The Golden Yarn

  Fox memorized the meeting point, the time, and she ignored his instruction to burn the letter. She kept it, for those days when he would keep himself, and all that made him special, under guard again.

  ***

  It was touching how devastated Baryatinsky looked when she informed him that the Tzar’s assignment meant she had to depart immediately. He ordered his servants to pack Sylvain’s and Chanute’s few belongings into his best travel chests (Fox was relieved they didn’t find any of their master’s possessions among theirs) and offered her the services of his personal coachman (unlike the Tzar, Baryatinsky did not like automobiles). He was very disappointed when Fox assured him Jacob had already arranged for her transport. The provisions he’d had brought up from the kitchen would have fed an army on an expedition around the world: khleb, zakuski, kulebiaka, blini... The words tasted as good as the food. Their sound would forever remind her of a time when she’d been very happy.

  Fox promised Baryatinsky they’d stay with him when they returned the carpet. She very much hoped he wasn’t going to be charged as an accomplice—and that she might indeed return. If they could find Will. If by then she’d figured out whether to keep going with Jacob or to stay with Orlando. Was there even a question? She didn’t even know that.

  The Goyl by the gate was gone. Fox would’ve liked to know why. Hard to imagine Hentzau had lost interest in them.

  Double Cross

  If you’d asked Ashamed Tchiourak why he’d been an informant for the Goyl for years, he’d have told you a sentimental story about a girl with amethyst skin whom he’d met in his youth and who’d taught him how to turn stone into the glowing colors that had made him the envy of his peers. Touching…so touching that Hentzau didn’t believe a word of it. Tchiourak could say neither what had become of his muse nor why, despite those secrets, he was still such a bad painter. No, Hentzau guessed Tchiourak’s real motivation was his origins. He was from Circassia, a province that had been plundered by Varangia for centuries. In Hentzau’s eyes, that was good enough reason to make you a traitor.

  Tchiourak’s origins also explained why he was now selling information that didn’t harm Varangia but Albion, the land that had just recently conquered his old home in a bloody campaign. And then there was the Wolfling. Brunel’s liberators obviously weren’t aware that long ago a Wolfling had made a cripple of Tchiourak’s brother. Where would the world’s spy agencies be without such stories? Private revenge, jealousy, ambition. Spies always claimed to have noble motives for their treason, but Hentzau had yet to meet one who really did.

  Tchiourak described in great detail how the escaped prisoners in his workshop stank, and what a monster the Wolfling was, before he finally got around to what he’d heard. Brunel was to be taken out of the city very soon. Hentzau was sorely tempted to send some commandos into Tchiourak’s workshop, but that would’ve exposed one of his most valuable assets, and even the Tzar’s secret police were very reluctant to go into the neighborhood where the painter lived. No, it was better to set a trap and catch Brunel when they tried to sneak him out of the city. Tchiourak had told Hentzau the place, under the condition that the Goyl would let the liberators go—except for the Wolfling, of course—and that they’d keep the Varangian secret police out of it. Hentzau had no intention of keeping the first promise, but the second he had no problem with. He couldn’t wait to embarrass those arrogant fools by presenting them with their escaped prisoners, proving once again how superior the Goyl were to any human, Varangian, Albian, or whoever. And as far as Orlando Tennant was concerned, Hentzau was toying with the idea of keeping him for himself. The Barsoi had valuable information about the Albian spy networks.

  “You’re saying they also have another man from Albion. What does he look like?”

  Tchiourak shrugged. He was scrutinizing a speck of gold paint on his thumb. “Young. Mid-twenties. Dark hair.”

  Yes, that sounded about right. There weren’t many men outside Nihon who knew how to use a melting-ax. So many flies with one stroke. Hentzau wondered what Jacob Reckless thought of his father. Or hadn’t he recognized him?

