“I understand,” she said.

Neel was silent. Tomik was, too, because he wasn’t sure he did understand. If he made a promise to Petra, he would keep it, no matter what.

“The Roma are your family,” Petra said. “They have to come first.”

“But you’re my family, too. I said so.”

The tiny iron horseshoe of Petra’s necklace swung slightly, flicked by an invisible finger.

“It’s not the same,” Petra said. “I know that. This”—she touched the horseshoe he had given her long ago—“it’s…”

“Symbolic,” Astrophil supplied.

“Yes. It doesn’t mean that I am your sister. Only that you wish I were.”

“But I don’t—” Confusion crossed Neel’s face.

“We’ll be all right, Neel,” Tomik said firmly.

“Yes.” Petra attempted a smile.

“What can I give you?” Neel said. “I’m the king. I can get you anything. Gold? Oh! I know. Horses. You’ll need ’em, and I’ve got some beauties in the royal stable—”

“No,” said Astrophil. “We need furs. Dried food.” The spider raised one leg each time he listed something, like someone might tick off items on his fingers. “Snowshoes. Brassica oil for me to drink.” Two more legs waved. “Rope. Matches. Kindling.” Astrophil was now standing on one leg as seven others flickered in the air. “And a rowboat.” He hopped on his remaining leg.

The three friends couldn’t help it. They laughed.

* * *

“PSST.”

Petra opened her eyes and glanced at Astrophil, curled into a tin ball on her pillow. He snored gently.

“Psst.” She heard it again. She scanned her dark bedroom. Her heart beating, she reached for her Glowstone with one hand and her invisible sword with the other. She slipped from the bed, her nightgown whispering against her legs.

“It’s me,” Neel said, just as the Glowstone came alive in Petra’s hand, and she gasped.

Neel was hanging outside her open window, miles above the sea.

“Neel! How did you—”

He swung into her bedroom. “I climbed.”

“You climbed.” Petra gave a breathy chuckle. “Astrophil would be impressed.”

“Don’t wake him. See, I’ve got an idea, and I don’t think he’ll approve.”

Petra raised one brow. “A secret idea, it seems. One so secret you had to climb through my window instead of taking the hallway and stairs. Or are you simply showing off?”

“Maybe. Listen. I hate to send you off to Bohemia like this. At least let me give you something.”

“You already—”

“Pfft.” He waved a hand. “The supplies Astro asked for? That’s nothing. How about I give you a little bit of me to take along for the ride?”

She frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“A mental link.”

Understanding dawned on her face, then fear, then anger. “No.”

“Like the one you had with John Dee. It let you chat with each other, in your minds, even when you were far apart, until you broke it.”

“No.”

“You can make one, for me and you.”

She raised her voice. “Neel—”

“I’m Roma. All Roma know enough about mind-magic to know that that’s what it takes to forge a link. You’ve got the gift. You should use it—”

“Neel, stop!”

Astrophil squeaked in his sleep. Petra and Neel held their breath as the spider rolled onto his side and then onto his pointy face, his eight legs fanning wide around him.

“Why not?” Neel whispered. He looked hurt. “A mental link wouldn’t let me poke around inside your personal thoughts and inklings. We’d just be able to talk without speaking, like you do sometimes with Astro. It’s sure as fire a faster way to swap news than sending letters. So unless … unless you don’t fancy us being hooked together like that, I don’t see what the fuss is about.”

Her silver eyes were fierce. “I could hurt you.”

“Nah.”

“So you know everything, don’t you, King Neel?” She stabbed him in the chest with one finger. “Then you must know that forging a mental link is like scrying, and that scrying opens the mind in dangerous ways. You could go mad.”

“I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t! I don’t have the skill. Practicing with the Metis for a few weeks doesn’t mean I can bumble around inside your brain.”

“But I bet you know how. I bet you asked them, because you were so groused at Dee for having done it to you way back when that you’d want to know exactly how he did it.”

Her eyes glimmered with anger.

“Ha!” he said. “I knew it. Pet, don’t you see how useful a link would be? What if you need help? What if I do? Please, Petra. Please. If you did this, you’d be giving something to me, too.”

She sighed. She knew this was wrong, but it’s hard to deny someone who’s pleading for the very thing you want. She felt suddenly, and sharply, how difficult it would be to say goodbye to her friend.

Neel’s bruised face was eager in the light of the Glowstone.

Slowly, Petra said, “We’ll need something that shines.”

Neel clapped his hands. “There’s a humongous mirror in the ballroom that’ll do fine. It’s very flash.”

Petra had already turned to her nightstand for a small golden coin that had been hidden in its drawer. “No,” she said. “This.” She drew Neel into the center of the room and they sat on the floor with the coin on the cool, marble tiles between them, lit by the radiant blue of the Glowstone.

“Look at the coin,” Petra said. “Breathe deep, and calm. Try to … try to loosen the knots that tie you together into who you are. And…” her voice wavered. “Trust me.”

“Course I do.”

“Shh. Don’t talk. When your mind is opened like this, you might say something private. Something you’d never normally tell me. I don’t want to steal your secrets.”

Neel’s hand twitched, then lay still, and Petra knew in that uncanny way she had that he’d been ready to trace one of the long scrapes on his arm. She took it all in again—his ripped tunic, his dirty hands, the dark bruises. Again she wanted to ask what had happened to him, and again she told herself that he clearly didn’t want to say. “Promise me,” she said. “No talking.”

He nodded.

“Now,” Petra said. “Look.”

He dropped his gaze to the gleaming coin. Time unwound like a ball of yarn, the minutes spinning away into the shadows. Neel’s shoulders slumped. His eyes widened eerily and did not blink.

It troubled Petra to see Neel so vulnerable.

She lifted his chin and stared straight into his face.

