“That’s enough.” Dee lifted her fingers from the West’s forehead. Petra snatched her hand away, and cradled it in her other palm. It was cold. She blinked at Dee, and the world felt unsteady.
“It is, of course, only her word,” Robert Cecil said.
“I’ll take it,” Dee replied. “What Petra says is consistent with certain signs on the body. Notice how pink Gabriel’s cheeks are.”
“That could be from wine.”
“True. He does smell of it. But then, where is his bottle? Where is his glass? If nobody entered the room, these items should be here.”
Cecil was silent.
“Gabriel’s mouth and gums are also a bright red,” Dee continued. “This, and the high color of his cheeks, are symptoms of poisoning by quicksilver.”
Cecil sighed. “I’ll tell the queen.”
“The key, I believe, will be discovering why Gabriel reserved the library this morning, and if he was indeed alone.”
Cecil passed a weary hand over his forehead. “How distressing. Gabriel wasn’t always well liked, but it’s difficult to imagine that anyone would wish him dead. Well, except . . .” He glanced at Dee, and then cleared his throat in embarrassment.
Except you. Petra was sure that’s what Cecil had been about to say. She remembered Walsingham’s comment to Dee: I just thought you’d care, one way or another. Was Dee glad that the West was dead?
With the face of someone eager to change the topic of conversation, Cecil said rapidly, “Now, John, while I have you here, would you be so good as to look at a draft of a law being considered by Her Majesty? I’d like to know your thoughts on it before the council meets.” He led Dee to a table near a window, and pulled a sheaf of paper in front of them.
As the two men leaned over the table, Petra stepped away from the West’s body. She didn’t want to linger near the corpse, but she thought about what Tomik would do in a situation like this. He would be thorough. He would look for something that everyone else had missed.
Petra glanced down at the thick carpet, and saw a tiny, tear-shaped seed by the leg of the chair. She bent down and picked it up. It looked like an apple seed, except it was a dusky orange, not brown.
Petra put it in her pocket and felt a sense of satisfaction. She had noticed something Dee hadn’t.
Still warm with the glow of this small triumph, Petra decided to act upon a sudden idea. After a glance at the two men, who were engrossed in conversation, she scanned the shelves until she found what she wanted: a small, compact book on English grammar. She tucked it under her arm, then carefully pulled the cloak around her shoulders.
Petra Kronos had stolen from the queen of England. Astrophil would be pleased, and Neel would be proud.
DEE WAS QUIET as the oarsman rowed him and Petra away from the dockhouse. The fog had lifted, and Petra could now see the palace and the fields of dead trees around it.
It was colder than before, and snow began to fall. Petra shivered under her cloak. The silence made her uncomfortable. She was bursting with questions, and finally she couldn’t resist. “Why did you bring me to Whitehall?”
“You might have thought Ariel’s words were nonsense,” he answered, “but I never did. When Walsingham came to Throgmorton Street with the news that a councillor was dead, I recalled Ariel’s prediction of murder. That warning came when I asked the spirit about you. Clearly, the death of the West is connected to you in some way.”
The chilly feeling that crept over Petra had nothing to do with the cold. “But I didn’t know Gabriel Thorn.”
“That may not matter.”
“Did he know the prince?”
Dee paused before replying. “I do not think so. I don’t yet understand why Gabriel died, or what you have to do with that fact. But events at Whitehall confirmed my suspicion that Ariel’s words about you were not random. In the Shield Hall—”
“The Cotton tree,” Petra supplied. “The tree dressed with robes.”
“Yes. And then there was the dirty metal river.”
Petra looked at him blankly.
“Think, Petra.”
She remembered the quicksilver, a liquid metal that flows without being heated. “But quicksilver isn’t dirty. It’s shiny.”
“It’s poisonous. That is dirty enough.”
“Oh.” She didn’t speak for a moment, then lunged into a question that had been bothering her. “Why haven’t you been giving me lessons?”
“I just did, in the Whitehall library.”
“But you didn’t before. You’ve been ignoring me.”
He didn’t give the response that Petra expected. Dee didn’t say he had been busy. Instead, he replied, “The unfortunate thing about being a teacher is that it is impossible to make a pupil learn something if she doesn’t want to do so.”
Petra heard herself saying, “But I do want to.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“I mean,” she amended, “I might want to. But nine months is too long.” It had always been too long, but Petra had made that agreement thinking she could escape well before the end of that period.
“Anything worth learning takes time,” Dee said.
“I don’t have time.”
“Then what do you propose?”
Petra considered the things that she knew about John Dee. He enjoyed bargaining. He constantly challenged Petra, whether by mocking, tricking, or entrapping her. He seemed (Petra forced herself to admit it) intrigued by her. He might care about the death of the West, and whatever Petra had to do with it.
“I propose,” Petra began, “that we stick to our original agreement. Except—”
“Except?” He was amused.
“Except that if I solve the mystery of who killed Gabriel Thorn, you will send me home to Okno right then and there. With all of my possessions,” she added, thinking of the sword.
Dee laughed.
“And,” she added, “you will break the link between our minds.”
“That part is not negotiable. A mental link like that can be broken only by the person who forged it, or by whoever owns the minds that are connected. I will not sever that link, which means that you are the only one left who can. Somehow, I don’t think I will be teaching you how to do that.”
“But do you agree to the rest?”