Reckless (Free Preview) (10 page)

Clara stared
incredulously across the silent courtyard.

"It is
said that anyone who sleeps in her bed will find true love.
 
But it seems" — Jacob gazed at the dark
windows — "the prince never showed up."

Or he had perished
on the thorns like a skewered bird.
 
A
mummified hand stuck out from between the roses.
 
Jacob pushed some leaves over it before Clara
could see.

A mouse
scampered across the courtyard, and Fox jumped after it, but she immediately
stopped with a whimper.

"What is
it?
"
Clara asked.

The vixen
licked her side.

"Threefingers
kicked me."

"Let me
have a look."
 
Clara leaned over her
and carefully prodded her silky fur.

"Lose the
fur, Fox!
"
Jacob said.
 
"She knows more about humans than about
foxes."

Fox hesitated,
but then she obeyed.
 
Clara stared at the
girl who suddenly stood before her, in a dress that looked as if the red moon
had woven it onto her body.

What kind of world is this
?
her
face asked as she turned to
Jacob.
 
If fur turns to skin, or skin to stone, what remains?

Fear.
 
Bewilderment.
 
And enchantment.
 
All
of that was in her eyes, and as she stepped toward Fox, she rubbed her own
arms, as if she could already feel the fur on her skin as well.

"Where's
Will?
"
Jacob asked.

Clara pointed
at the tower next to the gate.
 
"He's been up there for over an hour.
 
He hasn't said a word yet," she added,
"since he saw them."

They both knew
whom she was talking about.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Nowhere did
the roses grow as densely around the circular walls of the tower.
 
Their blossoms were of such a dark red that
the night tinged them almost black, and their scent hung heavily in the cold
air, as if they did not feel the autumn.

Jacob already
knew what he would find under the pointed roof before he started climbing the steep
spiral stairs.
 
He had to keep freeing
his boots form the thorny tendrils, but finally he was standing in front of the
room where, two hundred years earlier, a Fairy had delivered her birthday
present.

The spinning
wheel stood next to a narrow bed that had never been meant for a princess.
 
The body that lay on it was covered with rose
petals.
 
The Fairy's curse had kept it
from aging, but the princess's skin was like parchment and nearly as yellowed
as the dress she'd been wearing for two centuries.
 
The embroidered pearls still shimmered in
brilliant white, but the lace at the hem had turned as brown as the petals that
covered the silk.

Will was
standing by the only window, as if the prince had finally arrived.
 
Jacob's steps made him spin around.
 
The stone now also stained his forehead, and
the blue of his eyes was drowning in gold.
 
The bandits had stolen what was most precious — time.

"No
‘happily ever after’ here," Will said, looking over at the princess.
 
"This was also the curse of a
Fairy."

He leaned his
back against the rough wall.
 
"Are
you feeling better?"

"Yes,"
Jacob said, lying.
 
"What about
you?"

Will didn't
answer right away.
 
And when he did, his
voice sounded as cool and smooth as his new skin.

"My face
feels like polished stone.
 
The night
grows brighter with every passing day, and I could hear you long before you
reached the stairs.
 
I don't just feel it
on my skin now."
 
He hesitated,
massaging his temples.
 
"It's inside
me as well."

He walked to
the bed and stared at the mummified body.
 
"I'd forgotten everything.
 
You.
 
Clara.
 
Myself.
 
All I knew was I wanted to ride to them."

Jacob searched
for words, but he found none.

"Is that
what's happening?
 
Tell me the
truth."
 
Will
looked
at him.
 
"I won't just look like
them; I'll be like them.
 
Won't I?"

Jacob had the
lies ready on the tip of his tongue, all the ‘Nonsense, Will!
 
Every will be fine!’ but it wouldn't pass his
lips.
 
His brother's look did not allow
it.

"You want
to know what they're
like?
"
 
Will plucked a rose leaf from the princess's
strawlike hair.
 
"They're
angry.
 
Their rage bursts inside you like
a flame.
 
But they are also stone.
 
They can feel it in the ground, breathing
beneath them."

He examined
the black nails on his hand.

"They are
darkness," he said quietly.
 
"And heat.
 
And the red moon
is their sun."

Jacob trembled
as he heard the stone in his brother's voice.

Say something, Jacob.
 
Anything
.
 
The dark chamber was so silent.

"
you
will not become like them," he finally said.
 
"Because I am going to
stop it."

"How?"
 
There it was again, the glance that suddenly was so much older than
he.
 
"Is it true, what you told
those bandits?
 
You're taking me to
another Fairy?"

"Yes."

"Is she
as dangerous as the one who did this?"
 
Will touched the brittle skin on the princess's face.
 
"Look out the window.
 
There are corpses hanging in the thorns.
 
You think I want you to end like that for my
sake?"

But Will's
eyes belied his words.
 
Help me, Jacob
, they said.
 
Help me
.

Jacob pulled
him away from the corpse.

"The
Fairy I'm taking you to
is
different," he
said.
 
Is she, Jacob?
 
He heard a
whisper inside him.
 
But he ignored it.

He put all the
hope he possessed into his voice.
 
And
all the confidence his brother wanted to hear:
 
"She'll help us, Will, I promise!"

