The Jewel of the Kalderash

  A fear that Petra had shoved deep down inside her floated to the surface of her mind.

  How much brassica oil was pumping through Astrophil’s tiny body? How long, really, could it last?

  Was Astrophil just tired during the day, or was he winding down?

  OW! Neel howled. Nadia slapped me! I can’t believe she slapped me! I’m the king! Oh, you’re going to regret that, you are, you—

  Petra closed her mind like a fist around Neel’s voice. She couldn’t listen to it. Not now. She felt Astrophil clinging to her ear and realized what his light touch had reminded her of: the day the spider had fallen asleep for the first time. They had been in Prague, and the spider’s hold on her ear slackened. Then he had fallen.

  Astrophil’s grip wasn’t delicate. It was feeble.

  Petra stopped in her tracks and tugged off her mittens. Tomik, surprised, stopped too, and watched as Petra gently lifted the spider from her ear and cradled him in her palm.

  “Astrophil?” Petra touched a tin leg. Astrophil? Wake up!

  The spider slept.

  He had never slept like this.

  “What’s wrong?” Tomik asked.

  “He—he—” Petra stuttered in panic. “He hasn’t eaten in almost two weeks.”

  “He said he was fine. That he could run on very little.”

  Petra stared at Tomik. “Maybe … he was being brave. He was trying to be strong and make it to Krumlov. But he knows we’re close now, close to safety. I think he’s given up.” Petra’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I think he’s dying.”

  Tomik reached for Petra’s free hand and pulled her into a run. “Hurry,” he said.

  * * *

  IT WAS TWILIGHT when they pushed their way out of the forest. The pale moon loomed low over a hilltop castle.

  Krumlov. They had made it.

  But Tomik and Petra didn’t slow their pace. Not when they floundered up the hill, slipping on its light coat of snow. Not when night fell, and they saw faraway torches blaze near the castle’s entrance. Not when those fires grew bigger in their sight, their feet crunched over the small rocks strewn across the courtyard, and they saw that one of the castle towers was a black ruin, and the walls were splashed in a crazy quilt of color.

  Not until Petra felt something change in the palm of her hand.

  She halted. Castle guards were shouting at them, but she couldn’t hear them. She couldn’t hear anything at all. Petra stared at the tin spider crumpled in her hand and remembered the mechanical sound she had always heard, so steady, like her own breath or heartbeat. She couldn’t hear it now.

  Astrophil’s gears had stopped.

  18

  The Tarantella

  “IRIS!” Petra screamed when the guards seized her and Tomik. “Iris!”

  “What’s this?” As one guard held her, another forced back the fingers Petra had curled protectively over Astrophil. He peered at the spider with light eyes. “Give that here.”

  Petra let her mind-magic crackle through her, and sensed that the ribs of the light-eyed guard were sore, newly healed from a brawl last month. The other, leaner guard still had his hands locked on her upper arms. Petra leaned back into his grip and hitched up her legs to smash her feet into the light-eyed man’s torso. He dropped to the stones, wheezing for breath.

  The guard holding Petra slackened his grip in surprise. She wrenched free. She ran for the entrance, shouting Iris’s name, leaving Tomik behind.

  “Silence!” someone bellowed.

  In the shadow of the castle entrance, beyond the gate of its portcullis, was a short, elderly woman. Her hands were planted on her hips. “You caterwauling ninny! I am Irenka Grisetta December, Sixth Countess of Krumlov, and I’m not about to let a ragamuffin nobody take the liberty to call me Iris. Who are you? I’ll ‘Iris’ you, young lady, you upstart mushroom, you—”

  “Iris.” Petra grabbed the iron gate. She heard the scatter of stones behind her as the guards rushed toward her back. “Please let me in.”

  The torchlight glowed on Petra’s face. Iris paused, peered at Petra over the tops of her spectacles, and sucked in her breath. “You,” Iris hissed.

  The guards descended on Petra and dragged her back from the portcullis. Petra felt like they were dragging her away from all hope.

  Her hand was already reaching for the hilt of her invisible sword when Iris said, “Raise the gate!”

