When they reached the chambers at the northwest corner, they spotted a room whose doorknob was a snarling boar’s head. Neel put one eye to the keyhole, screwing the other one shut. Then he took a small glass out of his pocket and pressed one end against the door, holding the other end to his ear. Nodding briskly, he moved his fingers over the door and they heard a click.
Checking the hallway to make sure no one was there, Petra slipped in after Neel. She held her breath, hoping that the captain of the guard was happily stuffing food in his mouth someplace far from here.
They shut the door softly. The captain’s bedchamber was a suite. They had entered into an empty drawing room. A door to the bedroom was at the opposite end.
“Did Sadie say where he keeps it?” Neel whispered.
“It’ll be right by his bed.”
“That ain’t a very safe spot to keep all your secrets.”
“Nobody knows that you can suck the secrets out of Worry Vials. Everyone thinks they’re reliable. And you’d better not tell anyone otherwise.”
Neel unlocked the bedroom door. “Think of all the krona you could get from blackmailing …” His eyes were wide.
“Not now!” She pushed open the door. And there, right on the nightstand, was a fat, black bottle. Petra reached in her pocket for a flask of water. She uncorked the Worry Vial and poured the water in.
“How long do we have to wait?” Neel scooped up a pile of coins on the dressing table.
“Neel,” she hissed. “Put that back.”
“What for? I want to get something out of this, too.”
“But the captain will notice that the money’s missing.”
“So? He’ll think one of the servants took it.”
“Exactly. One of the servants. Don’t you care that one of the servants will get in trouble?”
“Nah. Not really.”
“Even if the servant is your sister, who cleans this room?”
“Oh. Yeah. Right.” He sighed and put the money back on the dresser. “Can’t figure why she didn’t take it herself.”
“Just steal something that the captain won’t notice is missing for a while, will you?”
Neel began inspecting the room, pulling open drawers and peeking inside of trunks. “Hate to repeat myself, but how long is this going to take?”
“I don’t know.” She placed her palm over the Worry Vial’s opening and shook the bottle, hoping that agitating the water would make the process go faster.
“It’s not like we got time for taking tea and biscuits.”
“Agreed,” Astrophil spoke up. “Petra, we should get out of here as soon as possible.”
“See? The spider thinks so, too.”
“All right” She poured the treated water back into the flask it came from. She was gratified to see that the water was very dark—not quite black, but it would have to do. The Worry Vial had a sort of grayish color to it now. From her pocket, Petra pulled the bottle of India ink, which she had mixed with the algae earlier that day to make the ink stick to glass. She tipped the black liquid into the vial. Not exactly wanting to walk around the castle with a black hand, she bent down and pulled up her petticoat. She held the beige cloth over the opening of the vial and shook it so that the ink coated the inside of the vial. Letting her stained petticoat fall, she poured the leftover ink back into its original container. She stoppered the Worry Vial. Now it looked almost exactly the way it had when they entered the room.
They hastily exited the captain’s chambers. Neel locked the doors as they left. It was not until they were safe in the basement of the castle that Petra handed him the flask of dark water and asked, “So what did you steal?”
“A silver codpiece. He’s got a zillion of them.” He caught Petra’s look. “I’m not going to keep it! I’m going sell it. They fetch a fair price on the market. They make a fellow look all manlylike.”
Petra, however, had her doubts.
THEY DECIDED they would listen to the captain’s worries on their next day off in the woods near the Lovari campsite. Petra had a hard time agreeing to this, eager as she was to hear the contents of the Worry Vial, which Neel had left out to dry in his family’s wagon. “The garden seems safe enough,” Petra argued. “Why don’t we do it there?”
But Neel looked uncomfortable. He said he had been to the menagerie since they had visited it together, and felt that something was wrong. “The elephant was trumpeting away like there was no tomorrow. She was looking right at me, flapping her ears. So I started to back up. And then I swear she nodded at me, like she’d been saying ‘Get out’ and I finally caught on.”
Petra teased him for taking the moods of an elephant so seriously, but Neel insisted that they should not return to the garden.
At the campsite, the small children ran up to Petra and tugged at her skirt for attention. Neel kissed his mother, slipping some money into her skirt pocket. Then he dashed into the family wagon to fetch the vial.
Ethelenda was there, and introduced Petra to an old woman named Drabardi, who looked surprisingly fit for her age. She said something to Petra, which Ethelenda translated. “She offers to tell you your fortune.”
Petra felt uncomfortable. Not for the first time, she was glad that she seemed to have inherited her father’s gift rather than her mother’s. Mind-magic was her least favorite kind. Despite —or maybe because of—the fact that her mother had been able to read the future, the very thought of magic like the Second Sight, scrying, or mind reading made her feel as if something were weighing her down, like the time she got sick and Dita piled blankets on top of her until Petra couldn’t move. She could only lie there, breathing and sweating. She tried to think of a polite way to say no to Drabardi. The woman might be a fraud, but even if she wasn’t, Petra didn’t want to hear what she had to say. As far as Petra could tell, knowing the future had never done anyone a bit of good.
Drabardi laughed and said something. Ethelenda translated in a puzzled voice, “She says you’re probably right.”
Petra was relieved when Neel emerged from the wagon and gestured for her to follow him. They walked among the pines and slender birch trees, which were shrugging off their pale leaves.
When they were a good distance from the campsite, Neel pulled out the bottle Petra had given him. No liquid remained in it, just dust. Petra tipped the dust into her palm and stirred it with her finger.