Fearless (11 page)

The spider danced on, but her twin sister was awfully chatty and babbled whatever she picked up. Who the hell cared what colour sky Reckless was looking at, or whether he was sleeping outside or in a hotel?
Come on!
Where exactly was Reckless headed? Did he already know where he was going to look for the hand and the heart? But all the spider danced was the menu of some Flandrian tavern. Damn. If only those beasts were a little smarter.

‘Are you the Goyl who’ll be accompanying the prince?’

The voice was barely more than a damp whisper.

A Waterman was standing outside the carriage window. He was as scaly as the lizards that had given their skin for Nerron’s clothes. His six eyes were colourless, like the water the stable hands had left out for Crookback’s horses.

‘The Goyl accompanying the prince.’ Wonderful. . .

‘The prince is waiting.’ Every word from a Waterman’s mouth sounded like a threat.

Fine. The prince could wait until he had moss growing from his royal armpits. Nerron let the spider slip back into the medallion.

Little waves rippled across the Waterman’s uniform as he walked ahead of Nerron across the courtyard – as though his body was protesting against the clothes. Back in their slimy native ponds, they wore only a covering of algae and mud, and they didn’t keep very clean on land, either. There were few creatures more repulsive to a Goyl than a Waterman.

The prince and a Waterman. ‘Lizard-crap!’ Nerron spat out, which immediately earned him a reproving look from the colourless eyes. At least Watermen were known for not being very talkative, and as royal bodyguards they hopefully also refrained from dragging every halfway-decent-looking human girl into the nearest pond.

The prince is waiting.

Nerron cursed Crookback with every step that brought him closer to the King’s offspring. Louis of Lotharaine was waiting for them in front of the stables where his father kept his racing horses. His travelling clothes were going to attract every highwayman within a hundred miles. It was all Nerron could do to hope that they’d soon get filthy and that Thumblings would pick off all the diamond buttons. The crown prince of Lotharaine ate too well, that much was obvious, and his unkempt white-blond curls hung into his pudgy face as though his servants had only just dragged him out of bed. Louis had even brought one of them with him: the man barely reached up to his master’s chest, and his stiff black frock coat made him look like a bug. He scrutinised Nerron with a look full of surprise, as though he’d never seen a Goyl before. Nerron stared back at him.
Whatever you heard about us, Bug Man – it’s all true.

A Waterman, a prince, and a bug . . . Jacob Reckless would be rubbing his hands in glee.

‘So, what exactly are we looking for?’ Louis sounded grouchy, just as one would expect from a spoilt royal brat. He had only just celebrated his seventeenth birthday, but his innocent face was deceptive. Apparently not much was safe from him – not his mother’s maids nor her silver, which he regularly fenced to pay his gambling debts and his tailors.

‘Your father has informed me that this is about Guismond the Witch Slayer, Your Highness.’ The Bug sounded as though his metal spectacles were pinching his nose. ‘You may remember our lessons on your ancestry. Guismond’s younger son is your ancestor. Not in direct line’ – the direct line had their heads chopped off by the people of Lotharaine – ‘but through an illegitimate cousin.’ The Bug closed his mouth and brushed back his thin hair, no doubt congratulating himself on the extent of his learning.

A teacher. The Crookback was sending a teacher along with his son on a treasure hunt. Nerron wished himself far, far away. Even hell sounded attractive right now.

Louis gave a bored shrug. He was staring at a scullery maid crossing the yard. Hopefully, he was just as stupid as he looked. It would make keeping secrets from him easier. ‘Could we at least take a carriage?’ he asked. ‘The one that doesn’t need horses? My father had it brought over from Albion.’

Ignore him, Nerron. Otherwise you’ll have killed him by the second day.

‘We depart in an hour,’ he said to the Waterman. ‘On horseback,’ he added with a glance at Louis. ‘But first I have to take a closer look at your tutor.’ He grabbed the Bug by his lapels and pulled him away, which, just as he’d expected, did not interest his pupil in the slightest.

‘Arsene Lelou. I will not solely be travelling in my capacity as Louis’s tutor!’ the Bug stammered. ‘His father charged me with recording his son’s adventures for posterity. We have interest from some newspapers. . . .’

Nerron silenced him with one click of his tongue. The onyx were excellent teachers when it came to intimidating subordinates.

‘I assume you know a few things about the Witch Slayer’s younger son?’

The Bug’s beardless mouth showed a hint of a condescending smile. ‘I know everything about him. But of course I shall not share my knowledge about the royal family with any . . .’

‘Any what? Listen to me, Arsene Lelou!’ Nerron whispered to him. ‘Killing you would be easier than breaking a Thumbling’s neck, and I think we both know your pupil wouldn’t raise a finger to save you. Maybe you’d like to reconsider sharing your knowledge with me?’ Nerron gave him a smile any wolf would have envied.

Arsene Lelou went so red, he looked as if he was turning into carnelian.

‘What would you like to know?’ he said with a twang. He was trying to be a brave Bug. ‘I can give you the dates and places of his most important victories. I have memorised large portions of his correspondence with his sister, Orgeluse, concerning the Austrian line of succession. Then there are the armistice treaties with his brother, which Feirefis breached several times. And his—’

Nerron impatiently waved all that aside. ‘Do you know anything about a severed hand the Witch Slayer left to Gahrumet?’

Make my day, Bug. Say yes.

But Lelou just pursed his lips disgustedly. ‘Pardon me, but I never heard about such a grotesque heirloom. Would that be all?’

His receding chin trembled – whether from fear or indignation wasn’t clear. He gave a stiff bow and made to return to the others. But after two steps, he suddenly stopped.

‘Mind you, there was an incident’ – Lelou adjusted his spectacles with such a haughty face that Nerron nearly swiped them off his nose – ‘involving the favourite servant of Gahrumet’s grandson. He was choked to death by a severed hand.’