  Prividiniy Park

  It was midnight, four days after they’d broken into the Magic Collection, when the Wolfling waved Jacob and Moskva’s two most wanted men onto a sparely lit street. Jacob thought the two hearses waiting for them were much better than their previous conveyance. The smell of refuse was still in their clothes. Brunel wasn’t so impressed, saying it was absurd to try to sneak past roadblocks in coffins. But then Ludmilla Akhmatova climbed out of a taxi parked behind the hearses. She was wearing mourning garments and assured Brunel that nighttime funerals were not unusual in Moskva and that there was no better way. It was the first time since the break-in that they’d seen the Dwarf woman. She directed the Wolfling to show them that one of the coffins did indeed contain a corpse, just to make the cover perfect. When Jacob asked her whether she also counted an undertaker among her lovers, she just smiled mischievously.

  Thanks to the Dwarf doctor, Orlando had recovered reasonably well from the interrogation by the Varangian secret police. He looked quite amused as he climbed into his coffin. During their close confinement over the past few days, Jacob had wondered more than once whether his jealousy was worse because he actually liked Orlando Tennant. They had talked about everything—the political situation in Albion and Leon, about danger and how much they enjoyed it—but had studiously avoided talking about the one thing that was on their minds. The one person.

  Ludmilla drove ahead in her taxi with the Wolfling on the coach box. The black veil made her beauty even more seductive, and Jacob would’ve liked to ride with her just to watch her convince the guards of her utter harmlessness.

  It was an unusual journey through Moskva, lying on red coffin silk, feeling the cobbled pavement beneath, wondering what roads they were driving on. An unforgettable journey. Every time they stopped, Jacob got ready to play dead. The Wolfling had whitened their faces with powder, and he had put three dead cats into the real corpse’s coffin, just to add the right scent. But Jacob’s coffin wasn’t opened once.

  He’d made it quite clear they could use the Tzar’s flying carpet for their escape only if Chanute and Sylvain came with them. Chanute had sent word to Ludmilla via one of her contacts that he and Sylvain had survived their firebranding, but they were hiding in a part of the city that was dangerously far from their meeting place. That had made it difficult for Ludmilla to accept Jacob’s condition. The Dwarf was still a mystery. Jacob suppressed his urge to ask her why she was spying for Albion if she really loved her homeland so much. “The Walrus pays well” was all Orlando had said. But Jacob didn’t believe that was the whole truth. One thing was certain: They all had their secrets, and they were all practiced in keeping them. Only Fox knew that Jacob didn’t intend to fly Orlando and Brunel back to Albion, and whether they’d all spend the rest of the night in freedom or in prison depended on Fox and whether she’d gotten his message.

  At the roadblocks, Ludmilla told the soldiers that they were headed to a cemetery on the eastern outskirts of town. But as soon as the roadblocks became fewer, the coachmen changed direction. The roads became rougher. Jacob could feel it only too well in his coffin, and soon he had no clue where they were anymore.

  When the hearses finally stopped and the Wolfling opened Jacob’s coffin, all he saw were old trees and wide lawns lined with weathered benches.

  “Privideniy Park,” Ludmilla whispered, lifting the veil off her face. “The Ghost Garden. Moskva’s most popular place for duels. Has been for more than two centuries. Many of its most prominent citizens have died here. They say if you die in Privideniy Park, you stay here for eternity. So they’re probably all still here.”

  And so they were. There were no lanterns to light the paths, and the ambling figures were barely visible. They all were the color of fresh blood, proof that they’d met a violent death.

  Brunel stared at them wide-eyed.

  “You should n
ot let them walk through you,” Jacob whispered to him, “unless you want to share a dead man’s memories. But otherwise they’re harmless.”

  Brunel’s trembling hand brushed through his hair. Then he looked crossly at the white powder on his fingers. “Just too many allusions to death for one night,” he said. “I find it hard to face my own mortality. The others don’t seem to have that problem.”

  One ghost stopped by the hearses, as though they reminded him of his own funeral. The red shape disappeared as soon as Ludmilla clapped her hands. Jacob caught himself scanning the park for glassy shapes, but the breeze billowing the hearses’ black curtains was cool.

  There was still no sign of Chanute and Sylvain. Jacob thought of all the times he’d waited in vain for his old teacher. Chanute was rarely aware what day of the week it was, let alone what time. And despite having been one of the most successful treasure hunters, he had a gift for getting lost. Jacob could only hope Sylvain was more reliable.

