They would have to make their own way Under Stone.

Frederick moaned. “How long will that take?”

No one answered him.

“As there is no food here, we could go to my hall,” Oliver offered. “It’s not very fine, but you could work there unmolested as long as you needed.”

Oliver couldn’t bear to look at Galen’s or Walter’s faces as he said this. He could see that they were thinking that making their own gate would take not a matter of hours or days, but months or years. It didn’t bear thinking on.

He reached out and nearly brushed the canvas of an enormous painting that hung on the nearest wall. It was a hunting scene and looked very familiar. He was almost certain that it had belonged to his family. In fact, one of the figures wore a dark tunic that clearly had been painted over, and he thought it had borne his family’s coat of arms before. He squinted at it. The paint in several places looked wet, now that he gave it closer scrutiny.

“Shall I return to Bruch, while the rest of you go to this hall of Oliver’s?” Frederick asked.

He started to add something more, but Karl and the rest of Oliver’s men burst through the front door. Karl had an ax in one hand and a pistol in the other, and all their masks were in place.

“What’s afoot?” Karl demanded.

“Ah, an escort back to the young earl’s hall,” said Walter Vogel with a laugh.

“Karl,” Oliver said, holding up his hands. “Hold your fire!”

When he lowered his arms, his elbow passed right through the painting as if it hadn’t been there. Oliver slowly removed his arm, then he plunged his hand in. It was as though there was no paint, no canvas, and no wall behind. It just kept going.

“I believe I’ve found the gate,” Oliver said.

He moved his arm back and forth. The gate was as high and as wide as the painting, and Oliver held his breath as he thrust his head in to look around.

“Oliver! What are you doing?”

He heard Karl shout, but it wasn’t necessary. He could see quite well, and there was nothing to alarm him. Just a stairway of gold that descended toward a silver gate. Beyond the gate he could see a wood, also of silver, and beyond that the spires of a black palace. He drew back.

“That’s the gate all right,” he told them, feeling almost giddy.

“How in heaven’s name?” Prince Heinrich’s mouth was agape. “They walked through a painting?”

“And not a very good one, either.” The crone sniffed. “Those horses have stumpy legs, and what are they hunting? I can’t tell if that’s a fox or a polecat.”

Oliver bowed to the old woman. “When this is all over, I shall replace this painting with a portrait of you, good frau.”

“Well!” That seemed to please her. “Help me over the frame, then.”

Arsonist

Petunia was crouched in a corner of Rose’s bedchamber, trying to light the leg of a small table on fire. Her sisters all stood watch, except for Poppy and Violet, who had gone off on some mission of their own. This made Lily even more nervous than did the prospect of setting Rose’s room on fire, for as she said, “Anytime Poppy gets that look in her eye, it makes me nervous.”

“Just light it already,” Jonquil shrilled. “And try not to use up all the matches!”

“Thank you, Jonquil,” Petunia snapped. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Be nice,” Daisy whispered. She was standing next to the chair with a pitcher of water, ready to douse the experiment.

But there was no fire. Petunia had even shredded a handkerchief as kindling and wrapped the bits around the leg of the chair. They had no books in their room, though Rose swore she had seen some of the princes reading when they had been trapped in the palace as children. Even if the slick wood of the chair was reluctant to burn, the linen—or whatever it was the handkerchiefs were made of in Under Stone’s realm—should have caught fire by now; she’d placed three matches directly on the threads.

“I don’t think it will work,” Petunia admitted. “And Jonquil’s right: I shouldn’t use up all my matches just playing around. I’ve never seen them so frightened; there must be some way to use that against them.” She closed the little box of matches and put it in her bodice.

“What was it exactly that you started on fire last night?” Rose’s forehead was creased with concentration.

“The horrid flowers that I had picked in the wood,” Petunia recited. “And my fan from the ball, and my handkerchief.”

“Did it all burn?”

“Yes!” Then Petunia stopped. “No,” she said more thoughtfully. “I don’t really think the fan burned. But that handkerchief—wait! That handkerchief was one of mine! It burned and so did the flowers. There was a nasty mess on my dressing table afterward; I could see it through the webby thing that Rionin put over it all. I don’t know if the sticks of the fan burned; I could see its shape through the web. But a footman cleared it all away before I got a good look at it.”

“If they are so afraid of fire,” Orchid said, “it might be that things here aren’t meant to burn. They might have some chemical on them, or be made of things that aren’t naturally flammable.” She pushed her spectacles up higher and nodded.

“What isn’t flammable?” Petunia frowned at her.

She’d never heard of such a thing. Her father had lectured her at length when she was a child about how everything had the potential to burn, and burn out of control, from green wood on down a list of household items he thought she might try her matches on.

“Wool doesn’t burn,” said Orchid. “In fact, it smothers fires.”

“I don’t think this is wool,” Petunia said, fingering the slippery shreds of what had been a black handkerchief edged with rather tatty lace.

“Silk burns,” said Orchid. “But not very well.” She squinted at the mess around the table leg. “Did that even singe?”

“Not a bit,” said Petunia with despair.

“It makes sense that they wouldn’t have clothes and things that could burn, if they’re afraid of fire,” said Hyacinth. “Which is a shame, since we shan’t be able to burn this place to the ground after all.”

The others all stared at her in surprise, and she flushed.

“Well, there must be something around here that burns,” said Lilac, disgruntled.

“I’m not sure that this chair is even really wood,” said Petunia, chipping at the lacquered leg with a fingernail.

“If something did burn, how could they replace it?” Rose pointed out.“I don’t know how the first king created all this, but I doubt Rionin has the power to do the same. There’s no quarry to get new stone, no forests other than the silver wood.”

Petunia’s head snapped up and she blinked at her oldest sister. “The silver wood! Do you think that would burn?”

“It’s silver,” Iris said. “Metal doesn’t burn.” She was rearranging her hair in the dressing-table mirror. “But I do wish we could go across the lake to the forest. I want some knitting needles.”

“What are you going to knit?” Lilac wanted to know. “A nice scarf for Derivos?” Her voice was thick with scorn.

“No,” Iris retorted, “I want something that doesn’t look like a weapon so that they won’t take it away from me, but I could still stab someone with it.”

“I just want clothes that don’t scratch at me,” Jonquil fretted. Her pale skin was red where the lace of the bodice chafed, and she was so thin that the gown hung off her shoulders, though Lily had tried pinning it up as best she could.

“I wonder,” Petunia said, tucking the box of matches into her own bodice and getting to her feet, “if they would let us go over to the wood if we said that we wanted knitting needles.”

“It can’t hurt to ask,” Rose said, her eyes gleaming.