Living Shadows Page 15

  She spun around as he sat up, and hid her hand behind her back.

  “What do you have there?”

  She didn’t answer. “The moth on your chest has three spots,” she said. “When was the other time?”

  “In Saint-Riquet.” Jacob had never seen her face look so pale. He sat up. “What is that in your hand?”

  She flinched.

  “What’s that in your hand, Fox?” His knees were still weak from the pain, but Jacob grabbed her arm and pulled the hand out from behind her back.

  She opened her fingers.

  A glass ring.

  Jacob had seen a similar one in the Empress’s Chambers of Miracles.

  “You didn’t put that on my finger, did you? Fox!” He grabbed her shoulders. “Tell me the truth. This ring was not on my finger. Please!”

  Tears ran down her face. But then she shook her head. Jacob took the ring before she could close her hand. She reached for it, but Jacob put it in his pocket. Then he pulled her close. She sobbed like a child, and he held her as firmly as he could.

  “Promise me!” he whispered. “Promise me you’ll never try something like that again. Promise!”

  “No!” she replied.

  “What? Do you think I want you dead instead of me?”

  “I just wanted to give you time.”

  “These rings are dangerous. Every second you put it on my finger will lose you a year. And sometimes they can’t be pulled off before they haven’t taken your entire life.”

  She struggled free and wiped the tears off her face.

  “I want you to live.” She whispered the words, as though she feared death might hear them and take them as a challenge.

  “Good. Then let’s find the heart before the Goyl does. I’m sure I can ride. Who knows when they’ll get that coach repaired.”

  “There are no horses.” Fox went to the window. “The landlord sold his only riding horses the day before yesterday, to four men. He boasted to Troisclerq that one of them was Louis of Lotharaine. He had a Goyl with him, with a green-speckled skin. They only stopped briefly and rode on that same afternoon.”

  The day before yesterday. It’s even more hopeless than you thought.

  Fox pushed open the window, as if letting out the fear. The air that came rushing in was as cold and damp as snow. There was laughter from downstairs, and Jacob recognized the loud voice of the lawyer who’d sat next to him in the coach.

  Louis of Lotharaine. The Bastard was hunting the crossbow for Crookback.

  Fox turned around. “Troisclerq heard me ask about horses because we had to push on urgently. He bribed the landlord to send his workmen to the coach. I told him we’ll pay him back, but he won’t hear of it.”

  They would pay him back. Jacob pulled the handkerchief from his pocket. He was already too deep in Troisclerq’s debt.

  “I tried that,” said Fox.

  She was right. No matter how hard Jacob rubbed the fabric, the only thing the tattered handkerchief produced was the card on which were still the same words. FORGET THE HAND, JACOB. It had been good advice.

  “We could ask Chanute to send some money,” Fox suggested. “You still have some in the bank in Schwanstein, right?”

  Yes, he did. But it wasn’t much. Jacob took her hand.

  “You’ll get the ring back once all this is over,” he said. “But you have to promise me you’ll never use it.”

  TOO MANY COOKS

  The best! No, Nerron couldn’t remember ever having felt that good. He’d taken Jacob Reckless’s loot and had humiliated him like a rookie.

  Not even the princeling could spoil his mood, even though Louis told everyone Nerron had let an Albian spy get away, and that after he, Louis, had brought him an impeccable virgin. A whole day long the prince refused to set off to Vena, and even now he kept sneaking off with every girl that let herself be dazzled by his diamond buttons. The Waterman spent his nights searching the barns and farmhouses for him. Eaumbre had begun to eye his royal charge with such distaste, Nerron wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d found Louis drowned in a trough one morning. Of course, none of that was mentioned in the journal in which Lelou kept scribbling tirelessly. Instead, it noted every castle they passed, every icy road, and every Mountain Gnome that threw a stone at them. Nerron checked the tutor’s writings every night (luckily, the Bug wrote very legibly) and regularly fell asleep over them.

  Yes, it was all going splendidly. Despite Louis. Despite Lelou. Despite Eaumbre’s fish stench. They’d soon be in Vena, he’d find the heart, take the hand off Louis, and then toast to the memory of Jacob Reckless.

