“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.
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.”