The Cabinet of Wonders

by Marie Rutkoski

  Petra told Neel everything that had happened since she began working in the Thinkers’ Wing. She explained how she had tried to explore other levels of the castle but was stopped by guards. She described Iris and her acid condition. She told him about the prince’s birthday. “Someone like him would have his birthday on Halloween. Think he’ll come to his party dressed as a devil?”

  “You’re supposed to dress like something you’re not, so I wager you a krona he’ll come as a normal person.” Neel looked thoughtfully at the gray animal. “What you need to do, Pet, is make Iris give you the nod to go anywhere in the castle. She can’t be walking pell-mell down every hall, can she? She could have one of those—what do you call em—acid attacks. If she’s so set on inventing a new color, well, you just tell her that you need to get something for her that’s in a different part of the castle. She’s some sort of lady, right? She can give you a pass or a seal or something so you can go past the guards. It won’t be easy for me to snoop around the place, though I got my ways. The best thing for you to do is figure out where the prince stashes his goods. Then we break in the night of the party.”

  Neel’s plan was good. It was artful. It was downright devious. But it also presented Petra with a challenge. Could she think of a way to contribute to his idea? To match its cleverness? Even as part of her wondered why she needed the respect of a thief, she searched for a way to gain it. A thought struck her. “The castle must be huge. I can’t look into every single room and cupboard for my father’s eyes. So you know what we need to do? We need to find someone who feels guilty.”

  Neel gave her a confused stare, so she explained what she had in mind.

  After he had heard her plan, he nodded. “That’ll do. That’ll do all right. But you’re not going to break into a room alone. There’s no point using your boot to crush a snake’s tail when my bare foot’ll stamp out its head just fine.”

  She looked at him.

  “That is: leave breaking and entering to the experts.”

  They turned to leave the garden. The iron door swung behind them and locked in place.

  A tall man stepped from behind a row of trees several feet away from the cages. He walked out onto the path and stared at the shut door. He recognized the boy: he was one of the Gypsies working in the stables. As for the girl: she looked like every other servant girl in her gray-blue dress, though her hair was shorter than usual. He hadn’t had a good view of her face. But something told him that he should know who she was.

  Whoever she was, she and the Gypsy had no right to be in the garden. When he was watching them from behind the trees, their low-voiced conversation struck him as suspicious. But he hadn’t been able to make out what they were saying.

  He approached the cage. What were they talking about? he asked the elephant.

  Well, I suppose I could tell you. The gray beast munched its leaves and swung its trunk up to snare another mouthful. But I don’t think I will.

  Jarek sighed with exasperation. Elephants are such difficult creatures.

  18

  The Reader and Rodolfinium

  PETRA AND IRIS were behind the black curtain, working in almost total darkness. This was where they handled lightsensitive materials or conducted experiments with colors that you can see only in the dark. Shelves were stacked with bottles of delicate dyes. Some of them glowed. On the other side of the table where Petra and Iris worked, their backs to the curtain, was a door. Once, Petra had tried to open it and Iris snapped, “Who magically transformed you into me, that you think you can sashay your way anywhere you please in my laboratory?”

  The Countess of Krumlov was now seated in her adamantine chair, watching Petra mix powders and set flames under various brass bowls.

  Petra said casually, as if she were just making conversation, “I noticed that we don’t have any heliodor on the shelves.”

  “What the devil would we do with heliodor?”

  Petra’s father worked mainly with silver, copper, tin, iron, and sometimes gold. These are most commonly thought of as kinds of metals, and indeed they are. But they are also part of a vast system of minerals that include jewels and semiprecious stones, like amethysts, jade, diamonds, and other kinds of crystal and rock. Minerals can be decorative, or they can be made into useful things, even dangerous things. Arsenic, for example, is a mineral as well as a poison. Mikal Krono used to quiz his daughter about the many different kinds of minerals, not just common metals. Petra decided to put this knowledge to good use.

  “Well,” she said offhandedly, stirring a maroon mixture, “I’ve heard that heliodor can make liquids sparkle if added in the right way.”

