Goyl. He pronounced the word as they all did with their soft lips: as though they had something rotten on their tongues, something that needed to be retched up and spat out.
Nias’ny’s face turned into a mask of black stone. There was nothing for which the onyx hated Kami’en more than for forcing them to ally themselves to the Doughskins. The mere scent of a human made Nia’sny nauseous. Yet his voice gave none of that away.
‘Certainly, Your Majesty,’ he said with perfectly pitched reverence. ‘And whom do you have in mind to support his quest?’
The Waterman returned. He whispered something to his master before resuming his position next to the throne. Charles de Lotharaine’s soft forehead creased into a frown. Human skin was as defenceless as a worm wriggling in the sun. It was a wonder they didn’t dry out.
‘I am told that my son Louis is out hunting.’ The King’s voice betrayed his anger as well as his reluctant love. ‘But we shall have everything ready for him to depart as soon as he returns. This quest shall be an excellent training for his future responsibilities as my successor.’
Louis of Lotharaine. Nerron bowed his head. What was he hunting? His mother’s maids? Nerron had heard a lot of things about this crown prince, none of them very good.
‘I cannot possibly guarantee his safety.’ Nerron’s voice barely concealed his anger. He worked alone. Always alone. And this was the most important hunt of his life.
The old onyx shot him a warning glance.
What? Whoever found the crossbow would be the best – for ever. Power. Land. Gold . . . There were many things for which the onyx and Crookback would have sold their wives and children. The Bastard wanted only one thing: to be the best in his trade. There was nothing on or below the earth he desired more. He was never going to find the Lost Palace, or the crossbow, if he had to babysit a prince along the way. Especially with the competition he was facing. Nerron hadn’t told the onyx about Reckless. It was far too personal. They would learn about him when the hunt was over and Reckless had lost.
Crookback’s eyes had turned as cold as the skin of his Watermen. Kings assumed that the company of their sons was nothing if not an undeserved honour, even if they didn’t think much of their offspring themselves.
‘You will guarantee his safety. I once had my best huntsman shot because he returned Louis to me from a hunt with a graze to his arm.’ The crowned cat was showing its claws. ‘I will send my best bodyguard along with Louis.’ Perfect.
Maybe the prince could also bring his tailor. Or the servant who procured his elven dust. Louis was known to have a weakness for the stuff.
Nerron bowed his head and pictured the tomb-cloves from Guismond’s grave spreading green mould on Crook-back’s skin.
And he would still beat Jacob Reckless.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JUST A CARD
He ran and ran. He had no feet any more, but he stumbled on, on bloody stumps, through a forest that was darker than the one in which he’d faced the Tailor. Always following the man who he knew was his father, even though that man never turned around. Sometimes he just wanted to catch up with him; sometimes he wanted to kill him. It was a dark forest.
‘Jacob! Wake up!’
He shot up. His shirt was so wet with sweat that he shivered in the cold night air. At first he had no idea where he was. He wasn’t even sure which world he was in, until he saw the two moons through the branches above and Fox kneeling next to him.
Flanders, Jacob. Soggy meadows, windmills. Broad rivers. The bedbugs had eaten them alive at the last inn, so they’d decided to sleep outside. They were on their way to the coast to catch a ferry to Albion.
‘Everything all right?’ Fox looked worried.
‘Yes. Just a bad dream.’ An owl screeched in the oak above them. Fox was still looking anxious. Of course, Jacob. Now that she knows the truth, every sneeze sounds like dying. He took her hand and placed it over his heart. ‘Feel it? Strong and regular. Maybe Fairy curses only work on those who were born in this world.’
Fox attempted a smile, but it wasn’t very convincing. They both knew what she was thinking: his brother had also not been born into this world, and yet he’d grown a skin of jade.
They’d left the mine four days earlier and had not rested since. Jacob was quite certain he knew what the inscriptions on the tomb floor meant, but the only proof would be holding the crossbow in his hands. They’d both seen the mutilated corpse and had immediately realised that head, hand and heart were missing to make something disappear. It was a common enough spell. But it was the alabaster words that had revealed to them that it wasn’t merely the crossbow that Guismond had made vanish. Fox and Jacob had turned and twisted the words every which way, until they were convinced it could mean only one thing.
