Fearless (22 page)

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 the forest where he’d stolen a pair of seven-league 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 for ever, 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 saviour 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 learnt 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 the Mirrorworld, 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 crueller than other occupying forces, yet as the coach passed grey 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 and 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’ll meet at the hotel.’

It had sounded colder than he had meant it to.
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 towards 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 catalogued? 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.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

DIFFERENT METHODS

S
trange, 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 cellar stairs that led down to his place of business were unlit. They ended in front of a door with an enamelled 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 neighbour 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 on to 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 enamelled 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 realised 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 towards 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!’

The apothecary hastily pulled open another drawer. He used a pair of pliers to pick out a tongue that differed from a human tongue only by a small slit at the tip. Nerron poured the fake heart out of the case and put the tongue inside.

He was already at the door when the undertaker began to stir.

But he never came after Nerron.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

A GAME

I
t was less than a half hour’s walk from the train station to the state archives, but all the big avenues leading to the palace were cut off by police blocks. The crowds on the sidewalks were nearly as thick as on the day of the Blood Wedding, and Jacob felt himself being washed along by the throng, like a piece of driftwood. Kami’en was in Vena. There was going to be a parade to celebrate the pregnancy of his human wife. The new Empress’s guards were decorating the streetlights and facades with garlands. The guards were, without exception, Goyl. Amalie left her protection to her husband’s soldiers. It was said she preferred to pick ones that had Kami’en’s carnelian skin. The garlands were strung with moonstone flowers, and the barricades along the streets were decorated with silver branches. Yet all Jacob saw was Troisclerq as he pinned a flower to Fox’s dress. What was going on with him?
You’re jealous, Jacob. Don’t you have enough problems already?

He turned into the next alley – and ended up in front of another roadblock.
Damn.
Who was he fooling? The Bastard had long since found the heart.
Stop it, Jacob!
But he couldn’t remember ever having felt so tired. Not even the fear of death penetrated the fog in his head.