  Iris was silent.

  “We don’t have a lot of minerals on hand,” Petra continued. “I haven’t seen any jordanite in our stores, or hematite, dravite, xenotine—”

  “We can’t have every chunk of rock that’s been scratched out of the earth! Some of these things are quite difficult to come by. And their usefulness is by no means proven.”

  Petra lit a fire under the bowl of reddish-brown dye. She stirred quietly. Then she said, “Well, if you don’t want to try …”

  “I don’t want to waste my time!”

  The brick-colored liquid thickened. Iris peered into the bowl and said, “Add some chalk.”

  Petra tipped in a spoonful of the white powder and said, “We could do some research beforehand, couldn’t we? Isn’t there a library in the castle?”

  Ah, the library! Astrophil sighed dreamily in Petra’s mind.

  Iris pursed her lips. “Well, I suppose you could fetch me a few books on the properties of minerals. After we’re done with this batch of Mayan red.”

  After they were finished, Petra left the Dye Works and waited outside the closed door. She did not want to arouse Iris’s suspicion in any way, so she thought she would make it seem as if a pass to enter another level of the castle was the furthest thing from her mind. After a good few minutes in the dark corridor, she opened the door and complained, “The guards won’t let me pass.”

  “Oh, bother.” Iris grabbed a sheet of parchment and a pot of ink. She wrote, “Third Floor Clearance.” Then she signed it and stamped it with the Krumlov seal. A design of a white ermine now marked the paper.

  “Will the library let me take books out?”

  “Bother!” Iris scribbled a postscript.

  Petra strolled toward the door with the note, as if she were not interested in the slightest in going to the library.

  “Well, hurry along, won’t you? You’re not made of molasses!” Iris called as Petra shut the door behind her.

  THINGS WERE VERY DIFFERENT on the third floor. The hallway ceiling was golden pink and the blue carpet was plush. It took Petra a moment to realize that the carpet was rippling under her feet in gentle waves. The wallpaper on either side seemed plain blue, but as Petra walked farther she could see a many-sailed ship floating off to her right. She heard a gull screech. She stroked the marble that bordered the doors. The stone was riddled with holes. Some of them were tiny bubbles. Others were deep enough for Petra’s finger to wiggle inside.

  That is travertine marble, Astrophil informed her. The fissures were made by water.

  Many of the doors that appeared in the stretch of sky-colored wallpaper were shut, but as Petra passed she peered into rooms where the doors stood ajar. She saw a salon with long, silk-colored divans. She gazed into an immense ballroom with cathedral windows. Many servants fluttered around the ballroom, and several gray-blue men and women were crouched on its wooden floor, polishing it until it gleamed.

  Soon she reached a large double door made from oak. The word Bibliotheca was carved above the doors in blocky Gothic letters.

  There it is! cried Astrophil. He bounced up and down on her ear.

  Calm down, will you?

  Across the doors was a large carving, showing an old man sitting in the dirt with a stick in his hand, drawing something. Far behind him, soldiers were crashing into one another with s
words and shields. And right behind the man was a muscular soldier with a raised sword.

  What’s that all about? Petra was curious. The scene had nothing to do with books.

  That is Archimedes. He was a Greek scientist and mathematician. See: he is so preoccupied with his idea that he is writing notes in the dirt while the Greeks and Romans war behind him. He was so dedicated to his work that he did not even notice that a Roman had come to kill him. He died for his idea.

  Was the scene supposed to be a warning? Or was Archimedes supposed to be some kind of role model? Whatever the case may be, Petra did not like the carving. She pushed open one door. It swung widely.

  She stood in a room the size of a large closet. Directly in front of her sat a man in a high-backed, stuffed brocade chair. His desk was short, small, and bare aside from a long bar that read, SIR HUMFREY VITEK, ESQ. The man was heavyset, and about her father’s age. He wore a wig, spectacles, and a black robe trimmed with scarlet piping. He hadn’t noticed Petra, but was staring into space, his eyes flicking left, then right, then left, then right.

