The Celestial Globe: The Kronos Chronicles: Book II Read Free Page B

and flipping back its wings. Master Kronos placed the stool beneath the wooden sign with its many-pointed compass, hoping that if the prince seized him, he might not try to find Petra. Mikal sat down to wait.

3
The Sign of Fire
     

     
    B EFORE PETRA had reached the edge of the village, she wanted to go back and apologize. Why had she overreacted? If her father was angry with her, could she blame him? They were leaving the village he had lived in all of his life. Who was responsible for that, if not she?
    She turned around.
    Astrophil pinched her ear.
    “Ow!
Astrophil!
”
    “Where are you going?”
    “Home.”
    “Why? That is not what your father asked you to do!”
    “Master Stakan can’t need the tin sheet so badly that he won’t be able to wait fifteen minutes more. I just . . . I want to tell Father I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so . . . sulky.”
    “But sulking is a great talent of yours. You should practice it. You should continue to sulk.”
    “Astrophil, are you trying to be funny?”
    “I simply do not see what is to be gained by ruining such a dramatic exit as the one you just made. To return to the Sign of the Compass now, well . . . it would not be artistic. A heroine in a novel would never turn back at this point.”
    “Will you quit pinching my ear? That
hurts
!”
    “Very well.” Astrophil leaped to the ground. “I shall go to the Sign of Fire alone. I would like to see Tomik. He is a very intelligent conversationalist. And Atalanta! What a charming dog!”
    “You always complain that she tries to drown you with her slobber.”
    “Yes. Well. I am merely being affectionate when I say that.”
    “All right. Go on ahead. I’ll meet you there soon.”
    Astrophil tried one last thing. He tried being honest, or close enough to it. “Petra,” he said, “if you truly wish to make your father happy, you should do as he asks right away.”
    She paused. “You really think so?”
    “I do.”
    “Hop on my shoulder, then. You’re getting muddy.”
    Relieved, Astrophil shot a web to her shoulder and quickly pulled himself up the glittering line.
    “A JOURNEYMAN !” Mila Stakan had said when she first saw Tomik pin the badge to his tough leather work apron. “You’re all grown up. And look how that badge brings out the blue in your eyes!”
    “Mother, please,” he protested. “It’s just a badge.”
    “You know better than that,” she said. “It’s everything it represents.”
    That had been several weeks ago, the day after his Coming of Age ceremony. The ceremony had taken place on his fourteenth birthday, when Tomik legally became an adult. He was supposed to have certain rights now: he could buy property, attend university, and marry. He had thought he would feel different, but the truth was that nothing had changed. He had no money to buy land. The only university he wanted to enter was the Academy, which was impossible. And no fourteen-year-old he’d ever heard of actually
got
married. The idea of marriageseemed far-off and foreign, something for people years older than he was.
    But at least Tomik had been promoted from being his father’s apprentice. He was now a journeyman. The blue badge stitched with red flame had been Master Stakan’s birthday gift to his son.
    The next morning, Tomik had pinned the badge over his heart. But when his mother began cooing over him, Tomik felt as if his secret hopes had been found out. He tore the badge from his apron.
    Yet on that foggy morning at the end of December, something made him fish out the scrap of cloth from the box under his bed. He knew he would be alone in the shop for the entire afternoon, as the rest of his family had errands to run. But maybe somebody would stop by . . .
    When Petra opened the shop door at the Sign of Fire, Tomik couldn’t help wondering if maybe the journeyman badge pinned to his chest made him look different after all.
    Petra mumbled a distracted greeting, and Tomik’s smile sank.
    She sat