The Golden Yarn (Mirrorworld 3)

John’s stash of frost-fern seeds, which he’d sewn into the hem of his shirt, was running out. He’d tried in vain to create a chemical substitute. His fake face held for now, saving him from having to reveal himself to his older son. And what would have been the point? There was nothing to say. His reasons for leaving Jacob’s mother were not really valid: ambition, selfishness, the look of disappointment in Rosamund’s eyes.

“Brunel!” Their icon-painting host was offering him a bowl of borscht. Maybe his art wasn’t popular because he was still painting the old gods. John looked at the pictures leaning against the walls: Vasilisa the Wise, the Weaver, Kolya the Undead. No, that wasn’t it. Their host was simply a bad painter.

John took the soup, though he was not hungry.

How did an icon painter end up harboring spies and escaped prisoners of the Tzar?

Jacob was still arguing with the Wolfling. Stop staring at him, John.

The presence of his long-lost son left little room for the relief he should’ve felt over his rescue. During their encounter in Goldsmouth, he’d already noticed with more than a little shock but also some relief how the grown-up Jacob looked more and more like him. But Rosamund’s face was still there. She hadn’t been the first to make John doubt his ability to ever really feel love. His son, who was shouting at the Wolfling only an arm’s reach away, was the only person for whom he’d ever felt something close to love.

Did he love him now? No, his guilty conscience had swallowed all else. And this adult Jacob was a stranger. John longed for the child, the boy who’d listened with rapt attention to every one of his words, who’d thought everything his father did was wonderful. The man that child had grown into was definitely not going to have such feelings for him. Still, John wished he had the courage to tell Jacob exactly whom he’d saved from the firing squad the night before. But courage was something John Reckless only ever wished he had. Courage was not a given; it was acquired, earned. You had to take the difficult paths, and John had always picked the easy ones.

Jacob was looking at him. What did he think of the man who called himself Isambard Brunel? Even his name was stolen from a better man. The Wolfling pointed at Tennant, and John thought he heard Jacob say something about his brother. Will. Always his mother’s son, never John’s. The Dwarf doctor gave Jacob some pills. The Witches in Albion sold an herb that erased memories as completely as waves washed footprints from the sand. The problem was that it also erased feelings, and the love for the son who didn’t know who he was still too precious to him. Losing that love would’ve removed the last barriers to the ever-growing emptiness inside him.

For a brief moment, John wished Jacob would see through his fake face, as Hentzau had. After all, his son had a reputation for revealing hidden things. But Jacob turned away and went to the mattress where Tennant was lying.

So many years. At least his son had followed him into this world.

Hidden Words

The midday bells woke Fox. She couldn’t remember ever having slept so long. Baryatinsky’s palace was humming with excitement. Something had happened during the night, but Fox couldn’t make any sense of her maid’s very excited Varangian. The only thing she learned was that all three, Jacob, Sylvain, and Chanute had not spent last night in their beds.

She went to Jacob’s room to search for a message from him, but she only found the rolled-up flying carpet. For a few unreal moments, she imagined not leaving with Jacob, but moving into Orlando’s apartment, calling a place home. Did Orlando want such a life? The gander and the vixen? There was no message from him, either. The last she’d heard, he was off on some secret mission for a few days.

She couldn’t take her eyes off the carpet. Onward. And onward with Jacob, on that endless, aimless journey they’d been on for so many years. It’s the life you wanted, Fox. Really? She had always been so certain, but something in her felt tired now. Jacob had been her beacon for so long, the one she followed without wondering where other paths might lead, whether there was something somewhere worth staying for. Until now.

When lunchtime came and went without the others having returned, Fox decided to look at the church Orlando had told her about. Better than just sitting and waiting for a message from Jacob. Moskva’s churches were so different from the sparse stone chapels of her native country. The god living here seemed as warm as the gold that s

urrounded him, even though his saints stared down from the walls with dark and serious eyes. A god who liked gold had to have a heart for treasure hunters. But when she stepped outside to hail a taxi, she found the streets clogged and people everywhere staring up at the sky. She approached a group of Lotharainian tourists, who became quite talkative when she greeted them in their native tongue. A governess from Lutis had seen a flying wolf above the city, and a tax collector from Calias advised her to cover her ears should she hear the cries of a bird with the head of a woman.

What the devil had happened while she slept?

She went back to ask the boys in the stables, but the porter approached her with a letter. The envelope was small, Dwarf-sized, but the handwriting was Jacob’s.

