Jacob could feel the Hemlock-Fly’s poison working on his body, and when Ludmilla asked him where they should drop him off, he couldn’t even answer. The Wolfling and Sokolsky caught him as his knees buckled. Jacob wanted to show them the sting on his hand, but he couldn’t even do that. They lifted him into the foul-smelling vehicle, and the last thing he saw was Brunel’s anxious face.
A Fairy Tale
Seventeen raged against the rain like an enemy. Nerron had watched him ram his silver fingers deep into the trunks of trees to make them suffer for what the curse of the Fairies was doing to him. And he kept squabbling with Sixteen. He didn’t like that she was no longer hiding from Will. He should have been grateful!
The Pup was ever more restless in his pursuit of the Dark Fairy, and Nerron knew that Sixteen was the reason. Will’s eyes kept searching for her. Nerron pictured her turning the Pup to silver with a kiss, but the thought of melting Sixteen and Seventeen down to make silver chamber pots was much more satisfying.
The jade.
It was the jade.
Nerron couldn’t shake the sight. He still felt some awe, even though the Jade Goyl he’d dreamed of as a child bore very little resemblance to the innocent baby face riding in front of him. The Jade Goyl of his fantasies had drowned the onyx in their underground lake, just like they used to do with their bastards. As a child, Nerron had gotten so lost in these dreams that he used to search his own face for traces of jade. Children were such sentimental idiots. Life had woken him from such dreams; it had taught him to despise his own skin and his own heart, and it had taught him not to trust stories with happy endings and heroes who would save him or the world. Yet what he felt stirring inside himself since he’d seen the jade were exactly those awe-drenched delusions. Too bad this Goyl-forsaken land had no child-eaters. They would have cleansed his head with a cup of blood.
They stopped at a river to water the horses—the only thing for which the Pup stopped. Nerron led his horse to the water, and he saw Will pull the swindlesack off the crossbow. The Pup now did this every time they stopped. He cocked the string quite easily. Then he aimed at a tree more than a hundred yards away—and shot. Strike. Incredible. A crossbow was not an easy weapon to master, but the Pup handled it as though it had been made for him.
Of course!
Nerron’s horse lifted its dripping muzzle from the river as he began to berate himself with every invective ever hurled at bastards above or below the earth.
A message for the Fairy...
And he thought Milk-face was naive?
He looked around, but what the devil! Why shouldn’t those Mirrorlings hear that he’d seen through their lies. Embarrassing enough how long it had taken him. He dragged his horse away from the water.
Will was cutting the bolt from the tree trunk.
“You’re supposed to kill her, am I right?” Nerron grabbed Will’s shoulders and shoved him against the tree. “You’re not after the jade!”
Will’s eyes showed golden speckles.
Nerron grabbed Will’s hand that held the bolt. “I assume her immortality is not a problem for this crossbow. But have you forgotten the Cossacks? And even if you manage to kill her before she kills you,what if she takes the jade with her?”
The Pup tore himself free.
“I hope she takes it with her. I never wanted it, or have you forgotten that?”
“The jade is the best thing that’s ever happened to you!” Nerron wanted to smash Will’s soft face, make the stone come back, but there they were already. His glassy guard dogs. They didn’t look too good. The bark was growing faster than they could peel it off.
“Let him go.” Sixteen. Sixteen times ten faces, and all of them wanted the Pup. How did she like the jade? Or was she more into the soft human flesh?
Seventeen went to Nerron. He had blood (if it was blood) stuck to his skin like colorless oil. He’d been a little too thorough peeling off the bark.
“Get out of here, Stoneface. He’ll find the Fairy without you. You said it yourself. He doesn’t need you anymore.”
Really? The Pup had never needed him more. Will was still holding the bolt. The crossbow was silvering his mind. The crossbow and Sixteen.
“Is that so? And who kept him from becoming raven fodder?” Nerron stood so close to Seventeen he could see himself in his eyes. “Let me think. That may have been me. I’m not going anywhere. We had a deal.”