  They were spending the night in a roadside inn in Bavaria—Vena was just a day’s travel away—when it dawned on Nerron that the final leg of his hunt was probably not going to be quite as smooth.

  He woke up to the feeling of cold steel on his neck. Louis was standing over him, an elven-dusted look in his eyes, holding his saber to the Goyl’s throat.

  “You lied to me, Goyl,” he growled. He was holding a swindlesack, which Nerron, even though he’d drunk a lot of that spiced hot wine they served in Bavarian inns, immediately recognized as the one he’d taken off Reckless. Nerron needed just one glimpse of Lelou’s bug face peering out from behind Louis’s elbow to understand who’d put the princeling on the trail of the sack.

  “It’s the head!” Lelou observed accusingly. “It gave me a jolt. And it screams.”

  “It probably put a curse on you,” Nerron said, pushing Louis’s saber away.

  Lelou grew a little pale around his pointy nose, but Louis leaned even lower over Nerron’s bed. “You tried to trick me, Goyl. How long have you had the head?”

  “He wanted to show it to you.” The Waterman was a dark outline in the open door. “The Goyl asked me where he might find you, but you weren’t in your bed.”

  That was probably the worst lie Nerron had ever heard, but the Waterman’s whisper made it sound like a weighty truth.

  “I work for your father,” Nerron said, pulling the sack from Louis’s fingers. “Or have you forgotten that? I am just following his instructions. The head stays with me, unless you let me teach you how to shield yourself from its curses.”

  Lelou was still hiding behind Louis’s back.

  Just you wait, Bug Man. From now on, I’ll be sending every Mountain Gnome we meet your way.

  Louis stroked the blade of his saber, probably picturing how it might cut through Goyl skin. “Fine. You keep the head. For now.”

  Eaumbre was still standing in the door.

  Lelou might have suspected that Nerron was lying. But the Waterman knew it.

  Nerron went to Eaumbre’s room as soon as he heard the Bug’s cricketlike snores from his room, and a girl’s giggles from behind Louis’s door.

  Eaumbre was lying on his bed, pouring a bowl of water on his scaly chest.

  “What’s your price?” Nerron asked.

  “We’ll see,” the Waterman whispered.

  THE HEART IN THE EAST

  It took them fifteen days, despite Troisclerq’s silver, and every one of those days only convinced Jacob more that the Bastard had already found the heart.

  After his collapse, the other travelers had been reluctant to get into the coach with Jacob. (The pox was going around in Bavaria and Austry.) But Troisclerq made a point of sitting next to him. Yes, Jacob was beginning to like him. Troisclerq knew as much about horses as about the newest Goyl weaponry, and he didn’t mind discussing for hours whether Albian or Catalunian blades were better. They shared a passion for fencing, though Troisclerq preferred the rapier over Jacob’s saber. The other passengers probably cursed them for their endless discussions, their hour-long arguments over whether the dirtiest feint was the in quarto or the sparita di vita.

  Outside, dark valleys drifted past, lakes reflecting castles on the snowy peaks above. In one of those castles, Jacob had found the Glass Slipper that had earned him a medal from the Empress. At some point they caught a glimpse of t
he forest where he’d stolen a pair of Seven Miles Boots from a gang of highwaymen for one of the Wolf Lords in the east. This couldn’t all be over, not yet. However, thanks to him, the Empress was now spending her days in an underground fortress, and that forest had shrunk to half its original size since its timber had begun to be used to smelt steel in the valley beyond. And the Goyl ruled in Vena. Nothing lasted forever, even behind the mirror.

  The two governesses were blushing over one of Troisclerq’s jokes. Jacob looked out the window to distract himself from the fact that Fox had also begun to regard his savior with increasing affection. To their left, the Duna was flowing languidly through flooded meadows, and the towers of Vena appeared on the horizon.

  “Jacob?” Troisclerq put a hand on his knee. “Celeste asked me where Louis of Lotharaine usually stays when he comes to Vena.”

  Celeste. It was odd to hear her real name from the mouth of a stranger. Jacob had only learned it himself a few months earlier.

