The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

“Old lady who fought Atlantis?” Madame Pierredure had indeed been an old lady, but she had also been the chief strategist for the rebellion in the Juras ten years ago, and had been responsible for a series of brilliant victories. No one had heard of her since the end of that spate of rebellions and insurrections. If she was still alive, she must be quite ancient. “I thought she was dead.”


“That’s what we all thought,” said Wintervale. “Then Mother heard news that Madame was in Grenoble. She was keen to see for herself that Madame was still alive—they had known each other back in the day. And she wanted me to come along to meet Madame in person, if the rumors turned out to be true.

“We traveled under assumed names and stayed at nonmage hotels. Everything was fine until last night, when we had news Madame had arrived at a hotel in centre-ville. We went to a café in the square outside the hotel. Left and right there were mages—we could hear them whisper about Madame Pierredure. That was when Mother stood up and told me we were leaving. She said something felt wrong, that if it was all hush-hush and secret, with news traveling only along trusted channels, then there shouldn’t be nearly as many mages gathered in a place that has very little Exile presence, waiting for a glimpse of Madame.

“I should have listened to her. But instead—” Wintervale took a deep breath. Titus could almost see him grimacing. “Instead I said we should stay, for the chance to witness something historic. We were arguing back and forth when she stopped talking and just grabbed me. That was when I realized that mages at the far end of the square were dropping unconscious. And then I looked up and saw the armored chariots.”

Titus tensed. A narrative almost always took a fateful turn with the entrance of armored chariots.

“We couldn’t vault, so we ran,” Wintervale went on, his voice strained. “Had we gone back to our lodging, we probably would have been all right. But one man in our corner of the square shouted that he had access to a dry dock and could get us to England fast.”6

“About twenty of us followed him to a house on the outskirts of town. We crowded onto a vessel in the cellar. The next moment it dropped into the sea and we all thought we were safe. But not two minutes later, we had an Atlantean frigate behind us.

“It was all chaos on board. Mother asked where Sutherland’s uncle’s house was—I had told her earlier I was missing the party to be with her. I said it was somewhere within a few miles of Cromer. That was the last thing I knew. When I came to, it was morning. I was on the dinghy and it was sailing itself. I had no idea where I was and Mother . . .”

Wintervale gulped. “She’s lived through rough times,” he said fervently. “She must be all right.”

Lady Wintervale was the only other person who knew that one of the “boys” at Mrs. Dawlish’s was the great elemental mage sought by Atlantis. If she were arrested and interrogated . . . Titus could only hope that Atlantis would not think to ask her questions on that particular subject.

They were almost halfway up the cliff. Titus inched along the narrow footpath that would take him to the next ladder, adjusting Wintervale’s arms so the latter did not inadvertently strangle him.

With Wintervale’s tale finished, Titus had no choice but to ask the question that disturbed him far more than it should. “Did you make the maelstrom?”

Wintervale had largely stopped shivering, but now he trembled. “I’m not sure how that happened. The Atlantean skimmer came out of nowhere. One minute I was dozing off and the next minute it was there.” He exhaled slowly—as if trying to push away the memory. “I panicked completely. All I could think was, if only I were a more powerful elemental mage, I would open up a huge whirlpool right before the skimmer and then I’d be safe from it.”

The fact that Wintervale was an elemental mage was never the first, second, third, or even fourth thing Titus recalled about him. If I want to make a fire, I use a match, Wintervale had once confessed to Titus. And that had not been false modesty. Spent coals could produce bigger sparks than the glimmers of fire Wintervale summoned. And one would probably die of thirst waiting for him to fill a glass with water.

Then again, great elemental mages tended to be unexceptional as children, until their powers manifested in adolescence. Titus had thought it was too late for Wintervale to undergo such a transformation. But obviously he was wrong.

“So you wanted to make a huge whirlpool?”

“I did. And the next moment, all this power I’d never felt before poured out of me and the sea did exactly what I wanted it to do. I guess . . . I guess I’m a better elemental mage than I thought I was.”

Titus’s arms burned as he pulled up to the next rung. “You might get into Lives and Deeds of the Great Elemental Mages if you are not careful.”

The sound Wintervale made was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I wish Mother could have seen it. When we still lived in the Domain, she was so unimpressed with my powers she didn’t bother to have me declared. She would—she would have liked to see what I was able to do today.”

“Yes, this changes things,” Titus said slowly.

Everything, possibly.