Neel knew that the real Petra had blond hair now. She had told him so. Her hair shouldn’t have been a straight, glossy sheet of dark brown, her eyes shouldn’t have been bright silver. Iris had dyed those, too. He knew this. But he had heard an unusual clarity in her voice when she’d said his name, and the worry on her face was too real for a dream.

“Thank you.” Neel paused, startled at the words that had tumbled from his mouth. He stammered, “I mean, I know you didn’t want to do this. Talk through dreams. But I … I have missed you. And everything’s just like you described. I see a beach, and I bet that if we wait long enough the stars will come out.”

She crossed the sand and took his hands into her own. She rested her fingers over the skin and ghost of his, and he felt a surge of something like happiness, yet richer. “Petra—”

“Neel,” she said, “Sadie is dead.”

The wind came back, the waves swelled again and crashed against the shore, and everything sounded too loud to Neel. There was a roaring in his ears. “That’s not true.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was thick, and broke on the last word. She began to tell Neel about Joel Riven, and how he had seen his sister, and that Sadie had been wearing her chambermaid’s uniform …

“Well, Riven was wrong.” Neel lashed out. Who was that foul Joel Riven, to spread such lies?

“He seemed very sure.”

Neel searched Petra’s face. Fear iced his blood as he realized that she, too, seemed very sure. Petra believed this.

“No.” He yanked his hands away. “This is a dream. You told me not to trust what I see in dreams. That look on your face is make-believe, something my mind cooked up to punish me. And I should be punished. I should have dragged Sadie out of Prague by now—somehow, some way. That’s exactly what I’m going to do when I wake up. I’m going to travel there. I’ll use the globes. I’ll kidnap her, if I have to. I’ll—”

“Neel,” said Petra, “you can trust what I say. I’m sorry.”

The green waves seemed to rush into Neel’s ears and fill his eyes. He felt Petra’s arms slip around him. Then the sea poured out of Neel’s mouth, and it no longer sounded like waves, but like a harsh sobbing. Neel pressed his face against Petra’s hair and wept.

* * *

“PETRA! PETRA!” Someone was hammering at the door.

Petra struggled out of the blankets. She blinked, dizzy with the realization that she was no longer sleeping. She was no longer with Neel. She was in Prague, in the Decembers’ house.

Astrophil’s green eyes opened. “Is that Lucas?”

“Wake up!” Lucas shouted. “It’s important!”

Petra pulled a robe over her nightgown, stumbled through the dark, and threw open the door.

Lucas was clutching a candle with one hand and a scrap of paper with the other. “Read this.” He thrust the paper at her. Astrophil, who had jumped to Petra’s shoulder, read it along with her.

Fiala Broshek’s laboratory is on Lady’s Lace Pier, on the northern bank of the Vltava River, here in Prague. From the outside, it looks like a silk factory.

Good luck.

Sadie

“I couldn’t sleep,” Lucas said excitedly, “so I decided to take Zora’s advice and go through my papers. And look! It was lying on my desk, half-covered by letters from my annoying cousin in—”

He was interrupted by a muffled banging. It took Petra a moment to realize that the sound was coming from the heavy front door, several floors below. She and Lucas stared at each other, wondering who it could be at this time of night. There was a series of creaks and shuffles as a maid traveled through the house, and then a groan of hinges as the front door opened.

Petra heard thumps, a metallic ringing sound, and deep voices. Armed men, she realized. She looked at Lucas and Astrophil, and saw their eyes widen with the same thought.

A voice boomed from far below, echoing its way up the stairs: “We have permission to search this house for Petra Kronos.”

35

The King’s Decree

ASTROPHIL SQUEAKED, then clapped four legs over his mouth.

Lucas had gone pale. “We can leave by the windows in the bathing room on this floor. Wake Tomik. I’m going to get Zora. You wait for me here. Understand? Right here.”

He ran down the hall as noiselessly as he could.

