The Golden Yarn Read online

“And what now?” Sylvain whispered. “Why did you want me to bring him here? Maude merde, we are sitting in a trap!”

  Fox didn’t pay any attention to him.

  “The mirror from your father’s study,” she whispered to Jacob, “is here.”

  Here? Thoughts tumbled through his aching head. “What about Will? And Clara?”

  Fox shook her head. “You two were the only prisoners.” She took his hand. “We’ll come back once you can see again.”

  Sylvain whimpered like a child when Fox told him he was going to have to step in front of a mirror once more. Finally Fox took his hand and pressed it against the glass. Sylvain Caleb Fowler disappeared, and the mirror was their secret no more.

  It never had been. Spieler had probably always known where it was.

  Like an Open Door

  “Ayoye! Ta-bar-nak!”

  A shrill scream. Sounds of a fight. Jacob thought he could make out the outlines of the tower’s windows, and in front of them the figure of his cell mate, who seemed to be struggling with something. Whatever it was, Sylvain won.

  “Saint ciboire!” Sylvain was leaning over something lying by his feet. “I swear it jumped me!” He sounded disgusted and fascinated.

  “That, Sylvain, is a Stilt,” Fox explained.

  “A what? Maude merde, I think I broke its neck!” He didn’t seem to relish the thought. It was good to know they hadn’t brought a savage killer through the mirror. And he’d killed the Stilt! For years Jacob had tried to catch that old bloodsucker. The creature was a committed baby-snatcher, and its bite had been Jacob’s first welcome to this world.

  “What now?” Fox stood next to him.

  To Jacob’s silver-blind eyes, the mirror was just a shimmering blob. Hard to imagine his father’s study was no longer waiting for him on the other side.

  “Shall I go back and check on Will?” Fox took his hand.

  “No. I’ll go, as soon as I can see again.” Jacob led her away from the mirror. He felt a brief fear that the Elf could be watching them through the glass. “Your vixen will make beautiful children. I hope you don’t take too long!” Jacob let go of her hand, as though his very touch might deliver her to the Elf. And yet he desired her even more. Of course. That was the game, wasn’t it? Forbidden desires...and always a price.

  He wanted to smash the mirror, but then what? Everything seemed to indicate there were many more, but until he found the others, this was his only way back.

  “Where are we?” Sylvain was standing by one of the windows. “Looks old. Really old.”

  Jacob was staring at the mirror, or at whatever he could see of it.

  “Let them come!” Fox whispered. “We’ll make it hard for them to find us.”

  What would he do without her? He couldn’t give her up. You don’t have to give her up, Jacob. You just have to stop wanting her. Forever. He hated that word.

  She went ahead. Sylvain and Jacob followed. He nearly broke his neck following her through the hatch, but he managed to descend the rope without further incident. Fox barricaded the door to the tower with a few stones so she could check later if someone had come through.

  “Zut alors! There was a tiny man over there!” Sylvain shouted. He’d just seen his first Heinzel. “I know magicians can do wild things with mirrors, but this is...”

  All those years, and now a stranger knew about the mirror. He could tell about it, here and in the other world. Not a nice thought. Jacob hadn’t even told Chanute about the mirror.

  “Bout de charge! And what is this?”

  “That, Sylvain, is a Thumbling.” Jacob could hear Fox having trouble maintaining a serious tone. “They’re very skillful thieves, so always chase them away before they can get to your pockets.”

  “Ta-bar-nak!” The delight in Sylvain’s voice was obvious.

  It didn’t sound as if Sylvain Caleb Fowler would want to go home anytime soon.

  An Old Acquaintance

  John Reckless couldn’t wait to get back to Albion. The ferry crossing was certainly not an experience he was looking forward to, but the island had for a long time now been the only place he’d called home. Albion had given him protection when he’d been so broken he feared he’d never put the pieces together again. It had given him the appreciation he’d been thirsting for since his life in another world, and a wife who worshipped him. Who cared that she loved a fake face?

