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The deliveryman was getting louder.
“It is as I told you. She is free.”
Tennant eyed Jacob as if he’d lost his mind. “I’m very good at lying to other people,” he said, “but not as good at lying to myself. A problem you very obviously don’t have. I’m not sure I envy you that.”
He looked over Jacob’s shoulder.
Fox was standing at the top of the steps. She was smiling at the Windhound. Jacob had always thought that smile belonged to him alone.
“Chanute was about to go searching for you,” she called to Jacob.
“He had a good reason for his long absence,” Orlando replied. “I just learned you’re going on a treasure hunt for the Tzar. Will you still have breakfast with me? There’s a café on Woslki Square where they drizzle the pancakes with edible gold.”
“Sure.” Fox avoided looking at Jacob.
Gone. It didn’t matter that he’d done it to protect her. Not a bit. She belonged to him. Why did such truths only reveal themselves after they’d become lies?
The guards called Orlando a taxi. The dogs licked his hands while he waited for it. The Barsoi. Fox stood and looked after the taxi, and with every step they then climbed together, Jacob remembered something he could’ve said or done that would’ve prevented the look she’d given Orlando. Oh yes, he was an idiot. He’d always been frightened by how much he needed her. And now it was too late.
Do you love him more than me? Jacob would rather have swallowed his tongue than actually asked that question, but he would’ve given his right hand for an answer.
“Have you ever heard of the Golden Yarn?” Fox asked.
“What’s that supposed to be?”
She again looked out beyond the gate, as though she hadn’t heard his question.
“The Tzar’s giving us his most precious flying carpet. Maybe we can still find Will. We can leave soon.” In three days, at the earliest, Jacob. It would take him at least that long to walk the spells into the carpet. Why did he not tell her? Because he wanted to see how much she minded leaving Moskva. He’d never hurt her willingly; this was the first time. Love didn’t deserve the nice reputation it had.
“Good,” said Fox. But she didn’t mean it. She sounded sad. And guilty.
“Are you sure you want to come? He’s my brother after all, not yours.”
There was a moment when he thought she might actually say no. She stayed silent for a long while.
“So I can go retrieve your silver statue from some treasure chamber?” she finally said. It wasn’t what she’d wanted to say.
She turned around.
“Let’s find Will,” she said over her shoulder. “What happen
s after that, we’ll see.”
A Message for Celest Auger
The carpet was delivered the next morning, as promised. Even though Baryatinsky’s guest bedrooms were at least as big as The Ogre’s taproom, Jacob still had to move some furniture to be able to unroll it even partway. Before locking himself away with the carpet for three days and three nights, he treated himself to a sumptuous breakfast in their host’s dining hall. The portraits on the walls showed men in bearskin coats and turbans of embroidered silk, some faces as pale as Dragon bone and some as dark as night-wood. Baryatinsky’s ancestors (if that’s who they were) showed the diversity of Varangia. And its enormous size. It was better to philosophize about that than stare at the empty chair where Fox usually sat at breakfast. Pancakes with edible gold...
Jacob was sipping his third cup of mocha when Chanute and Sylvain joined him. But he didn’t feel like talking, and the way the other two looked at the empty chair was too much. Every thought of Will or the Alderelf seemed to fade against the smile Fox had given the Windhound. “What happens after that, we’ll see.” He kept hearing her say it all the way back to his room. “What happens after that, we’ll see.”
He bolted his door and sat down on the carpet. Time to leave the present behind. Only the past could induce the carpet to carry him to Will. The past was not a place to which Jacob liked to return, but on this morning, it was a refuge from the thoughts and feelings he didn’t want to think or feel.
Once upon a time, Jacob...
Memories. How did they get stored in the mind? Why did he remember that particular day with Will in the park, when there’d been so many more? Why did he remember that one quarrel or that one laugh as though it had happened yesterday, but other moments eluded him, even though he could recall their emotions? So little was left of all the weeks, months, years. “My brother likes to fight.” Some things were preserved in the words used to frame them. Or in a touch. Will’s hand in his, when they were both younger; the knock on his bedroom door when Will couldn’t sleep; the jealousy, the rage, when he had to let him tag along; the impatience with the younger one...
Remember, Jacob.
But what came were the wrong images. The first traces of jade, their fight in the cage, their struggle in the palace in Vena, the Blood Wedding, Will at Kami’en’s side, Man-Goyl.
