The Cabinet of Wonders: The Kronos Chronicles: Book I (5 page)

“Remember you?” Petra scoffed. “Don’t be silly. Wasps don’t have brains to remember
with.”

He grimaced. “It’s not its brains I’m worried about.”

Petra took the ball from him. The thin glass buzzed under her grip, which tightened as she peered at the insect’s stinger. “Not a pretty sight,” she agreed, and passed both spheres to Tomik, who tucked them back into the box.

“I thought of it because Lucie kept pestering me to make earrings for her in the shape of butterflies. Father told Lucie and Pavel that they could make the trip to Prague this year to sell our wares. Lucie wants to impress the city-folk. And Pavel.” He rolled his eyes.

Lucie was his older sister. She was pretty, plump, and married to Pavel at the age of eighteen. She, Tomik, and Petra used to explore the woods together when they were younger. But the trio split up after Tomik and Petra suggested that Lucie wade in a muddy creek. Though they swore that they didn’t know the creek was full of leeches, Lucie was hysterical when she discovered little black blood-sucking globs stuck to her pale legs. Wailing, she jumped from the water and rolled on the grass, shoving at her brother and Petra as they tried to peel off the leeches. They finally convinced her to let them help, but tears poured down her face and she whimpered as every torn-off leech revealed a bruise-colored mark. After this incident, Lucie decided Tomik and Petra were not so much fun to play with. Frankly, they felt the same way about her.

“I have better things to do than make her some ridiculous earrings,” Tomik continued, “but then I thought, What if I used
real
butterflies? That’d be pretty—but also pretty useless. Then I realized that breaking something takes energy, and I could use that energy to multiply whatever was in the shattered glass. But a hundred butterflies? That’s not so interesting.”

“A hundred times prettier and a hundred times more useless than just one.”

“Exactly,” Tomik agreed with a laugh.

“Have you considered putting water inside?” Astrophil suggested.

Tomik rubbed his chin. “There’s a thought. Smash the ball on a wall right next to somebody and they’d be completely soaked.”

“You’d have to make sure the water multiplies more than a hundred times, though,” Petra pointed out. “One hundred drops of water isn’t very much. That’s not even enough to fill a small pitcher.”

“True. Hmm …” Tomik’s eyes became unfocused as he considered how he might increase the magnifying power of the spheres. Then his gaze sharpened as he looked again at Petra. “But the concept is a good one, isn’t it? There are so many possibilities. I could multiply almost
anything
this way. What do you think?”

“I think I’m jealous.”

She meant this in an admiring way. Magical ability was extremely rare—that is, it was rare if you were not born into a noble family. And it was even more unusual for Tomik to be able to use his talent at a young age, since such talents did not typically begin to show themselves until about the age of fourteen. This was the age of adulthood, when the Academy tested children who were the sons and daughters of lords, high-ranking military officers, well-connected people, or those rich enough to make huge donations to the right people. Someone like Tomik would never be examined by the Academy, let alone admitted.

Tomik closed the box with a snap. “I keep trying to show Father, but he stops me dead in my tracks every time. He’s either too busy or too tired. One minute he tells me that I’m too young to do any magic. The next minute he warns me that I’d better stop fiddling around with magic. He told me that his own magical abilities have brought him nothing but trouble, that his life would be a lot easier if he were a normal glassblower. I guess he lost some friends in the Guild.”

Most cities and villages had a separate guild for each trade. Guilds were organizations that shared their trade secrets among themselves and established rules for how to craft an item and sell it. Usually, each town had a Glassblowers’ Guild, a Leatherworkers’ Guild, and so forth. But Okno was so small that if there had
been a Glassblowers’ Guild, Tomik’s father would have been the only member. The same was true for many other artisans, including Petra’s father. So in this village there was only the Guild. Its members worked with one another—or mostly did. A leather shoe crafted by Mistress Chistni was cinched with a metal buckle made by Petra’s father. But Mistress Chistni’s leather was made supple by hours of labor, not magic. This was a fact that she was willing to forget when she worked with Master Kronos. Not all members of the Guild shared her attitude.

So when Tomik stowed the box back under the bed and said, “Maybe we should keep this a secret,” Petra was not surprised.

I
T WAS DUSK
when Petra left the Stakans’ home. The sun had set, and the clouds blushed pink. Above them, a dark blue nestled into the dome of the sky. One bright pinpoint of light twinkled like the lightning in Tomik’s sphere. Petra’s father had told her that bright stars like that were planets, just like earth. Just like earth? she wondered. Were the hills and valleys the same? Did people have the same problems? Maybe on that planet, things were different, and no one ever took what didn’t belong to them.

A dog barked, but then the streets of Okno were quiet. The farmers had returned from the fields, and one window—the kitchen window —glowed with firelight in almost every house. She should hurry home to supper. But she hovered by the fountain in the center of town, and dipped her hands in the cool, dark water.

Over the bubbling of the fountain, Petra heard the cries of swallows. The birds swooped in circles above her, seeking their evening meal.

Astrophil burrowed deeper into her hair.

“Scared, Astro?” Petra teased, trying to shake off her somber mood.

“Merely cautious,” he whispered.

“Do you think some skinny swallow is drooling for a tasty treat like you? Silly. Metal insects give birds indigestion.”

“I am
not
an insect. I am an arachnid. There is a distinct and well-observed difference between the two.”

“Astrophil, has anyone ever told you that you sound like a stuffy old schoolmaster when you’re afraid?”

“Thank you. But this is not fear. This is irritation.” A swallow flapped close to Petra’s head and Astrophil squeaked. “Now can we go home, please?”

