Petra K and the Blackhearts (17 page)

“Everybody out!” he yelled. “We have to continue underground.” Children who had looked so distraught and lifeless before now jumped from the cab with savage howls. Once settled, Deklyn took them one by one, and, with a piece of black charcoal, drew a black heart on each of their chests.

“Honorary member,” he said to each, then directed them toward a drainage pit by the river. I ran to Deklyn to congratulate him.

“That was amazing,” I said.

“Not bad for somebody who just sells fake potions. Isn’t that what you said?”

“That was before.”

“Before what? Before you betrayed us?”

“I did not,” I said. But I knew if Jasper didn’t believe me, Deklyn wouldn’t either.

“It does not matter now,” he said. “We can’t trust you, so you can’t come this way. Go overland. And when you see your Youth Guard friends again, tell them the JRM was well at work.” He looked at me with spite. And without another word, the small gang disappeared into the darkened underground passage. But after the crowd disappeared into the darkness, Isobel re-emerged. She approached me.

“I know you are innocent,” she said. “I see things the others don’t. They only understand force and blood. But keep out of Jozseftown. Things are dangerous there if you are not part of the JRM. I will talk to Deklyn and send word to you.”

“Agreed,” I said. “And, thanks.” Isobel gave my hand a squeeze, looked me in the eye, not without kindness, and then disappeared down the tunnel.

O
F COURSE
I
WAS GOING
to go straight back to Jozseftown, for the simple fact that I had nowhere else to go. I made my way quietly, trying to keep to back streets where I would not be spotted. Boot guards stood at every corner. It was as though they had multiplied in my absence. I slipped quietly among them. Before long I was at the Jozseftown gate. What I really wanted to do was to go home. I could feel the pull of my mother, but I suspected she would send me back to where I had just escaped from. Instead, I followed a feeling that rose from my gut, a feeling that told me I needed to go to Jozseftown Cemetery. If Zsofia was still there, I knew we could help each other. I needed a friend. The only question was: was she still alive?

After scaling the wall, I found the mausoleum into which I had last seen her disappear. I pulled the door open and entered quietly. The dry, dark space was empty; there was no sign that
Zsofia was still residing there. I had no better idea, so I decided to make this my shelter for the time being. If the Blackhearts could do it underground, I could survive here, if I wanted to. The only question was: did I want to? If anybody has ever encountered a livable cemetery, I would like to know about it.

I made a nestlike bed of my jacket, and pushed shut the stone door on the wind. It was a cold but bearable abode. I had escaped the mines, but I still didn’t know why the Palace was rounding up the dragonka and what Luma had to do with the whole thing. Whatever the answer was, I knew Luma had something special about him that never failed to arouse curiosity. At least I was safe, and hidden where I was. I let out a sigh of relief.

It was then that I felt a hand grasp my ankle.

In an instant I was yanked downward and dragged through a hidden trapdoor. I landed with a thud on a pillow. It took me a few moments to rub the dirt from my eyes, but when I did, there before me sat Zsofia, in a white lab coat. And behind me, with her webbed-fingers on my shoulder, the person who had apprehended me: Ludmilla. Carmine- and mint-colored bats fluttered around my head.

“Welcome to my new laboratory,” she said.

I
n the tradition of refugees, mutants, and criminals on the run, Ludmilla had taken shelter in Jozseftown after the Boot closed her shops. There, she had set up a miniature laboratory. The grim space had been transformed into a white gleaming room; alabaster busts of Ludmilla’s ancestors stood in the corners, portraits of noble women from abroad, all former clients, graced the walls. In the center of the room stood barrels of clay from the Pava River, which she used in her mudpacks.

The Newt doorman who had once worked at her department store bowed to me, tipping his hat, only now he wore a casual smoking jacket.

“Have a look around,” she said. “Try a sample, though I fear a youth-enhancing pack would put you in diapers.”

“Who do you sell these to?” I asked, astonished at what I saw.

“Oh, I still have my clients,” she said. “It is only the method of distribution that has changed, thanks to this one,” she said, indicating Zsofia. Ludmilla busied herself packing a round cartridge with an order of mudpacks. “You see?” she asked, indicating a
tube that ran along the floor, and a mechanism with levers, like a large typewriter. It was the pneumatic mail system!

“Sorry,” Zsofia said to me. “I don’t have time to catch up. There is a blocked tube somewhere under the river, and I have to go unblock it.”

