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‘If you tell me, I will kill you before the wolves eat you.’
Oh yes, he was afraid, though he hid it well. And he didn’t care. Enviable. Nerron despised fear. Fear of water. Fear of others. Fear of himself. He fought it with rage, but that only made it grow, like a well-fed creature.
‘I already have the hand.’ He couldn’t resist a little bragging. Too often had he been forced to listen to the tales of Jacob Reckless’s glorious deeds.
‘Perfect.’ His adversary’s face turned white with pain as he tried to sit up once more. ‘Then I can take it off you when I get my head back.’
‘Really?’ Nerron was wearing the gloves that had already protected him from many spells, yet the pain shot all the way to his shoulder as he pulled the head from the sack. The eyes were closed, but the lips were slightly parted. Nerron quickly shoved the head back into the sack before it could utter something. Even a dead Warlock might still have a spell waiting on his lips.
Nerron put the swindlesack in his coat pocket. His lizard-leather coat would have given Reckless’s human skin much more protection than the fabric his coat was made from. As soft as his skin, and just as tearable. ‘Now, before all your wisdom gets ingested by a wolf . . . how did you manage to steal the red riding hood from the child-eater in Moulin? I heard she already had you in her oven.’
‘I’ll tell you if you tell me how you found that white blackbird. I searched for it for months.’ Reckless tried to free one of his hands, but choke vines were very reliable fetters. ‘Does its song really make you young again?’
‘Yes, but the effect barely lasts a week. My client had already paid me before he found out.’ Nerron rubbed his cracked skin. It ached, even in the shade of the forest. Once this hunt was over, he urgently needed a few months underground. But there was one more question he wanted to ask.
He pulled his knife.
‘Just out of curiosity . . . and I promise you’ll take the answer with you to your grave – or should I say, into a wolf’s intestines? Where are you hiding your jade-skinned brother?’
Ah. So there was a way to get through that smug mask.
‘Will. Wasn’t that his name?’ Nerron leant over his prisoner and cut a fresh shoot from the vine that had wrapped around Reckless’s soft neck. There’d always be another opportunity to use choke vines. ‘Did you know the onyx have tasked five of their best spies to find him?’
Reckless’s eyes followed every move Nerron made. He had himself under control again, but human eyes were still much more treacherous than a Goyl’s. Their alertness betrayed what his silence was trying to conceal. Yes, the rumours were true: the Jade Goyl, who had saved Kami’en’s stone skin, was indeed Jacob Reckless’s brother.
‘Where is he?’ Nerron wrapped the fresh shoot in the cloth that still had a few thorns of the old one stuck in. ‘You could both buy a palace in Lutis with all the silver the onyx have spent searching for him, and they still haven’t found even the faintest trail. That must be quite a remarkable hiding place.’
Reckless smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll tell you if you get these thorns off me.’
Oh, Nerron liked him – as much as he was capable of liking anyone. It was just as well that feeling overcame him so rarely. His mother was the only person he’d ever given his unquestioning affection to. Love was a luxury you paid for with far too much pain.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d better not. The onyx are already unbearable. Doesn’t bear thinking about what will happen if the Jade Goyl helps one of them grab Kami’en’s crown.’
‘Yes?’ Reckless swallowed a groan. His skin was probably well larded with thorns by now. ‘What do you think will happen when you get them the crossbow?’
Nice try.
Nerron tucked the cloth with the shoot into his pocket. ‘Our clients are our professional secret, aren’t they?’ He could already hear the wolves between the trees. ‘I’m not asking you whom you’re seeking the crossbow for.’
He gave his rival one last smile.
‘I really am glad our paths crossed this way. I was getting sick of constantly hearing that you are the best in our trade. Good luck with the wolves. Maybe you’ll think of some-thing. Surprise me! They don’t leave much behind, and it would be such a pity if the vixen has to spend the rest of her life searching for you.’
Nerron jumped on to his horse just as the first wolf came slinking towards Reckless. The others would soon follow. Unlike the onyx lords, however, Nerron didn’t find the screams of a dying man very entertaining.
And Louis had probably found a virgin by now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A HOUSE AT THE EDGE OF THE VILLAGE
The house looked even more shabby than she’d remembered. Mould sprouting in the stone walls. The stench of rotting straw and pig manure. Fishing had made some men along this coast rich, but her father had always taken his money to the tavern than rather than bring it home. Father. Why do you still call him that, Fox? Her mother had married him when Fox was three. Two years and two months after the death of her actual father.
A stump was all that was left of the apple tree by the gate, which she had climbed so often as a child, because the world always seemed much less frightening when viewed from above. The sight nearly made her turn her horse about, but her mother had planted primroses in front of the house, just as she used to every spring. The pale yellow blossoms reminded Fox of all the good times she’d had because of her behind those shabby walls. As a child she’d wondered that something as fragile as a flower could withstand the wind and the world. Maybe her mother had always planted those primroses to teach her and her brothers just that.
Fox touched the posy she’d tucked into her saddle. The blossoms had withered, but that didn’t make them any less beautiful. Jacob had given them to her. For a brief moment, those dried flowers made her feel as though he was by her side. Their two lives, connected through a flower.
The gate stood open, just as it had on the day they chased her away. Her two older brothers and her stepfather. They’d tried to take the fur dress away from her. Fox had torn it from their hands, and she’d started to run. She had felt the bruises from the stones they’d thrown at her for weeks, even under the vixen’s fur. Her youngest brother had stayed hidden in the house, together with her mother, who’d stared through the window as though trying to hold her back with her eyes. But she hadn’t protected her daughter; how should she have? She could never even protect herself.
