Jacob put the book on flying carpets back on the desk. He wished he were on the hunt for some harmless magical object like that.
“I am looking for the head of Guismond the Witch Slayer.”
Dunbar stopped so abruptly that one of the books slipped from his arms. He bent down and picked it up.
“You’d have to find his tomb first.” His voice sounded unusually cold.
“I found it. Guismond’s corpse is missing its head, its heart, and its right hand. I believe he had his head sent to Albion. To his eldest son.”
Dunbar pushed the books into the shelf, one after another, without saying a word. Then he turned around and leaned back against their leather spines. Jacob had never seen such hostility in Dunbar’s face. He was wearing his usual long coat, which hid his rat’s tail. Only its bright red color gave away the Fir Darrig. They never wore any other color.
“This is about the crossbow, isn’t it? I know I’m in your debt, but I will not help you with this.”
A few years back, Jacob had rescued Dunbar from a bunch of drunken soldiers who’d thought it amusing to set his fur on fire. “I’m not here to call in a debt. But I have to find the crossbow.”
“For whom?” Dunbar’s fur stood on end, like that of an angry dog. “Farmers are still plowing up bones from the old battlefields. Have you traded your conscience for a sack of gold? Do you, at least every now and then, think about what you’re doing? You treasure hunters turn the magic of this world into a commodity only the powerful can afford.”
“Jacob is not going to sell the crossbow!”
Dunbar ignored Fox’s protest. He returned to his desk and leafed absentmindedly through his notes. “I know nothing about the head,” he said without looking at Jacob. “And I don’t want to know anything. I’m sure you’ll ask others, but I am hopeful nobody can give you the answer you’re looking for. Luckily, this country has lost its interest in black magic. There’s at least that to be said for progress. And now you must excuse me. I have to give a lecture tomorrow on Albion’s role in the slave trade. Another sad chapter.”
He sat down behind his desk and opened one of the books in front of him.
Fox shot Jacob a helpless look.
He took her arm and pulled her toward the door.
“Forgive me,” he said to Dunbar. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Dunbar didn’t look up from his book. “Some things are best never found, Jacob,” he said. “You’re not the only one who likes to forget that.”
Fox wanted to say something, but Jacob pushed her through the door.
“I forget less often than you think, Dunbar,” he said before pulling the door shut behind him.
What now?
He looked down the dark corridor.
Fox’s face held the same question. And the same fear.
A swaying lantern appeared at the end of the corridor. The night watchman carrying it was nearly as old as the building. Jacob ignored his puzzled look and simply walked past him without a word.
It was a clear night, and the two moons speckled the roofs with rust and silver. Fox spoke only once they’d reached the iron gate.
“You always have a second plan. What is it?”
Yes, she knew him well.
“I’ll get some blood shards.” He started to swing himself over the gate, but Fox grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “No.”
“No what?” He didn’t mean to sound that irritated. But he was dog-tired, and he was thoroughly sick of running away from death. You’re forgetting something, Jacob. Fear. You’re scared.
“I have to find the head, and I have no idea where to look, not to mention the heart and the hand. The only man I thought could help me thinks I’m a ruthless thug now, and the way things stand, I myself will be lying in a coffin in less than two months.”
“What?” Fox’s voice broke, as though the truth lodged in her throat like a splinter.
Damn it, Jacob!
She shoved him into the iron gate. “You said you didn’t know!”
“I’m sorry!” Reluctantly, she let him embrace her. Her heart was beating fast, nearly as fast as when he had freed the vixen’s leg from the trap.
“Knowing it doesn’t change anything, does it?”
She struggled free.
“Together,” she said. “Wasn’t that the plan? Don’t ever lie to me again. I’m sick of it.”
17
THE FIRST BITE
Some things need to be sought in the filth. Sinister things, found by following the scent of poverty to the dark streets beyond the gaslights and the stuccoed houses, to backyards stinking of refuse and bad food. Jacob asked for directions from a man sitting on his front steps and squeezing silver dust from a captured Elf. Elven dust. A dangerous path to escape the world.