  “May I ask what we’re waiting for?” Jacob heard Brunel ask.

  “For a carpet,” answered Ludmilla Akhmatova.

  Fly, Carpet, Fly!

  There was the policeman who asked them gruffly why they were visiting Moskva. There were the suspicious faces of the guards as they eyed the valuable carpet on the simple cart. The officer who silently studied the warrants in his hand before finally giving the signal to let her pass. Fox’s nighttime trip through Moskva offered plenty of reasons to be afraid. But the fear of arrest or of the rifles the soldiers trained on her was nothing compared to the prospect of seeing Jacob and Orlando and the worry that they would both be searching her face for whom she loved more. Her only consolation was that she didn’t know the answer herself.

  Still, she was glad when the wrought-iron gate to the park appeared in the darkness. Some of the ghosts who’d given this place its nickname were hovering right behind the gate, as if grateful for the diversion. The horses only dared to pass them when Fox took the reins from the young coachman. She’d met many ghosts, not only on treasure hunts. The drowned whom she’d seen as a child had been as gray as the sea that had claimed their lives, but the soldiers she’d encountered with Jacob on an old battlefield had the same blood red color as the shadows in Privideniy Park. Fox feared the lingering dead only for one reason: their sadness.

  The living were waiting by an obelisk commemorating a poet who’d been shot in a duel by his wife’s lover. Fox wondered what the wife had thought of that. She climbed down from the cart. Jacob was standing next to Ludmilla Akhmatova and a man who smelled so much of Wolfling that her vixen’s fur bristled. Orlando was leaning against the obelisk. Fox didn’t know the man next to him. Probably Brunel. Strange—his face didn’t match his scent.

  Orlando spared her deciding whom she should embrace first. He came toward her and pulled her close, as though he’d been certain he’d never see her again. The first thing he said was Jacob’s name and how he’d be in some anonymous grave now if it hadn’t been for him.

  Fox had never hugged Jacob so awkwardly. Could one love two men? She saw the concern in Jacob’s eyes that she might not have forgiven him the sleeping powder, and she felt his relief when she hugged him closer—for the words he’d written but would never speak aloud.

  Jacob was concerned that Chanute and Sylvain hadn’t arrived yet. Fox suspected she knew why Chanute was in no hurry to face him, but she said nothing. It was going to be hard enough for Jacob to hear it from Chanute himself.

  The carpet began to glow as soon as they unrolled it. It looked as though its colors had absorbed the light of the stars. The carpet was large enough to carry twenty people, but when Fox asked Ludmilla whether she would join them, the Dwarf shook her head.

  “I don’t like being in the air,” she said. “Dwarfs are creatures of the earth. But I shall leave Moskva for a while. His brother”—she pointed at the Wolfling—“works for one of the Wolf-Lords in Kamchatka. I’m sure he can use a good spy, or who knows? Maybe I shall spy for the Tzar for a change? A woman is always on love’s side, sister Fox,” she added with a smile that would’ve done any vixen proud. “Men are always on the side of power. Even the Dark Fairy had to learn that. They will always betray us for power, so why shouldn’t we do the same? If only it didn’t make our hearts so cold.”

  She offered Fox her gloved hand. “I hope we see each other again. Soon. Watch your heart. The Golden Yarn weaves a painful bond.”

  The Dwarf cast a knowing look at Jacob.

  Jacob approached the two figures who were now cautiously walking through the gate as though expecting to meet foe, not friend. Jacob was too relieved to notice it. Of course, none of that relief was in his voice when he shouted at Chanute to damn well hurry up.

  Chanute pulled Jacob aside while Sylvain went to Fox. He was limping. Apparently, his night as an anarchist had taken its toll, but he certainly looked like he’d enjoyed himself.

  “How do you think Jacob’s going to take it?” Sylvain whispered anxiously.

  Badly. How else? Fox couldn’t hear what Chanute was saying, but she could read it on Jacob’s face. If he was trying not to show his disappointment, his surprise, the hurt, his jealousy of Sylvain, then he was failing miserably.

  Fox went to his side, just in case he needed comforting or Chanute needed protecting.