  So many reasons to be perfectly happy. Why wasn’t he? Nobody is happy. That answer usually silenced the inner voice that kept pestering him with such questions. John had always been good at ignoring it, anyway.

  His return was going to be celebrated with elaborate pomp. After all, he was bringing the news Wilfred of Albion had been hoping for. John felt flattered to be the “great hope” for the King, and the uniformed protectors who came with that role might have been annoying at times, but they were also very comforting. One of them leaned in the carriage window to tell him they were three hours from Calias. His breath smelled so strongly of garlic that John had to struggle not to avert his face. There were more ferries from Dunkerk to Albion, but John had insisted on crossing from Calias because Dunkerk was in Flanders, which had been occupied by the Goyl two months earlier. The commanding officer of his guards tried to lecture him that even the Goyl had enough respect for international law not to attack an official convoy of the King of Albion. But what did John care whether a young upstart officer thought him a coward? He knew he was one, and four years locked in a dungeon was surely a good reason to be cautious. Flanders had been an easy prize, especially after Albion’s shipment of weapons had ended up at the bottom of the sea. A strange situation, to have been the one who’d not only designed the flagship but the planes that had sunk it. As though he were playing war with himself.

  Meadows and apple orchards drifted past the carriage window. John decided to forget politics for a while. Lotharaine was such an enchanting country, and they drank and ate so much better here than in Albion. Even the Walrus secretly employed a chef from Lutis, and his Lotharainian wine was as well guarded as his treasure chambers. John opened the basket Crookback’s servants had packed for his journey: goose paté with just a hint of swan fat, stuffed Witch-frogs, leaf-gilded mille-feuilles. Opening a bottle of red wine in a jolting carriage was not an easy feat, but the first sip was going to make the effort worthwhile. They’d even wrapped a crystal goblet in Lotharainian linen for him. The only pity was he thought he saw Arsene Lelou’s pointy-nosed face in the dark red wine. He downed the whole glass as though it could wash away the memory. “The Albian secret service may not be as omniscient as its reputation suggests. Jacob Reckless survived the sinking of the fleet.”

  So he still had two sons. Good. Granted, he hardly ever thought of Will. Jacob had always been his favorite. Will had been Rosamund’s. He’d married her for her illustrious ancestors, and by the time he’d actually fallen in love with her, it had been too late. Not that she hadn’t loved him still, but he couldn’t bear the love he constantly betrayed. He’d disappointed her, and himself, time and time again. He was never the man she’d seen in him.

  More wine. Memories be gone. Away with her face, which he still remembered all too well. He had a recurring dream in which they reconciled, and she always looked as young as on the day he’d met her.

  Heavens, the bottle was already half empty. And? He was going to vomit it all over the ferry railing later anyway. John brushed a fly off his nose. His fingers still remembered the other nose, fleshier, straighter. Who would’ve thought his fake face could fool even his own son?

  The carriage bounced and stopped abruptly. John’s wine spilled over his tailored shirt. This was another thing he’d discussed with Crookback. Progress required good highways. John was picking some snail paté off his lap, when his hands went numb with fear.

  Shots.

  John ducked under the window and peered outside. The soldier with the garlic breath was lying next to his horse, his face shot to pieces. There was no sign of th
e other soldiers. John’s trembling fingers tried to pull the revolver from its holster. He’d improved the weapon in ways that weren’t visible from the outside, but it still couldn’t fire more than six shots.

  The young man approaching the carriage wore a well-tailored greatcoat and didn’t look like a highwayman, but maybe he was one of those who dressed like lords and pretended to be protectors of the poor. Travel in Albion was no safer than in Lotharaine, and John had fallen prey to robbers like him twice before. For years he’d been trying to convince the Walrus to raise a tax to finance armed patrols along the highways.

  “Monsieur Brunel.” The stranger greeted him with the hint of a bow while he trained his pistol on John’s head. “Thierry Auger. My pleasure.”

  Monsieur Brunel...He knew who John was. That wasn’t good. Put the gun away, John! He was a decent enough shot, but not very fast.

