Reckless (Mirrorworld 1)

“Look who’s here!” Chanute said, his grouchy mouth actually stretching into a smile. “I thought you were in Lotharaine, looking for an hourglass.”

Chanute had been a legendary treasure hunter, but Jacob had meanwhile gained an equally famous reputation in that line of work, and the three men sitting at one of the stained tables curiously lifted their heads.

“Get rid of them!” Jacob whispered across the counter. “I have to talk to you.”

Then he went up to the room that had for years now been the only place in either this world or the other that he could call home.

A wishing table, a glass slipper, the golden ball of a princess — Jacob had found many things in this world, and he had sold them for a lot of money to noblemen and rich merchants. But it was the chest behind the door of his simple room that held the treasures Jacob had kept for himself. These were the tools of his trade, though he had never thought they’d one day have to help him save his own brother.

The first item he took out of the chest was a handkerchief made of simple linen, but when it was rubbed between two fingers, it reliably produced one or two gold sovereigns. Jacob had received it years earlier from a Witch in exchange for a kiss that had burned his lips for weeks. The other items he packed into his knapsack looked just as innocuous: a silver snuffbox, a brass key, a tin plate, and a small bottle made of green glass. Each of these items had saved his life on more than one occasion.

When Jacob came back down the stairs, he found the taproom empty. Chanute was sitting at one of the tables. He pushed a mug of wine toward him as Jacob joined him.

“So? What kind of trouble are you in this time?” Chanute looked longingly at Jacob’s wine; he only had a glass of water in front of him. In the past, he’d often been so drunk that Jacob had started hiding the bottles, though Chanute would always beat him for it. The old treasure hunter had often beaten Jacob, even when he was sober — until Jacob had one day pointed his own pistol at him. Chanute had also been drunk in the Ogre’s cave. He would have probably kept his arm had he been able to see straight, but after that he had quit drinking. The treasure hunter had been a miserable replacement father, and Jacob was always on his guard with him, but if anyone knew what could save Will, then Albert Chanute most definitely did.

“What would you do if a friend of yours had been clawed by the Goyl?”

Chanute choked on his water and eyed him closely, as if to make sure Jacob was not talking about himself.

“I have no friends,” he grunted. “And you don’t, either. You have to trust friends, and neither of us is very good at that. So, who is it?”

Jacob shook his head.

“Of course. Jacob Reckless likes it mysterious. How could I forget?” Chanute’s voice sounded bitter. Despite everything, he thought of Jacob as the son he had never had. “When did they get him?”

“Four days ago.”

The Goyl had attacked them not far from a village where Jacob had been looking for the hourglass. He had underestimated how far their patrols were already venturing into imperial territory, and after Will had been clawed, he’d been in such pain that the journey back took them days. Back where? There was no “back” anymore, but Jacob had not had the courage yet to tell Will.

Chanute brushed his hand through his spiky hair. “Four days? Forget it. He’s already half one of them. You remember the time when the Empress was collecting all their colors? And that farmer tried to peddle us a dead moonstone he had covered in lamp soot as an onyx Goyl?”

Yes, Jacob remembered. The stone faces. That’s what they were still called back then, and children were told stories about them to teach them to fear the night. When Chanute and he were still traveling together, the Goyl had only just begun to populate the caves aboveground, and every village used to organize Goyl hunts. But now they had a King, and he had turned the hunted into hunters.

There was a rustling near the back door, and Chanute drew his knife. He threw it so quickly that it nailed the rat in mid-jump against the wall.

“This world is going down the toilet,” he growled, pushing back his chair. “Rats as big as dogs. The air on the street stinks like a Troll’s cave from all the factories, and the Goyl are standing just a couple of miles from here.”

He picked up the dead rat and threw it onto the table.

“There’s nothing that helps against the petrified flesh. But if they’d gotten me, I’d ride to one of them Witches’ houses and look in the garden for a bush with black berries.” Chanute wiped the bloody knife on his sleeve. “It’s got to be the garden of a child-eater, though.”

“I thought the child-eating Witches all moved to Lotharaine since the other Witches started hunting them.”

“But their houses are still there. The bush grows where they buried their leftovers. Those berries are the strongest antidote to curses I know of.”

Witch-berries. Jacob looked at the oven door on the wall. “The Witch in the HungryForest was a child-eater, wasn’t she?”

“One of the worst. I once looked in her house for one of them combs that you put into your hair and they turn you into a crow.”

“I know. You sent me in there first.”

“Really?” Chanute rubbed his fleshy nose. He’d convinced Jacob that the Witch had flown out.

“You poured liquor on my wounds.” The imprints of her fingers were still visible on his throat. It had taken weeks for the burns to heal.

Jacob threw the knapsack over his shoulder. “I need a packhorse, some provisions, two rifles, and ammunition.”

Chanute didn’t seem to have heard Jacob. He was staring at his trophies. “Good old times,” he mumbled. “The Empress received me personally three times. How many audiences have you clocked up?”