“Yeah, Pet, of course I do,” he replied sarcastically. “And I’m just saying otherwise cause I like to waste time when my life’s at stake.”

Then Petra realized that the prince could see the cogs clearly with the stolen eyes. And she could see them because of who she was.

“Turn your wrist like that,” she said, and tilted Neel’s right hand. “Now push them together.” He did, and the two cogs united.

“Have you both lost your minds?” Astrophil cried. “Do not assemble the heart! You are supposed to do the very opposite!”

Neel and Petra looked at the spider guiltily.

“Silk neutralizes banium. Find some, split the cogs between you, and wrap each one in silk so they do not shock you. Then we will get rid of them once we are outside the castle. And I highly recommend that you move quickly! How long could it possibly take for the prince to eat dinner?”

Petra found a silk kimono embroidered with cranes. She borrowed Neel’s knife and began hacking the kimono into pieces. Then she paused, thinking. She spoke: “But what are we going to do with the cogs, toss them in the river? That’s not going to be enough. The prince would just fish them out. If we bury the pieces, he’ll find them and dig them up. Your idea won’t work,

Astro.”

“Can we not fight?” Neel pleaded. “Because picking apart each other’s plans at the moment we’re supposed to be getting our sweet selves out of here seems to me like a bad plan. Let’s just break the blasted heart.”

“It is already broken.” Astrophil gestured at the metal pieces.

“No, it isn’t,” Petra stated. As she looked at the banium, the entire pattern of the puzzle suddenly made perfect sense. “Not really. Not yet.” Wrapping her hands with the silk rags, she told Neel to cut the kimono belt. “Use each half of the belt to tie the rags over my hands,” she instructed. “Just like mittens. Knot the belt halves over my wrists. Good.”

With her silk-covered hands, she picked up another cog and fitted it to the ones she and Neel had already connected.

“Petra!” Astrophil was shocked.

“I know what I’m doing, Astrophil.” Petra rapidly began to attach the cogs. “Listen, I have some magic over metal. Some. But I’m not sure how much and I haven’t exactly been trying to find out. I’ve been too busy.” Or too lazy? she asked herself. Too afraid? “If I can smash those little teeth along the edges of the cogs, they won’t fit together anymore. But I don’t think I have that kind of power. Luckily, the banium does. Once the heart is assembled I can use its own energy to help me.”

Astrophil dragged his gaze from Petra’s quick hands. He looked at her. “It might work,” he said grudgingly.

“Is this an idea you got from your da?” Neel asked Petra. He reached out his ghostly fingers to help her balance the growing ball of metal. It was now thrumming with energy.

“No,” she admitted. “But will you trust me?” she begged, even though she didn’t totally trust herself.

He lifted the last cog. “Let’s see what happens.”

Petra took the last piece. It almost pulled itself into place. The heart began to beat loudly.

“Somebody might hear that,” Astrophil said in a tiny voice.

“Be quick, Pet!” Neel urged.

Petra stared at the thumping heart in her silken hands. She tried to focus on the banium, to invite it inside her mind the same way she did Astrophil and the Lovari dagger. Then she paused, afraid. If the touch of banium could kill a person, what would this magic do to her? If my father built the heart and survived, she told herself, I can break it and do the same. Tomik would have recognized this attitude in Petra, because it was the same steely stubbornness that had brought her to Prague in the first place.

The banium heartbeat began to thud inside Petra’s mind. Quietly, at first. Then it swelled and pressed against her skull. A whimper escaped her.

“What’s wrong?” Neel cried.

Astrophil jumped up and clung to her shoulder. “Petra?”

She ignored them, trying to cope with the throbbing in her brain. It was worse than any headache. It was beyond painful. Just when she thought her head would split apart from the force of the magical connection between her and the banium, Petra focused on the seams in the clock’s heart, the places where the cogs met. Split THERE, she willed.

There was a sound like ice cracking. As the throbbing in her head drained away, Petra watched the teeth of the cogs shatter along the lines that held them together. The heart still held its shape somehow, like the fractured shell of a hard-boiled egg. But the teeth were gone.

