he took her hand again, she did not push him away.
CHAPTER 16
THE MEADOW BEFORE SLEEPING BEAUTY’S castle seemed peaceful enough—they had not been in this copy of the Crucible long enough yet for all hell to break loose. Still Kashkari and Amara, who had borne the brunt of the chaos in the other copy, held their wands tightly and circled again and again before they deemed it safe to land.
“No sign of Skytower, at least,” said Kashkari.
Fairfax and her guardian stood with their hands clasped, their heads bent toward each other, speaking in voices too soft for Titus to hear. They were probably discussing how best to get rid of Aramia without causing the latter grave bodily damage, but the sight of their closeness, their obvious affection for and reliance upon each other, made his heart constrict.
“So where is this copy of the Crucible?” asked Aramia.
No one answered.
“We will be on Atlantis, won’t we, once we exit?” Her voice quavered.
Still no answer.
“Fortune shield me.” She bit her lower lip. “And are you planning to leave me behind here?”
“It would be for the best,” said Fairfax.
“Maybe, if you were headed elsewhere. But here it would be a mistake. What do you know of Atlantis?”
Fairfax glanced Titus’s way. They had studied, as much as they could, everything about Atlantis that might be relevant to their tasks—he more than she, as he had been at it for far longer. The problem was, the information they had was often out of date.
Atlantis, when it had been poor and on the verge of destroying itself, had been of little interest to the more prosperous and powerful mage realms. And when its fortune had turned, it had likewise shunned close diplomatic ties with the wider world. No doubt the Bane’s desire to keep his secret at any cost also played a role—if the rest of the world did not know anything about Atlantis, they would have a much more difficult time coming after him.
Titus had read most of the books and articles about Atlantis that could be dug up and studied the rudimentary maps that the more adventurous mages of yesteryear had made. From time to time, Dalbert, in his unobtrusive way, would present Titus with a report. But even Dalbert could only do so much.
“Aha,” said Aramia triumphantly. “As I thought, you know the depth of your ignorance. But my mother always collected intelligence everywhere she went, and everyone loved to confide in her.”
Haywood winced. Fairfax narrowed her eyes at Aramia, who gulped. In the Sahara Desert, Titus had called Fairfax “the scariest girl in the world.” Aramia obviously agreed with him.
But she carried on, if visibly less smug. “It’s nighttime outside. Do you know Atlantis has had a curfew in place for decades?”
“Of course,” retorted Amara. “That’s common knowledge.”
“So it may be. But do you also know that the towns and cities of Atlantis are brightly lit at night?”
She looked around. This time, no one told her that she was repeating old chestnuts.
“Well, they are,” Aramia continued. “Except for the biggest boulevards, which are continually patrolled, most streets do not have trees, but short, neatly trimmed shrubs that offer very few hiding places. Even the architecture is unfriendly to any illicit activity—there are no narrow alleys between houses where one might hide from the night patrol. And houses with their backs to each other do not share a common garden, as they sometimes do in the Domain. Even with raising land from the ocean, terrain suitable for construction is always at a premium on Atlantis, so their houses and apartment buildings simply back into one another with no spaces in between, and the communal gardens are on the roofs, which, again, have flowers and shrubs but no trees, making it very easy for patrols to see everything.”
Every word she uttered was unwelcome news. Not that Titus had counted on arriving at night to be an advantage—he too knew about the long-standing curfew and understood movements at night to be potentially troublesome. But Aramia’s information revealed just how profoundly uninformed he was about Atlantis as a society—it would be almost impossible for them to be in the open without betraying themselves.
If Fairfax felt as he did, she did not reveal it. “It isn’t enough for you to point out what we don’t know. What solutions can you offer to help us counter such disadvantages?”
“Obviously I’ve never stepped onto Atlantis either. But I do know that Atlanteans themselves have found various ways around the curfew. There