Fearless Read online

  He had to feed an extra helping of lapis lazuli to the spider before she began her dance.

  No carriages . . . damn . . . roadblocks . . . flowers everywhere . . .

  Nerron felt a smile sneak on to his face. Yes, Reckless really was alive. The spider kept dancing. Cabby! What? No. To the spiny gate . . .

  He’d be damned. Maybe the Witch’s tongue wasn’t going to be needed after all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  DISAPPEARED

  The gate to the jewellers’ quarter only truly earned its name by night. Jacob’s flesh had already felt the spikes the gate grew in the dark, but now it was midday and so the iron wings stood wide open.

  The jewellers’ quarter was one of the oldest parts of Vena. Its alleys were too narrow even for the lightest cabs, and its back yards still contained clusters of tiny houses from the days when jewellers used to employ Elves and when Heinzel were regarded as good-luck charms.

  Hippolyte Ramée had driven his Heinzel away years ago after he’d caught them stealing. But he still worked with Elves. He hid them in his back room so he wouldn’t be thought of as old-fashioned, yet the silvery dust they spread when they flew immediately settled on Jacob’s coat as he opened the door.

  The jewellery Ramée crafted was famous beyond Vena. The jeweller originally came from Lotharaine, where he’d trained under the infamous goldsmith of Pont-de-Pile. There were many stories, each more gruesome than the last, about how Hippolyte had lost both his feet in the goldsmith’s service. Ramée maintained his silence about it. Jacob had actually seen the golden feet Ramée had wrought to escape his master. On this morning, however, they were tucked inside buttoned boots.

  For the past Thirty years, Hippolyte Ramée had been the official goldsmith to the imperial family of Austry, and as far as Jacob was aware, the Goyl had not changed that. The many years of setting tiny stones in gold and silver had not been kind to Ramée’s eyes. The lenses on his spectacles were so thick they made his rheumy eyes look as big as a child’s.

  ‘Do you have an appointment? If not, you may leave immediately.’ Ramée’s temper was as famous as his jewellery. He was known to have thrown even emissaries from the Empress out of his shop. Yet the beauty of the pieces that were on display in glass cabinets all around the shop made most aristocratic treasure chambers look shabby in comparison. Necklaces, bracelets, tiaras and brooches; rubies, emeralds, topaz and amber, wrought so delicately in gold and silver that it looked as though they had simply grown from the fingertips of the old man behind the simple wooden table.

  ‘It’s me, Hippolyte.’

  Ramée lifted his head and put down the palm-sized magnifying glass through which he’d been inspecting a diamond the size of a pea. The suspicion on his face disappeared only after Jacob went to stand right in front of him.

  ‘Jacob, of course,’ he observed. His mottled hand closed around the diamond. Ramée always expected to be robbed. The Empress was the only person he’d ever exempted from his suspicion. ‘Are you in need of another brooch to impress some imperial maid?’

  ‘No.’ Jacob glanced at a tiara that looked like a web of silver woven around blossoms of carnelian. Ramée had adapted his craft to the new masters of Vena. ‘I presume you’re still in charge of maintaining the imperial jewels?’

  Ramée adjusted his glasses. ‘Of course. Say what you will about the Goyl, but they do recognise a man who knows his stones.’

  Jacob suppressed a smile. Hippolyte was a vain old man.

  ‘A shame they don’t like gold,’ Ramée added. ‘It means I have to work more with silver, but their King only recently ordered a few very tasteful pieces. The bracelet, he . . .’

  ‘Hippolyte!’ Ramée could ramble on for hours about the cut of a stone or the value of flawless elven glass, but Jacob was done wasting time he didn’t have. Yet the old man carried on, in the heavy Lotharainian accent he’d never lost through all the decades of exile. He was obviously not only half blind but also quite deaf by now.

  ‘Hippolyte! Could you listen to me for a moment?’

  Ramée abruptly fell silent, as though he’d swallowed one of his diamonds. ‘What?’ he barked at Jacob. ‘I’m three times as old as you. What’s the rush?’

  ‘We never know when death might claim us, right?’ Jacob flicked a spider off his sleeve. Her body was blue, like the amethyst rings Ramée was so famous for.

