The Celestial Globe: The Kronos Chronicles: Book II (30 page)

“What is it?” Dee asked.

“Nothing,” she said, but saw that he didn’t believe her. “It’s . . . each of these coins is from a different country, like you said. They
were sent by rulers from all over the world as a sign of friendship to him.” She pointed at the skeleton.

That is not the whole story,
said Astrophil.
What else did you see?

I’ll tell you later.

“Keep the coin,” said Dee. “This must be what we came for, and it clearly belongs to you.”

Petra slipped it into her right trouser pocket, and heard it clink against the Glowstone.

Petra and Dee scaled the rope. When they were in the sun again, Petra leaned against the hill. She sucked in the spring air, pondering what she had just discovered about the coin.

Dee fastened a new lock on the door, which Petra now knew was a ship hatch. He asked, “How have your lessons with Christopher progressed?”

“What? Uh . . . they’ve been all right.”

“Hmm.” He packed his satchel with the coiled rope. “Have you grown fond of him?”

The last thing Petra wanted to say was the truth.
“No.”

“Good. Because I fired him.”

He turned away then, toward his daughters picnicking on the grass. For a moment, Petra stood stock-still, her hands balled into fists. Then she strode after him, because she had no choice but to follow.

Petra was ruthlessly glad that she had hidden what she had learned about the coin from Dee, who was not only her competitor in the race to solve Thorn’s murder. Dee was also someone who seemed determined to thwart Petra’s every chance at happiness, however slender or slight.

The gold coin is Romany,
she told Astrophil.
It was minted during the reign of Danior of the Kalderash, about eight hundred years ago.

She reached into her pocket, touched the coin nestled against the crystal, and wished that her friends were with her now.

W
HEN THE
P
ACOLET
limped into the harbor at Deptford, the other ships gave it a wide berth. The flag it flew belonged to Sea-Gypsies, and nobody wanted to tangle with them.

The
Pacolet
docked, and the sailors on ships close by watched curiously as the Gypsy crew lowered a small boat. When it hit the water, everyone could see that there were four people seated at the oars. And—how odd—one of them was blond. His hair was stiff and long and filthy, but there was no mistaking its color as it fluttered in the late April breeze.

Murmurs were exchanged. Everyone knew that Gypsies didn’t like outsiders. But—the English sailors took one look at the dark-skinned crew thronged along the deck—they also didn’t like people nosing into their business.

The whispers died, and Treb, Andras, Neel, and Tomik rowed up the Thames toward London.

T
REB TAPPED ASH
from his pipe into the water. “The
Pacolet
’s taken a beating.”

“That last storm . . .” muttered Andras as he pulled on the oars.

Tomik never saw anything to rival the tempest. But over the past few months, he had sailed through many storms where the green
sea washed over the deck and the ship was surrounded by glittering hills of water.

“The rest of the crew can patch up the
Pacolet
in Deptford and guard the Terrestrial Globe while we search for its twin,” Andras continued. “We’re not far from London Bridge.”

Soon they were slipping under the bridge along with dozens of other small boats, and pulling into a wharf that reeked of fish. Tomik swung his legs over the side of the boat. Oyster shells cracked under his feet as he stood quickly, and swayed.

“Steady, Tom,” said Neel, though he was wobbling, too.

“It’ll pass,” Andras told Tomik. “Your legs aren’t used to being on land.”

“Where do we go now?” asked Tomik.

“Why”—Treb grinned—“to the Liberties, of course.”

As Tomik and Neel walked side by side, they were day and night, sun and moon. Looking at them stroll into the lawless part of London, you might not think they were friends, but you would still sense that to raise your hand against one of them would mean facing both.

“Get two rooms at the Sign of the Spoked Wheel,” Treb told them. “Andras and I are going to scout around and see what happens when we say the English word
cotton
.”

“Someone’ll try to sell you a dress?” Neel smirked. “You’d look awfully pretty in one.”

“Make sure you take a bath before we get back, little cousin, because you
and
your jokes stink.” With that, Treb and Andras turned away, walking toward a knot of villainous-looking people prowling on a street corner.

The Liberties were slummy and rough. Tomik had never seen so many fights in such a short space of time. Before he and Neel reached the inn, Tomik had counted two broken noses. There was also an incident where a whip-thin girl pulled a knife on a grown
man and began pummeling his head with the hilt. That might have been funny—if there hadn’t been so much blood.

When they entered the Sign of the Spoked Wheel, Tomik had begun to doubt that they would find anything so civilized as a bath. But the inn was clean and even cozy.

“Two rooms for me and mine.” Neel spoke to the innkeeper in Romany. “And a hot bath. Name’s Neel.”

“Tribe?”

“Lovari. Got two more men coming, though, and they’re Maraki.”

“And who’s this?” The innkeeper jerked a thumb at Tomik. “Your pigeon?”

“Nah,” said Neel.

The man reassessed Tomik. “Not your courtesy-man, then?”

