Naturally. But breaking into the Cabinet of Wonders then will also suit you. I doubt the prince will wear your father’s eyes to a meeting where he must concentrate carefully, when he must try to persuade all of us to lend Bohemia our support, without admitting that he plans to defy his brothers if his father chooses one of them to become the next emperor. The meeting will also take place when it is just dark enough outside for you to try to escape after breaking the clock’s heart. You must destroy or steal it.
What do you mean, the clock’s heart?
But his face faded, and if he replied, Petra didn’t hear it. She was waking up. She caught his last words: Don’t fail me, Petra Kronos.
She opened her eyes.
PETRA FLUNG THE ORANGE into the woodpile. It sat there, prickly, squat, and reproachful.
“Good throw,” Neel commented. The belladonna had worn off, and today he looked more like himself and less like some odd offspring of a bumblebee.
She told him what had occurred over the past several days, of the prince’s letter, his private chambers, and the door that she was sure led to the Cabinet of Wonders.
“Tell me about that door again.”
“Well, it’s plain—”
“No, the one with the lion and the lizard.”
She described it, and Neel’s face grew grim. “And the window ain’t a window?”
Petra nodded.
“Then there’s no way I can help you. Danior’s Fingers won’t trick a lion and a lizard like that. There’s no keyhole?” She had to admit that there was not.
Neel shook his head. “Even if there was, I guess the lion would just roar like anything while we tried to bust in. It won’t work.”
“I already thought of that,” she said excitedly, and produced a sheet of paper stamped with the prince’s coat of arms. “It’s your documentation.” She explained her plan.
“All right. When are we going to do this, then?”
His question raised a subject that she was reluctant to discuss, but did anyway: her troubling dream the night before. “Dee said we should do it the day after tomorrow. That is, tomorrow.”
“You dreamed this?”
“Look, I’m not the type to go around believing in dreams either, but—”
“That’s what he did!” Neel slammed his fist into his palm. “It was no dream, Petali!”
“Come on,” Petra scoffed. “What else would it be? I don’t have the Second Sight or anything.” But she was uneasy.
“You don’t need to have the Second Sight! It was the scrying that did it!”
“What do you mean?”
“When you met with Dee, he asked you to scry. You didn’t see anything, right? That’s because what he wanted was to make a link between your mind and his.”
Disgust oozed all over her flesh. “He can read my mind?”
Neel shook his head. “I don’t think so. But I’ve heard of this sort of thing before. It’s been used in war, to make it easy for generals to send messages. The Roma use it sometimes for tricksy things. The Company of Rogues, they do it, too, if they can lay their hands on someone able to do the scrying. But it’s risky. It can wreck the mind of the magician and whoever’s doing the scrying. It can scramble your brain like an egg.”
“But … but what does this mean? Am I going to dream of”—she shuddered—“Dee all my life?”
“It means that he can talk to you when he feels like it. It’ll be easier for Dee when you’re sleeping, because your mind will be relaxed. It means you weren’t dreaming, and we should listen to him.”
“We should not! It could be a trap!”
“Just find out if the prince really is eating with those foreigners. If so, Dee’s idea is probably right on the money. Plus”—he gri-maced—“I got my own reasons for wanting to move fast.”
“The snow?”
“There’s that, too. But I was thinking about Sadie. You see, she spotted me lurking in the castle cellar today. Tabor’s kept quiet about my working here, like I asked, but I guess it was only a matter of time before she saw me. She’s no fool. If she catches hold of me, she won’t let go until she shakes the story out of me.”
Petra looked at him with scorn. “Just don’t tell her, Neel.”
He spread his hands. “I can swear up and down and on the grave that I won’t tell her a word, but the fact of the matter is that she’s been waiting for this ever since you talked to her and Ma in the vurdon. She was always worrying that I’d want a piece of your scheme. If she corners me, I can lie my head off, but she won’t believe a word I say. If I say nothing, she’ll know I’m stirring up trouble. Either way, she’ll figure out that what she thinks is going on is going on.”
“So what’re you going to do?”
“Avoid her. You should, too, cause I don’t suppose she’s thinking of you as one of her best pals now.”
Petra winced. She wanted to explain everything to Sadie, but the plan was moving much too quickly now, like one of her father’s music boxes when the wind-up key was cranked too tightly. Would she have time to ask Sadie to forgive her, to make her understand her feelings, and Neel’s? She pushed aside these thoughts, for they reminded her of something she and Neel had to discuss: time.
“When we get past the lion and the salamander—”
“If.”
“Trust me, we will! Now, when we get into the Cabinet of Wonders, we’ll have to move fast.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he said coolly.
“The Cabinet of Wonders is a collection. The prince is rich. He probably has mountains of things in there.”
“I’m still waiting to hear something I don’t know.”
“We have to move quickly to find the eyes.”
“And stuff to steal,” he reminded.
“And stuff to steal. So the question is: how are we going to be able to get in and out with what we need in a short amount of time? We can’t count on the prince being occupied by his dinner forever.”
Astrophil cleared his throat. “I believe I can help,” he said proudly.
AS PETRA NEARED Iris’s laboratory, she heard a great crash of glass against the door, which flung open. A wild-eyed boy darted out. As some sort of lumpy blue slime trickled down the door, the boy stared at Petra. “Run!” he shouted. Taking his own advice, he sprinted down the hall.