I nodded. “Likely the exact time. We won’t know where that beam of light will shine—and which metal plate to treat with the solution—until that day and time.”
Yoslyn’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t remember what time of day the queen died, but it was definitely in the spring. All of the images of her funeral—all the paintings and such—show fresh spring blooms sprouting at her graveside.”
“We can get the date and time. It’s recorded with all of the other royal records, and there’s definitely a copy in every library. But…I can’t wait until spring.”
I didn’t even know if I’d still be at the Alchemary by then.
I couldn’t even swear I’d still be alive.
It took us no time at all to discover that Queen Avalona had died on the fourth day of the third week of spring, at approximately a quarter past midnight. But it took two full days of searching after class and before my laboratory time to find a record of the moon’s cycles that went back far enough to be any use to us.
The mathematics took another couple of days. But finally, after several sheets of parchment and a couple of hours spent checking our calculations, we felt ready to predict where the moonlight would cast that bright white beam on the anniversary of Queen Avalona’s death. And if I was right, there was no need to wait for that anniversary to show us the way.
Four nights after I’d sat crying in the laboratory stairwell, I returned, with Yoslyn at my side.
The second and third floors were empty; I’d checked. But someone was always at work in the first-floor infirmary, so we would have to be quiet.
I paused on the second-floor landing, and my gaze was pulled toward Desmond’s lab. The thin gap beneath the door was dark. Hidden behind a shrub in the quadrangle, I’d watched him leave nearly an hour before.
Yoslyn crept past me, mumbling beneath her breath, and it took me a second to realize she was counting. “Here,” she whispered from three-quarters of the way up the second flight of stairs, just feet from the third-floor landing. “If our calculations are correct, this is where the beam of light would hit just after midnight on the anniversary of Queen Avalona’s death.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Of course not.”
Our calculations were approximate, at best. The brightest astrological minds in the world were yet unable to account for all of the moon’s movements—they blamed the celestial body herself, as the very personification of a woman’s temperamental nature. Yoslyn and I werenotamong the brightest astrological minds, but we just had to get close, because there were only so many metal trim pieces on the stairs.
“Do you have the solution?” Yoslyn asked.
I pulled the capped vial from my satchel.
“What if this doesn’t work?” she whispered as I knelt on the tread she’d indicated, facing the stairwell wall.
“Then we try again.”
I uncorked the vial and carefully poured the solution onto the metal trim piece at the juncture of stair tread and wall, but at first, nothing happened.
Yoslyn made a disappointed sound over my shoulder, where her shadow was layered over mine on the wall. “Maybe we—”
“Shh!” I leaned closer to the floor, drawn by a soft hissing sound. Hoping I wasn’t imagining it entirely. A second later, I heard a soft pop, and the metal trim piece shuddered, so slightly the movement could easily have been a play of light and shadow on the wall.
I reached for the trim piece, and the decorative metal rectangle came off easily in my hand.
Behind it was a wooden knob, shaped a bit like a bolt or a gear.
Yoslyn gasped. “Turn it!” she practically squealed into my ear, gripping my shoulder so tightly that her fingers dug into my collarbone.
I reached into the rectangular opening and carefully twisted the knob clockwise. Because everything my father had ever made turned clockwise, in the Toolkeeper tradition.
The knob settled into some groove I couldn’t see, and something clicked from my left. Yoslyn jumped, so startled that she almost tumbled us both down the stairs. I grabbed her arm to steady her, and we knelt together as the riser to our left slid open, revealing a small hollow beneath the tread above the one we sat on.
There was something in the space. Something glinting in the red-tinted wash of moonlight shining through the stained glass overhead.
As I reached inside, my hand brushed another tiny lever, and again I marveled at Toolkeeper ingenuity, though at first, I could not tell what the lever had triggered. My fingers closed around a warm bit of metal, and I pulled a square from the dark space. It was small—about half the width of my palm—and the front side had been cast with highly detailed swirls and swooping lines, as if it were meant to frame a tiny portrait, in the corridor of a very well-to-do doll’s house.
“What is that?” Yoslyn took the small frame from me, and while she examined it, I picked up the metal trim piece. And suddenly I could see what the lever in the hole had done.
The knob, with its distinctive shape, had popped a fraction of an inch beyond the stairwell wall, where it appeared to be in the way of the curved metal trim piece.
