Reckless (Mirrorworld 1)

Say something, Jacob. Anything. The dark chamber was so silent.

"you will not become like them," he finally said. "Because I am going to stop it."

"How?" There it was again, the glance that suddenly was so much older than he. "Is it true, what you told those bandits? You're taking me to another Fairy?"

"Yes."

"Is she as dangerous as the one who did this?" Will touched the brittle skin on the princess's face. "Look out the window. There are corpses hanging in the thorns. You think I want you to end like that for my sake?"

But Will's eyes belied his words. Help me, Jacob, they said. Help me.

Jacob pulled him away from the corpse.

"The Fairy I'm taking you to is different," he said. Is she, Jacob? He heard a whisper inside him. But he ignored it.

He put all the hope he possessed into his voice. And all the confidence his brother wanted to hear: "She'll help us, Will, I promise!"

It still worked. Hope still spread over Will's face as easily as rage. Brothers. The elder and the younger. Unchanged.

15

Soft Flesh

Threefingers with the butcher's face was the first to speak. Humans so liked to choose the wrong men as their leaders. Hentzau could see his cowardice as clearly as the watery blue of his eyes. But at least he had told them a few interesting details the moth had not shown Hentzau.

The Jade Goyl was not alone. He was with a girl. Also — and this was even more important — he seemed to have a brother who had gotten it into his head to drive the jade from his body. If Threefingers was telling the truth, then the brother was planning to take the Jade Goyl to the Red Fairy. Not such a dumb idea. She despised her dark sister as much as the other Fairies did. Still, Hentzau was sure she wouldn't be able to break the curse. The Dark Fairy was so much more powerful than all the others.

No Goyl had ever seen the island that was home to the Fairies, let alone set foot on it. The Dark Fairy guarded the secrets of her sisters, even though they had cast her out, and everybody knew you could only reach their island if they wanted you to.

"How is he going to find her?"

"He didn't say!" Threefingers stammered.

Hentzau nodded to the only She-Goyl in his squad. He didn't enjoy striking human flesh. He could kill them, yes, but he avoided touching them. Nesser had no such qualms.

She kicked Threefingers in the face, and Hentzau gave her a look of warning. Her sister had been killed by humans, and so Nesser tended to overdo it. For a brief moment, Nesser held his gaze, full of defiance, but then she lowered her head. Hatred had by now engulfed them all like slime.

"He didn't say," Threefingers stammered again. "I swear."

His flesh was as pale and as soft as a snail's. Hentzau turned away in disgust. He was certain they had told him all they knew, and it was because of them that the Jade Goyl had gotten away.

"Shoot them!" he ordered, and went outside.

The shots sounded strange in the silence, like something that didn't belong in this world. Guns, steam engines, trains; to Hentzau it still all felt unnatural. He was getting old — that was the trouble. The sunlight had clouded his eyes, and his hearing had been so damaged by all the battle noise that Nesser had to raise her voice whenever she addressed him. Kami’en acted as if he didn't notice. But the Dark Fairy would make sure everybody else knew — as soon as she found out that a bunch of plunderers had made him lose the Jade Goyl.

Hentzau could still picture him standing there. The face, half Goyl, half human, the skin suffused with their holiest of stones. He wasn't the Jade Goyl. He couldn't be. He was as fake as one of those wooden fetishes, covered with gold leaf and sold to old women as solid gold. "Behold, the Jade Goyl has come to make our King invincible. But don't cut too deep, or you will find human flesh." Yes, that's what it was. Nothing but another attempt by the Fairy to make herself indispensable.

Hentzau squinted into the gathering night. Even the darkness turned to jade.

What if you're wrong, Hentzau? What if he is the real thing? What if your King's destiny depends on him? And he had let him get away.

When the scout finally returned, even Hentzau's dimmed eyes could see from his face that he had lost the trail. Once he would have killed the scout on the spot, but he'd learned to control the rage that lurked in all of them, although not half as well as his King.

That meant all he had to go on was what Threefingers had said about the Red Fairy. He would have to swallow his pride once more and send a messenger to the Dark Fairy to ask her for directions. The prospect pained him more than the cold night air.

"You will find me their tracks!" he barked at the scout. "As soon as it gets light. Three horses and a fox. Can't be that hard!"

He was just asking himself whom he should send to the Dark Fairy, when Nesser approached him. She was just thirteen years old. At that age Goyl were fully grown, but most of them didn't join the army until they were at least fourteen. Nesser was not very good with the saber, nor was she a particularly good shot, but her courage more than made up for those shortcomings. At her age, fear was an unfamiliar concept; you felt immortal, even without the blood of a Fairy coursing through your veins. Hentzau remembered the feeling all too well.