The Perilous Sea Read Online Free PDF

Atlantis? Was that why he had to get her away from him, so that she wouldn’t lose her freedom at the same time? The roar of her blood was such that her ears rang as she grimly dug around the hut for something to cover herself.
    Her anxiety subsided somewhat after she unearthed changes of clothes, nutrition cubes, and coins in the seemingly abandoned hut. Even better, a student pass issued by a small conservatory somewhere in the northeast of the Domain. She had not been chucked away at a random location in desperation. Something had come up and he needed her out of the castle; without enough time to get her to a proper safe house, he had instead deposited her at a way station.
    Dressed and with half a nutrition cube in her stomach, she stepped outside the hut to investigate her new whereabouts. The castle was no more than three miles away to the north. A far-seeing spell revealed the flag of the Domain, a silver phoenix on a background of sapphire, streaming atop the highest parapet.
    She frowned. If the Master of the Domain was in residence, his personal standard, that of a phoenix and a wyvern guarding a shield with seven crowns, should be the banner flying over the castle.
    Where was he? Her misgivings returned with a vengeance. She must get out of the mountains and find out what was going on.
    The castle was situated near the eastern front of the Labyrinthine Mountains. Theoretically, it should be no more than twenty or twenty-five miles, as the crow flies, from the plains. But when the mountains moved without rhythm or pattern, twenty or twenty-five miles as the crow flies might very well take a week on foot.
    Provided that she didn’t become hopelessly lost. 4
    It took her four days, two and half of which were spent thinking she had become hopelessly lost. Fortunately, the closest villages and towns were accustomed to seeing lost hikers stumbling out of the mountains, dirty and disoriented, in desperate need of a wash and a meal.
    The first thing Iolanthe asked for, before a wash and a meal, was a newspaper. It was almost the anniversary of Titus’s coronation and every year, to mark the occasion, a parade was held in Delamer. If the parade was canceled, then he was in trouble.
    But no, the parade would take place the next day, and the Master of the Domain would attend several ceremonies and give out prizes to exemplary students.
    A kindly farmer offered her a lift in his ancient chariot, pulled by an even more ancient pegasus, to the nearest town that had expedited services. From there she was able to catch a translocator to a larger town, which happened to be a hub of expedited highways.
    Being at the hub made her heart palpitate: there could be agents of Atlantis, lying in wait for her. But she had to move quickly—and she was protected by an Irreproducible Charm that made it impossible for her image to be reproduced and transmitted.
    She reached Delamer that evening. The next afternoon, from quite some distance away, she watched Titus pass over Palace Avenue on a floating balcony, flanked by the regent and Lady Callista. He did not wear his grandfather’s sunburst medal, to signal that he was under house arrest or any other type of captivity. But he was encircled by guards and attendants, with barely enough room to breathe.
    She could not go near him while he was thus surrounded. Her only choice was to leave him a coded message in The Delamer Observer , head to Eton, and hope that he, too, would be given permission to go back to that nonmage school.
    Departing so soon—and by herself—was not how she had envisioned her summer. She debated whether to remain in Delamer for some more time, so that she could arrange for a meeting with Titus or find out on her own something of Master Haywood’s whereabouts. But in the end, she decided it was far too risky to stay longer: there was a subtle tension in the mood of the capital; even just standing in line to buy a bit of something to eat, she