  The door Petra had opened began to groan backward. It thudded into place. Sir Humfrey jumped. “What? What?” Then, adjusting his spectacles, he focused on Petra. “Well, miss, who might you be?”

  “Viera.”

  “Well, Miss Viera, I don’t mean to be rude … but are you quite sure that you mean to be here? You see, I was just reading some exquisite Persian sonnets about a desert flower called the selenrose. I was feeling so restful.” He wrung his hands, folded them, and sighed. “If you don’t have a library pass I shall have to call the guards, which would disrupt my sense of tranquillity. The rules say I must call the guards in cases like these. But it seems to me to be an unnecessary action to take for such a little thing as yourself.”

  “I’m looking for the library.” She scanned the room, but it was utterly empty. There were no other doors besides the ones she had just stepped through. “Is this it? Where are the books?”

  This is most disappointing, said Astrophil, hurt.

  “All the books are here, in a sense,” replied Sir Humfrey.

  Petra glanced again at the blank walls. “Sure. Right”

  “They are here.” He tapped his forehead. “At least, one copy of everything except books specifically banned by the Lion’s Paw to the eyes of anyone but Prince Rodolfo. I have a delightful job, really. I get to greet lovers of literature and history. And when no one comes, I am never lonely. I can read away.” His gaze drifted from Petra and he stared off into space as if there were an invisible page before him. Then he looked at Petra again. “But you shan’t make me call the guards, I hope? That would be so unpleasant.”

  “My mistress sent me.” Petra held out Iris’s letter. “Won’t this work as a pass?”

  Sir Humfrey’s eyes widened when he saw the ermine stamp. “Is this from the Countess of Krumlov?” Petra nodded.

  “Oh, my.” He stared at the letter in Petra’s hand. He reached out a finger and then drew it back.

  Realizing what made him so hesitant, Petra said, “If she had been acidic when she wrote it, the letter would have burned up. There’s nothing wrong with the paper.”

  He looked a little sheepish. “Yes, of course.” He took the letter and studied it. “All right, then. Yes, everything seems to be in order.” He passed back the paper. “Go on ahead.” He waved at the blank wall behind him.

  “Sir?”

  “Oh, I am sorry. I am so absentminded.” He shook his head, then leaned across his desk and touched his nameplate. The back wall vanished.

  “Let me know if you need anything,” Sir Humfrey whispered. “And remember: keep your voice low, pianissimo”

  Now, this was more like what Mikal Kronos had described. The ceiling was rocky. Silent birds swooped above. Shelves many times taller than Petra flanked either side of the library. A woman approached a nearby shelf and pulled a lever. The stacks silently yawned open, revealing whatever hidden treasure she was seeking. A handful of readers studied at desks lit by the green glow of brassica-fueled lamps.

  After consulting a map on the wall of how the books were arranged, Petra went to the natural history section. Using a railed ladder that had a silence spell on it, Petra climbed up to gather a few likely books on minerals and their uses.

  Stay under my hair, she sternly ordered Astrophil. Don’t even think about gallivanting all over the library.

  You have become joyless in your time here at the castle. I prefer the old, fun-loving Petra.

  She stepped down the ladder and was about to return to the entrance when she realized that someone was watching her.

  He was a reader. His robes, like Sir Humfrey’s, were black. His brown hair and beard were long, flowing down his back and chest. There was a buzz of energy about him, and he didn’t stare at Petra the way humans normally do. A human looks away when he is caught secretly gazing at someone. His brown eyes watched her the way a fox watches anything, waiting to see what the thing moving across its territory will do first.

  Petra turned her back on him, unnerved. She walked toward Sir Humfrey, trying to keep her pace steady. When she approached Sir Humfrey’s desk, the blank wall appeared behind her, and her shoulders sank with relief.

  The librarian noted down the books she was taking. “There you go.” He handed the small pile to her.

  “There was a man in there …” Petra described the reader who had stared at her. “Who is he?”

