She worked quickly and quietly, hoping that no one would chance down this hall—and that if they did, they’d see nothing odd about a chambermaid moving things from one room to another.

Sadie was lucky. No one strolled down the hall that night.

She checked a small clock resting on the captain’s desk. It was nearly time. She crawled inside the trunk and shut the lid.

In the dark, she remembered the trundle of her family’s wagon and the iron lamp swinging overhead as the horses pulled them south. Neel was supposed to be sleeping, but he had begged Sadie to teach him how to play cards. She had looked at him. He had been sick from the pox, and his face was thin and scarred. She agreed. They played for feathers.

Sadie heard the door to the captain’s room open. Guards clanked into the room, and Sadie heard the usual ringing of sword hilts against chain mail as they searched. Again, Sadie was lucky. They didn’t open the trunk.

Sadie remembered how, as she and Neel slapped the cards down on the wagon floor, a gleeful, cunning expression grew around his eyes. Sadie didn’t understand why. After all, he was losing. She kept raking in goose feathers, and even had to lend him some so they could continue playing. She watched him carefully, and finally caught his hand stacking the deck.

He had been cheating. He had been cheating so that she would win.

Sadie heard the heavier steps of the captain. Then door hinges sighed, and Sadie could tell from the nervous silence that the prince was entering the room. The captain told his guards to leave.

“Good news, Your Highness,” said the captain. “We have a lead on the whereabouts of Petra Kronos.”

“Ah.” The sound was long and satisfied.

Sadie’s heartbeat quickened.

“It’s a report from an Academy student. I think we would have gotten the information sooner, but there was such chaos after the Academy burned down—” The captain broke off, and Sadie wondered if it was because the prince had shot him a furious glance. The loss of the Academy had been a big blow. “Well. The student said he saw a girl who looked like the sketches, but had blond hair. She spoke with a professor, then got into a carriage with a young man about her age.”

“A Gypsy?” said the prince.

“No, he was Bohemian.”

“Tomik Stakan, then.”

“Yes, and the carriage took the road to Prague. There’s more. The carriage clearly belonged to a wealthy family. The student couldn’t quite see the coat of arms on the door, but he could tell that there was one. That means that Kronos and Stakan are under the protection of an aristocratic family—located in Prague.”

The prince let out a low hiss.

“Remember,” the captain said nervously. “This is good news.”

“Good news that one of Bohemia’s highest born has betrayed me?”

“They will be discovered.”

Petra has to leave Prague. Sadie’s thought was wild. She wiped the sweat from her face. She has to leave now.

“I know you will be busy tomorrow,” said the captain, “but rest assured that my best spies will be planted throughout the city, with an eye especially on Prague’s finest houses.”

“Yes, tomorrow.” The prince’s voice had changed. It sounded lazy and content. “I hope my valet and seamstresses are well prepared. It would not do for me to wear the same mourning clothes every time a family member of mine dies.”

“They will need to sew a new set of emperor’s robes as well, of course.”

“So the Gray Men have returned from my father’s palace.”

“Yes. Tomorrow morning the world will wake to the news that Emperor Karl has died,” said the captain, “and that you are the new Hapsburg emperor.”

Sadie gasped. Then she bit her lip as if she could eat the sound she had just made. She pressed her hands to her mouth, and her chest heaved with short, sharp breaths.

They had not heard her. No, they couldn’t have.

There was a scrape of chairs, and the sound of feet approaching.

They had.

The lid of the trunk was thrown open. The sudden light blinded Sadie as she was seized by her hair and dragged upright.

Sadie no longer tried to stop the tiny, fearful cries that escaped her mouth. She blinked, and now she could see clearly. She saw the prince—his young, pale face, his shiny brown hair, his full mouth. She saw that he held a knife in his hand.

Her mind flung back to years ago, and she remembered holding a fistful of goose feathers her brother had let her win.

The prince smiled at Sadie. The memory of those feathers scattered and blew away.

