The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

“Maybe Mrs. Dawlish has something for it. You know, old ladies and their aching muscles,” Cooper continued.

“I might ask her,” said Kashkari, not sounding overly enthused about being physicked by Mrs. Dawlish. “If this gets much worse, I won’t be able to haul Wintervale to his classes.”

Cooper, always looking to be of use, leaped at the opportunity. “I’ll do it. You’ve already done so much.”

“Thank you,” said Kashkari. Then, after a beat, “I’m afraid Wintervale finds my company rather stale, these days. A change for him might be welcome.”

Wintervale used to be quite indiscriminate: he spent a great deal of time with Kashkari, but he was equally happy to pass time with other boys from Mrs. Dawlish’s house. Now, he seemed to crave only Titus’s company.

It was perfectly understandable—only with Titus he could be himself. All the same, Iolanthe felt bad for Kashkari.

“That can’t be true,” said Cooper. “I think Wintervale is downright grateful that you are always there to help him. Goodness knows I’d be.”

Kashkari sighed. “I hope—”

Something caught Iolanthe’s senses, an impression of objects crashing toward her. She swung her cricket bat—and felt the impact of the hit deep in her shoulder.

Cooper yowled, amid a racket of thuds and cracks.

Roof tiles—from Mrs. Dawlish’s house, as they were almost about to enter her door.

Iolanthe had struck one tile and sent it in several pieces to the middle of the street. Kashkari looked shaken, but unhurt. Cooper, however, had been hit by another tile and was bleeding a little from the side of his head.

Iolanthe glanced at the roof—no one was up there. Across the street, the rather suspicious hawker who had been loitering about of late also wasn’t there. She broke into a run and circled the house, but there was no one on the other side of the roof ridge, nor anyone either clambering back into windows or flat-out running away.

When she came back to the curb outside the front door, Kashkari was holding a handkerchief against Cooper’s skull. “Do you feel faint? Or nauseous? Or anything out of the ordinary?”

Cooper stared in fascination at a smear of bright red on his hand. “Well, my ears are ringing a little, but I think I’m fine.” He grinned. “I’ll have a story to tell at supper.”

Kashkari shook his head. “Come on. Let’s get you to a dispensary first.”

After Cooper’s wound had been cleaned and bandaged, Iolanthe bought him a paper cone of roasted chestnuts from a street hawker. Back at Mrs. Dawlish’s, they settled him into his room with a pot of tea and a sandwich. Sutherland, Rogers, and a few other boys crowded into his room.

Cooper recounted his freak accident with great relish.

Sutherland, however, frowned. “You don’t suppose Trumper and Hogg are behind this, do you?”

Iolanthe shook her head. Trumper and Hogg, two pupils who had made a great deal of trouble for Mrs. Dawlish’s boys the previous Half and had been humiliated in turn, were no longer at the school. And even if they had come back to Eton specifically to seek vengeance, they lacked the competence to organize a remote precision strike, for there had been no one on the roof.

Such an attack, however, would be all too easy for a mage.

But against whom? Iolanthe, who was still the most wanted mage in the world, or Kashkari, who, at least according to what he had told the prince, was an implacable foe of the Bane?

More boys came to see Cooper. Iolanthe and Kashkari yielded their places and went out into the corridor.

“Thank you,” said Kashkari.

“It was nothing.”

“I might have been hit by that roof tile, if you hadn’t reacted so fast.”

“Or maybe I would have been.”

“Maybe,” said Kashkari, not sounding terribly convinced. “I’d better go check on Wintervale.”

And she, decided Iolanthe, had better go speak with the prince.



The prince was not in his room. He was also not in the laboratory. The laboratory’s other entrance was via a lighthouse on Cape Wrath, Scotland. She put on the lighthouse keeper’s mackintosh and went out despite the howling wind and the driving rain—sometimes the prince liked to walk on the headland, when he had been reading for too long.

There was no sign of a single soul out and about. Puzzled, she returned to Mrs. Dawlish’s. From there, she walked to High Street, wondering whether he had gone to buy some foodstuff—he usually didn’t, preferring to vault to London for his supply, going to a different shop each time, so he could be sure his cakes and tins hadn’t been tampered with.

An enemy of the Bane had many worries.

She bought a hot cross bun for herself at the baker’s and had just stepped out of the door of the shop when someone took her by the arm.

Lady Wintervale, pale, drawn, and just short of skeletal.