“Fine!” he growled. “Then at least take Sylvain with you.”
“So that I can look after him? No.”
Behind them Sylvain was giving quite an impressive imitation of a raven’s caw. Obviously, Chanute hadn’t yet explained to him how dangerous that could be in this world.
Jacob looked at Fox.
“Why am I even trying to argue with you?” Chanute shouted after him as Jacob stepped under the trees. “Even as a child you were more stubborn than a gold-donkey. Did I come after you all this damn way so you could go and kill yourself? You’re no faster than Wenzel on his crutch.”
The concern in his voice was very touching, particularly from the man who used to send Jacob into Witches’ houses and Ogres’ caves without a second thought. Maybe old age did soften the heart. Jacob wasn’t sure if that was a good thing for Albert Chanute.
The Wrong Face
Amalie always made Kami’en wait. Not on purpose, as he did with visitors and supplicants. No. Amalie’s unpunctuality was caused by a last-minute change of dress, or having to powder the face she still wore like a mask. She never lost her fear that she could lose her beauty as suddenly as the Fairy lily had granted it.
The room where she received Kami’en had been her mother’s favorite room. Amalie had redecorated it, like she had most of the palace. She bought furniture, rugs, paintings, as though she were decorating a dollhouse. And the results looked like it as well: too much gold, the kitsch of a past that existed only in her decorator’s mind. Her mother would have hated it. And Kami’en didn’t like it any better.
The Goyl King was about to send one of his adjutants to get her when her favorite maid announced the Empress. Amalie loved rituals. She
walked in a little too erectly, as usual—her feeble attempt to imitate the Fairy—and she was again a little breathless, as though she always had too much to do, despite all her servants and maids. Her dress was white. The color of innocence. Surely not a coincidence. Amalie spent hours planning what to wear. She could be very calculating in a very childish way. She had her mother’s intelligence but not her self-assurance. It was never good for children when parents felt they had to buy them a new face because the one they’d been born with wasn’t good enough.
He had, of course, known all this before he married her. His spies had told him things about Amalie that not even her mother knew. But he’d still underestimated her cruelty, her helpless selfishness, and her impressive talent for seeing herself as the victim and everyone else as guilty. She despised, and still loved, nobody more than herself. Maybe she felt some love for him, but he’d also believed she loved their infant son. Kami’en didn’t really like Amalie, but he still desired her, like a sweet fruit he was forbidden to eat.
Niomee had always understood this. She’d told him her name only after a whole year. If that was her name. In her language, it meant “green”.
“I am so glad you’re here!” Amalie’s violet eyes swam in tears. It had taken Kami’en a while to understand that she only ever shed tears for herself.
She wrapped her arms around him and offered her lips for a kiss. Such perfect lips. Yet all he wanted to do was hit her for the game she was trying to play with him, for the pain her lies had caused him. Niomee had understood the rage that lived in Kami’en’s stone flesh, just as she’d understood his impatience and his urge to break rules, and his preference for attack over defense.
Not as gently as he’d intended, he freed himself from her embrace.
The teary eyes became alert.
“Kami’en? My love? What is it?”
“You hid my son at your godfather’s? How stupid do you think I am?”
Through all the powder, Amalie blushed like a child caught lying. Like a child? Like a human child. Goyl learned early to hide their feelings. Stone skin came with a lot of benefits.
“I just wanted him safe. I was afraid she might do something to him.”
Ah, she’d planned exactly what to say in case he found out.
“And the charade with the bloody crib?”
Kami’en turned his back on her. He wasn’t sure his face didn’t still show some of the despair he’d felt when he heard the news. For a few hours he’d believed her. His son…What did he care if he had a moonstone skin? He was born to a human woman; that was all that mattered.
His revenge for all the years that humans had hunted him like vermin. For the way they still stared when they thought he wasn’t looking.
“You gave him to a hunter who couldn’t even read!”
The alertness in her eyes turned to fear as she realized he was speaking of the hunter in the past tense.
“I was going to tell you.”
Kami’en went to the window. Behind the stables, he could see the glass roof of the pavilion where the Fairy had lived. Amalie was stuttering excuses, explanations, accusations against the Other One, as she liked to call the Fairy.
“The child is no longer at your godfather’s.”