“She says that a green fairy must have sucked Neel’s brains out of his ear when he was a baby, because she certainly didn’t raise him to be so stupid.” Neel rolled his eyes. “Come on, Neel. She’s right. You may think stealing is a game, but—”
“I don’t! We need the money! Don’t tell me we don’t need the money!”
Sadie started to say something but Damara cut into the conversation, this time in a gentler voice. Her children fell silent. Sadie translated, “Ma says that she knows Neel is trying to help. And there’s nothing she can do to stop him.”
“Darn right,” he muttered.
“She has always had confidence that he wouldn’t be caught. His ghost fingers make that impossible. Or, at least, we thought it was impossible. But she points out that you, Petra, don’t have the Gift of Danior’s Fingers. How can you hope to succeed?”
Petra felt the glow of a sudden idea. “What if Neel were to help me? If the prince doesn’t value my father’s eyes, he’ll keep them someplace where they’d be easy to steal, and I could do that on my own. But he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of taking them if he didn’t think they were special, so he probably keeps them someplace hard to break into. If that’s the case, then I’m sure he locks them up with other valuable things. If Neel helped me, he could take some of those things and sell them. Then you would have enough money to buy your horses.”
Her proposal was met with silence. Astrophil stared with incredulous green eyes. Sadie crossed her arms. “I’m not translating that.”
“If you won’t, I will!” Neel began to speak excitedly to his mother in Romany. She raised her eyes to the ceiling as if asking it for help. She shouted something that Petra was willing to bet anything meant “Even if I was in my grave I’d rise out of it to tell you no, never, not in a million years!” Or something to that effect. Damara pounded her first against the cloth-covered floor. Their voices grew louder and louder. Finally Sadie shouted, “Dosta!”
Damara exhaled one long breath. When she spoke, her voice was calmer but strong.
Sadie said, “My mother says that if you want to risk your neck, Petra, that’s your business. She respects your decision if not your sense of self-preservation. But her son will not take part in your plan. She says you’re welcome to stay here for the midday meal, and to return anytime you wish. But you will no longer be welcome if you try to drag Neel into your plan.” She glared at her brother. “And I, for one, agree.”
“And I, for one—” Neel stopped. He shrugged. “Well, I can’t argue against the both of you, can I?”
Sadie looked relieved but a little suspicious. “All right, then. Let’s eat.”
• • •
AT LUNCH, Petra found herself the center of attention. Emil and a few others gave her disgusted looks, but most of the Lovari were kindly curious. Ethelenda, the woman who had been roasting the meat when they arrived, gave Petra a thick slice.
One of the little girls pointed to Petra and asked Neel a question, wrinkling her nose. He laughed. “She wants to know why your clothes are so ugly.”
“Are they?”
“Well, brown and brown aren’t exactly the liveliest colors. Makes me think of pinecones. Burned porridge. Rags after scrubbing down a muddy wagon. And horse droppings.”
“I like pinecones,” Petra said defensively.
Ethelenda offered to pierce her ears. “Um, no thanks,” Petra said.
“You might actually want to dress more like a girl,” Sadie said. Coming from Lucie, this advice always made Petra grit her teeth, but she listened to Sadie. “I can see why you wanted to walk around Prague in trousers. No one thinks twice about a boy being alone in the streets. But there’s no point trying to convince people at the castle that you’re a boy. In fact, I’d advise against it. The job that the housekeeper is always looking to fill only goes to boys, and you don’t want it.”
“What is it?”
“Cleaning out the privies.”
“Oh. I see. Maybe skirts aren’t so bad after all.” Petra sighed. “So much for my short-lived disguise.”
“It didn’t work that well anyway,” said Neel.
After lunch, a young man set up a wooden board one hundred paces away from the campfire. The target was a painted red circle the size of a melon, with a walnut-sized black dot marking its center. Damara slipped a dagger from her tall boot and was the first to throw, thwacking the blade’s point into where the black spot met the red circle’s border. Everyone clapped. Then the young people began taking their turns. Many of them missed the board entirely (everyone groaned) or just hit the plain wood. Two of them threw the blade respectably into the red. A girl complained that she couldn’t even see the black spot at this distance. At that, Emil stood up and said he would show them how this game was done. With the grace of a snake rearing its head to bite, Emil leaned back and then threw, the shiny blade spinning from his fingers. He scored a direct hit on the black. Someone whistled admiringly. One woman shook her hand as if she had touched something hot. Emil grinned. Sadie rolled her eyes.
Then Emil said something to Petra that she didn’t understand. His voice was friendly, but he smirked.
Neel said, “Do you want to throw?”
Now, Petra had only ever used knives for chopping vegetables, cutting meat, carving bits of wood into horses, and, most recently, cutting her hair. So she didn’t have high hopes for her chances at hitting a target at one hundred paces. But Emil’s attitude irritated her. If she refused, he would be pleased. If she missed, he would be pleased. If she managed to at least hit the board, she could walk away from the Lovari with her pride. She said she would give the dagger game a try.
“Ever done this before?” Neel asked.
“No.”
“Let me show you a couple things.” He pulled out his knife. “Now, if you start out like this,” he said and cocked his hand, “you’re liable to throw it so that the handle hits the board, not the blade. Watch.” He threw, and the knife clattered against the wood and fell. The group made hooting calls.
Neel retorted in Romany, explaining (Petra assumed) that he had meant to do that. The onlookers laughed, shaking their heads in disbelief. They flapped their hands at him. He shrugged and seemed to say that they could believe what they wanted. He went to pick up the fallen knife and walked back to the campfire. The dagger floated below his hand. He was carrying it by the blade with Danior’s Fingers. “Now, I can hold it like this.” The knife lifted, hovering about a foot above his hand, the iron tip pointing at the board. Neel threw the dagger. It sang in the air and thwacked straight into the black.