“But the captain will notice that the money’s missing.”

“So? He’ll think one of the servants took it.”

“Exactly. One of the servants. Don’t you care that one of the servants will get in trouble?”

“Nah. Not really.”

“Even if the servant is your sister, who cleans this room?”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.” He sighed and put the money back on the dresser. “Can’t figure why she didn’t take it herself.”

“Just steal something that the captain won’t notice is missing for a while, will you?”

Neel began inspecting the room, pulling open drawers and peeking inside of trunks. “Hate to repeat myself, but how long is this going to take?”

“I don’t know.” She placed her palm over the Worry Vial’s opening and shook the bottle, hoping that agitating the water would make the process go faster.

“It’s not like we got time for taking tea and biscuits.”

“Agreed,” Astrophil spoke up. “Petra, we should get out of here as soon as possible.”

“See? The spider thinks so, too.”

“All right” She poured the treated water back into the flask it came from. She was gratified to see that the water was very dark—not quite black, but it would have to do. The Worry Vial had a sort of grayish color to it now. From her pocket, Petra pulled the bottle of India ink, which she had mixed with the algae earlier that day to make the ink stick to glass. She tipped the black liquid into the vial. Not exactly wanting to walk around the castle with a black hand, she bent down and pulled up her petticoat. She held the beige cloth over the opening of the vial and shook it so that the ink coated the inside of the vial. Letting her stained petticoat fall, she poured the leftover ink back into its original container. She stoppered the Worry Vial. Now it looked almost exactly the way it had when they entered the room.

They hastily exited the captain’s chambers. Neel locked the doors as they left. It was not until they were safe in the basement of the castle that Petra handed him the flask of dark water and asked, “So what did you steal?”

“A silver codpiece. He’s got a zillion of them.” He caught Petra’s look. “I’m not going to keep it! I’m going sell it. They fetch a fair price on the market. They make a fellow look all manlylike.”

Petra, however, had her doubts.

THEY DECIDED they would listen to the captain’s worries on their next day off in the woods near the Lovari campsite. Petra had a hard time agreeing to this, eager as she was to hear the contents of the Worry Vial, which Neel had left out to dry in his family’s wagon. “The garden seems safe enough,” Petra argued. “Why don’t we do it there?”

But Neel looked uncomfortable. He said he had been to the menagerie since they had visited it together, and felt that something was wrong. “The elephant was trumpeting away like there was no tomorrow. She was looking right at me, flapping her ears. So I started to back up. And then I swear she nodded at me, like she’d been saying ‘Get out’ and I finally caught on.”

Petra teased him for taking the moods of an elephant so seriously, but Neel insisted that they should not return to the garden.

At the campsite, the small children ran up to Petra and tugged at her skirt for attention. Neel kissed his mother, slipping some money into her skirt pocket. Then he dashed into the family wagon to fetch the vial.

Ethelenda was there, and introduced Petra to an old woman named Drabardi, who looked surprisingly fit for her age. She said something to Petra, which Ethelenda translated. “She offers to tell you your fortune.”

Petra felt uncomfortable. Not for the first time, she was glad that she seemed to have inherited her father’s gift rather than her mother’s. Mind-magic was her least favorite kind. Despite —or maybe because of—the fact that her mother had been able to read the future, the very thought of magic like the Second Sight, scrying, or mind reading made her feel as if something were weighing her down, like the time she got sick and Dita piled blankets on top of her until Petra couldn’t move. She could only lie there, breathing and sweating. She tried to think of a polite way to say no to Drabardi. The woman might be a fraud, but even if she wasn’t, Petra didn’t want to hear what she had to say. As far as Petra could tell, knowing the future had never done anyone a bit of good.

Drabardi laughed and said something. Ethelenda translated in a puzzled voice, “She says you’re probably right.”

Petra was relieved when Neel emerged from the wagon and gestured for her to follow him. They walked among the pines and slender birch trees, which were shrugging off their pale leaves.

When they were a good distance from the campsite, Neel pulled out the bottle Petra had given him. No liquid remained in it, just dust. Petra tipped the dust into her palm and stirred it with her finger.

