The Golden Yarn (Mirrorworld 3)

And looked at Sylvain.

“It was Chanute’s idea!” Sylvain defended himself. “He knew the two of you were having an interesting conversation. Et voilà! You will need a diversion.”

The Dress of War

The rhythm of his heartbeat had changed. Will felt it as clearly as the pain on his neck. The daylight stung his eyes. Just like it used to. Why was he less afraid now? Because he’d been through it before? No. This was different. He was different. He didn’t fight it. He let it happen.

He had called the stone. Out of fear or rage, it didn’t matter.

He.

The robbers hadn’t even tried to cover their tracks. Why should they? They thought he and the Bastard were dead. They followed the bandits’ trail deeper into the forest, until they came upon a house. Its pale blue paint was weathered; moss and rot had settled into the wood carvings around the roof and windows. A wooden pavilion stood among overgrown flower beds like a skeleton of pleasures long past. The empty bottles and gnawed bones were probably from the new owners, just like the bear’s head with bared fangs that hung above the door. The paws were nailed to the doorposts.

“Oh my, ghost guardians, how touching!” Nerron whispered to Will. “They probably buried the heart under the threshold. If the bear appears, don’t worry—he can’t do anything. In Lotharaine, they do the same with cats and dogs. I’ve never understood it. If I were a ghost, why would I guard the ones who’d killed me?”

Something moved behind one of the windows. They heard screams. One of the grimy windowpanes exploded, and a bullet struck the fence post next to them. The robbers had taken their guns, but Nerron still had his knife, and Will discovered a rusty hatchet in the grass.

They entered through a back door into a filthy kitchen. The robbers never got to the weapons on the table. Will and Nerron found them in the next room, six silver corpses on a moth-eaten rug. Will stared at them in disbelief. The same ragged men who’d tied the ropes around their necks were now shimmering sculptures, every hair frozen in precious metal. He looked at Nerron, who didn’t seem very surprised.

Outside, a horse whinnied. It sounded shrill, frightened. Will went to one of the grimy windows. Next to the five frantic horses were three more corpses. There were two shapes leaning over them that mirrored the overgrown garden and the weathered house. Will flinched when one of them looked over at the window. It was a girl with eyes of glass; her face was a reflection of the sky above her, but as she approached the house, the gray clouds turned to skin.

“Ah, so now you’ve finally seen them.” Nerron cut some silver hair off one of the dead bodies and tucked it in his pocket. “In case they fail to introduce themselves properly—the boy calls himself Seventeen, but Sixteen may look a little more familiar.”

Yes, she did. The girl who appeared in the smashed-down doorway looked so human she could’ve been the one living in this house. And Will knew her face from his dreams. Except for the rash on her left cheek. Sixteen hid it with her hand when she noticed him looking at it.

“What are you doing?” The boy who appeared next to her in the doorway was still a moving mirror. He pulled Sixteen aside and whispered something to her, but she didn’t take her eyes off Will. Her glass eyes.

The boy was carrying the crossbow. He approached Will and placed it in front of his feet. Seventeen. His arms were sprouting leaves. He plucked them off with his fingers.

“You have to forget you ever saw us,” he said to Will. “Sixteen isn’t supposed to show herself to you. We are here for your protection, nothing else. We make sure you can do what you came here to do.”

“Really? Well, I have to say, you’re not doing it very well.” Nerron picked up the crossbow and handed it to Will. “Who cut him off that rope? You?”

Seventeen’s face turned silver. Nerron groaned with pain as the blades on the Mirrorling’s fingers poked into his chest. “You promised to find the Fairy. What about that? You’d better find her soon, Stone-skin, you hear? Very soon.”

Silver turned to glass again. “He can make himself completely invisible. Am I right, Seventeen?” Nerron reached out and waved through the air. “You can’t even feel them. They’re an idea, nothing else. A dark thought.”

Sixteen was still standing in the doorway, her hand on her cheek. “He’s gone, Stoneface,” she said.

Then she turned into glass, like her brother. If that’s what he was.

Nerron took a silver piece of bread off one of the dead and threw it through the window, cursing. He seemed only a little reassured that there was no reaction.

Will climbed over the solidified corpses and went to stand where Sixteen had just been. Why had she been in his dreams? He forced himself to think of another face. Clara. But he could only picture her in the hospital bed, so alien and still. He pulled the swindlesack from under one of the bodies—and stared at his own hand. Skin. He touched his bruised neck. The stone was gone. The disappointment was so strong that the Goyl could read it on his face.

“‘And he wore the jade only as his war dress.’ That’s how my mother always ended her stories of the Jade Goyl,” Nerron said. “I always wondered what that meant. I’m sure the skin will return when you need it.”

Will stroked his soft hand. He wanted the stone back, but he hated himself for wanting it. Was he betraying her again? Clara. Think her name, Will. Clara. When had he last thought of her? He no longer even dreamed of her. He was forgetting her, like he had before.

“Everything will be just as it was meant to be.”

“Let’s turn around,” the Goyl said behind him. “Who cares about the Fairy? The Jade Goyl is back! We’ll wait for the next rain, lose your guards, and disappear. A few more wet days and you won’t be able to pick those two from a row of trees. No loss, if you ask me.”

Turn around? No.

Will shook his head. “I have to find the Fairy. I promised.”

“Promised? Shall I remind you of another promise? You swore an oath to Kami’en, and Kami’en is in Moskva, barely three days’ ride from here.”