“Nor I, but being the secretary of education has its benefits. Now, I hate to rush our conversation, but I have a meeting in”—he pulled a red enameled watch from his pocket and peered at its face—“ten minutes. What brings you here today, my lady? And who”—he finally focused on Tomik—“is this?”
The breath died in Tomik’s throat.
“He is why I needed to see you.” Zora beamed at him. “Stefan”—she laid a hand on Tomik’s arm—“is a great talent. He could do so much for Bohemia, but with the Academy gone … you were right when you said that things will never be the same. Classes can be held in another building, of course, but that will take so long to organize.”
The secretary nodded and sighed.
“Meanwhile, his education will suffer,” Zora said. “Unless … well, I have an idea. You see, Stefan hoped to work with one Academy professor in particular: Fiala Broshek.”
The secretary looked suddenly wary.
“Would it be possible to arrange an apprenticeship with her?” Zora continued. “I’d ask her myself, but no one knows where she is.”
The secretary’s eyes roved from Zora to Tomik, then back again. “How exactly do you know each other?”
Zora’s hand slipped to link arms with Tomik. She nestled close to him and smiled. Tomik blushed.
“Oh.” The secretary’s gaze softened somewhat.
“You see, I want the very best for him,” Zora said. “Professor Broshek is the best.”
“The best of a certain kind,” the secretary said slowly. “An apprenticeship might be possible—Professor Broshek is enthusiastic about gathering the most promising magical talents under her wing—”
“So she is safe and well,” said Zora. “What a relief! There were rumors that she was missing.”
“She and the prince had an arrangement, should something ever happen to the Academy. For her own safety, she had to return immediately to Prague. Once the rebels began to destroy public property—little things, at first, like bridges—Prince Rodolfo feared that the Academy could become a target. Professor Broshek’s research then—and now—is a sensitive, secret matter. Which brings me back to your silent gentleman.” The secretary’s gaze focused again on Tomik. “If I ask Professor Broshek to take on an apprentice, I need to know what he can do. What, young man, is your magic skill?”
Zora’s eyes flashed an anxious message at Tomik. It was easy to read: Be careful.
Tomik thought quickly. Neel had once taught him the trick to telling a good lie. “Tell the truth,” Neel had said. “But skew it. Twist it.”
“Heat,” Tomik said finally.
The secretary frowned. “I’m not so sure that heat would be useful to Professor Broshek.”
“Yes, it would.” The next words flew out of Tomik’s mouth: “I can prove it.”
Zora struggled to keep her smile, but Tomik saw the dismay on her face, and her fear. There was no way that he could prove an ability he didn’t have.
But he could heat and mold glass, sometimes, with the touch of his hand. If he was determined enough. It hurt his head and made him see double, but he could do it. He had done so last year, when he had made a glass knife from loose sand.
Zora’s eyes were still on him. Tomik cursed his brazen words. Of course he could heat something in front of the secretary’s eyes—but only glass, or something that could be made into glass. A secretary of education had to be an intelligent man. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out Tomik’s identity.
“Prove it, then,” said the secretary, “or I’m going to wonder why you won’t, and why you two are asking questions about Professor Broshek. Well, Stefan? Let’s see if you have something the professor wants. And let’s see it now. I am out of time.”
Tomik had a flash of inspiration. “May I have your watch?”
The secretary’s brows shot up. “My watch?”
“I’ll give it back.”
With a curious glance, the secretary handed his pocket watch to Tomik, who tightened his fingers around it. He felt its enamel-coated surface. He remembered how people don’t think too hard about the objects they use. When the secretary looked at his watch, did he think about the red, opaque enamel that framed its face? Did he consider its shiny ceramic surface, and think about what enamel was made from, what it really was? Or, to him, was it just a pretty part of a watch? Enamel, after all, doesn’t look like glass. It’s not clear. It looks like floor tile.
But Tomik’s hand knew what it was. His fingers began to burn. He felt like someone had thrust a torch down his throat and the flames were burning in his brain.
