Jacob stared into his glass as though he could see the captured Elves swimming in it.
‘Has the tomb been looted?’ His voice sounded as casual as though he was enquiring about Valiant’s tailor.
The Dwarf shrugged. ‘You know the Dwarf council. Always penny-pinching in the wrong places. Of all the treasure hunters they sent in there, not one has come out. And I say: just as well! Who’d want a weapon that can put an end to every war with one single shot? How’s that good business?’
The Dwarf babbled on, and Fox could feel Jacob’s eyes seeking hers. She wasn’t sure what she saw in them: hope, or the fear of it. The Witch Slayer. She tried to recall what treasure hunters associated with that name, but all she could remember was that at least one headstone in every Witches’ graveyard cursed his name.
‘Can you take me to the tomb?’
Valiant was still raving about the excellent profits to be made in a war, but Jacob’s question immediately shut him up. The Dwarf’s mouth twisted into a smirk that exposed the gold teeth beneath his ridiculous moustache. ‘I knew it! You nearly had me convinced that you actually have a conscience. But you’re all about business, too, aren’t you?’
Jacob took the glass from Valiant’s hand. ‘Can you take me there? I need an answer before you drink yourself out of this chair.’
Valiant wrestled the glass back from him. ‘Who’re you going to sell it to? The Goyl? Or will you grace a human potentate with your help, for a change? To make up for what you did for the stone-skins in the cathedral? Jacob Reckless, the treasure hunter who decides who gets to rule the world.’
Jacob’s face turned a little paler. He didn’t like to remember the Blood Wedding and the role he’d played in it. His voice was hoarse with anger as he answered the Dwarf.
‘I wasn’t helping the Goyl; I was helping my brother.’
Valiant rolled his eyes. ‘Sure. I know. You’re a saint! Still, you should be glad the Goyl are keeping mum about who saved their stone skins at the Blood Wedding. They’re more despised than ever. Those attacks in Vena are nothing compared to the trouble they’re having in their northern provinces. There are daily attacks in Prussia and Holstein, and Albion is supplying the rebels with weapons. The world is a powder keg. Business with explosives and munitions has never been better. Fairy lilies, Witch needles . . .’ The Dwarf grunted disdainfully. ‘Those are yesterday’s commodities. Weapons – that’s the future. And Dwarf hands build very handy bombs.’ His smile was rapturous, as though he were looking straight into paradise.
‘What is in that tomb?’ Fox looked at Jacob.
Valiant rubbed his napkin over his wine-soaked moustache. ‘The deadliest crossbow ever built.’ His tongue was getting heavier by the minute. Fox was having trouble understanding his slurred words. ‘One bolt into the chest of a general reduces his entire army to a pile of corpses. Not bad . . . not even the Goyl have anything like it.’
Fox gave Jacob a puzzled look. What was this about? Was he going to squander what time he had left hunting for treasure?
‘My share’s Fifty per cent,’ said Valiant. ‘No – Sixty. Or you can forget about it.’
‘I’ll give you Sixty-five,’ Jacob replied. ‘If we leave tomorrow morning.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TOGETHER
Elven dust and red wine. When Jacob took Fox to her room, Valiant was sitting in his oversize chair, his feet on his oversize table in his ridiculously oversize and crumbling castle, and he was talking to the paintings on the walls. They were all chasing their childhood dreams.
Fox’s shoulder was aching, though she tried to hide it. Jacob found a sleepy servant down in the kitchen who heated a bowl of water for him. A Man-Swan’s beak was not the cleanest of weapons, and so he also dressed the wound with some of the salve Alma had mixed for him.
Bites, knife wounds, burnt fingers . . . like him, Fox had probably lost count of how often they’d patched each other up over the years. To Jacob, her body was as familiar as his own, but as he touched her now he caught himself feeling self-conscious. She belonged to him like his own shadow. Younger sister, best friend. Jacob loved her so much that the other kind of love seemed like something he had to protect her from: the hungry game that was best ended before it got too serious. He wished he’d observed that rule himself with the Fairy.
Fox didn’t say a word while he put a fresh bandage on her shoulder. Her silence used to be an expression of the wordless familiarity that connected them. But not this time. Jacob opened the window and poured the bloody water into the night. A few snowflakes drifted in.
Fox stepped to his side and caught them with her hand.
‘What’s your plan? Are you going to trade the Dark Fairy the crossbow for your life?’ She leant out the window and inhaled the cold air as though it might drive away her fear.
‘A few hundred thousand dead, for my own skin? Since when do you think so little of me?’
She looked at him. ‘You would have done it for your brother. For him you would have done anything. Why not for yourself?’
Yes, why not, Jacob? Because he’d grown up with the certainty that Will’s life was more precious than his own? Did it matter?
‘I’m not planning to trade or sell the crossbow,’ he said. ‘The Witch Slayer used it three times. The first bolt killed an Albian general who took Fifty thousand men with him to his death. The second killed the commanding general of Lotharaine and Seventy thousand soldiers. A few weeks later, Guismond had himself crowned King of both kingdoms.’
Fox held out her hand into the falling snow.
‘I think I know the rest. I’d forgotten that story. It always frightened me.’ The flakes planted crystal flowers on her skin. ‘One day’ – she spoke the words into the night as though snatching them from the darkness – ‘Guismond’s younger son was dying. Gahrumet. I think that was his name. A Witch had poisoned him to take revenge on his father for killing hundreds of her sisters. His son was in such terrible pain that Guismond couldn’t bear it any more. He shot a bolt from the crossbow into his son’s heart, but Gahrumet didn’t die; he was healed. They say he hated his father later on, but he lived for many years.’ She closed the window and turned around. ‘It’s nothing but a fairy tale, Jacob.’
‘And? Everything in this world sounds like a fairy tale. I’m dying for having uttered the name of a Fairy!’ He stepped towards her and brushed the snowflakes from her hair. ‘Why shouldn’t there be a weapon that brings death when it’s yielded in hatred but gives life when it’s used out of love?’
Fox shook her head. ‘No.’
They both knew who was going to have to shoot the bolt.
Jacob took her hands. ‘You heard Valiant: nobody came out of the tomb alive. You know we can make it. Or shall we just wait together for death to catch up with me?’
What could she say to that?
CHAPTER TWELVE
LIVING SHADOWS
Looking at the valley where the Dwarfs had found the tomb, no one would have guessed that it had once been famous for its flowering slopes. Mirror-blossoms could make even the ugliest face irresistible for a few hours. But the sale of iron ore made riches faster.
The valley lay in the steep mountains of Helvetia, a little under a day’s ride from Valiant’s castle. The country was so small that it spent a lot of effort and gold on appeasing its mighty neighbours. It had once been part of Lotharaine but had won its independence with the help of an army of mercenary Giants. And since a Stilt had stolen the last King’s only heir, a parliament had been ruling the tiny country, keeping peace with the Goyl by allowing them to move troops through its mountains. When Jacob had asked what price the Dwarfs had paid for the permission to scour iron ore from Helvetia’s blooming valleys, Valiant merely replied with an indulgent smile. The country needed tunnels if it wanted to keep up with its neighbours’ railways and fast highways. And nobody could blast holes through mountains the way the Dwarfs could.