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‘What will be your price? A castle? A medal? A title?’ Jacob looked at the mirror again. Fox had noticed it as well.
What if he was wrong? It was worth a try.
‘Let’s put it this way . . .’ The Bastard put the swindlesack in his pocket. ‘You got what you wanted. I’ll get what I want.’
‘What if I can give you a better price? Better than anything Wilfred of Albion or the Lords of the East could offer you?’
‘What could that be? I have a castle full of treasure.’
‘Treasure!’ Jacob shrugged disdainfully. ‘You can’t fool me. You care about that as little as I do.’
The Bastard kept his eyes on Jacob. The Goyl liked to claim they could read human faces like open books. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘That the Preachers are right.’
The thin mouth stretched into a sneer. ‘The gateway to heaven.’
‘I wouldn’t call it heaven.’ Jacob felt his regained life like a drug. He had cheated death, so why not the Bastard? ‘I think you’re right about the blood,’ he said, ‘but it’s got nothing to do with kinship. It’s just that Guismond and I came from the same place.’
The Waterman grunted impatiently. He was probably already picturing the girl to whom he would offer Guismond’s treasures in some damp cave. He was going to read her every wish from her eyes, but he’d never let her go.
‘They are going to be here soon,’ Eaumbre whispered. ‘The Dwarfs . . . Crookback’s men . . . every self-respecting treasure hunter. They will all come, but we can still shift most of the stuff.’
‘Then why are you still standing there?’ the Bastard replied. ‘Take what you want, and go. It’s all yours.’
The Waterman gave Jacob a six-eyed glance that seemed to know exactly how many of his kind Jacob and Fox had hunted down and cheated of their quarry.
‘I wouldn’t trust them if I were you,’ he whispered to Nerron. Then he turned and disappeared through the door into the audience chamber without looking around again.
Nerron stayed silent until the Waterman’s steps had receded. He looked at the pictures around them. His eyes stopped on the silver archway and Guismond’s knights flooding through them. Jacob caught a brief glimpse of a child’s yearning on the speckled face. He even nearly regretted that he couldn’t let the Goyl have what he longed for. But Dunbar was right. Some things should never be found, and if they were found, then their next hiding place had to be better than the first. He stepped over Guismond’s body. Where was all that life coming from that he suddenly felt coursing through his veins? Was some of it the Witch Slayer’s? Not a pleasant thought.
‘I’m sure you know them as well as I do,’ he said, slowly walking towards the mirror. ‘The stories about Guismond’s origins. That he was a King’s bastard, the child of a Witch, the son of a golden-haired Devil. Nobody ever figured out that he simply came from another world.’
Jacob stopped next to the mirror.
‘This is it,’ he said. ‘The door you’ve been looking for.’
Nerron’s face melted into the dark glass as he stepped to Jacob’s side. Jacob saw how much the Goyl wanted to believe him. He had learnt to read the speckled face.
‘Prove it, Fox,’ he said.
Of course she knew what he was planning. It wasn’t hard to guess. But Fox shrank from the mirror.
‘No. You do it.’ The fear in her voice was not pretend. For a moment, Jacob worried she wouldn’t follow him. But she’d also made a promise to Dunbar, just as he had.
Nerron’s eyes met his on the dark glass.
The best . . .
Jacob wouldn’t have minded letting him claim the title. Just a pity the Bastard also wanted the crossbow.
‘Go on, then,’ Nerron said, ‘prove it.’
Nerron didn’t notice how Fox moved closer to his side. All he saw was the mirror.
Jacob pressed his hand on the glass.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
