The Golden Yarn Read online

  “I’ve known about the mirror for a long time. Much longer than Jacob. He wasn’t the first I ever saw come out of that tower.”

  The revelation came as such a surprise to Fox that she let Wenzel’s soup go cold again. She’d never asked Jacob about the mirror. He didn’t like to talk about it, maybe because it had been his secret for so long.

  “I’m not talking about Jacob’s father,” Alma continued. “John lived in Schwanstein for a long time. I didn’t like him, which is why I never told Jacob about him. No. The first one came nearly half a century before him. Back then Vena was still ruled by some Ludwig or Maximilian—the one who fed his youngest daughter to a Dragon. The ruin was still the prettiest hunting castle in Austry. Half of Schwanstein was out chasing a Giant who’d abducted a baker, probably to give him to his children to play with. They liked to play with humans.”

  Alma strained the tea through a sieve, which also caught a couple of cat hairs. “Erich Semmelweis. I’ll never forget that name, because it reminded me of that abducted baker. Semmelweis is, as I later found out, also the maiden name of Jacob’s mother. The Semmelweis I met must’ve been one of Jacob’s ancestors. He was as pale as a grub, and he smelled like those alchemists over in Himmelpfortgrund who’re always trying to turn their hearts into gold. Semmelweis was a big success in Vena. For a while he even tutored the Emperor’s son.”

  Alma turned to Fox. “You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this in the middle of the night. Erich Semmelweis one day returned from Vena with a bride. He let it be known he was going to sail to the New World with her. The people believed him, just like they believe Jacob’s Albion story. But a year later, I saw Semmelweis and his wife come out of the tower, and shortly afterward, Semmelweis summoned me because she couldn’t sleep. Jacob does very well at covering up the strain caused by changing worlds, but even he used to get quite sick at the beginning. So be careful.”

  “What happened to Semmelweis’s wife?”

  Alma poured the hot tea into the mug that Chanute claimed he’d stolen from the King of Albion. “Someone stole her firstborn child. I always suspected the Stilt in the ruin. She had two more children. She brought them a couple of times to visit her parents, but eventually Semmelweis came out of that tower alone.”

  A bride from Vena. She stayed in the other world. With her children. Fox’s weary mind took a while to grasp the meaning.

  “You have to tell Jacob!”

  Alma shook her head. “No. You can tell him I know about the mirror, but it’s best he doesn’t learn about the other things. For Jacob, everything was always about his father. Who knows. Maybe his yearning for this world has a lot more to do with his mother.”

  Over

  Amalie’s guards didn’t keep the mob from climbing the walls separating the palace gardens from the streets. From up there, even the stones flung by the children reached all the way to the Dark Fairy’s pavilion. That she had only to lift her hands to put the shattered windows back together just angered her attackers even more. But the Dark One enjoyed showing them how droll she thought their hatred was. If only she could’ve silenced their chants as easily. And still no word from Kami’en.

  His subjects took Kami’en’s silence to mean he believed Amalie’s version of events. Excuses were easily found: He hadn’t received the Fairy’s letters, the rebels had intercepted them, his answer had been lost on the long way from Prusza to Vena. But the Fairy had given up deceiving herself. Kami’en’s soldiers were still there, but they were no longer posted only for her protection. They neither drove away the stone throwers nor did anything about the insults Amalie’s subjects hurled over the walls every day and every night.

  Water Witch, Demon Fairy... Those names were not new. Only one was: Child-Murderer.

  Could Kami’en really believe she’d kill his only son, after all she’d done to keep the infant alive? Her efforts to save that baby had cost her so much strength she still felt weak. And now the pain from his silence...

  Just as her sisters had foretold when she’d left their island, she’d become a shadow of herself. And she would have paid even that price for Kami’en’s love, no matter how it shamed her to admit it, but maybe that’s how it always was when the end began.