The Witch Slayer had three children. His elder son, Feirefis (or Firefist, as he later called himself ), had claimed the crown of Albion while his father lay on his deathbed. Albion lay to the west. His younger brother, Gahrumet, the one who’d supposedly been saved by the crossbow, was made King of Lotharaine, the southern part of Guismond’s empire. Guismond’s only daughter, Orgeluse, had founded the dynasty of Austrian Emperors by marrying one of her father’s knights and bearing him two sons. Austry lay to the east.
THE HEAD IN THE WEST.
THE HAND IN THE SOUTH.
THE HEART IN THE EAST.
Feirefis had received his father’s head. Gahrumet the hand. Orgeluse his heart.
TOGETHER THEY SHALL POSESS WHAT EACH DESIRES.
It wasn’t hard to guess that this was the crossbow.
CONCEALED WHERE THEY ALL BEGAN.
Guismond’s children had all been born in the palace above the Dead City, which he’d built and which had been nothing but an empty plain since the day of his death. To conceal the crossbow, the Witch Slayer had made an entire palace disappear, and he’d left macabre clues as a riddle to his children. If the madness to which he’d succumbed in the final years of his life had convinced him this would sow peace among his offspring, then that wish was not to be granted. They’d hated each other as strongly as they’d hated their father. Some stories claimed that their mother was a Witch and that she was the reason for Guismond’s deep hatred of all Witches. Others claimed the Witch had been his second wife and that she had revealed to him the path by which he became a Warlock. Whichever was true, Guismond’s children had warred with one another without ever solving their father’s riddle, and it was quite likely that they’d never even read the inscriptions in his tomb. But the Bastard had, and Jacob had no illusions about whether the Goyl had also deciphered them. The only question left now was who’d be faster finding the three macabre keys.
Head, hand, heart. West, south, east.
Fox had suggested they make the longest journey first. That meant Albion. With any luck, they would be there in two days, provided the ferries were running. This early in the year, storms often kept them in port. Two, three months. Maybe less. It was going to be tight, even if the Bastard didn’t manage to find any of Guismond’s gruesome parting gifts before they did.
Fox pulled the fur dress from her saddlebag.
‘Who do you think the Bastard’s working for?’
She still shifted nearly every night, even though she realised herself how quickly the fur stole her years. But he couldn’t presume to say anything about it. He’d never stopped going through the mirror – not for his mother’s sake, nor for Will’s – and he definitely wouldn’t have done it in exchange for a less perilous and potentially longer life. When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer. The heart, the soul, whatever it was . . .
‘He usually works for the onyx, as far as I know,’ Jacob said. He pulled from his saddlebag the tin plate that had saved him from many hungry nights. ‘His father is one of their highest lords. If the Bastard finds the crossbow, then I guess the Goyl will soon have a new King.’
Jacob rubbed his sleeve over the pla
te, and immediately it filled with bread and cheese. He wasn’t really hungry, but he was afraid of falling back asleep and finding himself in that forest again, stumbling endlessly after his father. He never really acknowledged the thought, but it was always present, like an annoying whisper: You’ll actually die without ever having seen him again, Jacob.
Fox had swapped her human clothes for the fur dress. It kept growing with her, like a second skin, and it still had the same silky sheen as on the day Jacob had seen it the first time.
‘Jacob . . .’
‘What?’ He could barely keep his eyes open.
‘Lie down. We’ve not had a rest in days. There won’t be a ferry until the morning, anyway.’
She was right. He reached for his backpack. He still had some sleeping pills from the other world somewhere. If he remembered right, they were from his mother’s nightstand. For years she hadn’t been able fall asleep without them. A card dropped out of the backpack on to the frost-covered grass, and he picked it up. NOREBO JOHANN EARLKING. The odd stranger who’d vouched for him at the auction and been so interested in his family’s heirlooms.
