The Cabinet of Wonders: The Kronos Chronicles: Book I (20 page)

The door Petra had opened began to groan backward. It thudded into place. Sir Humfrey jumped. “What? What?” Then, adjusting his spectacles, he focused on Petra. “Well, miss, who might you be?”

“Viera.”

“Well, Miss Viera, I don’t mean to be rude … but are you quite
sure that you mean to be here? You see, I was just reading some exquisite Persian sonnets about a desert flower called the selenrose. I was feeling so restful.” He wrung his hands, folded them, and sighed. “If you don’t have a library pass I shall have to call the guards, which would disrupt my sense of tranquillity. The rules say I must call the guards in cases like these. But it seems to me to be an unnecessary action to take for such a little thing as yourself.”

“I’m looking for the library.” She scanned the room, but it was utterly empty. There were no other doors besides the ones she had just stepped through. “Is this it? Where are the books?”

This is most disappointing,
said Astrophil, hurt.

“All the books are here, in a sense,” replied Sir Humfrey.

Petra glanced again at the blank walls. “Sure.
Right”

“They are here.” He tapped his forehead. “At least, one copy of everything except books specifically banned by the Lion’s Paw to the eyes of anyone but Prince Rodolfo. I have a delightful job, really. I get to greet lovers of literature and history. And when no one comes, I am never lonely. I can read away.” His gaze drifted from Petra and he stared off into space as if there were an invisible page before him. Then he looked at Petra again. “But you shan’t make me call the guards, I hope? That would be so unpleasant.”

“My mistress sent me.” Petra held out Iris’s letter. “Won’t this work as a pass?”

Sir Humfrey’s eyes widened when he saw the ermine stamp. “Is this from the Countess of Krumlov?” Petra nodded.

“Oh, my.” He stared at the letter in Petra’s hand. He reached out a finger and then drew it back.

Realizing what made him so hesitant, Petra said, “If she had been acidic when she wrote it, the letter would have burned up. There’s nothing wrong with the paper.”

He looked a little sheepish. “Yes, of course.” He took the letter
and studied it. “All right, then. Yes, everything seems to be in order.” He passed back the paper. “Go on ahead.” He waved at the blank wall behind him.

“Sir?”

“Oh, I am
sorry.
I am so absentminded.” He shook his head, then leaned across his desk and touched his nameplate. The back wall vanished.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Sir Humfrey whispered. “And remember: keep your voice low,
pianissimo”

Now,
this
was more like what Mikal Kronos had described. The ceiling was rocky. Silent birds swooped above. Shelves many times taller than Petra flanked either side of the library. A woman approached a nearby shelf and pulled a lever. The stacks silently yawned open, revealing whatever hidden treasure she was seeking. A handful of readers studied at desks lit by the green glow of brassica-fueled lamps.

After consulting a map on the wall of how the books were arranged, Petra went to the natural history section. Using a railed ladder that had a silence spell on it, Petra climbed up to gather a few likely books on minerals and their uses.

Stay under my hair,
she sternly ordered Astrophil.
Don’t even think about gallivanting all over the library.

You have become joyless in your time here at the castle. I prefer the old, fun-loving Petra.

She stepped down the ladder and was about to return to the entrance when she realized that someone was watching her.

He was a reader. His robes, like Sir Humfrey’s, were black. His brown hair and beard were long, flowing down his back and chest. There was a buzz of energy about him, and he didn’t stare at Petra the way humans normally do. A human looks away when he is caught secretly gazing at someone. His brown eyes watched her
the way a fox watches anything, waiting to see what the thing moving across its territory will do first.

Petra turned her back on him, unnerved. She walked toward Sir Humfrey, trying to keep her pace steady. When she approached Sir Humfrey’s desk, the blank wall appeared behind her, and her shoulders sank with relief.

The librarian noted down the books she was taking. “There you go.” He handed the small pile to her.

“There was a man in there …” Petra described the reader who had stared at her. “Who is he?”

