Petra and Neel had done so much, planned so well, had the luck to escape so many bad situations, only to be caught by a man who had treated Petra’s father as if he were a bundle of sticks tossed in the back of his cart. Unfair! Unfair! cried every fiber of Petra’s being. “Why?” she demanded, her voice thick with emotion. “Why does it have to be you who ruins everything for me?”

“But it’s not over,” Neel yelled. “Enough talking, Pet! Let’s go!”

“Yes, enough talking.” Jarek stood up straight. “I didn’t hurt your da. I just took him home for a bit of money. Now, that isn’t the worst thing in the world a man can do. But I’m not exactly proud of it either. I know you fancy Carlsbad, but that horse isn’t reliable. He’s skittish. He might throw you if a squirrel runs across his path. You should take Boshena.” He opened a stall and led out an aging mare. “She’s the best horse in the stables, even if she doesn’t look it. She’s the smartest, the most trustworthy. You could say that she and I are friends. She’s not fast, but she’s steady. And she knows where you”—he nodded at Petra—“are going. That’s more than you can say for yourself, am I right? Do you know how to get back to Okno?”

Petra glared.

“Thought so. Promise to take good care of her, and she’ll take you home. I don’t suppose you can return her.” He patted the horse’s head. “But I’ve seen your family. I think I’m leaving her in good hands.”

Neel sighed and sprang down from Carlsbad. “You got funny friends, Pet.”

“He’s not my friend,” Petra hissed through gritted teeth as Neel mounted Boshena.

“Come now,” Jarek said to Petra with a touch of humor. “Didn’t your da ever teach you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?” Then, in a swift movement, he picked her up and set her behind

Neel.

Boshena’s velvet lips brushed over Jarek’s hand, her large brown eyes reproachful. Then her ears pricked. She heard it before the humans did: the sound of approaching hooves.

I won’t have the deaths of two children on my conscience, Jarek silently told the horse. Help them. He patted Boshena gently on the rump and she burst from the stables in a canter.

27

The Fox on the Snow

NEEL LOOSENED THE REINS, letting the horse stride into a gallop. They had almost reached the forest when they heard the thudding of many horse hooves behind them. A dragoon of about twenty castle soldiers on horseback were in pursuit, sweeping down the snow-covered hill.

“I’m surprised there ain’t more,” Neel said, as if nothing could stop them.

“Well, I think there’s plenty!” Petra pulled the Hive out of her pocket.

Neel swiveled around. “Oh, no.” He looked into her palm. “Not another one of those things. First, you nearly blast us all into bits of bits. Then, you try to drown us. I don’t like the looks of that one.”

“Neither do I,” she admitted. But what choice did they have? She waited until the castle soldiers were just close enough for her throw to reach them, and far enough away to put some distance between their horse and whatever disaster the Hive unleashed. She threw, and they nudged Boshena to go even faster.

Cries rose up behind them and horses screamed in panic as a loud buzz filled the air. Petra couldn’t help looking back. A cloud of insects was attacking the men. Wasps wriggled under helmets.

They stung every bare inch of human skin they could find. They stung the horses, which threw their masters and ran wild, stomping the ground and bucking in the air.

Petra and Neel disappeared into the trees. Though guiding Boshena at a slow pace, Neel expertly led them deeper into the forest, picking out the ground where little snow had fallen because it had been trapped in the pine trees above. “The bare earth is frozen hard,” he explained. “The horse hooves won’t mark it up an awful lot, and we’ll stay off the snow. This way, we won’t leave any tracks.”

After about half an hour, they stopped and dismounted. This was where Neel would go ahead by foot to the Lovari camp, and Petra would make her way back to Okno. It was almost full night. Soon it would be pitch-black, and she would have to ride on alone. She shivered.

Do not worry, Petra, Astrophil said. You will not be alone. I will be with you.

She felt comforted.

“Will you ask Sadie to forgive me?” she said to Neel.

