The Golden Yarn

by Cornelia Funke

  After the parade, he immediately had a draftsman sketch what the moth had shown him: the river, the abbey, the nun holding the child. One of his officers thought he’d seen that building in Lotharaine, another in Lombardia, but Hentzau, after one quick look, shook his head.

  “Bavaria.”

  It made sense. Bavaria was allied to Lotharaine, and its young King was related to Crookback. (They were all related to each other.) Not a stupid choice for a hiding place, but then again, nobody had ever called Therese of Austry stupid.

  It couldn’t be too hard to locate the abbey, but whom could he send to retrieve the child? Bavaria was enemy territory; even a unicorn would be less conspicuous than a Goyl. Hentzau’s human spies thought the Moonstone Prince was a monster, a freak that should’ve never seen the light of day. Even his own officers shared this view.

  Whom could he send?

  There was only one answer.

  Hentzau tried to argue him out of it. He reminded the Goyl King that Bavaria had given shelter to organizations calling for the complete eradication of all Goyl and Man-Goyl. But this just confirmed Kami’en’s decision. Only one man would have a chance at retrieving the child unharmed. The King of the Goyl would have to bring his son home himself.

  “What if it’s a trap?” Hentzau asked. “It’s her moth! Why should she care about the child except as an opportunity for revenge?”

  Yes, why? Kami’en had no answer to that, not one Hentzau would have accepted.

  He gave orders to prepare for his departure.

  The Wrong Questions

  At night, Baryatinsky’s palace looked even more enchanted than during the day. It would’ve been perfect for one of those glass globes that children shake to stir up a flurry of snow. There was no sign of Jacob’s Goyl shadow when the Tzar’s chauffeur dropped him by the gate. Wladimir Molotov had kept him for three hours, signing papers and reviewing the care instructions for the flying carpet. The curator had made no secret of how much he disapproved of the Tzar’s decision to hand such a precious object to some dubious stranger who spoke with an Albian accent. Stealing the carpet would definitely have been more fun.

  The gaslights patterned Baryatinsky’s courtyard with the shadows of Dragons and Flying Horses, and for the first time since their arrival in Moskva, there was some real hope of finding Will. But Jacob was tired and in a foul mood. He was about to make an enemy of the Tzar, and then there was that promise he’d made so nobly in Schwanstein. What a fool he’d been! Such a damn fool. What had he been thinking? That he could just give her up, selflessly and virtuously... Was that at all like him?

  “Jacob?” A figure came out of the shadows by the stairs that Baryatinsky had designed based on the heavenly steps depicted on Varangian icons.

  Orlando Tennant.

  Of all people.

  “Oh no, Fox belongs only to herself.” He’d as good as invited him to steal her. Here, take my heart, I no longer need it.

  “Can I have a word?”

  What about? Did the Windhound want to know whether he minded that Fox looked so happy? That she never missed an opportunity to savor the other man’s name on her tongue?

  Had he slept with her? Stop it, Jacob. But he could think of nothing else as he looked at Tennant’s face. All the thoughts he hadn’t allowed himself to think now smothered every last glimmer of reason.

  “I assume you’ve heard of the present the Goyl have given the Tzar?”

  There was a surprise. The Windhound hadn’t come to discuss Fox.

  “Heard, yes, but if you’re hoping I’ll tell you what it is...”

  “I know what it is,” Tennant interrupted him. “I’m supposed to steal it. But that means I’ve got to get into the secret wing of the Magic Collection. You were there today, weren’t you?”

  The Windhound. There was a reason Orlando Tennant had a reputation for being even crazier than Jacob.

  “I only saw the doors. Forget it. Poisoned lacquer. Glass teeth. Knife-wire.”

  There was light in Fox’s window, and the only thing Jacob wanted to discuss with Tennant was whether she’d spent the last night in his bed. He nearly asked him.

  “I can handle knife-wire and glass teeth. But how do I get past the poisoned lacquer?”

  “The Dwarfs have an explosive that can disable it. Officially they deny it, but if you offer them enough, they’ll sell you some.”

