Jacob closed his fingers around the golden ball, but it was impossible to get a clear throw. Will was surrounded by imperials, and Jacob could barely lift his arm without someone stumbling into him. Another Goyl fell. Hentzau was next, but it took three bullets to bring him again to his knees, and Will was the last guard shielding the King. Kami’en was fighting off three imperials when another two attacked him from the side. Will killed them both, though one of them rammed his saber deep into his shoulder. The Fairy had been right. The jade Goyl, her lover’s shield. Too bad, he was also his brother.
Will and Kami’en were fighting back-to-back now, surrounded by white uniforms. Soon not even their Goyl skins would save them.
Do something, Jacob. Anything!
But what? He had no ammunition left. For a moment he caught a glimpse of red fur and Valiant standing protectively in front of a crouched figure. Right next to them, a Goyl was stabbed down by four imperials. And Therese of Austry was sitting amongst her Dwarfs, waiting for the death of the King who had defeated her.
Donnersmarck was still standing right next to her.
For a moment their eyes met across men fighting and dying.
I warned you, his look said.
He had.
Will was fighting four imperials at once. Blood was running down his face. Pale Goyl blood. He wouldn’t last much longer.
Jacob pushed his bloodstained hand into his pocket. One of the Empress’s ministers stumbled against him, a gaping wound on his forehead, when Jacob pulled out the handkerchief, and the dry willow leaves were scattered amongst the many fallen bodies, most of them Goyl. Jacob gathered the leaves from the blood-soaked chests and limbs. Goyl and humans. Whose side are you on, Jacob? But he could no longer think of sides, just of his brother, and of Fox. And Clara. Even the Dwarf came to mind.
He yelled the name of the Dark Fairy through the cathedral’s nave. It drowned in the ocean of screams, shots, and moans that raged around him, but she did hear him nevertheless, far away, a willow’s roots tying her to the wet soil of the Empress’s garden.
The bark was still peeling from her arms when she appeared in front of the altar steps, her long hair covered in willow leaves. She lifted her six-fingered hands, and glass tendrils grew up around Will and her lover, deflecting sword blades and bullets as if they were children’s toys. Jacob saw his brother collapse, his eyes on the Fairy and Kami’en catching him in his arms. The Dark One began to grow like a flame fanned by the wind, and the moths swarmed from her hair, thousands of them, covering the flesh of humans and Dwarfs wherever they could find it.
Therese tried to flee, her Dwarfs clearing a path for her, but they collapsed under the onslaught of the moths as did her guards, and finally black wings covered the Empress’s skin as well.
Human skin. Fox was hopefully wearing her fur, but where was Clara?
Jacob jumped down the altar steps and leaped over the dead and the wounded. His eyes found the vixen. Fox was standing in the center aisle, shielding two slumped bodies, desperately snapping the moths off their skin.
Jacob dropped to his knees next to her and searched in his pocket for some more of the leaves, but he couldn’t find any. Valiant was still moving, but Clara was as pale as death. And the Fairy was still blazing.
“Call them back!” he yelled at her, but without the leaves she didn’t even hear him.
White, red, black. Jacob brushed the moths off Clara’s skin and unbuttoned his white guardsman’s tunic. There was enough blood on it, but where could he get something black? The moths were attacking him when he put his jacket over Clara. Fluttering wings and stings that pierced his skin like splinters. They sowed a numbness that tasted of death. Jacob barely had the strength to pull a black cravat from a dead man’s neck. He wrapped it around Clara’s arm. Then he collapsed next to the Dwarf.
“Fox!” He barely managed to utter her name.
She swiped the moths from his face, but they were too many. He was so glad the fur protected her from them. So glad.
“White, red, black,” he muttered, but of course she didn’t understand what he meant. The leaves… he felt around the floor for them, the cold tiles wet with blood, but his fingers were made from lead.
“Enough!!”
Kami’en’s voice made the moths whirl up as if the wind had come to their victims’ aid.
