The tension drained from Neel’s body. He felt wobbly, as if the stress of the moment had been his skeleton, and now it was gone, leaving only soft, vulnerable flesh.
He left the royal chamber and found Damara waiting for him outside its doors.
The sight of her made his spine stiffen once more, and that was what gave him the strength to keep walking, to walk away, to walk down the hall without a word, without one backward glance at the woman who had raised him.
* * *
THE CHANGES WERE RAPID, and Neel hated them. The royal adviser, Arun, was to blame.
Arun had several guards ambush Neel, hold him down, and cut his hair.
He thrust a pile of richly dyed silks at Neel, saying he wasn’t leaving his room until the boy looked the part of the heir to the throne. Neel’s heart leaped with glee when he saw the clothes—he loved finery—but he hid his pleasure with a scowl that plainly said he wouldn’t be told what to do.
Arun told him anyway. He appointed a thin, eager man named Karim to give Neel manners lessons and advise him on courtly procedure. Another adviser, Gita, was an elderly woman who would instruct him in international politics. Both advisers were Kalderash, like Arun, who lectured Neel for hours on end about the very different skills and needs of each tribe—as if Neel didn’t know that the Roma were a fractured people. Even if they shared an “it’s us against the world” attitude, they didn’t always have a lot in common. This was obvious.
The worst, the very worst thing Arun did to Neel was insist that guards be stationed outside his door at all times, and follow him everywhere. They were a shell of armor around him, and no one Neel cared about could get inside. He had never felt so alone.
One night in December, almost a month after the Pacolet had reached the Vatran shore, Neel lay in his new, unnervingly large bed. He heard a dim ruckus outside his door, and raised voices. He sat up, and had almost snatched a dagger from under the sheets, when moonlight from an open window caught a silvery twinkle by the crack below the bedroom door.
It was Astrophil, glittering his way across the floor. Neel jumped from the bed and met the spider halfway, crouching to lift the tin creature up to eye level. “What’s going on, Astro? Who’s getting rowsy out there? Petra?”
Astrophil shook his head. “She is asleep. Tomik is outside your door. He wishes to see you, because—”
Neel had heard enough. He stalked to the door and flung it open to see Tomik bucking against the guards’ grasp. “Let him in,” Neel told the guards.
“Arun said no visitors,” one of them replied.
“Well, I say let him in.”
The guards did not let Tomik go.
“Who’s in charge here?” Neel demanded.
“Queen Iona,” the guards chorused.
“Yeah, and how long is she gonna last? She seems awful sickly to me.”
Silence.
“When she snuffs it,” Neel said, “then who’s in charge?”
One of them muttered, “You.”
“That’s right. Me. And I’ve got my likes and dislikes, and right now I don’t like you. I’m going to remember this, when I’m king. So if I were in your smelly shoes, I’d be working hard to get into the heir’s good graces. That is, if I were smart. Are you smart?”
Silence.
“Now,” said Neel, “who’s in charge?”
“You,” the guards said sullenly.
“Then let. My friend. In.”
They obeyed, but one of the guards couldn’t resist giving Tomik a good shove over the threshold, and another slammed the door shut. Neel bit his lip.
He might have to pay for this.
“Thanks,” said Tomik.
“What’re you two doing creeping around at this time of night?”
“No one will let us near you,” said Astrophil. “Petra has been trying to see you for more than a week—”
“How come you’re here without her?” Neel peered at the spider on his palm. “It’s weird. Seeing you right now, away from her … it’s like seeing a part of her that’s come loose.”
Astrophil stood as tall as he could. “I am helping Tomik. He has an idea. He would like you to—”
“Talk Petra out of her loony plan. Well, Tom, I know how you feel, but it’s not going to happen. Don’t you see that her plan is all she’s got, and that the guilt of doing nothing to help her da would be worse, to her, than anything she might face in Bohemia? She won’t change her mind.”
“Yes,” Tomik said heavily, “I know. That’s why I’m going with her.”