“Have you done it?” Astrophil asked. “Is it finished? Petra, are you all right?”

“Yes,” she whispered. Then she let her hands fall away from the heart. She leaned over and vomited.

Surprised, Neel fumbled with the heart. It dropped to the ground and broke open with an earsplitting BOOM.

The three of them looked at one another.

“Now, I know,” Astrophil said shakily, “that someone heard that.”

26

A Gift Horse

NEEL SWORE SWIFTLY in Romany. He was still cursing in what Petra assumed was a colorful way as he pulled her out of the Cabinet of Wonders. Astrophil leaped to her ear. Petra and Neel ran toward the double doors and shoved them open. Ignoring the roar of the lion and the squeaky bark of the salamander, they pelted down the hallway.

There was a sour taste in Petra’s mouth. But the sick mind-ache of the banium was gone, and relief from the pain made her feel a little giddy. She almost forgot she was in danger. Blood sang in her ears, and she was running too quickly to be really afraid.

Then, just before Petra and Neel were going to do their best to race past the guards blocking the stairs to the third floor, she saw a small group of soldiers bearing down on them from another hallway. Following right behind them, his face rigid with fury, was Prince Rodolfo. A quaking fear seized Petra. She skidded to a halt and froze.

“Pet!” Neel had spun around, staring at her. “Petra!”

His voice shook her out of her panicky trance. She tore off the silk mittens and flung them to the ground. She reached for the hem of her skirt and ripped at an uneven set of stitches. Then she squeezed Tomik’s Marvels into her left hand. “Close your eyes!” she called to Neel and the spider. She snatched the Marvel she had named Firefly. The lightning in the sphere flickered. Aiming for the space on the floor just ahead of the advancing soldiers’ feet, Petra threw the marble and screwed her eyes shut.

BANG! Red light flared behind her closed eyelids. When she opened them, a scene of destruction spread before her. The stone floor was blackened, broken, and heaved up in angular chunks. Some of the men sprawled on the ground. Those who were on their feet staggered, covering their faces with their hands and moaning. A scorched piece of the ceiling fell down with a large thud on a man’s foot. He screamed. Thunder rumbled down the hall.

“Come on!” Neel cried. They ran past the fallen guards and tore down the passageways of the third floor.

But over the pounding of their feet, Neel and Petra could hear another, terrible noise: the thudding, regular rhythm of many soldiers filing from every corner of the castle to capture them.

Petra glanced in her palm at the two marbles. The wasp buzzed. The water sloshed.

“Not the wasp, Petra!” Astrophil shouted in her ear. “The Hive could attack you, too!”

She tucked the Hive in her pocket and dearly hoped that the Bubble would do something useful. Petra threw the water-filled marble, smashing it against the wall behind them.

A tidal wave instantly engulfed the third floor. Petra was submerged under water and pulled by a fierce current. Something smacked against her leg. She felt a sharp pinch of Astrophil on her right ear, and her chest burned from lack of oxygen as she tumbled in the water.

When she finally broke the surface, gasping for air, she saw Neel floating rapidly past her. He clung to a wooden table. “What’re you doing?” he yelled. “Quit throwing those things!”

She struggled to splash toward him. She wasn’t able to make any headway, but as the current pushed them down a flight of stairs and several corridors, the flow of water began to lose its strength, and soon they were able to wade in water that rose only to their thighs, then only to their calves. They were on the second floor, in the Thinkers’ Wing.

They had just begun to think that they might actually be able to escape when they heard the thump of soldiers’ feet coming from up ahead. Neel and Petra exchanged a look of dread.

That was when a door with two handles, one iron and one red, opened.

Iris stepped into the hallway. She glanced down with a little cry to find herself standing in a foot of water, then looked up at Neel and Petra, astonished at their waterlogged clothes, soaked hair plastered to their heads, and dripping faces. “What in the name of the seven planets is going on here?”