The watch turned into a hot coal in his hand. The enamel melted. The red fluid dripped through Tomik’s fingers and exposed the metal gears underneath. Tomik squeezed his fist. He couldn’t melt the metal, but he could crush the delicate gears for good measure with the ordinary strength of his fingers. He did just that.
He handed the molten mess back to the secretary, who yelped and dropped it. The old man shook his hand to ease the burn. “You ruined it!”
“I said I’d give it back,” Tomik replied. “I didn’t mention what condition it’d be in.”
The secretary stared at the lump on the floor. It was unrecognizable.
“If I destroyed that so easily”—Tomik let a dangerous note creep into his voice—“imagine what else I can do. I want to serve Prince Rodolfo, and learn how to destroy what he wants destroyed. Well? Am I good enough for him? Am I good enough for Fiala Broshek?”
“Yes,” the secretary said shakily. “I will pass along a recommendation.”
“I’d prefer to speak with her myself. If you tell me the location of her new laboratory—”
“No. The prince would have my head. I can only say that she’s nearby, in Prague, and that I’ll arrange for you to see her.”
Tomik opened his mouth to argue, but Zora’s arm tightened around his.
“We’ll have to be satisfied with that,” she said.
* * *
SADIE’S BLACK EYES widened at the sight of Petra standing next to Joel Riven. She pushed her chair back against the tavern wall. She set her lovely mouth and said to Joel, “I can’t believe you brought her here.”
“She had this.” Joel passed the horseshoe necklace to Sadie. “It’s the token of a king. I had to bring her.” Sadie stared at the Romany writing.
When Joel had left, Petra dragged a chair to sit next to Sadie, who stayed silent, head bowed, looking at the horseshoe on her palm. Then Sadie lifted her face, and Petra saw the young woman who had been her friend, and had whispered with her through the dark of the Salamander Castle dormitory. Sadie carefully placed the necklace in Petra’s outstretched hand. “My brother must like you very much,” she said.
Petra tied the string around her neck and tucked the horseshoe inside her dress, where it warmed against her skin.
“It says you’re bound by blood to him,” Sadie said. “You took a blood oath with a Roma?”
Petra hesitated. It seemed to her that Sadie’s thoughts were hovering, uncertain where to land, and that a single word from Petra would cause them all to fly away. She lifted her palm so that Sadie could see the faint scar that matched Neel’s.
Sadie sighed. “Why are you in Prague, Petra?”
Petra told her everything except what might have been most important to Sadie. She said nothing about the little stitch she had sewn between her and Neel. Petra meant to tell her, but her mouth closed before the words could come out. She realized that she loved this secret, and sheltered it from everyone. Maybe this was because it wasn’t her secret alone. It was Neel’s, too. It occurred to her that a secret isn’t simply a secret. It’s a promise. Petra cherished hers.
“You know that I’m a spy,” Sadie said flatly. “I guess you need my help. You’ve come to me for information.”
“No.”
Sadie blinked. “Then why are you here?”
“To tell you to go home. Neel—”
“Joel Riven alr
eady gave me the message. You don’t have to repeat it.”
“Yes, I do. Joel Riven doesn’t know what I know. He can’t tell you what Neel told me: that after a boy in Spain cut his face, you cried. He can’t say that Neel has always tried to match his heart to yours, because he thinks yours is kinder and greater than his own. Joel Riven can’t say that I think Neel is wrong.” Petra took a breath. She held it, and steadied herself against the tears that threatened to well in her eyes. Her next words were very hard to say. “I thought about asking you for information. I considered asking you to find out where Fiala Broshek is. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to put you in danger.” Petra’s voice dropped. “I’ve lost my family. I don’t want Neel to lose you. I don’t want him to feel the way I feel.”
Sadie’s face softened. “You care for him.”
“Yes.”
“And you truly think I should leave Prague now?”
“Yes.”
“When thousands of Roma are imprisoned, or changed into monsters? Is this what you would do? Would you leave? Would Neel?”
Petra was silent.