  “I imagine Louis will be staying with his cousin,” Troisclerq continued. “I know him quite well. If you like, I could arrange for him to receive you.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  Celeste...

  The coachman reined in the horses. The road was flooded. The snowmelt in the mountains had caused the rivers to swell over their banks. In this world, rivers still picked their own beds, and every year entire villages disappeared into the floods. Yet Jacob loved the reed-lined riverbanks and the wooded islands mirrored in slow-flowing water. The rivers here were not only home to Naiads and Mud-Gnomes; they also contained treasure and had turned more than one poor fisher into a wealthy man.

  Celeste...

  The coachman crossed the river over the same bridge the Goyl had used to leave the city after the Blood Wedding. Vena had subsequently surrendered to them without a fight, after the Empress’s daughter had announced that her mother had been responsible for the bloodbath in the church. The Goyl were no crueler than other occupying forces, yet as the coach passed gray uniforms and houses with bricked-up windows, Jacob had an eerie feeling, wondering whether this ever would have happened without him.

  The coaches still stopped behind the train station, though the noise of the arriving trains made the horses shy. Maybe the coach operators didn’t want to cede the future to the iron carriages without a fight, but they had already lost. Next to the train station, the Goyl had opened an access to the catacombs, which they now used as living quarters. As the other passengers stared at the soldiers who guarded that entrance, they could barely conceal the disgust the stone faces still elicited in most humans. Kami’en’s marriage had done nothing to temper that.

  The station walls were papered with dozens of wanted posters. There were anarchist groups in Vena who had called for resistance to the new Empress, for attacks on her ministers, on military and police barracks, or on the living quarters of the Goyl. Fox anxiously scanned the placards, but Jacob saw neither his nor Will’s face on any of them. Whatever it was the Dark Fairy had told her lover, Kami’en was not searching for the Jade Goyl. And once you’re dead, Jacob, nobody will ever know where he disappeared to. Maybe that was exactly the ending the Dark Fairy was hoping for.

  A few cabs waited beneath the trees on the other side of the station concourse.

  “You go look for the heart!” Fox whispered as Jacob flagged one of them. “I’ll get Troisclerq to show me where Louis’s cousin lives, and I’ll find out whether the Bastard’s there.”

  He didn’t like that plan at all. The Goyl was dangerous, but Fox put her finger on Jacob’s mouth as he tried to protest. “Let’s not lose any more time,” she whispered. “Please. I’ll make sure he doesn’t see me.”

  Behind them Troisclerq was bidding farewell to the other passengers. Fox looked at him. Jacob tried to ignore the sting that look gave him.

  “Good. You take the cab. I’ll walk.” Fifteen days on a coach bench was more than enough. “We meet at the hotel.”

  It had sounded colder than he wanted. Jacob, what are you doing? Fox’s eyes were asking the same question.

  Troisclerq bought a bunch of daffodils from one of the flower girls in front of the station. He plucked one of the flowers and pinned it to Fox’s dress.

  “Are you all right?” He put his arm around Jacob’s shoulder. “I know a good doctor here in Vena. Maybe you should have yourself looked at.”

  “No. I’m fine.” Jacob waved the cab closer.

  “You will find the heart!” Fox whispered to him. “I know it.”

  ***

  Troisclerq opened the cab door.

  Fox gathered up her dress and looked at Jacob. “Will you telegraph Chanute about the money?”

  “Sure.”

  She gave him a smile and climbed into the cab.

  Troisclerq was looking at two passing women. They returned his glance. One of them blushed.

  “There are so many beautiful women,” Troisclerq murmured to Jacob, “but some are more than that. So much more.” He went to the cab and threw his bag toward the driver. “I have to journey on today,” he said to Jacob, “but I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

  He joined Fox in the cab.

  Celeste...Jacob liked calling her Fox.

  He watched the cab until it disappeared behind a tram. ‘You will find the heart.’ He looked around. Where to first, Jacob? To the state archives, where all of Austry’s treasures were cataloged? To the mausoleum where Guismond’s daughter rested among her imperial descendants? He tried to summon the rage he’d felt in the forest, the urge to get even with the Bastard...but he felt nothing. As though the moth was actually eating his heart.