Petra ducked back into her bedroom and flung open the door that joined Tomik’s room to hers. “Get up!” she hissed as she threw clothes at him. She felt almost sick with the push and pull of emotions. How had she gone so quickly from sorrow to hope to terror? When Tomik touched a match to a candle, she was sure that he could see every thought crawling across her face.

“What’s going on?” he said fuzzily.

“You are getting up!” Astrophil jumped onto Tomik’s bed and pinched his wrist.

“Ow!”

“You are getting up quietly!”

As Tomik tugged clothes on under the blankets and she jammed her feet into a pair of shoes and belted on her invisible sword, Petra explained Sadie’s note and the noises coming from downstairs. “We’ve got to leave now.”

“I’ve got to get something first.” He raced for the door.

“No,” Petra whispered after him, but he was already gone.

Moments later, Lucas and Zora appeared at the door. “Come on,” Lucas said, “let’s go!”

“Where’s Tomik?” Zora asked.

“I don’t know,” Petra moaned.

The muffled voices and heavy footfalls grew closer.

“They are on the floor below us.” Astrophil wrung his legs. “Oh, where is he?”

“Here.” Tomik was in the hallway, panting. He had a bag slung over his shoulders. “I’m here.”

“Follow me,” said Lucas. He led them down the hall, and they filed into the bathing room. It was so cramped that they had to squeeze around the tub for everyone to fit. Lucas bolted the door just as they heard the sounds of men reaching the landing of their floor.

“It’d be easier if you come out right now!” one of them called. “A clever little maid has already told us what’s been going on in this house. We know you’re here, Petra Kronos. You, your friend Tomik, and the Decembers are coming with us.”

A silence fell. The friends stared at one another.

“We’ll do it the hard way.” Then the man shouted, “Search this floor,” and the thumping of boots and breaking down of doors told Petra that they were coming closer.

Lucas unlatched a large window.

“Do you really think this is possible?” Zora whispered at him.

“Do we have a choice?” he whispered back.

“How, exactly, are we supposed to get out of here?” Petra stuck her head out the window. “Oh.”

“Oh, no,” said Astrophil. “You are mad, Lucas December!”

Petra looked at the long gap between the window and the roof of the nearest house. “Don’t worry, Astro. I’m sure you can jump that.”

“Of course I can! I am worried about the rest of you!”

“I’ll prove it can be done.” Lucas gripped the top frame of the window and scrambled his feet onto the sill. He leaned back, then flung himself into the night. He slammed onto the nearby roof. He straightened, and noiselessly waved his hand for the others to follow him.

They flinched when they heard a banging on the door behind them. Shoulders beat against the door. The men would break it down soon.

“You’ll be right behind me?” Zora asked breathlessly.

“Yes. Now go!” Tomik no longer bothered to lower his voice.

Zora leaped across the gap. She fell short of the roof, but snagged her hands on a gutter. Tomik and Petra watched as Lucas pulled her up.

The door to the bathing room splintered. Tomik started to take the bag off his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Petra jerked the bag’s straps back in place. “Please, just go. They want me most.”

“You’re not going to surrender.”

“Of course I won’t. When we’re so close to getting her?” Petra didn’t need to say Fiala Broshek’s name. “But I want you to jump first.”

Tomik’s laugh was a little wild. “I guess I always do what you want,” he said, and jumped.

He landed perfectly.

“Now, Petra,” said Astrophil. “Let me tell you a little something about leaping across long distances. After all, I know a great deal on the topic, and—”

Petra jumped.

Her feet slapped down on the nearby roof. Her toes ran forward with the momentum from her leap, then tripped over the hem of her nightgown. She fell against the hard ceramic roof tiles, and the hilt of her sword rammed into her side. “Stupid nightgown,” she muttered as Zora helped her up.

“It’s not ideal for running across rooftops,” agreed Zora, who had had the sense to put on a pair of her brother’s trousers.

“This is why I do not wear clothes,” said Astrophil.

