The Golden Yarn (Mirrorworld 3)

As the Goyl receded into the darkness behind them, John breathed such a sigh of relief that Thierry Auger gave him a crooked smile and offered him a drag of his cigarette. And on they rolled through the night. They were headed northeast, if John was reading the constellations above the fields right. The stars were the same as in his world; they even had the same names. A mirror image, nothing more…How often he’d told himself that, despite the two moons, despite the Fairies and the Witches. He’d even wondered whether there were Goyl in his world and whether they just never came to the surface. Useless thoughts, but a welcome distraction from the fear that was growing with every mile.

John had no idea how long they’d been traveling. Auger had searched him for weapons and taken his pocket watch, together with his purse and the gold cuff links he’d been given by his lover, engraved with the initials he had stolen from another engineer. Who were they working for? What were they going to do to him? Torture? Execution? More time in a cell? All his carefully devised routines, the precious illusions of stability and safety—why did one begin to trust them if even the biggest fool would’ve realized by now that there was no such thing as constancy in life?

Auger nodded off once. John had his hand on the door handle instantly, though the carriage was going so fast that the jump would have certainly broken his neck. At that very moment, the leader rode up to the window and shouted Auger’s name. Bad luck or not? John wasn’t sure.

It was light again by the time they stopped in front of a house. The smashed windows and bullet holes in the whitewashed walls indicated it had been abandoned for a while. There were windmills in the distance, the same kind that dotted the Flandrian landscape in John’s world, though on this side their wooden wings were painted in different colors: sky blue (though a blue sky was a rare sight in Flanders), green (like the vast, wet meadows), or red (like the fields of tulips that often surrounded the mills). There wasn’t much in Flanders that could’ve protected the small country from the Goyl.

Impatiently, the leader waved John out of the carriage. His black beard and bushy eyebrows would’ve suited an anarchist. That’s how anarchists were generally depicted on the posters, anyway. Auger pushed his pistol into John’s back as he climbed out behind him.

They didn’t walk to the house but toward a well.

And how John’s heart began to race. Oh yes. There was always more fear to be felt. Those stories of people who died of fear—all nonsense. He’d be long dead.

As John figured, there was no water in the well. Instead, steel rungs led down into the deep, the kind of ladders the Goyl installed in wells and mine shafts to take them to where they’d come from: under the earth.

No. He was not going back down there. He was a fast runner. His running had saved him several times in underground tunnels, and not only from the Goyl but also from giant bats, calf-sized lizards, spiders that built their nests by the hundreds in every available crack and cranny...

John spun around. Auger would shoot him. And? He couldn’t think. He knocked down one of the guards, but even before he could take a step, Thierry Auger had rammed his pistol into John’s stomach so hard that John cried out and dropped to his knees.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Auger whispered to him. “Diego won’t hesitate to shoot off all your fingers if you cause any more trouble. And in the end, you’ll go into the well anyway.”

Diego. John had been right about the leader’s Leonian accent. How could he have fooled himself just because they were human? It was well known that the Goyl had human collaborators. They paid them in diamonds. And some even worked for free because they saw the stonefaces as their liberators from the rule of their despised kings.

The soldier who dragged John back to his feet also looked like a human, but the strip of moonstone on his forehead gave him away—together with the black claws. Man-Goyl. A new race. Ever since the Fairy had abandoned Kami’en, nobo

dy could be sure which side they were on.

Diego was the first down the shaft. He had a pit lamp to light the way. The Man-Goyl, who’d taken over guarding John from Auger, didn’t need a lamp.

The well led down into one of the tunnels the Goyl had dug everywhere. This one was just a footpath, but John had seen others big enough for mounted soldiers. Many had space for carriages and some even for trains. During his time with the Goyl, John had seen maps of these centuries-old tunnel networks. There was hardly a place on the surface that couldn’t be reached through them. John even knew of plans for a tunnel to connect Albion with the mainland. Similar plans existed for Sveriga, but not even John had been able to solve the problem of ventilation in underwater tunnels. He’d been glad about this limit to his knowledge, for the Goyl would’ve found ways to make him help them.