“Oh, I think she will, once she sees what I’ve brought home. We’ll be riding new horses into Spain in no time. It’s my best theft yet.” He grinned. “I can’t wait to see Emil’s face.”

Somewhat awkwardly, they shook hands. “Well, I guess that’s it, then,” Petra said. It was hard for her to believe that she would probably never see Neel again. It was even harder to find that she didn’t know how to say goodbye.

Neel was digging in his pockets. “You know, I was sure we’d be warming a prison floor tonight. But I thought that maybe, just maybe, things would work out all right. And if they did, I would give you this.”

It was a circle of leather string. Dangling from it was a miniature iron horseshoe.

Petra took it. She turned the horseshoe over. There was an engraved sentence written in words she didn’t understand. There, in the middle of it, was her name, or something close enough to it: Petali Kronos.

“Do you like it? Course, I couldn’t write it myself. Had to ask someone else. But it means that you’re a friend of my clan. Actually …” Neel paused. He seemed to make up his mind about something. “It means more than that. There’s something you don’t know about me. Sadie isn’t really my sis.” He began to tell Petra about how he had been adopted as a baby. Petra pretended as if she were hearing this for the first time. “So here’s what I think.” Neel came to the end of his story. “Family is what you make of it. And that horseshoe makes you part of mine. If you need help, or you need to find me, you just show that to a Roma.”

“Why,” she began and then stopped. She found it difficult to speak. “Why a horseshoe?” The horseshoe makes its own luck, she thought.

“Because that’s you, you see?”

Petra did not see.

“Petali means ‘horseshoe.’”

“But … but you told me it meant ‘lucky.’”

“Same thing. One word, two meanings. We use petali to talk about a horseshoe and to talk about good luck. Don’t you gadje think horseshoes are lucky?”

“We do.” Petra didn’t know how to react. She didn’t know what to think about her mother’s prediction and how it had, in a way, come true. She put on the necklace. “It’s the best present I’ve ever been given.”

“Excuse me?” Astrophil objected.

“Well, except Astro, of course.” Petra laughed. “Thanks, Neel. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

“I know.” He smiled. “But I guess I’d have to say the same thing about you, too. Anyway, I hate goodbyes. I don’t believe in ‘em. So I’ll just say, ’See you later, Petali.’”

“See you later, Neel.”

PETRA LEANED HER HEAD against Boshena’s bristly neck and shivered. She was miserable. After the excitement of escaping from the castle had worn off, she realized that she had no food or water. Her empty stomach was a dead thing inside her. She had no idea where she was going. Her wet clothes had frozen stiffly against her skin. She sneezed. She had tried guiding Boshena to walk on the bare ground, to avoid patches of snow, like Neel had done. But after a couple hours of this she was too tired, too cold, and too hungry to bother. She just let Boshena walk ahead as she liked, hoping that Jarek was right when he had said the horse knew the way to Okno.

She grew thirsty. When Astrophil suggested that she eat snow, Petra just shuddered. But a few hours later, she was scooping up snow in the dark and forcing herself to swallow some.

Finally, during the coldest hour of the night, when whatever warmth from the day before had been sucked out of the earth, Petra fell asleep, her head on Boshena’s mane. The horse plodded along.

Then Petra heard something, a skittering on the snow. She raised her head. They had reached a clearing. A ray of moonlight filtered through the bare trees, and Petra saw the slinky brown body of a fox picking its way across the snow. As she watched, the fox turned its head and looked back. Its brown eyes fixed upon hers, and grew larger. The fox stood on its hind paws and stretched into a tall human with a long beard. It was John Dee.

I’m dreaming, Petra stated.

You are, Dee agreed. I have come to wish you a happy birthday. Petra stared. What?

This is the hour you were born, on a November night thirteen years ago. Am I not correct?

Petra thought about it, and realized that it was her birthday. She hadn’t remembered it at all. It had been the furthest thing from her mind these past months. She shivered against her hard clothes and laughed. Some birthday she was having.

You and your accomplice did very well. Admirably well. I confess that I am impressed by your skills, my dear.

