The landlord gave Fox and her men’s clothes a disapproving look before he started searching the guest register for Jacob’s name.
“Mademoiselle?” The man rising from one of the tables was so beautiful that more than one of the women present followed him with their eyes. Fox, however, only saw the black fur on his collar.
He stopped in front of her and touched it with his fingers. “A gift from my grandfather,” he said. “Personally, I find no pleasure in that kind of hunt. I’m always on the side of the fox.”
His hair was as black as the shadows in a forest, but his eyes were light blue, like a summer sky. Day and night.
“Jacob asked me to keep an eye out for you. He’s at the doctor’s—he’s fine,” he added when Fox gave him a worried look. “He stumbled into some choke vines, and some wolves. Luckily, we were on the same road.” He bowed and kissed her hand. “Guy de Troisclerq. Jacob described you very well.”
*
The doctor’s practice wasn’t far. Troisclerq explained the way to Fox. Wolves and choke vines… Jacob generally knew how to keep wolves away, and choke vines were supposed to have been eradicated from Lotharaine; after Crookback’s niece was killed by choke vines, they’d been ordered to be burnt. Jacob met Fox halfway, his hands bandaged and his shirt splattered with blood. She’d rarely seen him as angry.
“The Bastard has the head.” He flinched in pain as she embraced him, and she had a hard time coaxing out of him exactly what had happened. At least for now his injured pride had pushed away all thoughts of death, but Fox couldn’t think of anything else. The haste, the dangers, the time it had taken them to find the head—for nothing! They were again empty-handed. Fox was sick with fear, and her hand clamped around the box in her pocket.
“And he’s got the hand as well!” Jacob looked up at the monument. Flocks of birds were nesting in the giant’s ears. Fox knew that Jacob wasn’t seeing the chiseled stone, but the onyx-black face of the Bastard.
“Bastard!” he panted. “I will find the heart before him, and then I’ll get the head and the hand. We’re riding to Vena today.”
“You can’t possibly ride that far. Troisclerq says one of the wolves bit you in the side.” Even a good horse would take ten days to reach Vena.
“Really? And what else did he tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything else!” Oh, his pride. He’d probably rather have been eaten by wolves than have been saved by a stranger. “Why do we have to go to Vena? Did you hear from Chanute or Dunbar?”
“Yes, but what they know, I already knew myself. Guismond’s daughter is buried in Vena, in the crypt of the imperial family. That’s the only lead I have.”
That wasn’t much. And Jacob knew it.
“There’s a coach tonight.”
“That’ll take us at least two weeks! You know those coachmen stop at every tavern. And the Goyl must be on his way already.”
They both knew he was right. Even if they bribed the coachman, it would still take them more than ten days. The Bastard was going to be in Vena before them. All they could hope was that he didn’t find the heart, though he’d already been quite fast with the hand.
Jacob held his wounded side. For a moment, Fox saw something on his face she’d never seen there before. He was giving up. It was one fleeting moment, but that moment scared her more than anything.
“You rest,” she said, stroking his scratched face. “I’ll get us tickets for the coach.”
Jacob nodded. “How’s your mother?” he asked as she turned.
“Fine,” Fox answered, fingering the box in her pocket. She was so worried about him.
30
NOTHING GOES
Eight people in one badly sprung coach that smelled of sweat and eau de cologne: a lawyer from St. Omar with his daughter; two governesses from Arlas, who knitted through the entire journey even though their fingers got pricked on every bump in the road; and a priest who tried to convince them that the Goyl were direct descendants of the Devil. Jacob wished himself in the Black Forest, or back at the Blood Wedding, or even on board the sinking Titania… and they’d only been traveling for three days.
The coins his handkerchief produced were becoming ever more pathetic, but the coachman had accepted his with wide eyes. Compared to the copper coins he usually received, gold was still worth a fortune, even if it was paper-thin. The coin had spurred him so much that the other travelers soon began to complain about the lack of rest stops. Five days in, one of the wheels broke in a mountain gorge. It took them hours to unharness the horses and lead them along the icy road toward the next coach station. Jacob couldn’t decide which was worse, his throbbing side or the voice in his head: You should have taken a horse. The Bastard must be in Vena already. You’re dead, Jacob…
The stationmaster refused to send his men into the night to repair the wheel. He told them about wood sprites and kobolds that supposedly roamed the gorge. He charged them a fortune for his cold rooms, and he only sent his cook back into the kitchen after Troisclerq dropped a pouch full of silver on his polished counter. Troisclerq paid for them all. He arranged for the fire in the dining room to be stoked, and he put his coat around Fox’s shoulders when he saw her shivering as she brushed the snow from her hair. Jacob did not miss the grateful look she gave him in return. She was wearing a dress she’d bought in Gargantua while they’d waited for the coach, and Jacob caught himself wondering whether she’d put it on especially for his rescuer.