John followed his captors along a roadway that looked as if it had been constructed only recently. It was paved with onyx—a nice way to mock the old ruling class. The tunnel led into a wide hall similar to train stations that were now being built all over the surface, only this one didn’t need a glass roof against wind and rain. Two freight trains were waiting on the tracks. They’d probably come from one of the ports of Flanders to supply the Goyl’s underground cities with all the goods that country’s colonies supplied: sugar, coffee, cotton, silkworms. The slave trade, Albion’s and Lotharaine’s most profitable enterprise, was of no interest to the Goyl. They sympathized with peoples who were considered inferior, and preferred to use their prisoners of war as laborers. It was an attitude that had earned the Goyl some loyal allies even in those countries that were out of their reach – for now – because of their fear of the sea.

A third train was parked behind the others on a platform guarded by soldiers. Its cars were reinforced with steel plates, and the locomotive bore Kami’en’s carnelian-red coat of arms, which, since his marriage to Amalie, now showed the imperial eagle of Austry instead of the Dark Fairy’s moth.

The Goyl waiting for Jacob in the last car probably didn’t feel at all comfortable between the forged walls. Hentzau hated everything these modern times had brought forth, and John was fairly certain that hadn’t changed. Hentzau’s left eye was now so clouded that Kami’en’s Bloodhound would probably soon be blind. Fear, hatred, helplessness... Seeing Hentzau brought back memories that threatened to drown John’s mind like water. Since his kidnappers had told him they were taking him to Flanders, John had feared that the jasper Goyl had sent them. He’d tried to dismiss the thought as paranoia, but reality had again outdone his worst nightmares.

Hentzau’s skin was riddled with fine cracks. He was paying a high price for his loyalty. Few Goyl stayed above ground for more than one or two months, yet Hentzau was always up there for his King. The jasper face was as familiar to John as his own, or that of Kami’en. Had Hentzau’s King aged as much as his Bloodhound? The portraits the papers printed of the King and his wife showed him unchanged. The King of the Goyl was an attractive man, younger and much better-looking than the human rulers he was waging war against. Hentzau would’ve said it was the humans who’d been waging war against the Goyl—and for a long time.

John felt his new face like a mask. Would it hold? He’d taught himself to speak with an Albian accent and had even learned to box to acquire a new body language. Nothing gave one away like a familiar gesture. The nervous tremor—the legacy of his years underground—still came back far too quickly. Hentzau would certainly recognize that. And more.

“May I ask what the purpose of this abduction is?” Yes, John. That’s the way. Isambard Brunel has no fear, and he knows nothing about the Goyl, only that they are the enemies of Albion and that they fear open water.

“Abduction? It was certainly not my intent that my invitation be interpreted that way. The Clifton Bridge, the rail line from Goldsmouth to Pendragon, the tunnel under Londra, the telegraph cable to New Amsterdam?” Hentzau rubbed his cracked skin. “Our King is a great admirer of your engineering skills, Mr. Brunel.”

Yes, the mask was holding even under the milky stare of the man who for years had taken every opportunity to rob John of any delusions about himself. But why should he be surprised?

“Too much honor. I am well aware that the Goyl have an engineer of at least similar accomplishments in their employ. It was his planes that sunk my best ship.” Oh, his fake face made him reckless. What are you doing, John? Still can’t get enough praise for your genius?

Hentzau smiled. If that’s what one should call what was going on around that lipless mouth. “Oh yes, the planes...”

The female soldier behind him handed Hentzau a flat leather pouch. From it, Hentzau pulled a mirror with such a delicate silver handle it all but disappeared in his massive jasper hand. “The first time I heard of the engineer who’d given Wilfred of Albion his much-admired horseless carriage, I had my spies give me a description of that Isambard Brunel. What I got sounded like I’d been mistaken. But then I heard about Brunel’s iron ship. Years ago, we had plans to build iron ships, but we lost our engineer before the construction drawings were completed.”

Hentzau stepped to John’s side and held the mirror so they both could look into it. John stared at the image on the glass.

He’d not seen his own face in over eight years.

“Fabulous, isn’t it?” Hentzau put the mirror down. “The man whom I relieved of this magical device claimed he’d found it in one of the abandoned silver palaces. You’ve heard of them? Very unhealthy places to visit.”