Sadie said, “For the longest time, I blamed you for what has happened to my people here. But now … well, I know Neel. He’s willful. And he was getting himself into trouble long before he met you. Maybe it was insane to steal from the prince, but our clan did need the money, and Neel wanted so badly to help us. You didn’t make him do anything. And I suppose … I suppose I’m willful, too. I want to help my people, too. So, no, Petra, I’m not leaving.”
Petra started to protest.
“Isn’t it strange?” Sadie laughed. “Neel and I aren’t related by blood at all, and yet we’re so alike.”
“I don’t think blood matters much.”
Sadie rested a hand on Petra’s, the one with the scar. “There’s something your rebel friends should know. There’s no point blowing up things to convince Emperor Karl to name Frederic as his heir. Gray Men have already been sent into Hungary to kill Frederic just like they killed Rodolfo’s other brother. Prince Rodolfo will become heir to the empire. It’s only a matter of time.”
Even though it was only yesterday that Petra had thought that she couldn’t let herself care about this very matter, her heart leaped with fear at Sadie’s words.
“I’m spying for the Roma,” Sadie continued, “not for you. But if I hear something about Fiala Broshek, I will let you know.”
It took a great deal of strength for Petra to shake her head. “I’ll find out what I need to know another way. Go home, Sadie.”
Sadie spoke as if she hadn’t heard. “I’m not doing this because you asked me to, but because I want to. You have to be careful, Petra. The prince suspects you’re in the country.”
Petra nodded. She wasn’t surprised.
Sadie stood to leave, and Petra tried one last time, “Sadie, please—”
Sadie cocked her head, and for a flash of a second she truly did look like Neel. “I’ll go home if you come with me.”
Petra shut her mouth.
Sadie smiled. “Goodbye, Petra.”
31
The Assassin
NEEL REMEMBERED SOMETHING Petra had once told him: that the earth spins around the sun, not the other way around. It seemed like a screwy idea. It was the opposite of what everyone believed. But Neel’s thoughts turned around that clear crystal bead he had found the night he’d been pushed off the palace wall, and he began to wonder if thinking the opposite of what made sense could, in the end, make sense.
If someone wants your heart on a dagger, what should you do?
Why, protect yourself.
And if you think that person’s drinking down one cup of rage after another, hating you more every day, what should you do?
Find the source of the anger and stop it. Stop needling this person. Stop digging your own grave.
Neel, though, wasn’t sure he agreed with what made sense. In fact, as he propped an elbow on his bedroom windowsill and mused at the moon, his chin cradled on a fist, he rather thought that he should be doing the opposite. And why not? Why not make himself as vulnerable as could be?
How best to spark a third attempt to kill him?
Neel shifted, and his sleeve grazed over something on the windowsill that made a faint, gritty noise. Dust. The wind had blown some of that red-brown dust through the window. Though Neel couldn’t quite see it in the moonlight, he was sure he’d just smeared a good bit of dust on his shirt. There’d be a stain, and it’d be devilishly hard to get out. Karim wasn’t going to like that. He’d practically wept when he saw the tunic Neel had been wearing the night he was tossed off the palace wall. The shirt had been shredded, and stained across the chest with reddish dirt from when Neel had pulled himself over the wall and had lain flat on the terrace.
A sudden idea made Neel stand up very straight. He fetched a candle from his nightstand and touched a match to the wick. He traced a finger through the fine layer of dust on the sill and looked at it. He thought of the crystal bead. He thought of the dust. And Neel knew he had been following the wrong clue.
He hoisted himself onto the sill and climbed out his window.
* * *
ONE BY ONE, Neel climbed through the open windows of rooms all over the palace. He crept past the sleeping forms of Tarn, Shaida, Jasmine, Arun, Gita, and Karim, and even after he had found what he was looking for, he riffled through the wardrobes in each room to make certain.
He now knew who had tried to kill him.
When Neel slipped back through his own window, his blood pulsed with an almost joyous feeling. At first he thought it was satisfaction with his own sneaky self. But then Neel remembered how he’d felt when he’d found the pair of crystal-beaded slippers, whose soles were stained with red-brown dust. He’d felt relieved.
