The entrance hall smelled of forgetyourself, even more so than the endless paths of the labyrinth. Jacob plucked the flowers from the vases by the door, and Donnersmarck pushed open the high windows to let in the night air.
Several corridors led away from the hall, and a broad staircase swung up to the first floor. What now? Should they split up?
They didn’t have to make that decision. A servant stepped from one of the corridors. Judging by his hairy hands, he hadn’t always been human.
Jacob drew his pistol. It was useless against the master, but it might work on the servant.
‘Where is she?’
No answer. The eyes staring at him were uniformly dark, like an animal’s.
Donnersmarck grabbed the servant by his stiff collar and put the tip of a sabre to his throat. ‘If she’s dead, then so are you. Understood? Where is she?’
It happened too fast.
Antlers sprouted from the servant’s head. They tore through Donnersmarck’s body before he could parry them with the sabre. Jacob shot, but the bullets had no effect, and the Man-Stag deflected Jacob’s sabre effortlessly, as though it were nothing but a stick wielded by a child. Jacob had read about them – stag calves that took the form of a man if human hair was mixed into their hay. It was said they were mindlessly loyal to their masters.
The Man-Stag wiped Donnersmarck’s blood from his brow and made a summoning gesture towards the corridor he’d come from. Jacob ignored him. He reached into his belt pouch and knelt down next to Donnersmarck. Yes, he still carried the Witch’s needle with him. Jacob pressed it into his friend’s bloody hand. It wouldn’t be able to heal a wound as terrible as this, but it could at least close it. The Man-Stag snorted impatiently. Only his head had changed. The blood was dripping from his antlers on to his black tailcoat.
‘Go, Jacob!’ Donnersmarck’s voice was a croaky rattle. Maybe the needle would keep him alive long enough. Long enough for what, Jacob? He got up.
The servant pointed at the corridor again. Jacob thought he could hear Chanute berating him: ‘Damn it, Jacob! What did I teach you about Bluebeards? You seriously believed you could just barge into his home and steal his quarry?’
Doors. At each one, Jacob thought Fox might be lying behind it, dead. But every time he stopped, the Man-Stag just uttered a menacing grunt.
The door he led him to was open.
Jacob already saw the red walls from many steps away.
And the dead on golden chains.
And Fox among them.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
LIFE AND DEATH
For an instant, Fox feared that the blood on Jacob’s shirt was his own, but then she saw the servant’s bloody antlers, and that they’d come without Donnersmarck.
Jacob just brushed her with a quick glance. He knew they were both lost if he let his concern for her distract him from the murderer who was waiting for him among the dead. Jacob was unarmed. His face was blurred by the tears in Fox’s eyes. Tears for her own helplessness. Tears for her fear for him. As they ran down her face, she nearly expected them be as white as the liquid that was filling Troisclerq’s pitcher.
The Bluebeard pushed himself off the blood-red wall. Lost in his house of death. Guy. He briefly regained his name. He went to Fox and touched her cheek as though he wanted to feel her tears on his fingertips.
‘You may go,’ he said to the servant, who was still standing in the door with his bloody antlers. The Man-Stag looked puzzled.
‘I said, you may go!’ Troisclerq’s voice sounded composed, as though time was his. And it was his. The dead bodies around them had procured it for him.
The servant bowed his horned head. Then he hesitantly stepped back and disappeared into the dark corridor.
They were alone. With the dead and their murderer.
Fox recalled all the hours Jacob had sat next to Troisclerq in the coach, relaxed, as though they’d been friends for years. She could still see a trace of that friendship on Jacob’s face. He liked Troisclerq, and he despised his heart for it.
‘No one has made it through the labyrinth in more than eighty years. The last one was a police constable from Champlitte. I kept his weapon as a souvenir.’ Troisclerq pointed at a rapier hanging on the wall behind the dead girls. ‘Help yourself. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. I know you prefer a sabre, but since this is my house, I hope you’ll respect my choice of weapon.’
Jacob went to the rapier. He still avoided looking at Fox. Yes, forget me, she wanted to whisper. Forget me, Jacob, or he will kill you. She saw her fear trickle into the pitcher.
Troisclerq saw it, too.
‘Only nine?’ Jacob looked at the dead. ‘I’m sure you killed many more than that. Am I right?’
He took the rapier from the wall.
‘Yes. I only bring the prettiest ones here.’ Troisclerq brushed back his black hair. ‘I killed my first ones during the Giant Wars. A long time ago. A very long time.’
‘You forget their names, don’t you?’ Jacob pointed the unfamiliar blade at the dead girl with the red ruby brooch on her dress. ‘Her name is Marie Pasquet. She was the granddaughter of a famous goldsmith. I promised her grandfather I’d kill you when I found her.’
‘And I know you usually keep your promises.’ Troisclerq smiled. ‘I already knew we’d end up here when I cut you out of those vines. A downside of such a long life. After just a hundred years or so, everybody becomes so predictable, transparent, like glass. Every virtue, every sin, every weakness . . . nothing but endless repetition. Every ambition – seen it a thousand times. Illusions, lost a hundred times over, all hope childish, all innocence a joke . . .’
He lifted his rapier. ‘What remains is death. And the search for that perfect thrust. Death in its most . . . immaculate form.’
He struck out so suddenly that Jacob, trying to dodge the thrust, stumbled into the hanging dead. Fear. How much could one have? The dead girls, watching the duellers through empty eyes, knew the answer. Fox died with every stumble, with every cut Troisclerq’s blade left on Jacob’s skin. He was toying with Jacob. And he let Fox see it. He left himself open so that Jacob would charge into his blade; he drew bloody lines on Jacob’s skin, sketching his death before he’d fill it in with red. And the pitcher filled with white fear – more lifetime for the Bluebeard.
Fox had often watched Jacob fight, but never against such an adversary. It only dawned on her slowly that he was Troisclerq’s equal – and he wanted to kill the Bluebeard. Never before had Fox seen that desire so clearly on Jacob’s face.
The rapiers snagged on silky robes; they slashed through the golden chains and dead flesh. The two men were breathing heavily. Their wheezes and the silence of the dead . . . Fox knew both would stay with her until the end of her life. If she’d have a life. She tried to free herself so desperately, blood streaming down her arms, and she screamed when Troisclerq’s blade nearly pierced Jacob’s throat. So much fear. She closed her eyes, trying not to choke on it. But the next scream did not come from Jacob.
Troisclerq pressed his hand against his slashed knee. ‘That was dirty,’ Fox heard him gasp. ‘Where did you learn that?’
‘In another world,’ Jacob replied.
Troisclerq stabbed at his chest, but Jacob slashed his blade through the other knee, and as Troisclerq collapsed, Jacob rammed his blade so deep between the Bluebeard’s ribs that the thrust was only halted by the hilt of the sword. Troisclerq cowered on the floor, spitting his own blood on his chest. Jacob dropped to his knees and pulled the key from the Bluebeard’s pocket.
