The crowd in front of the palace was so dense that Jacob had to struggle to get through to the wrought iron gates. The imperial guards pointed their bayonets at him as he approached. Fortunately, Jacob recognized a familiar face under one of the feathered helmets. Justus Kronsberg, scion of an old family of landed gentry. They owed their wealth to the fact that his father's meadows were popular with the Elves whose threads and glass adorned so many dresses at the court.
The Empress required all her guardsmen to be at least six and a half feet tall, and the youngest Kronsberg was no exception. Justus was half a head taller than Jacob, not counting his helmet, but his scraggly mustache couldn't hide the fact that he still had the face of a boy.
Years ago, Jacob had saved one of Justus's brothers from the wrath of a Witch whose daughter he'd rejected, and every year since then their father had sent Jacob enough elven glass to make new buttons for all his clothes, though the rumor that the beautiful glass protected against Stilts and Thumblings had sadly not proved to be true.
"Jacob Reckless!" The youngest Kronsberg spoke with the soft dialect of the countryside around the capital. "Just yesterday someone told me you were killed by the Goyl."
"Really?"
Jacob automatically touched his chest. The imprint of the moth was still on his skin.
"Where did they put the groom?" he asked while Kronsberg opened the gate. "In the north wing?"
The other guards eyed him warily.
"Where else?" Kronsberg lowered his voice. "Are you back from an assignment? I hear the Empress has been offering thirty gold sovereigns for a wishing sack since King Crookback started bragging about owning one."
A wishing sack. Chanute had one. Jacob had helped him steal it from a Stilt. But not even Chanute was ruthless enough to put such an item into the Empress's hands. You just had to name an enemy, and the sack made your foe disappear without a trace. Crookback was rumored to have already dealt with hundreds of men this way.
Jacob looked up at the balcony from which the Empress would present the bride and groom to her subjects the next day.
"No, I'm not here about a wishing sack," he said. "I am delivering a present for the bride. My best to your father and your brother."
Justus Kronsberg was visibly disappointed not to hear more, but he still opened the gate to the external courtyard. After all, it was Jacob's doing that his brother hadn't ended up as a toad at the bottom of some well, or, as Witches tended to prefer these days, as a doormat or a tray for their tea service.
The last time Jacob had been in the palace was three months earlier, when he'd been called to authenticate a magic nut in the Empress's Chambers of Miracles. The wide courtyards now seemed unremarkable compared to what he had seen in the Goyl fortress, and the buildings surrounding them looked drab, despite their gilded gutters and crystal balconies. The splendor within, however, was still impressive.
The Emperors of Austry had spared no expense, especially in the north wing, for it was built specifically to demonstrate to visitors the wealth and power of the Empire. Golden fruits and flowers twined around the granite columns. The floor was plain white marble (the Goyl were far better at mosaics than any of their neighbors), and the walls were painted with frescoes of Austry's marvels: the highest mountains, the oldest towns, and the most spectacular castles. The ruin that housed the mirror was depicted in all its lost glory, with Schwanstein as a fairy-tale idyll at its feet. No roads or railway tracks scarred the painted hills; instead, they were teeming with all the creatures Her Majesty's family had been hunting with abandon for generations: Giants, Witches, Watermen, Lorelei, Unicorns, and Ogres.
The stairs leading to the upper floors were lined with less peaceful images, commissioned by the Empress's father. Sea, land, summer, and winter campaigns; battles against his brother in Lotharaine, his cousin in Albion, against rebellious Dwarfs, and the Wolf-Lords in the east. Every visitor was sure to find a painting depicting the army of his own nation in battle with the Empire, and of course they were always the defeated. The Goyl were the only ones to have climbed these stairs without having to see their forebears being annihilated in battle. Ever since they had started engaging the humans in war, the Goyl had been the victors.
The two guards coming down the stairs didn't challenge Jacob, even though he was armed, and the servant who scurried past behind them gave Jacob a deferential nod. Everybody in the north wing knew Jacob Reckless, for Therese of Austry often called on his services to give important guests a tour of her Chambers of Miracles and tell them true and untrue stories about the treasures on display there.
