Head, hand, heart. West, south, east.
Fox had suggested they make the longest journey first. That meant Albion. With any luck, they would be there in two days, provided the ferries were running. This early in the year, storms often kept them in port. Two, three months. Maybe less. It was going to be tight, even if the Bastard didn’t manage to find any of Guismond’s gruesome parting gifts before they did.
Fox pulled the fur dress from her saddlebag.
‘Who do you think the Bastard’s working for?’
She still shifted nearly every night, even though she realised herself how quickly the fur stole her years. But he couldn’t presume to say anything about it. He’d never stopped going through the mirror – not for his mother’s sake, nor for Will’s – and he definitely wouldn’t have done it in exchange for a less perilous and potentially longer life. When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer. The heart, the soul, whatever it was . . .
‘He usually works for the onyx, as far as I know,’ Jacob said. He pulled from his saddlebag the tin plate that had saved him from many hungry nights. ‘His father is one of their highest lords. If the Bastard finds the crossbow, then I guess the Goyl will soon have a new King.’
Jacob rubbed his sleeve over the plate, and immediately it filled with bread and cheese. He wasn’t really hungry, but he was afraid of falling back asleep and finding himself in that forest again, stumbling endlessly after his father. He never really acknowledged the thought, but it was always present, like an annoying whisper: You’ll actually die without ever having seen him again, Jacob.
Fox had swapped her human clothes for the fur dress. It kept growing with her, like a second skin, and it still had the same silky sheen as on the day Jacob had seen it the first time.
‘Jacob . . .’
‘What?’ He could barely keep his eyes open.
‘Lie down. We’ve not had a rest in days. There won’t be a ferry until the morning, anyway.’
She was right. He reached for his backpack. He still had some sleeping pills from the other world somewhere. If he remembered right, they were from his mother’s nightstand. For years she hadn’t been able fall asleep without them. A card dropped out of the backpack on to the frost-covered grass, and he picked it up. NOREBO JOHANN EARLKING. The odd stranger who’d vouched for him at the auction and been so interested in his family’s heirlooms.
Fox shifted shape and licked her fur, as though she had to clean the human scent off. She quickly snuggled up to him the way she used to when there was still a child hiding under that fur. They were both children when he’d found her in the trap. Jacob stroked her pointy ears. So beautiful. In both bodies.
‘Be careful. The hunters are already out stalking.’ As if he really needed to remind her.
She snapped at his hand – the vixen’s way of showing her love – and then she disappeared between the trees, as silently as if her paws weren’t carrying any weight at all.
Jacob stared at the card he was still holding in his hand. He’d meant to ask Will to find out more about his strange benefactor. Where was his head? Yes, Jacob, where? Death is breathing down your neck. Norebo Johann Earlking will have to wait, no matter how much you disliked the colour of his eyes.
He threw the card back into the grass. Two, three months . . . Two days on the ferry, and who knew how long it would take them to find the head in Albion? Then back to Lotharaine and Austry for the hand and the heart. Hundreds of miles, with death hard on his heels. Maybe his last chance really had come along too late.
The wind blew through his sweat-soaked shirt and brought the stench of a nearby swamp. The two moons disappeared behind a dark cloud, and for an instant the world around him became so dark and strange that it seemed to want to remind him it wasn’t his home. Where would you like to die, Jacob? Here or there?
A few wilted leaves blew into the fire – and Earlking’s card went with them.
It didn’t burn.
The leaves it had landed on crumbled to ashes, but the card was as unblemished as when Earlking had first put it into his hand. Jacob drew his sabre and used its blade to flick the card out of the flames. The paper was lily-white.
A magical object.
How had it come to the other world? Stupid question, Jacob. How did the Djinn get there? But who had brought the card through the mirror, and had Earlking been aware of what he was putting in his hand? Too many questions, and Jacob had the nasty feeling that he wouldn’t like the answers.
He turned the card around. The back side had filled up with words, and when he brushed his finger over them, it came away with a trace of ink on it.
GOOD EVENING, JACOB,
I REGRET THAT WE MET ONLY SO BRIEFLY, BUT I HOPE WE SHALL HAVE MORE OPPORTUNITIES IN THE FUTURE. MAYBE I CAN BE HELPFUL SOMETIME WITH THE TASK YOU’RE FACING. NOT FOR PURELY UNSELFISH REASONS, OF COURSE, BUT I PROMISE YOU MY PRICE WILL BE AFFORDABLE.
The writing disappeared as soon as Jacob had read the last word, and the card again showed nothing but Earlking’s printed name.
Grass-green eyes.
A Leprechaun? Or one of the Gilches that the Witches up in Suomi moulded from clay and awakened with their laughter? But in Chicago? No. This had to be some cheap trick, the prank of an old man who’d happened upon a magical object. Jacob was tempted to throw the card away, but then he wrapped it in his gold handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket. Fox was right. He needed sleep. But as soon as he lay down next to the dying fire, he heard shots, and then he could only lay there and listen to the darkness until, hours later, he heard the vixen’s paws and Fox herself a little later as she spread her blanket next to his.
She was soon breathing deeply and steadily, in a sound sleep. And as he felt her warmth next to him, Jacob forgot the dreams awaiting him and the card that brought him words from the other world, and he finally fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A SPIDER’S REPORT
Carriages and racehorses. Charles, King of Lotharaine, collected both, just as he collected the portraits of actresses. Nerron was sitting in a carriage painted in the national colours of Lotharaine with diamond-studded doors. Crookback clearly had better taste when it came to selecting his suits. Nerron had spent a lot of time searching for a place that was watched neither by the King’s spies nor by those of the onyx – for what he was trying to find out was neither of their business.
Where was Jacob Reckless? That little trick with the door couldn’t have kept him in the tomb for long. The golden rule of treasure hunting (and of life in general) was never to underestimate the skills of your competition.
So – where was he?
The medallion Nerron pulled out from under his lizard shirt was one of his most prized possessions. Out of it crawled a spider he’d stolen when he was five – an act that had then saved his life. The onyx invited all bastard children between their fifth and seventh birthdays to a palace on the shores of an underground lake. The lake was so deep that the moray eels in it supposedly grew three hundred feet long. At the time, Nerron couldn’t understand why his mother wasn’t happy about the honour of the invitation. She had barely spoken a word while he’d admired, open-mouthed, all the wonders of that underground palace. Until then, home had been a hole in a wall, with a niche for him to sleep in and a table on which his mother cut the malachite that resembled her skin. But Nerron was neither tall nor beautiful, both of which the onyx valued very much, and his mother had been very aware what that meant: the onyx lords were miserly with their blood, and bastards who didn’t pass muster were drowned in the lake. A five-year-old, however, who managed to steal a valuable reconnaissance tool while he awaited his sentence in the library, definitely showed promise.
