Fearless (Mirrorworld 2)

CHAPTER SEVEN

IN VAIN

The Dark Fairy flinched. Jacob Reckless. She didn’t want to see his face any more. All the fear on it, the pain . . . she could feel death, drawn to him by her name, like a wound on his white skin.

This was not her revenge. Even though the pond that showed her his fear was the same one where he had turned her skin to bark.

Her red sister was probably seeing the same images, on the lake that had spawned them both. What was she hoping to gain from his death? That it would numb the pain of his betrayal, or heal her injured pride? Her red sister didn’t know much about love.

The pond turned dark, like the sky it reflected, and then her face was all she saw trembling on the waves. They distorted it, as though her beauty was dissolving. So? Kami’en no longer saw her anyway. All he saw was the swollen belly of his human wife.

The sounds of the city drifted into the nocturnal garden.

The Dark One turned around. She no longer wanted to see; not herself, nor her sister’s unfaithful lover. At times she even longed for the leaves and the bark he’d put on her.

He looked nothing like his brother.

The moth that landed on her shoulder was like a sliver of night on her white skin. Yet even the night now belonged to the other. Kami’en now slept more and more often by the side of his doll-faced princess.

What did her sister want with all that fear and pain? They would never bring back the love.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHANUTE

Along the road to Schwanstein, the workers were already crowding the gates of the weaving mill. Sirens were calling the morning shift to work, and as their wailing battled with the sound of church bells in the early morning, Jacob could barely calm the old horse Alma had lent him. The mare pricked her ears as though the Dragons had returned, but she was hearing only the modern times. The howling of sirens. The ticking of clocks. Machines wanted to run, and they ran fast.

Many of the men shivering in front of the gate looked up at Jacob as he rode past. The treasure hunter who always had some gold in his pocket, who came and went and did as he pleased, and who knew neither the toil nor the tedium that galled their lives. On any other day he would have understood the envy on their tired faces, yet on this morning Jacob would have gladly swapped with any one of them, even if that meant fourteen hours of hard labour for two copper coins an hour. Any life was better than death, wasn’t it?

It was a ridiculously beautiful morning. The flushing trees, the fresh green . . . even the old mare’s hide seemed to smell of spring. Pity. Dying in winter might have been a little less hard, but Jacob doubted he had that much time left.

A boy was sleeping by the side of the road, his bundle clutched to his chest so that the Thumblings didn’t steal what little he owned. Jacob had not been much older when he first came to Schwanstein, but thanks to Alma he’d at least been better nourished.

The pointy gables had looked like one of the illustrations in his grandparents’ yellowed fairy-tale books, and the coal soot in the air had smelled so much more exciting than the exhaust fumes in the other world. Everything had smelled of adventure: the leather harnesses on the carriages, even the horse manure on the grimy cobblestones and the butcher’s scraps that were being picked over by some hungry Heinzel. A few months later he’d met Albert Chanute, and he’d lost his heart for good to the world behind the mirror.

The windows of The Ogre were still shuttered. Jacob tied Alma’s horse in front of the tavern’s door. Only the windows to his own room were open, just as he’d left them. Fox sometimes slept there when he was gone. He’d spent the whole journey lining up the words he wanted to say to her. But there was no version that made the truth sound any better.

Chanute’s new cook was behind the counter, washing the previous night’s dirty glasses. Chanute had hired the former soldier after too many tavern guests had complained about the food the owner cooked himself. Tobias Wenzel had lost his left leg in one of the battles with the Goyl, and he drank too much, but he was a very good cook.

‘He’s upstairs,’ he said as Jacob approached the bar. ‘Careful, though. He’s got a toothache, and the Goyl just raised the taxes.’

The Goyl had been ruling Austry for half a year, and nobody in Schwanstein suspected that the Reckless brothers had not been entirely blameless in this. Not that it would have interested anyone much, anyway. The men were back from the war (those who had survived it), and the Goyl were building new factories and roads, which was good for trade. Even the mayor was still the same. There were bombings and organised resistance in the capital, but most of the country had learnt to live with the new masters. And the Empress’s throne now belonged to her daughter, who was pregnant by her stone-skinned husband.

Chanute barked a grouchy ‘What?’ when Jacob knocked on his door. His chamber was crammed with even more memorabilia than The Ogre’s taproom.

‘Well, I never!’ he growled. His hand was pressed to a swollen cheek. ‘This time I really thought you wouldn’t come back.’ A toothache. Not something you wanted to have on this side of the mirror. Jacob had once had an infected tooth extracted in Vena. Fighting an Ogre took less courage.

‘And?’ Chanute scrutinised him through squinting eyes. ‘Did you find the bottle?’

‘Yes.’

‘See? I told you it wouldn’t be a problem.’ Chanute wiped a quill on his wooden hand and stared at the paper in front of him. He’d been writing his memoirs ever since some drunk patron had told him he could make a fortune from them.

‘Yes, I found it.’ Jacob went to the window. ‘But the blood didn’t help.’

Chanute put down his quill. He tried very hard not to look concerned, but he’d never been a good actor. ‘Damn,’ he muttered. ‘Never mind, though. You’ll think of something else. What about the apple? The one in that sultan’s cursed garden? You know the one!’

Jacob already had the answer on his tongue, but the old man looked worried, so he quickly swallowed the truth. Chanute probably would have ridden off himself to find a cure. Chanute had grown old. He wore his prosthetic arm less often now because it caused him too much pain. And his hearing had grown so weak that twice already he’d nearly run into a carriage in the market square. No. Jacob still felt those calloused hands on his skin from all the beatings the old man had given him, but he owed everything he’d achieved in this world to Albert Chanute and to what the old treasure hunter had taught him. He owed him a lie.