chapter TWENTY-SIX
THE BEST
They didn’t land in the sea but on a beach as grey as powdered granite. The Waterman complained that his scales were itching, and Lelou swore the magic had made his fingernails grow, but the tracks they found in the sand were so fresh that even the prince managed to follow them. Nerron let him have his fun until they reached the first crossing, where, to the untrained eye, the trail disappeared among the tracks of cart wheels and farmers’ feet. For Nerron they were still easier to read than the signposts by the roadside. Reckless and the vixen had taken the road to Saint-Riquet, a provincial town where the inhabitants once used to get regularly trampled by Giants. Their huge teeth could still be found in the surrounding fields. The ivory fetched a good price.
Finding the inn where Reckless and the vixen were staying wasn’t hard. The Bug, with his innocent face, even got the landlady to give him the room number.
‘What are we waiting for?’ Louis asked while the Waterman eyed the curtained windows with a blank face. ‘Let’s get that spy.’
‘So he can destroy the head as soon as we come through the door?’ Nerron quickly waved them behind a coach that was parked by the kerb. ‘We have to lure him out!’ he hissed. ‘We need a bait.’
Lelou shot him a reproachful look.
Oh, this is going to be difficult, Nerron. But he had to get rid of the three for a few hours. Reckless was his. And he wasn’t going to see the head dangling from Louis’s tacky belt as well.
‘We need a girl,’ he whispered to them. ‘But I heard he only goes for virgins. Golden-haired. Eighteen years at the most.’
Lelou adjusted his glasses. That was usually a warning signal. ‘Virgins? Isn’t that the bait for Unicorns?’ he twanged.
‘Are you now going to teach me treasure hunting?’ Nerron hissed at him. ‘I’m sure you’re as good at dealing with Albian spies as you are at teaching Louis his ancestral history.’
The Bug wanted to retort something, but Louis found his new task as irresistible as Nerron had hoped.
‘I’ll find a virgin for the Goyl.’ His smile was smug, as befitted a prince. ‘But then that head is mine.’
Lelou pressed his thin lips together, and Eaumbre shot Nerron a knowing glance before he followed Louis, but all three disappeared into the narrow alleys, and Jacob Reckless was less than a stone’s throw away.
Nerron hid in an archway opposite the inn, but he had to change his position several times because some upright burgher stopped to stare at him. He was just beginning to pray for a mounted Goyl squadron to sweep through this sleepy street when he saw Reckless step out of the inn with a woman. The colour of her hair left little room for doubt – it was the vixen. Nerron usually didn’t find human women attractive, but she was as beautiful as everybody said. He wondered whether she and Reckless were a pair. What other reason could there be for taking a woman on a treasure hunt, even if she was a shape-shifter? Women were either unfathomable, like the Fairy Kami’en had fallen for, or they were weak, like his own mother, who’d become involved with an onyx and had made her son a bastard. Sometimes you convinced yourself that you loved them, but they could never be trusted, and in the end all one really desired was their amethyst skin. Never mind . . . The vixen turned her horse westwards, while Reckless took the road south. Excellent. Things would be much easier with him on his own.
The horse Nerron had hired found the sight of him just as disturbing as the good people of Saint-Riquet had. And by the time it finally allowed him to climb into the saddle, Reckless was out of sight. Nerron caught up with him just as he entered the forest that soon replaced the fields and meadows to the south of the town. Nerron was grateful for the shade under the trees, not only because it made him almost invisible. Sunlight no longer hurt his eyes since he’d had them hexed by a child-eater. It did, however, still crack his skin, even though he oiled it every day.
The forest was one of the former royal woods that had for a long time been the exclusive hunting grounds of the Lotharainian nobility. Since then they had also provided wood for the factories and the railways. This one, however, was still nearly as dense as it had been in the old days, and it reminded Nerron of the stone forests beneath the earth, which filled enormous caves with branches of garnet and leaves of the same malachite that ran through his skin.
He only pulled out his blowpipe once Reckless had ridden far between the trees. The plant shoot Nerron pushed into the narrow steel pipe was covered with thorns so sharp that only a Goyl could touch them without tearing his skin. It landed on the clearing Reckless was headed towards, and it began to grow as soon as it touched the ground. Choke vines grew fast. Faster than any prey could run.
Reckless reined in his horse as soon as he realised what was creeping towards him. He wanted to turn about, but the vines were already growing around his horse’s hooves. The vines clawed into Reckless’s clothes and wrapped themselves around his arms while his horse reared up in panic. Reckless was nearly trampled to death when the vines pulled him from the saddle. Careful! Nerron wanted him alive.
The Goyl tethered his horse to a tree. The stupid nag still shied from him. Reckless’s horse had managed to free itself. It trotted towards him, bleeding and trembling, as soon as he stepped out into the path. Nerron caught the animal and reached into the backpack hanging from the saddle. The head was still in a swindlesack. Of course. Only amateurs carried their quarry in plain sight.
