‘No what?’ He didn’t mean to sound that irritated. But he was dog-tired, and he was thoroughly sick of running away from death. You’re forgetting something, Jacob. Fear. You’re scared.
‘I have to find the head, and I have no idea where to look, not to mention the heart and the hand. The only man I thought could help me thinks I’m a ruthless thug now, and the way things stand, I myself will be lying in a coffin in less than two months.’
‘What?’ Fox’s voice broke, as though the truth lodged in her throat like a splinter.
Damn it, Jacob!
She shoved him into the iron gate. ‘You said you didn’t know!’
‘I’m sorry!’ Reluctantly, she let him embrace her. Her heart was beating fast, nearly as fast as when he had freed the vixen’s leg from the trap.
‘Knowing it doesn’t change anything, does it?’
She struggled free.
‘Together,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t that the plan? Don’t ever lie to me again. I’m sick of it.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE FIRST BITE
Some things need to be sought in the filth. Sinister things, found by following the scent of poverty to the dark streets beyond the gaslights and the stuccoed houses, to back yards stinking of refuse and bad food. Jacob asked for directions from a man sitting on his front steps and squeezing silver dust from a captured Elf. Elven dust. A dangerous path to escape the world.
There was nothing ominous about the windows of the shop the man sent them to. It was way past midnight, but what Jacob was after was best purchased under the cover of night anyway. In Albion, trade in magical objects and substances was strictly regulated. Still, nearly anything that was available on the mainland could also be found here, if only one looked in the right places.
The screams of a Hob sounded through the door when Jacob knocked against the frosted glass. The Albian variant of the Heinzel had carrot hair and much longer legs than its Austrian kin. The woman who opened the door was trying hard to look like a Witch, but she had the round black pupils of a human, and the herbal perfume she’d sprinkled deep into her bosom didn’t smell anything like Alma’s forest scent. The Hob was sitting in a cage above the door. Hobs were good guards as long they were fed regularly, and their mood was barely worse in a cage than when they were free. The creature’s red eyes clung to Fox as she stepped into the shop. The Hob could smell the shape-shifter.
The fake Witch locked the door while she appraised Jacob’s clothes. The cut and fabric seemed to whisper ‘money’ to her, and she gave him a smile as fake as her perfume. The shop reeked of dried moor lilies, which wasn’t a good sign. They were often passed off as Fairy lilies, and the fungus-sponges that hung from the ceiling were sold as an aphrodisiac, even though the only effect they had was lifelong hallucinations. But among the items on the shelves, Jacob did spot a few things that had real magical properties.
‘And what can Goldilocks do for you two darlin’s?’ Her hoarse voice gave her away as a lentil-chewer. The Cinderella addiction . . . for a few hours of princess dreams. Goldilocks gave Fox a sleazy smile. ‘Need something to fan the old flames? Or is there someone in your way?’
Jacob would have loved nothing more than to give her an infusion of her own deadliest potion. Her locks were indeed golden – the kind of sticky gold that fake Witches liked to concoct to colour their hair and lips.
‘I need a blood shard.’ Jacob dropped two thalers on the grimy counter. His handkerchief was becoming quite unreliable at producing them. It was so thin in places that he would soon have to start looking for a new one.
Goldilocks rubbed the coins between her fingers. ‘There’s five years’ hard labour for selling blood shards.’
Jacob put another coin in her hand.
She dropped the money into her apron pocket and disappeared behind a threadbare curtain. Fox’s eyes followed her. Her face was pale.
‘They don’t always work,’ she said without looking at Jacob. Her voice sounded as rough as the lentil-chewer’s.
‘I know.’
‘You’ll lose blood for weeks.’
Her look was so desperate, he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss away the fear on her face. What are you doing, Jacob? Was the garbage on the shelves fogging his senses? All the love potions and cheap amulets, the finger bones that were supposed to bestow lust and love? Or was this another effect of his fear of death?
Goldilocks returned with a paper bag. The glass shard Jacob took out of it was colourless and a little bigger than the bottom of a bottle.
‘How do I know it’s real?’
