What troubled her most, however, was that she was no closer to her goal. She had no idea where the prince kept her father’s eyes. She hadn’t even seen anything of the castle beyond the servants’ quarters and the Thinkers’ Wing.
One morning, Petra strolled down the Thinkers’ Wing, humming a tune. The doors flanked her like silent soldiers. She idly gripped a doorknob. It rattled but would not turn. Petra stopped humming, because she suddenly recognized the melody on her lips. It was “The Grasshopper,” the song she and her father danced to years ago.
A longing for home filled her heart. She tried to ignore it, staring down the Thinkers’ Wing.
Surely her father had worked in one of these laboratories.
Petra tried the doors until she found one that was unlocked. She pushed it open and stepped inside. A shuddering wave of power hit her. Astrophil squealed and pinched her ear. She was thrown back into the hallway on her bottom, her teeth clattering. She stood up, dusting herself off. The closed doors looked smug. “I’m not afraid of you,” she told them.
Speak for yourself, said Astrophil.
After Petra rattled several more locked doorknobs, one turned in her hand. She stuck a toe inside the room as if testing the waters of a chilly lake. She and Astrophil sighed with relief when nothing happened.
Inside this laboratory was a man with paint-smeared clothes. He was staring at a canvas the size of a wall. When he noticed Petra’s presence, he was friendly, and introduced himself as Kristof, an artist from Poland. But he spoke barely any Czech. Soon he forgot that Petra was in the room, and just resumed staring at the utterly blank canvas. Petra saw him use a brush to dab pink paint on the canvas. The color quickly disappeared, leaving the surface as empty as it was before. Kristof looked pleased, but Petra was confused. She didn’t see how an absentminded artist and his absent art would help her quest, so she did not return to Kristof’s studio.
Every day she tried the locked doors, but with no further luck. She attempted to take the stairs to the next floor of the castle, but was rudely stopped by guards. As Iris’s assistant, Petra had a pass that gave her access to the Thinkers’ Wing. But she was not allowed beyond that.
She began to feel that her idea to seek a job at the castle in order to rescue her father’s eyes was a mistake. It didn’t make her feel better that the one person who said he would help her was nowhere to be seen. Neel was as invisible as if Kristof had painted his portrait. She supposed that Neel, despite what he’d said, had never bothered to get a job in the stables.
There was never a moment’s rest when Petra was in the Dye Works, and she was surprised to find that this suited her. Working to meet Iris’s demands distracted her from thinking about how her plan was proving to be a failure. And as she slowly learned how to prepare and mix pigments, Petra felt like she was atoning for something: for not trying harder to practice her father’s trade. In the Dye Works, she strove to do well. Iris criticized Petra’s work, but the girl knew that she was deft at carrying out Iris’s commands. Although Iris complained, Petra began to suspect that her words were really praise given in a grouchy tone, such as “You ground that ochre too finely!” Petra could tell the difference between this kind of comment and words expressed with real irritation, such as when Iris grumbled about receiving orders for hair dyes.
“As if I didn’t have enough to do! As if my highest priority was keeping Lady Hortensia’s hair a sunny yellow! If you ask me, it would be far easier for her to catch an eligible husband if she were to buy a new brain. But no! Everybody has to look as fine as possible for the prince’s ball, and they don’t care a whit that I am on the brink of an important discovery.”
The prince, Iris revealed, would soon turn nineteen. An elaborate celebration would be held in his honor. Her gift to him would be the invention of a new primary color.
“Currently there are only three primary colors: blue, yellow, and red. Every other color is a mix of these three. Except white, which doesn’t count as a color.”
White is the absence of color, Astrophil informed Petra.
I know that, Petra thought back.
“Imagine,” Iris continued, light gleaming on the lenses of her spectacles, “imagine that there was another primary color. It would open a world of possibilities. You can mix red and yellow to get orange. Red and blue make purple. But what would happen if you mixed a new primary color with red? What would you see?”
Petra was less interested in the invention of a new primary color than she was in the birthday celebration. Perhaps while everybody was busy, she would be able to skulk around the castle. “Will the celebration take place here?” she asked. She hoped that the prince would decide to have it in a hunting lodge hundreds of miles away.
“Of course. And you will get to see some of it.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. Prince Rodolfo is good to his people. He believes that everyone should join in his happiness.”
It amazed Petra that a woman as intelligent as Iris could think well of somebody Petra knew to have a black heart. But one day, while grating a madder root, Petra asked the following question: “Do you make Kristof’s paints?”
“Kristof!” Iris frowned. “I suppose you mean the Pole down the hall.”
“Yes. I met him last week.”
“Did you? Well, I would advise you not to keep his company. You are my assistant. If anyone is going to get rid of you, it will be me.”
Petra didn’t understand what she meant by that, but she could tell that Kristof wasn’t on Iris’s list of favorite people. Though she had a hard time imagining who would be on that list, except maybe the prince. “So you don’t make his paints.”
“I most certainly do not. I told Prince Rodolfo somebody else would have to do that disagreeable job.” She pursed her lips at Petra’s baffled expression. She said testily, “Kristof makes things disappear. That is his talent. Of course, it has its limits like anything else. He can only make living things disappear, though I assure you that is quite enough. Let’s say he wanted to make you disappear. He would need to make a brush that included a strand of your hair, and paint mixed with your blood. Then he would paint your portrait. Since people don’t exactly leave their blood lying around, there are only a certain number of poor, foolish people he can paint. Thank heavens.”