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‘I will get you a pendant for it,’ he said as he put it around Fox’s neck. ‘The most beautiful one I can find in Guismond’s palace. But let me go alone. Please! It’s too dangerous. I’ll come back with the crossbow. I promise.’
Fox replied by placing her hand over where the Fairy’s moth covered his heart. ‘What could be worse than the Bluebeard’s house?’ she asked. ‘Or worse than having to wait here for you?’
At a signal from Valiant, the Giantling kicked an opening in the fence.
The Dwarf handed Jacob two candles.
‘They weren’t easy to find,’ he said. ‘Your debts are growing and growing. I will wait here for you. The tomb was enough for me, but don’t get any ideas. I’ll find you, whatever you may try to cheat me out of my share. Believe me, I can be much more unpleasant than Crookback.’
‘I remember,’ said Jacob. He followed Fox across the trampled fence.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
HEAD START
Pale blood was dripping from the Waterman’s fingers as he cut Nerron’s ties. He’d scraped the scales off his arms to free himself. Some of his olive-green flesh was probably still stuck to the carriage wheel, yet he never even flinched.
They had, of course, taken all their weapons.
Tricked by a prince dumber than any horse you’ve ever ridden, Nerron.
They saw the palace already from afar. So the Dwarf had brought Guismond’s body with him. Nerron was sick with rage as he pointed his spyglass at the watchtower where the exchange was supposed to have taken place. A pile of stones that looked suspiciously like the grave of a Giantling, and a few dead bodies in front of it. He couldn’t make out who they were, but the Giantling crouching over them was hard to miss. He was quite a hefty specimen. What, by Crookback’s hangman, had happened there?
‘Can you see Louis?’
Nerron was glad the hatred in the Waterman’s voice was not aimed at him. He shook his head.
‘I want to hear his princely neck snap,’ Eaumbre whispered. ‘Or crush his throat until his stupid face turns as blue as the sky.’
Some Watermen spent years hunting down a man who’d insulted or cheated them. Eaumbre had been very patient with Louis. But Nerron didn’t care whether the prince was still alive. All he cared about was whether Reckless was among the dead. But not even that information was worth tussling with a Giantling for.
He pushed the spyglass back into his belt.
Eaumbre eyed the ruins and the palace that was built around the mountain like a crown. ‘The Witch Slayer had more treasure than just the crossbow, right?’
‘Probably.’
Eaumbre rubbed his raw arms. ‘If Louis is there, he’s mine,’ he whispered.
‘And if not?’
The Waterman bared his teeth. ‘Then hopefully I’ll find enough gold to compensate me.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
THE DEAD CITY
Weathered facades. Cracked pillars. Arched doorways. Stairs leading nowhere. Even the skeleton of the Dead City still showed how opulent it had once been. The street they were following wound steeply past crumbled houses. The silence was as black as the moonless night. Jacob thought the first face he saw was an embellishment, the legacy of a talented mason. But they were everywhere, staring out of the grey walls like fossils. Women, men, children.
The stories were true. Guismond had taken the whole city with him to his death. ‘He wanted the world to stand still after his death.’ It was supposed to begin and end with him. Smart Bug!
The Witch Slayer had locked them into the stones of their houses. What had killed them? His final breath? Had he died with a curse on his lips? Jacob thought he could hear their voices as the wind brushed through the empty streets. It groaned and sighed, driving dead leaves in front of it, loosening weathered stones from walls that had been bleached like bones by the passing centuries. Swarms of will-o’-the-wisps dotted them with light, and a few plague-finches were frantically hopping around on the cracked paving stones. Apart from that, the deserted streets with their hemlines of dead faces were still.
They were picking a path through the debris of a collapsed tower, when a man jumped out from behind the remnants of a statue. Jacob hacked off his arm before he could ram his rusty scythe into Fox’s back. His clothes were covered with pieces of glass and metal. A Preacher. His eyes were as empty as those of the dead in the walls. Six more were waiting beneath a triumphal arch, its weathered marble celebrating Guismond’s victories over Albion and Lotharaine. They fought as stubbornly as if they were defending a living city, but luckily their weapons were old, and the men weren’t very well fed. Jacob killed three and Fox shot another before he could push Jacob against the hexed walls. The others fled, though one of them stopped after a few steps to scream curses in the local dialect of the surrounding mountains. He didn’t stop screaming until Fox put a warning shot in front of his feet. The curse was superstition, born of the helpless fear of real magic, but the screams attracted more of the ragged figures. They appeared everywhere between the ruins. Some just stood there, staring or throwing stones at them. Others stumbled into their path with rusty pitchforks and shovels they must have stolen from some farmer nearby.
Jacob and Fox had to kill four more before the others left them in peace, and Jacob was sure there’d be more of them waiting at the palace. Guismond’s modern knights. Jacob wondered whether it was the magic that pervaded this ruined city that told them to guard it, or whether it was the fear of their own mortality that had brought them to this place of death – the hope that these ruins might harbour the secret of how to escape the ultimate end.
Not much different from the hope that brought you here, Jacob.
