They saw a tall, spotted animal with long legs, an impossibly long neck, and two short antlers on its head. It was busy chomping leaves hanging from the trees above.
“Look” —Neel pointed to another cage —“it’s an elephant.”
The gray creature had huge curved tusks. Its eyes were tiny beads surrounded by a mass of wrinkles. The black eyes fixed on Petra and Neel. Then the animal ignored them. It wrapped its powerful trunk around some leaves, ripped them away, and then stuffed them in its mouth.
“Ain’t she pretty?”
Pretty was not the first word that sprang to Petra’s mind as she gazed at the animal. But she had to admit that it had a hefty kind of grace. It looked noble. Petra looked at the bars of the elephant’s cage with sympathy. She, too, felt trapped.
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.