“I’m afraid,” he said, his voice toneless and empty.

“Shh.” Petra felt a stab of panic, and would have broken the intense gaze between them if it wasn’t too late. The spell had already begun.

“I’m afraid for my sis. I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid for me.”

She would have to do this quickly. Her mind seemed to shiver, and she felt like she was slipping inside of herself. She searched for some loose part of her mind—it didn’t matter which part, any part would do—and tugged. Holding Neel’s yellow-green stare, Petra stitched a mental thread between her and her friend, and pulled tight.

Neel blinked.

“Neel? Are you all right?”

He rubbed his temples. “Yeah.” The word was slurred. “A little swoony. Did it work?”

You tell me, she murmured in his mind.

He jumped a little. “Boxers and jugglers, that’s weird.” I mean—his words formed silently, tentatively—nice. Good. That’s good.

An awkwardness rose between them, and Neel glanced again at the coin. “Shouldn’t keep gold in your nightstand drawer, Pet. Too easy to steal. You ought to keep it in your shoes. Nigh impossible to nick it that way.”

She smiled. He’d said something like this to her before. “It’s hot, and I like to go barefoot. Besides, this is your palace. I doubt it’s crawling with criminals.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” he said darkly, and this time he did touch one of his bruises. He caught Petra’s startled glance, then added in a lighter tone, “After all, I live here, don’t I?” He picked up the coin and peered at it. When he saw that it was stamped with a bird and ringed with Romany letters he recognized but could not read, surprise showed on his face. “This is Roma,” he said. “And old. Is that…?” he touched the bird. “That’s the sign of Danior.”

“Yes. It was minted during his reign, hundreds of years ago.”

He stared at her.

“I found it in England,” she said. “Keep it.” She folded his fingers around the coin. “To remember me by.”

Don’t need that. He grinned.

“Keep it anyway. And go back to bed. You’ve got to be tired.”

“Nah.” But when he stood, Neel wobbled on his feet.

“And walk back to your rooms. You’re in no shape to clamber around the palace walls.” She stood, too, and pushed him toward the door. “Will you … be there tomorrow, at dawn, to see us off to the Loophole?”

“Course.” He turned to leave, but Petra stopped him.

“You spoke to me,” she said reluctantly. She knew he wouldn’t remember what he’d said under the spell, but she didn’t want to keep the fact of it from him.

He shifted uneasily. “What’d I say?”

“I told you not to talk.”

“Petra. What did I say?”

She told him.

“Well, then.” His gaze was steady. “I said nothing I’m ashamed of.”

13

Into the Mountains

NEEL WAS THE ONLY ONE on the beach the next morning to see his friends off. Astrophil, with a keen glance at Neel, had suggested he come alone and pass along the travelers’ goodbyes to the others. While it would have been nice to see the sailors of the Pacolet one last time before leaving, none of the friends wanted to mar the moment by ignoring the black stares many of the Pacolet’s crew would surely send Neel’s way. The Maraki had not forgiven him for accepting the crown.

Neel kicked the rowboat. “I’m not so sure this is seaworthy.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Tomik.

“Wait another day. I’ll get you something better. A crack little vessel with a sleek hull—”

Petra shook her head. “Time to go home. It’s been too long already.”

Neel tugged at the high collar of his silken sleeveless tunic. “Watch out for riptides. The current’s got a wicked pull, and—”

“Neel.” Tomik dumped their bags in the boat. “We know how to row.”

Neel looked at him—at his sea-blue eyes, and shoulders strong from months of sailing. Standing next to Tomik, Petra was slighter than her friend, but Neel had seen her wield both knife and sword with lethal skill. They made a good team. They would be all right, he told himself.

Petra turned to him, her features softer than usual. There was a farewell on her lips. Neel could see it forming, but found that he couldn’t bear to hear it. He raised a hand to her shoulder and held out one finger for Astrophil, perched near her collarbone, to shake. The spider gripped it with a few legs.

“Stay safe,” Neel told the spider. “No heroics, you hear?”

“From me?” Astrophil said. “Hardly. As for you, Your Majesty, may I recommend that you behave yourself? Also: learn how to read.”

Neel let go of the spider’s legs. He stared.

“Unless, of course,” the spider continued, “you wish to trust other people to do it for you. Personally, if I were king, I would not like to be so much at the mercy of people with better access to information.”

The Roma king sputtered.

“Agree with him,” Petra suggested. “It’s easier that way.”

Astrophil rolled his tiny green eyes. “Yes, as Petra knows, since she always listens to what I say.”

Petra smiled down at him, but when her gaze turned back to Neel her smile faded. Neel rummaged around inside himself for something to say, yet could think of nothing other than the fact that he was exactly the same height as Petra, her eyes were level with his, and she was leaving, and there was no promise that they would ever see each other again.

Take care of yourself, she said, and he marveled for a moment at the sensation of her words inside his mind.

Then she turned, quickly, and her braid struck his bare shoulder like a soft whip.

Startled, he still said nothing as she climbed inside of the boat, and nothing as Tomik raised a hand to wave at him, and nothing as Astrophil sniffed and rubbed at his eyes, smearing a greenish speck of oil that looked suspiciously like a tear.

The skin of Neel’s shoulder tingled as his friends pushed the boat from the shore. He felt it, and felt the pressure of the link between him and Petra. His mind touched it, resting on that little stitch, long after the boat had rowed away.

* * *

PETRA FELT STRANGE as she pulled at the oars. Waves slapped against their boat, and different emotions pushed and tugged at her, as if the ocean were inside of her—deep, and too murky for her to see clearly to the bottom of things.

She knew she felt eager. It had been agonizing to see each day slip past, with her no closer to the only hope she had to save her father. She seemed to betray him with every sunset.