The Liberties were slummy and rough. Tomik had never seen so many fights in such a short space of time. Before he and Neel reached the inn, Tomik had counted two broken noses. There was also an incident where a whip-thin girl pulled a knife on a grown man and began pummeling his head with the hilt. That might have been funny—if there hadn’t been so much blood.

When they entered the Sign of the Spoked Wheel, Tomik had begun to doubt that they would find anything so civilized as a bath. But the inn was clean and even cozy.

“Two rooms for me and mine.” Neel spoke to the innkeeper in Romany. “And a hot bath. Name’s Neel.”

“Tribe?”

“Lovari. Got two more men coming, though, and they’re Maraki.”

“And who’s this?” The innkeeper jerked a thumb at Tomik. “Your pigeon?”

“Nah,” said Neel.

The man reassessed Tomik. “Not your courtesy-man, then?”

Tomik had had enough. In clear Romany, he said, “Will you say something resembling sense, or do I have to make you?” Months with the Maraki had taught him that if there’s anything people like better than kindness, it’s a bit of backbone.

The man held up his palms. “Sorry, lads. No offense meant. My wife will see to your rooms. Have a seat while you wait.”

“What’s a pigeon?” Tomik asked Neel as they took a table by the window. “And don’t tell me it’s a bird.”

“A pigeon’s someone caught in a trap set by—oh, me, for example. Like, say I was to tell you I knew that this tavern’s got a card game going between a lot of sloppy drunks and that you could make a killing. But really I just want to make you put in enough money for my cardsharp pals—who are faking their drunkenness—to take it all off you. You’re not a courtesy-man, either. Though . . .” Neel examined Tomik thoughtfully. “You could be, come to that.”

“A courtesy-man.”

“Yeah. Someone who plays the gentleman. The one who people will trust. If you cleaned up and threw some rich clothes on you, we could pull off a nice scam. We’d head into the market, find someone with a fat-looking purse, and I’d play the scary Gypsy. You’d sail in and pretend to save the day. Then you’d pick their pockets. Except you don’t speak English. And you don’t know the first thing about thieving.”

“And we have better things to do.”

“Like play some cards to see who’ll get to use the bath first?”

To his horror, and even though he cheated, Neel lost.

FRESHLY SCRUBBED, Tomik waited downstairs, eating a spicy stew and grateful to have a dinner that wasn’t dried. Neel skipped down the stairs and sat down with him, dragging his fingers through his wet, knotted hair. “We’ve got some plotting to do,” Neel said. “First thing, we check the weavers’ halls and the cloth sellers of London. We’ll see who deals in cotton, and ask after the globe and Petra.”

“Forget the globe.”

“You know, we wouldn’t be in this uncertain situation if it weren’t for you. At the scrying, you were supposed to question me about Petra after the Maraki got their turn with the globe. It was supposed to be a two-birds, one-stone kind of thing. Instead, you had to confuse everything. It’s not my fault if we don’t know what we’re after. We’ll follow the leads we’ve got.”

“What about talking to that English ambassador who visited Salamander Castle? Maybe he’s back in London. Wouldn’t John Dee help us? He helped Petra in Prague, after all.”

“I kind of got the impression that he used her,” said Neel. “Sketchy fellow. I’d trust him like I’d trust a viper not to bite me. Plus, he’s a spy for the queen of England. It’s never a good idea to catch the attention of governmental types, especially not when you’re looking for someone the Bohemian prince wants well and truly dead. Best to stay away from Dee. Let’s tramp a bit about London and see what that shows us.”

“London’s a big place, but I have an idea about how to find Petra.” Tomik slipped the Glowstone out of his pocket and placed it on the table. He explained.

Neel inspected the crystal, holding it up to the light. “Don’t you know Petra’s twitchy about spies? She hates ’em.”

Tomik was silent.

“And you gave her a gift that tracks her every move. Very spy-like. She’s not gonna appreciate that.”

“I don’t care.”

