Reckless (Free Preview) (22 page)

"That
gold tree had better last a good long time!" he said, growling as Jacob
bandaged his hand.
 
"If not, you
just accrued a whole new set of debts."

Two Guardians
still circled the bridge, but they didn't follow them into the tunnel.

The exertions
of the fight hadn’t made breathing any easier, and the maze of dark tunnels
seemed endless.
 
Jacob was just beginning
to wonder whether the Dwarf was playing another dirty trick on him, when the
tunnel suddenly took a sharp bend, and everything seemed to dissolve into
light.

"And here
it is!
"
Valiant said breathlessly.
 
"The lair of the
beast, or the lion's den, depending on whose side you happen to be on."

The tunnel had
ended high up in a cave that was so vast Jacob couldn't see where it
ended.
 
Countless lamps gave off the kind
of dim light Goyl eyes liked best, and they seemed to run not on gas but on
electricity.
 
They illuminated a city
that looked as if it had been extruded by the rock itself.
 
Houses, towers, and palaces grew from the
bottom of the cave and up its walls, like a wasps' nest.
 
Dozens of bridges arched over the expanse of
houses, as if there were nothing simpler than elevating iron through the air.
 
The struts grew up like metal stalks from
between the roofs.
 
Jacob saw railway
lines, streets, and footpaths, all crisscrossing the air above the city.
 
Some of the bridges were lined with
buildings, like the medieval bridges of his own world — floating alleyways
under a sandstone sky.
 
Higher up, above
the houses and the web of bridges that looked as if it had been woven by a
steel-spinning spider, hung a series of gigantic stalactites.
 
The largest one was dotted with metal towers
pointing downward like spears, and the whole structure glowed as if its walls
had been saturated with the moonlight of the world above.

"Is that
the palace?" whispered Jacob to the Dwarf.
 
"No wonder they're not impressed by our buildings.
 
And when did they build those bridges?"

"How
would I know?
"
Valiant replied in a low voice.
 
"They don't teach Goyl history at Dwarf
schools.
 
The palace is much more that
seven hundred years old.
 
Their King
apparently is planning a more modern version, as he thinks it's too
old-fashioned.
 
The other stalactites are
military barracks and prisons."
 
The
Dwarf gave Jacob a devious smile.
 
"Want me to find out which one your brother's in?
 
Your gold coins will loosen even Goyl
tongues.
 
As long as
there's a little extra for me."

When Jacob
produced two more coins, Valiant couldn't help himself.
 
He stretched,
then
pushed his short fingers into Jacob's coat pocket.

"Nothing!"
he muttered.
 
"Nothing
at all.
 
Is it this coat?
 
No, can't be; it also worked with the other
coat.
 
Is it something you do with your
fingers?"

"Something
like
that," Jacob answered.
 
He yanked the Dwarf's hand out of his pocket
before he could find the handkerchief.

"I'll
figure it out one of these days!" the Dwarf grumbled.
 
He tucked the two coins into his velvet
waistcoat.
 
"And now keep your head
bowed.
 
You're a slave."

The trails
that led down along the cave walls were even more impassable for a human than
the streets of Terpevas.
 
Some of the
paths were so steep that Jacob's feet kept slipping, and he had to constantly
clutch at doorframes and window ledges.
 
Valiant, however, moved through them as quickly as a Goyl.
 
The humans they encountered looked green for
lack of sunlight.
 
Most of them had the
initials of their owners branded or etched into their foreheads.
 
They didn't acknowledge Jacob, and neither
did the Goyl they passed in the gloomy labyrinth of houses.
 
The Dwarf by Jacob's side seemed to be
explanation enough, and Valiant relished loading him with all the things he
purchased from the various shops at which he inquired about Will's whereabouts.

"Bingo!"
he finally whispered, after making Jacob
wait
for more
than half an hour in front of a jeweler's.
 
"Good news and bad news," the Dwarf continued quietly.
 
"The good news is, I found out what we
wanted to know.
 
The King's most trusted
man brought a prisoner to the fortress, someone the Dark
Fairy
 
apparently
sent him to find.
 
That's definitely our jasper friend, but it
looks as if word hasn't spread yet that the prisoner has a jade skin."

"And
what's the bad news?"

"He's in
the palace.
 
In the
Fairy's quarters.
 
And he's fallen
into a deep sleep from which not even the Fairy has managed to wake him.
 
I assume you know what that's about?"

"Yes."
 
Jacob looked up at the huge stalactite.

"Forget
it!" the Dwarf hissed.
 
"Your
brother might as well have dissolved into thin air.
 
The Fairy's chambers are right at the very
tip there.
 
You'd have to fight your way
through the entire palace.
 
Not even you
can be crazy enough to try that."

Jacob studied
the dark windows in the shimmering stony façade.

"Can you
get an appointment with the officer you do business with?"

"And then
what?"
 
Valiant shook his head and
sneered.
 
"The slaves in the palace
all have the King's mark burnt into their foreheads.
 
Even if your brotherly love extends to doing
that to yourself, none of them is allowed to leave the upper parts of the
palace."

"What
about the bridges?"

"What
about them?"

Two of them
were directly linked to the palace.
 
One
was a railway bridge that vanished into a tunnel in the upper part of the
cave.
 