Even the venom in Jacob’s veins seemed to dissolve, leaving only a deep weariness behind. The Dark Fairy shrank, like a fire that’s slowly burning down, until she once again resembled a mortal woman. One could still feel her magic though, like a scent filling the vast nave, dark and heavy, tasting of anger and love. And sadness.
Valiant rolled over with a groan, but Clara still wasn’t moving. She only opened her eyes when Jacob leaned over her. He is still one of them. Jacob didn’t have to say it. Clara’s steady gaze found Will as she pulled herself up, holding onto one of the pews.
He and Kami’en were back on their feet. The Fairy’s magic was already healing their wounds and the glass tendrils turned to water as soon as Kami’en took a step toward them. It washed the blood off the altar steps, while the moths landed on the fallen Goyl.
The Dark Fairy climbed the steps to meet her lover, while many of his dead men began to stir under the wings of her moths. She wiped the pale blood off both his face and Will’s. Jacob saw her say something to his brother. Maybe she thanked him for her lover’s life. One of Kami’en’s surviving soldiers dragged the Empress to her feet. Auberon attacked him, but the moths’ venom still weakened him, and the Goyl just pushed him aside and dragged Therese toward Kami’en. Some of the other Goyl were driving the survivors from the pews. Jacob spotted one of the willow leaves between the Dead, but before he could grab it, a ruby Goyl had his arm around his throat.
“Hide, Fox!” Jacob managed to gasp, but of course she ignored him and followed the Goyl, who pushed both him and Clara toward the altar steps.
Another grabbed Valiant who tried to hide between the corpses, but they all froze when a slender figure rose in the last pew.
White silk speckled with blood, and a face that, despite her fear, still looked like a mask, Amalie moved unsteadily into the center aisle. Her veil was torn as was her dress, which she gathered up to climb over the body of the general who had led her into the church, and she made her way toward the altar like a sleepwalker, followed by her long white train heavy and wet with blood.
Kami’en watched her as if he was weighing up whether to kill her himself or to leave that pleasure to the Dark Fairy. The rage of the Goyl. In their King, it had turned to cold fire.
“Get me a priest,” he ordered Will. “Let’s hope one of them is still alive.”
Therese looked at him incredulously. She could barely stand but Auberon, still shaken himself, was supporting her.
“Why the surprise?” Kami’en stepped toward her, his bloody saber in his hand. “You tried to have me killed. Did you hope that would also erase all the promises you and your daughter made?”
“No!” Amalie was standing at the bottom of the stairs. She cleared her throat and when she spoke again her voice was shaking, but there was no doubt that she meant what she said: “No, I will keep my promise to you. Despite what my mother did.”
Therese stared at her daughter.
“Well, I will…” she said, straightening her back, as if that would make Kami’en forget that she was his prisoner, “… I will give my permission. As long as he—” she kept her eyes on her daughter, “—keeps his, of course. Peace.” She finally looked at Kami’en. “Peace is still the price for my daughter’s—”
He silenced her with a gesture that came very close to slapping her face.
“Peace?” he repeated with his eyes on the Goyl the moths had not brought back to life. “I fear that’s one of today’s fatalities. I think I’ve actually forgotten what that word means. But—” he turned to Amalie, “—as it is our wedding, I will for now resist the temptation to kill your mother. Feel free to co
nsider that either as a gift or as a punishment.”
Will had found a priest, a scrawny old man, who rushed so hastily to the groom’s side that he stumbled over the corpses. The Dark Fairy’s face was whiter than the bride’s dress when Amalie walked up the steps to join Kami’en in front of the altar.
And so it happened that the King of the Goyl exchanged wedding vows with the daughter of Therese of Austry in a church that was filled with death. And the sadness of his lover.
51
HOSTAGES
When Amalie of Austry stepped out of the cathedral, her wedding dress was covered in flowers. The Dark Fairy had turned the bloodstains into roses—white blossoms for the Goyl blood, red for the blood of men. On Kami’en’s uniform hiding the cuts and stains, rubies and moonstone spread so lushly that the waiting crowd forgot their hatred and greeted him and the bride with equally enthusiastic cheers. Some of the onlookers wondered why so few of the wedding guests followed the happy couple, a few even noticed the fear on the faces of those who did, but the street noise had drowned out the shots and screams from the cathedral, the Dead were silent, and the King of the Goyl helped his human bride into the golden carriage that had taken many royal couples before them back to the palace.
