Free The Perilous Sea by Sherry Thomas Page A

bad-tempered when faced with an insistent do-gooder.
    Or . . . “Did you think I was the one who injured you?”
    He seemed amused. “That is only occurring to you right now?”
    â€œWhy should it have occurred to me sooner? I didn’t do it.”
    He raised a brow. “You are sure about that?”
    The question stumped her—she had no way of knowing for certain, did she? If he had harmed her protector, then she could see herself exacting vengeance. But on the other hand, his was not a wound caused by elemental powers.
    She pointed that out.
    He moved his lips in an eloquent representation of a shrug. “Are you telling me you do not know how to make a potion?”
    Did she? At the question, she began to recall all kinds of recipes—clarifying potion, bel canto draught, light elixir. She rubbed her temples. “Do you know why you are in the guise of a nonmage?”
    â€œI could be an Exile. The clothes I was wearing came from a place in London, England, and I recognized it as a street known for tailor shops.”
    â€œSavile Row?” The named rolled easily off her tongue, surprising her.
    Surprising him as well. He shifted—and winced in pain. “How do you know?”
    â€œWhen you said a street known for tailors in London, it just came to mind.” And yet she could not recall her own name.
    â€œSo we retain knowledge and skills we have acquired,” he said, “but we have no personal memories.”
    This implied the use of precision memory spells. Blunt-force memory spells required only the will to do damage, but precision memory spells were contact requisite: the mage who had so neatly cut away her memories must have accumulated many hours of direct physical contact with her, in order to be able to wield such spells over her.
    Most contact-requisite spells required thirty-six hours of contact; the more powerful ones needed seventy-two hours. Except infants being held by parents or siblings, or lovers who could not leave each other’s embrace, mages simply did not touch one another enough to be able to deploy contact-requisite spells. Of course there were ways around it, but in general the contact-requisite threshold ensured that a great many potentially dangerous spells were not used willy-nilly by anyone with a grudge.
    In this case, however, that contact-requisite threshold raised thorny questions: it meant her memory had not been taken by an enemy, but quite possibly someone she knew very, very well.
    That someone had made sure that she retained her fear of Atlantis. And whoever had applied the memory spells to the boy had done the same.
    â€œDo you—do you think we knew each other?”
    He looked at her a long moment. “What do you think are the odds that two completely unconnected strangers ended up in the middle of the Sahara Desert, within a stone’s throw of each other, both missing their memories?”
    The idea was an uncomfortable one, that she might be linked to this boy in some significant manner.
    â€œBut it remains to be seen whether we were allies or enemies,” the boy added. He checked his watch. “Shall we get going?”
    Â 
    It would be ridiculous to describe rock as soft, yet the next section of bedrock she tunneled through most certainly felt softer to her, easier to manipulate.
    They advanced more rapidly, which should have pleased her, yet the closer they drew to the one-mile boundary, the more uneasy she grew.
    â€œWe must be almost there,” said Titus. “Ten, fifteen yards left at most.”
    She stopped.
    â€œYou all right?” he asked.
    â€œOur progress has been too easy, don’t you think?”
    â€œWhat do you suspect?”
    She shook her head. “I can’t be sure. But the armored chariots knew exactly where to find us, so it stands to reason that the soldiers looking for us know that I am an elemental mage. They should realize that I can make my way