Fox locked herself in her room before she pulled the letter from the envelope. The written chatter confirmed that the real message was invisible. There were many ways to write invisible messages. Jacob always carried a nightingale feather. Fox whispered the words to make the message visible: “Through quivering branches only the nightingale’s song resounds.” The real message came forth, weaving itself through the words like a second thread of ink.

The first sentences were Jacob’s confession that he’d mixed a sleeping powder into her food. His lies were usually delivered very smoothly, but here he’d crossed out and rewritten much. Maybe that’s why Fox believed him when he wrote that he’d only done it to protect her. Fox read on, her feelings wavering between fear, rage, and love. Fear for Jacob, fear for Orlando, rage that they’d both kept secrets from her. But her love was stirred by what Jacob had tried to hide, even in his invisible words: the jealousy and the shame he felt over it, his willingness to save Orlando even though he’d rather have shot him dead, all the courage—and love. Fox had to wipe her tears off the ink. So much love. It echoed through Jacob’s excuses and explanations, like something that was too large to be hidden any longer. And, of course, he also needed her help. She had to help him deceive Orlando. As always, Jacob asked too much.

Fox memorized the meeting point, the time, and she ignored his instruction to burn the letter. She kept it, for those days when he would keep himself, and all that made him special, under guard again.

***

It was touching how devastated Baryatinsky looked when she informed him that the Tzar’s assignment meant she had to depart immediately. He ordered his servants to pack Sylvain’s and Chanute’s few belongings into his best travel chests (Fox was relieved they didn’t find any of their master’s possessions among theirs) and offered her the services of his personal coachman (unlike the Tzar, Baryatinsky did not like automobiles). He was very disappointed when Fox assured him Jacob had already arranged for her transport. The provisions he’d had brought up from the kitchen would have fed an army on an expedition around the world: khleb, zakuski, kulebiaka, blini... The words tasted as good as the food. Their sound would forever remind her of a time when she’d been very happy.

Fox promised Baryatinsky they’d stay with him when they returned the carpet. She very much hoped he wasn’t going to be charged as an accomplice—and that she might indeed return. If they could find Will. If by then she’d figured out whether to keep going with Jacob or to stay with Orlando. Was there even a question? She didn’t even know that.

The Goyl by the gate was gone. Fox would’ve liked to know why. Hard to imagine Hentzau had lost interest in them.

Double Cross

If you’d asked Ashamed Tchiourak why he’d been an informant for the Goyl for years, he’d have told you a sentimental story about a girl with amethyst skin whom he’d met in his youth and who’d taught him how to turn stone into the glowing colors that had made him the envy of his peers. Touching…so touching that Hentzau didn’t believe a word of it. Tchiourak could say neither what had become of his muse nor why, despite those secrets, he was still such a bad painter. No, Hentzau guessed Tchiourak’s real motivation was his origins. He was from Circassia, a province that had been plundered by Varangia for centuries. In Hentzau’s eyes, that was good enough reason to make you a traitor.

Tchiourak’s origins also explained why he was now selling information that didn’t harm Varangia but Albion, the land that had just recently conquered his old home in a bloody campaign. And then there was the Wolfling. Brunel’s liberators obviously weren’t aware that long ago a Wolfling had made a cripple of Tchiourak’s brother. Where would the world’s spy agencies be without such stories? Private revenge, jealousy, ambition. Spies always claimed to have noble motives for their treason, but Hentzau had yet to meet one who really did.

Tchiourak described in great detail how the escaped prisoners in his workshop stank, and what a monster the Wolfling was, before he finally got around to what he’d heard. Brunel was to be taken out of the city very soon. Hentzau was sorely tempted to send some commandos into Tchiourak’s workshop, but that would’ve exposed one of his most valuable assets, and even the Tzar’s secret police were very reluctant to go into the neighborhood where the painter lived. No, it was better to set a trap and catch Brunel when they tried to sneak him out of the city. Tchiourak had told Hentzau the place, under the condition that the Goyl would let the liberators go—except for the Wolfling, of course—and that they’d keep the Varangian secret police out of it. Hentzau had no intention of keeping the first promise, but the second he had no problem with. He couldn’t wait to embarrass those arrogant fools by presenting them with their escaped prisoners, proving once again how superior the Goyl were to any human, Varangian, Albian, or whoever. And as far as Orlando Tennant was concerned, Hentzau was toying with the idea of keeping him for himself. The Barsoi had valuable information about the Albian spy networks.

“You’re saying they also have another man from Albion. What does he look like?”