Surprised, Neel fumbled with the heart. It dropped to the ground and broke open with an earsplitting BOOM.
The three of them looked at one another.
“Now, I know,” Astrophil said shakily, “that someone heard that.”
26
A Gift Horse
NEEL SWORE SWIFTLY in Romany. He was still cursing in what Petra assumed was a colorful way as he pulled her out of the Cabinet of Wonders. Astrophil leaped to her ear. Petra and Neel ran toward the double doors and shoved them open. Ignoring the roar of the lion and the squeaky bark of the salamander, they pelted down the hallway.
There was a sour taste in Petra’s mouth. But the sick mind-ache of the banium was gone, and relief from the pain made her feel a little giddy. She almost forgot she was in danger. Blood sang in her ears, and she was running too quickly to be really afraid.
Then, just before Petra and Neel were going to do their best to race past the guards blocking the stairs to the third floor, she saw a small group of soldiers bearing down on them from another hallway. Following right behind them, his face rigid with fury, was Prince Rodolfo. A quaking fear seized Petra. She skidded to a halt and froze.
“Pet!” Neel had spun around, staring at her. “Petra!”
His voice shook her out of her panicky trance. She tore off the silk mittens and flung them to the ground. She reached for the hem of her skirt and ripped at an uneven set of stitches. Then she squeezed Tomik’s Marvels into her left hand. “Close your eyes!” she called to Neel and the spider. She snatched the Marvel she had named Firefly. The lightning in the sphere flickered. Aiming for the space on the floor just ahead of the advancing soldiers’ feet, Petra threw the marble and screwed her eyes shut.
BANG! Red light flared behind her closed eyelids. When she opened them, a scene of destruction spread before her. The stone floor was blackened, broken, and heaved up in angular chunks. Some of the men sprawled on the ground. Those who were on their feet staggered, covering their faces with their hands and moaning. A scorched piece of the ceiling fell down with a large thud on a man’s foot. He screamed. Thunder rumbled down the hall.
“Come on!” Neel cried. They ran past the fallen guards and tore down the passageways of the third floor.
But over the pounding of their feet, Neel and Petra could hear another, terrible noise: the thudding, regular rhythm of many soldiers filing from every corner of the castle to capture them.
Petra glanced in her palm at the two marbles. The wasp buzzed. The water sloshed.
“Not the wasp, Petra!” Astrophil shouted in her ear. “The Hive could attack you, too!”
She tucked the Hive in her pocket and dearly hoped that the Bubble would do something useful. Petra threw the water-filled marble, smashing it against the wall behind them.
A tidal wave instantly engulfed the third floor. Petra was submerged under water and pulled by a fierce current. Something smacked against her leg. She felt a sharp pinch of Astrophil on her right ear, and her chest burned from lack of oxygen as she tumbled in the water.
When she finally broke the surface, gasping for air, she saw Neel floating rapidly past her. He clung to a wooden table. “What’re you doing?” he yelled. “Quit throwing those things!”
She struggled to splash toward him. She wasn’t able to make any headway, but as the current pushed them down a flight of stairs and several corridors, the flow of water began to lose its strength, and soon they were able to wade in water that rose only to their thighs, then only to their calves. They were on the second floor, in the Thinkers’ Wing.
They had just begun to think that they might actually be able to escape when they heard the thump of soldiers’ feet coming from up ahead. Neel and Petra exchanged a look of dread.
That was when a door with two handles, one iron and one red, opened.
Iris stepped into the hallway. She glanced down with a little cry to find herself standing in a foot of water, then looked up at Neel and Petra, astonished at their waterlogged clothes, soaked hair plastered to their heads, and dripping faces. “What in the name of the seven planets is going on here?”
“Iris.” Petra waded toward her. “Did you know Mikal Kronos?”
Petra. Astrophil spat out water. This is unwise.
“Why, yes, he used to work down the hall. I—” Iris broke off. Her mouth pursed as she looked at Petra’s face with the expression of someone whose suspicions have been proven true. “And I suppose you know him, too. Rather well, I would guess.”
