Reckless (Free Preview) (11 page)

This was too
good to be true.
 
He would not have to
beg for help.
 
And nobody would need to
know that the Jade Goyl had eluded him.
 
Hentzau clenched his fist, but Nesser saw only his impassive face.

"All
right," he
said,
his tone studiously
uninterested.
 
"Tell the scout
you'll be leading the way from now on.
 
But you'd better not get us lost."

"I won't,
Commander!"
 
Nesser's golden eyes
glistened with confidence as she quickly walked away.

Hentzau just
stared down the unpaved road in the direction the Jade Goyl had escaped.
 
One of the looters had claimed that the
brother was injured, and they would have to stop somewhere to sleep.
 
Hentzau could go for days without sleep.
 
He would be waiting for them.

16

Not Ever

It was still
dark when Jacob made them break camp.
 
He
desperately needed sleep, but not even Fox could convince him to rest longer,
and Clara had to admit that she was glad to get away from all those sleeping
dead.

It was a clear
night.
 
Black velvet, studded with
stars.
 
The trees and hills like
silhouettes, and Will beside her but only seemingly close.
 
So familiar and yet so
strange.

Clara looked
across at him, and he smiled back as his eyes met hers.
 
But it was a mere shadow of the smile she
knew.
 
It had always been so easy to get
a smile from him.
 
Will
gave
love so freely.
 
And it was so easy to love him back.
 
Nothing had ever been as easy.
 
She didn't want to lose him, but the world around her whispered,
"He belongs to me."
 
And they
were riding deeper and deeper into it, as if they needed to find its heart to
make it release his brother again.

Let him go!

Clara wanted
to shout into the dismal face of this world.

Let him go!

But the world
behind the mirror was also reaching out for her.
 
She already felt its dark fingers on her own
skin.
 
"What do you want here?"
the strange night whispered.
 
"What
skin shall I give you?
 
Do you want
fur?
 
Do you want stone?"

"No,"
Clara whispered back.
 
"I will find
your heart, and you will give him back to me."

Yet Clara already
felt her new skin growing.
 
So soft.
 
Far too soft.
 
And she
felt the dark fingers reaching for her own heart.

And she was so
afraid.

17

A Guide
To
The Fairies

It was true
what they said about the Fairies.
 
Nobody
came to them if they didn't want you to.
 
That had also been true when Jacob had first searched for them three
years ago, but even then there had been a way to find them.

You just had
to bribe the right Dwarf.

There had
always been those Dwarfs who claimed they traded with the Fairies and who
proudly displayed lilies on their family crests.
 
Most of them, however, had just told Jacob
dusty old tales about their ancestors before finally admitting that the last
family member who had actually seen a Fairy had died more than a century
ago.
 
Finally, however, one of the Dwarfs
at the imperial court had mentioned the name Evenaugh Valiant.

At that time,
the Empress had offered a fortune in gold for a lily from the Fairy
lake
, for its scent was reputed to turn ugly girls into
beautiful women.
 
The prince consort had
been declaring himself increasingly disappointed with the appearance of their
only daughter.
 
He had died shortly
afterward in a hunting accident which, as sharp tongues had claimed, had been
arranged by his own wife.
 
But since the
Empress had always valued her husband's taste more than the man himself, she
had not withdrawn the reward for the lily, and so Jacob, who at that time was
already working without Chanute, had set off to find Evenaugh Valiant.

Finding the
Dwarf had not been hard, and for a sizable amount of gold, he actually led
Jacob to the valley where the Fairies lived.
 
But his guide had neglected to tell Jacob about the creatures that
guarded the valley, and Jacob had nearly paid with his life for that little
excursion.
 
Valiant, however, sold the
lily to the Empress, and it turned her daughter, Amalie, into an acclaimed
beauty, and him into a purveyor to the court.

Jacob had
imagined many times
who
he would settle his score with
the Dwarf, but after he returned from the Fairies, he had lost his taste for
revenge.
 
He'd won the imperial gold
through another assignment, and finally he had managed to push out of his mind
any memory of Evanaugh Valiant or the island, where he had been so happy that
he had nearly forgotten himself.
 
So what does that teach you, Jacob Reckless
?
he
wondered as
the first Dwarf dwellings appeared among the fields and hedgerows.
 
That,
on the whole, revenge is not such a great idea
.
 
All the same, his heart clenched at the
prospect of meeting the Dwarf again.

Not even the
hood could conceal the stone on Will's face any longer, and Jacob decided to
leave him and Clara behind with Fox while he rode into Terpevas (which, in the
language of its inhabitants, means nothing else but ‘Dwarf City’).
 
In a little wood, Fox found a cave that the
local shepherds used as a shelter.
 
Will
followed his brother into its shade as if he couldn't wait to get out of the
daylight.
 
There was only a small patch
of human skin left on his right cheek, and with every passing day Jacob found
it harder to look at him.
 
The eyes were
the worst.
 
Both were drowning in gold,
and Jacob had to struggle ever harder against the fear that he might have
already lost his race against time.
 
Sometimes Will would return his glance as if he had already forgotten
who he was, and Jacob thought he could see their shared past fading from his
brother's eyes.

Clara had not
followed them into the cave.
 