  The gate rattled up, and Iris stormed into the courtyard. “Oh, let them go!” she told the guards.

  The men didn’t loosen their grasp on Tomik and Petra, but looked uncertainly at the white-haired woman.

  “Isn’t that sweet,” Iris sneered at the guards. “Are you worried for your poor old mistress? Don’t be fools! They couldn’t possibly hurt me.” She extended a thin, papery hand, palm up. She smiled wickedly, as if her hand itself was a weapon.

  The men set Tomik and Petra free.

  “Well well well.” Iris tapped a foot against the stones. “I’d say some explanations are in order.” She shoved her heavy spectacles up the bridge of her nose and glared at Petra.

  “I need your laboratory,” Petra said. “You must have one here.”

  “Need, eh? Everyone needs something. I need a new hat, since mine blistered off my head a few minutes ago. I need to stop having acid attacks, because every time something upsetting happens, like you screaming for me at the top of your lungs, my skin leaks acid and ruins things.”

  “You don’t seem acidic now,” Tomik said.

  “Shut up! I liked that hat!”

  “Iris,” Petra said. “Your laboratory—”

  “Oh, no. Do you honestly think I’m letting you inside? I’ll have your story first, you little troublemaker. What are you doing here? You look like you’ve been tramping around the wilderness. On a diet. Your face is positively skinny! And who is this handsome—and grimy—young man?

  “There’s no time to tell stories!” said Petra, and ran into the castle. She heard Iris shout, “I can run, too, you know! Oh, yes I can! I may be old, but I’m no invalid!”

  Petra barreled down the hallway, with Iris calling her names and Tomik yelling that he was right behind her. She ran without knowing where she was going, but as her feet pounded against the uneven marble tiles, Petra noticed that parts of the stone floor were burned away, and that the walls were splashed with color. Petra imagined Iris flinging pots of dye at the walls, and destroying the floor under her feet when frustration made her skin flare with acid. Dye was everywhere.

  But, Petra realized, there would be more closer to a laboratory. That’s where the heart of Iris’s experimentation on color would take place. That’s where Petra would find the greatest scenes of disaster.

  So Petra ran after the color. An ugly purple smeared across a windowpane. Chartreuse paint oozing down a mirror. Glittering black handprints on a wall.

  Petra saw a ruined archway and ducked under it, racing through a dusty ballroom whose wooden floor was caked with multicolored layers of paint.

  Then she noticed what seemed to be an alcove, shrouded by a black velvet curtain. Petra had seen one just like it before, almost two years ago in the prince’s castle. Iris used curtains to protect her most light-sensitive experiments.

  Petra tore aside the curtain.

  The alcove wasn’t an alcove, but an enormous room latticed with shelves, and on those shelves were hundreds of glass and ceramic bottles filled with snakeskin and powders and things Petra couldn’t even begin to name.

  “Get out!” Iris shoved past Petra, and Tomik shoved past Iris. A distant clatter and jangle of metal told Petra that the armored guards weren’t far behind.

  “Where’s your brassica oil?” Clutching Astrophil with one hand, Petra riffled through bottles with the other. “I know you have some. You need it for really hot fires.”

  The first guards burst into the laboratory, gasping for breath.

  “Get out!” Iris screamed at them. She advanced toward one of the guards, and
when she held out her hands as if to shove him, a look of terror crossed his face and he turned and ran. The other men followed suit.

  Iris cackled.

  “Here!” Tomik shoved a clear glass bottle filled with green liquid into Petra’s hands.

  “Just a moment!” Iris said. “Exactly what do you think you’re doing with my only supply of very expensive brassica oil? You listen here, Petra Kronos—”

  Petra ignored her. She gently set Astrophil on a worktable littered with burners and bowls.

  “What is that?” said Iris.

  Petra uncorked the bottle.

  “That looks like a spider,” said Iris. “I don’t like spiders.”

  Petra pried open Astrophil’s mouth with one ragged fingernail and tipped the bottle carefully, so that a green drop hung and then fell.

  Petra’s aim was perfect. The oily drop splashed into Astrophil’s open mouth. But then it pooled and dribbled down the spider’s face as if his throat was blocked, perhaps by a stuck gear.

