“Of course, if you cannot discover the globe’s location, this will mean that you are not as unusual as I thought. And if you are not, what good are you to me? Why should I care for the lives of your friends, or for your own?” Then he added in a velvety voice, “Surely, Petra, there is no harm in trying to please me? Let us step into the library with Walsingham. Find the globe. Show us your worth.”
Petra didn’t think she had a choice, and neither did Astrophil. “I’ll try.”
“Excellent!” Then the prince turned to a guard. “Bind her wound,” he ordered. The guard tore off Petra’s left sleeve and gripped her bare arm. He used the bloody rag of her sleeve as a bandage, wrapping it around Petra’s shoulder so tightly that she whimpered. But the guard knew what he was doing, and the blood stopped flowing.
Tomik and Neel watched anxiously as the prince and half of his guards followed Petra. She approached Kit, who was now standing by Walsingham’s side. Kit’s broken nose was already swollen.
“Give me the title page,” she ordered.
He handed it to her. “Petra, I didn’t know Prince Rodolfo wanted to take you back to Bohemia! I thought—”
“We do not care what you think,” the prince informed him. “You are a buzzing fly. You will stay right here, and you will stay silent, or someone will swat you.”
“I think the girl already has.” Walsingham chuckled. As he, the prince, several guards, and Petra entered Cotton’s library, Walsingham said to her, “I shouldn’t have rubbed his face in his defeat, should I? Poor Kit. Well, I’ll see to it he gets some kind of reward for his troubles. He’s been very useful to me. When I poisoned Gabriel Thorn with a dose of quicksilver, Kit was there to help me dispose of the tainted wineglass. He distracted some palace guards and bribed others, so no one important ever knew I visited Thorn in the Whitehall library just before he died. Kit even questioned the servants to make certain they didn’t suspect me. And then John Dee was foolish enough to hire him to teach you. What a stroke of fortune for me! I swear, John used to be the councillor everyone feared, but he’s been slipping lately. A few years ago, John would have known Kit still worked for me, whatever people might say.”
Walsingham set his torch in a wall sconce, and the library flickered before them. Windowless and vast, the room smelled like animal skins, paper, and age. It was shaped in a hexagon, and each of the six sides held ten long shelves that were lined with books. Some volumes were new, and gleamed with gold letters. Others had split spines. At the very top of each set of shelves was a statue. They stood like guardians over the library.
Those statues . . . murmured Astrophil. I would like a closer look at them.
Petra took Walsingham’s torch and illuminated the stone faces one by one. Each face had different features, but they all seemed to sneer at her.
They are tyrants, Astrophil said finally. Rulers from ancient history who were known for their cruelty. The first one on the left is Phalaris, who enjoyed roasting people alive.
And the others? asked Petra. Who were they?
Astrophil named them as they turned around the room: Caligula, Nero, Dionysius, Domitian, and Tarquin the Proud.
“I know where the globe is,” Petra announced.
“But you haven’t even looked at the title page,” said Walsingham.
“I don’t need to.” Petra remembered the only thing that was important about the title page: that mysterious notation, N6.
“You see?” The prince was ecstatic. “Extraordinary! I said that you were, Petra Kronos, and I am never wrong. Now give me the Celestial Globe.”
Petra hesitated. What would happen to her, her father, and her friends after she obeyed the prince’s command?
There were too many uncertainties, and Petra had never liked feeling uncertain.
But what could she do? The prince had his guards, Walsingham, her sword, and her friends. She needed something he didn’t have . . . a weapon, or an ally, or both.
She slid a hand inside her pocket, and felt the gold Romany coin and the Glowstone.
Petra, what are you doing?
Shh, Astro.
She wrapped her fingers around the coin, and traced the outline of the bird stamped on it. King of the air-swimmers, she remembered Ariel saying. Then Petra thought of something else: how Dee had used stardust, feathers, and incense to summon Ariel. Dee had said that the air spirit didn’t need them to find him. I use these objects to help me concentrate, he had said. They are helpful only because I consider them to be allied with the air.