Fox shifted shape and licked her fur, as though she had to clean the human scent off. She quickly snuggled up to him the way she used to when there was still a child hiding under that fur. They were both children when he’d found her in the trap. Jacob stroked her pointy ears. So beautiful. In both bodies.
‘Be careful. The hunters are already out stalking.’ As if he really needed to remind her.
She snapped at his hand – the vixen’s way of showing her love – and then she disappeared between the trees, as silently as if her paws weren’t carrying any weight at all.
Jacob stared at the card he was still holding in his hand. He’d meant to ask Will to find out more about his strange benefactor. Where was his head? Yes, Jacob, where? Death is breathing down your neck. Norebo Johann Earlking will have to wait, no matter how much you disliked the colour of his eyes.
He threw the card back into the grass. Two, three months . . . Two days on the ferry, and who knew how long it would take them to find the head in Albion? Then back to Lotharaine and Austry for the hand and the heart. Hundreds of miles, with death hard on his heels. Maybe his last chance really had come along too late.
The wind blew through his sweat-soaked shirt and brought the stench of a nearby swamp. The two moons disappeared behind a dark cloud, and for an instant the world around him became so dark and strange that it seemed to want to remind him it wasn’t his home. Where would you like to die, Jacob? Here or there?
A few wilted leaves blew into the fire – and Earlking’s card went with them.
It didn’t burn.
The leaves it had landed on crumbled to ashes, but the card was as unblemished as when Earlking had first put it into his hand. Jacob drew his sabre and used its blade to flick the card out of the flames. The paper was lily-white.
A magical object.
How had it come to the other world? Stupid question, Jacob. How did the Djinn get there? But who had brought the card through the mirror, and had Earlking been aware of what he was putting in his hand? Too many questions, and Jacob had the nasty feeling that he wouldn’t like the answers.
He turned the card around. The back side had filled up with words, and when he brushed his finger over them, it came away with a trace of ink on it.
GOOD EVENING, JACOB,
I REGRET THAT WE MET ONLY SO BRIEFLY, BUT I HOPE WE SHALL HAVE MORE OPPORTUNITIES IN THE FUTURE. MAYBE I CAN BE HELPFUL SOMETIME WITH THE TASK YOU’RE FACING. NOT FOR PURELY UNSELFISH REASONS, OF COURSE, BUT I PROMISE YOU MY PRICE WILL BE AFFORDABLE.
The writing disappeared as soon as Jacob had read the last word, and the card again showed nothing but Earlking’s printed name.
Grass-green eyes.
A Leprechaun? Or one of the Gilches that the Witches up in Suomi moulded from clay and awakened with their laughter? But in Chicago? No. This had to be some cheap trick, the prank of an old man who’d happened upon a magical object. Jacob was tempted to throw the card away, but then he wrapped it in his gold handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket. Fox was right. He needed sleep. But as soon as he lay down next to the dying fire, he heard shots, and then he could only lay there and listen to the darkness until, hours later, he heard the vixen’s paws and Fox herself a little later as she spread her blanket next to his.
She was soon breathing deeply and steadily, in a sound sleep. And as he felt her warmth next to him, Jacob forgot the dreams awaiting him and the card that brought him words from the other world, and he finally fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A SPIDER’S REPORT
Carriages and racehorses. Charles, King of Lotharaine, collected both, just as he collected the portraits of actresses. Nerron was sitting in a carriage painted in the national colours of Lotharaine with diamond-studded doors. Crookback clearly had better taste when it came to selecting his suits. Nerron had spent a lot of time searching for a place that was watched neither by the King’s spies nor by those of the onyx – for what he was trying to find out was neither of their business.
Where was Jacob Reckless? That little trick with the door couldn’t have kept him in the tomb for long. The golden rule of treasure hunting (and of life in general) was never to underestimate the skills of your competition.
So – where was he?
