The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

Titus instantly had his arm around her shoulders. “What is it?”


“Wintervale. Someone is going to pass those pictures to him, sooner or later.”

“So?” said Kashkari.

“Wintervale is the Bane, or he has been since the day he came to Sutherland’s uncle’s house.”

Kashkari shivered. “No. Please, no.”

Mrs. Hancock materialized among them. Before anyone could demand why she wasn’t watching Wintervale, she said, “Something is wrong with Wintervale. He was looking at these pictures then he suddenly started laughing—and wouldn’t stop.”

“Wintervale is the Bane. And I’m the one who brought down lightning. He has been trying to reach a contact-requisite threshold with the prince, so he can find out where I am,” said Fairfax. “But those photographs he was looking at let him know that he has already found me, and I’ve been under his nose all along.”

Mrs. Hancock stumbled back a step. “Now I finally understand.” She turned to Kashkari. “By staying close to Wintervale, you saved him—His Highness, not Wintervale.”

Kashkari gawked at her, thunderstruck.

“We must go,” Titus said to Fairfax. “Right now.”

She gripped the emergency bag already strapped to her shoulders. “Let’s.”

But they could not vault. The Bane must have come to the same conclusion Kashkari had. And if he had been at Eton this long, the no-vaulting zone must have been at the ready for almost as long, waiting for his command to be put into effect.

Kashkari rushed to the window. “You can’t use a flying carpet either. There are armored chariots outside.”

The armored chariots were high above, circling like a flock of birds. They would swoop down in an instant, should Titus and Iolanthe dare to make an escape on Kashkari’s spare carpet. Not to mention, an armored chariot’s top speed was much higher than the carpet’s one hundred and twenty miles an hour.

“The quasi-vaulter, then,” said Fairfax.

“We will save that until we have no other choice. For now we still have this.” Titus set the Crucible on the table.

“You two had better leave this room,” said Fairfax, to Kashkari and Mrs. Hancock. “You have not been compromised yet. The Bane does not know you are involved with us, so do what you can to keep yourselves safe.”

“Will we meet again?” asked Kashkari.

Titus untwisted half of his pendant and gave it to Kashkari. “We can hope.”

Kashkari and Mrs. Hancock left. Titus and Fairfax each laid a hand on the Crucible, hers over his.

Titus began the password.



“How far is Forbidden Island?” Iolanthe shouted, over the air rushing over the carpet at one hundred twenty miles an hour.

“Ninety miles,” Titus shouted back.

Forty-five minutes, then.

They were a tight fit on the carpet, which was no more than three and a half feet wide and five feet long. At this speed there was only one way to ride: flat on one’s stomach, hands tightly gripped onto the front of the carpet, a safety harness clipped over the torso.

Below, the ground rushed by. She recognized the Plain of Giants. And somewhere to the north, Briga’s Chasm, made faintly visible by the vapor of miasma rising out of the depths of its deep ravine, a vapor that writhed and shifted, almost like a fog, under the sunlight.

There was also a portal at Briga’s Chasm, but that one led to the copy of the Crucible that had been lost, and without knowing where that copy of the Crucible was, Titus had not been willing to take the risk. So they were headed for Forbidden Island, to access the copy of the Crucible in the monastery, which was still a safe place for the Master of the Domain, if he could get to it.

“Wish they had picked easier stories to use for portals,” she said, knowing very well the point of selecting difficult locations was to decrease the likelihood one would be followed from one Crucible to another. “I can beat the Big Bad Wolf to a pulp on any given day.”

“And I daresay the seven dwarfs are no match for my prowess,” said Titus, turning carefully to look behind them.

“Anyone chasing us?”

“Not yet.”

“I guess we can’t ever go back to school again.”

“No.”

It was probably the last she’d see of the boys. She hoped Cooper would still remember her, when he was a portly, middle-aged lawyer, coming back to school each year on the Fourth of June to celebrate the memories of his youth.

And Master Haywood. She had one of her Wyoming Territory calling cards in her pocket—in case she couldn’t go to Paris in person, she was going to send it to him, to let him know not to expect her for a while. She wondered if she could still post it somewhere, so that he would worry less.

She turned to Titus. “I hope Kashkari and Mrs.—”