  Her moths swarmed around her like smoke, winged shadows of a bygone love, the only helpers she had left. No, there was one more. Splintered glass crunched under Donnersmarck’s boots as he approached her—the limping soldier who’d once served Amalie’s mother. He was an outcast, forever different from all those who were screaming out there, though he might be able to hide that fact for a while longer.

  “The rebellion is spreading through the north. Nobody knows when Kami’en might return to Vena.”

  The Fairy picked a piece of glass from her brown hair, which she was wearing down and loose again, like her sisters. For Kami’en she’d dressed like a human woman with her hair pinned up, had slept in their houses, and with the Man-Goyl she’d given him thousands of sons. How could he betray her so? Kami’en... Even his name tasted like poison now.

  Donnersmarck listened. The screaming seemed even louder than it was yesterday. Above them another glass pane shattered. The Fairy raised a hand. She briefly imagined the glass turning into water and washing them away—all the screamers, Kami’en’s soldiers, and his doll-wife. Her rage became ever harder to control.

  “I can no longer guarantee your safety.” Donnersmarck spoke without lowering his eyes. He was not afraid to look at her.

  “I can look after my own safety.”

  “The whole city is in turmoil. Amalie had your carriage burned. She’s spreading the word that everything you touch is cursed.”

  The Doll showed an impressive talent for intrigue. And what a chance to win her subjects’ sympathy, after she’d lost their love on her wedding day. The mob had even forgotten how much they’d despised the Moonstone Prince. Now she was just the grieving mother.

  “What about the baby?”

  Donnersmarck shook his head. “Not a trace. I have three of my soldiers looking for him. The only ones I can still trust.”

  She herself had sent dozens of her moths to search for Kami’en’s son, but so far none had returned. The Fairy looked at the broken glass around her feet. Her shattered cage. And the one who’d put her in it was far, far away. But, no, she had caged herself.

  Donnersmarck was still standing there. Her knight. “What do you want to do?”

  Yes, what? It was hard to let go of love. Once woven, its ribbon was hard to tear, and this one she’d woven quite firmly herself.

  The Dark Fairy stepped under the trees she’d planted. These trees only grew at the shores of the lake that had borne her and her sisters. She picked two of the seedpods from the dense foliage. She broke the first one, and two tiny horses, both green like the pod itself, sprang into her hand. She set them on the tiles, and they began to grow. A carriage rolled from the second pod. It sprouted leaves and pale green blossoms as it grew. The wheels and axles were black, the coach box, the leather benches, all as black as her pain, as black as her rage.

  Donnersmarck’s glance betrayed what all mortals felt when they witnessed magic: disbelief, yearning, jealousy... How they all wished for such powers.

  Carriage. Horses. Now all she needed was a coachman. The Dark Fairy raised her hand. A moth settled on her fingers, its spread wings looking as though their black velvet had been sprinkled with gold dust. Head and body gleamed emerald green.

  “Chithira, Chithira,” the Dark One whispered to the moth. “You helped me find him. Now you have to take me away from him.”

  The moth lowered its wings until they brushed her hand, lightly, like a kiss. Then it fluttered down to her feet and changed into a young man. Like the moth’s wings, his black clothes seemed to have been dusted with gold. His turban and his vest were of gleaming emerald green, and his pale face showed how long he hadn’t been at home in this world. Chithira... His name was one of the few the Fairy remembered. A
prince who’d fallen in love with her more than a century ago, and who’d stayed faithful even after death, like so many others who’d fallen for her or her sisters. They were accustomed to the everlasting love of mortals. How could she have known that Kami’en’s affections would be so short-lived?

  Chithira silently climbed up onto the coach box. Donnersmarck still stared at the horses and carriage like someone lost in a dream. But this dream was Kami’en’s love. Time to wake up.

  The Fairy gathered up her dress and looked around one last time. Splinters. They were all that was left. Dead, like solid water. What else but death could you hope to reap when you gave your heart to a mortal?

  Donnersmarck opened the carriage door for her. The Dark One had known for a while—longer than he’d known himself—that Donnersmarck would come with her. He came to protect her, but also for her to protect him—from what was stirring in his chest.

