The Golden Yarn (Mirrorworld 3)

Tchiourak shrugged. He was scrutinizing a speck of gold paint on his thumb. “Young. Mid-twenties. Dark hair.”

Yes, that sounded about right. There weren’t many men outside Nihon who knew how to use a melting-ax. So many flies with one stroke. Hentzau wondered what Jacob Reckless thought of his father. Or hadn’t he recognized him?

Prividiniy Park

It was midnight, four days after they’d broken into the Magic Collection, when the Wolfling waved Jacob and Moskva’s two most wanted men onto a sparely lit street. Jacob thought the two hearses waiting for them were much better than their previous conveyance. The smell of refuse was still in their clothes. Brunel wasn’t so impressed, saying it was absurd to try to sneak past roadblocks in coffins. But then Ludmilla Akhmatova climbed out of a taxi parked behind the hearses. She was wearing mourning garments and assured Brunel that nighttime funerals were not unusual in Moskva and that there was no better way. It was the first time since the break-in that they’d seen the Dwarf woman. She directed the Wolfling to show them that one of the coffins did indeed contain a corpse, just to make the cover perfect. When Jacob asked her whether she also counted an undertaker among her lovers, she just smiled mischievously.

Thanks to the Dwarf doctor, Orlando had recovered reasonably well from the interrogation by the Varangian secret police. He looked quite amused as he climbed into his coffin. During their close confinement over the past few days, Jacob had wondered more than once whether his jealousy was worse because he actually liked Orlando Tennant. They had talked about everything—the political situation in Albion and Leon, about danger and how much they enjoyed it—but had studiously avoided talking about the one thing that was on their minds. The one person.

Ludmilla drove ahead in her taxi with the Wolfling on the coach box. The black veil made her beauty even more seductive, and Jacob would’ve liked to ride with her just to watch her convince the guards of her utter harmlessness.

It was an unusual journey through Moskva, lying on red coffin silk, feeling the cobbled pavement beneath, wondering what roads they were driving on. An unforgettable journey. Every time they stopped, Jacob got ready to play dead. The Wolfling had whitened their faces with powder, and he had put three dead cats into the real corpse’s coffin, just to add the right scent. But Jacob’s coffin wasn’t opened once.

He’d made it quite clear they could use the Tzar’s flying carpet for their escape only if Chanute and Sylvain came with them. Chanute had sent word to Ludmilla via one of her contacts that he and Sylvain had survived their firebranding, but they were hiding in a part of the city that was dangerously far from their meeting place. That had made it difficult for Ludmilla to accept Jacob’s condition. The Dwarf was still a mystery. Jacob suppressed his urge to ask her why she was spying for Albion if she really loved her homeland so much. “The Walrus pays well” was all Orlando had said. But Jacob didn’t believe that was the whole truth. One thing was certain: They all had their secrets, and they were all practiced in keeping them. Only Fox knew that Jacob didn’t intend to fly Orlando and Brunel back to Albion, and whether they’d all spend the rest of the night in freedom or in prison depended on Fox and whether she’d gotten his message.

At the roadblocks, Ludmilla told the soldiers that they were headed to a cemetery on the eastern outskirts of town. But as soon as the roadblocks became fewer, the coachmen changed direction. The roads became rougher. Jacob could feel it only too well in his coffin, and soon he had no clue where they were anymore.

When the hearses finally stopped and the Wolfling opened Jacob’s coffin, all he saw were old trees and wide lawns lined with weathered benches.

“Privideniy Park,” Ludmilla whispered, lifting the veil off her face. “The Ghost Garden. Moskva’s most popular place for duels. Has been for more than two centuries. Many of its most prominent citizens have died here. They say if you die in Privideniy Park, you stay here for eternity. So they’re probably all still here.”

And so they were. There were no lanterns to light the paths, and the ambling figures were barely visible. They all were the color of fresh blood, proof that they’d met a violent death.

Brunel stared at them wide-eyed.

“You should n

ot let them walk through you,” Jacob whispered to him, “unless you want to share a dead man’s memories. But otherwise they’re harmless.”