Nerron wondered whether the coldness in Seventeen’s smile was stolen, like the smile itself, or whether that was his own metal ingredient.
“Ah, the mirrors. Believe me, you’ll never see them, or those who are waiting on the other side.”
Seventeen wore his human face like a badly fitting mask. “We haven’t killed you yet, Stoneface. That is payment enough.” Sixteen went to stand by her brother’s side, to reinforce his threats. “And did you find the Fairy? No. So what should you be rewarded for?”
Filthy mirror-brood.
The Bastard was sick of being cheated. Lied to. Robbed. If anybody did the cheating and robbing and lying, it should be him.
“I will find her,” he said. “And a deal is a deal.”
Sixteen’s finger was growing silver claws.
Get out of here, Nerron, before your legs turn to silver.
But he couldn’t. He was too angry. That damned rage. And his pride. Broken too many times. Far too many.
Sixteen was really looking forward to turning him into a hunk of precious metal. She was almost as keen as she was on the Pup. A silver Goyl. Probably a first, Nerron. Not the kind of precedent he wanted to set.
“You are so ugly.” Sixteen stared hard at Nerron as though she wanted him to see it in her mirror-eyes. “This whole world is so ugly. I hope they make it prettier when they come back.”
She put her hand on Nerron’s chest. Oh damn, that hurt. He shoved her back, but she grabbed his arm, and his skin erupted in silver blisters.
“What are you doing? Let him go!” The Pup grabbed her by her shoulders. Sixteen looked at him like a chastised child.
Seventeen stared at Nerron’s arm. He seemed surprised that he hadn’t turned all silver. Ha! Goyl skin, you mirror-spawn!
Nerron didn’t turn his back on them until he reached his horse.
Yes, go, Stoneface, Seventeen’s eyes teased him. Before I do a better job than my sister. Milk-face won’t be able to protect you.
No. But he’d tried.
And the rain would keep falling, and soon the Bastard would be feeding them to his cooking fire.
Nerron kept his eyes on the Mirrorlings as he swung himself up into the saddle.
The Pup didn’t try to hold him back, but when Nerron looked around, Will was still staring after him.
They soon moved on. Nerron followed them as soon as they were out of sight. The Pup was leaving a clear enough trail.
Yes, he’d tried to protect the boy, but he’d also let the boy’s guardians chase him off like a mangy dog. He would have to remind himself of that the next time the jade threatened to make him all sentimental again.
Forgotten
Why had Donnersmarck assumed it would happen at night? The sun was high in the sky when the stag came. The Fairy was asleep under her web, the horses were grazing under the trees, and the coach box was empty. Chithira preferred his moth guise during the day.
He would not let it happen. That had been Donnersmarck’s mantra since the child-eater had let him go. He would defeat it. After all, he was used to fighting, and it wasn’t even the first time his enemy was inside him. Every soldier had to battle his weaker self. His weaker self had brought Donnersmarck to his knees, trembling. He had screamed it away, he had outrun it, he had drowned it in the blood of others. And he had always defeated it. But what had come with him from the Bluebeard’s house did not leave any time for screaming.
The stag surged forth with the same violence with which it had been planted into him. Even the pain was similar. It felt as if the antlers that had to
rn into his chest were now breaking out from inside him, and before Donnersmarck knew what he was doing, he was bellowing into the forest while his name became as meaningless as the uniform he’d once worn.
He scraped the skin off his new antlers and looked at the dark web that hung between the trees as though the night had dropped its dress. The stag who’d once had a name knew who was sleeping beneath it, though he’d forgotten everything else. She was the thread that connected him to everything he’d once been. He took that one memory of her with him as he disappeared between the trees.
The Lost Son
Why did their hideout have to be a basement? John tried to manage the panic he still felt underground by reminding himself of the iron cell he’d spent the past week in. Or had it been two? Time escaped so quickly.
