Reckless (Free Preview) (18 page)

Fox tried to
drive them away, but there were too many.
 
Finally she gave up and simply watched as they covered Jacob with their
wings.
 
It was as if the Red Fairy was
claiming him even in death.

Clara knelt
next to Fox and wrapped her arms around her.

"We have
to bury him."

Fox freed
herself from Clara's embrace and pressed her face against Jacob's chest.

Bury him.

I'll do
it.
 
The Dwarf had actually dared to
venture closer.
 
He picked up the rifle
Jacob had dropped, and as if the metal were as soft as clay, he slapped the
barrel flat with his bare hand, shaping it into a spade.
 
"Bloody waste!" he muttered as he
attacked the soil.
 
"Two
pounds of red moonstone!
 
And now
nobody will get it."

The Dwarf dug
the grave effortlessly, as if he'd had a lot of practice.
 
Fox just sat
there,
her arms wrapped around Clara, and looked at Jacob's still face.
 
The moths were still covering him like a
shroud when Valiant threw down his shovel and brushed the dirt off his hands.

"Right,"
he said.
 
"Let's get him in
there."
 
He leaned over Jacob.
 
"But first we should check his pockets.
 
No
point in letting
perfectly good gold sovereigns rot
in the ground."

Fox's fur
returned in an instant.
 
"Don't
touch him!" she hissed, snapping at Valiant's eager fingers.

Bite him, Fox.
 
As hard as you can.
 
Maybe that will ease the pain.

The Dwarf
tried to fend her off with the shovel-rifle, but she tore into his coat and
jumped at his throat until Clara grabbed her by the fur and pulled her back.

"Fox,
don't!" she whispered, pressing the quivering body against hers.
 
"He's right.
 
We'll need the money.
 
And Jacob's weapons.
 
The compass... everything he had with
him."

"Why?"

"To find Will."

What was she
talking about?

Behind them
the Dwarf snorted in disbelief.
 
"Will?
 
There is no more
Will."

But Clara bent
over Jacob and put her hand in his coat pocket.
 
"We'll give you all he had — if you help us find his brother,"
she said.
 
"That's what he would've
wanted."

She pulled the
handkerchief from Jacob's pocket.
 
Two
gold sovereigns dropped onto his chest.
 
The moths swirled up like leaves stirred by an autumn breeze.

"Strange
how little resemblance there was between the two," Clara said, brushing
the dark hair from Jacob's forehead.
 
"Do you have sisters, Fox?"

"Three brothers."

Fox rubbed her
head against Jacob's lifeless hand.
 
A
last moth rose from his chest.
 
Suddenly
she flinched.
 
His body shuddered — his
lips gasped for air, and his hands clawed into the grass.

Jacob!

Fox
impulsively jumped on his chest, causing him to groan with pain.

No grave.
 
No damp soil on his face!
 
She bit his chin and his cheeks.
 
Oh, she just wanted to eat him up with love.

"Fox.
 
What are
you doing?"
 
He grabbed her and sat
up.

Clara backed
away from him as if from a ghost.
 
The
Dwarf dropped his shovel.

But Jacob sat
there and looked at his bloody shirt.

"Whose
blood is this?"

"Yours!"
 
Fox
nestled against his chest to feel his heartbeat.
 
"The Goyl shot you."

Jacob looked
at her incredulously.
 
Then he unbuttoned
his blood-soaked shirt.
 
But instead of a
wound, there was only the pale red imprint of a moth on the skin above his
heart.

"You were
dead, Jacob."
 
Clara struggled with
the words, as if her tongue had to search for every syllable.
 
"Dead."

Jacob touched
the mark on his chest.
 
He wasn't all
there yet; Fox could see it in his eyes.
 
But finally he looked around.

"Where's
Will?"

Jacob
struggled to his feet as he noticed the Dwarf standing behind him.

Valiant gave
him his broadest smile.
 
"That Fairy
must have really taken quite a fancy to you!
 
I heard they sometimes bring their lovers back from the dead, but that
they also do that for the ones who ran out on them..."
 
He shook his head and picked up the warped
rifle.

"Where's
my brother?"
 
Jacob took a step
toward the Dwarf, but Valiant managed to evade him with a quick leap across the
empty grave.

"Easy,
now!" he called, waving the rifle at Jacob.
 
"How am I supposed to tell you if you
wring my neck?"

Clara pushed
the handkerchief and the gold sovereigns back into Jacob's pocket.
 
"I'm sorry.
 
I didn't know how to find Will without
you."
 
She pressed her face against
his shoulder.
 
"I thought I'd lost
you both!"

"Don't
worry."
 
Jacob stroked her hair
soothingly, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on Valiant.
 
"We'll find Will.
 
I promise.
 
We don't need the Dwarf for that."

"Really?"
 
Valiant snapped the bent barrel off the rifle as if it were a brittle
twig.
 
"They're taking your brother
to the royal fortress.
 
The last human
who tried to sneak in there was an imperial spy.
 
They cast him in amber and put him on display
right next to the main gate.
 
Terrible sight."

Jacob picked
up his pistol and pushed it back into his belt.
 
"But of course you know a way to get in."

Valiant's
mouth stretched into such a smug grin that Fox bared her teeth.
 
"Of course."

