Pip and El had visited this kitchen often over the years. They knew Oni’s mother well enough to call her by her first name, Amina, although most people called her Missus Bemare. The Missus was a sign of respect more than anything else; no one seemed to know if she had ever been married. Oni’s father was called Guilliame Tylova and lived in the Tailors’ Quarter. Oni visited him now and then, to check how he was.
“Nobody knows what he does,” said Oni once, when El asked about him. “He always has plenty of money, though. Ma says she doesn’t quite know why she ended up with him, except that he was very handsome at the time. And then she got me, and who could regret that?”
Amina gestured for them to sit down. She wouldn’t let them speak until she had lit several dark yellow candles with an unfamiliar, sharp scent and set them around the table, muttering under her breath. Pip raised his eyebrows at Oni.
“We don’t want to be overheard,” she said. “So shut up until she’s ready.”
El was watching with fascination, her eyes wide. “It’s witchcraft, isn’t it?” she whispered. “Is your ma a witch?”
“I said, shut up,” said Oni.
“No need to be rude,” said Pip.
“You don’t know how rude you’re being,” said Oni. “So shut up.”
After that Pip and El buttoned their mouths. Pip shifted uncomfortably. Something strange was happening with the Heart: he could feel it getting colder and colder in his pocket.
At last Amina seemed satisfied, and she sat down with them at the table, clasping her hands in front of her.
“So you’d better have a good story.”
Pip then told Amina what he had told Oni: how he had found the Heart, and how he was sure that an assassin had murdered Olibrandis. Amina listened in complete silence.
“There was a box?” she said when he had finished.
“Yes, a silver box.”
“Describe it to me.”
He was beginning to get tired of talking about it. “Well, Ollie said it had excellent chasing and repoussage work, and it had amethysts and garnets that weren’t worth much. It had a red dragon in the coat of arms; Ollie said it was the Old Royals.”
“I wish you hadn’t sold it.”
“We was hungry,” said El. “We didn’t have nothing else.”
“You had better show me the Heart.”
When Pip touched the Heart, it was so cold he winced. As he put it on the table he noticed that it had a faint mist of condensation on its surface. Amina stared at it in silence, but she didn’t touch it. She didn’t look horrified or disgusted. Most of all, thought Pip, she looked sorry for it.
“Put it away,” she said at last. “That is a terrible thing. I wish I had never had cause to see such a thing as that.”
“I told you it was evil,” said El.
“It’s not evil in itself. Maybe it might do evil things. What caused it to be made is evil.”
“So what is it?” said Pip, wrapping it up and putting it back in his pocket.
“I’m not sure that you should know.”
Pip opened his mouth to argue but was interrupted by the ringing of a bell several rooms away.
“Oh no,” said Oni. “That’s Georgie.”
THE OLD PALACE HAD BEEN CRUMBLING INTO GRAND decay for almost a century, ever since King Axel I built his new, showier palace in the center of Clarel. Much of it was a maze of paneled corridors and rooms constructed inside faded ballrooms and reception rooms, where dusty scribes and officials scurried from office to office on their inscrutable duties. Even Amina, the Old Palace’s housekeeper, wasn’t quite sure what most of them did, although she thought it was something to do with tax.
Georgette breathed in the familiar smells of damp and stale cooking with relief. For the first time that day, her feeling of panic subsided. She knew every corner of this place. It was the closest thing to a home she had ever known.
In the Old Palace, where the king put unimportant affairs like princesses he didn’t want and obscure government departments, things ran on their own, mostly overlooked by the royal gaze.
Amina’s door was always locked to keep out bewildered scribes, who sometimes got lost. It was a long time before she answered the bell this evening, long enough for Georgette to start wondering if she was out. How could Amina not be there?
She was just about to tug the bell rope again when the door opened. Amina met her eyes unsmilingly, hurriedly let her in and turned the key behind her, and only then kissed her cheeks. Georgette wanted to hug her, but something made her hold back.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
It was unlike Georgette, who was a princess after all, to notice the feelings of others, and Amina gave her a narrow look. “Nothing, my dear,” she said. “I’ve just got Oni here, with some friends who wanted advice.”
Georgette’s face brightened. “Oni!” she said. “I haven’t seen her since, oh, for years . . .”
“No, that you haven’t.”
“It’s not like I’m allowed,” Georgette said, with sudden defensiveness.
Amina’s face relaxed. “Yes, my dear, I know that. Anyway, it can’t be helped. You might as well come to the kitchen.”
Georgette wrinkled her nose as Amina showed her in. There were candles burning although it wasn’t yet completely dark, and a strong smell of cassia and myrrh. Three people looked up as she entered. Georgette recognized Oni, but the others were strangers: a sharp-faced boy and a girl who looked a little younger than her. To her annoyance, she felt herself blushing under their gaze.
The fair girl was staring at Georgette in awe. “Is that real gold?” she said.
“Shhh,” said the