  Petra’s brain seemed to cramp and shake and bleed out any rational thoughts except a clear certainty that if her father were here, he would be able to save Astrophil.

  But her father wasn’t here. There was only her.

  She would have to do.

  Petra yanked open one of the worktable drawers and rummaged through it until she found a narrow metal file and a long, thin pipe she recognized from her days working as Iris’s assistant in Salamander Castle. “It’s an aspirator,” Iris had told her when Petra had first seen the pipe. “I use it to aerate certain dyes.”

  That means she uses it to blow air into the dye, Astrophil had silently explained.

  I know! Petra had told him, but she had lied. Tears welled in Petra’s eyes at the thought that he might never explain something to her again. A tear fell into Astrophil’s mouth. Like the oil, it ran right back out.

  Petra rubbed her eyes clear. Then she inserted the file in the spider’s mouth and probed.

  It was like picking a lock, which Neel had taught her how to do during the long months at sea. Petra delicately pushed against the gears in Astrophil’s throat, looking for one with a springy tension. She couldn’t see down into the tiny opening of Astrophil’s mouth, so she would have to feel for the right gear.

  She found it. The tip of her file touched a gear that moved in place. With a quick, nervous breath, Petra jabbed at it. It sank, pushed back, and released.

  Astrophil did not move.

  But his throat was clear. This time, when Petra trickled oil into Astrophil’s mouth, it stayed inside, dripping down, mingling with a trace of Petra’s tear.

  Astrophil still did not move.

  Petra set the pipe in his mouth and blew. She imagined the oil forcing its way through a network of pin-thin pipes and metal joints the size of poppy seeds. Yet even when Petra was sure that Astrophil’s body was flush with oil and she set the pipe aside, the spider lay motionless on the table, legs limp.

  “It’s not working,” Tomik said in a low voice.

  Iris looked at him, then at Petra. “What is all this fuss about?” she said. “It’s a machine. A peculiar one, I’ll give you that, but if it won’t start, toss it out and get a new one.”

  Petra stared at Iris, stunned at her suggestion, though Iris had no way of knowing what and who Astrophil was, since he had hidden in Petra’s hair the entire time she worked as Iris’s assistant.

  “Well, really, Petra.” Iris shrugged. “If it doesn’t work, what can you do?”

  Petra’s gaze dropped to the spider, and she rested one finger on his cool, silvery head. That is not my “head,” she remembered him saying crossly. Spiders do not have “heads.” That is my cephalothorax.

  It seemed to Petra that Astrophil’s silence was expectant. That he was waiting, like when he would wait for her to figure something out on her own. She considered making her Choice, as the Metis had taught her. She could increase her magic over metal.

  But the Metis had warned that the sudden shock of power would confuse her. She might not even remember her own name, or who Astrophil was.

  Then what could Petra do?

  “I will make him work,” she said.

  Petra’s own, familiar brand of magic pulsed through her fingertip. Her skin tingled as she imagined Astrophil’s central mechanism, a heart of cogs and gears. Start, she commanded the metal parts. Spin.

  Astrophil’s body made a tiny wheeze, then a crank, then a buzz. His eight legs sprang straight. He popped up in the air, fell down flat on his abdomen, and zigzagged across the table, his legs wild. “Stop!” he shouted at his legs. “Cease! Desist! Please?”

  “Astrophil!” Petra laughed.

  “I see no humor in this situation!” The spider careened off the table and crashed onto the floor.

  “Astro? Are you all right?” She scooped him up.

  “Of course I am all right.” His legs still waved crazily, but he didn’t move from Petra’s palm. “Why would you think otherwise?”

  “Um, you died,” Tomik pointed out.

  “Surely not.”

  A smile quirked at the corner of Iris’s mouth. “And then you seemed to have some sort of seizure,” she added.

  “Seizure? Just now? Oh, no. I was dancing. In fact, that dance is called the tarantella, a lovely Italian step inspired by a cousin of mine, the tarantula. Of course, the tarantula is from the rather unattractive side of the spider family. It is so hairy. But—”

  “You really are all right.” Petra raised her hand so that she and the spider could see eye to eye. Astrophil’s legs jerked a few more times, then calmed.