  Kami’en’s guards moved to block the path of her green horses, but they were no match for Chithira, who’d already steered them past her sisters’ unicorns. The guards in the courtyard scattered as soon as they saw his deathly-pale face. Donnersmarck opened the gate while the Fairy looked up at the balcony from which Therese of Austry had announced her daughter’s engagement. Amalie didn’t show. The Dark One probably would have let her live. Probably.

  Too Many Dogs

  Three attacks in as many days. Two on border posts and the third one a direct attempt on Kami’en’s life. His bodyguards had acted so clumsily that Hentzau had to kill the assassin himself. Then he had the bodyguards executed, with a public threat to cut out the tongue of anyone who used this incident to lament the disappearance of the Jade Goyl. There would be whispers, of course. “First the Jade Goyl leaves him, then the Fairy. The King of the Goyl is as doomed as his moonstone son.”

  The assassin who’d managed to get into Kami’en’s tent was not one of the human rebels who’d risen against the occupation. No. It was an onyx Goyl. Just weeks before, they’d crowned one of their own as rightful King of the Goyl. A shadow king, allied to Lotharaine and Albion. Traitors to their own people. Not surprising. The onyx had always been parasites, living off the blood and sweat of their subjects. Under their rule, only those born onyx could thrive. Hentzau had stuffed the assassin’s head with stone maggots and had sent it to Nia’sny, the most powerful onyx lord, who now resided in Lotharaine, but his spies were everywhere.

  Too many days... Hentzau put one of the pills, which Kami’en’s personal physician had prescribed for his chest pains, under his tongue. They were as useless as the ones Amalie’s human doctor had given him in Vena. So he’d sent one of his soldiers to the underground forest north of the royal palace, to where the Clay-Matrons lived. The potions they brewed could burn even Goyl tongues, but they had also helped Hentzau survive his wounds from the Blood Wedding.

  Hentzau had to get back under the earth. Down there he needed neither pills nor the potions of the Clay-Matrons. And now that idiot of a quartermaster had assigned Hentzau a tower room as his office, with a window and so much light that he’d soon be blind in both eyes. Hentzau had asked for the window to be bricked up, but apparently the only soldiers with any bricklaying experience had died in the last skirmish with the rebels.

  Kami’en loved taking up residence in human palaces, despite all the windows and towers. The one they were in now they’d taken from a Holstein cavalier who’d tried to avenge the theft of his property by releasing poisoned rats into the cellars. Thirty of Hentzau’s men were in the sick ward after they’d slept down there to get away from the daylight. The longer they lived above ground, the more susceptible they became to human diseases. It was one of the facts the onyx Goyl used to support their argument that Goyl had no business being above ground. But like Kami’en, Hentzau hadn’t forgotten what happened when the Goyl tried to stick to life under the earth. There was too much down there the humans wanted—not only silver, gold, and precious stones but ore, coal, gas, oil... All of which had grown more precious to them than what grew in their fields.

  “Lieutenant Hentzau?” Nesser poked her head through the door.

  “What?” He quickly dropped the pill bottle into his desk drawer. Nesser didn’t deserve the harshness of his voice, but there were already too many whispers that the King’s Bloodhound was old and sick—though only the Fairy had ever dared say it in front of Kami’en. By all the gods of the heart of the earth, Hentzau was so glad she was gone.

  “New dispatches.” Nesser positioned herself behind him before ushering in the courier. After an attack had left Hentzau lightly wounded, Kami’en had made Nesser Hentzau’s personal bodyguard. Against his will, of course. The King’s Bloodhound guarded by a soldier who could’ve been his daughter? It could hardly get any worse... Though, admittedly, Nesser was much smarter than the imbeciles who guarded the King.

  The courier was one of the Man-Goyl who’d remained in the Goyl King’s service, though his skin had in places already turned back to the snail-like softness of his birth. Hentzau would’ve had all Man-Goyl shot, but they’d proven to be very useful as scouts and spies. They hardly remembered their human lives. This one had been a ruby Goyl. The red stone was still on his brow and cheek, and there was a shimmer of gold in his brown eyes. Entire armies of them were now roaming as mercenaries, plundering above- and below ground.

