Reckless (Free Preview) (33 page)

An endless
parade of coaches and carriages was waiting in front of the cathedral.
 
The Fairy remained at the top of the steps,
like a threat, while the surviving Goyl formed a cordon from which there could
be no escape.
 
Not one of the imperial
soldiers managing the crowds noticed that the carriages were being filled with
hostages and that one of them was their Empress.

She was
shaking as Donnersmarck helped her into the carriage.
 
He'd survived the carnage, together with two
of her Dwarfs.
 
One of them was Auberon,
her favorite.
 
His bearded face was
swollen from the stings of the moths.
 
Jacob knew only too well how the Dwarf felt.
 
He was numb himself.
 
Clara wasn't looking any better, and Valiant
tripped over his own feet as they descended the steps of the cathedral.
 
Jacob was carrying Fox in his arms so that
the Goyl wouldn't chase her away.
 
They
were all hostages, human decoration,
a
camouflaged
escort for the Fairy's lover, whose troops were standing by barely a day's
march away.

What have you done, Jacob?

He had
protected his brother.
 
And Will was
alive.
 
His skin was jade, but he
lived.
 
Jacob only regretted that he had
lost the willow leaves, and, with them, any hope of protecting them from the
Fairy.
 
She watched him as he followed
Clara and Fox into the carriage.
 
Her
anger still burned on Jacob's skin.
 
He
had gambled everything on keeping his brother alive, and in the process he'd
turned the Empress and with her half of the Mirrorworld into his enemies.

Each coachman
was joined by a Goyl before setting off, and as soon as the carriages reached
one of the bridges leading out of the city, the drivers were summarily shoved
off their boxes.
 
The guards escorting
the wedding couple tried to intervene, but the Dark Fairy unleashed her moths,
and the Goyl steered the carriages unimpeded across the bridge, and from there
into one of the streets on the other side.

A dozen carriages.
 
Forty soldiers.
 
A
Fairy protecting the man she loved.
 
A princess who had said "I do" among the dead.
 
And a King who had trusted
his enemies and would surely take revenge for their betrayal.

As they
rattled along the cobbled streets, Jacob kept repeating to himself:
 
Your
brother is alive, Jacob.
 
Nothing else
matters
.
 
All the while, Valiant was
cursing himself for wanting to go to a royal wedding.

Dark clouds
drifted across the sky like bad omens as the convoy rumbled through a gate,
behind which a group of plain buildings surrounded a wide courtyard.
 
Everyone in Vena knew about the old munitions
factory — enough to avoid it.
 
The
factory had been abandoned after the river flooded the area a few years
earlier, leaving the buildings filled with water and foul-smelling mud.
 
During the last cholera epidemic, the sick
had been brought there to die.
 
Not that
the Goyl would have been bothered by that.
 
They were immune to most human diseases.

"What are
they going to do with us?
"
Clara whispered as
their carriage stopped next to the redbrick wall.

"I don't
know," Jacob answered.

Valiant,
however, clambered onto the seat and peered out into the deserted yard.
 
"I think I might," he muttered.

Will climbed out
of the golden carriage first, followed by the King and his bride.
 
The Goyl pulled their hostages from the other
carriages.
 
One of them shoved the
Empress back as she tried to reach her daughter, and Donnersmarck quickly drew
her to his side.

The Dark Fairy
stood alone in the middle of the yard, looking around vigilantly.
 
She was not about to let her beloved stumble
into another ambush.
 
Five moths
fluttered up from her dress and into the crumbling buildings.
 
Silent spies.
 
Winged death.

The Goyl looked
at their King.
 
Forty soldier who had all
narrowly escaped death and were now isolated in the heart of their enemies'
territory.
 
What now
?
their
faces asked.
 
They struggle to hide their
fear under their helpless rage.
 
Kami’en
waved three of them to him.
 
They had the
alabaster skin of Goyl spies.

"Make
sure the tunnel is safe."
 
The
King's voice sounded relaxed.
 
If he was
afraid, he managed to hide it better than his soldiers.

"I bet
you my gold tree I know where they're trying to go," Valiant whispered as
the three
alabaster
Goyl vanished between the
buildings.
 
"One of our more
dim-witted ministers built a tunnel from here to Vena some years ago because he
didn't believe there was a future in trains.
 
The tunnel was to supply this factory.
 
I did hear rumors that the Goyl connected it with their western fortress
and that their spies like to use it."

A tunnel.
 
Back underground, Jacob
.
 
If they didn't shoot their
hostages first.

The Goyl were
herding the prisoners together.
 
Jacob
leaned down to grab Fox before she could get lost between all the shuffling
feet, but one of the Goyl pulled him roughly out of the crowd.
 
Jasper and amethyst.
 
Nesser.
 
Jacob remembered all too well how she had put
the scorpions on his chest.
 
Fox wanted
to jump after him, but Clara quickly lifted the vixen into her arms as the
She-Goyl cocked her pistol.

"Hentzau's
more dead than alive!" she hissed at Jacob as she led him away.
 
"Why are you still breathing?"

She shoved him
across the courtyard, past the King, who was standing with Will by the
carriages and was conferring with the two Goyl officers who had survived the
carnage.
 
