“When you’ve eaten,” Mrs. Hancock went on, “we’ll see how we can bed down everyone as comfortably as possible. You’ll need a good night’s rest.”
It might be their last.
Titus was accustomed to late nights and little sleep. But it had been a long day, both physically demanding and emotionally draining. And the thought of a few hours of uninterrupted sleep sounded more tempting than he wanted to admit, for someone who really ought not to waste any more time sleeping.
He moved closer to Fairfax, intending to ask how she was holding up.
“No!” Aramia screamed.
Every single person stopped mid-motion.
“Don’t eat. Don’t sleep. You must leave this house now! Go to the tunnels, get out of Lucidias this minute.”
Titus stared at her. Suddenly he knew what she was about to say next.
“I’m carrying a tracer. I entrusted the other half to Uncle Alectus to give to the new Inquisitor. It would take them a while to find us, but we have been here a while.”
Of course. If all she wanted was to free Lady Callista, it would be much easier to help the Bane than to defeat the Bane. Titus could have throttled himself. Aramia had the uncanny talent to portray herself as a victim, a girl too weak to matter, someone who would never intentionally serve as an accessory to murder.
Was this what would lead to Fairfax’s death?
“No!” Fairfax shouted, clamping her hand on him and pushing his arm down.
Belatedly he realized that he had his wand pointed at Aramia, with every intention of completing an execution curse.
The room turned dark all at once. He blinked before he realized that Kashkari had extinguished the light, in order to look outside without attracting notice. As he drew back the shutters, a bright-blue light rushed in.
“Hurting her now would serve no purpose whatsoever,” said Fairfax.
“I didn’t know that’s why the Bane wanted her,” whimpered Aramia. “I didn’t know that it was to use her in sacrificial magic.”
“So it was quite all right for you when you did not know that specific fact?” Titus growled. “What did you think was going to happen? That the Bane would treat her to a nice afternoon tea and let her go?”
Fairfax’s hand tightened on his arm. “Stop wasting time. We have to leave.” She turned to Aramia. “Hand over your tracer.”
Aramia dug under the folds of her overrobe and surrendered a small round disk.
“Get started on the password to the Crucible. I’ll send the tracer as far away as possible.”
“We won’t have enough time to get into the Crucible,” said Kashkari, from the window. “They are coming.”
CHAPTER 18
IOLANTHE RAN TO THE WINDOW. In the clear, cool light of the streetlamps, it was all too easy to see the swarm of armored pods, the kind that had chased her in Cairo and Eton, speeding toward them.
She swore and threw down the tracer.
“I’ve a half portal!” cried Mrs. Hancock. “Quick. This way.”
A fully functional portal required a starting enclosure and an end enclosure. A half portal, on the other hand, could send a mage a certain distance, but there was no telling just how far one would be dislocated, or even in which direction.
They grabbed their emergency bags. Mrs. Hancock urged everyone into a closet in her bedroom, packed as tightly as if they were spectators at a parade.
“What about me?” cried Aramia. “If Atlantis interrogates me now, they’ll learn that I’d helped you after all.”
“Then you had better make sure they don’t interrogate you,” said Mrs. Hancock as she closed the door in Aramia’s face, shutting her out.
The next moment, they found themselves standing in a garden of some kind, surrounded by low, burbling fountains and parterres made of dwarf shrubs. The city spread out to the south—a thin, dense strip. And in the distance, the sea, the foam of its choppy waves a strange shade of blue-green under the light of the floating fortress—Titus had told them it was big, but her imagination had been no match for the size of the colossus in the sky.
Mrs. Hancock looked about. The garden was as brightly lit as everywhere else in Lucidias. “We are in River Terrace Park,” she said, a name that meant nothing to the non-Atlanteans, “about three miles from my house.”
“Is it safe here?” asked Kashkari. “And are there any tunnels around?”
“There are no tunnels nearby,” said Mrs. Hancock, waving at them to follow her as she walked toward the west. “Public spaces in Lucidias are carefully