Ariel had said that Petra was a dream-thinker. Very well, then, Petra would dream-think. She remembered the sparrow that had flown to the Sign of the Compass on that fateful morning months ago. She imagined the wind in its feathers. She pretended that she was the bird, swimming in the air, diving and breathing and floating. Petra gripped the golden bird coin, and called upon Ariel.
Then Ariel came, and Petra couldn’t believe what she had done.
32
The Wind
A BRUTAL WIND slammed against the greenhouse roof, and every single pane of glass shattered. Shards whipped around the room, slicing into leaves and flesh. Branches snapped, and men screamed. Kit thrust himself into a thick hedge, but the guards in the greenhouse were not so lucky. Soon, their dead bodies were studded with broken glass.
Tomik knocked Neel to the ground. Afterward, he couldn’t say how he did it, but Tomik begged the glass not to touch them, and the glass obeyed.
Then there was a sudden silence, and all Tomik and Neel could hear was the tinkling of glass. The air was very still.
But it was only the eye of the storm.
The wind began to twist in the center of flowers and greenery, spinning. Then it barreled into the library, snaked around Petra, and dragged her back into the greenhouse, flinging her onto a pile of broken plants and glass.
She struggled to her feet. “Ariel? I need your help. Will you—?”
“You dare?” the wind howled. “Are you a juggler? Am I a toy? Idiot dream-thinker! You think I am a floor-washer, a dust-sweeper!”
“No! I don’t think you’re my servant! I hoped . . .” Petra searched for the right words. Hadn’t Ariel been kind to her? She had kept the secret of Astrophil from Dee. She had smiled at Petra. “I thought . . . I thought you liked me.”
“Perhapsss,” Ariel hissed. “But I am the wind, and the wind changesss.”
The air began to condense in front of Petra. It was foggy.
“But why did you tell me about all those things?” shouted Petra. “Why did you tell me about the coin if you didn’t want me to call on you? What were all your predictions for, if not this?”
“Maybe ssso, sssilver-sssinger. Maybe I did want thisss, all along.” The fog was taking shape. Then its claws reached for Petra, and her heart leaped into her throat.
Ariel had changed into a skeletal Gristleki. “Maybe,” it said, “I offer a word-gift, a whisssper heard far away. A sssecret.”
Petra scrambled back. “I don’t want it.”
The monster brandished its scaly arm. “Do you know why we are ssskin-ssscrapersss?” The Gray Man opened its empty black mouth. “Becaussse we have no teeth, and we like your fear-blood. We ssscrape your fear-blood out and we sssuck . . .”
“Enough!” John Dee strode into the greenhouse. His daughters followed, and rushed to help Neel and Tomik.
The Gristleki snarled. “You did not call me, deep-sssearcher, ssso you do not command. Thossse are the rulesss.”
Dee looked at Petra. He placed a hand on her unhurt shoulder, and for once she did not flinch away, because his face held something new: comfort. “Everything will be all right,” he promised, and she could not remember the last time someone had said this to her.
Dee turned back to Ariel. “I offer you something better than rules. I offer you freedom. I saved your life, and for years you have served me. Leave Petra alone, and I will consider your debt paid.”
The Gray Man vanished, and in its pl
ace was a moth. It fluttered, undecided. “A trick! Tricksy deep-searcher! Cunning foxman! I am worth more than a girl!”
“I do not think so,” said Dee. “Not this girl. But if you wish to do more to pay your debt, then take the men who hide inside the library. Bring them here to me, bound and harmless. Forgive Petra. Do all this and I will never call upon you again.”
“Never, never, never!” The words were wild, ringing bells.
“Never,” Dee vowed.
Prince Rodolfo, Francis Walsingham, and six guards hurtled through the library door, paper whirling behind them. Their arms were tied with ropes of air, so tightly that their skin was purple. The prisoners all stared at Dee with wide eyes, but it was Walsingham who was most afraid.
The moth nipped Petra’s cheek, and she couldn’t tell if she had been kissed or bitten. Then Ariel flew out through the frame of the shattered greenhouse roof.