“Ah, that would be Master John Dee. He’s the ambassador from England. A very learned man. He speaks many languages, even dead ones.”

Despite her plan, Petra did not feel eager to return to the third floor, if the third floor held Master Dee.

B
UT RETURN SHE DID.
Luckily, she did not see John Dee again during her third-floor excursions. Unluckily, it did not seem that what she really wanted was on the third floor: bedrooms.

“Well, I could have told you that,” Sadie said. “The private chambers of anyone of rank are on the fourth floor. That’s where I work.”

They were at dinner, talking quietly amid the uproar of hundreds of men, women, boys, and girls. Dana, one of Sadie’s friends, had finally turned away from them to tell anyone else who would listen about her latest crush. Petra seized the opportunity to ask Sadie for a favor.

“Can you find out something for me?” Petra asked casually, reaching for the large bowl of stewed cabbage.

Sadie’s face grew wary. She lowered her fork. “What?”

“Have you ever heard of something called a Worry Vial?”

When Sadie shook her head, Petra began to explain what the vial was, and what it looked like. “The darker it is, the better. Would you tell me if you see one that looks really purple, and whose room it’s in?”

“Petra, you’re going to get into so much trouble. Don’t you understand that you could get really hurt? You should go back to your village.”

“I’m not going to
take
anyone’s Worry Vial. I swear.” Petra crossed her heart in mock solemnity. “Anyway,” she continued lightly, “the worst thing that could possibly happen is that someone will catch me cleaning a room where I don’t really belong. Then I’d just say that I’m sick of working for Iris. That’s believable. I could claim that I’m hoping to prove myself in a new position as a chambermaid. Maybe I’d get fired, but I won’t get sent to prison. Hey, will you pass me the salt?”

Sadie shook her head. “Don’t try to pretend that we’re not talking about something truly dangerous, Petra. If the Worry Vial works the way you say it does, don’t you think that if they catch you playing with some powerful lord’s vial, they’ll be a tiny bit suspicious?”

Petra shrugged. “As far as anyone knows, Worry Vials are foolproof. And the gentry don’t expect people like me to even know that the vial is anything other than a decorative vase. If someone sees me handling a vial, I’ll just say I’m dusting it.”

“You’re going to do it whether I help you or not, aren’t you?”

“Yes. But it’d take me a lot longer. I’d have to search dozens of rooms. Of course, I’m more likely to get caught that way. But what else can I do?”

That worked.

A few days later, when they were tucked under their wool blankets in the darkness, Sadie whispered, “Try the captain of the guard’s private chambers. Fourth floor, northwest corner. The
doorknob is shaped like a boar’s head. But it’s usually locked. I don’t know how you’ll get in. And I won’t help you do that.”

“Is the vial dark purple?”

Sadie paused before replying. “It’s black.”

“T
HE POWDERED BERYL
does absolutely nothing!” Iris pressed her forehead against her fist. “The dye is still yellow.”

The gap of time between now and the birthday celebration was narrowing, and as they worked harder on the production of a new primary color, Iris grew ever more distressed.

“It’s not
that
yellow,” Petra tried to comfort her.

“I could fill my chamber pot with that dye!”

I think you are going about this in the wrong way,
Astrophil commented.
You keep mixing things together in the hope that you are going to produce a color that
cannot
be made by blending other colors. Do you not think that you should look for
one
thing that can produce
one
color?

Petra repeated Astrophil’s suggestion to Iris as if it were her own.

Iris considered this, and murmured, “Rainbows.”

“What?”

“A rainbow is one thing that shows us many colors.”

“Yes, but we already know what those colors are. There’s nothing new about them.”

“But sometimes stones seem to have rainbows inside. Like diamonds. A diamond is clear, but if you look closely you can see flashes of rainbow light—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. But what if there’s a color that we haven’t noticed, hidden among the rest?”