  “I feel very well rested,” he said. “And full. Mmmm.” He smacked his tiny mouth. “I have clearly been drinking very high quality brassica oil. A fine vintage. Delicious. Although … there is a salty aftertaste. How strange.”

  “Very.” Petra smiled.

  Astrophil considered her face, then stretched out one leg to brush a tear from her lashes. “Perhaps it is not so strange after all,” he said.

  19

  The Peasants’ Darling

  THEY MET AGAIN in Iris’s sitting room, after Petra had taken a bath in a sunken marble tub so large she could swim in it. It had three golden faucets, each topped with the curved shape of a sleeping ermine, the symbol of the Krumlov family. Petra was less amazed by this, however, than by what the faucets could do. Two of them spouted hot and cold water, and the third gushed bubbles. Then Petra spotted a fourth faucet that didn’t point into the bath, but curved over the marble edge of the pool, right above a porcelain cup that rested on the stone floor of the bathing room. Petra fiddled with the faucet, and hot chocolate poured into the cup. She swam in the bath’s rainbow froth. Then she floated, drinking the rich, melty brown liquid in her cup. After days of weasel meat, the hot chocolate was a delight.

  When Petra entered the sitting room, wearing a velvet nightgown with Astrophil clinging to the midnight purple of its fabric, she saw Tomik seated at a table before a fire. His hair was clean and damp, and he was wolfing down roasted chicken, buttery vegetables dusted with spices, and fizzy cider.

  “And bread!” Petra gasped. “And apples!” She snatched a fork to help Tomik demolish the food.

  “Hello to you, too,” Iris said dryly from her plush chair. It was drawn up to a desk on which lay a sheet of paper half-filled with swirly lines of cursive writing. Iris set her quill into its inkpot, drew a clean page to cover the written one, and pushed her chair back to face the three of them.

  “Fohrry. Umbello, Girish,” Petra said, her mouth full.

  Iris scowled at her, then focused on Astrophil, who was busy scolding Petra in tones of dismay. “You are using the wrong fork,” he moaned. “Would you please remember your table manners?”

  “You.” Iris pointed at him. “Tell me what you’re doing here, and what has happened since I last saw Petra blasting and flooding her way out of Salamander Castle.”

  It was a long story that began with Petr
a’s first encounter with the Gray Men, and how John Dee had saved her only to imprison her in his London house. Bargaining for her freedom in exchange for solving a murder, Petra had gotten tangled up in English politics that led to her facing Prince Rodolfo in a deadly, destructive encounter.

  “None of that explains why you are here, in my home,” Iris said.

  Astrophil searched for the most diplomatic way to phrase his next words. “Countess, your generosity toward us already has been deeply moving,” he began. “And we honor you for it. Yet—”

  “Oh, stuff it. Do you think I’m an idiot? I know exactly what you want.”

  “Really?” said Petra. Astrophil hadn’t even explained yet what had happened to her father. “How?”

  “Well, maybe I don’t know exactly what made you turn up on my doorstep in such a hysterical, bossy manner, but one thing is clear: you want my help.” Iris folded her arms, settled back in her chair, and propped her slippered feet on a lurid green footstool. “And whatever you want my help for, it’ll be directly in defiance of our Bohemian prince. You’re an outlaw, Petra, do you know that? If I turned you over to the authorities, I’d receive a very nice reward. Of course, I don’t really need that. I am rich enough. But delivering you to the prince would put me back in his good graces.”

  “You’re not in his good graces?” said Petra. “What did you do?”

  “Do? I helped you, that’s what I did. I helped you and that Gypsy escape from Salamander Castle by the skin of your pretty white teeth.”

  “He knows? How did he find out?”

  “Oh, Rodolfo doesn’t know anything for sure. He certainly suspects me, though. The Krumlov family is too powerful for him to accuse me without proof, but I’ve been banished from court. All because of you—Petra Kronos, the peasants’ darling.”

  “But you didn’t like being at court,” Petra said.

  The grouchiness of Iris’s expression didn’t change. However, one brow arched above the rim of her spectacles. “Oh?”