  The old man swatted at the spider as she dropped between his fingers.

  ‘Spiders, mice, cockroaches!’ he muttered, wiping the spider off the table. ‘The cats can’t keep up with them! I might have to get some of those thieving Heinzel back after all.’

  Another favourite subject. Heinzel.

  ‘Hippolyte, can you tell me something about a piece of jewellery? I saw it in a portrait at the history museum. The stone is black, slightly larger than a grape, set in a mesh of golden tendrils.’

  Ramée stared at him aghast. Then he dropped his head, and his shaky hands began to sort the tools on the table in front of him. When he lifted his head again, the eyes behind the thick glasses were swimming with tears.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ he panted at Jacob. ‘Is that some kind of cruel joke? I confessed everything to the Empress back then.’

  He stood up so abruptly that the diamond he’d been working on was knocked off the table. ‘Did Amalie send you? Sure! What can you expect from a princess who gets herself knocked up by a Goyl!’

  Ramée pressed his hand over his mouth as though he could stuff the words back inside. He shot a quick glance at the window, but the only one outside was a Dwarf standing in front of the shop window opposite.

  What was the old man talking about? Jacob picked up the diamond and put it back on the table. It glistened like a frozen tear.

  ‘Nobody sent me,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for this piece myself. I just wanted to ask you whether you could get me a look at it.’

  Ramée took off his glasses and agitatedly wiped the lenses with his sleeve. ‘Forget it!’ The words burst out of him. ‘The stone is lost. Just like Marie.’

  Jacob took the glasses from his hands. He polished the lenses and handed them back to the old man. ‘Marie?’

  Ramée’s hands were trembling as he took the glasses. He pointed at a photograph on the wall next to the door. A black ribbon was tied to the frame. The picture showed a young girl, maybe eighteen years old. Jacob went to the picture. Past reality, frozen by light, acid and silver. Behind the mirror you were still reminded what a miracle a photograph really was. The girl Jacob was looking at had hair so dark that it nearly melted into the sepia brown background. She looked a little stiff – after all, one had to sit still for a long time for a portrait like that – but her eyes were saying, Look at me. Am I not beautiful?

  ‘It was her first ball.’ Ramée stood by Jacob’s side. Only the heaviness of his steps hinted at the golden feet. ‘I’d just received the necklace, together with a few other pieces from the palace. I still don’t know what kind of stone it was. It had a strange consistency. But it looked so beautiful on Marie’s white skin. ‘Like a piece of night caught in gold, Grandpapa,’ is what she said. Who can refuse his own granddaughter? And it was only for the ball. She never returned. Gone. Just gone. As if she never existed. Her mother grieves so much, she now barely leaves the house. She tells herself Marie ran off with one of the officers who like to hang around those balls. She probably knows that the truth is far more unbearable.’

  Ramée pulled back his sleeve. He was wearing a golden bracelet. The fine links looked tarnished, black. ‘You’ve heard about bracelets like this?’

  Jacob nodded. Not many goldsmiths knew how to make them. You added a drop of blood to the gold. If the one whose blood it was, was well, the metal stayed bright; if it turned red, the person was in grave danger. And black could mean only one thing.

  ‘Dead.’ Ramée stared at the photo. ‘These photographs are a disconcerting invention, are they not? One always looks like a ghost in them. Bu
t at least I have her picture.’ He pulled his sleeve back over the black bracelet. ‘On that last day, when Marie came here, she had a flower pinned to her dress, and she was gushing over some stranger who was as beautiful as a prince. And of course he was clean-shaven. I don’t have to tell you why she never came back.’

  No, he didn’t.

  A flower on her dress. Jacob felt his heartbeat quicken. Have you gone blind, Jacob?

  ‘Bluebeards.’ Ramée rubbed his rheumy eyes. ‘You think they only exist in fairy tales, until one of them gets your granddaughter. Should you ever find the necklace you’re looking for, shoot the one who has it, and then go and see whether there’s a dead girl in his red chamber, with a ruby brooch. I made it for Marie’s sixteenth birthday.’

  His red chamber. Jacob had seen such a chamber once. A memory he’d rather have forgotten.

  How long since Fox had left with him? Three hours?