Fox took the shard from him and ran her fingers over the glass. Then she looked at the fake Witch. ‘If he’s harmed in anyway, I will find you,’ she said. ‘No matter where you hide.’
Goldilocks sneered. ‘It’s a blood shard, honey. Of course it’ll harm him.’ She took a vial from her apron and put it in Jacob’s hand. ‘Rub this on the wound. It’ll slow the bleeding.’
The Hob stared through the doorway before his mistress shut and locked it behind them. A rat scampered down the dark alley, and in the distance Jacob and Fox could hear the wheels of a cab rattling over the cobblestones.
Jacob stepped into the nearest doorway and pushed up his sleeve. Blood shards. He’d never used one himself, but Chanute acquired one once, when they’d been hunting for the wand of a Warlock. To use the blood shard, one had to picture the item one was looking for as exactly as possible and then cut the shard deep into the flesh until the object appeared in the glass, hopefully also showing its location. Blood shards only revealed objects that had been touched by dark magic, but the Witch Slayer’s head definitely had enough of that.
‘Did you ever find the wand?’ Fox turned away in disgust as Jacob pressed the shard against his skin.
‘Yes.’ What he didn’t tell her was that Chanute had nearly bled out. It was the worst kind of magic.
Just as he was just about to cut into his skin, a pain pierced his chest, unlike any Jacob had felt before. Something was digging its teeth into his heart. The shard dropped from his hand, and the scream that crossed his lips was so loud that a window opened on the other side of the street.
‘Jacob?’ Fox grabbed him by the shoulders.
He wanted to say something, anything reassuring, but all he could utter was a wheeze, and he could only manage to stay on his feet because Fox held him up. His old self wanted to hide himself from her, too proud to be seen in such a vulnerable state, so helpless. But the pain just wouldn’t go away.
Breathe, Jacob. Breathe. It’ll pass.
The Dark Fairy’s name had six letters, but he could recall only five of them.
He leant against the door and pressed his hand to his chest, certain that he’d see his own blood seep through his fingers. The pain subsided, but the memory of it still quickened his breath.
‘It’s not going to be pleasant.’ The understatement of the year, Alma.
Fox picked up the shard. It was broken, but there was no blood on it. Fox stared in disbelief at the clean glass. Then she pulled Jacob’s hand off his chest. The moth above his heart had a spot on its left wing now. It was shaped like a tiny skull.
‘The Fairy is claiming her name back.’ He could barely speak. He could still feel the scream in his throat.
Pull yourself together, Jacob. Oh, his damned pride. He held out his hand, even though it was trembling. ‘Give me the shard.’ Fox dropped it into her pocket and pulled his sleeve over his bare arm.
‘No,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think you have enough strength to take it off me.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE HAND IN THE SOUTH
The Waterman turned out to tax Nerron’s nerves the least. Eaumbre – when his name crossed his scaly lips, you felt as though you had the mud of his pond in your ears. Even Louis was bearable, though he was constantly asking about their next meal or riding after every peasant girl. But Lelou! The Bug was talking all the time, at least whenever he was
n’t scribbling in his notebook. Every castle above the winter-bare vineyards, every collapsed church, every town name on a weathered signpost – each triggered a flood of commentary. Names, dates, royal gossip. His chatter was like the hum of a bumblebee in Nerron’s ear.
‘Lelou!’ he interrupted at some point as the Bug was explaining why the village they were riding through was certainly not the birthplace of Puss in Boots. ‘See this?’
Arsene Lelou fell silent as he cast a confused look at the three objects Nerron had poured into his hand from a leather pouch. It took him a few moments to realise what they were.
‘You’re seeing right!’ Nerron said. ‘A finger, an eye, a tongue. They all annoyed me. What do you think I’ll cut out of you?’
Silence. Delicious silence.
Nerron had picked up the Three Souvenirs, as he lovingly called them, in one of the onyx’s torture chambers. The objects never failed to work. Maintaining a bad reputation was hard work, especially if, like Nerron, you didn’t actually find pleasure in cutting off fingers or scooping out eyes.