“Oh, you do, Tom. You do.”

25

Shoe Lane

NEEL AND TOMIK were discouraged. They had visited the shops of drapers and dressmakers, weavers and embroiderers, but Neel had a hard time getting anyone to answer his questions. The shopkeepers narrowed their eyes at him as if he were a scheming thief—which he was. He should have done exactly what Treb and Andras were doing. They had hired a respectable, white Englishman to investigate the cloth shops for them.

Tomik was worse than no help. His regular, European features might have softened people up, but he didn’t understand English. Plus, he spent every second staring hopefully at his Glowstone like a moonstruck fool, waiting for it to glimmer with light.

“The Glowstone’s dark,” Tomik muttered as they walked down a narrow lane.

“Stop it.”

“But the scrying . . . you said Petra was in London, and there’s no light at all in the Glowstone.”

“Tom, who knows what I meant at the scrying?”

“Maybe Petra’s never been to this part of London. We need to keep looking.”

“No, you need to stop.” Neel seized Tomik’s wrist, and the other boy curled his fingers protectively around the crystal. “Don’t you get it? There’s nothing here to make your crystal shine, and if you don’t put it back in your pocket I’m going to crush it under my heel into a thousand shards.”

The hand that held the Glowstone became a fist.

“Try it,” Neel taunted. “See where hitting me gets you, ’cause neither of us thinks that’ll make Petra alive and here.”

“What am I supposed to do, then?”

“Put that blasted thing away. We’re going back to the inn.”

Tomik thrust the Glowstone into his pocket, but it was Neel who felt defeated.

“IT WOULD NOT be difficult for me to spy on John Dee,” offered Astrophil. “I could creep into his library, see with whom he meets, and overhear his conversations.”

“No,” said Petra.

“I am not afraid. I do not think I could possibly be more frightened than when I slipped into the prince’s Cabinet of Wonders. Oh, how my legs trembled!”

“Dee is cleverer than the prince. He could catch you.”

“Petra, I am no use to anyone hiding under a dusty bed. I am proposing a sensible idea, one that we should have considered a long time ago. Do you not wish to know what Dee says when he thinks a conversation is private?”

“No.”

“Petra, listen—”

“I can’t!” Her voice broke. “You have to stay safe, and with me. I can’t risk losing you, too.”

Astrophil was silent. Then he said, “Very well. We will stay together. But we must do something. We cannot simply wait for Kit to help us.”

“That’s not the plan.”

“Then what is?”

“Today we go to Whitehall Palace. Tomorrow, Robert Cotton’s home.”

ONE THING PETRA had learned from her time at Salamander Castle was that it is easier to be sneaky when you’re a servant, because wealthy people have a lifetime’s experience of pretending that the hired help don’t exist. After stealing a plain dress from the clothesline in Dee’s garden, and a sack of turnips from his kitchen, Petra was well equipped to escape the attention of anyone who mattered at the palace.

She avoided the grand dockhouse she remembered from her previous visit. Instead, she asked the oarsman to take her to the servants’ wharf, where deliveries were made. From there, it was easy to mingle with the palace servants, who all thought that she worked in a different quarter of the palace than theirs.

It wasn’t long before Petra found the kitchens, and Jessie.

“Hello,” said Petra, “I’m—”

“Oh, I remember you. You’re Kit’s friend. What’s this?” Jessie pointed at Petra’s sack.

“Turnips. Do you want them?”

“If you’ll help me chop.” Jessie passed Petra a knife. “I’m guessing that, since you don’t look like a lady today, you don’t mind not acting like one.”

As they cut the vegetables, Petra asked, “Do you remember the morning Gabriel Thorn died?”

“Didn’t Kit tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“What I told him. The same thing I said to the queen’s councillors—Walsingham and Dee—when they questioned me. What curious eyes you have, girl! Well, I don’t mind repeating to you what I said. You can’t keep a secret here.” She waved a rough, red hand at the kitchen. “We’re a pack of gossips.”