The medallion Nerron pulled out from under his lizard shirt was one of his most prized possessions. Out of it crawled a spider he’d stolen when he was five – an act that had then saved his life. The onyx invited all bastard children between their fifth and seventh birthdays to a palace on the shores of an underground lake. The lake was so deep that the moray eels in it supposedly grew three hundred feet long. At the time, Nerron couldn’t understand why his mother wasn’t happy about the honour of the invitation. She had barely spoken a word while he’d admired, open-mouthed, all the wonders of that underground palace. Until then, home had been a hole in a wall, with a niche for him to sleep in and a table on which his mother cut the malachite that resembled her skin. But Nerron was neither tall nor beautiful, both of which the onyx valued very much, and his mother had been very aware what that meant: the onyx lords were miserly with their blood, and bastards who didn’t pass muster were drowned in the lake. A five-year-old, however, who managed to steal a valuable reconnaissance tool while he awaited his sentence in the library, definitely showed promise.
The spider was sleepy, but she began to dance as soon as Nerron poked his claw into her pale belly.
Twin spiders.
Rare and very valuable.
It had taken him months to comprehend what the eight legs wrote on his palm. Their silent dance was not unlike that of bees pointing their kin towards the best flowers. The spider, however, didn’t report what she had seen but what her twin sister was seeing right then. And that twin sister had crept into Jacob Reckless’s clothes in Guismond’s tomb.
The head. The hand. The heart. What was he going to search for first?
The spider wrote what appeared to be fragments of a conversation: . . . an old friend . . . no idea . . . long time ago . . . two, three hours from the ferry . . .
The ferry. That could only mean Albion, and hence the west. Perfect. The mere thought of the Great Channel made Nerron nauseous. The Goyl’s wet fear. If the head was in Albion, then Reckless was doing him a favour by finding it and bringing it back to the mainland.
The spider danced on, but her twin sister was awfully chatty and babbled whatever she picked up. Who the hell cared what colour sky Reckless was looking at, or whether he was sleeping outside or in a hotel? Come on! Where exactly was Reckless headed? Did he already know where he was going to look for the hand and the heart? But all the spider danced was the menu of some Flandrian tavern. Damn. If only those beasts were a little smarter.
‘Are you the Goyl who’ll be accompanying the prince?’
The voice was barely more than a damp whisper.
/> A Waterman was standing outside the carriage window. He was as scaly as the lizards that had given their skin for Nerron’s clothes. His six eyes were colourless, like the water the stable hands had left out for Crookback’s horses.
‘The Goyl accompanying the prince.’ Wonderful. . .
‘The prince is waiting.’ Every word from a Waterman’s mouth sounded like a threat.
Fine. The prince could wait until he had moss growing from his royal armpits. Nerron let the spider slip back into the medallion.
Little waves rippled across the Waterman’s uniform as he walked ahead of Nerron across the courtyard – as though his body was protesting against the clothes. Back in their slimy native ponds, they wore only a covering of algae and mud, and they didn’t keep very clean on land, either. There were few creatures more repulsive to a Goyl than a Waterman.
The prince and a Waterman. ‘Lizard-crap!’ Nerron spat out, which immediately earned him a reproving look from the colourless eyes. At least Watermen were known for not being very talkative, and as royal bodyguards they hopefully also refrained from dragging every halfway-decent-looking human girl into the nearest pond.
The prince is waiting.
Nerron cursed Crookback with every step that brought him closer to the King’s offspring. Louis of Lotharaine was waiting for them in front of the stables where his father kept his racing horses. His travelling clothes were going to attract every highwayman within a hundred miles. It was all Nerron could do to hope that they’d soon get filthy and that Thumblings would pick off all the diamond buttons. The crown prince of Lotharaine ate too well, that much was obvious, and his unkempt white-blond curls hung into his pudgy face as though his servants had only just dragged him out of bed. Louis had even brought one of them with him: the man barely reached up to his master’s chest, and his stiff black frock coat made him look like a bug. He scrutinised Nerron with a look full of surprise, as though he’d never seen a Goyl before. Nerron stared back at him. Whatever you heard about us, Bug Man – it’s all true.