Reckless (Free Preview) (30 page)

Jacob couldn't
tell where the voice was coming from.
 
Maybe it was just in his head, but he heard it as clearly as if she were
whispering the words into his ear.
 
"Let me go, and I will give your brother back his skin."

"Your
sister told me that you would make promises and that I shouldn't believe
you."

"Bring
him to me, and I will prove it!"

"Your
sister also told me to do this."
 
Jacob reached into the branches and plucked a handful of the
silvery-green leaves.

The willow
sighed as he wrapped them in his handkerchief.

"I'm
supposed to take these leaves to your sister," Jacob said.
 
"But I think I'll keep them to trade for
my brother's skin."

The pond was
like a silver mirror, and his hand that had touched the Fairy felt burnt.

"I will
bring him to you," he said.
 
"Tonight."

A shudder ran
through the willow.

"No!"
the leaves whispered.
 
"Kami’en
needs him!
 
The Jade Goyl must remain by
his side until the wedding is over."

"Why?"

"Promise
me, or I won't help you."

Jacob could
still hear the voice after the pond had long vanished behind the shrubs.

"Promise!"

Again and again.

47

The Chambers of Miracles

"I will bring him to you."
 
But how?
 
For at least an hour, Jacob stood behind the
stables that lay between the gardens and the palace, keeping his eyes on the
windows of the north wing.
 
There was
still light coming from them, candlelight, as the Goyl preferred it.
 
Once he thought he saw the King.
 
Waiting for his lover.
 
On the eve of his wedding.

"Bring him to me."

"But how, Jacob"

A children's
toy gave him the answer.
 
A dirty ball,
lying
between the buckets the grooms used to water the
horses.
 
Of course, Jacob, the golden ball!

He himself had
sold it to the Empress three years earlier.
 
One of her most treasured
possessions,
it was
now in the Chambers of Miracles.
 
But no
guard would let Jacob back into the palace, and the Goyl had taken his
waneslime.

It took him
another hour to find one of the snails that produced the slime.
 
The royal gardeners always killed any they
could find, but Jacob finally spotted two under the moss-covered ledge of a
well.
 
Their shells were already becoming
visible again, and their slime worked as soon as he rubbed it under his nose.

It wasn't
much, but it was enough for a couple of hours.

There was only
one guard by the servants' entrance.
 
He
was leaning against the wall, and Jacob snuck past him without disturbing his
snooze.

The kitchens
and laundries were busy even at night, and an overtired maid gave a start as
soon as Jacob's invisible elbow brushed her side.
 
Soon he reached the stairs that led away from
the servants and up to the masters.
 
He
felt his skin already go numb.
 
He had
used the slime only a few days earlier, but fortunately there was no paralysis
yet.

The Chambers
of Miracles were in the south wing, the newest part of the palace.
 
They occupied six rooms in which all the
walls were clad with lapis lazuli, as it was presumed the stone would weaken
the magical potency of the artifacts on display.
 
The imperial family always had a penchant for
the magical objects of their world, and for generations they tried to get their
hands on as many of them as they could.
 
It was the Empress's father who had finally decreed that all objects,
animals, and humans with magical powers be reported to the authorities.
 
It was difficult to rule a world where a
pauper could be turned into a lord by a gold tree or where talking
animals
whispered seditious ideas into the ears of forest
laborers.

There were no
guards by the gilded doors that the Empress's grandfather had ordered from a
smith who'd learned his trade from a Witch.
 
Branches of Witch's birch had been encased within the golden trees that
spread their boughs across the door leaf, and whoever attempted to open these
doors without knowing their secret would be impaled.
 
The branches would shoot out like lances as
soon as someone touched the handles, and like the birches in the
Hungry
Forest
,
they aimed straight for the eyes.
 
But
Jacob knew how to open the Chambers of Miracles.

He approached
the doors without touching the handles.
 
The goldsmith had hidden a woodpecker among the gilded leaves, and the
moment Jacob breathed on the golden
bird,
its plumage
became as colorful as the feathers of a living bird.
 
The doors swung open without a sound, as if
caught by a sudden gust of wind.

Austry's Chambers of Miracles.

The first hall
was filled with magical animals that had fallen prey to various members of the
imperial family.
 
Their glass eyes seemed
to follow Jacob as he walked past the cabinets that protected their stuffed
bodies from dust and moths.
 
A Unicorn.
 
Winged rabbits.
 
A Brown Wolf.
 
Swan-men.
 
Magic crows.
 
Talking horses.
 
There
was also a vixen, of course.
 
She wasn't
as gracile as Fox, but Jacob still couldn't bear to look at her.

The second
chamber contained Witches' artifacts.
 
The Chambers of Miracles made no distinction between the healers and the
cannibals.
 
Knives that had separated
human flesh from bone lay right next to needles that healed wounds with a
single stitch and owl feathers that restored the powers of sight.
 
There were also two of the brooms on which
the healing Witches were able to fly as fast and as high as birds, as well as
some gingerbread from the deadly houses of their man-eating sisters.

The cabinets
of the third chamber displayed scales from Nymphs and Watermen.
 
These scales enabled whoever put them under
the tongue to dive very deep and stay underwater for a long time.
 
There were also Dragon scales in all sizes
and colors.
 
Every part of this world had
its own stories about surviving Dragons, but Jacob had only once seen a shadow
in the sky that looked like the mummified body on display in the fourth
chamber.
 