Lelou’s silence held until they saw the walls of the abbey of Fontevaud appear ahead of them. One glance at the rotten wooden gate and they knew that the abbey was deserted. The cloisters were overgrown with nettles, and the sparse cells housed no more than mice. The only cemetery they could find consisted of merely eight crosses with the names and dates of deceased monks. None of the graves were older than Sixty years, but yet, if the Bug was right, the hand would have been buried here more than three hundred years ago.
Nerron felt the urge to cut Lelou into thin, moonstone-pale slices. The Bug saw it in his eyes and quickly hid behind Eaumbre. Lelou had not forgotten the Three Souvenirs.
‘The farmer,’ he stammered, pointing a trembling finger at an old man who was digging up potatoes from a fallow field behind the abbey. ‘Maybe he knows something.’
The old man dropped his meagre harvest as soon as he saw Nerron coming towards him. He stared as though the Devil himself had emerged from the damp earth. Goyl were still a rare sight in Lotharaine. Kami’en would change that soon enough.
‘Is there another graveyard?’ Nerron barked at the old man.
The farmer crossed himself and spat in front of Nerron’s feet. Touching. People believed that kept demons at bay. But it didn’t help against Goyl. Nerron was just about to grab the old man by his scrawny neck to shake some sense into him, when he dropped to his knees.
Louis was coming towards them, with Lelou and the Waterman in tow.
The princely garments had grown a little scruffy, but they still looked a thousand times better than anything the old man had ever worn. He probably had no idea that he was looking at the crown prince of Lotharaine – the old peasant didn’t look like he read a newspaper – but the vassals always knew what masters look like, and that it was better to do as they told.
‘Ask him about the cemetery!’ Nerron whispered to Louis.
All he got was an irritated look in return – sons of Kings were not used to receiving orders. But Lelou came to his aid.
‘The Goyl is right, my prince!’ he warbled into Louis’s perfumed ear. ‘He’s sure to answer you.’
Louis cast a disgusted look at the peasant’s filthy clothes. ‘Is there another cemetery?’ he asked in a jaded voice.
The old man ducked his head between his lank shoulders. His bony finger pointed at the pine trees beyond the fields. ‘They built a church from them.’
‘From what?’ Nerron asked.
The man still held his head bowed. ‘The whole ground was full of them!’ he mumbled. He quickly dropped a couple of potatoes into his baggy pockets. ‘What else could they have done with them?’
He took them to the church, which, at first sight, looked no different from the other churches of the region. The same grey stone, a stout tower with a low roof, a few weathered battlements. But the peasant made a quick getaway as soon as Nerron pushed the brittle door open.
Even the crest that was set into the wall behind the altar was made of human remains. The pillars were encrusted with skulls, and the fenced-off alcoves were piled to the ceiling with bones. There were hands as well, of course. They served as candleholders or were splayed across the walls as ornaments. Frustrated, Nerron kicked in one of the skulls. How, by his mother’s green skin, was he supposed to find the right hand here? He was going to be stuck neck-deep in brittle bones while Reckless easily picked up the head and the heart.
‘What are we looking for again?’ Louis poked his fingers into a skull’s eye socket.
‘Your ancestor’s crossbow.’ The empty church made the Waterman’s damp whisper sound even more ominous.
‘A crossbow?’ Louis’s mouth tightened into a contemptuous smile. ‘What’s my father hoping for – that the Goyl will laugh themselves to death when they attack?’
‘This is a very unusual crossbow, my prince . . .’ Lelou began. ‘And it’s a little more complicated, if I understand the Goyl right.’ He pursed his mouth like a toad about to spit venom. ‘First, we have to find a hand, and then –’
‘You can explain that later,’ Nerron interrupted gruffly. He went to one of the alcoves and stared through the metal trellis at the piled-up bones. ‘If Lelou is right, then the hand was quartered. Also, it probably isn’t decomposed, and it has golden fingernails.’
All Warlocks gilded their nails to hide the fact that the Witches’ blood made them rot.