  And the Windhound wouldn’t be the first to kill himself with it. The stuff was more volatile than nitroglycerin. Jacob caught himself thinking Orlando Tennant was about to die young.

  “Forget it!” Jacob said, as though that compensated for the satisfaction the thought of Tennant’s death had given him.

  “I can’t forget it. The King’s command. What about you?”

  “We’re leaving soon. I have an assignment from the Tzar.” What was he doing now? Was he trying to brag to his rival? At least it wasn’t a lie.

  Tennant looked up at Fox’s window. “I assume she’s going with you? Jacob Reckless’s loyal companion.”

  His tone answered the question Jacob had not dared to ask. Behind them, the guards were arguing with a deliveryman who’d come to the main gate instead of the servants’ entrance.

  “I would never have touched her if you yourself hadn’t told me she was free.”

  The deliveryman was getting louder.

  “It is as I told you. She is free.”

  Tennant eyed Jacob as if he’d lost his mind. “I’m very good at lying to other people,” he said, “but not as good at lying to myself. A problem you very obviously don’t have. I’m not sure I envy you that.”

  He looked over Jacob’s shoulder.

  Fox was standing at the top of the steps. She was smiling at the Windhound. Jacob had always thought that smile belonged to him alone.

  “Chanute was about to go searching for you,” she called to Jacob.

  “He had a good reason for his long absence,” Orlando replied. “I just learned you’re going on a treasure hunt for the Tzar. Will you still have breakfast with me? There’s a café on Woslki Square where they drizzle the pancakes with edible gold.”

  “Sure.” Fox avoided looking at Jacob.

  Gone. It didn’t matter that he’d done it to protect her. Not a bit. She belonged to him. Why did such truths only reveal themselves after they’d become lies?

  The guards called Orlando a taxi. The dogs licked his hands while he waited for it. The Barsoi. Fox stood and looked after the taxi, and with every step they then climbed together, Jacob remembered something he could’ve said or done that would’ve prevented the look she’d given Orlando. Oh yes, he was an idiot. He’d always been frightened by how much he needed her. And now it was too late.

  Do you love him more than me? Jacob would rather have swallowed his tongue than actually asked that question, but he would’ve given his right hand for an answer.

  “Have you ever heard of the Golden Yarn?” Fox asked.

  “What’s that supposed to be?”

  She again looked out beyond the gate, as though she hadn’t heard his question.

  “The Tzar’s giving us his most precious flying carpet. Maybe we can still find Will. We can leave soon.” In three days, at the earliest, Jacob. It would take him at least that long to walk the spells into the carpet. Why did he not tell her? Because he wanted to see how much she minded leaving Moskva. He’d never hurt her willingly; this was the first time. Love didn’t deserve the nice reputation it had.

  “Good,” said Fox. But she didn’t mean it. She sounded sad. And guilty.

  “Are you sure you want to come? He’s my brother after all, not yours.”

  There was a moment when he thought she might actually say no. She stayed silent for a long while.

  “So I can go retrieve your silver statue from some treasure chamber?” she finally said. It wasn’t what she’d wanted to say.

  She turned around.

  “Let’s find Will,” she said over her shoulder. “What happen
s after that, we’ll see.”

  A Message for Celest Auger

  The carpet was delivered the next morning, as promised. Even though Baryatinsky’s guest bedrooms were at least as big as The Ogre’s taproom, Jacob still had to move some furniture to be able to unroll it even partway. Before locking himself away with the carpet for three days and three nights, he treated himself to a sumptuous breakfast in their host’s dining hall. The portraits on the walls showed men in bearskin coats and turbans of embroidered silk, some faces as pale as Dragon bone and some as dark as night-wood. Baryatinsky’s ancestors (if that’s who they were) showed the diversity of Varangia. And its enormous size. It was better to philosophize about that than stare at the empty chair where Fox usually sat at breakfast. Pancakes with edible gold...

