The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

Q: Do you have a nickname?

A: Some of my friends call me Eirene, for fun. Eirene is the goddess of peace, but I study the art of war.



Iolanthe’s fingertips prickled. What she did remember from reading Princess Ariadne’s visions was that the first time it had been seen on the day of the prince’s birth, and the second time, in the hours immediately preceding Iolanthe’s birth.

“Do you remember what your mother was doing the second time she saw the vision?”

“Yes,” said Titus. “She was at someone’s confinement.”

At Eirene’s confinement. And Eirene had read her diary, a vision which probably made no sense to Princess Ariadne, but which Eirene had recognized as being about herself and her child, and which had led her to go to such extremes to ensure that her child would not be found by Atlantis.

And Eirene was Commander Rainstone.

“I checked,” said Titus. “At that time Penelope Rainstone had been on my mother’s personal staff, but within weeks was reassigned to the Citadel’s general staff: she had lost my mother’s trust.”

It felt strangely disheartening to hear this of Commander Rainstone. Iolanthe supposed it was because she still couldn’t quite connect Commander Rainstone to the faithless memory keeper.

“Commander Rainstone has no children. She would have had to disguise an entire pregnancy. And if she passed off her own child as Iolanthe Seabourne, what would she have done with the Seabournes’ baby, the real Iolanthe Seabourne?”

“It has been done before, a woman hiding a pregnancy from everyone. And she could have found foster parents for the baby.”

The real Iolanthe Seabourne had been born at the Royal Hesperia Hospital, near the end of September. Her birth had been two and a half months premature. For weeks she remained at the hospital, her anxious parents visiting every day and staying as long as they could.

At the end of one particular visit, driving home in a borrowed chariot, they had collided in midair with a much larger vehicle full of drunken tourists. According to Master Haywood, both Jason and Delphine Seabourne had died instantly.

On the fateful night of the meteor storm, the real Iolanthe Seabourne had been six weeks old, but would have easily passed for a newborn. And a switch had taken place. She had gone . . . somewhere. And Commander Rainstone’s baby had been brought up by Master Haywood as Iolanthe Seabourne.

Titus was before the help desk again.

“What are you getting?”

“Records from the Royal Hesperia Hospital around that time.” He scanned various volumes. “Nothing about a Rainstone giving birth. Someone, however, did pay for the hospital’s best maternity suite and request complete anonymity. That expectant mother did not even use the hospital’s staff. But listen to this, half an hour after the baby was born, it was taken to the nursery, and not brought back to the mother until several hours later, at dawn.”

When it was brought back, it was no longer the same baby.

“And your guardian visited the hospital at the same time.”

Titus pushed a thick book of visitors’ logs at Iolanthe. She flipped through it, the sound of pages turning unnaturally loud in her ears.

Master Haywood had first visited the hospital’s nursery in September, shortly after the real Iolanthe Seabourne was born. In subsequent days he came frequently, his reason for visit always “To take the parents’ place so they may have some rest.” After the Seabournes died, he still came several times a week, to “Look in on my friends’ orphaned daughter.”

At which point did he begin to conspire with Penelope Rainstone to plan a switch? Penelope Rainstone, who had learned what would happen to her own child because she snooped inside Princess Ariadne’s diary of visions? Had he mentioned in passing that there was an orphan girl at the hospital, one who was about to be entrusted to the care of an elderly relative who had never seen her before? Did the inspiration grow from there?

The last time Master Haywood visited the hospital was on the night of the meteor storm. He had signed in at seven o’clock in the evening and signed out an hour later. Next to the entry, however, there was a note from the hospital’s administrative staff: he had been found by security at half past three in the morning and escorted from the premises.

But he would have had enough time for the switch.



“I want to speak to Lady Wintervale,” Iolanthe said.

When she had arrived in the attic of the Wintervale house in London, Lady Wintervale had nearly killed her. Not because she thought Iolanthe an intruder, but because she held Iolanthe responsible for someone’s loss of honor.

Iolanthe had escaped convinced that Lady Wintervale was completely mad. But now that she knew Lady Wintervale was mostly lucid and only occasionally unstable, she saw Lady Wintervale’s words in a different light.