“I’m his daughter, Petra. My father worked here for six months. But one day, when the clock was almost completed, the prince blinded him. He stole his eyes. I came to this castle to get them back.”
Iris gazed at Petra, uncertain. The thud of soldiers grew closer. “Where do you think the prince got those silver eyes he wears for fun?”
Iris said nothing.
“We have to get out of here! Which way should we go? Please help us. If the castle guards catch us, our lives are worth nothing!”
Desperate, Petra searched for some way to convince Iris that she was telling the truth. “Fiala Broshek removed his eyes, on the prince’s command!”
“Fiala!” The name burst from Iris’s lips. Then she pushed open her door. “Get in here, both of you.”
She slammed the door shut behind them. “Fiala Broshek! Unscrupulous woman! Kristof’s work is nothing compared to the abominations she creates! And the operations she performs! ‘Surgeon,’ she calls herself! Why doesn’t she try seeing what her insides look like for a change!” She led them into her bedchamber. Neel gave Petra a quizzical look. Iris opened the closet door. “Go in there,” she said.
“Um,” Neel objected, “I don’t think hiding’s going to work. They’re going to search the castle when they don’t find us.”
“There’s a stairway in there, you dolt! It leads directly to the castle courtyard.”
Petra looked at Iris in surprise.
“I am a countess, am I not? I deserve to be able to come and go as I please without dealing with the hassles of guards. Well” —she pushed her spectacles up her nose —“I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing each other again, Petra Kronos.”
There was only one thing Petra could do when Iris said that. She gave the old woman a soaking-wet hug.
To someone very unused to being touched, let alone embraced, this came as a shock. She stood still for a moment, then patted Petra awkwardly on the back. “Now, now. Enough of that. You’re going to incriminate me, girl!” They broke apart, and Iris stared down at her newly wet clothes. “The soldiers are going to come around asking if I’ve seen a soggy-wet criminal and here I’ll be, marked with water from hugging the enemy! A fine kettle of fish that will be!” But her smile was warm, gentle, and pleased. “Now, get on with you! Get out of my laboratory!”
Neel plummeted down the stairs. With a glance behind her, Petra followed. They heard the door close behind them.
They soon found themselves in an empty courtyard. Any soldiers who might have been there had, it seemed, entered the castle to find them.
Neel and Petra dashed into the stables. They hid behind a stack of hay, watching as a couple of stable boys cleaned out some stalls, apparently oblivious to the commotion going on inside the castle. Then a third stable boy ran into the building, yelling that they should come out and see the action. He shouted that an army of bandits had broken into the prince’s private chambers, and that a fierce battle complete with explosions was going on inside the castle. The other two boys dropped their rakes and raced out of the stables with him.
Neel and Petra couldn’t believe their luck.
“This one.” Neel led a huge chestnut stallion out of its stall. “Ain’t he a beauty? He can carry both of us. Let’s take him.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” said a deep voice.
They turned around. There was Jarek, leaning against a stall, with narrowed eyes and long jowls.
Neel swung up onto the horse. He beckone
d to Petra. “Come on. I know this man. He can take care of the prince’s horses all right, but he can’t ride better or faster than me.”
But Petra knew that all Jarek had to do was run from the stables, shout for the soldiers, and point them after their galloping horse. The entire castle army would come crashing down on them as they tried to race down the hill, in plain sight. And, Petra realized, as she watched the man chew idly on a stick of straw, Jarek knew this, too.
“So you’re responsible for the jumble and noise in the castle,” he said. “I guess that’s what you two were plotting in the prince’s garden. I suppose you also trussed up that lad I found among the tack. You kids are in a lot of trouble. The kind that ends with a death sentence.”
Petra and Neel had done so much, planned so well, had the luck to escape so many bad situations, only to be caught by a man who had treated Petra’s father as if he were a bundle of sticks tossed in the back of his cart. Unfair! Unfair! cried every fiber of Petra’s being. “Why?” she demanded, her voice thick with emotion. “Why does it have to be you who ruins everything for me?”