“We will protect her,” Astrophil squeaked.
“Oh. Well, I’m going, too, of course,” said Neel. “This whole gimcracky king thing’s just a way for us to get a boat, some fleet horses, and—”
Tomik shook his head. “Listen,” he said, and explained his idea.
“Oooh,” said Neel. “That’d make the Vatra crazy. They’d hate me.”
Astrophil’s tin legs sagged with disappointment. Tomik’s face fell.
“I’ll do it,” said Neel.
* * *
QUEEN IONA DIED in her sleep several days later. Some people muttered that this was far too easy and peaceful an end for someone who had used her last breath of life to stir up as much trouble as she could. Others said she had suffered her painful disease long enough, and no one could guess what she might have suffered inside to live her life as she had. But few shed any tears for her. Certainly not Neel.
He was crowned with a fanfare that he found surprisingly boring. As he walked in a procession through the Vatran streets and finally returned to the palace to sit in his throne as courtiers played music and threw flower petals, it occurred to Neel that, not so long ago, he would have craved to be the center of attention.
Neel scanned the crowd. There were Petra and Tomik, on the fringes. Astrophil was a bright star in Petra’s hair. Damara was there, too, farther back, her cheeks shining with tears.
Neel looked away.
Arun—his adviser now—opened the gold hoop in Neel’s ear, and Neel felt a pang as he saw the small circle disappear into the man’s pocket. It was just a trinket, he told himself, something he’d nicked long ago from a Moroccan market. It was nothing. Nothing compared to the Jewel of the Kalderash.
Arun slipped the sapphire earring through the pierced hole the hoop had left behind. He fastened it with a sharp pinch that made Neel wince.
Everyone cheered.
“Hey!” Neel stood. “Pipe down! I’ve got something to say.”
The crowd quieted.
“This is … uh, an important day.” Neel felt a snaky kind of nervousness. Had he really once liked to have everyone’s eyes on him? He reached with his invisible fingers—Danior’s Fingers—to touch the jewel that had belonged to Danior. His ancestor. The sapphire was cool beneath his ghostly fingertip. “And I want to do something to com—commemorate it. I want to give a gift.”
Startled, the crowd began to whisper.
“Tomas Stakan,” Neel called. “Come here.”
Tomik pushed his way through the crowd, his tanned skin glaringly different from the darker tones of the Roma. Everyone stared.
When Tomik stood before him, Neel said, “I give you the Terrestrial and Celestial Globes.”
The gasps of the crowd rang in Neel’s ears.
“You’re mad!”
That was Treb, storming right up to the throne, shoving guards out of his way. “Neel, why would you give them to Tom? Why would you do such a stupid, gadje-loving thing?”
“So that he can destroy them,” said Neel.
9
Tomik’s Idea
PETRA BURST THROUGH Tomik’s bedroom door and caught him with the globes on a large worktable, and a small saw in his hand. “What is going on?” she demanded. “Did you know Neel would do that?” After Neel’s announcement, the crowd had roiled with shocked anger, and Petra had watched, helplessly straining against the current of people, as Neel and Tomik left the throne room
under heavy guard.
Tomik dropped the saw to the table and rubbed tiredly at his brow. “No. Yes. I mean, I asked him, and he said he’d give me the globes, but I didn’t expect him to do it then, or like that.” He shook his head. “He’s such a show-off.”
“It will make him very unpopular,” said Astrophil.
“You asked him if you could destroy the globes, and … he agreed?” Petra’s hand strayed across the red fabric of her sleeveless dress to touch her shoulder, where a fencing scar stood out like a brand. She had earned that scar fighting for a globe.
“I’m not going to destroy them.” Tomik glanced at the handsaw. “Well, fine. Yes, I am. But I have an idea. I couldn’t tell you before—in fact, I wish we weren’t talking about this now—because I didn’t—I don’t want to get your hopes up. I wanted to wait until I was done, but…”
“Tomik.”
“I want to replicate the globes.”