  DIFFERENT METHODS

  Strange, how humans liked to do their forbidden deeds in cellars. As though crawling underground was enough to remain undetected. A Goyl always would have chosen the light of day.

  The man, whose name Nerron had been given by an undertaker, plied his illegal business beneath a well-established butcher shop. The smells wafting through the door above were the perfect disguise for the kinds of goods he traded beneath.

  The basement stairs that led down to his place of business were unlit. They ended in front of a door with an enameled sign: BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. The man who opened to Nerron’s knock was the same undertaker who’d given him the address. He was as bald as an Amber-Gnome, and he was hiding a knife under his black frock coat. He waved Nerron into a room that was so dark that only a Goyl could immediately see what was sold there. Jars with eyes, teeth, claws of any kind; cabinets filled with hands, paws, hooves, ears, noses, and skulls of any shape and size; potent ingredients for giving your neighbor a headache, or your philandering husband a pair of goat-hooves. Harm-spells. That’s what this forbidden craft was called. The Witches dismissed it as human superstition, but even the Empress’s daughter liked to have eyes or teeth placed under her enemies’ beds to harm their health. Nerron, of course, noticed that this particular pharmacy also offered a considerable range of Goyl limbs, which when ground into a powder were supposed to cause paralysis.

  The man who traded in all this looked as though he himself had become a victim of his craft. The yellow skin was stretched over his bones as if it had been worn by someone else before. He was wearing a white coat, like all the apothecaries who’d switched from the healing to the hurting kind of medicine because of its larger profits, and because the clients could hardly come and complain if the sinister remedies failed to work.

  “The undertaker told you what I’m looking for?”

  “He did indeed.” The surprisingly full mouth stretched into an obliging smile. “It’s about a heart. A very special heart. Very expensive merchandise.”

  Nerron emptied a purse of red moonstone onto the spotless white counter. The smile grew even wider.

  “That might be enough. It was quite a challenge to find the merchandise. But I have my sources.”

  The apothecary turned around and opened one of the enameled drawers behind him. It contained hearts of
every size and shape; some were as small as hazelnuts, and the biggest one looked like the well-preserved heart of a Giant.

  “You won’t find a finer collection in all of Vena.” Another smile, proud, like that of a florist praising his roses. “The spell that keeps my merchandise fresh is quite complicated and not without hazards, but that’s, of course, not necessary for this heart. This, after all, is the heart of a Warlock. And I probably don’t have to explain what that means.”

  He reached for a silver case next to the Giant heart. The heart the case contained was no bigger than a fig and had the consistency of black opal. Guismond’s heraldic animal was etched into the smooth surface: the crowned wolf.

  “As you can see, it’s in pristine condition. It was, after all, in the possession of the imperial family these past centuries.”

  The undertaker first, Nerron.

  Nerron spun around and smashed the man’s head into the wall before the dolt even realized what was happening.

  “How stupid does one have to be to try and sell a fake stone to a Goyl?” he hissed at the apothecary. “Do you think we’re as ignorant as you people and can’t tell an opal from a petrified heart? One stone’s like any other, right? What do you think my skin’s made of? Jasper?”

  He swiped the case off the counter. Disappointing. Very disappointing. Your own fault, Nerron. You’re trying to find the heart of a king, and here you are, searching in the gutters. Reckless never would’ve been so stupid.

  He pointed his pistol at the trembling apothecary and nodded toward the glass jar by the register. Floating among the human and Dwarf eyes were also two Goyl eyeballs.

  “Try the golden ones,” Nerron said as he poured the moonstone back into the purse. “I’m sure they taste better. And who knows, maybe you’ll end up seeing my kind with fresh eyes.” The idea came to him as the apothecary was forcing down the first eye. It was a dirty idea, but he’d been looking for the heart for more than a week now, and patience had never been his strong suit. Nerron grabbed the pale shaking hand before it went into the eye jar again. “You can skip the second one. Do you have a Witch tongue? But no fake this time!”