The pastilles were even better than moor-root, and Witch-caramel had no side effects. Jacob had to admit he was beginning to like his rescuer. Troisclerq hadn’t said a word about saving Jacob in the woods, not to Fox or to the other travellers. He might have given Fox a few too many looks, but even that Jacob could forgive. After all, he couldn’t ask the man to pretend to be blind.
It was best not to drink wine with Witch-caramel, but not even the child-eater pastilles could soothe his injured pride, and Jacob could still see the Goyl sneering down at him. Fox shot him a worried look as he ordered his second carafe. He answered her with a smile that he hoped didn’t give away too much of the humiliating self-pity he was wallowing in. Self-pity, injured pride, and fear of death. A nasty mix, and they still had several days of travelling in that stuffy coach ahead of them. He filled his glass to the brim.
The pain shot into his chest so suddenly that he thought he could feel his heart explode behind his ribs. Nothing would have soothed that pain. Jacob clawed at the table around which they were all sitting, and he suppressed the groan that so badly wanted to escape from his lips.
Fox looked at him. She pushed back her chair.
The pain blurred her face as much as the others’, and he could feel his whole body begin to shake.
‘Jacob!’ Fox took his hand. She talked at him, but he couldn’t hear her. There was only the pain as it seared another letter of the Fairy’s name from his memory. Jacob felt Troisclerq’s arms reaching under his, then Troisclerq and the coachman carrying him up the stairs, where they put him on a bed and examined the wound the wolf had torn into his side. He wanted to tell them they were wasting their time, but the moth was still feeding, and then he was gone.
When he came to, the pain was gone, but his body still remembered. The room was dark. Only a gas lamp burning on the table. Fox was standing next to it; she was looking at something in her hand. The lamp’s light made her skin as white as milk.
She spun around as he sat up, and hid her hand behind her back.
‘What do you have there?’
She didn’t answer. ‘The moth on your chest has three spots,’ she said. ‘When was the other time?’
‘In Saint-Riquet.’ Jacob had never seen her face look so pale. He sat up. ‘What is that in your hand?’
She flinched.
‘What’s that in your hand, Fox?’ His knees were still weak from the pain, but Jacob grabbed her arm and pulled the hand out from behind her back.
She opened her fingers.
A glass ring.
Jacob had seen a similar one in the Empress’s Chambers of Miracles.
‘You didn’t put that on my finger, did you? Fox!’ He grabbed her shoulders. ‘Tell me the truth. This ring was not on my finger. Please!’
Tears ran down her face. But then she shook her head. Jacob took the ring before she could close her hand. She reached for it, but Jacob put it in his pocket. Then he pulled her close. She sobbed like a child, and he held her as firmly as he could.
‘Promise me!’ he whispered. ‘Promise me you’ll never try something like that again. Promise!’
‘No!’ she replied.
‘What? Do you think I want you dead instead of me?’
‘I just wanted to give you time.’
‘These rings are dangerous. Every second you put it on my finger will lose you a year. And sometimes they can’t be pulled off before they have taken your entire life.’
She struggled free and wiped the tears off her face.
‘I want you to live.’ She whispered the words, as though she feared death might hear them and take them as a challenge.
‘Good. Then let’s find the heart before the Goyl does. I’m sure I can ride. Who knows when they’ll get that coach repaired?’
‘There are no horses.’ Fox went to the window. ‘The landlord sold his only riding horses the day before yesterday, to four men. He boasted to Troisclerq that one of them was Louis of Lotharaine. He had a Goyl with him, with a green-speckled skin. They only stopped briefly and rode on that same afternoon.’
The day before yesterday. It’s even more hopeless than you thought.
Fox pushed open the window, as if letting out the fear. The air that came rushing in was as cold and damp as snow. There was laughter from downstairs, and Jacob recognised the loud voice of the lawyer who’d sat next to him in the coach.
Louis of Lotharaine. The Bastard was hunting the crossbow for Crookback.