Petra laughed. As the sound flew from her throat, Lucas pointed at the prince’s men swarming around the bathing room window. “At least you’re not wearing armor, Petra. There’s no way they can jump after us with all that weight on them. We could stay here the whole night, if we wanted.” He began to crow, shouting his words so that the soldiers would hear him. “We could watch the sun rise, and take breakfast and tea—with sugar! We could—”

A man hurtled through the air and slammed onto the roof.

“Or we could run,” said Lucas.

They tore across the red tiles.

The soldier slipped after them, cursing, as they crossed from one house to another, jumping across gaps that were sometimes narrow, sometimes as wide as a creek. They were fleet and nimble and far faster than the lumbering guard, but he doggedly trailed behind them. Finally, they reached the end of the houses.

“The drainpipe,” said Lucas, pointing. “Hold on to it with both hands, and put your feet on the rivets that bolt it to the wall. There are rivets all the way down, like steps on a ladder.”

Zora went down first. “I get the feeling you’ve done this before, Lucas,” she shouted up at him in a voice that was annoyed, amused, and ever so slightly frantic.

“Maybe.” Lucas pulled Tomik to the edge and almost pushed him down the pipe. The soldier was closing the gap between him and them. “Just for fun, you know. To see if I could. Now, Petra: your turn.”

“Got you!” The soldier snatched Petra’s wrist and hauled her to him.

Petra heard Lucas shout her name and felt Astrophil pinch her ear. Her mind ground to a halt and stopped. She looked at the man’s meaty face grinning at her over his metal breastplate. Then Astrophil shouted, “Petra, do you remember how you saved my life?”

Her brain roared to life again. Yes, she remembered. She remembered zapping the spider’s metal body with magical energy, and had a good idea what something like that would do to a human encased in metal.

She placed her palm flat against the man’s steel breastplate. She sucked in her breath, and pulsed power through her fingers and into the shiny armor.

The man’s hand on her wrist jittered, then locked, then jerked open. His eyes rolled up into his head, and he keeled over with a groan.

As soon as the man had flopped down onto the roof tiles, Petra could see the rest of the soldiers, not very far away, running along the roofs.

She and Lucas scrambled down the pipe. When Petra’s toes touched the ground, everyone broke into a run, ducking down alleyways so that the guards’ view of them was blocked by tall buildings.

“To the river!” Petra shouted, and they skidded down streets so steep they could have been slides.

When they burst onto the banks of the Vltava, and were sure they were no longer being followed, their pace slowed. They picked their way along the wharf, past piers and late-night rowboats with hanging lanterns.

“… and then she zapped him!” Lucas chuckled as he told the others how he and Petra had escaped the soldier. “Just like that! He fell down flat.”

Tomik dragged at Petra’s elbow so that she’d trail behind the Decembers. “I didn’t know you could do something like that,” he said.

“I didn’t either,” she confessed.

“That must have taken a lot of power. You keep getting stronger.”

“I hope so.” She thought of Fiala Broshek’s laboratory. “I hope it will be enough.”

Tomik looked at her, and Petra realized that something had changed in the chase across the rooftops. There was still a stiffness between them, one that had been there since the carriage ride to the Academy. Yet it no longer felt painful. Their friendship felt like a muscle that had been pulled or stretched past its limits. But Petra thought it would get better.

“It’ll be enough,” Tomik said.

“There it is!” Zora called. She pointed at a dark, looming silk factory.

“Petra,” said Tomik, “I want to show you something.” He shrugged off his bag and opened it. Inside were balls of fabric. Tomik lifted one out and unwrapped the rough cloth.

He held a Marvel. A large one, about the size of a fist. Inside glowed something that looked like fire.

“I made a lot of different kinds over the past week,” said Tomik. “And trust me—these are very special.”

* * *

NEEL SHUT THE DOOR to his mother’s room behind him. He stood in the hallway, listening to the dulled sounds of her sobs. He put a hand to his face, then let it fall away. Neel stiffened his shoulders and walked down the hall.