No wonder Kit knows the kitchen staff so well, Astrophil commented.

“The guards who walk the hallway by the library say that Thorn never met anyone that morning,” Jessie began, “and as far as I know or care, he didn’t. But I was the one who popped upstairs to see if Thorn needed anything. And from the smell of him, he’d already had plenty of wine, and it being early in the morning, too! He was muttering to himself. Total nonsense, as far as I could tell, but I would have thought that even if Thorn didn’t meet anybody that day, he meant to, because he was saying, ‘Cotton’s got the globe. I have to tell him. Why isn’t he here already?’ ”

“Cotton? A globe? Tell who? Tell Cotton, or tell somebody else? Who’s ‘he’?”

“How am I to know?”

Ask about Raleigh and Dee, Astrophil suggested.

“Could Thorn have been talking about seeing Walter Raleigh?” Petra asked.

“Raleigh?” Jessie grinned. “He was in the palace, all right, but he went nowhere near the library that morning.”

“How do you know?”

“Why, because he’s a rake.”

“A rake?”

“A flirt. He was making pretty with Eleanor over there, and if you doubt that, her blush will tell you the truth.”

Petra glanced over at the young woman standing within earshot, stuffing a game hen, her cheeks on fire. “I see. Well, do you think Thorn wanted to meet with John Dee?”

“Maybe. They’re both on the queen’s council, and see each other often. I hear they don’t much care for each other, though.”

Ask about Walsingham, said Astrophil.

Him? Petra remembered the self-important man, with his pointed beard and hair oil that smelled like dead flowers. Why?

On that day you went to this palace for the first time, Walsingham was very convinced that Thorn died of heart failure. A murderer would, of course, want everyone to think that the victim died of natural causes.

“What about Francis Walsingham?” Petra asked Jessie.

“Well, I suppose that whatever’s true for Dee is true for him, right? It’s just as likely that Thorn would have met with one as with the other. And Walsingham’s got more power, politically speaking, than Dee. Walsingham’s the South, and he sure lets us know it when we have to prepare a special dish for him!”

“Thanks, Jessie.” Petra handed her the knife.

“You’ll always get a straight answer from me. And I’ll tell you something else: you and Kit are two peas in a pod. Here you are, echoing the very same questions he asked.”

Astrophil said, What I would like to know is this: why has he not shared this information with you, Petra, if he really wishes to help?

“Jessie . . . have you seen Kit lately?”

Jessie paused before replying, and Petra instantly regretted her question, because it made her sound like someone who had been kissed and forgotten—and this, it seemed, was exactly the case.

Sympathetically, the woman said, “No, dear.”

Petra left the kitchen, left the palace, left the grounds, and left the servants’ wharf, but as the hired boat rowed toward the center of London, Petra couldn’t leave behind the dull weight of rejection and disappointment. And by the time her boat docked cityside, anger had kindled within her. Kit owed her some answers.

Petra walked through west London, searching for Shoe Lane. This was where she and Kit had stopped, and he had said his home was nearby, and he had confessed that he didn’t want her to leave England.

Was this why he hadn’t told her about his conversation with Jessie? Was Kit only pretending to help Petra? Maybe he was really just trying to keep her in London.

Petra sped up her pace. When she reached Shoe Lane, she began to stop strangers, asking after Kit. She turned from street to street, but with no success.

She kicked at a pile of trash.

Where was he?

“TOM.” Neel nudged him.

Tomik was staring straight ahead as they walked toward the Liberties.

“Hey,” Neel persisted.

“I’m not talking to you. If you don’t want to try to find Petra, that’s your—”

Neel grabbed Tomik’s shoulder and dragged him to a halt. “Look!” He pointed at Tomik’s pocket.

It was glowing. Tomik snatched the crystal from his pocket.

Neel and Tomik had almost reached the Liberties when they veered west with eager feet. They began to run, the Glowstone shining a deeper and brighter blue in Tomik’s palm.