thought there would be plenty of time for weddings and celebrations after we put away the Bane. But then we realized there is no point waiting.”
Fairfax passed around the plate of biscuits. “I assume it probably wasn’t your choice to spend your honeymoon here with us. And how did you get here so fast?”
“Mohandas probably told you that one of our satellite bases has a dry dock that can launch a boat into the Mediterranean. I was taken to the coast of Andalusia and flew the rest of the way.”
Flying carpets, for all their marvelous uses, could not travel for long distances over water. From Spain to Britain, the only major body of water she had to cross would have been the English Channel, which was narrow enough between Calais and Dover for a well-made carpet to make it across before it started to lose altitude.
“And as for why I am not enjoying my husband’s company . . .” Amara took a deep breath. “My parents left the Kalahari Realm many years ago, before I could remember. Last night armored chariots paid a visit to the settlement where they once lived.”
Titus clenched his hand—no good ever came of armored chariots paying anyone a visit.
“The population of the settlement is about twenty thousand. I am told that at least half of the inhabitants are confirmed dead. Twenty-five percent of the rest are not expected to last more than a few days. And of those who will survive, many will suffer: blindness, lesions on internal organs, the accumulation of fluid in the lungs so that they exist in a constant state of near drowning.”
The only sound in the room was that of the fire in the grate, leaping and crackling. And then the water, beginning to agitate inside the kettle.
“You believe the attack was a direct retaliation against you, personally, for the assistance you gave us?” asked Titus.
Amara shook her head. “If only that was it. The settlement’s elders received a message afterward that said, ‘This will be Delamer in seven days, unless . . .’”
“Unless what?” asked Fairfax, her voice no more than a whisper.
“That was all it said, ‘unless . . .’”
Unless she was handed over to the Bane.
The kettle hissed. The room seemed to grow darker, a shadow as enormous as the world itself creeping upon them.
“Do you believe the threat credible?” Titus heard himself speak to Amara, his tone entirely flat.
“Atlantis has never made idle ultimatums. And the fact that they specified a week lends credence to the threat—even Atlantis needs a few days to stockpile the quantity of death rain necessary to cover all of Delamer.”
“What . . . what should we do?” came Haywood’s hesitant question.
Titus could not think. He was responsible for the welfare of his subjects—he could not possibly allow them to die by the hundreds of thousands. On the other hand, he would never voluntarily give up Fairfax, never allow her to be taken by the Bane.
Fortune shield him. Was that what Kashkari had seen in his prophetic dream?
As if the thought had occurred to him at the exact moment, Kashkari said, “Could that be what my dream was all about?”
They looked at each other, aghast.
Fairfax rose and removed the kettle from the fire. The room was once again dead quiet, so much so that he could hear every wave breaking against the cliffs.
And then she asked the question he had been dreading. “What exactly did you dream of, Kashkari?”
Kashkari could not seem to meet Iolanthe’s eyes; instead he turned toward Titus. Her spine tingled with alarm.
His face ashen, Titus stood in place, a stone statue of a boy.
“Answer me,” she demanded.
Another endless moment passed. Titus gripped the top of a chair and at last looked back at her. “He dreamed of your death.”
“No!” someone shouted. “No!”
But it wasn’t her. It was Master Haywood, on his feet, pale and shaking.
She glanced down at the kettle in her hand. There seemed no point in doing anything except pouring out the boiling water. So she did, into the teapot—and only then remembered that she hadn’t put any tea leaves inside.
She set the kettle back on its hook, which had been swung out of the grate, put down the towel she had used to shield her hand from the heat of the kettle’s handle, and reached for the tin of tea leaves.
“Did you not hear what His Highness said?” came Master Haywood’s anxious, high-pitched question.