The Golden Yarn Read online

All those human helpers who had betrayed them—Guismond, Robespierre, Stone, Semmelweis…a long list. Only Dee had honestly tried to complete his mission. No, the one they were now placing all their hopes on would be under glass guard.

  Spieler stepped closer to the statue. He’d commissioned it from a famous sculptor three hundred years ago, to commemorate all those who hadn’t managed to escape. The artist had given impressive shape to the curse. As a model for the changing Alderelf, Spieler had given the artist a description of an old friend. Now every time he looked at the statue, he wondered whether he’d ever see him again. Him and all the others. There had been suggestions to divide the world among those who hadn’t been stupid enough to get caught. Krieger even wanted to chop down all the Silver-Alders instead of liberating those held prisoner inside. Spieler wasn’t sure what to think about such plans. More than eight hundred years of shared exile had not made the closest friends out of him and the twenty-three others. Maybe one day it would prove useful to have allies among those who’d underestimated the fury of the Fairies.

  One of the golems announced a visitor. Who was it this time? Letterman? Krieger? They couldn’t keep still now that they knew another hopeful was on his way. Their constant visits were going to raise suspicion and give away the island. Spieler had lived in many places in this world, but he’d liked none of them as much as North Brother Island. He had a weakness for the New World, maybe because he so clearly came from the old one. The others still arrived by carriage. Ridiculous. They’d never understood this world as the opportunity it was.

  Sometimes he dreamed he was the only one who’d managed to escape. An enticing fantasy.

  Her Mortal Play

  The Dark Fairy had heard many stories about the river she now saw meandering southward through the damp meadows. The Goyl called it Gleboki, the Deep River, because it was fed by some of their underground waterways. They feared it, as they did all water. Just a bit north of here, Kami’en had nearly drowned in this river.

  She was going to have to travel much farther to truly escape his name.

  The morning sun, as pale as a moon, shimmered on the water. The Dark One stood on the bank and listened to what the river had to tell her. It remembered everything its waters had seen—so much life in every drop, so many forgotten stories. The Fairy filled her heartless chest with the rush of them all, just so she wouldn’t have to feel the bitterness love had sown there.

  She slipped off the shoes she wore when she traveled their roads, and she waded into the cool waters until they soaked her dress with the light of the new day.

  The embrace was cold, but the water caressed her without demanding she forget herself in its arms. It recalled to her who she’d been before Kami’en. Do it like me, the river roared. Roll on and on, until the bond breaks. Yes. Maybe it would break without her having to pay the price.

  Chithira unhitched the horses. Before he let them go, he whispered the names he’d given them. They disappeared into the meadows as though the Fairy had made them of grass. The world was so still, so quiet in these lands. Just a lark was singing as though it alone had the task of singing the day into existence.

  As she waded back to the shore, she saw Donnersmarck standing next to the carriage. He still had no fear of looking her straight in the eye. Of course, he desired her, but that didn’t scare him. She liked that. And he didn’t have the wish to control her. He sprinkled ground deer horn on his food, and his arms were covered in cuts. He hid them under the coat he now wore instead of Amalie’s guard uniform, but the Fairy saw them. He inflicted pain on himself whenever the stag stirred, to remind his body of its human flesh. How could a soldier comprehend that sometimes surrender was better than resistance?

  “He is getting stronger. You promised to help.”

  The Fairy raised a hand, and Donnersmarck’s shadow became that of a stag. “You misunderstood. I can help you be both, but you have to stop fearing him.”

  She left him with the shadow he tried to flee. And she resisted the temptation to show herself the shadow she was running from.

  Her moths had spread their night-catching net between the only trees standing near the riverbank. They were young willows, reminders of when, thanks to her red sister, she herself had nearly been turned into one. That night she’d felt the cruelty of the punishment suffered by those who’d misused the Fairy lake’s water for their mirrors.

