Reckless (Free Preview) (24 page)

You don't have to find her anymore,
Jacob.
 
She came to you!

Clara shrank
away as the Dark Fairy stepped into Will's cell, but Jacob clasped his fingers
around the metal bars that separated him from her.
 
Come
closer!
 
Come on
!
he
thought.
 
Just one
touch,
and
the three syllables her sister had taught him.
 
But the bars put her as far out of his reach as if she were lying in her
royal lover's bed.
 
Her skin seemed to be
made of pearl, and her beauty surpassed even that of her sister.
 
She eyed Clara with the same disdain all her
kind had for human women.

"You love
him?"
 
The Dark Fairy caressed
Will's sleeping face.
 
"Go on, tell
me."

Clara stumbled
back, but her own shadow came alive and wrapped its black fingers around her
ankles.

"Answer
her, Clara," Jacob said.

"Yes,"
she stuttered.
 
"Yes.
 
I love him."

Clara's shadow
became once again nothing but a shadow, and the Fairy smiled.

"Good.
 
Then you surely want to wake him up.
 
All you have to do is kiss him."

Clara cast a
pleading glance at Jacob.

"No
!
he
wanted to say.
 
Don't
do it!
 
But his tongue no longer
obeyed him.
 
His lips were numb, as if
the Fairy had sealed them, and he could but watch helplessly as she took
Clara's arm and gently led her to Will's side.

"Look at
him!" she said.
 
"If you don't
wake him, he'll just lie like that forever, neither dead nor alive, until even
his soul has turned to dust in his withered body."

Clara wanted
to turn away, but the Fairy held her.

"Is that
love?
"
Jacob heard her whisper.
 
"To betray him like that, just because
his skin is no longer as soft as yours?
 
Let him go."

Clara lifted
her hand and stroked Will's stone face.

The Dark Fairy
let go of her arm and stepped back with a smile.

"Put all
your love in that kiss!" she said.
 
"You will see; it doesn't die as easily as you think."

And Clara
closed her eyes as though she wanted to forget Will's petrified face, and she
kissed him.

39

Awoken

For a moment,
Jacob hoped against all reason that the person stirring in the neighboring cell
was still his brother.
 
But Clara's face
quickly set him straight.
 
She stumbled
over the hem of her dress as she backed away, and the look she gave Jacob was
so full of despair it even made him forget his own pain.

His brother
was gone.

Any trace of
human skin had vanished, and he was nothing but breathing stone, his familiar
body now cast in jade like a dead insect in amber.

Goyl.

Will didn't
see Jacob or Clara as he rose from the sandstone bench on which he had
lain.
 
His eyes sought only one
face
— that of the Fairy.
 
Jacob felt the pain tear through all those protective shells he had
fastened around his heart for so many years.
 
It was, once again, just as raw and defenseless as he had last felt as a
child in his father's deserted study, and, as then, there was no comfort, just
love.
 
And pain.

"Will?"
 
Clara whispered her brother's name like that
of a dead man.
 
She took a step toward
him, but the Fairy stepped into her path.

"Let him
go," she said.

The guards
opened the cell, and the Fairy led Will out.

"Come
with me," she said to him.
 
"It's time to wake up.
 
You've slept far too long."

Clara looked
after them until they disappeared down the dark corridor.
 
Then she turned to Jacob.
 
Blame, anguish, guilt turned her eyes as dark
as the Fairy's.
 
What have I done
?
they
asked him.
 
Why did you not stop me?
 
Didn't you promise to protect him?

Or maybe he
was just reading his own thoughts into her glance.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

"Shall we
shoot this one?" asked one of the guards, pointing his rifle at Jacob.

Hentzau drew
the pistol they had taken from Jacob.
 
He
opened the chamber, scrutinizing it like the core of some strange fruit.

"This is
an interesting weapon," he said.
 
"Where did you get it?"

Jacob turned
his back to him.
 
Just shoot already
, he thought.

The cell, the Goyl, the hanging palace.
 
Everything around him seemed so unreal.
 
The whole underground city.
 
Fairies, enchanted forests,
a vixen who was a girl — nothing but the feverish dreams of a twelve-year-old.
 
He saw himself standing in the doorway of his
father's study, Will inquisitively staring past him at the dusty model planes,
the old revolvers.
 
And
the mirror.

"Turn
around."
 
Hentzau's voice was impatient.
 
Their rage was so easily stirred, constantly
burning just beneath their stone skin.

Jacob still
didn't move.
 
Then he heard the Goyl
laugh out loud.

"The same arrogance!
 
Your brother doesn't look like him.
 
That's why I didn't realize right away why your face looks so
familiar.
 
The same
eyes.
 
The same
mouth.
 
But your father never
could hide his fear as well as you do."

Jacob turned
around.
 
You're such an idiot, Jacob Reckless
.

"The Goyl have better engineers."
 
How often Jacob had heard that sentence in
the mirror — be it in Schwanstein or uttered by a despairing imperial officer —
and he had never thought twice about it.

The father
found, the brother lost.

"Where is
he?" he asked.

Hentzau raised
his eyebrows.
 
"I had hoped you'd
tell me.
 