Petra stared.
“Oh,” Tomik said in a low voice. “You don’t think I can do it.”
“Do you know—” Petra’s voice cracked. “Do you know what this looks like? It looks like you’re trying to ruin the one thing that might help me get home.”
“Petra, don’t you trust me?”
Have some faith in me, Kit had told her, sometime soon after he had kissed her, and soon before he had stabbed her deep in the shoulder.
“I’m not sure I can,” she whispered, and left.
She stood for some time outside Tomik’s closed door. Then she heard it: the rhythmic, dry whine of a saw cutting through wood and paper.
She forced herself to walk away slowly, but as the sound grew fainter it cut more deeply at her heart, tearing at a hope she would never have dared admit, would never have let see the light of day, because she would never have asked Neel for his kingdom’s greatest treasure.
Petra, Astrophil murmured in her mind. Tomik would never betray you.
She didn’t know. She just didn’t know, and there was so much she didn’t know. An overwhelming awareness of her ignorance crashed over her in a great wave. Who was Petra Kronos, to think of slipping close to the Bohemian prince and kidnapping his most valued magician?
She had gifts—she knew this. She could fence like a sword was part of her body. And she had magic. A feel for metal. Glimpses, sometimes, of the future or someone else’s thoughts.
Yet she was no master. None of her gifts was strong enough. None of them showed her whether Tomik was telling the truth. None of them promised she could save her father.
Her feet picked up pace, and Petra followed them out of the palace, down, down, down the city streets, and deep into the darkest dark she had ever seen.
In the depths of the cave, four lights sprang to life around her head.
“She has returned!” a Meti squealed.
“Why?” said another.
“Indeed, brother, why? I thought she did not like us.”
“Please—” Petra said. She tried again. “Please—”
The Meti with the softest voice said, “Little woman, young braveling, why are you here?”
“Teach me,” Petra said.
10
Gifts
NEEL WAS SLINKING DOWN a palace passageway, eager to escape the hordes of angry courtiers, when a hand reached out and touched his arm.
It was his mother.
No, he told himself, it’s Damara. He instantly regretted he had succeeded in commanding his guards not to follow him everywhere. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. Not alone. He didn’t want to stand in front of this woman and realize that somehow he had grown taller than her. He didn’t want the emotions that realization unleashed inside him.
“Neel,” she said. “You can’t do this. You can’t give away the globes.”
“Can’t I?” His voice was taunting. “I’m the king!”
Her black eyes narrowed. Neel recognized that look. It was the one she usually gave before smacking the back of his head for doing something dumb.
“Anyway,” he said, “it’s done. Tom’s a quick one. I bet he’s already sliced ’em open by now.”
Damara briefly covered her face. “As it is, people don’t want you to be king. After this … Neel, you can’t afford to be seen as a boy being used by a pair of gadje.”
“I am not a boy.”
“This is about how you are seen. You—”
“It was my choice to give Tom the globes. Mine. I deserve my choices. Especially after you tried to take them all away.”
“I didn’t—”
“You kept the greatest secret of my life from me,” Neel said, yet he didn’t voice the fear that simmered below his hurt, the fear that there was something else Damara wasn’t telling him. He didn’t ask, If you kept that secret so long, why did you let it come out? Was it because you have something at stake? What do you want, Ma, now that I’m king? People will try to use me, sure as sure.
Will you?
Damara looked as if the wind had been knocked out of her.
Quietly, Neel said, “I wish Sadie were here.” He missed his older sister, who was sweet, and kind, and would so easily mend things between him and his mother.
“I do, too. But—”
“Don’t say it. Don’t say what everybody says, that it’s good she’s stuck in Prague. That spying on the Bohemian prince is the best thing she could do for her people. Don’t.”
“I was going to say something you’d like even less.”
“Oh, yeah? Out with it, then.”
“I’m sure you did want to give the globes away. I know you.” She gave him a small smile. “It’s not easy to make you do something against your will. But if you love Sadie, you have to stop thinking about what you want.”