  Ransom. Of course. That’s what the stranger wanted. Money for the famous engineer who’d taken Albion to the pinnacle of modern times. John’s mouth was as dry as parchment. He’d always had a very physical reaction to fear. John moved to open the carriage door, even though he could barely feel his own legs. But the young robber shook his head.

  “Stay where you are, monsieur. Your destination has changed, but your mode of transport will remain the same.” A highwayman who spoke fluent Albian, though with a heavy Lotharainian accent. Monsieur Auger was so young he probably hadn’t been growing his beard for long, but his confidence spoke of some experience in highway robbery.

  A man who suddenly appeared next to Auger was much older and less groomed, though just as well dressed. This was obviously a profitable trade.

  “Get in there with him,” he ordered Auger. “But watch out he doesn’t try to jump.”

  Thierry Auger did as he was told. He picked up John’s pistol from the floor of the carriage before taking the seat opposite. John could hear more voices outside, but he couldn’t make out how many robbers there were. They’d picked their time and place well. Even the fields were deserted. Behind the fence, where the blood of the dead soldier had turned the grass red, a very disinterested cow was ruminating away, and in the distance, church bells had started chiming to complete the idyll.

  The carriage turned around. Through the window, John could see two men dragging another of his uniformed guards off the road. He looked as dead as the first one.

  “Where are you taking me?” Not only did fear make his body go numb—it also started producing embarrassing amounts of sweat. But his mind stayed surprisingly clear, as though disengaging from the sweating, trembling coward who was staring into the pistol of a boy.

  Thierry Auger lit a cigarette. Crookback had made them fashionable, but this one smelled different from the ones the King smoked. Witch-leaves, if John’s nose wasn’t mistaken. They grew all over these woods.

  “We’re off to Flanders,” Auger said. “I see you have some food. You’ll need it. It’s a long drive.”

  He wouldn’t reveal more, no matter how much John asked. The voices outside didn’t all speak with a Lotharainian accent. John thought he could make out some Lombardic sounds. The older man who seemed to be the leader sounded more Leonese.

  They passed the Flandrian border at night. When John saw the Goyl at the tollgate, he nearly leaned out the window to beg the Lotharainian border guards for help. The Goyl had a garnet skin, considered to be volatile. One of John’s prison guards had been a garnet Goyl.

  Stop it, John! Your kidnappers are humans.

  But why were they taking him to Flanders?

  The guard on the Lotharainian side cast a bored glance into the carriage and waved them on. Maybe John should’ve screamed, but Auger gave him a warning look. He’d draped his jacket over his pistol, but it didn’t take too much imagination to assume it was pointed at his stomach. John had once seen a man die from a shot to the stomach, one of the prisoners of war who worked in the underground factories of the Goyl. No. He didn’t scream for help. He even managed to look the garnet Goyl straight in the eye. He’s seeing the face of Isambard Brunel, John.

  As the Goyl receded into the darkness behind them, John breathed such a sigh of relief that Thierry Auger gave him a crooked smile and offered him a drag of his cigarette. And on they rolled through the night. They were headed northeast, if John was reading the constellations above the fields right. The stars were the same as in his world; they even had the same names. A mirror image, nothing more…How often he’d told himself that, despite the two moons, despite the Fairies and the Witches. He’d even wondered whether there were Goyl in his world and whether they just never came to the surface. Useless thoughts, but a welcome distraction from the fear that was growing with every mile.

  John had no idea how long they’d been traveling. Auger had searched him for weapons and taken his pocket watch, together with his purse and the gold cuff links he’d been given by his lover, engraved with the initials he had stolen from another engineer. Who were they working for? What were they going to do to him? Torture? Execution? More time in a cell? All his carefully devised routines, the precious illusions of stability and safety—why did one begin to trust them if even the biggest fool would’ve realized by now that there was no such thing as constancy in life?

  Auger nodded off once. John had his hand on the door handle instantly, though the carriage was going so fast that the jump would have certainly broken his neck. At that very moment, the leader rode up to the window and shouted Auger’s name. Bad luck or not? John wasn’t sure.