There was nothing ominous about the windows of the shop the man sent them to. It was way past midnight, but what Jacob was after was best purchased under the cover of night anyway. In Albion, trade in magical objects and substances was strictly regulated. Still, nearly anything that was available on the mainland could also be found here, if only one looked in the right places.
The screams of a Hob sounded through the door when Jacob knocked against the frosted glass. The Albian variant of the Heinzel had carrot hair and much longer legs than its Austrian kin. The woman who opened the door was trying hard to look like a Witch, but she had the round black pupils of a human, and the herbal perfume she’d sprinkled deep into her décolletage didn’t smell anything like Alma’s forest scent. The Hob was sitting in a cage above the door. Hobs were good guards as long they were fed regularly, and their mood was barely worse in a cage than when they were free. The creature’s red eyes clung to Fox as she stepped into the shop. The Hob could smell the shape-shifter.
The fake Witch locked the door while she appraised Jacob’s clothes. The cut and fabric seemed to whisper “money” to her, and she gave him a smile as fake as her perfume. The shop reeked of dried moor lilies, which wasn’t a good sign. They were often passed off as Fairy lilies, and the fungus-sponges that hung from the ceiling were sold as an aphrodisiac, even though the only effect they had were lifelong hallucinations. But among the items on the shelves, Jacob did spot a few things that had real magical properties.
“And what can Goldilocks do for you two darlin’s?” Her hoarse voice gave her away as a lentil-chewer. The Cinderella addiction… for a few hours of princess dreams. Goldilocks gave Fox a sleazy smile. “Need something to fan the old flames? Or is there someone in your way?”
Jacob would have loved nothing more than to give her an infusion of her own deadliest potion. Her locks were indeed golden—the kind of sticky gold that fake Witches liked to concoct to color their hair and lips.
“I need a blood shard.” Jacob dropped two talers on the grimy counter. His handkerchief was becoming quite unreliable at producing them. It was so thin in places that he would soon have to start looking for a new one.
Goldilocks rubbed the coins between her fingers. “There’s five years’ hard labor for selling blood shards.”
Jacob put another coin in her hand.
She dropped the money into her apron pocket and disappeared behind a threadbare curtain. Fox’s eyes followed her. Her face was pale.
“They don’t always work,” she said without looking at Jacob. Her voice sounded as rough as the lentil-chewer’s.
“I know.”
“You’ll lose blood for weeks.”
Her look was so desperate, he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss away the fear on her face. What are you doing, Jacob? Was the garbage on the shelves fogging his senses? All the love potions and cheap amulets, the finger bones that were supposed to bestow lust and love? Or was this another effect of his fear of death?
Goldilocks returned with a paper bag. The
glass shard Jacob took out of it was colorless and a little bigger than the bottom of a bottle.
“How do I know it’s real?”
Fox took the shard from him and ran her fingers over the glass. Then she looked at the fake Witch. “If he’s harmed in way, I will find you,” she said. “No matter where you hide.”
Goldilocks sneered. “It’s a blood shard, honey. Of course it’ll harm him.” She took a vial from her apron and put it in Jacob’s hand. “Rub this on the wound. It’ll slow the bleeding.”
The Hob stared through the doorway before his mistress shut and locked it behind them. A rat scampered down the dark alley, and in the distance Jacob and Fox could hear the wheels of a cab rattling over the cobblestones.
Jacob stepped into the nearest doorway and pushed up his sleeve. Blood shards. He’d never used one himself, but Chanute acquired one once, when they’d been hunting for the wand of a Warlock. To use the blood shard, one had to picture the item one was looking for as exactly as possible and then cut the shard deep into the flesh until the object appeared in the glass, hopefully also showing its location. Blood shards only revealed objects that had been touched by dark magic, but the Witch Slayer’s head definitely had enough of that.