For a moment he couldn’t speak. “If I?” he choked out. “If I love her?”
“Neel, we live in dangerous times. Thousands of our people are locked inside Prince Rodolfo’s prison. The choices you make as king will affect Sadie, and every Roma. They need you. They need you to stop thinking only about yourself and what you want.”
Neel stared. “You don’t know me at all,” he said coldly.
He walked away.
* * *
A WEEK WENT BY, then two. Neel avoided Tomik, because he couldn’t bear the thought that he had made a terrible mistake in giving his friend the globes. Tomik was gifted, but would he really be able to do what he planned with the glass spheres inside the globes?
As for Petra … Neel didn’t avoid her. But she was elusive. Sometimes he saw her shadow slip around a corner of the palace. Sometimes he’d meet her silver eyes across a distance and be surprised, as he always was, by their unusual color. He’d think that they looked like something precious, like moonlight, maybe, and by the time he’d finished that thought she’d glance away again. Then she was gone.
Petra unsettled him. He wasn’t sure why. He supposed it was because everything unsettled him these days.
One day, he caught a glimpse of her dark brown braid as she crossed the wooden bridge over the river Neel had plunged into the very first time they’d entered the palace. Her figure dwindled as she headed toward the doors that would take her down to the city.
Neel bunched the hem of his blue silk jacket into a fist, then let it go. He stopped a servant and demanded they exchange shirts.
He had to wear something a lot less flashy if he was going to follow her.
* * *
WHEN NEEL SAW HER disappear into the Metis’ cave, he ducked behind a natural pillar of rock that served to hitch several hardy beach ponies. Neel waited for hours as the horses whickered and nudged at him with their velvety noses.
Petra emerged from the cave as the sun was setting, her face distant and thoughtful. Astrophil bounced on her shoulder, trying to get her attention.
Well, Neel thought. He would get her attention.
His ghostly fingers unfurled and stretched, reaching their very limit. The tips of his flesh and blood fingers ach
ed a little, feeling the tug of the ghosts. Just as the pain began to sear him, and it felt like the ghosts might rip away, Neel touched the tip of Petra’s nose with one invisible finger.
She whirled around, and he chuckled. “Neel!” she cried.
“Who, me?” He stepped out from behind the pillar.
She smirked as he walked toward her. “Good thing you didn’t try staying hidden. I would have found you.”
“Nah. Don’t think so.”
“Truly.” Astrophil pointed one leg at him. “She would have. Had she tried.”
The smug looks on their faces made Neel realize that there would have been something special in the way Petra might have ferreted out his hiding place. He glanced back at the mouth of the Metis’ cave. “Petali,” he said slowly, “what have you been up to?”
Her smile grew wider.
Neel slipped his hand into hers—his real hand. He felt her skin with his skin and thought about how different that felt. He could touch things with the Gift of Danior’s Fingers, of course, but this … felt different. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
* * *
THEY CLIMBED A TREE that grew out of a cliff and sat in its branches, looking at the wide green sea.
“You go there every day, all day, don’t you, Pet?” Neel said.
She nodded. The wind pulled a dark lock of her hair from its braid and danced it on a breeze.
Neel caught it, then let it fly again. “Tell me your secret.”
“It’s not a secret. It’s just … Fiala Broshek must have the answer to my father’s cure. I need to talk with her. And I can’t stand waiting.”
“Petra, we have been over this before,” said Astrophil. “Which is better? To leave right away with a boat and make our way slowly to Bohemia, or to give Tomik some time to work on the globes? If he succeeds, we can travel home almost instantly. Be reasonable.”
“Maybe Tomik won’t succeed,” Petra said in a dark voice. “Maybe he doesn’t really want to.”
“That’s silly.” Neel was startled. “Why would he…? Oh. To keep you here.” He shook his head, trying to dislodge an instant doubt. “No. Tom wouldn’t do that.”
The Jewel of the Kalderash Page 5
