“My lady indulges her daughter,” remarked the secretary stiffly, leading them up the stairs where they passed yet more paintings and sculpture and palms in copper planters. As they climbed to the third floor, Max heard music playing, a tinny warbling like an old jazz recording. Reaching the third-floor landing, Dmitri led them down a long hallway that terminated at a conspicuously stout door. It was barely ajar, just enough to let the music and Katarina’s voice escape into the hall.
“Have their heads and be done!” the girl hissed. “I want to finish my painting.”
“I’ll not ask again,” replied a woman’s voice, gentle but unyielding.
A stamp of a foot and then silence.
Dmitri knocked delicately. “The goblins are here, Madam Petra,” he announced. “May I show them in?”
“Do.”
Max and David trailed after Toby into a paneled office whose far wall was lined with enormous windows that provided a panoramic view of the misty lake. Huge artworks dominated the other walls, abstract spatters of luminescent paint on black or red canvases. To the left was a long conference table, to the right a comfortable sitting area where Katarina was pouting by a colossal fireplace. Straight ahead was a small desk. Behind it stood the smuggler.
Madam Petra was the most striking woman Max had ever seen. She was younger than he’d imagined—midthirties, with porcelain-white skin and long auburn hair that fell in a braid to her waist. Her understated dress was in marked contrast to her ostentatious house: a simple black jacket, gray tweed pants, and black riding boots. She wore only one piece of jewelry, a diamond choker whose central stone must have been worth half of Piter’s Folly. Offering a polite smile, she gestured to three chairs across her desk before returning her attention to several documents. When Max and the others were seated, Dmitri pulled up a fourth.
“We will not be needing you, Dmitri,” said Madam Petra offhandedly, jotting something on the top paper. “Katarina will sit in for today.”
“My lady,” said the secretary, holding up his hands. “It is merely goblins—no doubt it would be better for Katarina to sit in with the Baron of Marrovia. That would be more educat—”
The smuggler glanced sharply up from her papers with eyes that flashed like emeralds. The man fell silent at once. When Madam Petra spoke, her voice was dangerously soft.
“As you say, we have several Broadbrims with us this morning. I value their clan greatly and am anxious to hear their proposal. And we must disagree; I think Katarina has much to learn from this meeting. For example, she has already seen you break a cardinal rule of our profession and compromise another client’s identity. Did you intend to impart such a clumsy lesson, Dmitri?”
The man turned ashen. It was clear that he craved Madam Petra’s approval on many levels.
“I—I apologize,” he stammered. “With your permission, I’ll take my leave.”
“Very good,” said Petra coolly. “Please tell the chefs that I’d like supper to be ready by eight—and no more fatty meats in pastries or boiling everything to shoe leather. Delicacy. Elegance. Subtlety. I know they object to Nestor, but ask him to lend a hand. I think he trained as a saucier.…”
Once the chastened secretary closed the door, Madam Petra turned to her daughter. “Katarina, come and sit by me.”
“I’m fine over here. Goblins stink.”
“I imagine they say the same of you. Come over here—I want your help.”
At this, Katarina dragged herself up from the chaise and came to sit on her mother’s lap. She was too old for such things—eleven or twelve—but the girl seemed an unusual combination of old and young, absent and present.
“How am I supposed to help?” she asked, blankly surrendering her cheek for a kiss.
“Well,” said Madam Petra, “we have a problem. And I know you like to solve problems.”
The girl nodded. Max glanced uneasily at David and Toby, but the two kept their attention on their hostess.
“Here’s our dilemma,” continued Madam Petra. “The kingdom is at war and Aamon’s armies are rampaging across the land. And here comes an unguarded, solitary goblin wagon braving the Ravenswood Spur with a pittance of goods and asking for a private audience. Mind you, the Broadbrims haven’t even sent anyone senior to conduct the business—just a junior trader and two others I’ve never met before. Now, they must have known I’d have their heads for such appalling insolence and yet … here they are. Why haven’t I taken their heads, sweet daughter?”
The girl frowned and stared at the three visitors. “They’re either crazy or something’s off,” she murmured. “Maybe they’re acting without their leader’s approval. Perhaps they’ve secretly brought something that we would find valuable—something they didn’t want Dmitri to know about. Of course, they might not be goblins at all; perhaps they’re imposters.”
“Hmm,” said Petra, considering her daughter’s analysis. “Each suggestion seems plausible. Be a dear and flip the record for us while we talk. While you’re at it, you might retrieve that marvelous little thing I showed you the other day.”
“I don’t want to touch that. It frightens me.”
“Do we always get to do what we want?”
“No, Mother.”
Easing her daughter off her lap, the smuggler turned her eyes on Toby as the smee cleared his throat.
“We hoped to speak alone, my lady,” he said, glancing at the girl. “Our proposal is sensitive. It would not do for this information to go beyond this room and, as you know, children are prone to talk.”
“Your proposal is safe with us,” replied Madam Petra, sounding bored. “Let’s have it, then.”
Toby edged forward in his seat and spoke as Katarina flipped the record and placed the needle at its edge. Music issued from the antique, pouring into the room from a polished horn that resembled an enormous silver flower. The recording evoked a powerful flood of memories; Scott McDaniels had often listened to this very album whenever he sat at the dining room table to do his taxes. Max blinked; it was such a strange image and triggered such a jarring, incongruous jumble of emotions. No wonder tyrants often outlawed music; it was a shortcut to the soul. Max wondered how Madam Petra managed to have such forgotten luxuries and realized it must have been a gift from the Workshop. The smee’s words snapped him from these thoughts.
“We have found gold down deep beneath our burial halls,” Toby explained. “Ullmach says it is a rich lode, the richest we have found for many generations. But we cannot reach it without disturbing our ancestors, a blasphemy Plümpka will not permit. He suggested that the Great Piter Lady might have friends with tools—machines—that could mine gold more carefully than picks and shovels and fire-rock.”
“And what would I get for introducing you to these friends?”
“Twenty percent of the gold.”
The smuggler gave an utterly charming laugh and walked to a small bar by the sitting area. She moved like an athlete, every step fluid and graceful. Max now recalled why her face seemed so familiar—he had seen it many times on magazine covers and television. Madam Petra had been a very famous person in her former life. Unlike most humans, it was a life she seemed to remember, even as she carved out her own little empire in the new order. She now offered the goblins another drink. When they declined, she poured herself a glass of champagne.
“You want me to introduce you to my friends for twenty percent of an unknown sum?” She laughed again and sat down. “What a preposterous notion. I won’t even broach the subject with them for less than fifty.”
“Fifty is too much,” Toby countered. “Your friends will want their share as well.”
“Which is better? Fifty percent of something or one hundred percent of nothing?” she inquired, blinking innocently. “If you’re concerned with my friends’ share, then we can agree to a seventy percent commission and you let me worry about compensating them.”