  Chithira had laid a pattern of blossoms on her pallet, a greeting from a faraway land she’d seen only in his eyes. Donnersmarck felt very uncomfortable in his presence. The soldier liked to separate life and death as carefully as man and beast. Sometimes Chithira amused himself by walking through Donnersmarck, as if by chance, to enjoy the confusion on his face when his mind and heart were suddenly flooded with memories of a royal childhood in Bengalian palaces. The Fairy had forbidden Chithira to do that, but princes, even dead ones, did not do well with orders.

  Outside, Chithira was talking to some Rusalkas. The Dark One could hear them laugh. It really did sound like tinkling water. Rusalkas were much less aggressive than the naiads who lived in the river next to the royal fortress of the Goyl. There was no place Kami’en loved more, and yet he hadn’t been there in months. Kami’en didn’t live for love alone. There was much that was more important—another thing she’d learned only very late.

  The Dark One kneeled on Chithira’s carpet of flowers and swiped away the moth that wanted to settle on her chest. The red wings betrayed the sender. Her sister had been sending her fluttering messengers for weeks. Fear. Her sisters were always afraid. A wilted leaf, a card floating in their lake, the crossbow of a dead King…as though she hadn’t seen all those as well. “Come to us. You’ll only be safe on our island. You’re putting us all in danger!” Maybe. But she wasn’t going to hide. She wanted to be free. Kami’en had nearly made her forget that, but she wasn’t going to forget again.

  The Fairy crushed the moth, and her sisters’ cries and clamors stuck to her fingers. “You’ll only be safe on our island.” Safe from what? Not from the pain of betrayed love. Was she supposed to sit with her sister under the willows, pitying herself, or maybe send death to Kami’en, as the Red One would have done with an unfaithful lover?

  Outside, a Rusalka laughed again. But then she heard some less peaceful sounds through the moth’s net: hooves thumping on the damp grass, voices, louder than the lark that was still greeting the day.

  She stepped through the net, and for one absurd moment she expected to see Kami’en surrounded by his guards—even though she knew how he hated to sit on a horse. One of the many fears he hid so well. The strength of that hope made her feel ashamed, and yet, through that shame, she felt the old longing she’d tried to suppress since her flight.

  The riders approaching through the meadows were not Goyl. There were around fifty of them, all wearing the same colorful dress their ancestors had worn when they rode into battle. Cossacks. Hentzau liked to joke that the day he’d start being afraid of Cossacks was the day they realized that a uniform was more practical than their flapping wide pants. The Cossacks, in contrast to the Goyl, did not think much of modern times, though they were also warriors. The elected their leaders, did not tolerate women in their ranks, kept their chins clean-shaved to distinguish themselves from their hairy enemies in Varangia, and preferred to be paid in horses rather than gold for the rich harvests of their fertile fields. Their leader’s gelding was probably worth more than that entire train Kami’en so liked to ride in. And the horse was definitely more beautiful. His rider sat as proudly as a young cockerel claiming the morning, the river, and the land the Fairy had so recklessly entered as his own.

  Reckless? No. He took her to be stupid, like all women. The discarded mistress of a King.

  Love had made her so small.

  His men stared at her with the usual mixture of fear and longing. Men liked to claim how different they were, yet they were all so alike.

  Riding next to the cockerel was one of the blind minstrel
s without whom no Cossack ever rode into battle. Their musical craft was reserved for the blind, as though the past they sang about could be seen only if one were blind to the present. Most traveled through the lands begging for their meals, but some had the fortune of falling in with a band of soldiers—if fortune is what you’d call it. Cossacks loved to have their feats praised in song, but the wrong verse could easily get the minstrel shot.

  The leader would, of course, not stoop so low as to address the Fairy himself. The man who spurred his horse to approach her was smart enough to fear her magic, though he was ashamed of that fear. His skull was bare except for the chupryna, the long lock of hair only experienced Cossack warriors were permitted to wear. This man’s story was known even at Amalie’s court: Demian Razin’s escape from the dungeons of the sultan of Turkmara, his courage under torture. Just a year ago, Razin had tried to buy weapons from the Goyl. Kami’en had sent him home with a polite refusal. The Goyl respected the Cossacks for their bravery, but they were not half as powerful as their eastern neighbors, the Tzar, the Wolf-Lords, or the Mongolian Hun Khans. Maybe the young cockerel saw an opportunity to change that with this early-morning visit.