It still
worked.
 
Hope still spread over Will's
face as easily as rage.
 
Brothers.
 
The elder and the younger.
 
Unchanged.

15

Soft Flesh

Threefingers
with the butcher's face was the first to speak.
 
Humans so liked to choose the wrong men as their leaders.
 
Hentzau could see his cowardice as clearly as
the watery blue of his eyes.
 
But at
least he had told them a few interesting details the moth had not shown
Hentzau.

The Jade Goyl
was not alone.
 
He was with a girl.
 
Also — and this was even more important — he
seemed to have a brother who had gotten it into his head to drive the jade from
his body.
 
If Threefingers was telling
the truth, then the brother was planning to take the Jade Goyl to the Red
Fairy.
 
Not such a dumb idea.
 
She despised her dark sister as much as the
other Fairies did.
 
Still, Hentzau was
sure she wouldn't be able to break the curse.
 
The Dark Fairy was so much more powerful than all the others.

No Goyl had
ever seen the island that was home to the Fairies, let alone set foot on
it.
 
The Dark Fairy guarded the secrets
of her sisters, even though they had cast her out, and everybody knew you could
only reach their island if they wanted you to.

"How is
he going to find her?"

"He
didn't say!
"
Threefingers stammered.

Hentzau nodded
to the only She-Goyl in his squad.
 
He
didn't enjoy striking human flesh.
 
He
could kill them, yes, but he avoided touching them.
 
Nesser had no such qualms.

She kicked
Threefingers in the face, and Hentzau gave her a look of warning.
 
Her sister had been killed by humans, and so
Nesser tended to overdo it.
 
For a brief
moment, Nesser held his gaze, full of defiance, but then she lowered her
head.
 
Hatred had by now engulfed them
all like slime.

"He
didn't say," Threefingers stammered again.
 
"I swear."

His flesh was
as pale and as soft as a snail's.
 
Hentzau turned away in disgust.
 
He was certain they had told him all they knew, and it was because of
them that the Jade Goyl had gotten away.

"Shoot
them!" he ordered, and went outside.

The shots
sounded strange in the silence, like something that didn't belong in this
world.
 
Guns, steam
engines, trains
; to Hentzau it still all felt unnatural.
 
He was getting old — that was the
trouble.
 
The sunlight had clouded his
eyes, and his hearing had been so damaged by all the battle noise that Nesser
had to raise her voice whenever she addressed him.
 
Kami’en acted as if he didn't notice.
 
But the Dark Fairy would make sure everybody
else knew — as soon as she found out that a bunch of plunderers had made him
lose the Jade Goyl.

Hentzau could
still picture him standing there.
 
The
face, half Goyl, half human, the skin suffused with their holiest of
stones.
 
He wasn't the Jade Goyl.
 
He couldn't be.
 
He was as
fake
as
one of those wooden fetishes, covered with gold leaf and sold to old women as
solid gold.
 
"Behold, the Jade Goyl has come to make our King invincible.
 
But don't cut too deep, or you will find
human flesh."
 
Yes, that's what
it was.
 
Nothing but
another attempt by the Fairy to make herself indispensable.

Hentzau
squinted into the gathering night.
 
Even
the darkness turned
to
 
jade
.

What if you're wrong, Hentzau?
 
What if he is the real thing?
 
What if your King's destiny depends on him?
 
And he had let him get away.

When the scout
finally returned, even Hentzau's dimmed eyes could see from his face that he
had lost the trail.
 
Once he would have
killed the scout on the spot, but he'd learned to control the rage that lurked
in all of them, although not half as well as his King.

That meant all
he had to go on was what Threefingers had said about the Red Fairy.
 
He would have to swallow his pride once more
and send a messenger to the Dark Fairy to ask her for directions.
 
The prospect pained him more than the cold
night air.

"You will
find me their tracks!" he barked at the scout.
 
"As soon as it gets
light.
 
Three
horses and a fox.
 
Can't be that hard!"

He was just
asking himself whom he should send to the Dark Fairy, when Nesser approached
him.
 
She was just thirteen years
old.
 
At that age Goyl were fully grown,
but most of them didn't join the army until they were at least fourteen.
 
Nesser was not very good with the saber, nor
was she a particularly good shot, but her courage more than made up for those
shortcomings.
 
At her age, fear was an
unfamiliar concept; you felt immortal, even without the blood of a Fairy
coursing through your veins.
 
Hentzau
remembered the feeling all too well.

"Commander?"

He loved the
reverence in her young voice.
 
It was
still the best antidote for the doubts the Dark Fairy had sown in him.

"What?"

"I know
how to get to the Fairies.
 
Not the island... but to the valley from where it can be
reached."

"Is that
so?"
 
Hentzau did not show his
relief.
 
He was fond of the girl, and
that made him even
more strict
with her.
 
Like his own skin, Nesser's resembled brown
jasper, thought, as in all Goyl females, hers was suffused with amethyst.

"I was
part of the escort the King sends with the Fairy when she goes traveling.
 
I accompanied her on her last visit to her
sisters.
 
She left us to wait for her at
the entrance to the valley, but..."