  “Ah, that would be Master John Dee. He’s the ambassador from England. A very learned man. He speaks many languages, even dead ones.”

  Despite her plan, Petra did not feel eager to return to the third floor, if the third floor held Master Dee.

  BUT RETURN SHE DID. Luckily, she did not see John Dee again during her third-floor excursions. Unluckily, it did not seem that what she really wanted was on the third floor: bedrooms.

  “Well, I could have told you that,” Sadie said. “The private chambers of anyone of rank are on the fourth floor. That’s where I work.”

  They were at dinner, talking quietly amid the uproar of hundreds of men, women, boys, and girls. Dana, one of Sadie’s friends, had finally turned away from them to tell anyone else who would listen about her latest crush. Petra seized the opportunity to ask Sadie for a favor.

  “Can you find out something for me?” Petra asked casually, reaching for the large bowl of stewed cabbage.

  Sadie’s face grew wary. She lowered her fork. “What?”

  “Have you ever heard of something called a Worry Vial?”

  When Sadie shook her head, Petra began to explain what the vial was, and what it looked like. “The darker it is, the better. Would you tell me if you see one that looks really purple, and whose room it’s in?”

  “Petra, you’re going to get into so much trouble. Don’t you understand that you could get really hurt? You should go back to your village.”

  “I’m not going to take anyone’s Worry Vial. I swear.” Petra crossed her heart in mock solemnity. “Anyway,” she continued lightly, “the worst thing that could possibly happen is that someone will catch me cleaning a room where I don’t really belong. Then I’d just say that I’m sick of working for Iris. That’s believable. I could claim that I’m hoping to prove myself in a new position as a chambermaid. Maybe I’d get fired, but I won’t get sent to prison. Hey, will you pass me the salt?”

  Sadie shook her head. “Don’t try to pretend that we’re not talking about something truly dangerous, Petra. If the Worry Vial works the way you say it does, don’t you think that if they catch you playing with some powerful lord’s vial, they’ll be a tiny bit suspicious?”

  Petra shrugged. “As far as anyone knows, Worry Vials are foolproof. And the gentry don’t expect people like me to even know that the vial is anything other than a decorative vase. If someone sees me handling a vial, I’ll just say I’m dusting it.”

  “You’re going to do it whether I help you or not, aren’t you?”
/>   “Yes. But it’d take me a lot longer. I’d have to search dozens of rooms. Of course, I’m more likely to get caught that way. But what else can I do?”

  That worked.

  A few days later, when they were tucked under their wool blankets in the darkness, Sadie whispered, “Try the captain of the guard’s private chambers. Fourth floor, northwest corner. The doorknob is shaped like a boar’s head. But it’s usually locked. I don’t know how you’ll get in. And I won’t help you do that.”

  “Is the vial dark purple?”

  Sadie paused before replying. “It’s black.”

  “THE POWDERED BERYL does absolutely nothing!” Iris pressed her forehead against her fist. “The dye is still yellow.”

  The gap of time between now and the birthday celebration was narrowing, and as they worked harder on the production of a new primary color, Iris grew ever more distressed.

  “It’s not that yellow,” Petra tried to comfort her.

  “I could fill my chamber pot with that dye!”

  I think you are going about this in the wrong way, Astrophil commented. You keep mixing things together in the hope that you are going to produce a color that cannot be made by blending other colors. Do you not think that you should look for one thing that can produce one color?

  Petra repeated Astrophil’s suggestion to Iris as if it were her own.

  Iris considered this, and murmured, “Rainbows.”

  “What?”

  “A rainbow is one thing that shows us many colors.”

  “Yes, but we already know what those colors are. There’s nothing new about them.”

  “But sometimes stones seem to have rainbows inside. Like diamonds. A diamond is clear, but if you look closely you can see flashes of rainbow light—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. But what if there’s a color that we haven’t noticed, hidden among the rest?”

  “You want to turn diamonds into dye?” Petra was skeptical. “Don’t be daft! Diamonds are too hard. You can’t grind them or melt them down easily. Perhaps a moonstone.”