Sandstone walls and iron bars, a lizard-skin boot kicking him in the ribs, gray uniforms in the red fog that filled his head… the Dwarf had sold him out once again. When had he done it? In one of the shops, while you were waiting in front of the door like an obedient dog, Jacob.
He managed to sit up, although they had bound his hands and feet.
“So her red sister can indeed bring back the Dead.” The jasper Goyl stepped out of the dark. “I admit that at first I didn’t believe it when the Dark Fairy told me you were still alive. I am a very good shot.” His Austrish was fluid, but he spoke it with a heavy accent. “You went for her net like a fly: it was her idea to spread the word your brother was with her. But, well, how could you know that her snakes aren’t fooled by wane-slime. You did much better than the two onyx Goyl who tried to break into Kami’en’s chambers. We had to scrape their remains from the roofs of the city.”
Onyx—the Goyl’s former ruling class fought Kami’en even more passionately than his human enemies. Jacob usually tried to stay away from this world’s political schemes, though that wasn’t always easy while working for kings and empresses, but if the Goyl really thought his brother to be the jade Goyl of their legends, there would be no more staying away.
“Where’s my brother?” The snakes had strangled him so fiercely that Jacob barely recognized the hoarse croak as his own voice.
The Goyl ignored the question.
“Where did you leave the girl?” he asked instead.
He surely didn’t mean Fox, did he? But why should they be interested in Clara? What do you think, Jacob? Your brother is sleeping, and they can’t wake him. That was good news. And Valiant obviously did have a weak spot for Clara or he would have told them where she was.
So… just play dumb, Jacob.
“What girl?”
That answer earned him another kick. The soldier who drove her boot into his stomach was a woman. She looked familiar. Of course: he’d shot her out of her saddle in the valley of the unicorns. No wonder she enjoyed kicking him.
“Leave him, Nesser,” the jasper Goyl said. “It will take hours to get any answers from him that way. Get the scorpions.”
Jacob had heard about them. The scorpions of the Goyl.
Nesser let the first one crawl over her hand almost affectionately before she placed it on his chest. The creature was barely longer than his thumb and seemed to be made from breathing, moving crystal, including its pincers and stinger.
“There’s not much they can do to our skin,” said the jasper Goyl, as the scorpion crawled under Jacob’s shirt, “but yours is so much softer. So… once again, where’s the girl?”
The scorpion dug its pincers into Jacob’s chest. It felt as if it was cutting through his skin with shards of glass. He still managed to suppress a scream, but then the scorpion thrust its stinger into his flesh. The venom poured fire under his skin and made him gasp with pain.
“Where’s the girl?”
Nesser placed another scorpion on his shoulder.
Where is the girl? The same question, over and over again. But Will would sleep as long as they didn’t find Clara, and Jacob wished for his brother’s jade skin, as he groaned and screamed.
*
He had no memory of what he’d told them, when he woke in another cell, its narrow window filled with a view of the Hanging Palace. The window was barred—obviously the Goyl didn’t trust the height to hold their prisoners as much as they trusted it to protect their King. Maybe too many of their captives had thrown themselves into the abyss below, after they had met their scorpions. Jacob managed to get to his knees. His whole body was aflame as if someone had scalded his skin. His weapons belt was gone and so were all the magical tools he’d had with him. They had only missed the handkerchief, but it wouldn’t help him much. Goyl soldiers were famous for their incorruptibility.
His cell was separated from the neighboring one by nothing but iron bars. Jacob pressed his shoulder against the wall and hauled himself to his feet. The prisoner in the other cell was his brother.
Will didn’t move, but he was breathing and there were still a few slight traces of human skin on his forehead. Miranda had kept her promise. She had stopped time and the completion of her sister’s spell.
Jacob backed away from the bars that kept him separate from his brother when he heard footsteps on the corridor leading past the cells. The jasper Goyl was followed by two guards. Hentzau—by now Jacob knew his name. When he saw whom the Goyl were dragging with them, he wanted to smash his head against the bars.
He had told them what they wanted to know.
Clara had a bloody gash on her forehead and her eyes were wide with fear. Where’s Fox? Jacob wanted to ask her, but Clara didn’t even notice him. All she saw was Will.
Hentzau pushed her into his brother’s cell. Clara took a step toward the bed Will was lying on—and stopped as if remembering that only a few hours earlier she’d kissed the other brother.
“Clara.”
She turned, her face a torrent of emotions: horror, anxiety, despair—and still shame. She was shaking when she approached the bars.
“We tried to escape,” she whispered, “but they were too many.”
You told them, Jacob. How could he ever forgive himself for that?
“Where is Fox?” That was all he wanted to know. Had they killed her? Did she escape? The vixen was fast. But Clara took that hope from him.
“They caught her too. But I don’t know where they took her.”
The Goyl who had brought her stood to attention. Even Hentzau straightened his shoulders, though his reluctance clearly showed. It wasn’t hard to guess who the woman coming down the corridor was.
The Dark Fairy was indeed even more beautiful than her red sister. Her hair was, despite the name she was called by, much lighter than Miranda’s. It resembled dark amber and polished copper, and the luster of her skin put the Empress’s most precious pearl necklaces to shame.
Clara shrank away as the Fairy stepped into Will’s cell, but Jacob clasped his fingers around the metal bars. “You need to touch her and while you do say her name!” Her red sister had made him repeat it twice. “But you have to be fast or she will kill you before you even stretch out your hand.”
Touch her. How? Jacob wished for one of those magical nuts that shrank a human to the size of a Thumbling. The bars put the Dark Fairy as far out of his reach as if she were lying in Kami’en’s bed.
She eyed Clara with the same disdain all her kind had for human women. Because they can’t give birth, people said. Maybe.
The Dark Fairy moved to Will’s side and caressed his sleeping face.
“You love him?”
Clara took another step back, but her own shadow came alive and pulled her to the Fairy’s side.
“Answer her, Clara!” Jacob said.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Yes. I love him.”
The shadow let go of her and was once again nothing but a shadow, while the Dark Fairy smiled.
“Good. Then you surely want him to wake up, don’t you? Kiss him! He is waiting for that kiss, can’t you see?”
Clara cast a pleading glance at Jacob. No! he wanted to say. Don’t do it, Clara. But his lips were as numb, as if someone had sealed them. He could not even shake his head. Magic. The stale air seemed to smell of it. Of evergreen leaves, of water and wet soil.
The Dark Fairy took Clara’s arm and gently pulled her to Will’s side.
“Look at him!” she said. “If you don’t wake him, he’ll just sleep like that forever until all the love in his heart has become dust.”
Clara tried to turn away, but the Fairy grabbed her arm once again.
“Is that love?” Jacob heard her whisper. “To sentence him to death just because his skin is no longer as soft as yours? Look at him! My magic only made him strong. And so beautiful.”
Clara looked down at Will.
“Touch him,” the Fairy said. “Don’t you see he longs for it?”
Clara hesitated but then lifted her hand and caressed Will’s jade face.
The Dark Fairy stepped back with a smile.
“Make him feel that love when you kiss him!” she said. “You will see. It doesn’t die as easily as you think.”
Clara wiped a tear from her eyes. Then she bent over Will and kissed him.