"Can you get an appointment with the officer you do business with?"
"And then what?" Valiant shook his head and sneered. "The slaves in the palace all have the King's mark burnt into their foreheads. Even if your brotherly love extends to doing that to yourself, none of them is allowed to leave the upper parts of the palace."
"What about the bridges?"
"What about them?"
Two of them were directly linked to the palace. One was a railway bridge that vanished into a tunnel in the upper part of the cave. The second was one of the bridges with houses, and it connected to the stalactite halfway down. There were no buildings near where it entered the palace, and Jacob got a clear view of an onyx-black gate and a double line of sentries.
"That expression on your face!" Valiant muttered. "I don't like it at all."
Jacob ignored him. He was looking at the metal trusses that held up the bridge. They looked from a distance as if they had been added later to support an older stone structure, and they stuck like claws into the side of the hanging palace.
Jacob ducked into an entrance and pointed his spyglass at the stalactite. "The windows have no bars," he whispered.
"Why would they?" Valiant whispered back. "Only the birds and the bats can get anywhere near them."
The Dwarf fell silent as a group of children filed past the alley. Jacob had never seen a Goyl child before, and for a moment he thought he recognized his brother in one of the boys. Once they'd passed, Valiant looked back up at the bridge.
"Hold on!" he hissed. "Now I know what you're planning to do! It's insane! Even you aren't that stupid!"
Jacob pushed the spyglass back into his coat. "If you want that gold tree, you'd better get me on that bridge!"
He would find Will. Even though he had kissed his girl.
36
The Wrong Name
"Fox?" There. She was calling her again. Fox fantasized about the Waterman dragging Clara down into his pond, the wolves tearing at her skin, or the Dwarf selling her to the highest bidder at some slave market. The Red Fairy had never made Fox feel that way; neither had the Witch into whose hut Jacob had vanished every night some years ago, nor the Empress's maid whose sweet flowery perfume she had once smelled on his clothes for weeks.
"Fox? Where are you?"
Shut up!
Fox ducked under the bushes. She couldn't tell anymore whether she was wearing fur or skin. She no longer wanted her fur. She wanted skin, and lips, so he could kiss them as he had kissed Clara's lips. She couldn’t stop picturing Clara in his arms, again and again.
Jacob.
What was this yearning, tearing at her insides like hunger and thirst? It couldn't be love. Love was warm and soft, like a bed of leaves. But this was dark, like the shade under a poisonous shrub, and it was hungry. So hungry.
It must have some other name, just as there couldn’t be the same word for life and death, or for moon and sun.
Jacob. Even his name suddenly tasted different. And Fox felt a cold breeze on her human skin.
"Fox?" Clara knelt down on the damp moss in front of her.
Her hair was like gold. Fox's hair was always red, red like the fur of a vixen. She couldn’t remember whether it had ever been different.
She shoved Clara away and stood up. It felt good to be the same size as her.
"Fox." Clara reached for her arm as she pushed past her. "I don't even know your name. Your real name, I mean."
Real? What was real about it? And how was it any of her business? Not even Jacob knew her human name. "Celeste, wash your face. Celeste, comb your hair."
"Do you still feel it?" Fox stared into her blue eyes. Jacob could look you in the eye and lie. He was very good at it, but not even he could fool the vixen.
Clara averted her gaze, but Fox could smell what she was feeling, all the fear and shame. "Have you ever drunk Larks' Water?"