people loved her dearly. It was impossible not to be drawn to her kindness and the depth of her sincerity. Her death devastated me. And it devastates me to this day that no matter what I or anyone else does, she cannot be brought back.
But I see in Your Highness a spark of the greatness that she never had the chance to realize. I pray Leander can help you achieve that greatness—he aches for a purpose in life and longs to prove himself in the wider world. For now, I hope you will be good friends and faithful companions at Mrs. Dawlish’s house.
The house is one step above a hovel, but changes that shake the world have come from unlikelier places.
Your humble servant,
Pleione Wintervale
P.S. Before he passed away, Baron Wintervale had commissioned a hot air balloon for Leander’s tenth birthday, forgetting that his son is terrified of being that high above the ground. If Your Highness should be so inclined, the apparatus can be found in the main carriage house of Windsor Castle—before he passed away, Baron Wintervale and I often entertained at the English queen’s home; his funeral, too, was held there.
Perhaps Your Highness will find the hot air balloon amusing. Consider it a gift, from someone who has never stopped mourning the loss of your mother.
As agents of Atlantis swarmed over Windsor Castle, Iolanthe said to Master Haywood, “I think I’ve got it. On my count, one, two, three.”
She struck a match. It flared to life. At the same time, Master Haywood worked a force pump that was attached to two cans of paraffin oil, driving the fuel into an overhead cistern. Flames shot up into the opening of the hot air balloon’s envelope. The balloon ascended farther.
“All right. Let’s practice it a few more times.”
They did. Then they practiced some more with Master Haywood striking the match. When he no longer looked as if these nonmage fire sticks were entirely foreign to him, they let the balloon go on rising as they strapped down the contents of the gondola.
They were high above Salisbury Plain, more than a hundred miles west of Windsor Castle. It had been Master Haywood who had pointed out that Iolanthe was being far too optimistic in thinking of going to Lady Wintervale for help getting back into the Domain.
“What’s the first thing Atlantis would have done?” he’d asked her. “I’ve been in a similar situation, and I don’t think the protocol has changed in the past six months. They would have interrogated her under truth serum, and she would have told them about every last interaction she’d had with you, including where you last met.
“And if they still keep Eton under a no-vaulting zone, do you think they wouldn’t have kept a similar watch on that room in Windsor Castle, especially after they lost your trail in the desert?”
His doubts made all too much sense. But from what other quarter could she ask for help? Iolanthe had turned to Princess Ariadne’s diary, which gave her nothing. In desperation, she reread the letter from Lady Wintervale to Titus, which she had only glanced at before.
The detail that leaped out at her was the location of Baron Wintervale’s funeral, which affirmed Master Haywood’s suspicions. Even if Lady Wintervale had been released from Atlantean custody in time to plan for her son’s last rites, she would not have held his memorial in some little-known church in London, as stated in the notice in the Times, not when she had set her husband’s pyre in the middle of the English queen’s castle.
It was only as Iolanthe was once again restlessly pacing in the laboratory that it struck her: she ought to at least go and see whether the hot air balloon was still at Windsor Castle. When mages stowed their belongings among nonmages, such belongings remained undisturbed until either the original owner came for them or another mage searched specifically for those items. She had never heard Titus mention having gone on a hot air balloon ride, so there was a chance that the hot air balloon Baron Wintervale had commissioned for his son had remained undisturbed in the carriage house at Windsor.
And so it had. She and Master Haywood wove a series of otherwise spells, which compelled the castle’s staff to transport the balloon and everything it came with to the railway station and into a luggage car. Meanwhile Iolanthe found a footman who knew the location of the parlor where she used to meet Lady