W
HEN PETRA ENTERED THE KITCHEN,
Dita was standing by the fire, scooping boiled carrots with strings of thyme out of the large iron pot that hung over the logs. Josef and David were sitting at the oak table that was so thick that thudding your fist against it would make you feel the same way as striking the ground. You would only be aware of just how little an impression you were making on it.

Josef was rather like the table at which he sat. He was a big man, muscular and brown. Deep lines marked his face. Petra’s father said that you could tell how old a tree was by counting the rings in a trunk that had been cut open. One ring meant one year. But if Petra were to count the wrinkles on Josef’s face in the same way, he would be ancient. And he was not even forty years old. He glanced at Petra and continued chewing. He was about as talkative as the table, too.

Dita scraped Petra up and down with her eyes. She clearly wanted to yell at her for being late. But then, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, she seemed to decide that the day had been an unusual one, and allowances could be made for Petra’s behavior.

Petra sat across from David. He shoved an enormous chunk of carrot in his mouth and looked disappointed that Petra wasn’t going to get in trouble.

After they had finished eating, Dita warmed a generous helping of chicken and carrots in the pot over the smoldering fire. She then arranged the food on a plate and dressed it with pickled onions. She passed the plate to Petra. “Take that down to your father.”

Petra was worried that she might find him sleeping or, worse, wake him up. But he was alert and pleased when she walked into his room. “I have found a name for my enemy: ‘Boredom.’ “ He beckoned her to his side. “You will make him run and hide.”

They didn’t discuss the fact that he would make a mess of things if he tried to feed himself. He simply straightened up and she sat down beside him with the plate on her knees. It felt very strange to be feeding her father, like writing with her left hand. But he chatted between mouthfuls as if they were sitting across from each other in the kitchen, having an ordinary meal. He asked about Tomas Stakan and laughed when she told him about her encounter with Jaspar, but she didn’t mention Tomik’s glass spheres or why she had visited the Sign of Fire.

She did, however, tell him about Master Stakan’s angry explosion, and then added, “I just don’t understand something.
He
knew that the prince was a terrible person. Why didn’t you? Why did you accept the prince’s offer to build the clock?”

He did not reply right away. “Well, Petra,” he began slowly, “you need to give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes. Of course, there was that awful incident during the year of the drought when we lost several good people. They were friends of mine, Petra, people I wish you knew now. But the prince was a twelve-year-old boy then, and controlled by his father’s counselors in Prague. All decisions were made by them until he turned fourteen.”

Bohemia was its own country, but remained part of the Hapsburg Empire, which was under the reign of the prince’s father.
Emperor Karl ruled from his court in Vienna, and had three sons. When each was born, he gave him a country. The eldest, Prince Maximilian, ruled Germany. Hungary belonged to Prince Frederic. And the youngest, Prince Rodolfo, had Bohemia. When Karl felt his death to be near, he would choose which of his sons would become ruler of the entire Hapsburg Empire after him, judging how well each had managed his own country.

“It’s easier,” Mikal Kronos continued, “to blame your sorrows on one person than on a group of them. Then you can believe that if only that person were to disappear, everything would be different, better. Maybe that’s true sometimes. But more often than not it’s just wishful thinking. Let us say that the prince
had
given the order to imprison, even kill, the people plotting rebellion when the fields dried up. It was a brutal choice. But how could I hold a young man accountable for a decision he made as a child?”

“He was the same age I am now.”

“I am old,” her father said, sighing. “And I still make mistakes in judgment.”

Petra did not like to hear him say that. Her father’s straight salt-and-pepper hair flowed over his shoulders, and Petra only had to look at it to admit that there were more gray hairs than black. She knew that he had been older than most fathers when she was born. She had not been his first child. Her mother had given birth to three sons. Each had been stillborn or died soon after he was born, and the third had been Petra’s twin. There had been no midwife or doctor in the town then, or now. There was only an old woman, Varenka, who brewed medicine and helped deliver babies, though she was not particularly good at either.

“Of course, I had my suspicions about the prince,” her father said. “If you remember, I went to Prague to meet with him first before agreeing to take the job.”

“But how could you have agreed? Look what he did to you. How could you have met him and not seen him for what he was?”

“It is not always easy to see people for what they are. I hope you will be better at it than I have been. Prince Rodolfo is charming and persuasive. He seemed keenly smart and friendly. I was ready to believe, after that first meeting, that people had misjudged him and blamed him for things that he could not control, like the weather or the decisions of his advisers when he was younger. Also”—her father paused—“I was intrigued by the project. When it was suggested to me, I couldn’t let go of the idea. It haunted my mind, and I had so many visions that I simply had to realize them.”

Petra was silent, because she had the sense that although what her father had told her was true, the pause he had taken before he spoke meant that what he had said wasn’t the whole truth. “It’s just a clock. You could have built one for the mayor of Okno if you had wanted to.”

“But such a clock? With such resources and talent from all over the Empire? No, never. Because …” He bit his lip. “Petra, you must be very careful not to tell anyone what I am going to tell you.”

She was curious. “Of course I won’t.”

“No one!” He gripped her hand. “Not even Tomik.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

His hand relaxed a little, but still held hers. “The clock is more than what it seems. You know, don’t you, that the relationship between the weather and time is a very close one. What we call a ‘month’ is the time it takes for the moon to wax and then wane. The moon controls the tides, and the tides change the shape of the land, sometimes taking pieces of it away, sometimes giving pieces of it back. The tides bring rain clouds, and then winds push them over the land. For years we have thought that the sun moves
around the earth, but I learned at the prince’s court that it is not so. The exact opposite is true: the earth revolves around the sun. And we split the time that we see the sun and the time that we do not into hours. And it is the sun that decides how hot it will be.”