  The Dark Fairy’s legacy. Yes, Hentzau was indeed glad she was gone, though he didn’t dare contemplate how much damage she might do as their enemy. His spies reported she was traveling east. The Suleiman Empire? Unlikely. Its sultan believed magic should be the domain of men alone. But there were other rulers she could peddle her magic to: the Cossacks in Ukraina, the Tzars of Varangia, the Wolf-Lords in Kamchatka and Yukaghiria. For centuries, the Goyl had maintained lively trade relations with most of the rulers of the East, and some of their oldest underground cities lay in the East, but Hentzau had little doubt that most of their old allies would turn against them if the Fairy promised them her magic. His greatest concern used to be the Wolf-Lord who was married to Isolde of Austry. But the youngest sister of the deposed Empress had died a few weeks earlier. Poisoned by her husband, according to the whispers in Vena.

  The dispatches the Man-Goyl delivered did little to improve Hentzau’s mood: a fire in one of their airplane factories, a murdered Goyl ambassador in Bavaria, a suicide attack on one of their cave cities on the surface. Four hundred dead. The last dispatch was from Thierry Auger, one of their human spies in Lotharaine. He reported that Crookback had received an interesting visitor: Isambard Brunel—the human who built planes and ships but hated to travel. It was the first time Brunel had left Albion, and that he’d done so to pay his respects to the King of Lotharaine was the most alarming message of them all.

  Nesser waved the Man-Goyl out of the room. As he left, he pressed his fist to his chest, saluting like a Goyl. Hentzau still couldn’t get used to them. Nesser waited in the doorway. Hentzau had no children, but the feelings he had for Nesser probably came as close to being fatherly as he would ever experience. He even valued her weaknesses, the impetuousness, the youthful impatience, the need to see the world in black and white, all good on her side, all bad on the other. Enviable. Life is so simple when you’re young, though of course that’s not what it feels like to the young.

  Brunel and Crookback. Maybe the bad news could be turned into good news. No, better, a present.

  “Tell Kami’en’s attaché I need to speak to the King. Right away.”

  As soon as Nesser had pulled the door shut behind her, Hentzau clutched his chest. The pain was brutal, but a soldier was used to living with pain.

  ***

  Kami’en no longer had the windows of his rooms bricked up. He’d had his eyes hexed by a Witch, and he made fun of Hentzau for fearing that magic more than the milky white film that dulled his vision. When Hentzau entered his chamber, the King of the Goyl was standing by the window, and, yes, he was probably thinking of the Fairy.

  Hen
tzau was sure Kami’en still loved her. But whether Kami’en believed she’d killed his son—there were things not even Hentzau knew about him. He turned around, and his face betrayed nothing. Carnelian. The Goyl called it fire-skin.

  “Brunel in Lutis. I assume we’re both thinking the same?” the King said after he’d scanned Thierry Auger’s message. “The Walrus of Albion isn’t quite as stupid as I thought. Have the troops along the Lotharainian border enforced, and make sure the crown prince doesn’t run out of elven dust.”

  “That won’t be enough.” Hentzau rubbed his skin. The daylight coming through the high windows was granite gray, but it still hurt his eyes. “We need to sow unrest in their colonies so their troops can’t join forces. Anarchists in their cities. And we have to make sure the East is on our side. I suggest a present to the Tzar of Varangia. A present that will give him the military confidence to challenge Albion and Lotharaine.”

  “And what present might have such a miraculous effect?”

  ...and be more enticing than what my lover could offer the Tzar? Neither of them would mention the Dark Fairy’s disappearance, though it was all the world could speak of.

  “The present just dropped in our laps, Your Majesty.”

  They both loved the game of reading their thoughts off each other’s faces. So many wars fought together. So much shared: defeats, triumphs, fear, rage, despair, relief...and the rush brought by the proximity of death.