“But it’s not over,” Neel yelled. “Enough talking, Pet! Let’s go!”
“Yes, enough talking.” Jarek stood up straight. “I didn’t hurt your da. I just took him home for a bit of money. Now, that isn’t the worst thing in the world a man can do. But I’m not exactly proud of it either. I know you fancy Carlsbad, but that horse isn’t reliable. He’s skittish. He might throw you if a squirrel runs across his path. You should take Boshena.” He opened a stall and led out an aging mare. “She’s the best horse in the stables, even if she doesn’t look it. She’s the smartest, the most trustworthy. You could say that she and I are friends. She’s not fast, but she’s steady. And she knows where you”—he nodded at Petra—“are going. That’s more than you can say for yourself, am I right? Do you know how to get back to Okno?”
Petra glared.
“Thought so. Promise to take good care of her, and she’ll take you home. I don’t suppose you can return her.” He patted the horse’s head. “But I’ve seen your family. I think I’m leaving her in good hands.”
Neel sighed and sprang down from Carlsbad. “You got funny friends, Pet.”
“He’s not my friend,” Petra hissed through gritted teeth as Neel mounted Boshena.
“Come now,” Jarek said to Petra with a touch of humor. “Didn’t your da ever teach you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?” Then, in a swift movement, he picked her up and set her behind
Neel.
Boshena’s velvet lips brushed over Jarek’s hand, her large brown eyes reproachful. Then her ears pricked. She heard it before the humans did: the sound of approaching hooves.
I won’t have the deaths of two children on my conscience, Jarek silently told the horse. Help them. He patted Boshena gently on the rump and she burst from the stables in a canter.
27
The Fox on the Snow
NEEL LOOSENED THE REINS, letting the horse stride into a gallop. They had almost reached the forest when they heard the thudding of many horse hooves behind them. A dragoon of about twenty castle soldiers on horseback were in pursuit, sweeping down the snow-covered hill.
“I’m surprised there ain’t more,” Neel said, as if nothing could stop them.
“Well, I think there’s plenty!” Petra pulled the Hive out of her pocket.
Neel swiveled around. “Oh, no.” He looked into her palm. “Not another one of those things. First, you nearly blast us all into bits of bits. Then, you try to drown us. I don’t like the looks of that one.”
“Neither do I,” she admitted. But what choice did they have? She waited until the castle soldiers were just close enough for her throw to reach them, and far enough away to put some distance between their horse and whatever disaster the Hive unleashed. She threw, and they nudged Boshena to go even faster.
Cries rose up behind them and horses screamed in panic as a loud buzz filled the air. Petra couldn’t help looking back. A cloud of insects was attacking the men. Wasps wriggled under helmets.
They stung every bare inch of human skin they could find. They stung the horses, which threw their masters and ran wild, stomping the ground and bucking in the air.
Petra and Neel disappeared into the trees. Though guiding Boshena at a slow pace, Neel expertly led them deeper into the forest, picking out the ground where little snow had fallen because it had been trapped in the pine trees above. “The bare earth is frozen hard,” he explained. “The horse hooves won’t mark it up an awful lot, and we’ll stay off the snow. This way, we won’t leave any tracks.”
After about half an hour, they stopped and dismounted. This was where Neel would go ahead by foot to the Lovari camp, and Petra would make her way back to Okno. It was almost full night. Soon it would be pitch-black, and she would have to ride on alone. She shivered.
Do not worry, Petra, Astrophil said. You will not be alone. I will be with you.
She felt comforted.
“Will you ask Sadie to forgive me?” she said to Neel.
“Oh, I think she will, once she sees what I’ve brought home. We’ll be riding new horses into Spain in no time. It’s my best theft yet.” He grinned. “I can’t wait to see Emil’s face.”
Somewhat awkwardly, they shook hands. “Well, I guess that’s it, then,” Petra said. It was hard for her to believe that she would probably never see Neel again. It was even harder to find that she didn’t know how to say goodbye.