  Jacob was sipping his third cup of mocha when Chanute and Sylvain joined him. But he didn’t feel like talking, and the way the other two looked at the empty chair was too much. Every thought of Will or the Alderelf seemed to fade against the smile Fox had given the Windhound. “What happens after that, we’ll see.” He kept hearing her say it all the way back to his room. “What happens after that, we’ll see.”

  He bolted his door and sat down on the carpet. Time to leave the present behind. Only the past could induce the carpet to carry him to Will. The past was not a place to which Jacob liked to return, but on this morning, it was a refuge from the thoughts and feelings he didn’t want to think or feel.

  Once upon a time, Jacob...

  Memories. How did they get stored in the mind? Why did he remember that particular day with Will in the park, when there’d been so many more? Why did he remember that one quarrel or that one laugh as though it had happened yesterday, but other moments eluded him, even though he could recall their emotions? So little was left of all the weeks, months, years. “My brother likes to fight.” Some things were preserved in the words used to frame them. Or in a touch. Will’s hand in his, when they were both younger; the knock on his bedroom door when Will couldn’t sleep; the jealousy, the rage, when he had to let him tag along; the impatience with the younger one...

  Remember, Jacob.

  But what came were the wrong images. The first traces of jade, their fight in the cage, their struggle in the palace in Vena, the Blood Wedding, Will at Kami’en’s side, Man-Goyl.

  “He has a skin of stone.”

  No. Jacob forced himself to go back further. He needed images from the other world, of the Will he’d known better than himself.

  Jacob closed his eyes. He found the way back through the mirror, saw Will in a room full of plush animals and toys. Brothers together in the school yard. In the corner store, where the owner sold cigarettes to a twelve-year-old Jacob if he promised to send his regards to their mother. Will had always tried to keep him out of that store.

  Then.

  Will looked so much like her. They were so similar. No, that wasn’t true. The images came faster, and again they were images he hadn’t wanted to recall. They wove themselves into the carpet’s fibers until Jacob was sitting on his childhood. And then there was an image that made his heart stumble. He had no idea where it had come from, but it was as clear as the others: Spieler in their living room, with the same face Jacob had seen when he’d come to on the Alderelf’s island. His mother was standing next to the Elf, close, like how one stood with good friends. The image came so suddenly, Jacob involuntarily looked around. Could Spieler put fake memories in his mind? But if it was real, why hadn’t he recognized the face when Spieler had shown it to him? Because for all these years it hadn’t meant anything, one face of many, his mother’s friends—did a child really study them? Because Spieler only ever visited when he and Will were not at home?

  Jacob got up and pushed open the window.

  Sylvain was standing by the stables. Fox was with him.

  She was back.

  How long had he been sitting on the carpet? No matter. Orlando wasn’t with her. Ridiculous how relieved that made him feel.

  He had enough memories of Fox to feed all the flying carpets in the world. Your brother, Jacob. Think of Will. Or do you want the carpet to take you to Fox?

  He closed the window, and the scents of the past again flooded the room, like a bunch of wilted flowers.

  He sat on the carpet.

  Closed his eyes. And remembered the night when the Goyl injured Will. No!

  Someone knocked on his door.

  Jacob had told the servants he didn’t want to be disturbed. Was it Chanute wanting to show him a trick with his new hand? Had Sylvain again bought some fake magic? Or was it Fox?

  He opened the door, hoping to see her face.

  The corridor was empty.

  “Too high!” a woman’s voice said.

  The Dwarf looking up at him was as beautiful as the dolls in Amalie’s collection. No, she was more beautiful.

  “Jacob Reckless?” she asked. “Ludmilla Akhmatova. May I speak with you in private? I have a request from a friend, and I’d rather explain that request behind closed doors.”

  Fox had told Jacob about the Dwarf spy, but the image he’d had in his mind didn’t do her justice. Ludmilla Akhmatova looked as though she had a world of memories to feed to the flying carpet. She waved Jacob into the salon where Baryatinsky’s servants served afternoon tea. There was a salon for every meal, as there was for each of Baryatinsky’s countless hobbies, as well as three music salons, one each for his butterfly and weapons collections, and five (Sylvain had counted them) containing mementos of lost loves.