The parade of coaches and carriages waiting in front of the cathedral was endless. The Dark Fairy remained at the top of the stairs, while the Goyl escorted the surviving wedding guests down. Not one of them tried to escape. They all felt the Fairy’s gaze following them from above, and none of the imperial soldiers managing the crowds realized that the Goyl were loading the waiting carriages with hostages right in front of their eyes, one of them being their Empress.
Therese almost stumbled when Donnersmarck helped her into a carriage. He’d survived the carnage, along with Auberon and two other Dwarfs. Auberon was known for his fearlessness. The Empress liked to tell visitors about the countless Watermen and Ogres he had killed, but his fighting skills hadn’t protected him from the Fairies’ moths. His bearded face was so swollen from their stings that he could barely see and needed Donnersmarck’s help to follow the Empress into the coach. Jacob knew only too well what a state the Dwarf was in. His own skin was as numb from the stings, as if he had stolen it from a dead man. Clara certainly wasn’t any better, and Valiant tripped over his own feet as they descended the cathedral steps. With his eyes Jacob begged Fox to steal away as the Goyl waved him into one of the coaches, but the vixen jumped in with Clara before the Goyl even noticed her. Hostages… Jacob was sure that the Goyl only kept them alive because they could use them as human shields for Kami’en, who had survived the Empress’s assassination attempt thanks to his Fairy lover, to the jade Goyl, and thanks to you, Jacob. It had taken two brothers to save the King of the Goyl. Jacob didn’t dare to imagine how Kami’en would take revenge for Therese’s betrayal, for it would be all on him, every single death. He knew he would have done it again, for his brother, for Fox and Clara. But that didn’t make it easier to accept.
Will joined Kami’en in the golden carriage after he had one last time stared up the stairs, as if to make sure he was doing what the Dark Fairy wanted him to do. Yes, he was still alive, and though it felt very strange to have ended up fighting on the Goyl’s side, Jacob regretted only one thing: that he had lost the willow leaves, and any hope of protecting them all from the Fairy, not to mention breaking the spell she had cast on his brother.
The Dark Fairy had her eyes on the golden carriage when she finally walked down the cathedral stairs. She had won and lost, and Jacob was surprised to once again feel compassion for her. As hard as she tried she couldn’t hide the love she felt for Kami’en. In that she proved to be as helpless as a mortal woman, like her red sister. All those thousands of men who had died in despair loving Fairies who obviously couldn’t make themselves immune against the pain they so easily inflicted on others.
The Fairy exchanged a glance with Jacob before she climbed into her coach. I remember, it said. The bark and the leaves. And my sister’s betrayal. Beware, Jacob Reckless. He had made many enemies in these past few days: the Empress, the Goyl, and now the darkest of all Fairies. And Will still wore a skin of jade.
When the coaches finally set off, each coachman had been joined by a Goyl. The imperial guards probably assumed that it was a gesture to demonstrate the union of men and Goyl, but as soon as the carriages crossed the bridge leading out of the city, the Goyl pushed the coachmen off their boxes. The few guards escorting the wedding couple tried to stop them, but the Dark Fairy unleashed her moths once again, and the Goyl steered the coaches away from the bridge Amalie’s ancestors had built, and soon all of them had disappeared into the streets on the other side of the river.
A dozen carriages, forty soldiers, a Fairy protecting her lover, a Princess who had said, “I do” amongst corpses, and a King who had trusted his enemy only to be betrayed by her…
The sky was covered with dark clouds when the convoy passed through a gate to some plain buildings which surrounded the courtyard of an abandoned munitions factory. The river had flooded the area years earlier, leaving the buildings filled with water and foul-smelling mud. Since then the factory had been deserted until it was used during the last cholera epidemic, when many of the infected had been brought to the deserted buildings. Vena’s citizens had avoided the site since but the Goyl didn’t worry about human diseases. They were immune against most of them.