Reckless had already all but disappeared. The vines had enveloped him in a spiky cocoon. Nerron pulled them apart until he could see the face of his rival. Reckless was unconscious – choke vines quickly suffocated their victims – but he opened his eyes when Nerron punched him in the face.
Nerron held up the swindlesack. ‘Thank you! I’m very glad I didn’t have to go on a boat. Where do you think I should look for the heart?’
Reckless tried to sit up, though the vines were driving their thorns into his soft flesh. The wolves would soon catch the scent of his blood. These woods were home to an infamous pack that had been accustomed to human flesh by a local nobleman who used to feed his enemies to them.
‘Even if I knew, why should I tell you?’ The grey eyes were alert, and there wasn’t much fear in them. It was exactly as everybody said: Reckless fears nothing. He thinks he’s immortal.
Nerron tied the swindlesack to his belt.
‘If you tell me, I will kill you before the wolves eat you.’
Oh yes, he was afraid, though he hid it well. And he didn’t care. Enviable. Nerron despised fear. Fear of water. Fear of others. Fear of himself. He fought it with rage, but that only made it grow, like a well-fed creature.
‘I already have the hand.’ He couldn’t resist a little bragging. Too often had he been forced to listen to the tales of Jacob Reckless’s glorious deeds.
‘Perfect.’ His adversary’s face turned white with pain as he tried to sit up once more. ‘Then I can take it off you when I get my head back.’
‘Really?’ Nerron was wearing the gloves that had already protected him from many spells, yet the pain shot all the way to his shoulder as he pulled the head from the sack. The eyes were closed, but the lips were slightly parted. Nerron quickly shoved the head back into the sack before it could utter something. Even a dead Warlock might still have a spell waiting on his lips.
Nerron put the swindlesack in his coat pocket. His lizard-leather coat would have given Reckless’s human skin much more protection than the fabric his coat was made from. As soft as his skin, and just as tearable. ‘Now, before all your wisdom gets ingested by a wolf . . . how did you manage to steal the red riding hood from the child-eater in Moulin? I heard she already had you in her oven.’
‘I’ll tell you if you tell me how you found that white blackbird. I searched for it for months.’ Reckless tried to free one of his hands, but choke vines were very reliable fetters. ‘Does its song really make you young again?’
‘Yes, but the effect barely lasts a week. My client had already paid me before he found out.’ Nerron rubbed his cracked skin. It ached, even in the shade of the forest. Once this hunt was over, he urgently needed a few months underground. But there was one more question he wanted to ask.
He pulled his knife.
‘Just out of curiosity . . . and I promise you’ll take the answer with you to your grave – or should I say, into a wolf’s intestines? Where are you hiding your jade-skinned brother?’
Ah. So there was a way to get through that smug mask.
‘Will. Wasn’t that his name?’ Nerron leant over his prisoner and cut a fresh shoot from the vine that had wrapped around Reckless’s soft neck. There’d always be another opportunity to use choke vines. ‘Did you know the onyx have tasked five of their best spies to find him?’
Reckless’s eyes followed every move Nerron made. He had himself under control again, but human eyes were still much more treacherous than a Goyl’s. Their alertness betrayed what his silence was trying to conceal. Yes, the rumours were true: the Jade Goyl, who had saved Kami’en’s stone skin, was indeed Jacob Reckless’s brother.
‘Where is he?’ Nerron wrapped the fresh shoot in the cloth that still had a few thorns of the old one stuck in. ‘You could both buy a palace in Lutis with all the silver the onyx have spent searching for him, and they still haven’t found even the faintest trail. That must be quite a remarkable hiding place.’
Reckless smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll tell you if you get these thorns off me.’
Oh, Nerron liked him – as much as he was capable of liking anyone. It was just as well that feeling overcame him so rarely. His mother was the only person he’d ever given his unquestioning affection to. Love was a luxury you paid for with far too much pain.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d better not. The onyx are already unbearable. Doesn’t bear thinking about what will happen if the Jade Goyl helps one of them grab Kami’en’s crown.’
‘Yes?’ Reckless swallowed a groan. His skin was probably well larded with thorns by now. ‘What do you think will happen when you get them the crossbow?’
Nice try.
Nerron tucked the cloth with the shoot into his pocket. ‘Our clients are our professional secret, aren’t they?’ He could already hear the wolves between the trees. ‘I’m not asking you whom you’re seeking the crossbow for.’
He gave his rival one last smile.
‘I really am glad our paths crossed this way. I was getting sick of constantly hearing that you are the best in our trade. Good luck with the wolves. Maybe you’ll think of some-thing. Surprise me! They don’t leave much behind, and it would be such a pity if the vixen has to spend the rest of her life searching for you.’
Nerron jumped on to his horse just as the first wolf came slinking towards Reckless. The others would soon follow. Unlike the onyx lords, however, Nerron didn’t find the screams of a dying man very entertaining.
And Louis had probably found a virgin by now.