The Dark City Read Online Free

lesson.
    â€˜I have to go. I’ve got a meeting with Ambassador Inchuk and I’m already late,’ the Duchess said. Then she hugged Bianca fiercely. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
    Bianca nodded and she and Marco waved as the Duchess hurried off, the bottom of her dress trailing without its wire.
    â€˜Good morning, Miss Bianca,’ said a voice, and Bianca turned to see a maid bobbing a curtsey as she scurried past.
    â€˜Good – oh,’ Bianca began, but the maid was gone. ‘I don’t know if I’m ever going to get used to that,’ she said to Marco, shaking her head as they started back to the Duchess’s drawing room. ‘They don’t wait for me to answer, they just curtsey whenever they see me and run off. It’s weird!’
    â€˜You’re special now,’ Marco smirked. He swept a low bow and seized her hand like a fancy gentleman from one of his father’s plays. ‘A master artist!’
    â€˜Geroff,’ Bianca laughed. ‘I’m not special. And I’m
definitely
not a master.’ She wasn’t nearly a good enough artist to be called
master
.
    Marco shrugged. ‘You’re going to have to get used to people treating you all poshly if you live in the palace,’ he said.
    â€˜Why?
You
live in the palace, and you spend almost as much time with the Duchess as I do and nobody pretends you’re a gentleman!’
    â€˜Charming,’ said Marco, but he grinned. ‘Tumblers aren’t respectable, not like artists.’
    They turned a corner into the Rose Gallery and Bianca’s heart skipped a beat. It was here, while she was working on the huge mural that took up the length of the corridor, that she’d discovered the secret of the passages. She turned her face to the mural as they passed, feeling the warmth and light from the painted greenhouse on her face. Inside the bright glass structure, raised earth beds lined the ochre-tiled floor and Bianca couldn’t help trailing her arm into the magical painting, grazing the delicate petals of the rose bushes, their scent flooding her nostrils. At the end of the flowerbed was a door – seemingly leading to a painted building. But it was a door that led into the picture and to a secret passage – the first she’d ever painted. She remembered the joy that’d surged through her when she’d realised she could create a real door out of magical paint.
    She was distracted from her reverie when a woman dressed as a mermaid marched through the door in front of them and stopped dead. She plonked her hands on her hips, ruffling her blue-green scaly tights, and tossed the twisted fabric strands of her blue wig over her shoulder.
    â€˜Marco!’ the mermaid snapped. ‘There you are! We’ve been looking for you everywhere!’
    â€˜Oh sorry, Olivia,’ Marco said. ‘I got, um  …  waylaid.’
    â€˜Well, come on,’ Olivia snapped. ‘We’ve got a scene to rehearse and this wig is itching like mad.’
    Marco just about managed a wave and a ‘see you later’ to Bianca before Olivia herded him out of the gallery, still muttering about the wig.
    â€˜Bye.’ Bianca sighed to herself. She wondered what Rosa and Cosimo and her old master’s other apprentices were doing right now.
They
would certainly never curtsey to her.
    She turned around and almost walked into a tall man in a cream velvet doublet trimmed with white fur. ‘Oh sorry, My Lord.’
    The man gave her a wide, slick smile. ‘Ah, dear little Bianca,’ he said, bowing almost as low as Marco had. Bianca curtseyed back and tried to remember that it was wrong to give dirty looks to lords – even if they did call you ‘dear little Bianca’.
    â€˜Lord di Cassio,’ she said, and tried to step aside.
    â€˜Actually, Bianca, I was looking for you!’ di Cassio said. He gave her another oily grin. ‘I wanted to