Not that Troisclerq wasn’t also taking care of Jacob. As soon as he noticed Jacob holding his hand to the bite in his side, he offered him two black pastilles. Witch-caramel. Not something people generally carried on them. It was made by the child-eaters, and one had better not ask about the ingredients. How did someone with such fine clothes and manners get hold of Witch-caramel? Maybe the same way he learned how to drive off a pack of wolves, Jacob. And anyway, Lotharaine was swarming with Dark Witches ever since the Crookback had granted them asylum in return for straightening his spine.
The pastilles were even better than moor-root, and Witch-caramel had no side effects. Jacob had to admit he was beginning to like his rescuer. Troisclerq hadn’t said a word about saving Jacob in the woods, not to Fox or to the other travelers. He might have given Fox a few too many looks, but even that Jacob could forgive. After all, he couldn’t ask the man to pretend to be blind.
It was best not to drink wine with Witch-caramel, but not even the child-eater pastilles could soothe his injured pride, and Jacob could still see the Goyl sneering down at him. Fox shot him a worried look as he ordered his second carafe. He answered her with a smile that he hoped didn’t give away too much of the humiliating self-pity he was wallowing in. Self-pity, injured pride, and fear of death. A nasty mix, and they still had several days of traveling in that stuffy coach ahead of them. He filled his glass to the rim.
The pain shot into his chest so suddenly that he thought he could feel his heart explode behind his ribs. Nothing would have soothed that pain. Jacob clawed at the table around which they were all sitting, and he suppressed the groan that so badly wanted to escape from his lips.
Fox looked at him. She pushed back her chair.
The pain blurred her face as much as the others’, and he could feel his whole body begin to shake.
“Jacob!” Fox took his hand. She talked at him, but he couldn’t hear her. There was only the pain as it seared another letter of the Fairy’s name from his memory. Jacob felt Troisclerq’s arms reaching under his, then Troisclerq and the coachman carrying him up the stairs, where they put him on a bed and examined the wound the wolf had torn into his side. He wanted to tell them they were wasting their time, but the moth was still feeding, and then he was gone.
*
When he came to, the pain was gone, but his body still remembered. The room was dark. Only a gas l
amp burning on the table. Fox was standing next to it; she was looking at something in her hand. The lamp’s light made her skin as white as milk.
She spun around as he sat up, and hid her hand behind her back.
“What do you have there?”
She didn’t answer. “The moth on your chest has three spots,” she said. “When was the other time?”
“In Saint-Riquet.” Jacob had never seen her face look so pale. He sat up. “What is that in your hand?”
She flinched.
“What’s that in your hand, Fox?” His knees were still weak from the pain, but Jacob grabbed her arm and pulled the hand out from behind her back.
She opened her fingers.
A glass ring.
Jacob had seen a similar one in the Empress’s Chambers of Miracles.
“You didn’t put that on my finger, did you? Fox!” He grabbed her shoulders. “Tell me the truth. This ring was not on my finger. Please!”
Tears ran down her face. But then she shook her head. Jacob took the ring before she could close her hand. She reached for it, but Jacob put it in his pocket. Then he pulled her close. She sobbed like a child, and he held her as firmly as he could.
“Promise me!” he whispered. “Promise me you’ll never try something like that again. Promise!”
“No!” she replied.
“What? Do you think I want you dead instead of me?”
“I just wanted to give you time.”
“These rings are dangerous. Every second you put it on my finger will lose you a year. And sometimes they can’t be pulled off before they haven’t taken your entire life.”
She struggled free and wiped the tears off her face.
“I want you to live.” She whispered the words, as though she feared death might hear them and take them as a challenge.
“Good. Then let’s find the heart before the Goyl does. I’m sure I can ride. Who knows when they’ll get that coach repaired.”
“There are no horses.” Fox went to the window. “The landlord sold his only riding horses the day before yesterday, to four men. He boasted to Troisclerq that one of them was Louis of Lotharaine. He had a Goyl with him, with a green-speckled skin. They only stopped briefly and rode on that same afternoon.”
The day before yesterday. It’s even more hopeless than you thought.
Fox pushed open the window, as if letting out the fear. The air that came rushing in was as cold and damp as snow. There was laughter from downstairs, and Jacob recognized the loud voice of the lawyer who’d sat next to him in the coach.
Louis of Lotharaine. The Bastard was hunting the crossbow for Crookback.
Fox turned around. “Troisclerq heard me ask about horses because we had to push on urgently. He bribed the landlord to send his workmen to the coach. I told him we’ll pay him back, but he won’t hear of it.”
They would pay him back. Jacob pulled the handkerchief from his pocket. He was already too deep in Troisclerq’s debt.
“I tried that,” said Fox.
She was right. No matter how hard Jacob rubbed the fabric, the only thing the tattered handkerchief produced was the card on which were still the same words. FORGET THE HAND, JACOB. It had been good advice.
“We could ask Chanute to send some money,” Fox suggested. “You still have some in the bank in Schwanstein, right?”
Yes, he did. But it wasn’t much. Jacob took her hand.
“You’ll get the ring back once all this is over,” he said. “But you have to promise me you’ll never use it.”
31
TOO MANY COOKS
The best! No, Nerron couldn’t remember ever having felt that good. He’d taken Jacob Reckless’s loot and had humiliated him like a rookie.
