The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

“Gentlemen, let Wintervale go back to bed,” came Mrs. Hancock’s firm voice. “If you wish to visit him and chitchat, do it in a way that will not tax him.”


“Mrs. Hancock wanted to see you as soon as you woke up,” said Kashkari, who must have gone to fetch her.

Wintervale grinned at the woman. “Of course you would, dear Mrs. Hancock.”

Fairfax was still there in Wintervale’s room when they returned. She helped Wintervale settle back into bed. But as more and more boys trickled in, she slipped away, largely unnoticed.



Iolanthe opened the door to the laboratory to the sound of a typewriter clacking.

The prince had a typing ball, which transmitted messages from Dalbert, his personal spymaster. The typing ball had once been stored in a cabinet in his room at Mrs. Dawlish’s, but he had moved it to the laboratory for safekeeping.

The brass keys, looking like chunky quills on a very nonthreatening porcupine, stopped pistoning up and down as she reached it. She rolled out the piece of paper that had been set on the tray underneath.

The message would appear to be gibberish, but he had taught her to decipher the code. She had asked him to, she remembered with a pang, the day she first decided that she would actually help him with his impossible goal.

A strange thought burbled up from the depths of her mind. She had condemned his love as weak, because he would not choose her over his mother’s words, but what of her love? Was it of any greater strength or constancy? He was, as ever, headed toward ruinous peril, and she would let him go to it with nothing more than a Fortune shield you.

She stood for a minute with her fingers on her nape, trying to relieve a tension in her neck that simply would not go away. Then she sighed and started Dalbert’s report.



Your Most Serene Highness,

Per your instruction, I have looked into the events in Grenoble, France. According to my sources in Lyon and Marseille, the Exile communities in those cities had been warned against going to Grenoble, because of intelligence suggesting that it might be a trap.

Exiles from those communities did make the trip to Grenoble, but with the express purpose of warning mages who had come from as far as the Caucasus, drawn by rumors of Madame Pierredure’s return. They report that they did successfully turn away a number of mages, though there were others they could not locate ahead of time or persuade to leave.

The raid on Grenoble is the latest Atlantean trap, using Madame Pierredure as a lure. Convincing reports have emerged of Madame’s death eight and a half years ago, which had never been publicized because she took her own life. (It was well known during the rebellions of ten years ago that Atlantis had captured her children and grandchildren, then tortured and eventually killed them.)

But many of the traps, before the truth came out, had been quite effective. The death of the late Inquisitor and the rumored death of the Bane had been seen as an opening, a sign of weakness on the part of Atlantis. New underground resistance groups formed; older ones were roused out of dormancy. The Bane’s apparent subsequent resurrection did not dampen their enthusiasm—the common thinking was that he could not go on resurrecting.

Now many of these resistance groups, old and new, have been decimated, their boldest and most enthusiastic members taken into Atlantean custody.

I tender my humble good wishes for Your Highness’s health and well-being.

Your Highness’ dutiful subject and servant,

Dalbert



Having spent her summer in near-complete isolation, Iolanthe had no idea that what she and the prince had accomplished the night of the Fourth of June would inspire so many others to organize against Atlantis, nor that Atlantis had already swiftly and ruthlessly responded to quell these new ambitions.

Her heart ached with a dismay that had nothing to do with her own dismissal from the narrow path of destiny, but for the crushed hopes of all those who had believed that the first light of dawn was at last upon them.

She set down the message from Dalbert on the worktable. Already on the table was a copy of The Delamer Observer, made of a fine yet hardy silk, which could be folded up and carried around in the pocket. The newspaper was open to the very last page, thick with three-line advertisements for unicorn colts, beauty tonics, and cloaks that promised to make one almost impossible to see at night.

What had the prince been looking for?

Then she saw it, buried near a corner, an advertisement for Large Bird Sightings. Curious and unusual birds, last seen in Tangier, Grenoble, and Tashkent.

As she read, the text changed to last seen in Grenoble, Tashkent, and St. Petersburg.

With the exception of Grenoble, all the other nonmage cities had sizable Exile populations. Atlantis was far from finished with its crackdown.

She entered the reading room with a heavy heart and stood before the help desk, still distracted.