Like a ghost, a disembodied voice began to speak. The captain of the guard’s voice was low and rasping. “And we took them to dungeons and let them starve first… Then we … “

The voice droned on, telling Petra and Neel of horrible things: torture, murder, large graves, and missing limbs. Petra wanted nothing more than to dash the black dust from her hand and scrub it clean. Nausea and a sense of despair welled up in the back of her throat. Her eyes stung with unshed tears and she wanted to make the voice stop. But she kept her hand still.

“…until they stopped. Tomorrow night we will seize the clock-maker. Fiala Broshek will remove his eyes and put a spell on them. She says the prince wants them for his collection, to lock up in his Cabinet of Wonders … “

Petra flung the dust to the ground. She began scraping earth over it. Neel watched her, his face inscrutable. Petra didn’t try to guess his thoughts. She didn’t want to. After she had made a small mound over the dust she rubbed her hands with dirt. She sat there, shaken.

Neel stood up first. He turned around, walked a few paces, and stopped. He spat. Then he kept walking.

Petra followed him, but at a distance. She let him disappear into the trees ahead of her. Without having said anything, they understood that they both wanted to be alone.

Petra …

She said nothing to the spider. She did not want to listen to any more voices.

You cannot change what happened, he said. But now you know where Master Kronos’s eyes are. And you can do something about that.

Petra didn’t know what she would have said to this, if indeed she would have replied at all. A rustle of leaves interrupted their one-sided conversation. She spun around.

“Well, well, gadje, what brings you back to our neck of the woods?”

It was Emil. He looked at ease, one arm slinging a brace of rabbits over his shoulder, the other loosely hanging by his side.

“You speak Czech,” she said warily.

“I do. I understand it, too. And from what I understand, what you just planted there”—he nodded back into the trees, which hid the grave of the captain’s secrets—“is a sickness. Even now, the ants in that bit of earth are tunneling far away from it. Not a blade of grass will ever grow there. And what I wonder is, who is this girl who brings her poison among my people and buries it in our earth?”

“This land does not belong to you,” Petra said.

“I don’t care if it doesn’t.”

Petra started to turn away when Emil trapped her wrist with his free hand. The rabbits still hung nonchalantly over his shoulder. If it weren’t for the fact that Petra’s hand was seized in a viselike grip, anyone watching this scene would have thought that Emil was completely relaxed. “What I do care about,” he said, “is Neel. And his mother. And his sister. Now, I may be just an ignorant Gypsy”—he smiled, his teeth shining like a blade against the blackness of his beard—“but I think that you have invited Neel to play with your poison. You are involving him with something. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it.”

She twisted in his grip and felt her wrist burn. “Neel’s his own person.”

“Neel is a child! You are a child!” He shook her. “The funny thing is, even children can get people hurt.”

“I’m not going to hurt anybody!”

But her next action probably didn’t make Emil believe very strongly in what she had just said. She kicked him hard in the shins. Gasping in pain, he loosened his hold on her and she pulled herself away. He started to stumble toward her. She scooped up dirt and flung it in his eyes. Petra ran, leaving him limping, cursing, and rubbing at his face.

She left the Lovari almost immediately after she reached the campsite. She said nothing of her encounter with Emil to Neel, but she didn’t want to be around when the man returned. Since Neel would be spending the night with the Lovari and she would have to walk back to the castle alone, she said she wanted to leave before it got dark.

Neel nodded. “Turn up at the stables the morning of the party,” he said. “We have to plan.”

But as Petra walked up the hill, she decided she would not meet Neel on the day of the birthday celebration. She would search for the Cabinet of Wonders by herself. Not because Emil had frightened her, but because what he had said was right.

