The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

He had become paler, from being indoors so much. And pudgier—that big, athletic build beginning to lose its muscularity from the lack of exercise, or even movement.

“If I were a better card player I’d play with you—except I don’t think you care that much for cards either.”

“No, never saw the point of them,” he said, tapping his fingers on the top of a thick, red-leather-bound book.

She studied his face. Did he look anything like her? If his mother was correct, then he was her half-brother. But try as she did, she could not see any of her own features in him.

A drop of blood from Wintervale, that was what she needed. A drop of blood from him, a drop of blood from her, and Titus would be able to let her know whether she and Wintervale were truly related.

But one couldn’t simply go up to a mage and ask for a drop of blood. The stigma of blood magic ran deep and most mages guarded their blood as they would their lives.

“You think you can ask Titus to walk me down to supper tonight?” Wintervale asked.

The plaintiveness in his voice made her feel guilty: if it weren’t for her, Wintervale would most likely have Titus’s complete and undivided attention.

“If I see him before supper, I’ll let him know.”

“I wonder why Titus is so busy all the time,” muttered Wintervale.

No, she thought. She could not see him as a brother. At least, not yet. Perhaps someday, if they were able to work together toward the same goal . . .

The door opened and in walked Kashkari. “Fairfax,” he said, a little surprised. “Are you walking Wintervale down to supper?”

“I would if he wants me to. But I think Wintervale has his heart set on the prince—as any right-thinking man would,” she said, slipping past Kashkari. “Off I go to find your prince for you, Wintervale.”



In the middle of the night, Titus bolted upright in his bed.

He had been in a state of half dreaming, but now he could not remember what had caused him to jerk awake. He got up to drink some water, and, glass in hand, peered out from behind the curtain.

For the first time, he saw the watchers Fairfax had suspected of being there—three men, dressed in nonmage clothes and standing close together, their attention fixed on Mrs. Dawlish’s house.

As he turned away from the window, the idea that had yanked him out of his uneasy sleep returned: it had to do with his mother’s vision of Baron Wintervale’s death.

And her misinterpretation of it.

Most of the time Princess Ariadne did not offer her own view on the significance of her visions, trusting that a long enough, detailed enough vision was its own best explanation. But with the vision of Baron Wintervale’s death she had immediately construed the execution curse to have been ordered by Atlantis, never suspecting that his grieving wife, a skilled and powerful mage in her own right, could be his killer.

And if Princess Ariadne was wrong once, who was to say she could not have made another mistake somewhere else, in a vision that had far greater impact on Titus’s life?



Iolanthe had wanted to go to Claridge’s the day they met with Lady Wintervale, to see whether the memory keeper was still making use of it. Titus persuaded her to wait until he had Dalbert check Commander Rainstone’s schedule, so that they could choose a time during which Commander Rainstone would be otherwise occupied.

That opportunity came a few days later: Commander Rainstone was expected to be handing out awards at her alma mater all afternoon, and Titus and Iolanthe had a short day at school and no cricket practice requiring her attendance.

Claridge’s, a large hotel located in the Mayfair area of London, brimmed with respectability and Englishness. While the prince did his reconnaisance inside the hotel—he was still reluctant to let her be seen anywhere except school—Iolanthe waited at a newsagent’s stand around the corner, pretending to browse the selection.

The day was cold and overcast. The grayish leaves that still remained on the trees shook and shivered. A trio of street musicians on the opposite side of the intersection played an incongruously cheerful tune on their fiddles. Pedestrians, dressed almost invariably in coats of black or brown, rushed to and fro, paying little attention to the playbills that two boys were pasting onto a lamppost or the sandwich-board man advertising Mrs. Johansson’s Miraculous Slimming Tonic.

Presently the prince appeared at her elbow. “I found a suite from which I cannot proceed beyond the anteroom.”

The soles of her feet tingled. She paid the newsagent for a map of London and stuffed it into her coat pocket. “Let’s go, then.”

“Let me go first to make sure it is safe,” he said, after they were out of the newsagent’s hearing.