The barred window let in some daylight, but the rooms reeked of turpentine and oil paints. Their hideout was the workshop of an icon painter. Probably not a very successful one, if he had to work in a cellar on artwork that required light.
Their liberators were again discussing possible escape routes from the city. John didn’t speak Varangian, but they kept switching to Albian, since one of them seemed to be from there. What John gleaned from these bits of conversation didn’t really help alleviate his nausea caused by being underground and breathing turpentine. The Tzar had apparently put the entire city on high alert, and without a special permit there was no way in or out of Moskva. There were searches, roadblocks...
They were going to shoot him!
No matter how many times he’d thought it and no matter that he’d always gotten away alive, John quickly felt the usual symptoms setting in: shortness of breath, racing heart, cold sweats. The Dwarf doctor who’d been brought in to check on his cellmate made no secret of what he thought of his “symptoms.” The looks he gave him made John wish the Thumbling-blight on his stubby neck. Dwarfs... The Goyl had procured most of the raw materials for his weapons from Dwarfs. Even in Albion, Dwarfs were the most important suppliers of such materials, and John had spent endless hours haggling over prices and delivery schedules. Dwarfs ran more mines than Lotharaine and Albion combined, and they had a network of trading posts in even the most remote colonies. “Rich as a Dwarf” was a well-used phrase in this world. The Dwarfs liked to point out that, unlike the riches of humans, their wealth was not based on the slave trade. Still, John didn’t like them, even if two of them had just helped to free him.
John was very flattered that the Walrus had risked his best spy in his first attempt to rescue him. Orlando Tennant had been mostly unconscious after they’d thrown him in the cell, but John had at least learned his name. Tennant’s Caledonian accent had made him very homesick. He wanted to go home.
There’s a loaded word, John!
He snuck a glance at the straw mattresses strewn across the paint-splattered floor. Yes, there he was. The Dwarf doctor’s other patient.
Say it, John. Your son.
Jacob was conscious and very impatient with the doctor, just the way he’d been as a child. The urge to stare at him was so strong, but John was worried the Wolfling might notice his unusual interest. The shifter hadn’t been too happy about saving a man who’d brought about Albion’s victory over Varangia. In this country, even the traitors were patriots. On the other hand, Wolflings always looked like they were about to devour you.
Jacob could barely stay upright, but he tried. Slapped away the hand that tried to keep him on the mattress. Squabbled with the Wolfling, who wouldn’t let him leave. After all these years, why did it still feel to John as though he’d held his son in his arms only days before?
John’s stash of frost-fern seeds, which he’d sewn into the hem of his shirt, was running out. He’d tried in vain to create a chemical substitute. His fake face held for now, saving him from having to reveal himself to his older son. And what would have been the point? There was nothing to say. His reasons for leaving Jacob’s mother were not really valid: ambition, selfishness, the look of disappointment in Rosamund’s eyes.
“Brunel!” Their icon-painting host was offering him a bowl of borscht. Maybe his art wasn’t popular because he was still painting the old gods. John looked at the pictures leaning against the walls: Vasilisa the Wise, the Weaver, Kolya the Undead. No, that wasn’t it. Their host was simply a bad painter.
John took the soup, though he was not hungry.
How did an icon painter end up harboring spies and escaped prisoners of the Tzar?
Jacob was still arguing with the Wolfling. Stop staring at him, John.
The presence of his long-lost son left little room for the relief he should’ve felt over his rescue. During their encounter in Goldsmouth, he’d already noticed with more than a little shock but also some relief how the grown-up Jacob looked more and more like him. But Rosamund’s face was still there. She hadn’t been the first to make John doubt his ability to ever really feel love. His son, who was shouting at the Wolfling only an arm’s reach away, was the only person for whom he’d ever felt something close to love.
Did he love him now? No, his guilty conscience had swallowed all else. And this adult Jacob was a stranger. John longed for the child, the boy who’d listened with rapt attention to every one of his words, who’d thought everything his father did was wonderful. The man that child had grown into was definitely not going to have such feelings for him. Still, John wished he had the courage to tell Jacob exactly whom he’d saved from the firing squad the night before. But courage was something John Reckless only ever wished he had. Courage was not a given; it was acquired, earned. You had to take the difficult paths, and John had always picked the easy ones.
