The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

The two looked similar enough in Greek that it was an understandable mistake.

“Ah, that’s much better.” Cooper closed his notebook. “Are you sure you have to go to the Wyoming Territory?”

“Unfortunately, yes. And sooner rather than later, I’m afraid.”

The prince walked in then. He took one look at Cooper and said, “Leave us.”

As always, Cooper was delighted to be sent packing by His Highness, who looked at the door a moment after it had closed. “Someday I might actually miss that idiot.”

“Did you find Kashkari?”

“No. I could n—”

There came knocks—not at her door, but the prince’s—followed by, “Are you there, prince?”

Kashkari.

Titus was instantly at the door. “Yes?”

“A word with you, Your Highness.”

“Come in here.”

Kashkari entered Iolanthe’s room. Titus closed the door.

“My apologies to Fairfax,” said Kashkari, glancing at Titus. “But may I speak to you in private?”

“I am His Highness’s personal bodyguard,” said Iolanthe. From the moment she knew that Kashkari had long realized there was something not quite right about Archer Fairfax, she had been thinking of what to tell him that would explain everything but still keep her secret intact. “There are others at this house and around this school dedicated to his protection, but it was decided earlier this year, due to increased danger to His Highness, that I would step into the identity that had been created long ago, in case someone was needed to defend him from even closer quarters.”

“I see,” said Kashkari slowly. “I see now.”

Titus played along. “I would not be alive today, if it were not for Fairfax. Whatever you would like to say, you may say it before him. He already knows who you are and what your ambitions are, by the way.”

Kashkari studied Iolanthe for a moment, took out a notebook from his pocket, and scribbled something inside. Barely a second later, Mrs. Hancock materialized in the room. Iolanthe was startled enough to take a step backward, bumping into the edge of her desk.

Titus stepped before Iolanthe. “What is the meaning of this, Kashkari?”

“Let me set a sound circle,” answered Kashkari. When he was done, he turned to Mrs. Hancock. “Fairfax is His Highness’s personal bodyguard. We may speak freely before him.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” said Mrs. Hancock. “I always thought there was something inexplicable about you, Fairfax.”

“What are you doing, Kashkari,” demanded Titus, “with the special envoy from Atlantis’s Department of Overseas Administration?”

“I come tonight as who I truly am: a sworn enemy of the Bane,” said Mrs. Hancock.

Titus snorted. “I have my doubts that this residence, which contains mostly nonmages who have never heard of Atlantis, except as ancient hearsay, could house that many sworn enemies of the Bane. It is statistically unlikely.”

“But we are none of us here by chance,” said Mrs. Hancock. “Kashkari saw his own future. Wintervale’s mother sent him because of you, Your Highness. And you and I, Your Highness, are both here because of a man named Icarus Khalkedon.”

Iolanthe had never heard that name before, but Titus apparently had. “The Bane’s old seer, you mean?”

“The Bane’s old oracle,” answered Mrs. Hancock.

Titus and Iolanthe exchanged a look of astonishment. Seers were considered to possess a rare talent, but seers were receivers, limited by what the universe saw fit to reveal to them. Oracles, on the other hand, were able to answer specific questions. Most oracles in the mage world were inanimate objects, jealously guarded by devotees, and pilgrims could travel thousands of miles and still be denied a chance to ask their one burning question.

It was almost unheard of for a person to be an oracle.

“Where did the Bane find him?” Iolanthe asked.

“I don’t know and neither did Icarus—though my guess was the Kalahari Realm. Mages from all over the world had settled there and intermarried. That sometimes produces a startling beauty in the children, different from anything else one is used to seeing.”

Mrs. Hancock sighed. “I met him when I was honored with a summer apprenticeship at Royalis.14 Nowadays the Bane rarely leaves the Commander’s Palace in the uplands, but that summer he happened to stay in the capital. And of course, wherever the Bane was, Icarus was never far away.

“The Bane asked him one question a month. It took Icarus two weeks to recover from a question and the Bane usually let him have two more weeks of—normalcy, I suppose. Of not being so exhausted he could scarcely move an eyelid.