chapter SIXTY-FIVE
THE THIRD SHOT
Fox . . . Jacob heard her voice and felt her hands. But death was battling life in his body, and death was stronger. It was spreading through him, even though his skin was no longer that of an old man. The Fairy’s price had not been paid yet.
Let go. It’s over.
‘No!’ Fox grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘Jacob!’
He opened his eyes.
The Bastard was standing just a few steps away. ‘The Witch Slayer as a loving father . . .’ He stroked the crossbow’s gold-plated shaft. ‘Nonsense. I never believed that story about the third shot.’
The bolt in the crossbow was as black as his skin. He nodded at the Waterman. ‘Get her out of the way.’
Fox tried to pull her knife, but the Waterman struck it from her hands. Jacob was too weak even to lift his arm to shield her. He felt his life dissipating with every breath. What would become of Fox? It was all he could think of as the Bastard’s face blurred in front of his eyes. What would they do to her? Was the Waterman going to drag her into some pond, or would the Goyl shoot her? No, she’d escape. Somehow . . .
‘Look at the shaft. Just as I thought. It’s made of alder wood. Do you know what that means?’ Jacob heard the Bastard’s voice as though from a great distance. ‘No. You forgot all about them. But the Goyl remember. They lived even deeper under the earth than us, in their silver castles. Alderelves. Immortal. Devious. And masters at making magical weapons. The Fairies destroyed most of them, but there’s supposed to be a sword, somewhere in Catalunia, that was made by them.
‘The magic is always the same: the weapon brings death to its bearer’s enemies and life to his family. I always suspected that the crossbow is an Alderelf weapon, ever since the first time I heard the story about the third shot.’ The Goyl ran his finger over the reddish wood. ‘Who knows, maybe Guismond actually wanted to kill his son. He was probably already mad back then. After all, he’d been drinking Witch blood for years. But the crossbow wouldn’t allow it.’
He went to Jacob’s side.
‘How did he open the gate?’ he asked Fox. ‘It was easy, wasn’t it? It simply let him in.’
Fox didn’t answer him.
The Bastard drew the bow.
‘He himself explained it to me. The time spell only gives back life if it captures a relative. I most definitely don’t qualify, but Guismond was quite alive. Which means . . . ?’
Jacob could barely hear what the Goyl was saying. His own heartbeat was too loud, his laboured breath, his body’s final attempts to hold on to life.
‘That’s why the gate let him in. That’s why he was faster than I.’ Nerron’s throaty voice was getting louder, as though he could convince himself that he was the crossbow’s rightful owner. He caught himself doing it, and his next words again sounded as cool and cynical as they usually did. ‘Well, well, who would have thought, Jacob Reckless has the Witch Slayer’s blood running through him.’
Jacob would have laughed had he the strength for it. ‘Nonsense.’ He barely got the word out.
‘Really?’ Nerron stepped back and lifted the crossbow.
‘Let me shoot. Please!’ Fox’s desperate voice cut through the rush in Jacob’s head.
‘No.’ Nerron took aim. ‘How else can we prove this isn’t about love?’
Fox’s cry was stifled by the Waterman’s hand.
And the Goyl shot.
His aim was good. The bolt struck Jacob’s chest right where his blood was painting the moth on his shirt. The pain stopped his heart. Dead. You’re dead, Jacob. But he could hear his heart. Strong, and no longer stumbling. It hadn’t beat this regularly in a long time.
He opened his eyes and closed his fingers around the bolt that was sticking out of his chest. His heart hurt with every beat, but it was beating. And the wound did not bleed.
He gripped the bolt more firmly. His chest was numb, and he managed to pull it out with one tug. It didn’t hurt half as much as the moth’s bites, and the sharp point was clean, as though he’d pulled it out of a piece of wood instead of his own flesh.
The Bastard came towards him and took the bolt from his hand.
‘Let her go,’ he said to the Waterman.
Fox was shivering as she knelt down by Jacob’s side. Shivering with rage, fear, exhaustion. He wanted to take her away, far away from Bluebeard chambers and enchanted palaces.