“Did you ever find the wand?” Fox turned away in disgust as Jacob pressed the shard against his skin.
“Yes.” What he didn’t tell her was that Chanute had nearly bled out. It was the worst kind of magic.
Just as he was just about to cut into his skin, a pain pierced his chest, unlike any Jacob had felt before. Something was digging its teeth into his heart. The shard dropped from his hand, and the scream that crossed his lips was so loud that a window opened on the other side of the street.
“Jacob?” Fox grabbed him by the shoulders.
He wanted to say something, anything reassuring, but all he could utter was a wheeze, and he could only manage to stay on his feet because Fox held him up. His old self wanted to hide himself from her, too proud to be seen in such a vulnerable state, so helpless. But the pain just wouldn’t go away.
Breathe, Jacob. Breathe. It’ll pass.
The Dark Fairy’s name had six letters, but he could recall only five of them.
He leaned against the door and pressed his hand to his chest, certain that he’d see his own blood seep through his fingers. The pain subsided, but the memory of it still quickened his breath.
“It’s not going to be pleasant.” The understatement of the year, Alma.
Fox picked up the shard. It was broken, but there was no blood on it. Fox stared in disbelief at the clean glass. Then she pulled Jacob’s hand off his chest. The moth above his heart had a spot on its left wing now. It was shaped like a tiny skull.
“The Fairy is claiming her name back.” He could barely speak. He could still feel the scream in his throat.
Pull yourself together, Jacob. Oh, his damned pride. He held out his hand, even though it was trembling. “Give me the shard.” Fox dropped it into her pocket and pulled his sleeve over his bare arm.
“No,” she said. “And I don’t think you have enough strength to take it off me.”
18
THE HAND IN THE SOUTH
The Waterman turned out to tax Nerron’s nerves the least. Eaumbre—when his name crossed his scaly lips, you felt as though you had the mud of his pond in your ears. Even Louis was bearable, though he was constantly asking about their next meal or riding after every peasant girl. But Lelou! The Bug was talking all the time, at least whenever he wasn’t scribbling in his notebook. Every castle above the winter-bare vineyards, every collapsed church, every town name on a weathered signpost—each triggered a flood of commentary. Names, dates, royal gossip. His chatter was like the hum of a bumblebee in Nerron’s ear.
“Lelou!” he interrupted at some point as the Bug was explaining why the village they were riding through was certainly not the birthplace of Puss in Boots. “See this?”
Arsene Lelou fell silent as he cast a confused look at the three objects Nerron had poured into his hand from a leather pouch. It took him a few moments to realize what they were.
“You’re seeing right!” Nerron said. “A finger, an eye, a tongue. They all annoyed me. What do you think I’ll cut out of you?”
Silence. Delicious silence.
Nerron had picked up the Three Souvenirs, as he lovingly called them, in one of the onyx’s torture chambers. The objects never failed to work. Maintaining a bad reputation was hard work, especially if, like Nerron, you didn’t actually find pleasure in cutting off fingers or scooping out eyes.
Lelou’s silence held until they saw the walls of the abbey of Fontevaud appear ahead of them. One glance at the rotten wooden gate and they knew that the abbey was deserted. The cloisters were overgrown with nettles, and the sparse cells housed no more than mice. The only cemetery they could find consisted of merely eight crosses with the names and dates of deceased monks. None of the graves were older than sixty years, but yet, if the Bug was right, the hand would have been buried here more than three hundred years ago.
Nerron felt the urge to cut Lelou into thin, moonstone-pale slices. The Bug saw it in his eyes and quickly hid behind Eaumbre. Lelou had not forgotten the Three Souvenirs.
“The farmer,” he stammered, pointing a trembling finger at an old man who was digging up potatoes from a fallow field behind the abbey. “Maybe he knows something.”
