The Dark City Read Free Page B

wire with a grin. ‘This is perfect!’ She pulled it straight and reopened the door. Secretary Franco was still reading the same document – if anything he was moving even less than the painted saint.
    Slowly, Bianca poked the stiff wire into the room until it was right behind the secretary’s back. As he reached for a pen on his right, Bianca jabbed to the left, toppling the basket of sealed documents onto the floor. Secretary Franco jumped several inches into the air, his velvet robe rippling around him. Bianca tugged the wire back quickly. Behind her, she heard the muffled sound of Duchess Catriona giggling through a mouthful of her own sleeve.
    Secretary Franco sighed and bent down to his left to pick up the basket – so Bianca poked the stack of papers to his right. They flew up in the air like a flock of birds leaping from the branch of a tree. With a gasp, the secretary stood up and stared at the scattered papers, his mouth hanging open.
    â€˜Let me, let me!’ whispered Marco. Bianca sniggered and pressed her finger to her lips. Marco took the wire and Bianca strained to see over his shoulder as he waited patiently for Secretary Franco to place the basket of trade agreements back on his desk and walk around to pick up the mess on the other side.
    Marco hooked the big document that the Secretary had been studying and flipped it into the air, yanking the wire back at once. Secretary Franco spun around in time to gape in horror as the document floated back down to the desk.
    â€˜What in the name of the Duchess is going on?’ he whispered to himself, standing by his desk as if ready to grab any other documents that decided to make a break for freedom, and Bianca saw Duchess Catriona sink to her knees in a puddle of silk skirts, her shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.
    Bianca looked back into the study just in time to catch the large, elaborately written title of the big document as Secretary Franco seized it.
    She gasped aloud, and then clamped her hands over her mouth. She felt as if she’d been slapped.
    Franco didn’t seem to have heard her gasp. He was muttering as he scribbled on a piece of paper. ‘To whom it may concern  …  a summons  …  the reading of the will  …  reckoning of properties  …  final wishes  …  tomorrow, the twelfth of May, in the presence of Duchess Catriona, Her Royal Highness, Supreme Ruler of, etc, etc.’ He signed the note with a flourish and folded it into an envelope.
    Bianca slowly closed the door, and turned to Duchess Catriona and Marco. ‘It’s being read tomorrow.’
    â€˜What is?’ asked Marco.
    â€˜My master’s will,’ she said.

Chapter Three
    â€˜I’m sorry, Bianca. I didn’t know,’ Duchess Catriona said, as they walked back through the passages. ‘I haven’t been through my appointments for tomorrow yet.’
    Bianca let out a long breath. In all of the chaos and intrigue and adventure that’d followed di Lombardi’s death, she’d forgotten that he would have written a will.
    â€˜I expect he’s left everything to the Museum,’ she said. ‘He always said he was a servant of the Crown and the people, not just some private craftsman.’
    Duchess Catriona took Bianca’s hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘He was a great man, Bianca. I still miss him every day.’
    â€˜Me too.’ Bianca put her other hand into her pocket and ran the soft bristles of the paintbrush key over her palm, remembering her master.
    Her sadness had softened over the last few weeks. At first it had come in horrible waves, sharp and unpredictable, as if every tenth tile in the palace had been loosened and was waiting to trip her up. Now it was more like a limp from an old wound – it was just
there
.
    They found an empty room and clambered out through a painting of two young ladies warming up for a dancing