The Golden Yarn (Mirrorworld 3)

“The Empress wants to see you.”

Do not look at her. But she held his glance with her eyes.

“Why?”

Donnersmarck felt her rage, like an animal stirring.

“I know her son is still alive. Tell her that. And tell her she will die if that changes. I will send her my moths until she has caterpillars hatching from her doll skin. Can you remember that? I want you to repeat it to her, word for word, but do it slowly. Her mind is as dull as her hatred. Now go.”

The shadows formed wolves under the trees, unicorns behind the silk-upholstered chaise lounge Donnersmarck knew she never sat on, snakes on the rugs Kami’en had bought for her in Nagpur. She did not belong between these walls built by mortal hands. Beneath her rage, Donnersmarck could feel a pain that touched him more than her beauty. And he stood there and looked at her and could not understand how the King of the Goyl could be sleeping in Amalie’s doll bed when he had this woman waiting for him here.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked. But this time her voice sounded softer. The tiles under Donnersmarck’s feet bloomed into flower.

He turned.

“Come to me when the stag stirs,” she said. “I can show you how to tame him.”

Kami’en’s guards opened the doors, but Donnersmarck hardly saw them. He stumbled out into the wide courtyard, his hand on his mangled chest. His two soldiers eyed him quizzically. He could see their relief that he was alone.

Sleepless

Four o’clock. For hours, Fox had been listening to the chimes of Schwanstein’s market church tallying the night. She spent the night in Jacob’s room, as she always did when he wasn’t there. The bed smelled of him, though she probably only imagined that. Jacob hadn’t been to Schwanstein in months. Beneath her window, a late patron of The Ogre stumbled drunkenly into the square. The clinking of glass told her Wenzel was clearing the tumblers from the tables in the taproom below. In the chamber next door, Albert Chanute was coughing himself in and out of sleep. Wenzel had told her the old man had been unwell for weeks, but Chanute had apparently threatened that anyone who told Jacob would be drowned in a vat of his most rancid wine. Jacob would have done the same. The two were so similar, and always so anxious not to show how much they meant to each other.

Just how unwell Chanute was had only become clear to Fox when he’d asked her to fetch Alma Spitzweg. The old treasure hunter couldn’t stand Witches, light or dark. They scared him, though he’d have chopped his remaining arm off rather than admit it. But after the new doctor from Vena had been unable to do anything for him (further confirming Chanute’s opinion of city folk), there was only the old Witch left, who disliked him as much as he disliked her, and who had never forgiven him for taking Jacob as his treasure-hunting apprentice.

Alma had come to see Chanute tonight. Fox could smell thyme, fairy mint, and lungwort, and Chanute’s cough had begun to sound slightly less labored. Alma usually mixed a few of her cat’s hairs into her potions, but that was a detail Chanute didn’t need to know. A dog barked outside, and Fox thought she could hear the scream of a Thumbling. She pushed her hand under the pillow until her fingers found the fur dress. She’d worn it only twice since her return, but the temptation to ignore that it kept stealing years off her was strong. In every library they visited for Jacob’s treasure hunts, she would search for clues to some magic that might slow the premature aging of shape-shifters, but all she’d found so far were stories about those who had either died young or had ended up burning their other skin. So she now tried to spend most of her time being a human.

She’d been out with Ludovik Rensman, and with Gregor Fenton, who’d already asked her a dozen times to model for one of the photographs the people of Schwanstein always stopped to admire in his shop window. Both men knew nothing of the fur. Nobody in Schwanstein knew about it, except Wenzel and Chanute. When Ludovik had tried to kiss her, she’d pushed him away with some stammered excuse. Ludovik Rensman wouldn’t even have dared to go within sight of the Black Forest, so how could she have explained the memories his shy kisses evoked—of another’s kisses, of a dark carriage, a red chamber, the fear-milk she’d drunk. The Bluebeard’s terrible parting gift had been to make desire rhyme with death and fear.

Definitely not the right thoughts to find sleep.

Fox pushed back the blanket under which Jacob had slept so many times. She reached for her clothes. The scents of another world clung to them. Clara had insisted on washing them. It was finally quiet behind Chanute’s door, but now two Heinzel were squabbling over a rind of bread in front of it. Fox shooed them away before they could wake the old man. Just then, Alma stepped from the room. Her face seemed even more wrinkled by night. Like all Witches, Alma could look as young or as old as she wanted, but she mostly wore the face that gave evidence of her long life. “I prefer to look as old on the outside as I am on the inside,” she said to anyone who was stupid enough to ask her about it.

The Witch gave Fox a tired smile, though she was used to long nights. People called her to tend to sick cattle and ill children, to help with aching souls and hurting bodies, or whenever there was reason to believe someone had been cursed. The women in particular trusted Alma more than they trusted the city doctor, and she was the only Witch within a hundred miles...except for the child-eater in the Black Forest, but she now lived out her days as a toad in a well.

“How is he?” Fox asked.

“How do you think? He quit the liquor too late for a quiet death of old age. I can ease his cough, that’s all. If he wants stronger remedies,

he’ll have to go to a child-eater. But he’s not at death’s door yet, though that’s what he’d want you to believe. Men! A few nights of coughing and they see the reaper standing by their bedside. And what about you? Why are you not sleeping?”

“It’s nothing.”

“In the beginning, Jacob couldn’t sleep for weeks after coming through the mirror. Was this your first time?” Alma pinned up her gray hair. It was as thick as that of a young woman. “Yes, I know about the mirror, but don’t tell Jacob. He’s always worried someone might find out. Is he with his brother?”

Fox wasn’t sure why she should even be surprised. Alma had already been alive before the ruin became a ruin.

“He wanted to be back days ago—”

“Which doesn’t mean much when it comes to Jacob.” Alma finished her sentence.

They exchanged a smile—one Jacob wouldn’t have liked at all.

“If he doesn’t come soon, maybe we should let him know about Chanute,” Alma said. “The old drunkard would feed me to his horse if he knew I said that, but Jacob might do him good. I can’t think of any man Albert Chanute’s heart clings to like it does to Jacob. The only competition is probably that actress whose face he had that hack in Braunstein tattoo on his chest. The old fool was so embarrassed about it, he wouldn’t open his shirt!”

Chanute started coughing again. Alma sighed.

“Why do I always feel sorry for them? I used to wish the spider’s plague on Chanute every time he beat Jacob, and now I’m letting him keep me from my sleep. The child-eaters get rid of their compassion by eating the heart of a child. I wish there was a more appetizing method. Will you keep me company while I brew him a tea? Which he will again just spit all over my dress, because there won’t be any liquor in it.”