“Monsieur?” She had mended his waistcoat. Her hands reverently brushed over the brocade before she handed it to him. The waistcoat had been a gift from the Empress, and the girl’s dress had probably been worn by her older sisters before her. Cinderella. Except in this case, the girl’s own mother played the role of the evil stepmother. Jacob had seen how she ordered her youngest about. And here Jacob himself had sold Cinderella’s real Glass Slipper to the Empress. Maybe Dunbar was right. Jacob could still hear the Fir Darrig’s angry voice in his ear:’ You treasure hunters are turning the magic of this world into a commodity only the powerful can afford!
The girl had done her job well, and Jacob put his hand on his gold handkerchief to pay her. The coin that came from it was even thinner than the previous one, but the girl stared at the golden piece as though he had brought her a Glass Slipper after all. Her hand was rough from cleaning and sewing, but it was as slender as a Fairy’s hand, and she looked at him with such longing, as if he was the prince she’d been waiting for. And why not, Jacob? A little tenderness to fend off death? You’re still alive now. But all he could think of was when Fox would return.
As he opened the door for her, the girl stopped and turned around. “Oh, and I found this in your waistcoat, Monsieur.”
Earlking’s card was still spotless white. Except for the words on the back:
Forget the hand, Jacob.
Jacob was still standing there, staring at the card, long after the girl had left. He warmed it between his hands (no, it was not Fairy magic), soaked it in gun oil (the simplest way to detect Stilt or Leprechaun spells), and rubbed it with soot to rule out witchcraft. The card stayed perfectly white and kept displaying just those four words: FORGET THE HAND, JACOB. What the hell was that supposed to mean? That the Goyl already had it?
Jacob had seen many writing spells behind the mirror: threats that suddenly appeared on your skin, paper that filled with curses after a wind dropped it in front of your boots, prophecies that carved themselves into the bark of a tree. Gnome, Stilt, or Leprechaun hexes… magical pranks filled the air of this world like pollen.
FORGET THE HAND. And then what?
*
When Fox returned, the landlady was explaining to Jacob how to get to Gargantua. The city had a library that collected everything about the kings of Lotharaine, and Jacob hoped to find some clues about the hand there—or maybe get news that the Goyl had already been there…
He decided not to tell Fox about the moth’s second bite. She looked tired and was strangely absentminded. When he asked her about it, she claimed it was because of the horses—they weren’t really very good. Saint-Riquet was more the place to buy good sheep. Still, Jacob sensed there was something else on her mind. He knew her as well as she knew him. “Come on, tell me. What’s the matter?”
She avoided his eyes.
“My mother lives not far from here. I was wondering how she’s doing.”
That wasn’t all, but Jacob didn’t press her any further. There’d always been a tacit understanding between them to respect each other’s secrets, an agreement that the past was a land they both didn’t care to visit.
“It’s not a big detour. I could meet you in Gargantua tonight.”
For a split second, he wanted to ask her to stay with him. What’s the matter with you, Jacob? And of course he didn’t. It was bad enough that he himself had never gone to see his mother until it was too late. It had been all too easy to pretend she’d always be there, just like the old house and the apartment full of old ghosts.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be in the hotel right by the library. Or do you want me to come with you?”
Fox shook her head. She only ever spoke very reluctantly about why she’d left her home. All Jacob knew was that the fur was not the only reason.
“Thank you,” she said. “But I’d better do this alone.”
Yes. There was more, but her face did not invite Jacob to ask.
“How are you feeling?” She put her hand over his heart.
“Good!” Jacob hid the lie behind his brightest smile. Fooling her wasn’t easy, but luckily there were plenty of reasons for the tiredness in his voice.
He kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll see you in Gargantua.” Her skin still smelled of the Mal de Mer.
26
THE BEST
They didn’t land in the sea, but on a beach as gray as powdered granite. The Waterman complained that his scales were itching, and Lelou swore the magic had made his fingernails grow, but the tracks they found in the sand were so fresh that even the prince managed to follow them. Nerron let him have his fun until they reached the first crossing, where, to the untrained eye, the trail disappeared among the tracks of cart wheels and farmers’ feet. For Nerron they were still easier to read than the signposts by the roadside. Reckless and the vixen had taken the road to Saint-Riquet, a provincial town where the inhabitants once used to get regularly trampled by Giants. Their huge teeth could still be found in the surrounding fields. The ivory fetched a good price.
Finding the inn where Reckless and the vixen were staying wasn’t hard. The Bug, with his innocent face, even got the landlady to give him the room number.
“What are we waiting for?” Louis asked while the Waterman eyed the curtained windows with a blank face. “Let’s get that spy.”
“So he can destroy the head as soon as we come through the door?” Nerron quickly waved them behind a coach that was parked by the curb. “We have to lure him out!” he hissed. “We need a bait.”
Lelou shot him a reproachful look.
Oh, this is going to be difficult, Nerron. But he had to get rid of the three for a few hours. Reckless was his. And he wasn’t going to see the head dangling from Louis’s tacky belt as well.
“We need a girl,” he whispered to them. “But I heard he only goes for virgins. Golden-haired. Eighteen years at the most.”
