are mages who have legitimate excuses to be abroad at night: private security guards, late shift workers, or technicians who are summoned for emergency repairs—and I believe it is a fairly common practice to either barter favors with them or bribe them outright for their night passes.”
“And you think we can do that without being immediately reported? Wouldn’t most people have already arranged for these night passes before they left their houses in the evening?”
“There are always those who fail to plan ahead. They’ll have to pay more, of course.” Aramia looked around at them. “Is this copy of the Crucible in Lucidias?”
She received no answer, but that was apparently enough answer for her. “My mother knows about the tunnels underneath the city. Roads leading in and out of Lucidias have checkpoints. If we can get into the tunnels, then we can avoid the authorities altogether.”
“How do we get into the tunnels?” Fairfax asked.
“That I cannot divulge until we leave the Crucible. I’ve seen firsthand how dangerous it can become when it is used as a portal.” Aramia smiled. “Anyway, shall we make our exit? It won’t be safe to stay here for much longer.”
The moment Titus left the Crucible—and stepped onto Atlantis—his long-suppressed memory dropped back into his head, piercingly, regrettably vivid. Normal memories faded and distorted over time, but those that had been suppressed always reemerged with perfect clarity and accuracy.
He had been thirteen, in his first Summer Half at Eton, rowing on the Thames River with a scowl. He hated rowing, he hated this school, and he hated England: frankly, there was not a single aspect about his life he did not detest resoundingly.
At the end of two miles going upstream, they turned around to head for the boathouse. The crew sat with their backs to their destination, so Titus happened to be facing west. For an entire week, it had been drizzly. But now the clouds parted, and the sunlight that fell upon him had such a rich, saturated golden hue that it took his breath away.
And then one of the other three rowers in the boat, a boy named St. John who also lived in Mrs. Dawlish’s house, his mood probably likewise buoyed by the sudden flood of light, said, “Tell me this, who is the greatest chicken-killer in Shakespeare?”
Titus rolled his eyes. He regarded the nonmage boys with whom he was forced to share the school as absolute bumpkins—absolute and incomprehensible bumpkins.
“Who?” asked another boy.
“Macbeth!” St. John cried. “Because he did murder most foul. Get it? Murder most fowl?”
The other two rowers groaned. Titus very nearly smiled: he had actually understood the joke and found it rather ticklish.
And when they had pulled the boat ashore and started walking back toward their resident houses, instead of feeling sore and grumpy, as he usually did, he felt strong and . . . almost happy.
The sensation startled him. His mind raced: perhaps being sent to school in a nonmage realm was not the punishment he had always believed it to be. Here he was just another boy, without the tedium of court etiquette or the weight of a country’s expectations. And if he tried, he might come to enjoy such an adolescence, far from everything he hated about being the Master of the Domain.
And maybe, just maybe, he could even ignore for a few years the demands his mother had put on him. After he had thoroughly enjoyed himself, the Bane would still be there. What was the hurry? What was the harm in not spending every spare second preparing himself?
The vista of possibilities that opened before him was dizzying. He could have fun. He could have friends. And he even knew exactly how he would go about making friends—the hot air balloon that Lady Wintervale had told him about, still sitting in the carriage house at Windsor Castle, which would make for a grand eye-opener for the boys at Mrs. Dawlish’s house.
His excitement kept building. He never knew he could have this many ideas about having fun. Back at Mrs. Dawlish’s, after he had changed and washed, he sat down to imagine some more of this potentially sublime future.
By habit he knocked his finger against the cover of Lexikon der Klassischen Altertumskunde and turned the German reference book back to what it really was, his mother’s diary. Again by habit, he began turning the blank pages. But his mind was not on the diary: he was already thinking about what he could do to make Wintervale