The Dark City Read Online Free Page A

talk to you; I know you were just giving our beloved Duchess her art lesson, and I was wondering if she said anything about the matter of Lady Rosalita’s dowry.’
    Bianca rolled her eyes. If it wasn’t cringing servants, it was courtiers like di Cassio – they all had something they wanted her to talk to the Duchess about. People like him wouldn’t have given her a second glance two weeks ago, unless it was to tell her to get out of their way.
    â€˜Um, not right now, I’m very busy – Artist-In-Residence business,’ she said, neatly sidestepping the courtier and making a break for the Duchess’s private drawing room.
    She made it, but she still wasn’t alone. The Duchess’s drawing room was full of maids. They were sweeping the floor, plumping up the cushions on the couch, taking away the juice and making it seem as if the room cleaned itself by magic every time the Duchess left. They all dropped what they were doing and bobbed curtseys to Bianca, and then stood still with their eyes averted so they wouldn’t meet her gaze.
    Guilt burned the back of Bianca’s throat and she hurried to clear away the Duchess’s art things. None of the maids would be able to get on with their jobs until she was gone. She rolled the coloured chalks into their case, folded up the easel, scooped up the rather small pile of sketches, and shoved all of them into her canvas bag.
    She hurried out, clutching the bag tight. She had to find somewhere she could be alone, without servants or lords or ambassadors or actors watching her every move. If she was going to get anything done as Duchess Catriona’s Artist-In-Residence, she had to get some peace and quiet!
    For the first time since she’d spotted Master di Lombardi’s will, Bianca felt a warm smile spread across her face.
I know just the place
.
    The old Duke’s sitting room. It had been shut ever since the Duke’s death.
    Bianca stepped into the sitting room and looked up at the breathtaking scene of life and movement in the exotic garden painted on the wall. Two majestic tigers lay curled together in the foreground, under the dappled shade of a glossy green fern. A lion stalked back and forth between two trees, sometimes stopping to wash its forepaws just like the cats that hung around the palace kitchens.
    Bianca walked through the thick dust on the floor and stepped into the garden. She reached out as she passed the lion and ran her hand through its bright yellow mane. It parted just like real fur, but if she shut her eyes the strands felt more like the frayed ends from a piece of canvas that had unravelled.
    The lion was so lifelike, with its huge pink tongue rasping over the back of its paws, that she almost expected it to look up and rub its head against her side. But of course, it was only a picture that’d been given the illusion of life. It went on doing the sequence of actions it’d been enchanted to do.
    Bianca glanced back at the wonderful garden before she stepped through the old wooden door at the back of the painting and into the secret passages. She found herself directly opposite the short corridor leading to Master di Lombardi’s secret workshop.
    It was wonderfully good luck that the closest door to di Lombardi’s workshop led into a room that nobody went into.
    But is it luck?
Bianca wondered, as she turned the key in the workshop door. Master di Lombardi had been the Duchess’s spy and protector as well as a master artist. Knowing he foiled an assassination plot, Bianca could easily believe that he’d somehow arranged for the Duke’s sitting room to stay shut up for years. There really was no limit to her old master’s ingenuity.
    Bianca stood and gazed around the workshop. Its hugeness still surprised her. There were separate, neatly laid-out benches for woodwork, metalwork, stonework, varnishing, soldering, sanding and more. In between the benches, di Lombardi’s