He, Wintervale and the prince said at the same time.
Go ahead, the prince said to Wintervale.
She drank from her cup, trying not to appear too obviously relieved. Of course the prince would take care of her.
He climbed the tree at the edge of our playing field and fell off, Wintervale answered. The prince had to carry him back here. Didnt you, Your Highness?
I did, said the prince, with Fairfax crying like a girl all the way.
Oh, she did, did she? If I wept, it was only because you were so pitiful. I weigh barely nine stone. But youd think I were an elephant the way Your Highness moaned. Oh, Fairfax, I cannot take another step. Oh, Fairfax, my legs are turning into pudding. Oh, Fairfax, my knees are buckling. And you are crushing my delicate toes.
Kashkari and Wintervale chuckled.
My back is still hurting to this day, said the prince. And you weighed as much as the Rock of Gibraltar.
Their exchange was almost flirtatious. But she could not help notice that in the midst of the general jollity, he remained aparthad she never met him shed have considered him moody. She wondered why he was utterly alone when he was among mates.
Her, of course, she realized with a start. She was the reason. She was his great secret.
And now they were in this secret together.
She flashed him a smile. What are friends for, prince?
I am sorry I did not have the time to tell you that Wintervale is an Exile, Titus said. He is an elemental mage, in fact, but any nonmage with a match can produce a more impressive flame than he.
They stood some distance from the house, near the banks of the brown and silent Thames. Titus had rowed on the river for years. The repetition, the perspiration, and the good, clean exhaustion quieted his mind beautifully.
Eton was not always a pleasant place: many boys had a difficult time finding their place in the hierarchy, and there were senior boys who roundly abused their powers. But for him, the school, with its drafty classrooms, its grueling sports, its thousand boysand even its agents of Atlantiswas the closest thing to normalcy he had ever known.
Are there other mages here? she asked.
The day was fleeing. And so were the clouds, leaving behind a clear sky that had turned a deep twilight blue, except for the western horizon, still glowing with the last embers of sunset.
Besides Wintervale, only the agents of Atlantis.
She had been almost giddy with relief upon leaving Wintervales room, but this reminder of Atlantiss omnipresence sobered her mood. Her eyes lowered. Her shoulders hunched. She seemed to grow smaller before his eyes.
Afraid?
Yes.
You will become accustomed to it. Not true at all. He never had, but learned to carry on in spite of it.
She took a deep breath, snapped a leaf from a weeping willow, and rolled it into a green tube in her hand. Her fingers were slender and delicatevery much a girls.
Wintervale calls you Your Highness and nobody bats an eye. Do they all know who you are?
Wintervale does. But to everyone else, I am a minor Germanic princeling from the House of Saxe-Limburg.
Is there such a house?
No, but anyone who has ever heard of the name will find it on a map and in history books as a principality of Prussiathe regents mage-in-chief made sure of it.
That is a highly illegal otherwise spell, it is not?
Then do not tell anybody that is also how I made a place for Archer Fairfax here.
This earned him a long glance from her, half-approving, half-disquieted.
At the edge of the river they stopped. The water was a dark ripple, with a few daubs of reddish gold.
The Thames, he said. We row on it, those of us who do not play cricket.
He thought she might ask what exactly cricket was, but she only nodded slowly.
Across the river is Windsor Castle, one of the English queens homes, he added.
She looked south for a moment at the ramparts that dominated the skyline. He had the distinct feeling that she was only half listening to him.
Is there something on your mind? he asked.
She glanced at him again, reluctant admiration in her eyes. He rarely cared what others thought of him. But with this girl who observed him carefully and unobtrusively, who was as perceptive as she was capable . . .
We spoke of my guardian earlier, did we not?
Her decision to confide in him pleased himand turned him oddly anxious. We did, at the hotel.
She dropped the willow leaf into the river; it swirled in a small eddy. For the past several years I have been frustrated with him. He had been a scholar of great promise. But then he made one terrible mistake after another and became a nobody in the middle of nowhere.
I learned today that, fourteen years ago, to keep me safe, he gave up certain crucial memories of his past to a memory keeper. Since then he has lived without knowing the events that brought him to where he was.
Titus could scarcely imagine how the man had managed for so many years. It was the current medical consensus that memory escrow was eminently unsuitable for the long term. After a few years the mind started to hunt for the missing memories. They became an obsession.