“I’d like to paint my bedroom walls a different color,” she explained when the imp poked his head out. “Does Torville have any paint?”
“Check under the workroom stairs,” Pettifog said. “Now go away; I’m busy.”
“What are you doing?” Marigold glanced down at the thing he was trying to hide behind his back. “Is that an embroidery hoop?”
Pettifog glared up at her. “If you keep sticking your nose where it’s not wanted,” he said, “the Thing will bite it off.” Then he closed the door in her face.
In the crawl space under the stairs, Marigold found nails and hammers, rags and brushes, and half-empty cans of paint. She chose the can marked MIDNIGHT and set off for her bedroom with the paint in one hand and a large brush in the other.
“That’s a terrible idea!” shouted Torville.
Marigold was so startled by this that she dropped her brush. At least, she realized with relief, Torville didn’t seem to be shouting at her. He was still up in his workroom. But his voice was angry enough to travel: it tumbled down the stairs, squeezed under the closed door, and burst into the hallway where Marigold stood listening. “Something has to be done,” he said, “but not like that! It’s too dangerous.”
There was a long silence.
“Of course that’s not what I meant,” said Torville at last. “I’m sick of your accusations, Vivien, and I won’t stand here and listen to them. Do you think you can insult me to my face and then beg for my help?” Another silence. “Well, you can’t!” Torville bellowed. There was a clang of metal, a rattle of glass, and a storm of footsteps on the workroom stairs. Marigold had just enough time to leap aside before Torville barreled through the doorway. “Watch where you’re lurking!” he snapped at her.
“Sorry!” said Marigold, but Torville had already rushed away in a whirl of robes. The sharp, singed odor of wicked magic trailed behind him, and for the first time that day, Marigold realized she might not be his only problem.
There was something strange about the midnight paint. Marigold had expected it to be black, but it was really a deep blue mixed with fiery bits that shone like stars, and the more of it she used on the walls, the quieter and colder her room became. The paint gulped up sunlight, making it hard for her to see. It gulped up birdsong, too, and footsteps, and warmth from the kitchen stove on the floor below. By the time Marigold had painted all four walls, her room was full of hush and shadows.
She couldn’t wait to show off her work to Pettifog. “Doesn’t it look sinister?” she asked him as he stood in the doorway, taking it all in: the midnight paint, the heavy drapes, the bouquet of thorns. “Don’t you think a truly wicked person must live here?”
Pettifog tilted his head one way, then the other. He shrugged. “It’s not really my taste.”
Marigold flopped down on the bed, making the ancient springs shriek. “I was a dying star for twenty-three minutes this morning,” she told him. “That’s got to count for something.”
“And now you’re a princess who needs to help me chop vegetables,” said Pettifog. “We’re having rabbit stew for dinner.”
“But making stew isn’t wicked!” Marigold protested.
“It is if you’re the rabbit.” With a swish of his tail, Pettifog turned away. “Only six days left to impress me, Princess. You’re going to have to try harder.”
Pettifog trotted off toward the kitchen, but Marigold didn’t follow him. She had rarely obeyed the rules back in Imbervale, and she wasn’t about to start now. Instead, she climbed the dark, narrow staircase to Torville’s tower workroom and knocked on the door at the top of the stairs.
“What?” called Torville from the other side. He sounded grouchy, Marigold thought, but not furious, the way he had been earlier that day. And he hadn’t told her to leave or threatened to turn her into a bug. She pushed the door open.
“Oh, it’s you.” Torville was sitting in a threadbare green armchair, kicking his feet against the curved stone wall of the tower. He hardly bothered to look over at Marigold as she stepped inside. The sun was starting to set over the wildwood, and the sky glowed fierce and orange through the leaded windows. “Didn’t I tell you not to interrupt me?”
Marigold looked around the workroom. This was one place in the fortress, she guessed, where Rosalind hadn’t spent much time; it was cluttered with books and tools, and the wooden floorboards were stained with splotches of long-forgotten potions. The air smelled of damp and magic. There was a large iron cauldron in the center of the room — empty, at least for now — and a pedestal holding a clouded glass gazing ball as big as a giant’s marble. A standing blackboard was chalked with symbols and equations, but Torville wasn’t even looking at it. “You don’t seem very busy,” Marigold pointed out.
“I’m wallowing.” Thump went Torville’s foot against the wall. “It takes a lot of effort.”
Marigold could guess what had put him in such a gloomy mood. “The people you were talking to earlier,” said Marigold, “the ones you called the Miseries, are they —?”
Thump. “Was there something you wanted, Princess?”
“Yes,” said Marigold, “there was. I mean, there is.” It wasn’t easy talking to someone who was wallowing. “I want to learn how to cast a curse,” she told the side of Torville’s head. “I need you to teach me.”
Both of Torville’s feet went thump at once, and his armchair scraped backward. “No,” he said, standing up to face Marigold. “First of all, I’m busy. And second, I don’t want to.”
“But I’ve got to impress Pettifog,” Marigold explained, “and he doesn’t care how many cans of midnight paint I use on my walls. What impresses him is curses. Your curses, especially,” she added, remembering her etiquette tutor’s advice about the usefulness of a well-placed compliment. “He’s given me a whole book of them. I’ve already read about how you tied the roads in Tiskaree into knots and about the plague of invisible lizards you sent to Foggy Gorge.”
“That was five years ago, and they’re still trying to round those lizards up. I heard the crown prince found one in his pillowcase last month.” Torville cracked a smile, but only for a moment. “Those spells are much too advanced for you to learn.”
“Then teach me something simpler! Didn’t you say I had potential?”
Torville sat back down. “I’m getting a headache.”
He was stubborn, but Marigold could be stubborner. It had taken her fifteen tries to rig up her boat contraption with moving sails, but she’d gotten it to work in the end. “If you don’t agree to teach me,” she said, “I’ll throw a very loud tantrum.”
“If you do,” said Torville, “I’ll enchant away your voice.”
“I’ll smash your gazing ball.”
“Then I’ll curse you with itches that can’t be scratched.”
“I’ll tear up the record of your wicked deeds,” Marigold threatened, “and I’ll sink the pieces in the moat.”
Torville rubbed his temples. “I’m beginning to see,” he said, “why Imbervale doesn’t want you back. Meet me here at ten o’clock tomorrow, and don’t even dream of being late.”
In all Marigold’s years of lessons, she had never had a tutor quite like Torville. He didn’t hand her an armload of books to read or set out a paper and pen for note-taking. He erased the blackboard with a swoosh of his robes, sending a plume of chalk dust into the air. And he spoke so briskly that Marigold felt as if she were chasing after him, trying to catch his words between her fingertips before they vanished.
“Some spells are wicked,” Torville said, “and some, I’m sorry to say, can be used for good. Some spells must be used as soon as they’re prepared; others can be dried and bottled up until you need them. Some spells are big magic, which means you need to gather a whole group of wizards to work them, and others are small and simple enough that a mere child can perform them on their own.” Torville raised an eyebrow at Marigold. “But every enchantment requires three things: ingredients, incantations, and intention.” He wrote these three words on the board.
“The ingredients are the physical stuff of spell-casting — serpents’ toenails and onions’ tears, distilled fog, bottled fear. Each ingredient must be weighed out precisely and added to the cauldron in the proper order. Get the mixture wrong, and you’ll have a calamity on your hands. The incantations are the words you say while you’re mixing, and you’ve got to be just as precise in your speech as you are with your measurements. One mispronounced word, and . . . ?” Torville nodded at Marigold, waiting for her to supply the answer.