Petra was safe. Her enemies were bound and lying at her feet. But that was when Petra realized that Astrophil was missing. He had been ripped from her ear by the wind. She could not feel him. She could not see him. He was gone.
33
The Vatra
A STROPHIL!” Petra sobbed. She spun around, grating glass under her feet, flinging aside broken branches. She had believed she knew what fear was, but she didn’t, not really, because it was this: it consumed Petra, making her forget who she was. It hollowed out everything inside her, and left a trembling shell who could only search, and search, desperate to find a spider who was made of tin, but was as loving as any human, and wiser than most. Astrophil was her protector, and Petra was his, but she could not find him. He was so small.
Astrophil!
Petra, you are making a fuss over nothing. I am right here.
She caught her breath. She looked up, and saw a twinkling dot lower itself from the iron frame of the roof.
Astrophil dropped into her open palm. “Oh!” Petra whispered. “I thought I had lost you.”
“I am a spider,” he reminded her in an offended tone. “Spiders make webs. When they find themselves tumbling through the air, it is a simple matter to shoot a web and climb to safety. Really, Petra. This is common knowledge.”
• • •
THAT WAS HOW John Dee (and everyone else in the greenhouse who did not already know) discovered the existence of Astrophil. This fact would have consequences in the future, but for now Petra couldn’t worry about it, because so many things happened after that night in Robert Cotton’s manor.
Walsingham and Kit were arrested and thrown into Tyburn prison. The six Czech guards who survived Ariel’s storm were sent back to Bohemia with the prince. He was not accused of any actual crime. Relations between England and the Hapsburg Empire were already strained, and Queen Elizabeth didn’t think it wise to worsen the situation by arresting Emperor Karl’s youngest son.
John Dee spent an hour alone with Prince Rodolfo before the Bohemian was escorted by armed Englishmen onto his ship. Few people knew what Dee and the prince discussed, and those who did would not tell.
Tomik had a split lip and a hand full of glass shards, but it was Neel who looked more shaken than Petra had ever seen him. “An air spirit! Pet, don’t you ever do that again!”
Madinia and Margaret excitedly related their side of what happened in Cotton’s manor—how they had escaped through the Rift and rushed to find their father, and how he was such a hero. Once this would have infuriated Petra, but now she had to admit that the sisters had a point. Dee had saved Petra, twice.
PETRA WINCED as she sat in the hard leather chair across from John Dee. It hurt to move. Dr. Harvey had said there would be no lasting damage to her shoulder. “There will be a scar, of course,” he added apologetically.
Petra wasn’t too troubled. She was used to scars by now. She had plenty of them.
“I expect that you’ll regain full use of your arm,” the doctor had continued. “You are very lucky that the sword missed any tendons.”
Missed? Petra wasn’t so sure. Kit’s blade usually went where he wanted it to go.
“What about Kit?” Petra asked Dee as they sat in his library. Astrophil was crawling over Dee’s collection of books, making admiring noises. Petra would never understand the spider’s fascination. After the past several months, she was sick of libraries. “What will happen to Kit and Walsingham?”
“There will be a trial. They will be found guilty, and executed.”
“Executed? Kit, too? He didn’t kill anyone.”
“He helped Walsingham cover up his murders and give sensitive information to a foreign ruler. That is treason, and punishable by death. Christopher is an adult. He is responsible for his crimes.”
“But he doesn’t deserve to die!”
Astrophil said nothing, but in his heart he disagreed. He only had to take one look at Petra’s bandage to remember how much danger Kit had put her in.
The spider shot a web to Petra’s good shoulder and swung through the air to perch there. He told Dee, “You knew that Kit still worked for Francis Walsingham. I cannot believe otherwise. You warned Petra many times that Kit was not to be trusted. You fired him because he and Petra”—the spider looked at her—“got too close.”
Petra glared back, yet didn’t deny it.
Dee looked uncomfortable, too, but for a different reason. “Yes,” he admitted, “I knew that Kit was still Walsingham’s spy.”