Lelou adjusted his glasses. That was usually a warning signal. “Virgins? Isn’t that the bait for Unicorns?” he twanged.
“Are you now going to teach me treasure hunting?” Nerron hissed at him. “I’m sure you’re as good at dealing with Albian spies as you are at teaching Louis his ancestral history.”
The Bug wanted to retort something, but Louis found his new task as irresistible as Nerron had hoped.
“I’ll find a virgin for the Goyl.” His smile was smug, as befitted a prince. “But then that head is mine.”
Lelou pressed his thin lips together, and Eaumbre shot Nerron a knowing glance before he followed Louis, but all three disappeared into the narrow alleys, and Jacob Reckless was less than a stone’s throw away.
*
Nerron hid in an archway opposite the inn, but he had to change his position several times because some upright burgher stopped to stare at him. He was just beginning to pray for a mounted Goyl squadron to sweep through this sleepy street when he saw Reckless step out of the inn with a woman. The color of her hair left little room for doubt—it was the vixen. Nerron usually didn’t find human women attractive, but she was as beautiful as everybody said. He wondered whether she and Reckless were a pair. What other reason could there be for taking a woman on a treasure hunt, even if she was a shape-shifter? Women were either unfathomable, like the Fairy Kami’en had fallen for, or they were weak, like his own mother, who’d gotten involved with an onyx and had made her son a bastard. Sometimes you convinced yourself that you loved them, but they could never be trusted, and in the end all one really desired was their amethyst skin. Nevermind… the vixen turned her horse westward, while Reckless took the road south. Excellent. Things would be much easier with him on his own.
The horse Nerron had hired found the sight of him just as disturbing as the good people of Saint-Riquet had. And by the time it finally allowed him to climb into the saddle, Reckless wa
s out of sight. Nerron caught up with him just as he entered the forest that soon replaced the fields and meadows to the south of the town. Nerron was grateful for the shade under the trees, not only because it made him almost invisible. Sunlight no longer hurt his eyes since he’d had them hexed by a child-eater. It did, however, still crack his skin, even though he oiled it every day.
The forest was one of the former royal woods that had for a long time been the exclusive hunting grounds of the Lotharainian nobility. In the meantime they also provided wood for the factories and the railroads. This one, however, was still nearly as dense as it had been in the old days, and it reminded Nerron of the stone forests beneath the earth, which filled enormous caves with branches of garnet and leaves of the same malachite that ran through his skin.
He only pulled out his blowpipe once Reckless had ridden far between the trees. The plant shoot Nerron pushed into the narrow steel pipe was covered with thorns so sharp that only a Goyl could touch them without tearing his skin. It landed on the clearing Reckless was headed toward, and it began to grow as soon as it touched the ground. Choke vines grew fast. Faster than any prey could run.
Reckless reined in his horse as soon as he realized what was creeping toward him. He wanted to turn about, but the vines were already growing around his horse’s hooves. The vines clawed into Reckless’s clothes and wrapped themselves around his arms while his horse reared up in panic. Reckless was nearly trampled to death when the vines pulled him from the saddle. Careful! Nerron wanted him alive.
The Goyl tethered his horse to a tree. The stupid nag still shied from him. Reckless’s horse had managed to free itself. It trotted toward him, bleeding and trembling, as soon as he stepped out into the path. Nerron caught the animal and reached into the backpack hanging from the saddle. The head was still in a swindlesack. Of course. Only amateurs carried their quarry in plain sight.
Reckless had already all but disappeared. The vines had enveloped him in a spiky cocoon. Nerron pulled them apart until he could see the face of his rival. Reckless was unconscious—choke vines quickly suffocated their victims—but he opened his eyes when Nerron punched him in the face.
Nerron held up the swindlesack. “Thank you! I’m very glad I didn’t have to go on a boat. Where do you think I should look for the heart?”
Reckless tried to sit up, though the vines were driving their thorns into his soft flesh. The wolves would soon catch the scent of his blood. These woods were home to an infamous pack that had grown accustomed to human flesh by a local nobleman who used to feed his enemies to them.
“Even if I knew, why should I tell you?” The gray eyes were alert, and there wasn’t much fear in them. It was exactly as everybody said: Reckless fears nothing. He thinks he’s immortal.
Nerron tied the swindlesack to his belt.
“If you tell me, I will kill you before the wolves eat you.”
Oh yes, he was afraid, though he hid it well. And he didn’t care. Enviable. Nerron despised fear. Fear of water. Fear of others. Fear of himself. He fought it with rage, but that only made it grow, like a well-fed creature.
“I already have the hand.” He couldn’t resist a little bragging. Too often had he been forced to listen to the tales of Jacob Reckless’s glorious deeds.
“Perfect.” His adversary’s face turned white with pain as he tried to sit up once more. “Then I can take it off you when I get my head back.”
“Really?” Nerron was wearing the gloves that had already protected him from many spells, yet the pain shot all the way to his shoulder as he pulled the head from the sack. The eyes were closed, but the lips were slightly parted. Nerron quickly shoved the head back into the sack before it could utter something. Even a dead Warlock might still have a spell waiting on his lips.