Neel was digging in his pockets. “You know, I was sure we’d be warming a prison floor tonight. But I thought that maybe, just maybe, things would work out all right. And if they did, I would give you this.”
It was a circle of leather string. Dangling from it was a miniature iron horseshoe.
Petra took it. She turned the horseshoe over. There was an engraved sentence written in words she didn’t understand. There, in the middle of it, was her name, or something close enough to it: Petali Kronos.
“Do you like it? Course, I couldn’t write it myself. Had to ask someone else. But it means that you’re a friend of my clan. Actually …” Neel paused. He seemed to make up his mind about something. “It means more than that. There’s something you don’t know about me. Sadie isn’t really my sis.” He began to tell Petra about how he had been adopted as a baby. Petra pretended as if she were hearing this for the first time. “So here’s what I think.” Neel came to the end of his story. “Family is what you make of it. And that horseshoe makes you part of mine. If you need help, or you need to find me, you just show that to a Roma.”
“Why,” she began and then stopped. She found it difficult to speak. “Why a horseshoe?” The horseshoe makes its own luck, she thought.
“Because that’s you, you see?”
Petra did not see.
“Petali means ‘horseshoe.’”
“But … but you told me it meant ‘lucky.’”
“Same thing. One word, two meanings. We use petali to talk about a horseshoe and to talk about good luck. Don’t you gadje think horseshoes are lucky?”
“We do.” Petra didn’t know how to react. She didn’t know what to think about her mother’s prediction and how it had, in a way, come true. She put on the necklace. “It’s the best present I’ve ever been given.”
“Excuse me?” Astrophil objected.
“Well, except Astro, of course.” Petra laughed. “Thanks, Neel. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”
“I know.” He smiled. “But I guess I’d have to say the same thing about you, too. Anyway, I hate goodbyes. I don’t believe in ‘em. So I’ll just say, ’See you later, Petali.’”
“See you later, Neel.”
PETRA LEANED HER HEAD against Boshena’s bristly neck and shivered. She was miserable. After the excitement of escaping from the castle had worn off, she realized that she had no food or water. Her empty stomach was a dead thing inside her. She had no idea where she was going. Her wet clothes had frozen st
iffly against her skin. She sneezed. She had tried guiding Boshena to walk on the bare ground, to avoid patches of snow, like Neel had done. But after a couple hours of this she was too tired, too cold, and too hungry to bother. She just let Boshena walk ahead as she liked, hoping that Jarek was right when he had said the horse knew the way to Okno.
She grew thirsty. When Astrophil suggested that she eat snow, Petra just shuddered. But a few hours later, she was scooping up snow in the dark and forcing herself to swallow some.
Finally, during the coldest hour of the night, when whatever warmth from the day before had been sucked out of the earth, Petra fell asleep, her head on Boshena’s mane. The horse plodded along.
Then Petra heard something, a skittering on the snow. She raised her head. They had reached a clearing. A ray of moonlight filtered through the bare trees, and Petra saw the slinky brown body of a fox picking its way across the snow. As she watched, the fox turned its head and looked back. Its brown eyes fixed upon hers, and grew larger. The fox stood on its hind paws and stretched into a tall human with a long beard. It was John Dee.
I’m dreaming, Petra stated.
You are, Dee agreed. I have come to wish you a happy birthday. Petra stared. What?
This is the hour you were born, on a November night thirteen years ago. Am I not correct?
Petra thought about it, and realized that it was her birthday. She hadn’t remembered it at all. It had been the furthest thing from her mind these past months. She shivered against her hard clothes and laughed. Some birthday she was having.
You and your accomplice did very well. Admirably well. I confess that I am impressed by your skills, my dear.
She didn’t look at him. Maybe if she ignored him he would go away.
The Staro Clock still possesses power, Dee continued. The power of beauty, and of time. But it cannot harm anyone now. The prince will surely seek some other means to increase his political strength. But your father’s clock can no longer become his tool, Petra, thanks to you.
The Cabinet of Wonders Page 21
