Hippolyte Ramée had driven his Heinzel away years ago after he’d caught them stealing. But he still worked with Elves. He hid them in his back room so he wouldn’t be thought of as old-fashioned, yet the silvery dust they spread when they flew immediately settled on Jacob’s coat as he opened the door.
The jewellery Ramée crafted was famous beyond Vena. The jeweller originally came from Lotharaine, where he’d trained under the infamous goldsmith of Pont-de-Pile. There were many stories, each more gruesome than the last, about how Hippolyte had lost both his feet in the goldsmith’s service. Ramée maintained his silence about it. Jacob had actually seen the golden feet Ramée had wrought to escape his master. On this morning, however, they were tucked inside buttoned boots.
For the past Thirty years, Hippolyte Ramée had been the official goldsmith to the imperial family of Austry, and as far as Jacob was aware, the Goyl had not changed that. The many years of setting tiny stones in gold and silver had not been kind to Ramée’s eyes. The lenses on his spectacles were so thick they made his rheumy eyes look as big as a child’s.
‘Do you have an appointment? If not, you may leave immediately.’ Ramée’s temper was as famous as his jewellery. He was known to have thrown even emissaries from the Empress out of his shop. Yet the beauty of the pieces that were on display in glass cabinets all around the shop made most aristocratic treasure chambers look shabby in comparison. Necklaces, bracelets, tiaras and brooches; rubies, emeralds, topaz and amber, wrought so delicately in gold and silver that it looked as though they had simply grown from the fingertips of the old man behind the simple wooden table.
‘It’s me, Hippolyte.’
Ramée lifted his head and put down the palm-sized magnifying glass through which he’d been inspecting a diamond the size of a pea. The suspicion on his face disappeared only after Jacob went to stand right in front of him.
‘Jacob, of course,’ he observed. His mottled hand closed around the diamond. Ramée always expected to be robbed. The Empress was the only person he’d ever exempted from his suspicion. ‘Are you in need of another brooch to impress some imperial maid?’
‘No.’ Jacob glanced at a tiara that looked like a web of silver woven around blossoms of carnelian. Ramée had adapted his craft to the new masters of Vena. ‘I presume you’re still in charge of maintaining the imperial jewels?’
Ramée adjusted his glasses. ‘Of course. Say what you will about the Goyl, but they do recognise a man who knows his stones.’
Jacob suppressed a smile. Hippolyte was a vain old man.
‘A shame they don’t like gold,’ Ramée added. ‘It means I have to work more with silver, but their King only recently ordered a few very tasteful pieces. The bracelet, he . . .’
‘Hippolyte!’ Ramée could ramble on for hours about the cut of a stone or the value of flawless elven glass, but Jacob was done wasting time he didn’t have. Yet the old man carried on, in the heavy Lotharainian accent he’d never lost through all the decades of exile. He was obviously not only half blind but also quite deaf by now.
‘Hippolyte! Could you listen to me for a moment?’
Ramée abruptly fell silent, as though he’d swallowed one of his diamonds. ‘What?’ he barked at Jacob. ‘I’m three times as old as you. What’s the rush?’
‘We never know when death might claim us, right?’ Jacob flicked a spider off his sleeve. Her body was blue, like the amethyst rings Ramée was so famous for.
The old man swatted at the spider as she dropped between his fingers.
‘Spiders, mice, cockroaches!’ he muttered, wiping the spider off the table. ‘The cats can’t keep up with them! I might have to get some of those thieving Heinzel back after all.’
Another favourite subject. Heinzel.
‘Hippolyte, can you tell me something about a piece of jewellery? I saw it in a portrait at the history museum. The stone is black, slightly larger than a grape, set in a mesh of golden tendrils.’
Ramée stared at him aghast. Then he dropped his head, and his shaky hands began to sort the tools on the table in front of him. When he lifted his head again, the eyes behind the thick glasses were swimming with tears.
‘Why are you doing this?’ he panted at Jacob. ‘Is that some kind of cruel joke? I confessed everything to the Empress back then.’
He stood up so abruptly that the diamond he’d been working on was knocked off the table. ‘Did Amalie send you? Sure! What can you expect from a princess who gets herself knocked up by a Goyl!’
Ramée pressed his hand over his mouth as though he could stuff the words back inside. He shot a quick glance at the window, but the only one outside was a Dwarf standing in front of the shop window opposite.
What was the old man talking about? Jacob picked up the diamond and put it back on the table. It glistened like a frozen tear.
‘Nobody sent me,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for this piece myself. I just wanted to ask you whether you could get me a look at it.’
Ramée took off his glasses and agitatedly wiped the lenses with his sleeve. ‘Forget it!’ The words burst out of him. ‘The stone is lost. Just like Marie.’
Jacob took the glasses from his hands. He polished the lenses and handed them back to the old man. ‘Marie?’
Ramée’s hands were trembling as he took the glasses. He pointed at a photograph on the wall next to the door. A black ribbon was tied to the frame. The picture showed a young girl, maybe eighteen years old. Jacob went to the picture. Past reality, frozen by light, acid and silver. Behind the mirror you were still reminded what a miracle a photograph really was. The girl Jacob was looking at had hair so dark that it nearly melted into the sepia brown background. She looked a little stiff – after all, one had to sit still for a long time for a portrait like that – but her eyes were saying, Look at me. Am I not beautiful?
‘It was her first ball.’ Ramée stood by Jacob’s side. Only the heaviness of his steps hinted at the golden feet. ‘I’d just received the necklace, together with a few other pieces from the palace. I still don’t know what kind of stone it was. It had a strange consistency. But it looked so beautiful on Marie’s white skin. ‘Like a piece of night caught in gold, Grandpapa,’ is what she said. Who can refuse his own granddaughter? And it was only for the ball. She never returned. Gone. Just gone. As if she never existed. Her mother grieves so much, she now barely leaves the house. She tells herself Marie ran off with one of the officers who like to hang around those balls. She probably knows that the truth is far more unbearable.’
Ramée pulled back his sleeve. He was wearing a golden bracelet. The fine links looked tarnished, black. ‘You’ve heard about bracelets like this?’