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He’d obviously been paying as little attention as Fox.
‘Inside the tomb! What do you think I’ve been talking about all this time? Didn’t she tell you anything?’ Valiant shot a dismayed look at Fox. He’d probably told the story a dozen times. But she’d been preoccupied and had soon grown tired of listening to endless lectures on Dwarf history and Dwarf politics. One of the dogs came trotting over and sniffed her hand. Maybe he smelled the vixen beneath the human skin.
Valiant lowered his voice. ‘It’s the tomb of that King with the unpronounceable name. Kissmount or something. You know . . . the Witch Slayer.’
Jacob drained his glass. ‘Guismond?’
‘Yes. Whatever. All tip-top secret.’ Valiant waved at one of his servants and pointed at the empty wine bottle. ‘What do you think this is?’ the Dwarf barked at him. ‘Bring a new one.’
‘A lot of winemakers now spike their red wine with elven dust!’ he whispered to Jacob while the servant rushed off. ‘I wonder why they didn’t come up with that earlier. They keep Elves in cages. Hundreds of cages. Phenomenal!’ He raised his glass towards Jacob. ‘To modern times!’
Jacob stared into his glass as though he could see the captured Elves swimming in it.
‘Has the tomb been looted?’ His voice sounded as casual as though he was enquiring about Valiant’s tailor.
The Dwarf shrugged. ‘You know the Dwarf council. Always penny-pinching in the wrong places. Of all the treasure hunters they sent in there, not one has come out. And I say: just as well! Who’d want a weapon that can put an end to every war with one single shot? How’s that good business?’
The Dwarf babbled on, and Fox could feel Jacob’s eyes seeking hers. She wasn’t sure what she saw in them: hope, or the fear of it. The Witch Slayer. She tried to recall what treasure hunters associated with that name, but all she could remember was that at least one headstone in every Witches’ graveyard cursed his name.
‘Can you take me to the tomb?’
Valiant was still raving about the excellent profits to be made in a war, but Jacob’s question immediately shut him up. The Dwarf’s mouth twisted into a smirk that exposed the gold teeth beneath his ridiculous moustache. ‘I knew it! You nearly had me convinced that you actually have a conscience. But you’re all about business, too, aren’t you?’
Jacob took the glass from Valiant’s hand. ‘Can you take me there? I need an answer before you drink yourself out of this chair.’
Valiant wrestled the glass back from him. ‘Who’re you going to sell it to? The Goyl? Or will you grace a human potentate with your help, for a change? To make up for what you did for the stone-skins in the cathedral? Jacob Reckless, the treasure hunter who decides who gets to rule the world.’
Jacob’s face turned a little paler. He didn’t like to remember the Blood Wedding and the role he’d played in it. His voice was hoarse with anger as he answered the Dwarf.
‘I wasn’t helping the Goyl; I was helping my brother.’
Valiant rolled his eyes. ‘Sure. I know. You’re a saint! Still, you should be glad the Goyl are keeping mum about who saved their stone skins at the Blood Wedding. They’re more despised than ever. Those attacks in Vena are nothing compared to the trouble they’re having in their northern provinces. There are daily attacks in Prussia and Holstein, and Albion is supplying the rebels with weapons. The world is a powder keg. Business with explosives and munitions has never been better. Fairy lilies, Witch needles . . .’ The Dwarf grunted disdainfully. ‘Those are yesterday’s commodities. Weapons – that’s the future. And Dwarf hands build very handy bombs.’ His smile was rapturous, as though he were looking straight into paradise.
‘What is in that tomb?’ Fox looked at Jacob.
Valiant rubbed his napkin over his wine-soaked moustache. ‘The deadliest crossbow ever built.’ His tongue was getting heavier by the minute. Fox was having trouble understanding his slurred words. ‘One bolt into the chest of a general reduces his entire army to a pile of corpses. Not bad . . . not even the Goyl have anything like it.’
Fox gave Jacob a puzzled look. What was this about? Was he going to squander what time he had left hunting for treasure?
‘My share’s Fifty per cent,’ said Valiant. ‘No – Sixty. Or you can forget about it.’
‘I’ll give you Sixty-five,’ Jacob replied. ‘If we leave tomorrow morning.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TOGETHER
Elven dust and red wine. When Jacob took Fox to her room, Valiant was sitting in his oversize chair, his feet on his oversize table in his ridiculously oversize and crumbling castle, and he was talking to the paintings on the walls. They were all chasing their childhood dreams.
Fox’s shoulder was aching, though she tried to hide it. Jacob found a sleepy servant down in the kitchen who heated a bowl of water for him. A Man-Swan’s beak was not the cleanest of weapons, and so he also dressed the wound with some of the salve Alma had mixed for him.
Bites, knife wounds, burnt fingers . . . like him, Fox had probably lost count of how often they’d patched each other up over the years. To Jacob, her body was as familiar as his own, but as he touched her now he caught himself feeling self-conscious. She belonged to him like his own shadow. Younger sister, best friend. Jacob loved her so much that the other kind of love seemed like something he had to protect her from: the hungry game that was best ended before it got too serious. He wished he’d observed that rule himself with the Fairy.
Fox didn’t say a word while he put a fresh bandage on her shoulder. Her silence used to be an expression of the wordless familiarity that connected them. But not this time. Jacob opened the window and poured the bloody water into the night. A few snowflakes drifted in.
Fox stepped to his side and caught them with her hand.
‘What’s your plan? Are you going to trade the Dark Fairy the crossbow for your life?’ She leant out the window and inhaled the cold air as though it might drive away her fear.