Not even the princeling could spoil his mood, even though Louis told everyone Nerron had let an Albian spy get away, and that after he, Louis, had brought him an impeccable virgin. A whole day long the prince refused to set off to Vena, and even now he kept sneaking off with every girl that let herself be dazzled by his diamond buttons. The Waterman spent his nights searching the barns and farmhouses for him. Eaumbre had begun to eye his royal charge with such distaste, Nerron wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d found Louis drowned in a trough one morning. Of course, none of that was mentioned in the journal in which Lelou kept scribbling tirelessly. Instead, it noted every castle they passed, every icy road, and every Mountain Gnome that threw a stone at them. Nerron checked the tutor’s writings every night (luckily, the Bug wrote very legibly) and regularly fell asleep over them.
Yes, it was all going splendidly. Despite Louis. Despite Lelou. Despite Eaumbre’s fish stench. They’d soon be in Vena, he’d find the heart, take the hand off Louis, and then toast to the memory of Jacob Reckless.
They were spending the night in a roadside inn in Bavaria—Vena was just a day’s travel away—when it dawned on Nerron that the final leg of his hunt was probably not going to be quite as smooth.
He woke up to the feeling of cold steel on his neck. Louis was standing over him, an elven-dusted look in his eyes, holding his saber to the Goyl’s throat.
“You lied to me, Goyl,” he growled. He was holding a swindlesack, which Nerron, even though he’d drunk a lot of that spiced hot wine they served in Bavarian inns, immediately recognized as the one he’d taken off Reckless. Nerron needed just one glimpse of Lelou’s bug face peering out from behind Louis’s elbow to understand who’d put the princeling on the trail of the sack.
“It’s the head!” Lelou observed accusingly. “It gave me a jolt. And it screams.”
“It probably put a curse on you,” Nerron said, pushing Louis’s saber away.
Lelou grew a little pale around his pointy nose, but Louis leaned even lower over Nerron’s bed. “You tried to trick me, Goyl. How long have you had the head?”
“He wanted to show it to you.” The Waterman was a dark outline in the open door. “The Goyl asked me where he might find you, but you weren’t in your bed.”
That was probably the worst lie Nerron had ever heard, but the Waterman’s whisper made it sound like a weighty truth.
“I work for your father,” Nerron said, pulling the sack from Louis’s fingers. “Or have you forgotten that? I am just following his instructions. The head stays with me, unless you let me teach you how to shield yourself from its curses.”
Lelou was still hiding behind Louis’s back.
Just you wait, Bug Man. From now on, I’ll be sending every Mountain Gnome we meet your way.
Louis stroked the blade of his saber, probably picturing how it might cut through Goyl skin. “Fine. You keep the head. For now.”
Eaumbre was still standing in the door.
Lelou might have suspected that Nerron was lying. But the Waterman knew it.
Nerron went to Eaumbre’s room as soon as he heard the Bug’s cricketlike snores from his room, and a girl’s giggles from behind Louis’s door.
Eaumbre was lying on his bed, pouring a bowl of water on his scaly chest.
“What’s your price?” Nerron asked.
“We’ll see,” the Waterman whispered.
32
THE HEART IN THE EAST
It took them fifteen days, despite Troisclerq’s silver, and every one of those days only convinced Jacob more that the Bastard had already found the heart.
After his collapse, the other travelers had been reluctant to get into the coach with Jacob. (The pox was going around in Bavaria and Austry.) But Troisclerq made a point of sitting next to him. Yes, Jacob was beginning to like him. Troisclerq knew as much about horses as about the newest Goyl weaponry, and he didn’t mind discussing for hours whether Albian or Catalunian blades were better. They shared a passion for fencing, though Troisclerq preferred the rapier over Jacob’s saber. The other p
assengers probably cursed them for their endless discussions, their hour-long arguments over whether the dirtiest feint was the in quarto or the sparita di vita.
Outside, dark valleys drifted past, lakes reflecting castles on the snowy peaks above. In one of those castles, Jacob had found the Glass Slipper that had earned him a medal from the Empress. At some point they caught a glimpse of the forest where he’d stolen a pair of Seven Mile Boots from a gang of highwaymen for one of the Wolf Lords in the east. This couldn’t all be over, not yet. However, thanks to him, the Empress was now spending her days in an underground fortress, and that forest had shrunk to half its original size since its timber had begun to be used to smelt steel in the valley beyond. And the Goyl ruled in Vena. Nothing lasted forever, even behind the mirror.
The two governesses were blushing over one of Troisclerq’s jokes. Jacob looked out the window to distract himself from the fact that Fox had also begun to regard his savior with increasing affection. To their left, the Duna was flowing languidly through flooded meadows, and the towers of Vena appeared on the horizon.
“Jacob?” Troisclerq put a hand on his knee. “Celeste asked me where Louis of Lotharaine usually stays when he comes to Vena.”
Celeste. It was odd to hear her real name from the mouth of a stranger. Jacob had only learned it himself a few months earlier.
“I imagine Louis will be staying with his cousin,” Troisclerq continued. “I know him quite well. If you like, I could arrange for him to receive you.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Reckless II Page 15