When Jacob
walked with Fox back to the horses, he saw her standing among the trees, still
wearing men's clothes and looking so lost that for a moment Jacob mistook her
for one of the orphan boys found everywhere in this world, waiting by the
roadside, ready to do any kind of work.
 
The autumn grass growing between the trees was the same color as her hair,
and he could barely see the other world in her anymore.
 
The memories of the streets and houses where
they all had grown up, of the lights and the noise, and of the girl she had
been there — all but faded, far away.
 
The present swiftly became the past, and the future suddenly wore
strange clothes.

"Will
doesn't have much time left."

She didn't
phrase it as a question.
 
She faced
things, even if they scared her.
 
Jacob
liked that about her.

"And you
need a doctor," she said, seeing him flinch with pain as he swung himself
onto the mare.
 
All the flowers, leaves
and roots Fox had shown her had done nothing to check the infection in his
shoulder.
 
It was already making him
feverish.

"She's
right," said Fox.
 
"Go to one
of the Dwarf doctors.
 
They're supposed
to be even better than the Empress's personal physicians."

"Yes, if
you're a Dwarf.
 
Their only ambition with
human patients is to make them pay and then send them to an early grave.
 
Dwarfs don't think very highly of us,"
he added in response to Clara's puzzled look, "even those who serve the
Empress.
 
Nothing earns a Dwarf more
prestige than having successfully fleeced a human."

"But you
still know one you can trust?"

Fox uttered a
scornful growl.
 
She brushed around
Clara's legs.
 
Forging
an alliance.
 
"Trust?
 
The Dwarf he's going to see is even less
trustworthy than the others!
 
Ask him
where he got the scars on his back."

"That was
a long time ago."

"And?
 
Why should
he have changed?"
 
Anger had
replaced the fear in Fox's voice.

Clara looked
at Jacob with even more concern.

"Why
don't you at least take Fox with you?"

For that, the
vixen brushed around Clara's legs even more affectionately.
 
She now always sought Clara's company, and
for Clara she had even begun to shift into her human form more often.

Jacob turned
the horse about.

"No.
 
Fox stays here," he said.

Fox lowered
her head and did not protest.
 
She knew
just as well as he did that neither Will nor Clara understood this world well
enough to be left alone in it.

As Jacob
reached the first bend in the road, he looked back and saw her, still sitting
beside Clara, watching him ride away.
 
His brother hadn't even asked him where he was going.
 
Will was hiding from the sun.

18

Whispering Stone

Will
heard
the stone.
 
He
heard it as clearly as his own breathing.
 
The sounds came from the cave walls, from the jagged ground beneath his
feet, from the rocky ceiling above... vibrations to which his body responded as
if it were made of them.
 
He no longer
had a name, only the new skin that cocooned him, cool and protective, and the
new strength in his muscles, and the pain in his eyes when he looked at the
sunlight.

He ran his
hands over the rock, reading its age from its stony folds.
 
They whispered to him about what was hidden
beneath the innocuous gray surface:
 
striped agate, pale white moonstone, golden citrine, black onyx.
 
They showed him images:
 
of underground cities, of petrified water, of
dim light reflecting in windows of malachite...

"Will?"

He turned
around, and the rock fell silent.

A woman was
standing in the cave's entrance, the sunlight clinging to her hair as if she
were made of it.

Clara.
 
Her face brought memories of another world,
where stone had meant nothing more than walls and dead streets.

"Are you
hungry?
 
Fox caught a rabbit, and she
showed me how to make a fire."

She stepped
toward him and took his face between her hands, such soft hands, and so
colorless against the green that was spreading through his skin.
 
Her touch made him shudder, though Will tried
to hide that from her.
 
He loved her,
didn't he?

If only her
skin weren't so soft and pale.

"Can you
hear anything?" he asked.

She looked at
him, puzzled.

"Never
mind," he said.
 
And he kissed her,
trying to forget how he suddenly longed to find amethyst in her skin.
 
Her lips brought back more memories:
 
of a house as high as a tower, of nights lit
by artificial light and not by the gold in his eyes...

"I love
you, Will."
 
Clara whispered the
words as if she wanted to banish the stone with them.
 
But the stone whispered louder, and
Will
wanted to forget the name she'd called him.

I love you, too
.
 
He wanted to say it, because he knew he'd
said it so many times before.
 
But he was
no longer sure what it meant or whether it could be felt by a heart of stone.

"It will
be okay," she whispered.
 
She
stroked his face, as if trying to feel his old flesh under the new skin.
 
"Jacob will be back soon."

Jacob.
 
Another name.
 
pain
clung to it,
and he remembered how all too often he had called that name without receiving
an answer.
 
Empty rooms.
 
Empty days.

Jacob.
 
Clara.
 
Will.

He wanted to
forget them all.

He pushed away
the soft hands.

"Don't,"
he said.
 
"Don't touch me."

How she looked
at him.
 
Pain.
 
Love.
 
Blame.
 
He'd seen it all before, on another
face:
 
his mother's.
 
Too much pain.
 
Too much love.
 
He didn't want all that anymore.
 
He wanted the stone, cool and firm, so different from all the softness,
the yielding, the vulnerability, and the lachrymose flesh.