The second was one of the bridges
with houses, and it connected to the stalactite halfway down.
 
There were no buildings near where it entered
the palace, and Jacob got a clear view of an onyx-black gate and a double line
of sentries.

"That
expression on your face!
"
Valiant muttered.
 
"I don't like it at all."

Jacob ignored
him.
 
He was looking at the metal trusses
that held up the bridge.
 
They looked
from a distance as if they had been added later to support an older stone
structure, and they stuck like claws into the side of the hanging palace.

Jacob ducked
into an entrance and pointed his spyglass at the stalactite.
 
"The windows have no bars," he
whispered.

"Why
would they?
"
Valiant whispered back.
 
"Only the birds and the bats can get
anywhere near them."

The Dwarf fell
silent as a group of children filed past the alley.
 
Jacob had never seen a Goyl child before, and
for a moment he thought he recognized his brother in one of the boys.
 
Once they'd passed, Valiant looked back up at
the bridge.

"Hold
on!" he hissed.
 
"Now I know
what you're planning to do!
 
It's
insane!
 
Even you aren't that
stupid!"

Jacob pushed
the spyglass back into his coat.
 
"If you want that gold tree, you'd better get me on that
bridge!"

He would find
Will.
 
Even though he
had kissed his girl.

36

The Wrong Name

"Fox?"
 
There.
 
She was calling her
again.
 
Fox fantasized about the Waterman
dragging Clara down into his pond, the wolves tearing at her skin, or the Dwarf
selling her to the highest bidder at some slave market.
 
The Red Fairy had never made Fox feel that
way; neither had the Witch into whose hut Jacob had vanished every night some
years ago, nor the Empress's maid whose sweet flowery perfume she had once
smelled on his clothes for weeks.

"Fox?
 
Where are
you?"

Shut up!

Fox ducked
under the bushes.
 
She couldn't tell
anymore whether she was wearing fur or skin.
 
She no longer wanted her fur.
 
She
wanted skin, and lips, so he could kiss them as he had kissed Clara's
lips.
 
She couldn’t stop picturing Clara
in his arms, again and again.

Jacob.

What was this
yearning, tearing at her insides like hunger and thirst?
 
It couldn't be love.
 
Love was warm and soft, like a bed of
leaves.
 
But this was dark, like the
shade under a poisonous shrub, and it was hungry.
 
So hungry.

It must have
some other name, just as there couldn’t be the same word for life and death, or
for moon and sun.

Jacob.
 
Even his name suddenly tasted different.
 
And Fox felt a cold breeze on her human skin.

"Fox?"
 
Clara knelt down on the damp moss in front of her.

Her hair was like
gold.
 
Fox's hair was always red, red
like the fur of a vixen.
 
She couldn’t
remember whether it had ever been different.

She shoved
Clara away and stood up.
 
It felt good to
be the same size as her.

"Fox."
 
Clara reached for her arm as she pushed past her.
 
"I don't even know your name.
 
Your real name, I mean."

Real?
 
What was real
about it?
 
And how was it any of her
business?
 
Not even Jacob knew her human
name.
 
"Celeste, wash your face.
 
Celeste, comb your hair."

"Do you
still feel it?"
 
Fox stared into her
blue eyes.
 
Jacob could look you in the
eye and lie.
 
He was very good at it, but
not even he could fool the vixen.

Clara averted
her gaze, but Fox could smell what she
was
feeling,
all the fear and shame.
 
"Have you
ever drunk Larks' Water?"

"No,"
Fox answered disdainfully.
 
"No
vixen would ever be so stupid."
 
Who
cared that it was a lie?

Clara stared
at the stream.
 
The dead larks were still
stuck between the stones.
 
Clara.
 
Her name sounded like glass and cool water,
and Fox had liked her so much until Jacob kissed her.

It still
stung.

Call back the
fur, Fox.
 
But she couldn’t.
 
She wanted to feel her skin, her hands, and
the lips that could kiss.
 
Fox turned her
back to Clara, fearful that her human face could give her away.
 
She didn't even know anymore what it looked
like.
 
She had never cared.
 
Was it pretty?
 
Ugly?
 
Her mother had been pretty, and her father
had beaten her nevertheless.
 
Or because of it.

"Why do
you prefer being a fox?"
 
The night
had tinted Clara's eyes black.
 
"Does it make the world easier to understand?"

"Foxes
don't try to understand it."

Clara rubbed
her arms as if she could still feel Jacob's hands on them.
 
And Fox could see she wished for a fur of her
own.

37

At The Dark Fairy's Windows

Butchers, tailors, bakers, jewelers.
 
The bridge leading to the hanging palace was
like a dizzyingly high shopping street.
 
The windows displayed gems and minerals next to lizard meat and the
black-leaved cabbage that grew without sunlight.
 
There was bread, and there were fruits from
the various provinces above the ground, and the dried bugs that were considered
a delicacy by the Goyl.
 
But all Jacob
cared about was the palace beyond the storefronts.

It hung from
the roof of the cave like a sandstone chandelier.
 
Jacob felt quite dizzy as he leaned over the
balustrade between two shops to look down at where the stalactite ended in a
crystal crown, with its shimmering points reaching into the void.

"Which
are the windows of the Dark Fairy's chambers?"

"The malachite ones."
 
Valiant looked around nervously.