Nerron put the swindlesack in his coat pocket. His lizard-leather coat would have given Reckless’s human skin much more protection than the fabric his coat was made from. As soft as his skin, and just as tearable. “Now, before all your wisdom gets ingested by a wolf… how did you manage to steal the red riding hood from the child-eater in Moulin? I heard she already had you in her oven.”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me how you found that white blackbird. I searched for it for months.” Reckless tried to free one of his hands, but choke vines were very reliable fetters. “Does its song really make you young again?”
“Yes, but the effect barely lasts a week. My client had already paid me before he found out.” Nerron rubbed his cracked skin. It ached, even in the shade of the forest. Once this hunt was over, he urgently needed a few months underground. But there was one more question he wanted to ask.
He pulled his knife.
“Just out of curiosity… and I promise you’ll take the answer with you to your grave—or should I say, into a wolf’s intestines? Where are you hiding your jade-skinned brother?”
Ah. So there was a way to get through that smug mask.
“Will. Wasn’t that his name?” Nerron leaned over his prisoner and cut a fresh shoot from the vine that had wrapped around Reckless’s soft neck. There’d always be another opportunity to use choke vines. “Did you know the onyx have tasked five of their best spies to find him?”
Reckless’s eyes followed every move Nerron made. He had himself under control again, but human eyes were still much more treacherous than a Goyl’s. Their alertness betrayed what his silence was trying to conceal. Yes, the rumors were true: the Jade Goyl, who had saved Kami’en’s stone skin, was indeed Jacob Reckless’s brother.
“Where is he?” Nerron wrapped the fresh shoot in the cloth that still had a few thorns of the old one stuck in. “You could both buy a palace in Lutis with all the silver the onyx have spent searching for him, and they still haven’t found even the faintest trail. That must be quite a remarkable hiding place.”
Reckless smiled. “Maybe I’ll tell you if you get these thorns off me.”
Oh, Nerron liked him—as much as he was capable of liking anyone. It was just as well that feeling overcame him so rarely. His mother was the only person he’d ever given his unquestioning affection to. Love was a luxury you paid for with far too much pain.
“No,” he said. “I’d better not. The onyx are already unbearable. Doesn’t bear thinking about what will happen if the Jade Goyl helps one of them grab Kami’en’s crown.”
“Yes?” Reckless swallowed a groan. His skin was probably well larded with thorns by now. “What do you think will happen when you get them the crossbow?”
Nice try.
Nerron tucked the cloth with the shoot into his pocket. “Our clients are our professional secret, aren’t they?” He could already hear the wolves between the trees. “I’m not asking you whom you’re seeking the crossbow for.”
He gave his rival one last smile.
“I really am glad our paths crossed this way. I was getting sick of constantly hearing that you are the best in our trade. Good luck with the wolves. Maybe you’ll think of something. Surprise me! They don’t leave much behind, and it would be such a pity if the vixen has to spend the rest of her life searching for you.”
Nerron jumped onto his horse just as the first wolf came slinking toward Reckless. The others would soon follow. Unlike the onyx lords, however, Nerron didn’t find the screams of a dying man very entertaining.
And Louis had probably found a virgin by now.
27
A HOUSE AT THE EDGE OF THE VILLAGE
The house looked even more shabby than she’d remembered. Mold sprouting in the stone walls. The stench of rotting straw and pig manure. Fishing had made some men along this coast rich, but her father had always taken his money to the tavern rather than bring it home. Father. Why do you still call him that, Fox? Her mother had married him when Fox was three. Two years and two months after the death of her actual father.
A stump was all t
hat was left of the apple tree by the gate, which she had climbed so often as a child because the world always seemed much less frightening when viewed from above. The sight nearly made her turn her horse about, but her mother had planted primroses in front of the house, just as she used to every spring. The pale yellow blossoms reminded Fox of all the good times she’d had because of her behind those shabby walls. As a child, she’d wondered that something as fragile as a flower could withstand the wind and the world. Maybe her mother had always planted those primroses to teach her and her brothers just that.
Fox touched the posy she’d tucked into her saddle. The blossoms had withered, but that didn’t make them any less beautiful. Jacob had given them to her. For a brief moment, those dried flowers made her feel as though he was by her side. Their two lives, connected through a flower.
The gate stood open, just as it had on the day they chased her away. Her two older brothers and her stepfather. They’d tried to take the fur dress away from her. Fox had torn it from their hands, and she’d started to run. She had felt the bruises from the stones they’d thrown at her for weeks, even under the vixen’s fur. Her youngest brother had stayed hidden in the house, together with her mother, who’d stared through the window as though trying to hold her back with her eyes. But she hadn’t protected her daughter; how should she have? She could never even protect herself.
As Fox walked toward the door, she could see her younger self running across the yard. Her hair braided into pigtails, her knees covered in scabs and bruises. Celeste, where have you been this time?
She’d been in Ogre caves with Jacob, and in the oven rooms of Black Witches, yet she’d never wanted to leave a place as badly as she had this one. Not even her love for her mother had been able to bring her back. Now it was her love for Jacob that led her here again.
Reckless II Page 13