The Goyl had been put on the second floor, the most sumptuous part of the north wing. Jacob saw their sentries as he peered down the first corridor. They looked at him, but Jacob pretended not to see them as he turned left from the staircase into a chamber where the Empress demonstrated her interest in the wider world by displaying souvenirs brought back from her family's travels.
The chamber was deserted, just as Jacob had hoped. The Goyl weren't interested in the Troll-fur hat her Majesty's father had brought back from Yurtland, or in the Leprechaun boots from Albion, and whatever was written about their people in the books that lined the walls was most likely far from flattering.
The north wing was far from the Empress's chambers, thus giving her guests the illusion of being unobserved. But the walls hid a network of secret passages from which every room could be spied on and in some cases even entered. Jacob had used these passageways before, to pay nightly visits to an ambassador's daughter. The network was entered through hidden doors, and one of them was behind a royal souvenir from Lotharaine. The curtain was embroidered with the pearls found in the stomachs of Thumblings, and the door hidden behind it looked like part of the paneling.
Jacob nearly stumbled over a dead rat as he entered the dark passageway. The Empress had them fumigated regularly, but the rodents loved the dark corridors. Every three yards there were peepholes in the walls, each approximately the size of a thumbnail, which were hidden on the other side by ornamental stucco or behind two-way mirrors. In the first room Jacob checked, he saw a maid dusting the furniture. The second and third rooms had been turned into temporary offices for the Goyl. Jacob instinctively held his breath when he saw Hentzau sitting behind one of the desks. But it wasn't for him that Jacob had come.
The air was musty in the passageways, and the confined space made his heart beat faster. He heard another maid softly humming to herself, the clanking of porcelain — and then a cough, very close. Jacob quickly switched off his flashlight. Of course. Therese of Austry had all her guests watched; why should her greatest enemy be treated any differently, even if she was giving him her daughter?
A gas lantern appeared around a corner up ahead, illuminating a pale man who looked as if he spent his entire life in these dark spaces. Jacob squeezed into an alcove, holding his breath until the spy had shuffled past him and out through the hidden door. He was probably going to fetch whoever was relieving him. Jacob wouldn't have much time.
The spy had been watching the very room Jacob was looking for. He recognized the Dark Fairy's voice even before he saw her through the tiny hole. The room was dimly lit by a few candles, and the curtains were all drawn, though a trickle of sunlight seeped underneath the pale yellow brocade. The Fairy was standing by one of the curtains, as though she wanted to shield the King from the light. Her skin shone through the darkness like moonlight made flesh. Don't look at her, Jacob!
The King of the Goyl was standing by the door. Fire in the dark. Jacob sensed his impatience even through the wall.
"You're asking me to put my faith in a fairy tale."
Every word filled the room. His voice resonated with power as well as his ability to control it. "I admit it amuses me that those who'd like to see us crawl back into the earth seem to believe in it, but surely you don't expect me to be that naïve? No man's skin can guarantee what more than a hundred thousand soldiers have fought for. I am not invincible, and no Jade Goyl will change that. Even this wedding will only buy me peace for a while."
The Fairy tried to reply, but he cut her off.
"We have uprisings in the north; the east is only quiet because they're more interested in slaughtering each other; in the west, Crookback takes my bribes and arms his troops behind my back, not to mention his cousin on the island. The onyx Goyl despise the color of my skin. My munitions factories can't keep up with my trigger-happy soldiers. The field hospitals are overflowing, and the resistance has just blown up two of our most vital railroads. As far as I remember, none of that was mentioned in the fairy tale my mother told me. Let the people believe in the Jade Goyl and lucky stones, but these days the world is made of iron."
He put his hand on the door handle and looked at the gold fittings on the door. "They do make beautiful things," he murmured. "I just wonder why they're so obsessed with gold. Silver is so much more beautiful."