“You have a beautiful throat,” he told her.

Then he cut it.

33

The Center of Staro Square

PETRA STARED BLANK-EYED AT THE DAWN. She had not slept all night, nor had even spoken a word since Tomik had shown her the letter from the secretary of education. She pressed a palm against the window and drew her hand away. Her palm print faded almost instantly. So that’s what failure looks like, she thought.

“Petra.” Astrophil tugged on the sleeve of her nightgown. “It is time for breakfast. Come. I will bet you all eight of my legs that the Decembers will serve imported oranges.”

Petra did not look at him.

“You like oranges,” said Astrophil.

She made an impatient noise, which only encouraged the spider. At least she was responding. “I admit that Zora’s plan looks like a dead end,” he said, “but we will simply have to put our heads together. We will figure out a new way to find Fiala Broshek.”

That made her turn toward him. Her eyes were dull. “How?”

Astrophil’s legs fiddled and wavered. “I do not know,” he admitted.

Petra nodded and drew her gaze back to the window.

“It is not like you to do nothing,” Astrophil said desperately. “At least have breakfast.” He wrapped his legs around her wrist. “Please. For me.”

Petra sighed and reached for one of the lovely, uncomfortable dresses Iris had given her.

Voices were murmuring and trailing from the dining room even before Petra reached the open door. The others were awake.

“So that’s it,” she heard Lucas say. “It’s over.”

Petra entered the room. “What is?”

With a careful glance at the maid serving tea, Zora said, “Emperor Karl is dead. Rodolfo leaves today on a week’s journey for Austria, where he will be crowned the new Hapsburg emperor.”

Petra sank into a chair. Her fingers twisted around the fringe of the tablecloth as if holding on to that would somehow give her strength. “No.”

Tomik’s serious eyes met hers from across the table. “It’s true.”

Zora, who had clearly decided that no one at the table was doing a good enough job of playacting for the servants, said, “And it’s high time we had Prince Rodolfo as emperor. He will energize Europe, and bring glory to Bohemia.”

“Yes.” Lucas did not look up from his plate. He poked at a poached egg until it bled yellow. “What am I going to do? I’ll have nothing but free time on my hands, now that…”

Petra mentally finished the rest of his sentence: now that the rebellion is over. And it surely was, because however many people were secret members of the rebellion, they would never be enough to challenge a man who controlled the armies of half of Europe.

Lucas caught his sister’s sharp glance, then watched the maid as she set the teapot on the table. He seemed to inspect the teapot’s curlicues and narrow spout. In a forced way, he said, “I mean, I’ll have nothing to do, now that Prince Rodolfo will have no need of my advice. He will have his father’s old counselors to help him.”

“Catch up on your correspondence,” Zora said cheerfully. “Go over your accounts. Your papers are a mess, Lucas.”

“So?” He balled up his napkin. “Let them be. Let everything go to the devil.” He stood and stalked from the room.

Petra watched him go. Everyone left in the dining room seemed to be hovering. Every single one of them, Petra realized, felt that there was nothing to be done.

Well, there was one thing she could do. Maybe, at least, she could try once more to convince Sadie to leave Prague.

Petra returned to her room and changed into the plainest dress in her wardrobe. She did not want to draw attention to herself.

“Stay here,” she told Astrophil. “If I’m recognized and caught, I don’t want you to be with me.”

“And I do not want you to go!” he cried. “You said it yourself: you could be caught.”

She gave him a small smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t get caught.”

“Then you can take me with you,” he pleaded, but she was already gone.

Petra left the house on Molodova Street and crossed the river into Staro Square. As she wove around the stalls set up in the oldest part of the city, Petra noticed that people were muttering in hushed voices. Her ears strained to tell if they were talking about her. Had someone identified her?

She didn’t think so. She couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but no one looked at her. They must be discussing Rodolfo’s ascension to the Hapsburg throne, she decided.