We caught him five years ago in
Blenheim.
 
He'd been hired to build a
bridge because the townspeople had grown tired of being eaten by the
Lorelei.
 
The river has always been teeming
with them.
 
It's a lie that the Fairy put
them in there.
 
John
Reckless.
 
That's what he called
himself.
 
Always had a
photograph of his sons with him.
 
The King had him build us a camera, long before the Empress's scientists
came up with anything like that.
 
He
built many things for us.
 
Who would’ve
thought that one of his sons would become the jade
Goyl.
"

Hentzau ran
his fingers along the old-fashioned barrel.
 
"He wasn't half as stubborn as you when it came to answering our
questions.
 
What he taught us turned out
to be very useful in the war.
 
But then
he disappeared.
 
I searched for him for
months but never found a trace of him.
 
And now I have his sons."

He turned to
the guards.

"Keep him
alive until I get back from the wedding," he said.
 
"There are a lot of questions I want to
ask him."

"And the girl?"
 
The guard who was pointing at Clara had a skin of moonstone as pale as
if it had never seen the sun.

"Keep her
as well," Hentzau replied.
 
"And the fox girl, too.
 
The
two of them will probably loosen his tongue much faster than the
scorpions."

Hentzau's
steps receded into the darkness.
 
Through
the barred windows came the sounds of the underground city.
 
But Jacob was far away, in his father's room,
touching the frame of the mirror with a child's hands.

40

The Strength of Dwarfs

Jacob heard
Clara's breathing in the darkness — and her crying.
 
They were still separated by iron bars, but
even more by their thoughts of Will.
 
In
Jacob's mind, the kisses Clara had given him merged with the kiss that had
awoken his brother.
 
And he kept seeing
Will opening his eyes and drowning in jade.

He choked on
his own despair.
 
The Dark Fairy had been
so close, just a few steps away.
 
Had
Miranda watched it in her dreams?
 
Seen
how miserably he had failed?

Jacob slammed
his manacles against the bars, though all that had gotten him so far were more
kicks from the guards.

Clara wiped
the tears from her face.
 
How she melted
his heart.
 
It's nothing, Jacob.
 
Nothing but the Larks' Water
.

Through the
barred window, the hanging palace shimmered like a forbidden fruit.
 
Will was probably there already...

Clara lifted
her head.
 
From outside the window came a
scraping sound, a dull grinding,
the
sound of
something climbing up the wall.
 
A hairy
face squeezed through the bars of the cell's window.

Valiant's
beard was already sprouting as luxuriantly as in the old days, when he'd still
worn it with pride.
 
His short fingers
easily bent the iron bars apart.

"You're
lucky the Goyl haven't had many Dwarf prisoners yet!" he whispered as he
climbed through the warped bars.
 
"The Empress has silver added to all bars in her cells."

He dropped
down from the window as nimbly as a weasel and took a deep bow in front of
Clara.

"What are
you looking at?" he said to Jacob.
 
"It really was too funny when the snakes grabbed you.
 
Absolutely priceless."

"I'm sure
the Goyl paid you quite well for that show."
 
Jacob got to his feet and quickly checked the
corridor, but there were no guards in sight.
 
"And just when did you sell me out?
 
While I spent hours waiting in front of the jeweler's shop?
 
Or was it at the tailor, who supplies the
palace?"

Valiant just
shook his head while he pulled open Clara's manacles as easily as he'd bent the
window bars.
 
"Will you listen to
that!" he whispered to Clara.
 
"Can't trust a soul.
 
I told him it was an imbecile idea to go crawling all over the King's
palace like a roach.
 
Did he listen to
me?
 
No."

The Dwarf
pressed the bars between the two cells open and stood in front of Jacob.
 
"I suppose you're going to blame me for
the girls, as well?
 
It wasn't my idea to
leave them in the wilderness.
 
And it was
definitely not Evenaugh Valiant who told the Goyl where they were."

He leaned over
Jacob with a knowing smirk.
 
"They
put the scorpions on you, didn't they?
 
Oh, I do admit I would’ve loved to have seen that."

There were
voices from the other cells.
 
Clara cowered
beneath the window, but no one came down the corridor.

"I saw
your brother," Valiant whispered to Jacob as he forced open his
handcuffs.
 
"If
you can still call him that.
 
Every inch of his skin is now Goyl, and he follows the Dark Fairy like a
dog.
 
She took him with her to the
wedding of her beloved.
 
Half the
garrison went.
 
That's why I could risk
coming here."

Clara did not
take her eyes off the stone bench where Will had lain.

"Up with
you, M'lady!
"
Valiant whispered.
 
He helped her up to the window as though she
didn't weigh any more than a child.
 
"There a rope out there that does almost all the climbing for
you,
and this building doesn't have any snakes."

"What
about Fox?
"
Jacob hissed.

Valiant
pointed to the ceiling.
 
"Right above us."

The façade of
the prison stalactite was fissured and craggy, like dripstone, and it offered
plenty of footholds, but Clara trembled as she leant out the window.
 
She held on tight to the balustrade while her
feet sought purchase between the stones.
 
Valiant, however, gripped the wall as if he'd been born to it.