“It must be another rat. They love the pneumatic tubes. It is like a carnival ride for them,” said Ludmilla.

“Can I come?” I asked.

“Do you want to?” said Zsofia, grabbing my hand and grinning. I was glad to have her back as a friend.

“Of course,” I said.

“Only, bring Petra K back. I have to talk to her,” Ludmilla said.

“How could I possibly lose her?” Zsofia asked. They looked at each other and cracked up in laughter.

“Sorry,” said Ludmilla. “It is just that the system of tunnels is so very complicated, and the glow clouds are growing dimmer by the day.”

“Might a map help?” I asked.

“Of course,” Ludmilla said. “But they just don’t exist anymore.”

“Well, actually,” I said, pulling the map from my pocket and unfolding it in front of them. Ludmilla looked over the map, then gasped.

“This opens up whole new markets,” she said.

“And it has the codes,” I said, turning it over.

“Codes!” she shrieked, as though I had just dumped a pile of pink diamonds in front of her. “Petra K, what do you want for this? I’ll give you anything.”

I considered for a minute. “Get my mother some tea. Oolong. It is her favorite. And maybe something nice from your lab. And, I want a copy of the map for myself.”

“Consider it done,” Ludmilla said.

“Come on, Petra K,” said Zsofia. “Let’s go find that rat.”

Zsofia had a small flock of glow clouds at her disposal. They bunched together like a fistful of cotton balls shot through with electricity. She raised a flute to her mouth and the glow clouds came to attention around us.

“Were you here all this time, in the cemetery?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Ludmilla took me under her wing when she realized it wasn’t us who were responsible for the tainted perfume getting out.”

“Then who was it?”

“Tatiana. She was a spy for the Boot long before she was inducted into the Youth Guard.”

“But she got sick,” I said.

“True, but she knew all along that would happen. She planted the perfume in your gift bag herself. They needed somebody who had no Palace connections. And, that was you. She knew she would get sick, she knew there was an antidote waiting from the Ministry of Unlikely Occurrences. She knew she would be made captain of the Youth Guard when the time came.”

“Wow,” I said. “But what about the perfume I smelled in the mausoleum?”

“Totally harmless. Want to try?” Zsofia took from her pocket a bottle of the black perfume and pointed it at me.

“No!” I screamed, jumping back.

“If you can’t trust me, how can I trust you?” she said. “We know you were in the Youth Guard.”

I took the vial from her hand and examined it. I drew a deep breath, and sprayed it against my neck. The same molten wax and musky smell overtook me that I remembered from Ludmilla’s laboratories. I handed it back to Zsofia. I waited for a few tense moments; and felt nothing but silly for wearing perfume in the sewers of Pava.

“Ludmilla would never poison children. It is bad for business, as you can see.”

“But why did they sabotage her?”

“You know she comes from a long line of sorceresses. Well, her ancestor, the original Ludmilla, was the one that put the curse on the Haints, keeping them bound in the Palace laboratories like slaves. It is revenge that was a long time coming. Now let’s keep moving.”

The glow clouds illuminated the path ahead of us. Beneath Pava was a strange, mysterious place. Aside from the Kubikula, it was wholly unexplored. “The things I have come across down here,” she mused. “An albino python that glowed in the dark, a troupe of exiled Sibernian gnomes, and a crazy amount of bones. Ludmilla likes the bones; she grinds them up for face scrubs. If her customers only knew.…”

“How did you come to work for her?”

“Well, she found me the same way she found you. I was wandering sick with the dragonka fever through Jozseftown. The only refuge I found was in that mausoleum. She brought me into her lab, and cured me of the sickness, then put me to work. I’m learning how to concoct all kinds of great stuff. We are actually making our own antidote to the dragonka fever from the same perfume. That was my idea.”

During the course of our walk, Zsofia talked so much about her job that I lost track of where we were, though the dank smell led me to believe we were somewhere under the Pava River.

“Here we are,” she said, stopping at a portion of the glass tube that ran above us. “Look, you can see that something is trapped there, blocking the path.”

“Now what?”