Jacob was looking at him. What did he think of the man who called himself Isambard Brunel? Even his name was stolen from a better man. The Wolfling pointed at Tennant, and John thought he heard Jacob say something about his brother. Will. Always his mother’s son, never John’s. The Dwarf doctor gave Jacob some pills. The Witches in Albion sold an herb that erased memories as completely as waves washed footprints from the sand. The problem was that it also erased feelings, and the love for the son who didn’t know who he was still too precious to him. Losing that love would’ve removed the last barriers to the ever-growing emptiness inside him.
For a brief moment, John wished Jacob would see through his fake face, as Hentzau had. After all, his son had a reputation for revealing hidden things. But Jacob turned away and went to the mattress where Tennant was lying.
So many years. At least his son had followed him into this world.
Hidden Words
The midday bells woke Fox. She couldn’t remember ever having slept so long. Baryatinsky’s palace was humming with excitement. Something had happened during the night, but Fox couldn’t make any sense of her maid’s very excited Varangian. The only thing she learned was that all three, Jacob, Sylvain, and Chanute had not spent last night in their beds.
She went to Jacob’s room to search for a message from him, but she only found the rolled-up flying carpet. For a few unreal moments, she imagined not leaving with Jacob, but moving into Orlando’s apartment, calling a place home. Did Orlando want such a life? The gander and the vixen? There was no message from him, either. The last she’d heard, he was off on some secret mission for a few days.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the carpet. Onward. And onward with Jacob, on that endless, aimless journey they’d been on for so many years. It’s the life you wanted, Fox. Really? She had always been so certain, but something in her felt tired now. Jacob had been her beacon for so long, the one she followed without wondering where other paths might lead, whether there was something somewhere worth staying for. Until now.
When lunchtime came and went without the others having returned, Fox decided to look at the church Orlando had told her about. Better than just sitting and waiting for a message from Jacob. Moskva’s churches were so different from the sparse stone chapels of her native country. The god living here seemed as warm as the gold that s
urrounded him, even though his saints stared down from the walls with dark and serious eyes. A god who liked gold had to have a heart for treasure hunters. But when she stepped outside to hail a taxi, she found the streets clogged and people everywhere staring up at the sky. She approached a group of Lotharainian tourists, who became quite talkative when she greeted them in their native tongue. A governess from Lutis had seen a flying wolf above the city, and a tax collector from Calias advised her to cover her ears should she hear the cries of a bird with the head of a woman.
What the devil had happened while she slept?
She went back to ask the boys in the stables, but the porter approached her with a letter. The envelope was small, Dwarf-sized, but the handwriting was Jacob’s.
Fox locked herself in her room before she pulled the letter from the envelope. The written chatter confirmed that the real message was invisible. There were many ways to write invisible messages. Jacob always carried a nightingale feather. Fox whispered the words to make the message visible: “Through quivering branches only the nightingale’s song resounds.” The real message came forth, weaving itself through the words like a second thread of ink.
The first sentences were Jacob’s confession that he’d mixed a sleeping powder into her food. His lies were usually delivered very smoothly, but here he’d crossed out and rewritten much. Maybe that’s why Fox believed him when he wrote that he’d only done it to protect her. Fox read on, her feelings wavering between fear, rage, and love. Fear for Jacob, fear for Orlando, rage that they’d both kept secrets from her. But her love was stirred by what Jacob had tried to hide, even in his invisible words: the jealousy and the shame he felt over it, his willingness to save Orlando even though he’d rather have shot him dead, all the courage—and love. Fox had to wipe her tears off the ink. So much love. It echoed through Jacob’s excuses and explanations, like something that was too large to be hidden any longer. And, of course, he also needed her help. She had to help him deceive Orlando. As always, Jacob asked too much.