Jacob eyed the
Dwarf as if her were a poisonous snake.

"How much?"

Valiant bent
the broken rifle into shape.

"That
gold tree you sold to the Empress last year.
 
Word is you kept a cutting."

Fortunately,
Valiant missed the look Fox shot at Jacob.
 
There was indeed a cutting.
 
It
grew behind the ruin, by the scorched stables, but the only gold it had yielded
so far was its foul-smelling pollen.
 
Still, Jacob managed to produce an expression of honest indignation.

"That's
an outrageous price!"

"Appropriate
is more the word."
 
Valiant's eyes
were glinting as if he could already feel the gold raining down on his
shoulders.
 
"And the vixen has to
take me to it even if you don't make it out of the fortress alive.
 
I want your word of honor on it."

"Honor?"
 
Fox growled.
 
"I'm surprised
that word doesn’t make your lips blister."

The Dwarf leered
at her.
 
Jacob, however, held out his
hand to him.

"Give him
your word, Fox," he said.
 
"No
matter what happens, he'll have earned himself that tree."

31

Dark Glass

Without the
horses, it took them hours to reach a road that led from the valley up into the
mountains, and Jacob had to carry Valiant on his back so the Dwarf wouldn't
slow them down even more.
 
Finally a
farmer gave them a lift on his cart to the next village, where Jacob bought two
new
horses,
and a donkey for the Dwarf.
 
The horses weren't fast, but at least they were
used to the steep mountain paths, and Jacob only stopped when the darkness made
them lost their way.

He found a
spot beneath a rocky outcrop that gave some protection from the cold wind.
 
Soon Valiant was snoring as loudly as if her
were in one of the soft beds for which Dwarf inns were famous.
 
Fox scampered off to hunt, and Jacob advised
Clara to bed down next to the horses so that they would keep her warm.
 
Then he lit a fire with some dry wood he'd
found among the rocks, and tried to regain some of the calm he had felt on the
island.
 
Again and again, he caught
himself touching the dried blood on his shirt, but all he remembered was Will's
accusing stare after he'd been pricked by the rose, and then a relieved Fox
nudging his face with her muzzle.
 
In
between there was nothing, just an echo of pain and darkness.

And his
brother was gone.

"When you wake up, all this will be
over.
 
I promise."

How, Jacob?
 
Even if the Dwarf didn't
double-cross him again.
 
Even if he managed to find the Dark Fairy in the fortress.
 
How was he going to get close enough to touch
her, let alone utter what he'd learned from her sister, before she could kill
him?
 
Don't
think, Jacob.
 
Just go
.

He felt a
searing impatience, as if death had only increased his old restlessness.

Ride, Jacob.
 
Onward, just as you've done for years
.
 
The wind drove into the flames, and he buttoned his coat over his bloody
shirt.

"Jacob?"

Clara was
standing behind him.
 
She had wrapped a
horse blanket around her shoulders, and he noticed that her hair had grown
longer.

"How are
you feeling?"
 
In her voice Jacob
still heard the disbelief that he was actually alive.

"Fine,"
he answered.
 
"Would you like to
check my pulse?
 
Just
to make sure?"

She had to
smile, but the concern in her eyes remained.

An owl was
screaming above them.
 
In this world,
owls were regarded as the souls of dead Witches.
 
Clara knelt next to him on the cold earth and
held her hands above the warming flames.

"Do you
still think we can help Will?"

She looked
terribly tired.

"Yes,"
he said.
 
"And trust
me,
you don't want to know more than that.
 
It would just scare you."

When she
looked at him, her eyes were as blue as Will's.
 
Before they had been drowned in gold.

"Is that
the reason you didn't tell Will why he had to pick that rose?"
 
The wind blew sparks into her hair.
 
"I think your brother knows more about
fear than you do."

Words.
 
Nothing more.
 
But
they turned the night into dark glass in which Jacob saw
himself
.

"I know
why you're here."
 
Clara's voice
sounded distant, as though she were speaking not about him but about
herself.
 
"This world doesn't
frighten you half as much as the other one.
 
You have nothing and nobody to lose here.
 
Except Fox, and she clearly worries more
about you than you do about her.
 
You've
left all that could frighten you in the other world.
 
But then
Will
came
here and brought it all with him."

She got up
again and wiped the earth off her knees.

"Whatever
you're planning, please be careful.
 
Getting yourself killed for
Will
won't make up
for anything.
 
But if there is a way, any
way, to turn him back into who he was, then let me help!
 
Even if you think it'll frighten me.
 
You're not the only one who doesn't want to
lose him.
 
Why else would I still be
here?"

Clara walked
off before Jacob could answer.
 
He wished
her far away.
 
And he was glad she
wasn't.
 
And he saw his face in the dark
glass of the night.
 
Undistorted.
 
Just as she had drawn it.

32

The River

It took them
another four days to reach the mountains the Goyl called home.

Frosty days, cold nights.
 
Rain and damp clothes.
 
One of the horses lost a shoe, and the
blacksmith they took it to told Clara about a Bluebeard who had brought three
girls, barely older than her, from their fathers in a nearby village and had taken
them to his castle and murdered them.
 
Clara listened impassively, but Jacob could tell from her expression
that by now she considered her own story to be almost as horrific.