Reckless (Free Preview) (9 page)

Riders.

They came over
the fallow fields on horses that were as gray as their uniforms, and Will's
face said very clearly who they were, even before the weasel yelled it to the others.

"Goyl!"

The peasant
pointed his rifle at Will, as if only he could have called them, but Jacob shot
him before the man could pull the trigger.
 
Three of the Goyl, riding at full gallop, drew their sabers.
 
They still preferred fighting with their swords,
though their battles were now won with guns.
 
Clara stared, dumbfounded, at the stone faces — and then she looked at
Jacob.
 
Yes, that's what he's becoming.
 
You still love him now?

The bandits
sought cover behind a toppled cart.
 
They
had clearly forgotten about their prisoners, and Jacob quickly pushed Will and
Clara toward the horses.

"Fox!"
he yelled, grabbing the mare's reins.
 
Where was she?

Two of the
Goyl fell off their horses; the others took cover behind the barn.
 
Threefingers was a good shot.

Clara was
already sitting on her horse, but Will was just standing there, staring across
the yard at the Goyl.

"Get on
your horse, Will!
"
Jacob screamed as he swung
himself onto his mare.

But his
brother didn't stir.

Jacob was
about to drive his horse toward Will when he saw Fox scamper out of the
barn.
 
She was hobbling, and Jacob saw
the weasel aim his rifle at her.
 
He shot
the man down, but just as he reined in the mare and leaned forward to grab Fox
by her nape, he was hit on his injured shoulder by the butt of a rifle.
 
The boy.
 
He was standing there, holding his empty
rifle by the barrel.
 
He was already
striking out again, as if by killing Jacob he could slay his own fear.
 
The pain made everything swim in front of
Jacob's eyes.
 
He managed to draw his
pistol, but the Goyl were quicker.
 
They
swarmed out from behind the barn, and one of their bullets struck the boy in
the back.

Jacob grabbed
Fox and lifted her into the saddle.
 
Will
had also swung himself back onto his horse, though he was still staring at the
Goyl.

"Will!
"
Jacob yelled again.
 
"Ride, dammit!"

His brother
didn't even look at him.

"Will!
"
Clara screamed, glancing desperately at the fighting
men.

But Will only
came when Jacob snatched his reins.

"Ride!"
he barked at Will once more.
 
"Ride,
and don't look back."

And at last
his brother turned his horse.

13

Of The Use of Daughters

Defeated.
 
Therese of
Austry was standing by the window, staring down at the palace guards.
 
They were patrolling in front of the gate as
if nothing had happened.
 
The whole city
lay below her as if nothing had happened.
 
But she had lost a war.
 
For the first time.
 
And every night she dreamed she was drowning in bloody water, which
invariably turned into pale red stoneskin of her foe.

For the past
half hour, her ministers and generals had been explaining to her why she had
lost.
 
They were all in her audience
chamber, decorated with the medals she'd given them, and they tried to put the
blame on her.
 
"The Goyl rifles are
better."
 
"They have faster
trains."
 
But she knew this war was
being won by the King with the carnelian skin because he had a better grasp of
strategy than all of them together.
 
And because he had a mistress who, for the first time in more than
three hundred years, had but the magic of the Fairies in the service of a King.

A carriage
drew up to the gate, and three Goyl climbed out.
 
They acted so civilized.
 
They weren't even in uniform.
 
How she would have loved to order her guards
to drag them through the courtyard and club them to death, as her grandfather
would have done.
 
But these were
different times.
 
Now it was the Goyl who
did the clubbing.
 
They would sit down
with her counselors, sip tea from silver cups, and negotiate terms of
surrender.
 
The guards opened the gate,
and the Empress turned her back to the window as the Goyl crossed the
courtyard.

They were
still talking, all her useless, medaled generals, while her ancestors stared
down at her from the golden, silk-draped walls.
 
Right next to the door was a portrait of her father, gaunt and upright,
like a stork, continuously at war with his royal brother from Lotharaine, just
as she had been fighting his son, Crookback, for years.
 
Next to him was her grandfather, who like the
Goyl King, had once had an affair with a Fairy.
 
His yearning for her had finally driven him to drown himself in the
royal lily pond.
 
He'd had himself
portrayed on a Unicorn, for which his favorite horse was the model, with a
narwhal horn attached to its head.
 
It
looked ludicrous, and the Empress had always preferred the painting next to
his.
 
That one showed
her great-grandfather with his elder brother, who had been disinherited because
he had taken his alchemical experiments too seriously.
 
Her father had always been outraged by that
painting because the painter had caught his great-uncle's blind eyes so
realistically.
 
As a child, she would
push a chair under the picture, climbing up to get a closer look at the scars
around those empty eyes.
 
He'd supposedly
been blinded by an experiment in which he had tried to turn his own heart into
gold, and yet of all her ancestors, he was the only one who was smiling — which
had always made her think that his experiment must have been successful and
that he indeed had a golden heart beating in his chest.

Men.
 
All of them.
 
Crazy or
sane, but
always
 
men
.
 
For centuries only men had ascended to the
throne of Austry — and that had changed only because her father had sired four
daughters but not a single son.

