“Is that so? And where is it?”
“In Guismond’s palace, in the Dead City.”
Crookback flicked a speck of ash from his black trousers. “Don’t talk nonsense. There is no more palace. It disappeared on the day of his death, together with ten thousand of his subjects. My nannies told me this story already. After all, he’s one of my ancestors. And you have nothing else than this treasure-hunter yarn for me?”
Oh, the rage of the Goyl. Nerron felt it like oil boiling in his veins. In Lotharaine, they used to feed their kings to the Dragons if they couldn’t get the winter to end. They’d probably like your smoked flesh, Your Crooked Majesty.
Nerron!
He forced a smile. “Guismond’s corpse was missing the heart, the head, and a hand. Which means he used an old Witch spell. You take three parts of the body and hide them in far-apart places, and whatever you wish to conceal will disappear. It has to be hiding his vanished palace. The clues in the tomb were clear. Could there be a safer hiding place? It will reappear as soon as the corpse is put together again.”
There. The eyes behind those heavy lids now showed a little more respect.
“And? Do you know where to look for the three missing pieces?”
“It’s my business to find things that were lost.”
And he would find them. Unless Jacob Reckless beat him to it. Of all the treasure hunters of this world, it had to be Jacob Reckless who’d appeared in the tomb! And Nerron had even taken care of Guismond’s shadow for him. If Reckless had shown up just a couple of hours later, the inscriptions on the floor would have been illegible. He’d already had the bottle of acid in his hand. Annoying. Very annoying.
Their paths had nearly crossed a few times before. Reckless had beaten Nerron to the Glass Slipper. Back then his face had been on the front page of every newspaper. Nerron had cut the pictures out and burnt them, in the hope of putting some bad luck on his rival. But Jacob Reckless had only grown more famous, and if you asked anyone the name of the world’s best treasure hunter, his was the name you’d hear.
For now, Nerron.
This time he was going to beat Jacob Reckless.
The Crookback’s eyes were as dark as peacock jasper. The world was a mouse hole, and he was the cat sitting in front of it, waiting for his prey. Let him believe you’re nothing but another mouse, Nerron. It was the only way the powerful would let you go on the hunt by yourself.
Crookback whispered something into the ear of one of his Watermen. It was always stunning to see how nimble they were on dry land.
A shaft of light fell into the dark room as the Waterman exited through one of the high doors. Charles de Lotharaine inspected his fingernails as though he was comparing them to the claws of a Goyl. “That crossbow,” he said, “would give Lotharaine the weapon with which we could finally check the warmongering of your species. So I am sure you will understand that I can’t leave the search for it to a Goyl alone.”
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 defenseless 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—forever. Power. Land. Gold… there were many things for which the onyx and the 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 honor, 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 mold on the Crookback’s skin.
And he would still beat Jacob Reckless.
14
JUST A CARD
He ran and ran. He had no feet anymore, 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 realized 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 eldest son, Feirefis (or Firefist, as he later called himself), had cl
aimed 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 POSSESS
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.
“Whom do you think the Bastard’s working for?”
She still shifted nearly every night, even though she realized 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 the tin plate that had saved him from many hungry nights from his saddlebag. “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 plate, 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 onto 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 color 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 head 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 saber 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 molded 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 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.
15
A SPIDER’S REPORT
Carriages and racehorses. Charles, King of Lotharaine, collec
ted both, just as he collected the portraits of actresses. Nerron was sitting in a carriage painted in the national colors of Lotharaine with diamond-studded doors. The 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 honor 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.
Reckless II Page 7