  Ramée shouted something after him, but all Jacob heard was the blood rushing in his ears. Troisclerq had pinned the flower on her right in front of his eyes! They soaked them in forgetyourself oil.

  He stumbled out into the alley. Damned fool. Had he forgotten everything Chanute had taught him?

  Move, Jacob.

  But he didn’t get far. An arm came around his neck from behind, and someone dragged him through the next alleyway into one of the dark back yards that dotted the jewellers’ quarter.

  ‘And? Are you enjoying Vena under your new friends?’ Donnersmarck was no longer wearing imperial white but the grey uniform of the Goyl. The last time Jacob had seen him, he’d been a prisoner. Now his old friend was the personal aide to the new Empress. She obviously didn’t hold his service to her mother against him.

  Donnersmarck had been drinking. Not a lot, but enough to lose control. He hit Jacob in the face so hard that he tasted blood on his tongue. Jacob responded by ramming his knee into Donnersmarck’s stomach. Jacob struggled free, but again he didn’t get far. Blocking the alleyway was Auberon, the former Empress’s favourite Dwarf. He aimed a pistol at Jacob’s head. Auberon loved to show off his marksmanship by shooting people through the forehead. The Empress’s Dwarfs were all excellent shots, but Amalie preferred to be guarded by her husband’s men, and so her mother’s former bodyguards now protected jewellers, bankers and rich manufacturers.

  Jacob raised his hands.

  ‘Let me go, Leo!’ He was going to be too late.

  Donnersmarck pushed him against the nearest wall. ‘You’re not going anywhere. I made a promise to the Empress, in that filthy hole the Goyl have locked her in: I will find Jacob Reckless, and he will pay for what happened in the cathedral.’

  ‘Why don’t we shoot him right here?’

  Jacob remembered Auberon’s swollen face as he’d stumbled out of the cathedral. Yes, the Dwarf would probably love to pull the trigger, but Donnersmarck ignored him.

  ‘For months I’ve had the train station and the coach stations watched for you.’

  ‘Really? Yes, I can see you’re still a powerful man. Congratulations on the Goyl uniform. It suits you!’

  Jacob knew Donnersmarck would hit him for that remark, and that he was drunk enough to lose his footing. Before Donnersmarck could regain his balance, Jacob already had his pistol to the man’s head. Auberon proved once more that nobody was as inventive at swearing as the Dwarfs. He tried to get a clean shot, but Donnersmarck was very tall and provided excellent cover.

  ‘It was about my brother!’ Jacob hissed into his ear. ‘What would you have done? You put on their uniform so you wouldn’t have to end up in a dungeon like your former Empress. So drop the self-righteousness and tell me what you know about a Bluebeard who’s been hunting in these parts.’

  He could feel Donnersmarck take a deep breath.

  Bluebeard. They’d hunted one together. Years before.

  ‘Tell me. You’re Amalie’s watchdog. You know the answer.’

  ‘That’s a filthy trick!’ Donnersmarck’s voice had turned hoarse, roughened by ghosts only he and Jacob had seen.

  ‘Spit it out!’ Jacob let go of Donnersmarck so his old friend saw the fear in his face. ‘Is there a Bluebeard in Vena?’ Donnersmarck stared at him. Show him your fear, Jacob, even though you’re usually better at hiding it.

  ‘Yes.’ Donnersmarck spoke haltingly. ‘He took the first girl ten years ago. There have been four so far. He’s supposedly from Lotharaine, but he prefers hunting here. You know what they’re like – never in their own back yard. Why are you looking for him?’

  ‘He’s got Fox.’ Jacob pushed past him. Always the same image: Troisclerq’s hand pinning the flower on her dress. Why did he do it in Jacob’s presence? So he’d be haunted by it every night? He had fallen for Troisclerq’s charms, just like the women he killed. But Fox only went with him because of you, Jacob. You handed her to him like a gift.

  ‘Where in Lotharaine?’

  ‘It’s all just rumours.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘That he lives somewhere near Champlitte.’

  Champlitte. Troisclerq hadn’t even tried to lie. What if I take what’s dear to your heart, Jacob? Will you come to get it back?