  It was light again by the time they stopped in front of a house. The smashed windows and bullet holes in the whitewashed walls indicated it had been abandoned for a while. There were windmills in the distance, the same kind that dotted the Flandrian landscape in John’s world, though on this side their wooden wings were painted in different colors: sky blue (though a blue sky was a rare sight in Flanders), green (like the vast, wet meadows), or red (like the fields of tulips that often surrounded the mills). There wasn’t much in Flanders that could’ve protected the small country from the Goyl.

  Impatiently, the leader waved John out of the carriage. His black beard and bushy eyebrows would’ve suited an anarchist. That’s how anarchists were generally depicted on the posters, anyway. Auger pushed his pistol into John’s back as he climbed out behind him.

  They didn’t walk to the house but toward a well.

  And how John’s heart began to race. Oh yes. There was always more fear to be felt. Those stories of people who died of fear—all nonsense. He’d be long dead.

  As John figured, there was no water in the well. Instead, steel rungs led down into the deep, the kind of ladders the Goyl installed in wells and mine shafts to take them to where they’d come from: under the earth.

  No. He was not going back down there. He was a fast runner. His running had saved him several times in underground tunnels, and not only from the Goyl but also from giant bats, calf-sized lizards, spiders that built their nests by the hundreds in every available crack and cranny...

  John spun around. Auger would shoot him. And? He couldn’t think. He knocked down one of the guards, but even before he could take a step, Thierry Auger had rammed his pistol into John’s stomach so hard that John cried out and dropped to his knees.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Auger whispered to him. “Diego won’t hesitate to shoot off all your fingers if you cause any more trouble. And in the end, you’ll go into the well anyway.”

  Diego. John had been right about the leader’s Leonian accent. How could he have fooled himself just because they were human? It was well known that the Goyl had human collaborators. They paid them in diamonds. And some even worked for free because they saw the stonefaces as their liberators from the rule of their despised kings.

  The soldier who dragged John back to his feet also looked like a human, but the strip of moonstone on his forehead gave him away—together with the black claws. Man-Goyl. A new race. Ever since the Fairy had abandoned Kami’en, nobo
dy could be sure which side they were on.

  Diego was the first down the shaft. He had a pit lamp to light the way. The Man-Goyl, who’d taken over guarding John from Auger, didn’t need a lamp.

  The well led down into one of the tunnels the Goyl had dug everywhere. This one was just a footpath, but John had seen others big enough for mounted soldiers. Many had space for carriages and some even for trains. During his time with the Goyl, John had seen maps of these centuries-old tunnel networks. There was hardly a place on the surface that couldn’t be reached through them. John even knew of plans for a tunnel to connect Albion with the mainland. Similar plans existed for Sveriga, but not even John had been able to solve the problem of ventilation in underwater tunnels. He’d been glad about this limit to his knowledge, for the Goyl would’ve found ways to make him help them.

  John followed his captors along a roadway that looked as if it had been constructed only recently. It was paved with onyx—a nice way to mock the old ruling class. The tunnel led into a wide hall similar to train stations that were now being built all over the surface, only this one didn’t need a glass roof against wind and rain. Two freight trains were waiting on the tracks. They’d probably come from one of the ports of Flanders to supply the Goyl’s underground cities with all the goods that country’s colonies supplied: sugar, coffee, cotton, silkworms. The slave trade, Albion’s and Lotharaine’s most profitable enterprise, was of no interest to the Goyl. They sympathized with peoples who were considered inferior, and preferred to use their prisoners of war as laborers. It was an attitude that had earned the Goyl some loyal allies even in those countries that were out of their reach – for now – because of their fear of the sea.

  A third train was parked behind the others on a platform guarded by soldiers. Its cars were reinforced with steel plates, and the locomotive bore Kami’en’s carnelian-red coat of arms, which, since his marriage to Amalie, now showed the imperial eagle of Austry instead of the Dark Fairy’s moth.