  Ludmilla Akhmatova waited until Jacob had closed the door behind them.

  “I come at the request of Orlando Tennant,” she said, plucking the leather gloves off her fingers. “He wanted me to ask you to deliver a certain message. He’s probably hoping you can find a way to make it sound less upsetting than it unquestionably is.”

  “And who is the message for?”

  “Mademoiselle Celeste Auger. Orlando is asking you to tell her he can’t take her to the ballet tonight.”

  Messenger boy for Fox’s lover. Jacob had no idea the Windhound had such a vicious sense of humor.

  “Orlando suggests urgent matters of state as an excuse,” Ludmilla Akhmatova continued. “He believes it best if Mademoiselle Auger only learns the true reason once she no longer has occasion to do anything rash.”

  “Rash? That doesn’t sound like Mademoiselle Auger. May I know what the true reason is?”

  The Dwarf smiled a sad smile.

  “Orlando’s been arrested. The Tzar has decreed he shall face a firing squad at dawn.” Her composure was a front. It was obvious Ludmilla Akhmatova had done a lot of crying, though she’d tried to hide it behind her makeup.

  Jacob wasn’t sure what he was feeling, and maybe he didn’t really want to know.

  “I warned him,” he said. “But I admit I myself am not very good at heeding the warnings of others.”

  Ludmilla Akhmatova took a handkerchief from her bag. It was barely bigger than a calling card. “The man Orlando was trying to free—Isambard Brunel—is invaluable to Albion’s interests, and Orlando had little time. Our informants had told us the Tzar wasn’t going to use his precious prisoner to further Varangian progress, as the Goyl had expected, but instead was going to have him executed. And it’s quite understandable. Brunel’s “gift” was responsible for Varangia’s defeat by Albion.”

  The gift of the Goyl . . .

  That’s what happened when minds got muddled by Alderelves and jealousy. How often had Jacob heard in the past few days that Isambard Brunel’s failure to appear in public was due to some illness, and he still hadn’t managed to put two and two together?

  “Where are they holding Orlando?”

  “The same place from which he tried to free Brunel. In the secret wing of the Magic Collection.” Ludmilla blew her nose, the only expression of emotion she allowed herself. “Orlando managed to open the door—I procured some explosive for the poison lacquer—but it closed behind him
and raised the alarm.”

  The knife-wire. Obviously, Orlando hadn’t quite known how to handle it.

  “I’ll miss him.” Ludmilla dabbed a speck of mascara off her cheek. The women of this world still mixed their own beauty products. Some lamp soot, a few drops of elder juice... And there was, of course, the option to have a Witch conjure thicker lashes.

  “There’s never been a better spy than Orlando Tennant,” Ludmilla Akhmatova continued. “Or a better dancer. It’s only fitting he’ll be executed together with the best engineer of this world. But I’m sorely disappointed in our Tzar. I thought he had more respect for talent.”

  The painting next to the door depicted a naval battle. Like many of Baryatinsky’s paintings, it was fine enough that it could’ve been part of any museum’s collection. It reminded Jacob of another sea battle. Only a few months earlier, the Goyl’s airplanes had sunk this world’s first iron ship into the Great Channel, yet in the shipyards of Goldsmouth, they were already building three new ones, all designed by Isambard Brunel. Thanks to Brunel, Londra had underground trains, and its iron bridges were wider and more graceful than any other city’s. Nobody stood for the New Magic more than the man who called himself Isambard Christophorus Brunel. He had proven himself worthy of his name, which was like an echo of Jacob’s world.

  Ludmilla Akhmatova had herself under control again.

  Jacob wondered why she still spied for Albion. Madame Akhmatova didn’t seem like someone who did things for reasons other than her convictions.

  She glanced at the closed door and whispered, “We shall, of course, try to free Orlando and Brunel. If we succeed, we’ll hide them in the Volodj Quarter until things settle down. A lot of Wolflings live there, so not even the secret police dare to search the houses. We have a trash collector who’ll get them there unnoticed. Trash collectors are everywhere after nightfall.”