‘Yuck!’ Louis muttered, fiddling with his diamond buttons. He still wasn’t missing a single one. You couldn’t even rely on the Thumblings any more. Pretend he’s not here, Nerron. Neither he, nor the Waterman, nor the prattling Bug.
He pried open the gate with his sabre and immediately stood up to his knees in bones. Great. A forearm splintered under his boots. Goyl bones turned to stone after death, just like their flesh. Much more appetising than human putrefaction.
‘This is ridiculous. I’m going to a tavern.’ The boredom on Louis’s face had given way to anger. He had a hot temper, when he didn’t numb it with elven dust or wine.
A hand-sized gnome crawled out from one of the skulls on the pillar next to the prince. Eaumbre grabbed it before it could bite Louis. ‘A yellow follet!’ Lelou quickly pulled his charge away. ‘Easily confused with house follets, but . . .’ One glance from Nerron ended the lecture.
Crack.
The Waterman hung the follet’s corpse from the cobwebs, which were catching flies and dust between the pillars. ‘If you break the neck of one, it’ll be a warning to the others,’ he whispered.
Lelou threw up on the bones, but Louis stared in fascination at the small corpse. Nerron thought he could make out a trace of cruelty in the pudgy face. Not an entirely unsuitable character trait for a future King.
‘Right, then. Enjoy the search.’ Louis threw a skull at Lelou’s chest and laughed as the Bug stumbled back. ‘You’re staying as well!’ he ordered the Waterman. ‘I don’t need a guard dog to get myself drunk. And your ugly mug scares away the girls.’
He turned around, but Eaumbre stepped into his path.
‘I’m under orders from your father,’ he whispered.
‘But he’s not here!’ Louis hissed at him. ‘So just haul your fishy body out of my way, or I shall telegraph him that I caught you dragging a screaming peasant girl into the village pond.’ He flicked back his curly hair and gave the Waterman a princely smile. ‘We can all have our fun.’ Then he marched regally through the church door and slammed it behind him so hard that the brittle wood shed a few more splinters.
‘Go after him,’ Nerron said to the Waterman.
‘Yes, go after him, Eaumbre!’ Lelou echoed. His voice sounded panicky.
But the Waterman just stood there and stared with his six eyes at the door Louis had disappeared through.
‘Eaumbre! Go!’ Lelou repeated shrilly.
The Waterman didn’t move.
As proud as a Waterman. Even the Goyl knew that saying.
?
??Never mind. He’ll be back,’ Nerron said. ‘Our princeling is right. He doesn’t need us to get himself drunk.’
Lelou moaned. ‘But his fa—’
Nerron cut him off: ‘Didn’t you hear me? He’ll be back! We have to find a hand with gilded fingernails. So start looking, Lelou.’
The Bug wanted to reply, but then he ducked his head and began sifting through the bones that had poured out of the alcove.
Eaumbre gave Nerron a nod.
Six-eyed gratitude.
Who knew when that might come in handy?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MAYBE
The hotel where Fox brought Jacob was just as run-down as the fake Witch’s shop, but the pain had weakened him more than he would admit, and the streets were deserted, so she couldn’t find a cab that would have taken them to a better hotel.
Jacob closed his eyes as soon as he stretched out on the bed. Fox stayed by his side until she was sure he was fast asleep. His breathing was too fast, and she could still see the shadows the pain had left on his face.
She gently stroked his forehead, as though her fingers could wipe away the shadows. Careful, Fox. But what could she do? Protect her heart and leave him alone with his death?
She felt love stirring inside her like an animal roused from sleep. Sleep! she wanted to whisper to it. Go back to sleep. Or, better still, be what you once were: friends. Nothing else. Without the craving for his touch.
In his sleep, Jacob reached for his chest, as though his fingers needed to soothe the moth that was gnawing away at his heart.
Eat my heart instead! Fox thought. What good is it to me, anyway?
Her heart felt so different when she wore her fur. To the vixen, even love tasted of freedom, and desire came and went like hunger, without the craving that came with being human.
It was hard to leave Jacob behind. She was worried the pain would return. But what she was about to do, she did for him. Fox locked the dingy room behind her and carried the blood shard with her.