She didn’t look at him. Maybe if she ignored him he would go away.

The Staro Clock still possesses power, Dee continued. The power of beauty, and of time. But it cannot harm anyone now. The prince will surely seek some other means to increase his political strength. But your father’s clock can no longer become his tool, Petra, thanks to you.

His words were flattering, oily. This angered Petra.

Thanks to me! she cried. You talk as if I had a choice! You threatened my family! You made me do this! And, and, she stuttered, wondering how she had ended up here (wherever “here” was), alone on a stolen horse and trapped in a nightmare that was real. Her voice rose: And I’m only twelve years old!

Thirteen, he reminded.

She fumed.

Petra, do you think that I would have really harmed you, or your family? I am not a monster. You simply lacked the proper motivation. A good threat goes a long way. Think of what the clock’s secret power could have done. Is not the world better off without it?

Petra thought of Susana. She couldn’t say no. But she refused to say yes.

Since you kept our bargain, Dee continued, and since it is your birthday, I thought I would offer you a present. You may ask something of me: a favor.

How about this: I want you to get out of my head.

Oh, now, really. Dee chuckled. You do not want that. That would not do. Believe me when I say that I refuse your request out of my earnest wish to protect your best interests.

Funny, I never had the impression that you cared about my best interests.

I will not, as you put it, “get out of your head.” But if it is any consolation to you, I will be leaving your country. My purpose in Bohemia was to eliminate the threat of the clock. Now I can go home. Like you.

You are not like me.

Let us agree on this, Petra: you shall think about whatever favor you would like most to ask of me. I shall give it to you whenever you ask.

Petra heaved a disgusted sigh. It seemed as if she would be stuck with Dee for a while. She looked into the clear night sky. The stars glimmered. Tell me something.

Is this the present you will request?

No. I’m going to save that for later.

Wise girl.

This is just a question. You can answer it or not. I don’t care. I’ve been wondering about something my father said. Ah?

Petra could tell that she had piqued his curiosity. Is it really true that the earth goes around the sun, and not the other way around, as we learn in school?

Is that all? Yes, Petra Kronos, the earth goes around the sun. He pointed to the sky, and traced his finger along the white stream of stars that was the Milky Way, curving above them in a bending line. And the sun and the earth are just specks among many, many other things like them, spinning on some part of the galaxy, which is shaped like a spiral. We are standing on a point in that spiral, you and I. The Milky Way that bends above us is a spiral that, to our eyes, has been flattened into a line.

Petra said nothing.

Let us be allies, if not quite friends, Petra.

I’ll think about it, she said.

28

The Most Beautiful Thing

AT DAWN, Josef stepped outside the Sign of the Compass. He blinked.

Slouched over a horse was a sleeping girl. Her dress was water-stained and dirty. Her face was hidden against the horse’s mane, but it was her hair—shorter than he remembered, less snarled than he had thought—that convinced him who the girl was, for her hair was the same color as his wife’s. He had barely dared to hope when he first saw the girl, but now he was sure: it was Petra.

He picked her up as if she weighed no more than air. She mumbled. He strode into the house, calling, “Dita! Mikal!”

But it was David who ran down first. “What is it? What is it?” he cried excitedly. Then he saw what his father carried. “Petra!”

“Get your mother,” Josef ordered.

“I’m always being told to fetch people,” David complained. Josef frowned.

David turned and ran up the stairs.

By now, Petra had woken up, though she felt groggy. Her throat was on fire and it was hard for her to swallow. Astro? she thought confusedly. Am I really home?

Yes, but I think you are ill.

“Josef,” she croaked.

He smiled at her. He carried her up the stairs and into her bedroom, where he sat her on the bed. He told her to lie down, but she refused. “I’m all right,” she insisted.

Dita entered the room and paused in the doorway, staring at Petra unbelievingly. Petra braced herself, for she knew Dita’s fury would be fierce. She waited for her cousin’s silence to break. She waited for Dita to berate her.