  Razin nervously wiped his mustache before he swung himself out of the saddle. The Cossacks pampered their hairy lip ornaments with the same dedication Kami’en’s doll-wife spent on her golden hair.

  He did not dare look at her.

  Donnersmarck eyed him with open disdain, but the Fairy felt for the old warrior. There was nothing soldiers feared more than what they couldn’t fight with their weapons.

  “My lord, the most noble Prince Yemelyan Timofeyevich welcomes you to his father’s kingdom.”

  Ah, yes, she’d heard Kami’en’s generals mention that name. The Dark One used to regularly attend their briefings, as did Amalie—to the generals’ great discomfort.

  Razin waited for a reply. He stared at the grass in front of his feet, his hand on the hilt of his saber. The Cossacks shared the Goyl’s love for this weapon, but their saber had a double-edged tip. They called it a szabla. Kami’en owned a very nice specimen. How her mind kept finding excuses to think of him!

  “The most noble Yemelyan Timofeyevich...” Razin actually dared a quick glance. The desire flushed his face like a rash. Desire—and shame. “...conveys his father’s greetings and welcomes you to his kingdom.” His kingdom? As far as she knew, Yemelyan’s father was fighting a whole horde of lords for the throne. “Prince Yemelyan is offering you his protection. His warriors are yours. These woods and rivers are yours, every animal, every flower...”

  Donnersmarck shot her a quizzical look. Yes, let him talk to them. All that pride, the hunger for power, the unending urge to fight one another, and their unquenchable thirst for conquest. Mortals. She was so sick of them.

  “In exchange for what?” Donnersmarck’s voice was so cool it made not only the messenger frown but also the prince himself.

  The Cossacks were better riders than the Goyl, but their bravery made them careless. Donnersmarck had been a soldier long enough to know that. Kami’en was going to have no problem with them, should he ever decide to fight them. The Cossacks would, of course, never surrender, but instead would fight him from their dark woods, from the fog that perpetually hung between their mountains. They all feared death. Why were humans constantly seeking it?

  The prince was growing tired of letting the old warrior speak for him. He spurred his gelding forward and stopped it only a few feet from her.

  “We have come to escort you to my father’s castle.” He spoke in the language of the Goyl. The East had always found it easier to coexist with their stone-skinned neighbors. Kami’en had told her about the old Goyl cities, underground fortresses of amber, malachite, and jade that lay even farther east and had been depopulated by disease. He had promised to take her there.

  “We have come to escort you to my father’s castle.”

  What had become of her that the spawn of some local strongman dared to speak to her like that? His glance was even more insulting than his words. He eyed her like one of his father’s concubines. “Look at the Dark Fairy. She’ll do anything for the man she loves. And now that her lover has discarded her, she must be looking for a new one.” Yes. That’s what they were thinking. She had turned herself into an accessory, had misused her magic to fulfill the wishes of mortals. So small. And the fault was all hers.

  “What a generous offer.” She answered the prince in his own tongue.

  The young fool smiled. He missed her sarcasm as he missed her rage. The old warrior was less blind. Razin drove his horse to his master’s side, but he wasn’t going to protect him. The Fairy easily read the young prince’s ambitious thoughts: Why should he stop at Ukraina’s throne? With a Fairy by his side, he’d be as powerful as the Goyl King. No, even more powerful. Because he wasn’t going to be so stupid as to let her go.

  The Fairy looked around. The magic of this land was as green and golden as its wheat fields, but it wasn’t strong enough to break her bond with Kami’en. There was only one who could do that, and there was a long way to travel.

  “Ride home!” she said to the fool. “While I still let you.”

  She was tired of their words. All the noise. Their mortal limitations. Flies dressed up in satin, dreaming of power and eternity.

