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“Of course. Jacob Reckless likes it mysterious. How could I forget?” Chanute’s voice sounded bitter. Despite everything, he thought of Jacob as the son he had never had. “When did they get him?”
“Four days ago.”
The Goyl had attacked them not far from a village where Jacob had been looking for the hourglass. He had underestimated how far their patrols were already venturing into imperial territory, and after Will had been clawed, he’d been in such pain that the journey back took them days. Back where? There was no “back” anymore, but Jacob had not had the courage yet to tell Will.
Chanute brushed his hand through his spiky hair. “Four days? Forget it. He’s already half one of them. You remember the time when the Empress was collecting all their colors? And that farmer tried to peddle us a dead moonstone he had covered in lamp soot as an onyx Goyl?”
Yes, Jacob remembered. The stone faces. That’s what they were still called back then, and children were told stories about them to teach them to fear the night. When Chanute and he were still traveling together, the Goyl had only just begun to populate the caves aboveground, and every village used to organize Goyl hunts. But now they had a King, and he had turned the hunted into hunters.
There was a rustling near the back door, and Chanute drew his knife. He threw it so quickly that it nailed the rat in mid-jump against the wall.
“This world is going down the toilet,” he growled, pushing back his chair. “Rats as big as dogs. The air on the street stinks like a Troll’s cave from all the factories, and the Goyl are standing just a couple of miles from here.”
He picked up the dead rat and threw it onto the table.
“There’s nothing that helps against the petrified flesh. But if they’d gotten me, I’d ride to one of them Witches’ houses and look in the garden for a bush with black berries.” Chanute wiped the bloody knife on his sleeve. “It’s got to be the garden of a child-eater, though.”
“I thought the child-eating Witches all moved to Lotharaine since the other Witches started hunting them.”
“But their houses are still there. The bush grows where they buried their leftovers. Those berries are the strongest antidote to curses I know of.”
Witch-berries. Jacob looked at the oven door on the wall. “The Witch in the HungryForest was a child-eater, wasn’t she?”
“One of the worst. I once looked in her house for one of them combs that you put into your hair and they turn you into a crow.”
“I know. You sent me in there first.”
“Really?” Chanute rubbed his fleshy nose. He’d convinced Jacob that the Witch had flown out.
“You poured liquor on my wounds.” The imprints of her fingers were still visible on his throat. It had taken weeks for the burns to heal.
Jacob threw the knapsack over his shoulder. “I need a packhorse, some provisions, two rifles, and ammunition.”
Chanute didn’t seem to have heard Jacob. He was staring at his trophies. “Good old times,” he mumbled. “The Empress received me personally three times. How many audiences have you clocked up?”
Jacob closed his hand around the handkerchief in his pocket until he felt two gold sovereigns between his fingers.
“Two,” he said, tossing the coins onto the table. He’d had six audiences with the Empress, but the lie made Chanute very happy.
“Put that gold away!” he growled. “I don’t take no money from you.” Then he held out his knife to Jacob.
“Here,” he said. “There’s nothing this blade won’t cut. I have a feeling you’ll need it more than I will.”
6
Lovesick Fool
Will was gone. Jacob saw it immediately as he led the packhorse through the collapsed gate of the ruin. It lay as deserted as if his brother had never followed him through the mirror and all was fine and this world was still his, all his. For one moment he caught himself feeling relieved. Let him go, Jacob. Why not just forget he ever had a brother?
“He said he’d come back.” Fox was sitting between the columns. The night turned her fur black. “I tried to stop him, but he’s just as pigheaded as you.”
Another mistake, Jacob. He should have taken Will with him to Schwanstein instead of hiding him here at the ruin. Will wanted to go home. Just go home. But he’d take the stone with him.
Jacob led the packhorse to the other two horses already grazing behind the ruin. He walked toward the tower. Its long shadow wrote a single word on the shattered flagstones: Back.
A threat for you, Jacob, but a promise for Will.
Ivy grew up the scorched walls so densely that its evergreen vines hung like a curtain over the doorway. The tower was the only part of the castle that had survived the fire nearly unscathed. The inside was swarming with bats, and the rope ladder Jacob had installed years earlier shimmered through the darkness. The Elves always left their dust on it as if to remind him that he had once come down here from another world.