“You want to turn diamonds into dye?” Petra was skeptical. “Don’t be daft! Diamonds are too hard. You can’t grind them or melt them down easily. Perhaps a moonstone.”

Petra fetched a handful of the clear, translucent jewels and began
to melt them down in a bowl held over a green flame fed by brassica oil. The moonstones puddled into a bluish gel.

Try an opal,
Astrophil suggested. These milky white stones with sparkles of different colors had a reputation for bad luck. But Petra was not a superstitious sort of girl, so she put an opal to the test.

It flowed into a brown, glistening liquid.

Iris took one look at it and burst into tears. “Nothing ever works for me!” The old woman began to sink into the floor and holes appeared in her clothes, growing wider and wider.

Run, Petra!
Astrophil ordered in a panicked voice.

But Petra had noticed that one of Iris’s tears had fallen into the bowl. As the acid tear plopped into the melted opal, the color of the liquid in the bowl transformed. Petra had never seen anything like it. “Iris!” she shouted, her eyes flicking from the bowl to the floor, which was dipping into a cavity, causing Petra to slide toward the white and nearly naked woman. “Iris! Look in the bowl!”

To Petra’s relief, the woman did. Her tears stopped. Her clothes hung in shreds. The floor beneath her feet was a shallow basin, but it had ceased sinking and spreading.

“There it is!” Iris breathed. “Rodolfinium.”

You can imagine that Petra wasn’t pleased by Iris’s name for the new primary color. She tried to hide her disgust, but she needn’t have worried. Iris wouldn’t have noticed Petra’s expression anyway. She was too enthralled by the new color in the bowl.

Colors tend to stir emotions in the heart. Blue seems peaceful but unreliable. Red makes you feel passionate. Yellow produces a feeling of energy and restlessness. The best way to describe rodolfinium is that when Petra gazed into the bowl, she felt lightheaded.

Iris was joyous, and told Petra to take the rest of the day off. “Go on, then! Scamper!”

Thinking to take advantage of Iris’s good mood, Petra asked if
she could take a bottle of India ink with her. “I want to write down everything that happened today in my journal.”

“Of course you do! A fine idea! Yes, yes, take some ink. Just don’t walk off with any opals!” Iris beamed.

But Petra took more than a bottle of ink. You might say that Iris had trained her too thoroughly. Petra’s notion of what she needed was all too well informed. As Iris gazed into the bowl of rodolfinium, Petra took the following items in addition to India ink: powdered blue algae, sorrel vinegar, an empty bottle, iron tongs, and her third-floor pass.

T
HE PAIR OF FOURTH-FLOOR GUARDS
stared at the paper. They stared at the tongs holding the paper. Finally, they stared at the girl holding the tongs.

“Huh?” One of them scratched his nose.

“It’s my pass.”

“Well, give it over, then.”

“All right. But you probably should take the tongs, too.”

The two men eyed each other. Who was this jumped-up cellar brat? Why was she gripping her pass with a pair of tongs as if it were poisonous? Was she a lunatic, a Thinkers’ Wing experiment gone bad?

“What the blazes do we need tongs for?”

“My mistress is Countess Irenka December. She wrote the pass.”

The first man scrunched up his face in confusion, but the second muttered something in his ear. The first man winced.

“Fine. Hand over them tongs.”

But as the girl tried to pass the tongs, the folded note slipped to the ground.

“Blast!” growled one of the men. “Give em here.” He snatched
the tongs and bent over, trying (and failing miserably) to pick up the pass. His fellow guard smirked.

“There!” On his fourth or fifth try, the guard triumphantly held up the crumpled piece of paper, secure in the tongs’ grip. The other guard clapped slowly, sarcastically.

The guard with the letter stopped smiling. “Uh, how do we open it?”

One guard held the letter with the tongs and the other tried to unfold it with his penknife, knocking it to the ground. Swearing loudly and long, neither of them noticed a dark shape slip by and dash down the hall to hide behind an enormous window curtain. The two guards continued to fumble with the pass, growing increasingly irritated.