  He shoved the Dwarf out of the way and stepped into the alley. Donnersmarck quickly caught up with him, despite the limp he had from fighting his Empress’s wars.

  ‘Where did you see her last?’

  ‘At the train station.’

  He had to find the cab driver . . .

  None of the moth’s bites had made his heart beat as fast. Reason drowned in fear. He’d never known he could be that scared.

  You will find her. And she’ll be alive.

  If only he could believe himself. He just knew one thing: he was going to kill Troisclerq.

  He’d kill him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  FLOWERS

  Wilted flowers, in a cab and on a station platform. No. Troisclerq wasn’t even trying to cover his tracks. Donnersmarck was by Jacob’s side as he picked up the flowers from the platform. Bluebeard. The one word had turned Donnersmarck’s hostility into the unquestioning support Jacob had always been able to count on until the Blood Wedding.

  It was three years since the Empress had asked Jacob to find a Bluebeard who’d taken one of her maids. Donnersmarck had requested to be his military aide. The maid was his sister. They’d found her in an abandoned castle, together with seven other girls, all dead. The killer had already left. They had searched for him for months, but then he’d lured them into a trap from which they’d barely managed to escape alive. After that his trail had gone cold, and he died, years later, peacefully in his bed – having killed six more girls.

  Bluebeards always went on the hunt clean-shaven so the blue facial hair they were named after wouldn’t give them away. Supposedly, there had never been fewer than a dozen of them, but Chanute had always maintained there were hundreds. It was said they all shared one common ancestor, a man with black blood and a blue beard who’d found a way to live for ever by feeding off the fear of others. Bluebeards only killed their victims after they had milked all their fear. That was Jacob’s hope: Fox wouldn’t easily give Troisclerq what he craved.

  One of the station supervisors remembered a young red-haired woman who’d been so tired that her husband had to support her as they boarded the train. The effects of the flower . . .

  That train stopped in Champlitte. The next one wouldn’t leave before the following morning, but Jacob couldn’t wait. When he asked the cab driver to take them to the outskirts, where the air was thick with soot and destitution, Donnersmarck did not have to ask why. They needed fast horses, even faster than the ones in the Empress’s stable, and Donnersmarck knew as well as Jacob that such horses could only be found in the darkest corners of Vena. The farmers called them devil-horses because they ate raw meat and their breath was hot enough to scald you. They were caught in swamps and moors – pale white nags, their manes hanging like a tangle of roots around their necks. They w
ere twice as fast as normal horses, but they also ate unwary owners in their sleep.

  Jacob purchased two that even their Giantling handler could barely control. Donnersmarck hadn’t said much since their brawl, but they both knew the house of a Bluebeard should not be entered alone. Darkness was falling as they turned their backs on Vena and rode westwards together.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  AIR

  Air. They had disappeared into thin air. Both Reckless and the man Kami’en had put on him. Not even Hentzau knew where they were. And the spider had pulled her legs under her blue belly and refused to dance.

  And, Nerron, still glad the wolves didn’t get him?

  He returned to the palace of Louis’s cousin, his mood as dark as his skin. The building looked like one of the overwrought cakes sold in Vena’s bakeries. It had more rooms than Lelou had hairs on his head. But Louis was always easy enough to find. You just had to follow the giggles of his current favourite.

  There. The linen room. Louis left no room untouched. Nerron pressed his ear against the door.

  Time to move beyond civilised methods. He needed the hand. He needed the heart before Reckless could find it. And he needed to get rid of his companions. There was only one way to accomplish all of that. Three birds with one stone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Eaumbre’s whispers sounded even more damp than usual. Nerron turned around.

  The Waterman’s wet hair stuck to his angular head, as though he’d just climbed out of a pond. And he probably had. Nerron thought he could detect a slight scent of goldfish. Watermen dried out if they didn’t take a dip in a pond every now and then, the muddier the better. They also dried out if they were fed firemoths. Probably an interesting sight. Stop it, Nerron. Stay on good terms with him, He’s much more useful that way.

  Nerron pointed at the door to the linen room. ‘Your royal master is getting impatient. Crookback wants the crossbow, but how can I concentrate on the search while his son does nothing but try to seduce every girl in Vena?’