The tail alone took up half a
wall, and the gigantic teeth and claws made Jacob actually grateful that the
imperial family had eradicated its kind.

The ball he
had come for lay on
a
 
cushion
of black velvet in the fifth chamber.
 
Jacob had found it in the cave of a Waterman,
next to the abducted daughter of a baker.
 
The golden ball was barely bigger than a chicken's egg, and the
inscription attached to the black velvet sounded just like the fairy tale from
the other world:
 
ORIGINALLY THE FAVORITE TOY OF THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF LEOPOLD THE
BENIGN, WITH WHICH SHE FOUND HER BRIDEGROOM (LATER TO BECOME WENZELSLAUS THE
SECOND) AND FREED HIM FROM THE FROG-CURSE.

But that was
not the entire truth.
 
The ball was a
trap that sucked up anyone who caught it and would release the victim only when
its golden surface was polished.

Jacob broke
the lock of the cabinet with his knife.
 
For a moment he was sorely tempted to also take some of the other
objects, to replenish his chest in Chanute's tavern, but the Empress would be
angry enough about the ball.
 
Jacob had
just tucked it into his coat pocket, when the gaslights in the first chamber
suddenly lit up.
 
His body was already
becoming visible again, and so he quickly hid behind a cabinet displaying a
well-worn seven-league boot made from the skin of a salamander.
 
Chanute had found the boot for the father of
the Empress.
 
The matching one was in the
King Albion's Miracle Chamber.
 
Footsteps
echoed through the rooms, and Jacob heard someone getting to work on the
cabinets.
 
He couldn't see who it was,
and he didn't dare move, for fear that his steps would give him away.
 
Whoever it was didn't stay long; the lights
were extinguished, the heavy doors
fell
shut, and
Jacob was again alone in the darkness.

He was
nauseated from the waneslime, but he couldn't resist walking past all the
cabinets to check what the other nocturnal visitor had taken.
 
The healing Witch's needle was gone, together
with two Dragon claws that supposedly protected from injury, as well as a piece
of Waterman skin that was said to have similar properties.
 
Jacob couldn't make any sense of it, but then
he told himself that the Empress probably wanted to give the objects to the
groom as a wedding present, to make sure he wouldn't be replaced by another
Goyl less interested in bargaining for peace.

As the golden
doors shut behind Jacob, he was already feeling so sick that he nearly
vomited.
 
He was cramping — the first
sign of the paralysis caused by the slime — and the palace corridors seemed
endless.
 
Jacob decided to follow them
back to the gardens.
 
The walls
separating them from the street were quite high, but the Rapunzel-rope again
did not let him down.
 
At least one
useful thing he'd managed to keep.

Donnersmarck's
man was still standing by the gate, but he didn't see Jacob sneak away.
 
Jacob's body was still as vague as a ghost,
and a night watchman doing his rounds in the dark streets dropped his lantern
in fright when Jacob crossed his path.

Fortunately,
he was a lot more visible by the time he reached the hotel.
 
Every step was a struggle, and he could no
longer move his fingers.
 
He barely
managed to reach the elevator, and it was only when he was standing in front of
his room that he remembered Fox.

Jacob had to
bang on the door so hard that two guests poked their heads out of their rooms
before the soldier finally opened up.
 
Jacob stumbled past him into the bathroom and vomited.
 
Fox was nowhere to be seen.

"Where is
she?
"
Jacob asked as he came out of the
bathroom.
 
He had to lean against the
wall so his knees would not give out.

"I locked
her in the wardrobe!"
 
The soldier
held up a hand wrapped in a bloody handkerchief like a piece of incriminating
evidence.
 
"She bit me!"

Jacob pushed
him into the hall.
 
"Tell
Donnersmarck that what I promised has been done."

Exhausted,
Jacob leaned against the door.
 
One of
the Elves that were still fluttering around the room dropped some silvery dust
on his shoulder.
 
Sweet dreams, Jacob
.

Fox was
wearing her fur, and she bared her teeth when Jacob opened the wardrobe.
 
Whatever relief she might have felt at seeing
him, she hid it quite well.

"Did the
Fairy do that?" she simply asked, eyeing his bloodstained shirt.
 
She watched impassively as he struggled to
take it off.
 
His fingers were like wood
by now.

"I smell
waneslime."
 
Fox was licking her fur
as if she could still feel where the soldier had tried to grab her.

Jacob sat down
on the bed while he still could.
 
His
knees were also getting stiff.

"Help me,
Fox.
 
I have to go to the wedding
tomorrow, and I can barely move."

She looked at
him for such a long time that Jacob began to suspect she'd forgotten how to
speak.

"A good
bite might help," she said finally.
 
"And it would be my pleasure to give one.
 
But first you'll tell me what you're up
to."

48

Wedding Plans

The first red
of dawn reached out across the sky above the city.
 
Therese of Austry had not slept.
 
She had waited, hour after hour, but by the time
one of her Dwarfs finally led Donnersmarck into her audience chamber, she'd
hidden all the waiting and hoping behind a mask of powder.

"He did
it.
 
Kami’en has already called a search
for her, but if Jacob told us the truth, they will not find her."

Donnersmarck
didn't look too happy about the news he was delivering.
 
But the Empress's heart beat faster, for this
was exactly what she'd been hoping for.

"Good."
 
She touched her tightly coiffed hair.
 
It was turning gray, but she had it dyed
golden, like Amalie's.
 
Now she would get
to keep her daughter.
 
And
her throne.
 
And
her pride.