The old man dropped his meager harvest as soon as he saw Nerron coming toward him. He stared as though the devil himself had emerged from the damp earth. Goyl were still a rare sight in Lotharaine. Kami’en would change that soon enough.
“Is there another graveyard?” Nerron barked at the old man.
The farmer crossed himself and spat in front of Nerron’s feet. Touching. People believed that kept demons at bay. But it didn’t help against Goyl. Nerron was just about to grab the old man by his scrawny neck to shake some sense into him, when he dropped to his knees.
Louis was coming toward them, with Lelou and the Waterman in tow.
The princely garments had grown a little scruffy, but they still looked a thousand times better than anything the old man had ever worn. He probably had no idea that he was looking at the crown prince of Lotharaine—the old peasant didn’t look like he read a newspaper—but the vassals always knew what masters look like, and that it was better to do as they told.
“Ask him about the cemetery!” Nerron whispered to Louis.
All he got was an irritated look in return—sons of kings were not used to receiving orders. But Lelou came to his aid.
“The Goyl is right, my prince!” he warbled into Louis’s perfumed ear. “He’s sure to answer you.”
Louis cast a disgusted look at the peasant’s filthy clothes. “Is there another cemetery?” he asked with a jaded voice.
The old man ducked his head between his lanky shoulders. His bony finger pointed at the pine trees beyond the fields. “They built a church from them.”
“From what?” Nerron asked.
The man still held his head bowed. “The whole ground was full of them!” he mumbled. He quickly dropped a couple of potatoes into his baggy pockets. “What else could they have done with them?”
*
He took them to the church, which, at first sight, looked no different from the other churches of the region. The same gray stone, a stout tower with a low roof, a few weathered battlements. But the peasant made a quick getaway as soon as Nerron pushed the brittle door open.
Even the crest that was set into the wall behind the altar was made of human remains. The pillars were encrusted with skulls, and the fenced-off alcoves were piled to the ceiling with bones. There were hands as well, of course. They served as candleholders or were splayed across the walls as ornaments. Frustrated, Nerron kicked in one of the skulls. How, by his mo
ther’s green skin, was he supposed to find the right hand here? He was going to be stuck neck-deep in brittle bones while Reckless easily picked up the head and the heart.
“What are we looking for again?” Louis poked his fingers into a skull’s eye socket.
“Your ancestor’s crossbow.” The empty church made the Waterman’s damp whisper sound even more ominous.
“A crossbow?” Louis’s mouth tightened into a contemptuous smile. “What’s my father hoping for—that the Goyl will laugh themselves to death when they attack?”
“This is a very unusual crossbow, my prince…” Lelou began. “And it’s a little more complicated, if I understand the Goyl right.” He pursed his mouth like a toad about to spit venom. “First, we have to find a hand, and then—”
“You can explain that later,” Nerron interrupted gruffly. He went to one of the alcoves and stared through the metal trellis at the piled-up bones. “If Lelou is right, then the hand was quartered. Also, it probably isn’t decomposed, and it has golden fingernails.”
All Warlocks gilded their nails to hide that the Witches’ blood made them rot.
“Yuck!” Louis muttered, fiddling with his diamond buttons. He still wasn’t missing a single one. You couldn’t even rely on the Thumblings anymore. Pretend he’s not here, Nerron. Neither he, nor the Waterman, nor the prattling Bug.
He pried open the gate with his saber and immediately stood to his knees in bones. Great. A forearm splintered under his boots. Goyl bones turned to stone after death, just like their flesh. Much more appetizing than human putrefaction.
“This is ridiculous. I’m going to a tavern.” The boredom on Louis’s face had given way to anger. He had a hot temper, when he didn’t numb it with elven dust or wine.
A hand-sized Gnome crawled out from one of the skulls on the pillar next to the prince. Eaumbre grabbed it before it could bite Louis. “A yellow follet!” Lelou quickly pulled his charge away. “Easily confused with house follets, but…” One glance from Nerron ended the lecture.
Reckless II Page 9