She, too, had
no son, just a daughter.
 
But she had
never intended to turn her into a bargaining chip, as her father had done with
her younger sisters.
 
One for King
Crookback, in his gloomy castle in Lotharaine; one for her cousin
Albion
, the obsessive huntsman; and the youngest bartered
away to some eastern potentate who had already buried two wives.

No.
 
She had wanted to put her daughter on the
throne, to see her portrait on that wall, framed in gold, between all those
men.
 
Amalie of Austry, daughter of
Therese, who had once dreamed of being called The Great.
 
But there was no other way, or they would
both drown in that bloody water — she, her daughter, her people, her throne,
this city, and the whole country, together with those idiots who were still
holding forth about why they hadn't been able to win the war for her.
 
Therese's father would have had them all
executed.
 
But then what?
 
The next lot wouldn't be any better, and
their blood would not bring back all the soldiers she had lost, the provinces
that now belonged to the Goyl, nor her dignity, which in the past six months
had been choked in the mud of four battlefields.

"Enough!"

One
word,
and the room where her great-grandfather used to sign
death warrants fell silent.
 
Power.
 
Intoxicating.
 
Like a
fine wine.

How they bowed
their vain heads.
 
Look at them, Therese.
 
Wouldn't
it be nice to have them all chopped off after all?

The Empress
adjusted the tiara of elven glass that her great-grandmother had worn before
her, and waved one of the Dwarfs to her desk.
 
Hers were the only Dwarfs in this land who still wore beards.
 
Servants, bodyguards,
confidants.
 
Generations of
service to her family, and still in the same livery they had worn for over two
hundred years.
 
Lace collars over black
velvet, and then those ridiculously wide breeches.
 
Tasteless and completely unfashionable, but
you couldn't argue with Dwarfs about tradition any more than you could argue
with priests about religion.

"Write,"
she ordered.

The Dwarf
climbed onto her chair.
 
He had to kneel
on the pale golden cushion.
 
Auberon.
 
Her favorite and the smartest of them all.
 
The hand that now reached for the quill was
as small as a child's, but these hands would break iron chains as easily as her
cook's hands cracked an egg.

"We,
Therese of Austry—
"
 
Her
ancestors stared down at her disapprovingly.
 
What did they know of Kings brought forth
from the bowels of the earth, and a Fairy who turned human skin to stone to
make it like the skin of her lover?
 
"—herewith offer to Kami’en, King of the Goyl, our daughter
Amalie's
hand
 
in
marriage, to bring an end to the war and to bring peace to our two great
nations."

How the
silence erupted.
 
As if her words had
shattered the glass house in which they had all been sitting.
 
But it wasn't she, it was the Goyl, who had
struck the blow, and now she had to give him her daughter.

The Empress
turned her back on them, silencing their angered voices.
 
Only the rustle of her dress followed her as
she stepped toward the high doors, which seemed to have been built not for
humans but for the Giants, who, thanks to her great-grandfather's efforts, had
been driven to extinction sixty years ago.
 
Power.
 
Like wine when you have it.
 
Like
poison when you lose it
.
 
Therese
already felt it eating away at her.

Defeated.

14

Thorn
Castle

"But he
just won't wake up!"
 
The voice
sounded worried.
 
And
familiar.
 
Fox.

"Don't
worry.
 
He's just sleeping."
 
That voice he recognized well.
 
Clara.

Wake up, Jacob
.
 
Fingers stroked his searing shoulder.
 
He opened his eyes and saw the silver moon
drifting into a cloud, as if trying to hide from its red twin.
 
It shone down into a dark castle
courtyard.
 
High windows reflected the
stars, though there was no light behind any of them.
 
No lanterns shone above the doors or under
the overgrown archways.
 
No servant
scuttled across the yard, which was thickly covered with wet leaves, as if it
hadn't been raked in years.

"Finally!
 
I
thought you'd never wake up."

Jacob groaned
as Fox nudged her nose into his shoulder.

"Fox!
 
Be
careful!"

Clara helped
him sit up.
 
She had put a fresh dressing
on his shoulder, but it hurt more than ever.
 
The bandits, the Goyl...
 
the pain
brought it all back, but Jacob couldn't remember when he had lost
consciousness.

Clara stood
up.
 
"That wound doesn't look
good.
 
I wish I had some pills from the
hospital."

"It'll be
fine," Jacob said.
 
Fox anxiously
nudged her head under his arm.
 
"Where are we?" he asked her.

"At the
only hiding place I could find.
 
This is
deserted — by the living, anyway."
 
Fox dug aside the layers of leaves with her paw, revealing a shoe.

Jacob looked
around.
 
In many places the leaves lay
suspiciously deep, as if covering outstretched bodies.

Where were
they?

Jacob sought
support from a wall to pull himself to his feet, and immediately drew back his
hands, cursing.
 
The stones were covered in
thorny vines.
 
They were everywhere, as
if the entire castle had grown a hide of thorns.

"Roses,"
he muttered, picking one of the rose hips that grew from the twisted
branches.
 
"I've been searching for
this castle for years.
 
Sleeping Beauty's bed.
 
The Empress would pay a fortune for it."