Fox looked at him in disbelief as he got to his feet. The skin above his heart was flawless. Even the wound left by the moth had healed. He felt as young as on the first day he went treasure hunting with Chanute.
The Bastard looked at him with a wry smile. ‘That would also be a good story for the papers: Jacob Reckless has the Witch Slayer’s blood.’
He pulled a swindlesack over the crossbow and dropped the bolt into it.
Jacob looked at the mirror. The Bastard could be right, even if not exactly the way he thought.
‘You still want to sell the crossbow to Crookback, or did Louis ruin his father’s chances?’
Talk, Jacob. Play for time.
He’d made a promise to Dunbar.
Fox looked at him.
Two against two.
‘What will be your price? A castle? A medal? A title?’ Jacob looked at the mirror again. Fox had noticed it as well.
What if he was wrong? It was worth a try.
‘Let’s put it this way . . .’ The Bastard put the swindlesack in his pocket. ‘You got what you wanted. I’ll get what I want.’
‘What if I can give you a better price? Better than anything Wilfred of Albion or the Lords of the East could offer you?’
‘What could that be? I have a castle full of treasure.’
‘Treasure!’ Jacob shrugged disdainfully. ‘You can’t fool me. You care about that as little as I do.’
The Bastard kept his eyes on Jacob. The Goyl liked to claim they could read human faces like open books. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘That the Preachers are right.’
The thin mouth stretched into a sneer. ‘The gateway to heaven.’
‘I wouldn’t call it heaven.’ Jacob felt his regained life like a drug. He had cheated death, so why not the Bastard? ‘I think you’re right about the blood,’ he said, ‘but it’s got nothing to do with kinship. It’s just that Guismond and I came from the same place.’
The Waterman grunted impatiently. He was probably already picturing the girl to whom he would offer Guismond’s treasures in some damp cave. He was going to read her every wish from her eyes, but he’d never let her go.
‘They are going to be here soon,’ Eaumbre whispered. ‘The Dwarfs . . . Crookback’s men . . . every self-respecting treasure hunter. They will all come, but we can still shift most of the stuff.’
‘Then why are you still standing there?’ the Bastard replied. ‘Take what you want, and go. It’s all yours.’
The Waterman gave Jacob a six-eyed glance that seemed to know exactly how many of his kind Jacob and Fox had hunted down and cheated of their quarry.
‘I wouldn’t trust them if I were you,’ he whispered to Nerron. Then he turned and disappeared through the door into the audience chamber without looking around again.
Nerron stayed silent until the Waterman’s steps had receded. He looked at the pictures around them. His eyes stopped on the silver archway and Guismond’s knights flooding through them. Jacob caught a brief glimpse of a child’s yearning on the speckled face. He even nearly regretted that he couldn’t let the Goyl have what he longed for. But Dunbar was right. Some things should never be found, and if they were found, then their next hiding place had to be better than the first. He stepped over Guismond’s body. Where was all that life coming from that he suddenly felt coursing through his veins? Was some of it the Witch Slayer’s? Not a pleasant thought.
‘I’m sure you know them as well as I do,’ he said, slowly walking towards the mirror. ‘The stories about Guismond’s origins. That he was a King’s bastard, the child of a Witch, the son of a golden-haired Devil. Nobody ever figured out that he simply came from another world.’
Jacob stopped next to the mirror.
‘This is it,’ he said. ‘The door you’ve been looking for.’
Nerron’s face melted into the dark glass as he stepped to Jacob’s side. Jacob saw how much the Goyl wanted to believe him. He had learnt to read the speckled face.
‘Prove it, Fox,’ he said.
Of course she knew what he was planning. It wasn’t hard to guess. But Fox shrank from the mirror.
‘No. You do it.’ The fear in her voice was not pretend. For a moment, Jacob worried she wouldn’t follow him. But she’d also made a promise to Dunbar, just as he had.
Nerron’s eyes met his on the dark glass.
The best . . .
Jacob wouldn’t have minded letting him claim the title. Just a pity the Bastard also wanted the crossbow.
‘Go on, then,’ Nerron said, ‘prove it.’
Nerron didn’t notice how Fox moved closer to his side. All he saw was the mirror.
Jacob pressed his hand on the glass.