Brunel’s trembling hand brushed through his hair. Then he looked crossly at the white powder on his fingers. “Just too many allusions to death for one night,” he said. “I find it hard to face my own mortality. The others don’t seem to have that problem.”

One ghost stopped by the hearses, as though they reminded him of his own funeral. The red shape disappeared as soon as Ludmilla clapped her hands. Jacob caught himself scanning the park for glassy shapes, but the breeze billowing the hearses’ black curtains was cool.

There was still no sign of Chanute and Sylvain. Jacob thought of all the times he’d waited in vain for his old teacher. Chanute was rarely aware what day of the week it was, let alone what time. And despite having been one of the most successful treasure hunters, he had a gift for getting lost. Jacob could only hope Sylvain was more reliable.

“May I ask what we’re waiting for?” Jacob heard Brunel ask.

“For a carpet,” answered Ludmilla Akhmatova.

Fly, Carpet, Fly!

There was the policeman who asked them gruffly why they were visiting Moskva. There were the suspicious faces of the guards as they eyed the valuable carpet on the simple cart. The officer who silently studied the warrants in his hand before finally giving the signal to let her pass. Fox’s nighttime trip through Moskva offered plenty of reasons to be afraid. But the fear of arrest or of the rifles the soldiers trained on her was nothing compared to the prospect of seeing Jacob and Orlando and the worry that they would both be searching her face for whom she loved more. Her only consolation was that she didn’t know the answer herself.

Still, she was glad when the wrought-iron gate to the park appeared in the darkness. Some of the ghosts who’d given this place its nickname were hovering right behind the gate, as if grateful for the diversion. The horses only dared to pass them when Fox took the reins from the young coachman. She’d met many ghosts, not only on treasure hunts. The drowned whom she’d seen as a child had been as gray as the sea that had claimed their lives, but the soldiers she’d encountered with Jacob on an old battlefield had the same blood red color as the shadows in Privideniy Park. Fox feared the lingering dead only for one reason: their sadness.

The living were waiting by an obelisk commemorating a poet who’d been shot in a duel by his wife’s lover. Fox wondered what the wife had thought of that. She climbed down from the cart. Jacob was standing next to Ludmilla Akhmatova and a man who smelled so much of Wolfling that her vixen’s fur bristled. Orlando was leaning against the obelisk. Fox didn’t know the man next to him. Probably Brunel. Strange—his face didn’t match his scent.

Orlando spared her deciding whom she should embrace first. He came toward her and pulled her close, as though he’d been certain he’d never see her again. The first thing he said was Jacob’s name and how he’d be in some anonymous grave now if it hadn’t been for him.

Fox had never hugged Jacob so awkwardly. Could one love two men? She saw the concern in Jacob’s eyes that she might not have forgiven him the sleeping powder, and she felt his relief when she hugged him closer—for the words he’d written but would never speak aloud.

Jacob was concerned that Chanute and Sylvain hadn’t arrived yet. Fox suspected she knew why Chanute was in no hurry to face him, but she said nothing. It was going to be hard enough for Jacob to hear it from Chanute himself.

The carpet began to glow as soon as they unrolled it. It looked as though its colors had absorbed the light of the stars. The carpet was large enough to carry twenty people, but when Fox asked Ludmilla whether she would join them, the Dwarf shook her head.

“I don’t like being in the air,” she said. “Dwarfs are creatures of the earth. But I shall leave Moskva for a while. His brother”—she pointed at the Wolfling—“works for one of the Wolf-Lords in Kamchatka. I’m sure he can use a good spy, or who knows? Maybe I shall spy for the Tzar for a change? A woman is always on love’s side, sister Fox,” she added with a smile that would’ve done any vixen proud. “Men are always on the side of power. Even the Dark Fairy had to learn that. They will always betray us for power, so why shouldn’t we do the same? If only it didn’t make our hearts so cold.”

She offered Fox her gloved hand. “I hope we see each other again. Soon. Watch your heart. The Golden Yarn weaves a painful bond.”