Bullseye.

‘What happened to that hand?’

Lelou brushed down his waistcoat. It was embroidered all over with tiny royal Lotharainian crests. ‘Gahrumet’s grandson had it sentenced to death. In a regular trial.’

‘Meaning?’

‘It was delivered to the executioner, quartered, and then buried at its victim’s feet.’

‘Where?’

‘In the graveyard of the abbey of Fontevaud.’

Fontevaud. A six-day ride – if the princeling didn’t have to take too many breaks. Reckless was going to be in Albion at least that long.

The head in the west. The hand in the south.

Nerron smiled. He was certain he’d have the hand before Reckless could even as much as find out where the head was. This was easier than expected. Maybe having an educated Bug along for the hunt wasn’t such a bad thing. Nerron was no friend of books, unlike Reckless, who he’d heard knew every library between the White Sea and Iceland and who spent weeks poring over old manuscripts before embarking on a treasure hunt. No, that was not Nerron’s style. He preferred to pick up his trails in prisons, in taverns, or by the side of the road. Yet a smart Bug like this . . . Nerron slapped Lelou’s delicate shoulders.

‘Not bad, Arsene,’ he said. ‘You just considerably increased your chances of making it through this whole venture alive.’

Lelou looked unsure whether this statement made him feel more at ease. Louis was still standing by the stables, arguing with the Waterman over how many horses they’d need to transport his travel gear.

‘Not a word about our little conversation!’ Nerron whispered to Lelou as they walked back to them. ‘And you should forget about the newspapers. No matter how much Louis loves to see his face on the front pages. I want to see every syllable you write about his adventures. And I will, of course, expect my own role to be recounted in the most flattering terms.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE HEAD IN THE WEST

M
ost of the ships that anchored in the harbour of Dunkerk still used wind to navigate the oceans of the Mirrorworld. The wind blowing through their riggings flavoured the air with what they’d brought back from the remote corners of this world: silverpepper, whisperwood, exotic creatures for the royal zoos of Lotharaine and Flanders . . . the list was endless. The ferries that crossed over to Albion, however, already had chimneys instead of masts, and they proudly blew their dirty steam at the wind. Even so, the ferry Jacob and Fox boarded still needed more than three days to cross the Grand Channel that separated Albion from the mainland. The sea was rough, and the captain repeatedly ordered the engines throttled back to watch out for a giant squid that had pulled another ferry into the deep a few weeks earlier.

Jacob felt time was trickling through his fingers like sand. Fox stood by the railing and stared across the frothy waves as though she could will the coast to appear. Jacob’s dislike for ships was almost as big as the Goyl’s, but Fox was standing on the swaying planks as if she’d been born on them. She was the daughter of a fisherman; she’d told Jacob at least that much about her roots. Fox was even more reluctant to speak about the past than he was. All he knew was that she’d been born in a village in northern Lotharaine, that her father had died shortly after her birth, that her mother had married again, and that she had three stepbrothers.

The chalk cliffs that finally emerged from the grey waves on the fourth day were the exact equivalent of those in Jacob’s world, except that there were seven Kings and one Queen looking out from Albion’s white cliffs. Each of the effigies was big enough to be seen for miles on a clear day. The salty air gnawed at the faces as relentlessly as exhaust fumes attacked statues in the other world. The face of the current King was covered by scaffolds, on which a dozen stonemasons were busily freshening up the moustache that had earned him his nickname: the Walrus.

Fox eyed Albion’s coast like enemy territory. In theatres there, shape-shifters were forced onstage to shift into donkeys or dogs while audiences howled along. And in its green hills, foxes were hunted with such abandon that Jacob had made her promise not to wear her fur on the island.

Albion. Chanute claimed there used to be more magical creatures there than in Austry and Lotharaine combined. Now, however, factories were shooting up from Albion’s soggy meadows even faster than in Schwanstein. As Jacob steered his horse past the waiting carts on the ferry docks, he looked up at the surrounding hills and imagined he could already see the cities that were sprouting all over them on the other side of the mirror. For now, however, those hills were still covered with the enchanted forests that had always explained his own heart to him so much better than the streets and parks where he and Will had grown up. Jacob had often wondered whether his father had felt the same – whether it was the wildness of this world that had beguiled him, or just the fact that here he could pass off the inventions of another world as his own.

They took one of the less travelled roads leading northwest. It wound past fields and meadows that let you forget that Thumblings and Stilts were now as rare in Albion as Hobs, the Albian version of Heinzel, or the scaly-skinned waterhorses that only a few years earlier could still be seen grazing on the banks of every river. Albion’s last Gold-Raven now stared out of a glass cabinet in a museum; the only Unicorns left were the ones on the regal crest; and in Londra, the ancient capital, Albion was now building palaces to celebrate the new magic: science and engineering. But Jacob was headed for another town.

Pendragon lay less than forty miles inland. It had nearly as many towers as Londra and was so old that its age was the subject of endless debate. Pendragon was also home to Albion’s most famous university. The town’s centre was marked by a big stone, polished to a sheen by the touch of countless hands. Even Fox briefly reined in her horse to touch it before riding on. This was the stone from which Arthur Pendragon supposedly had pulled a magic sword and had – long before Guismond’s time – made himself King of Albion. In this world, there was no King shrouded in a web of truth and myth so thick as Arthur was. The story went that he’d been born to a Fairy and that his father had been an Alderelf, one of the legendary immortals who later made enemies of the Fairies and were destroyed by them so thoroughly that there was no trace of them to be found. Arthur had not just named the town Pendragon; he’d also endowed the famous university himself and had imbued its foundations with so much magic that the old walls still glowed bright enough to render any street lighting unnecessary.