“Simple, I unclog it,” she said. She pulled a wrench from her bag, found the place where the pipes were joined, and undid the screws on the joiner. She carefully lifted the glass from its place, laid the tube on the sewer floor, put on a glove, and reached toward the problem. “Stupid rats,” she said. “Always joyriding. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to rescue one like this. Rats are actually smarter than people give them credit for … for
instance they—” Before she could finish, Zsofia screamed. She pulled her arm from the pipe, and hanging off the end of her glove was a small dragonka, except this one had two heads, one of which appeared to be fashioned from gold and was biting into the finger of my friend.

“Quick, open the bag!” she yelled at me. I did so, and Zsofia shook her hand until the creature fell from her arm and into the open pouch. I quickly zipped it up, sealing the creature inside.

“God,” she said, rubbing her hand. The glove had protected her skin from the fangs, but it still looked like it hurt. “What was that?”

“They come from the Palace,” she said. “They are getting more vicious and ugly all the time. Let’s get it back to Ludmilla, and quick.” We made haste in reattaching the glass tube, and followed the glow cloud back to the mausoleum entrance.

I
T WAS A TASK
, extracting the wild beast from the bag and getting it into a terrarium. The dragonka was not at all grateful for its release; it snarled up at us, its tiny fangs flashing in the paraffin light. Ludmilla dropped a chloroform-soaked cotton ball in with it. Soon the beast got drowsy, then toppled over, asleep. Ludmilla took it by the tail and held it up for examination. “There is nothing remotely natural about this. Can you feel the chill it gives off? In place of a charm? The magic used to create it is the imperfect work of charlatans.”

“Because it comes from the inside,” I said. “The magic.”

Ludmilla looked impressed. “Yes,” she said. “Are you by chance part Half Not?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh, well never mind.”

“They are breeding them in the Palace,” I informed her, eager to help. “The Haints are performing experiments on the dragonka up there. Archibald says they are trying to
perfect
the dragonka.”

“Perfect them into what?” said Ludmilla. “Killers? Machines of war? What else are those bitter spirits doing up there?”

“They are growing hearts.”

“I know about that. They tried to get my help, blackmailing me with my stores as bait, but I refused. It would be reputation ruining. It can’t be easy to create a heart, even with their black magic, but that has been the mission of the Ministry of Unlikely Occurrences since their inception.”

“They are the Haints,” I said. “The Ministry of Unlikely Occurrences.”

“You’re quick,” she said. “Now, let’s see exactly what they are up to. Zsofia, bring me a scalpel.” Zsofia complied, finding Ludmilla a sharp, unused blade. Ludmilla turned the sleeping dragonka over. On its chest was a scar.

“If you are squeamish, I suggest you turn away,” she said to me. “Don’t worry about the dragonka, it is not much more than machinery and body tissue. Its spirit departed long ago.” She made a quick incision and pulled back the gold scales. I gazed at the specimen, now sliced open. Inside the dragonka was not a heart but a clocklike contraption. “That is why they have no charm. They have no heart.”

“But they are growing hearts in the Palace.”

“Maybe, but not for the dragonka,” said Ludmilla.

“For Archibald!” I said, making the connection with Archibald’s story. “They need a heart for Archibald.”

“That might be,” agreed Ludmilla. “If they can put a mechanical heart in a dragonka, they can put a dragonka heart in a child. But they would have to incubate it in a living body.”

“It’s Luma!” I said. “Luma is growing Archibald’s heart!”

I understood everything now. That was why Luma had such strange energy, and why they were eviscerating dragonka. They were looking for the right heart. The one I had all along. Or, the one Luma had, I should say. Now, with that heart, Archibald would live forever, the Haints would rule over Pava for perpetuity.
And the people would do their bidding—controlled through an army of vicious charmless dragonka.

“That’s what Luma is,” she said. “An experiment gone
right
, after so many tries.”

L
UDMILLA INVITED ME TO STAY
, offering me shelter and a job with her. As much as I wanted it, I had far greater obligations. I needed to find my dragonka. The Newt doorman gave me the copy of the map he had copied, then showed me the route out—through a mausoleum floor and from an empty grave. I fled the graveyard at top speed, dodging the gravestones, jumping over flowers that were laid over the resting places of the dead, and out onto the streets. I hastened through my old neighborhood, Jozseftown, which I had never seen so quiet. Nobody was on the streets now, not even the shops were open. Only empty stalls populated the markets, letting the wind whistle around the cold bare metal. On the walls, instead of posters of Archibald, black broken hearts were scribbled in chalk or paint. I saw the Blackhearts’ symbol everywhere.