to be traversing a relatively flat stretch of riverbed. Titus took out an emergency raft, which, when inflated, made for a decent mattress. “The water here is fifteen feet deep. You can make the air bubble a little bigger.”
“How far have we come?” asked Iolanthe, collapsing onto the raft.
Not far enough, that much she already knew, as the same bluish light that illuminated Lucidias elsewhere filtered down from the funnel she had made to the surface for the exchange of air.
“About a mile and a half. But the river’s course turned a couple of times. So as the crow flies, we are only about four-fifths of a mile from where we started.”
“Still in Lucidias?”
“Yes.” Titus handed her a small vial of remedy. “The good news is I have been studying the map of Lucidias Mrs. Hancock gave us, and I am certain that one, the river will take us out of Lucidias, and two, it will do so at a spot where there is no checkpoint. The bad news is, of course, since Atlantis did not think it necessary to install a checkpoint, we will find it punishing in some other way.”
The contents of the vial, when she tipped it into her mouth, tasted quite familiar, with its burst of orange flavor. He had given her the exact same wellness remedy on the day they’d first met.
The day she had sat inside a dark trunk, read Master Haywood’s letter, and learned just how much he had given up to keep her safe.
There would be no triumphant return to the Conservatory for him, no life of ease and plenty. And they would never share another sunrise on the Siren Isles, leaning into each other as the birth of another day suffused them with hope.
She knew she was crying, but she didn’t realize she was shaking until Titus wrapped his arms around her and held her against him.
“He wanted to keep you safe, and now he has.”
“For how long? I won’t leave Atlantis alive—we all know it.”
“We can never judge the full effect of any action in the immediate aftermath. But remember, it was not only you he kept alive and free, it was the rest of us too.”
A soft lament floated to her ears. For a moment she thought she had imagined it, but it was Amara, singing quietly. “It’s a paean to those who have led worthy lives,” said Kashkari, a catch to his voice. “Your guardian and Mrs. Hancock neither lived nor died in vain.”
For as long as Amara sang, Iolanthe let herself weep, her head on Titus’s shoulder. When the final note of the lament had drifted up to the ears of the Angels, she wiped her eyes on her sleeves. They had a long way to go yet, and she must focus on the tasks at hand.
But Amara sang again.
“A prayer for courage,” murmured Kashkari, “the kind of courage for facing the end of the road.”
It was quite possibly the most beautiful song Iolanthe had ever heard, as haunting as it was stirring.
“‘For what is the Void but the beginning of Light?’” said Titus, quoting from the Adamantine aria. “‘What is Light but the end of Fear?’”
Iolanthe heard her own voice joining him in the rest of the verse. “‘And what am I, but Light given form? What am I, but the beginning of Eternity?’”
You are the beginning of Eternity now, she said silently to Master Haywood. You have arrived at the end of Fear. And I will love you always, for as long as the world endures.
CHAPTER 19
THEIR PAINSTAKING PROGRESS CONTINUED THROUGH the night. By midmorning they came to a huge waterfall, and Fairfax declared that it was time for everyone to get out of the river.
Titus was accustomed to mountains—he had grown up in the heart of a great mountain range. But the mountains north of Lucidias—the Coastal Range—were like none he had ever seen. There were no slopes. Everything reared up at a near-vertical angle. Even the banks of the river were precipitous and strewn with enormous and sharply edged boulders. They had to fly out of the riverbed, after Fairfax once again parted the currents.
Titus made a number of blind vaults until he was high enough to see the dense, crowded city that consumed every square inch of feasible land between the sea and the mountains. Above Lucidias hung several floating fortresses, slowly rotating. Between them wove squadrons of armored chariots. As for the intensity of the search on the ground, he could