20

The Prince’s Birthday

PETRA GREETED HALLOWEEN with a jumpy heart. She found it difficult that day to concentrate in the Dye Works, where she and Iris were mixing edible dyes for the kitchen to brighten up the desserts for the feast. Iris wasn’t terribly pleased about doing anything that might make Mistress Hild’s efforts look good. But overall she was cheerful, for she had personally given the prince his rodolfinium robes several days ago, and had received nothing but praise in return. So when Petra produced a dye that was a sick green instead of peony pink, Iris simply chuckled. “You’re too excited, aren’t you, poor lamb? You and half the castle! The festivities are already under way, even as we sit in my laboratory. And I should say that you’ve never seen fireworks, have you?”

“What are fireworks, Iris?”

“Oh, you shall see.”

Not one of the servants would be set free from his duties until the evening. Throughout the day, Prince Rodolfo and his guests would be in the garden, basking in its artificial warmth and bright flowers. They were being entertained by theatrical performances, as well as acrobatics (Petra heard that a high wire had been rigged fifty feet off the ground) and musical arrangements. They would then sit down to an elaborate fourteen-course dinner. After dessert at midnight, the nobles would return to the garden to see the fireworks, whatever that was. The servants were allowed to watch the procession of the nobles and the fireworks from the castle yard. When the court returned to the castle for a masked ball that would last until dawn, the servants would treat themselves to a delicious meal of roasted pig, with several barrels of ale to share. It was during the masked ball and the servants’ dinner that Petra hoped to find the prince’s Cabinet of Wonders.

Iris preferred to work rather than attend the performances in the garden. But she would join the court later for dinner, the procession, and the dance.

“Aren’t you worried that you’ll have an acid attack?” asked Petra.

“I think I shall be too happy for that. Unless, of course” —her expression darkened—“I’m seated next to nincompoops at dinner. Which is highly likely, given that the court holds so many of them. And I’m sure no one will ask me to dance. I’ll have to drink punch in a corner and hope that some young lord with pins for brains starts a fight. That would at least keep me from going stark-raving mad with boredom. But, well, there’s no help for it.” Her face cleared. “I’ve been ordered to be present,” she said proudly. “Prince Rodolfo especially wishes me to see the reaction to his new robes.”

Petra felt a twinge of guilt for not meeting Neel that morning, but she told herself that she would feel far worse if he became a secret for the captain of the guard to whisper into his Worry Vial one night. When it came time for the servants to crowd into the courtyard, Petra avoided Sadie, fearing that Neel might be present among the blue-gray sea of people, and that he would seek his sister and her. Petra instead stood next to Susana, who was so overwhelmed with excitement that she grew pale, her freckles standing out like brown stars. Petra let the two of them get shoved around by the older, taller servants, who blocked the girls’ view but also hid them from the sight of others.

The courtyard was ablaze with torches. The procession began with the young children of the members of the prince’s circle. Dressed like fairies with gossamer wings, they marched solemnly. Their quietness seemed unnatural to Petra. If you put the smallest villagers of Okno into fairy costumes and asked them to parade around town, they would be pure mischief. But these children, David’s age and even younger, walked as if they were going to a funeral in inappropriate attire. They had probably been threatened with spankings if they dared embarrass their parents in front of the entire court.

“Ooh,” Susana breathed. “Look!”

The courtiers stepped out of the castle and filed toward the garden, where they waited by the door. They shimmered in bright fabrics and jewels, their faces hidden behind masks. Many nobles were dressed like fairy tale characters. Petra spotted Iris disguised as the Snow Queen, and watched Rusalka, the water goblin’s daughter, slip past. There was Finist the Falcon, a man-bird who captured a human girl’s heart. There walked Koshei the Deathless: wicked, immortal, and a wild horse rider.

After the last of the courtiers had taken his place at the opposite end of the courtyard, trumpets sounded. Prince Rodolfo emerged.

Petra would have to give Neel a krona. The prince did not wear a mask. He was not dressed as anything but himself, but that was enough. His skin was smooth and pale, his face attractively sharp. His lips were unexpectedly full and soft-seeming, like the mouths of the stone angels Petra had seen in Mala Strana. He was slender, and walked loftily. His robes were made of simple silk, without a pleat, tuck, or frill. But their color sent a wave of awe through the servants.