He had been right not to search the room of one other person who could have poisoned his food. He hadn’t even realized, until then, that the whispers of the court had planted a tiny black mustard seed of doubt in him. But he had been right. It could never have been his mother.
It was him. Neel should have known it was him.
Neel had noiselessly set the slippers in the exact place he’d found them and returned to his room.
As he lay in his bed and used invisible fingers to play absently with the white mosquito net, Neel pondered his next step. He was a king. He knew the criminal. Neel could name him, and jail him, and no one could question his decision. That was his right.
But dusty slippers are a pretty flimsy piece of proof. Reddish dust always blew somewhere in the Vatra, a few times a month. It wasn’t rare to have red-soled shoes, and though the combination of that with crystal beads proved something to Neel, he imagined how his courtiers would see things. They’d see a young king they didn’t trust accusing someone they did, based on the evidence of some dirty shoes.
Neel’s mind spun back to the idea he’d had earlier that night: to provoke another attack. Now he knew how.
* * *
NEEL SUMMONED THE TRIBE LEADERS and his advisers to the throne room. He’d refused to let Karim choose his clothes. Neel had dressed in shades of yellow, the Lovari color, and laughed at Karim when the man sputtered, then pleaded, then looked gloomy.
“So”—Neel slouched in his throne, and threw one leg over the side—“I’ve been thinking. It’s time I made my mark.”
“What do you mean?” Gita asked warily.
Neel pulled the Jewel of the Kalderash from his ear and began to juggle it from one hand to the other. Gita gasped. Karim covered his eyes. Tarn raised a suspicious brow, and Jasmine looked amused. Shaida and Arun did not.
“Well,” Neel continued, “I’ve only got a year and a half left to be king. Next time I get a turn to run things, I’ll be almost twenty-nine years old. So I’ve got to bake my bread while the fire’s hot. Every time a ruler takes the Romany throne, there’s a chance to change decisions other kings and queens have made. Some things, though, can’t be changed. Those things ar
e a king’s legacy. It’s time I gave the Roma something to remember me by.”
“You gave us the globes,” said Shaida.
“Yeah,” Neel drawled. The sapphire glittered in the air as it fell to his open palm. “It was a nice start. But I want to build something.”
The Kalderash in the room—Arun, Gita, and Karim—perked up.
“A wonderful idea.” Karim sounded relieved. “Your tribe will be pleased. A new building will put money in Kalderash pockets. What did you have in mind?”
“A theater for the Lovari.”
Someone gasped. His advisers’ faces went blank, then flashed anger. Jasmine grinned. Tarn shot his cousin an irritated look. “You don’t stop stirring trouble, do you?”
“Nope. Which brings me to my topic: John Dee.” The sapphire traced a blue arc from one hand to the other.
Now everyone in the room looked worried. “That problem needs to be contained,” said Arun. “The gadje can never leave this island, or the whole world will learn of the Vatra’s existence and location.”
“You should consider having him executed,” said Gita.
“Nah,” said Neel. “We’re going to accept him as the English ambassador, and send a Roma to England in his place.”
There was a silence.
“Neel,” Tarn said quietly. “If you open the doors to the world, no one will be able to close them.”
“I know. That’s my legacy.” Neel caught the sapphire again. This time, he held it.
“Your mother never would have wanted this,” Arun hissed.
“You mean Queen Iona? You’re right. She would have hated the idea. But the dead can’t hate, or love, or speak. She’s gone. You’ve got me. And this is my decision.”
Arun’s hands clenched at his sides. “You selfish, stupid brat.” The man’s fists jerked open, and snatched a set of daggers that had been hidden in his clothes. He launched himself at Neel and smashed the king off his throne.
Neel flung out his hands. He snatched a knife by its blade, wrenching it away with ghost fingers that no edge could cut. He leaped to his feet. Arun swiped at Neel’s neck with his other knife, but Neel danced back, nimble on his toes as he’d always been, as any Lovari should be. Then Neel stepped close. He ducked Arun’s blade, gripped the man’s wrist with invisible fingers, and twisted Arun’s arm.