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Louis of Lotharaine. Nerron bowed his head. What was he hunting? His mother’s maids? Nerron had heard a lot of things about this crown prince, none of them very good.
‘I cannot possibly guarantee his safety.’ Nerron’s voice barely concealed his anger. He worked alone. Always alone. And this was the most important hunt of his life.
The old onyx shot him a warning glance.
What? Whoever found the crossbow would be the best – for ever. Power. Land. Gold . . . There were many things for which the onyx and Crookback would have sold their wives and children. The Bastard wanted only one thing: to be the best in his trade. There was nothing on or below the earth he desired more. He was never going to find the Lost Palace, or the crossbow, if he had to babysit a prince along the way. Especially with the competition he was facing. Nerron hadn’t told the onyx about Reckless. It was far too personal. They would learn about him when the hunt was over and Reckless had lost.
Crookback’s eyes had turned as cold as the skin of his Watermen. Kings assumed that the company of their sons was nothing if not an undeserved honour, even if they didn’t think much of their offspring themselves.
‘You will guarantee his safety. I once had my best huntsman shot because he returned Louis to me from a hunt with a graze to his arm.’ The crowned cat was showing its claws. ‘I will send my best bodyguard along with Louis.’ Perfect.
Maybe the prince could also bring his tailor. Or the servant who procured his elven dust. Louis was known to have a weakness for the stuff.
Nerron bowed his head and pictured the tomb-cloves from Guismond’s grave spreading green mould on Crook-back’s skin.
And he would still beat Jacob Reckless.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JUST A CARD
He ran and ran. He had no feet any more, but he stumbled on, on bloody stumps, through a forest that was darker than the one in which he’d faced the Tailor. Always following the man who he knew was his father, even though that man never turned around. Sometimes he just wanted to catch up with him; sometimes he wanted to kill him. It was a dark forest.
‘Jacob! Wake up!’
He shot up. His shirt was so wet with sweat that he shivered in the cold night air. At first he had no idea where he was. He wasn’t even sure which world he was in, until he saw the two moons through the branches above and Fox kneeling next to him.
Flanders, Jacob. Soggy meadows, windmills. Broad rivers. The bedbugs had eaten them alive at the last inn, so they’d decided to sleep outside. They were on their way to the coast to catch a ferry to Albion.
‘Everything all right?’ Fox looked worried.
‘Yes. Just a bad dream.’ An owl screeched in the oak above them. Fox was still looking anxious. Of course, Jacob. Now that she knows the truth, every sneeze sounds like dying. He took her hand and placed it over his heart. ‘Feel it? Strong and regular. Maybe Fairy curses only work on those who were born in this world.’
Fox attempted a smile, but it wasn’t very convincing. They both knew what she was thinking: his brother had also not been born into this world, and yet he’d grown a skin of jade.
They’d left the mine four days earlier and had not rested since. Jacob was quite certain he knew what the inscriptions on the tomb floor meant, but the only proof would be holding the crossbow in his hands. They’d both seen the mutilated corpse and had immediately realised that head, hand and heart were missing to make something disappear. It was a common enough spell. But it was the alabaster words that had revealed to them that it wasn’t merely the crossbow that Guismond had made vanish. Fox and Jacob had turned and twisted the words every which way, until they were convinced it could mean only one thing.
The Witch Slayer had three children. His elder son, Feirefis (or Firefist, as he later called himself ), had claimed the crown of Albion while his father lay on his deathbed. Albion lay to the west. His younger brother, Gahrumet, the one who’d supposedly been saved by the crossbow, was made King of Lotharaine, the southern part of Guismond’s empire. Guismond’s only daughter, Orgeluse, had founded the dynasty of Austrian Emperors by marrying one of her father’s knights and bearing him two sons. Austry lay to the east.
THE HEAD IN THE WEST.
THE HAND IN THE SOUTH.
THE HEART IN THE EAST.
Feirefis had received his father’s head. Gahrumet the hand. Orgeluse his heart.
TOGETHER THEY SHALL POSESS WHAT EACH DESIRES.
It wasn’t hard to guess that this was the crossbow.
CONCEALED WHERE THEY ALL BEGAN.
Guismond’s children had all been born in the palace above the Dead City, which he’d built and which had been nothing but an empty plain since the day of his death. To conceal the crossbow, the Witch Slayer had made an entire palace disappear, and he’d left macabre clues as a riddle to his children. If the madness to which he’d succumbed in the final years of his life had convinced him this would sow peace among his offspring, then that wish was not to be granted. They’d hated each other as strongly as they’d hated their father. Some stories claimed that their mother was a Witch and that she was the reason for Guismond’s deep hatred of all Witches. Others claimed the Witch had been his second wife and that she had revealed to him the path by which he became a Warlock. Whichever was true, Guismond’s children had warred with one another without ever solving their father’s riddle, and it was quite likely that they’d never even read the inscriptions in his tomb. But the Bastard had, and Jacob had no illusions about whether the Goyl had also deciphered them. The only question left now was who’d be faster finding the three macabre keys.
ow, Nerron.
This time he was going to beat Jacob Reckless.