“What are they going to do with us?” Clara whispered, as the carriages came to a halt between the red-brick walls.
Valiant clambered up onto the coach seat and peered out into the deserted yard. “Nothing pleasant to be sure,” he muttered. “But I think I know why we came here.”
Will was the first to climb out of the golden carriage. He eyed the empty buildings while Kami’en followed with Amalie. The Goyl weren’t too gentle with their hostages when they gathered them in the yard, not surprising after the event at the cathedral. They shoved the Empress back when she tried to go to her daughter. Donnersmarck drew her to his side while his eyes searched for Jacob. He had heard him call the Fairy, Jacob saw it in his face. He’d made another enemy and this one hurt…
The Dark Fairy stood in the middle of the yard, her moths surrounding her like smoke. Some of them swarmed out toward the empty buildings. Their mistress wouldn’t allow Kami’en to walk into another ambush.
The Goyl had gathered around their King. Forty soldiers who had all narrowly escaped death and were now isolated in the heart of their enemies’ territory. What now? their faces asked. They struggled to hide their fear under their helpless rage. Kami’en waved one of them to his side. He had the moonstone skin of the Goyl’s spies. Kami’en didn’t show any sign of fear. If he was afraid, he managed to hide it better than his soldiers.
“What did you mean when you said you may know why we’re here?” Jacob whispered to Valiant, when the moonstone vanished between the factory buildings.
“Three years ago,” Valiant whispered back, “one of our most dim-witted ministers built two tunnels from Terpevas to Vena. The idiot didn’t believe there was a future in trains. One tunnel was supposed to bring supplies to this factory. There are rumors that the Goyl connected the tunnel with their western Fortress and that their spies like to use it.”
A tunnel. Back underground, Jacob. If the Goyl didn’t decide to escape without their hostages and just shoot them here. He bent down to the vixen. He had to convince her to run. She was the only one who might get away, but before he could talk to her, a Goyl pulled him roughly out of the crowd, jasper and amethyst. Nesser. Jacob thought he felt the scorpions again under his shirt. Fox bared her teeth and wanted to come to his aid, but Nesser drew her pistol. When Clara moved protectively in front of the vixen, the She-Goyl raised her hand to slap her, but something made her remember her orders and she aimed the pistol at Jacob.
“Get going!” she snapped, pushing him away from the others. “Hentzau’s more dead than alive! Why are you still breathing?”
>
She shoved him across the courtyard past Kami’en and his surviving officers. Will stood right next to the King. His shadow. Jacob lowered his head while he walked past him. Will didn’t remember his brother but he would certainly remember the man he had fought at the Empress’s palace. The Goyl did not have much time. By now the dead would have been discovered in the cathedral.
The Dark Fairy was waiting at the bottom of a steep flight of steps leading down to the river. To her left a landing pier reached out into the water. The refuse of the city covered it like a grimy skin, but the Fairy was looking at the shallow waves as if she could see the lilies among which she had been born.
“Leave me alone with him, Nesser,” she said.
The She-Goyl hesitated, but one frown from the Fairy and she headed for the stairs.
The Dark Fairy touched her arm. Her white skin was still spotted with a few remnants of bark. “You gambled everything, and you lost.”
“My brother is the one who lost.” How was she going to kill him? With her moths? With another curse?
She looked up at Will. He was still standing by Kami’en’s side. They reminded Jacob of the friends Will had loved as a child, often older, fiercely admired, always with a faithfulness that easily compared to the devotion it required to serve a King. Once upon a time Will had even treated his older brother like that. When he still remembered you, Jacob.
“Look at him. Your brother is everything I hoped for.” The Dark Fairy smiled. “All that Petrified Flesh sown just for him and it was all worth it.”
She brushed her finger over a streak of bark marking her white skin until it disappeared.
“I will give him back to you,” she said, “under one condition: that you take him away from here, far, far away. So far that I won’t be able to find him. For if I do, I will kill him.”
The Petrified Flesh Page 22