“Then why—?” Petra remembered the sunny afternoon when Dee had lowered cages of mice to their deaths. “I was a mouse. Like the ones you used at Sutton Hoo. You thought that Walsingham was . . . I don’t know. Rotten. Not worthy of being the South, or the secretary of defense. Maybe, when you were in Bohemia, you found out that the prince was bribing Walsingham. So you used me, like a mouse in the cage, and lowered me down to Kit as if you were testing the air, to see whether Kit would run to Walsingham with information about me, and whether Walsingham would tell the prince.”
“Yes.” Dee held her gaze. “It was a mistake.”
“That was a dangerous ploy!” Astrophil’s voice blazed with anger.
“Did you ever think that maybe I didn’t want to be a dead mouse?” Petra asked Dee.
“Please, my dear, don’t be so melodramatic. Here you are, alive and squeaking. And, as your gallant spider has already pointed out, I warned you not to share your secrets with Christopher Rhymer. If you didn’t listen to me, how is that my fault?”
“So that whole business about me learning to fence was just some complicated trap for Kit and Walsingham,” she said. “You never cared whether I learned how to use a sword or not.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Christopher is an excellent swordsman, one who has studied the art since the time he could toddle. And you beat him after only six months of training. Now you have a skill that can protect you, and make others wary. Was I mistaken to see that you gained that skill? Or would you have preferred to stay the way you were, a helpless little mouse?”
“Were you training Petra to be an assassin?” Astrophil asked directly.
“An assassin?” Dee leaned back and templed his fingers. “Where would you get that idea?”
“From Ariel,” said Petra.
“Hmm. Wasn’t Ariel talking about Gabriel Thorn?”
“You didn’t answer Astrophil’s question,” Petra persisted. “All you’re doing is asking questions of your own.”
“Well, I really don’t know what to say.” Dee spread his hands helplessly. “I’m at a loss for words.”
“Ha!”
“You, Petra Kronos, an assassin,” Dee mused. He looked coy. “That is an interesting thought. Now, assassins usually work for somebody. For whom would you work? Me? I don’t think I want anyone murdered. Or is there someone you wish to kill?” Dee chuckled. “Aside from me, of course.”
He’s like an eel, Petra thought, slipping away from Astro’s question again and again. She was frustrated, but she had known Dee long enough to realize that if he didn’t want to s
ay something, he wouldn’t. “I don’t want you dead,” she told him.
“I am glad to hear it.”
“I want you to make good on our wager.”
“Ah, that. If I recall, the deal was that you were supposed to discover the identity of Thorn’s murderer before I did.”
She gaped at him.
Dee explained, “The West came to Throgmorton Street the morning of his death. I was not pleased. You know what he did to my wife. But scrying is not illegal, and time had taken its revenge on Thorn for me, turning him into a drunken failure. When he said he had news that concerned the benefit of England, I had to listen. He was—whether I liked it or not—a queen’s councillor. Thorn was excited, and told me he had learned of something called the Celestial Globe, which was part of a set designed by Gerard Mercator to navigate through Rifts all over the world. I was intrigued, but I was also more impatient than I should have been. I didn’t want to speak with him more than I had to. Thorn never told me who possessed this globe. But what was I to think when Francis Walsingham came to visit me that afternoon with news of Thorn’s death? You remember that day, Petra. You remember how confident Walsingham was that Thorn had died of heart failure. You remember the true cause of Thorn’s death: quicksilver, a spy’s poison. I had already suspected Walsingham of selling information to Prince Rodolfo. Now I believed him capable of murder.”
“Suspicion is nothing,” Astrophil said. “Petra gave you proof.”
Petra added, “It’s thanks to me that Walsingham’s in prison.”
“It’s thanks to me that you weren’t ripped apart by Ariel.”
Petra leaned forward, and her shoulder screamed in protest. “I know you can use our mental link to track me down wherever I go, and haul me back to Throgmorton Street. But how would you like to do that every day? Or three times a day? You won’t have time to sit in this dark lair of yours and think about who else you might want to treat like a mouse in a cage. I’ll make you run after me until your hair turns white, your teeth fall out, and you’re so tired you’ll just let me go.”
The Celestial Globe Page 24