  So tired.

  Of course, the young cockerel’s reply was to reach for his saber. He was scared she might give to the Tzar or the Wolf-Lords what she had denied him. As though that could be any more dangerous than trying to stand in her way. But all he saw was a woman with only two men to protect her, one of whom was as pale as death and unarmed.

  “You will come, or you will turn around.”

  Razin drew his saber hesitantly, as though he knew he was sealing his fate. The other Cossacks followed his example.

  The Fairy felt her fury rise. Night had returned.

  She knew this was not about the riders in front of her. All the pain of the past months, the jealousy, the loneliness, the betrayal...It made her fury darker than anything she’d ever felt before.

  The rain she summoned turned into diamonds as it fell from the clouds. The gems pierced their skins, shaved the desire off their faces, and were red from their blood by the time they hit the ground.

  She spared the horses as well as the old warrior and the minstrel. Let the blind man someday sing about how those fared who thought they could command her. Then she let the river wash away the dead.

  Donnersmarck watched in silence as the water turned red, washing away her fury until she felt nothing but emptiness.

  What had become of her?

  “They will hunt you,” said Donnersmarck.

  “I’m sure you’ve seen worse,” she replied.

  “Yes, but when we mortals do it to each other, we find it easier to forgive.”

  Chithira stood in the water, watching the bodies float past. It was so strange that they had died. Aging and dying. The Dark One had promised Kami’en to never let him die. She wondered if he thought that promise still stood. He was not afraid of death, or if he was, he didn’t show it.

  Chithira picked black blossoms from the water and carried them ashore.

  “I gave you the wrong name, Devi,” he said, scattering the flowers around her feet.

  “What is the right one?”

  “Kali.”

  The Fairy knew nothing of his gods, as little as of Kami’en’s, but she’d liked the old name better. She looked at the black petals. Was that all she could sow? Flowers of death? Darkness?

  She brushed her fingers through her hair until dozens of her moths swarmed around her. From now on she’d travel unseen, invisible to human eyes and to her sisters, or else she risked choking on her own darkness. She whispered words to the moths, which they would weave into the gossip of the markets, onto the tongues of coachmen and soldiers. Words that would be believed as truth, because they spoke to the fears of the East and the wants of the West.

  Like Old T
imes

  Jacob’s flesh was melting, and every breath was as hard as a new skill to be learned. Fire. He was aflame. But it felt good, as though the flames were melting the silver in his veins. If only they weren’t so hot.

  The silver was also in his eyes again. But he could still recognize the face that was staring at him. For many years, it had been the first face he saw every morning.

  “There you go!” Chanute’s voice was hoarse with relief.

  The liquid he poured into Jacob’s mouth tasted salty, but at least it wasn’t liquor, which he used to force on him in the past.

  And another face drifted into his silvery field of vision.

  “Voilà! Salut!” said Sylvain.

  Jacob tried to sit up, but Chanute pressed a hand on his chest. “Stay down! There’s still enough silver in you to make a dozen candlesticks.”

  Seventeen.

  Jacob turned his head. Fox’s hair shimmered faint red, but it was still silver.

  He pushed Chanute’s hand away. His body was as heavy as if every limb were made of silver, but he managed to get to his knees and crawl to Fox’s side. Her face felt like warm silver picked up from a fireside.

  “She got it worse than you.” Chanute threw a few branches into the fire. It burned very high and made the night air smell sharply of singed leaves.

  “You have to thank the old Witch for making us go after you. She found a silver Heinzel up by the ruin and thought something must’ve come out of the tower. She got the recipe for this concoction from a Silver-Alder, but she said we’d best not try it.”

  “When did you find us?”

  “Two days ago.”

  Two days. Will could be anywhere by now. Seventeen had done his work. But what did it matter? The firelight flickered on Fox’s frozen face as on a mirror. Her hair was curled as though shaped by a silversmith. Jacob put a finger to her lips. She was still breathing, but barely.

  “Why did Alma’s recipe not work on her?”