“Iris.” Petra waded toward her. “Did you know Mikal Kronos?”

Petra. Astrophil spat out water. This is unwise.

“Why, yes, he used to work down the hall. I—” Iris broke off. Her mouth pursed as she looked at Petra’s face with the expression of someone whose suspicions have been proven true. “And I suppose you know him, too. Rather well, I would guess.”

“I’m his daughter, Petra. My father worked here for six months. But one day, when the clock was almost completed, the prince blinded him. He stole his eyes. I came to this castle to get them back.”

Iris gazed at Petra, uncertain. The thud of soldiers grew closer. “Where do you think the prince got those silver eyes he wears for fun?”

Iris said nothing.

“We have to get out of here! Which way should we go? Please help us. If the castle guards catch us, our lives are worth nothing!”

Desperate, Petra searched for some way to convince Iris that she was telling the truth. “Fiala Broshek removed his eyes, on the prince’s command!”

“Fiala!” The name burst from Iris’s lips. Then she pushed open her door. “Get in here, both of you.”

She slammed the door shut behind them. “Fiala Broshek! Unscrupulous woman! Kristof’s work is nothing compared to the abominations she creates! And the operations she performs! ‘Surgeon,’ she calls herself! Why doesn’t she try seeing what her insides look like for a change!” She led them into her bedchamber. Neel gave Petra a quizzical look. Iris opened the closet door. “Go in there,” she said.

“Um,” Neel objected, “I don’t think hiding’s going to work. They’re going to search the castle when they don’t find us.”

“There’s a stairway in there, you dolt! It leads directly to the castle courtyard.”

Petra looked at Iris in surprise.

“I am a countess, am I not? I deserve to be able to come and go as I please without dealing with the hassles of guards. Well” —she pushed her spectacles up her nose —“I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing each other again, Petra Kronos.”

There was only one thing Petra could do when Iris said that. She gave the old woman a soaking-wet hug.

To someone very unused to being touched, let alone embraced, this came as a shock. She stood still for a moment, then patted Petra awkwardly on the back. “Now, now. Enough of that. You’re going to incriminate me, girl!” They broke apart, and Iris stared down at her newly wet clothes. “The soldiers are going to come around asking if I’ve seen a soggy-wet criminal and here I’ll be, marked with water from hugging the enemy! A fine kettle of fish that will be!” But her smile was warm, gentle, and pleased. “Now, get on with you! Get out of my laboratory!”

Neel plummeted down the stairs. With a glance behind her, Petra followed. They heard the door close behind them.

They soon found themselves in an empty courtyard. Any soldiers who might have been there had, it seemed, entered the castle to find them.

Neel and Petra dashed into the stables. They hid behind a stack of hay, watching as a couple of stable boys cleaned out some stalls, apparently oblivious to the commotion going on inside the castle. Then a third stable boy ran into the building, yelling that they should come out and see the action. He shouted that an army of bandits had broken into the prince’s private chambers, and that a fierce battle complete with explosions was going on inside the castle. The other two boys dropped their rakes and raced out of the stables with him.

Neel and Petra couldn’t believe their luck.

“This one.” Neel led a huge chestnut stallion out of its stall. “Ain’t he a beauty? He can carry both of us. Let’s take him.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” said a deep voice.

They turned around. There was Jarek, leaning against a stall, with narrowed eyes and long jowls.

Neel swung up onto the horse. He beckoned to Petra. “Come on. I know this man. He can take care of the prince’s horses all right, but he can’t ride better or faster than me.”

But Petra knew that all Jarek had to do was run from the stables, shout for the soldiers, and point them after their galloping horse. The entire castle army would come crashing down on them as they tried to race down the hill, in plain sight. And, Petra realized, as she watched the man chew idly on a stick of straw, Jarek knew this, too.

“So you’re responsible for the jumble and noise in the castle,” he said. “I guess that’s what you two were plotting in the prince’s garden. I suppose you also trussed up that lad I found among the tack. You kids are in a lot of trouble. The kind that ends with a death sentence.”