At first, Petra didn’t think twice about Joel Riven’s red-rimmed eyes. She assumed he had a cold, or was bothered by the raw morning wind.

She slipped close to him and leaned over piles of fabric layered in shades of crimson and pink. “Master Riven,” she said, “could you arrange for me to see Sadie?”

He looked at her with glassy eyes. “She’s dead.”

“What?” The word stole the breath from Petra’s lungs.

“Her body was dumped in the center of Staro Square. Her”—Riven closed his eyes—“her throat had been slashed. The knife lay next to her, and its hilt was embossed with a lion and a salamander. She was wearing a castle uniform. I saw her. We all saw the body, all the shopkeepers and merchant sellers who turn up here before the sun rises. We were meant to see it. That knife wasn’t left there by accident. It was a message. A reminder that the prince—that Emperor Rodolfo is a man to be feared.”

Petra stumbled back from the stall. She searched the man’s face for some hint that he was lying, that he was wrong, that Sadie could not be dead.

A tear spilled down his cheek.

Petra ran. She wove through the morning crowd, her feet wobbling on the cobblestone streets, her vision blurry. She ignored everyone and everything around her. She hurtled across the bridge into Mala Strana—and it was there that she caught the eye of one of Prince Rodolfo’s spies.

He slipped behind her, and was following her from not so far away when a carriage drawn by a set of matched gray horses passed between them and blocked his view. He swore. The carriage rattled past in a matter of seconds, but seconds was all it had taken for Petra Kronos to disappear.

He studied the street. It was a dead end. She must have gone into one of the houses.

He glanced at the prettily stenciled sign nailed to a stone wall. Molodova Street. Well, there were only so many houses on this street. They would have to be searched, one by one—and quietly, so that the Kronos girl wouldn’t notice, and flee, before they got to hers.

But they would find her eventually. Perhaps even this very night.

34

A Golden Keyhole

PETRA WAITED UNTIL NIGHTFALL.

It was hard, every hour, to think about what she had learned. She carried a cruel thing inside her. It was as if she had swallowed a knife, and each time she tried to speak, the knowledge of Sadie’s death cut her deep inside. She locked herself in her room, and everyone assumed it was the secretary of education’s note that upset her, or the news about Rodolfo. Everyone left her alone.

Except Astrophil. “Please tell me what is wrong.” He perched at the foot of her bed and studied her as she pulled the down blanket up to her chin.

She opened her mouth, then bit back the words. “I can’t,” she said. “There’s someone else who needs to hear it first.”

A confused look lit Astrophil’s green eyes.

“I’ll tell you later,” Petra said. “I’m so tired. Astrophil? Will you sleep next to me?”

“What a silly question,” the spider said. “I always do.”

He crawled onto the pillow next to hers, and Petra blew out the candle. The darkness was dense, almost heavy, and Petra saw the same blackness whether she closed her eyes or opened them.

She heard someone walking down the hall. It was Lucas, muttering to himself. Petra could tell he was carrying a candle, because the empty keyhole to her room began to glow around the edges. During the few moments it took for him to pass her door, the keyhole became a golden jewel beaming into the darkness of Petra’s room. Then it faded and went black, and Petra could no longer hear Lucas’s footfalls.

But the flare of the golden keyhole was branded onto Petra’s mind. She grasped its memory as her breaths slowed and deepened. She thought about that lovely, fleeting shape of light as she fell asleep, and reached through her dreams for Neel.

* * *

NEEL DREAMED A PALM TREE. He watched its thin green fronds stab at the blue sky, pull back, and lunge again, like the tree was fighting with the wind. Neel was surprised that anything could fight with so little noise. There was only a whisper and a flutter and a shh as the palm fronds struggled.

Then the wind stopped. The tree froze, its green leaves etched sharply against the sky.

“Neel,” said a voice.

Petra was standing under the tree. Her bare feet were buried in pink sand, and behind her were motionless green waves that looked as if they had been carved from glass.