  “And what will become of The Ogre?” Oh, he was angry. Hurt like a boy who’d lost his best friend to another. Chanute, of course, pretended he didn’t notice.

  “I telegraphed Wenzel. He can have it. You’ll see. We’ll come back with our pockets full of gold.”

  Jacob didn’t look at Sylvain. He liked him, but right now he wished him to the Devil, or back into his Elf-prison.

  Ludmilla joined them.

  “You have to leave.”

  Jacob nodded. Did you know about this? his eyes asked Fox. He could probably see the answer.

  Sylvain almost crushed them both with his embraces. He couldn’t even find a curse word to relieve his heart.

  “Send a telegram to The Ogre when you get there,” she said to Chanute. Wherever “there” was.

  “Telegram? Nonsense. You shall read about our adventures in the papers!” Chanute always got loud when he got sentimental. He squeezed Fox almost as hard as Sylvain had.

  “Look after Jacob,” he whispered. “You know how bad he is at looking after himself.”

  Yes. Nobody knew that better. But if she kept looking after him, she’d break her heart one day.

  Orlando was already on the carpet, studying its patterns. He probably recognized the words hidden there, but he didn’t know about the memories Jacob had fed into the weave. How quickly would he notice they weren’t flying to Albion? A gander could read the stars as well as a vixen could.

  Ludmilla and the Wolfling led four of the horses onto the carpet. Brunel looked wary. He probably would’ve preferred to travel in one of his airplanes. Fox didn’t know what to think of him, and that didn’t happen often.

  The carpet was soft and firm at the same time, like a mossy bed of pebbles. One had to step on it slowly to allow it to adjust to the weight. “You have to kneel on a flying carpet, like for a prayer,” an old man in Maghreb, whose fingers had knotted the colorful patterns since his fourth birthday, had once told Fox. “They all have a soul, and they demand respect and a firm belief in their ability to defy gravity. Without that belief, they are nothing but rugs.”

  Jacob was still with Chanute. Finally, he embraced the old man as though he’d never let him go. Nobody had earned the title father more than Albert Chanute. Brunel watched them with a strange expression on his face.

  Ludmilla was right. They had to leave.

  Orlando knelt down next to Fox. It was good to feel him by her side again. It still seemed unreal how familiar he was, even though they’d spent only a few days together. His hands were blistered with burns, his neck showed signs of strangulation, and his eyes had a weariness Fox hadn’t seen there before. He reached for her hand, and
she returned the gentle pressure, yet the gesture felt like a betrayal, and her eyes sought Jacob.

  When he saw Orlando kneeling by her, Jacob hesitated for the briefest moment. Then he knelt down as far away from her as the carpet’s pattern allowed. And Fox’s heart was sliced in two.

  Chanute actually wiped a couple of tears from his unshaved cheeks as he stepped back to stand next to Sylvain. Brunel only knelt down when the Wolfling prompted him with a curt nod. Ludmilla looked up at the sky, but if the Tzar’s winged spies were looking for them, they were not looking at Privideniy Park.

  A shudder ran through the carpet as Jacob read the hidden words aloud. Fox could read them as clearly as he, and she whispered along:

  “Ride the wind

  until my hand

  touches the sky.

  Fly, carpet, fly!”

  The carpet rose as gently as Jacob’s voice had coaxed it. Not even the horses shied as it left the ground, rising higher and higher. The night swallowed Ludmilla and the Wolfling below, Chanute and Sylvain...and the dead in the Ghost Garden.

  Orlando stretched out on the carpet and closed his eyes. He was already asleep when they left Moskva’s lights behind, and Brunel spared no glance for the stars, which would have told him Jacob wasn’t steering the carpet toward Albion.

  The Wrong Dead

  For Hentzau, there was no clearer proof that humans were a thoroughly absurd species than their graveyards. Burying their rotting bodies in wooden boxes that would then rot along with them, while erecting stones and statues on top to bemoan the transience of all flesh, truly was absurd. The Goyl had so much more dignity in death. The boulevards beneath the earth, lined with the heads of their heroes, unchanged, stone in death as in life. The rest of their bodies left behind wherever death had found them, so they could again become one with the rocks and the earth that had borne them... Now, that was how to end it.