They did not have much
time.
 
By now someone had surely found
the dead in the cathedral.

The Dark Fairy
was standing at the bottom of a flight of steps that led down to the
river.
 
The stone arm of a jetty reached
out into the water, which the refuse of the city covered like a grimy skin, but
the Fairy was looking across the river as if she could see the lilies among
which she had been born.
 
She's going to kill you, Jacob.

"Leave me
alone with him, Nesser," she said.

The She
-Goyl hesitated, but then she left, giving Jacob one
last scathing look.

The Fairy
rubbed her white arms.
 
Jacob saw traces
of bark on her wrist.
 
"You gambled
everything, and you lost."

"My
brother is the one who lost."

He was so
tired.
 
How was she going to kill
him?
 
With her moths?
 
With some curse?

The Fairy
looked up at Will.
 
More than ever, he
and the King seemed to belong together.

"He was
everything I hoped for," she said.
 
"Look at him.
 
All that
petrified flesh, sown just for him."

She brushed
some bark off her arm.

"I will
give him back to you," she said.
 
"But I have one condition:
 
that you take him away from here, far, far away.
 
So far that I won't be able
to find him.
 
For
if I do, I will kill him."

He was
dreaming.
 
Yes.
 
He must be.
 
Some kind of fevered hallucination.
 
He was probably still lying in the cathedral,
her moths pumping venom into his skin.

"Why?"
 
He barely even managed to say that one word.

Why are you asking her, Jacob?
 
Do you really want to know if this is a
dream?
 
If it is, it's a good one.
 
She's giving you your brother back.

The Fairy
didn't answer him right anyway.

"Take him
to the building by the gate, and wait for me there.
 
But hurry, and watch out for Kami’en.
 
He won't appreciate losing his jade
shadow."

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Jasper, onyx, moonstone.
 
Jacob cursed his human skin as he crossed the courtyard, keeping his
head down.
 
Most of the surviving Goyl
were probably not aware that they owed their escape to him.
 
Fortunately, most of them were guarding the
hostages or looking after the wounded, so Jacob managed to reach the carriages
unchallenged.

The King was
standing with his officers.
 
The
alabaster Goyl had not returned.
 
The
princess approached her husband and talked to him.
 
Finally Kami’en led her away.
 
Will's eyes stayed on his King, but he did
not follow.

Now, Jacob
.

Will's hand
went for his saber as soon as Jacob appeared from between the carriages.

Do you want to play catch, Will?

His brother
shoved a couple of Goyl out of his way, and he began to run.
 
His wounds didn't seem to impede him.
 
Not too
fast, Jacob.
 
Let him come closer, just
as you used to do when you were kids
.
 
Back behind the carriages, past the shed where they'd locked up the
hostages,
and on to the building by the gate.
 
Jacob kicked open the door.
 
A dark hallway with
boarded-up windows.
 
The patches
of light on the grimy floor looked like puddles of milk.
 
The next room was full of beds for the
cholera victims.
 
Jacob squeezed himself
behind the open door.

Will spun
around when Jacob slammed the door shut behind him.
 
For a moment his face showed the same
surprise as when Jacob had hidden behind a tree in the park, but nothing in his
eyes indicated that he recognized Jacob.
 
The stranger with his brother's face.
 
But he did catch the golden ball.
 
Hands have their own memory.
 
Will,
catch!
 
The ball swallowed him up
like a frog swallowing a fly.
 
Outside,
the tone King was looking vainly for his jade shadow.

Jacob picked
up the ball and sat on one of the beds.
 
His reflection stared back at him from the gold, distorted, like his
father's mirror.
 
He wasn't sure what
made him think of Clara; maybe it was the hospital smell that still lingered in
the old walls, so different and yet so like that of the other world.
 
Whatever it was, he caught himself imagining
for a moment, just one short moment, how it would be if he simply forgot about
the golden ball and put it into his chest in Chanute's tavern.

What's wrong with you, Jacob?
 
Is it the Larks' Water still?
 
Or is it that you're afraid that even if the
Fairy keeps her promise, your brother will forever be that stranger whose face
is disfigured by his hatred of you?

The Fairy
appeared so suddenly in the doorway, as if he'd summoned her with his thoughts.

"Well,
look at that!" she said, seeing the golden ball in his hands.
 
"I knew the girl who once played with
that ball.
 
A long time before you and
your brother were born.
 
She caught not
only her husband with it but also her older sister, and wouldn't let her out
for ten years."

She walked
toward Jacob, her dress wiping over the dirty floor.

He hesitated,
but at last he gave her the ball.

"Such a
pity," she said, lifting it to her lips.
 
"Your brother looks so much better in jade."
 
She breathed on the gleaming surface until
the gold misted over.
 
Then she handed
the ball back to Jacob.

"What?"
she said, noticing Jacob's doubtful look.
 
"
You're trusting
the wrong Fairy."

She came so
close to him that he could feel her breath on his face.

"My
sister didn't tell you that any man who utters my name will die.
 
Death will approach slowly, as befits the
revenge of an immortal.
 
You have maybe a
year left, but it won't be long before you feel its presence.
 
I'll show you."