Tomik had had enough. In clear Romany, he said, “Will you say something resembling sense, or do I have to make you?” Months with the Maraki had taught him that if there’s anything people like better than kindness, it’s a bit of backbone.

The man held up his palms. “Sorry, lads. No offense meant. My wife will see to your rooms. Have a seat while you wait.”

“What’s a pigeon?” Tomik asked Neel as they took a table by the window. “And don’t tell me it’s a bird.”

“A pigeon’s someone caught in a trap set by—oh, me, for example. Like, say I was to tell you I knew that this tavern’s got a card game going between a lot of sloppy drunks and that you could make a killing. But really I just want to make you put in enough money for my cardsharp pals—who are faking their drunkenness—to take it all off you. You’re not a courtesy-man, either. Though . . .” Neel examined Tomik thoughtfully. “You could be, come to that.”

“A courtesy-man.”

“Yeah. Someone who plays the gentleman. The one who people will trust. If you cleaned up and threw some rich clothes on you, we could pull off a nice scam. We’d head into the market, find someone with a fat-looking purse, and I’d play the scary Gypsy. You’d sail in and pretend to save the day. Then you’d pick their pockets. Except you don’t speak English. And you don’t know the first thing about thieving.”

“And we have better things to do.”

“Like play some cards to see who’ll get to use the bath first?”

To his horror, and even though he cheated, Neel lost.

F
RESHLY SCRUBBED,
Tomik waited downstairs, eating a spicy stew and grateful to have a dinner that wasn’t dried. Neel skipped down the stairs and sat down with him, dragging his fingers through his wet, knotted hair. “We’ve got some plotting to do,” Neel said. “First thing, we check the weavers’ halls and the cloth sellers of London. We’ll see who deals in cotton, and ask after the globe and Petra.”

“Forget the globe.”

“You know, we wouldn’t be in this uncertain situation if it weren’t for you. At the scrying, you were supposed to question me about Petra
after
the Maraki got their turn with the globe. It was supposed to be a two-birds, one-stone kind of thing. Instead, you had to confuse everything. It’s not my fault if we don’t know what we’re after. We’ll follow the leads we’ve got.”

“What about talking to that English ambassador who visited Salamander Castle? Maybe he’s back in London. Wouldn’t John Dee help us? He helped Petra in Prague, after all.”

“I kind of got the impression that he
used
her,” said Neel. “Sketchy fellow. I’d trust him like I’d trust a viper not to bite me. Plus, he’s a spy for the queen of England. It’s never a good idea to catch the attention of governmental types, especially not when
you’re looking for someone the Bohemian prince wants well and truly dead. Best to stay away from Dee. Let’s tramp a bit about London and see what that shows us.”

“London’s a big place, but I have an idea about how to find Petra.” Tomik slipped the Glowstone out of his pocket and placed it on the table. He explained.

Neel inspected the crystal, holding it up to the light. “Don’t you know Petra’s twitchy about spies? She hates ’em.”

Tomik was silent.

“And you gave her a gift that tracks her every move. Very spy-like. She’s not gonna appreciate that.”

“I don’t care.”

“Oh, you do, Tom. You do.”

N
EEL AND
T
OMIK
were discouraged. They had visited the shops of drapers and dressmakers, weavers and embroiderers, but Neel had a hard time getting anyone to answer his questions. The shopkeepers narrowed their eyes at him as if he were a scheming thief—which he was. He should have done exactly what Treb and Andras were doing. They had hired a respectable, white Englishman to investigate the cloth shops for them.

Tomik was worse than no help. His regular, European features might have softened people up, but he didn’t understand English. Plus, he spent every second staring hopefully at his Glowstone like a moonstruck fool, waiting for it to glimmer with light.

“The Glowstone’s dark,” Tomik muttered as they walked down a narrow lane.

“Stop it.”

“But the scrying . . . you said Petra was in London, and there’s no light at all in the Glowstone.”

“Tom, who knows what I meant at the scrying?”

“Maybe Petra’s never been to
this
part of London. We need to keep looking.”

“No, you need to
stop
.” Neel seized Tomik’s wrist, and the other boy curled his fingers protectively around the crystal. “Don’t you
get it? There’s nothing here to make your crystal shine, and if you don’t put it back in your pocket I’m going to crush it under my heel into a thousand shards.”

The hand that held the Glowstone became a fist.

“Try it,” Neel taunted. “See where hitting me gets you, ’cause neither of us thinks that’ll make Petra alive and here.”

“What am I supposed to do, then?”

“Put that blasted thing away. We’re going back to the inn.”

Tomik thrust the Glowstone into his pocket, but it was Neel who felt defeated.

“I
T WOULD NOT
be difficult for me to spy on John Dee,” offered Astrophil. “I could creep into his library, see with whom he meets, and overhear his conversations.”

“No,” said Petra.

“I am not afraid. I do not think I could possibly be more frightened than when I slipped into the prince’s Cabinet of Wonders. Oh, how my legs trembled!”