“Hmm.” Her tone turned teasing. “Are you asking me to make a choice right now between the two of you?”
“Now you will choose me, of course. But what about after you remember?” The question made him more nervous than he cared to admit.
“Can’t you do something about the armored chariots, Fairfax?” shouted the subject of their discussion. “They are closing in fast.”
“All right!” she shouted back. “I’ll try.”
Then, into Titus’s ear, “I don’t think he even knows—or cares—that I’m a girl.”
Titus had to agree with her on that account—and he was glad for it.
“Hold the carpet steady,” she told him, and turned halfway around.
After a minute or so, she lay back down. “I can’t destabilize the armored chariots. Let me try something else. Hold on tight!”
The last few words were shouted for the other boy to hear. A second later, a tailwind very nearly blew Titus off the carpet altogether. Both the carpets accelerated as if they had been set on rockets. And behind them, barely visible in the dark of the night, sand rose like a curtain, obscuring them from the view of the Atlanteans.
The other boy signaled for them to descend. “My carpet has almost reached the limits of its range.”
Once a carpet neared the limits of its flight range, it had to be set down, or it would drop out of the sky like a rock. And once on the ground, it needed some time before it could take to the air again.
“Would you like some water?” asked Fairfax. The sphere of water she had summoned shimmered just barely under the starlight.
The boy held out a canteen. “Yes, I would, thank you.”
“Some food or a heat sheet?” asked Titus, placing his arm around Fairfax’s shoulder.
If the boy was her admirer, then he ought to either come forward to contest her affections or relinquish them forever.
The boy looked at them a moment, with neither dismay nor jealousy, but something rather like wonder. “No, thank you. These clothes are meant for the desert and water is all I need.”
A small silence fell. Titus was just about to tell the boy that they had no idea who he was when he spoke again.
“The pendant was so cold at the beginning I had to put it away from my person. And since I wasn’t looking for you specifically, but just traveling to meet my brother, I didn’t make it a point to check. Imagine my surprise when I came across it about noon and it was almost lukewarm.
“I had a two-way notebook on me so I contacted my brother and—his fiancée. They wrote back immediately saying phoenix beacons had been seen in the desert a few nights before, and their scouts were already on the lookout for you. Lo and behold, a few hours later you walked into an oasis leading a sand wyvern.”
Titus’s jaw dropped. “Those caravanists, they were mages?”
“They most certainly were.”
“But one fainted and two reached for their rifles when they saw the sand wyvern.”
“It’s a good policy for at least one member of the group to pretend to fall unconscious at a mage sighting. And I always think the rifles are a touch of genius—any time you see someone holding a firearm, your instinct is to dismiss that person as a nonmage.”
“I must remember that,” murmured Fairfax.
“And not only were the caravanists mages, the oasis itself is a translocator,” said the boy with obvious pride. “We have built three like it. Atlantis does not pay much attention to nonmages and their camels huddled around a piddly hole in the ground. It allows for our scouts to move quite freely around the desert.
“Anyway, the scouts recognized you and Fairfax. They reported back. The choice was made to take any measure necessary to keep you out of Atlantis’s hands. That was why, when they saw a large contingent of beasts and armored chariots leaving the base, they decided to attack the base to force the Atlanteans to return and defend their installation.”
“Why did your friends decide to use bewitched spears?” asked Fairfax.
“What?”
Fairfax turned to Titus. “I thought you said those who helped us used bewitched spears.”
“We have had to use quite a few unorthodox methods, but not bewitched spears,” said the boy. “We are not that desperate yet.”
“The Atlanteans who were literally on top of us were not going to head back to the base to help. They had their orders to hunt us down and they were going to obey those orders until they heard otherwise,” Titus told the boy. “I do not know what would have happened if that thicket of bewitched spears had not arrived in time to force them to leave.”
“That’s strange. I don’t know of any rebel groups that use antique weaponry. Is there anything else you can tell me about them, prince?”
Fairfax was just about to refill the boy’s canteen again. The stream of water she aimed at it missed altogether, landing with a splat in the sand.
The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)
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