantos.
He took her elbow and exited the Crucible. “Remember what I told you about the rupture view?”
She nodded. “The image of wyverns and armored chariots you saw in your head when I interrupted the Inquisitor.”
“I cannot be completely sure, but after speaking to my grandfather, I think it is the outer defenses of the Commander’s Palace in Atlantis.”