Charles de Lotharaine had fixed his crooked spine years ago with a corset of hexed fish bones, yet the moniker had stuck, very much to Crookback’s vexation, for he was a vain man. There were rumours that he had the grey in his beard refined with powdered silver and that he was very unhappy about the furrows in his face, which, thanks to his love for tobacco and good wine, grew ever deeper into his skin.
The onyx lord kept his head bowed as he approached the King. The court of Lotharaine had shunned the old-fashioned ceremonial the onyx loved so much. No kneeling, no uniforms, except on official occasions. Crookback had put the ermine robes and brocade jackets of his ancestors in mothballs. He loved suits of black silk, tailored in the newest fashion, and he was very partial to the slender tobacco sticks the Albian ambassador had brought to the Lotharainian court. He was holding one between his fingers even now. Cigarettes. To Nerron’s ears, the name sounded like a stinging insect. Rumour had it that Crookback liked to hide behind the smoke so nobody could read his face. Charles de Lotharaine was a crowned cat pretending to be vegetarian while the tail of a mouse hung from its mouth.
The grey haze surrounding the King was so thick that the onyx lord suppressed a cough before he stopped an adequate distance from the throne.
‘Your Majesty.’ The old onyx’s voice betrayed none of the disgust he felt towards humans. His dark face hid his hatred as effortlessly as it concealed his insatiable hunger for power. Nia’sny. His name meant ‘darkness’ in their language, and it described his appearance as adequately as his heart. He’d given Nerron strict instructions to remain invisible until called upon. Nothing easier than that. A bastard was practised at being a shadow.
‘Your treasure hunter was unsuccessful, just like the men the Dwarfs hired. I am very disappointed.’ Crookback waved at a servant, who was standing behind the throne with an ashtray. ‘You were obviously exaggerating when you praised his skills.’
Nerron wanted to stub the tobacco stick out on Crook-back’s forehead. Calm, Bastard. He is a King. But he’d never been good at controlling his emotions, and he wasn’t sure whether that was a skill he ever wanted to acquire.
‘He managed to open the tomb, just as I promised. And he will find the crossbow! May I remind you that if it hadn’t been for our spies, you never would have learnt about the tomb? The Dwarfs like to think they are, like us, at home in the deep, yet the womb of the earth has no secrets a Goyl won’t discover.’
No. The old lord could not mask the arrogance in his voice. He was onyx. The most noble skin a Goyl could have – until a carnelian Goyl had declared himself King. The onyx hated Kami’en with a passion that nearly melted their stone skins. In order to depose him, they had revealed the positions of Goyl fortresses, and they had filled Crookback’s wishing sack, into which he made his enemies disappear, with so many of Kami’en’s spies that it had finally refused to take any more. It was a miracle that the King of the Goyl was still alive. Nerron knew of a dozen assassins the onyx had sent out, but Kami’en’s bodyguards were the best in their trade, even now that the Jade Goyl was gone. And he also still had the Dark Fairy on his side.
The old onyx turned around.
Finally.
The Bastard’s cue.
Nerron moved out from where he’d been standing behind the pillar, and stepped towards the throne. The arm-rest was supposedly carved from the jaw of a Giant. No matter . . . stories like that were just another attempt to prove that humans had always been the rulers of this world. The history books of the Goyl knew better. In contrast to Elves, Fairies, and Witches, humans were infants. A salamander had more history than they did.
Crookback eyed him so disparagingly that Nerron imagined ramming the bones of the Lotharainian King’s hexed corset between his ribs. Not that the Goyl wasn’t used to such looks. He did not possess what would have shielded him from them – neither beauty nor a noble heritage. When he was a child, he told himself that a Fairy had cut him from the marble of the night and that the green speckles in his skin were the traces of the leaves she’d used for it.
The malachite that dappled his skin came from his mother. Officially, onyx only ever paired with onyx, but many of them had a strong appetite for anything that wasn’t theirs. They had different expectations for their bastards than for their legitimate sons, and Nerron had caught on to that very early. A bastard had to be like the snake, crawling and wriggling in order to survive. But he had also mastered the other virtues of the snake: the art of invisibility, deception, the ability to strike from the shadows. Nerron bowed his head as low as the old onyx had done. To the left and right of Crookback stood two of his bodyguards. Their eyes were as cold as the ponds from which they had come. The King of Lotharaine entrusted his protection to Watermen. Their skin was nearly as impenetrable as Goyl skin, and their six eyes were perfect for the task.
‘So?’ The look Crookback gave Nerron was not much warmer than that of his Watermen. ‘If you really did make it into the tomb, then why are you not handing me the crossbow right now?’
The powerful were all the same, whether their skin was as soft as a human’s or made of stone. They thrived on power, and they always wanted more, more, more.
‘It never was there.’ Nerron’s voice did not sound like velvet, like Crookback’s or the onyx lord’s. His was like the rough garments of a servant.
‘Is that so? And where is it?’
‘In Guismond’s palace, in the Dead City.’
Crookback flicked a speck of ash from his black trousers. ‘Don’t talk nonsense. There is no more palace. It disappeared on the day of his death, together with ten thousand of his subjects. My nannies told me this story already. After all, he’s one of my ancestors. And you have nothing else than this treasure-hunter yarn for me?’
Oh, the rage of the Goyl. Nerron felt it like oil broiling in his veins. In Lotharaine, they used to feed their Kings to the Dragons if they couldn’t get the winter to end. They’d probably like your smoked flesh, Your Crooked Majesty.
Nerron!
He forced a smile. ‘Guismond’s corpse was missing the heart, the head, and a hand. Which means he used an old Witch spell. You take three parts of the body and hide them in far-apart places, and whatever you wish to conceal will disappear. It has to be hiding his vanished palace. The clues in the tomb were clear. Could there be a safer hiding place? It will reappear as soon as the corpse is put together again.’
There. The eyes behind those heavy lids now showed a little more respect.
‘And? Do you know where to look for the three missing pieces?’
‘It’s my business to find things that were lost.’
And he would find them. Unless Jacob Reckless beat him to it. Of all the treasure hunters of this world, it had to be Jacob Reckless who’d appeared in the tomb! And Nerron had even taken care of Guismond’s shadow for him. If Reckless had shown up just a couple of hours later, the inscriptions on the floor would have been illegible. He’d already had the bottle of acid in his hand. Annoying. Very annoying.
Their paths had nearly crossed a few times before. Reckless had beaten Nerron to the glass slipper. Back then his face had been on the front page of every newspaper. Nerron had cut the pictures out and burnt them, in the hope of putting some bad luck on his rival. But Jacob Reckless had only grown more famous, and if you asked anyone the name of the world’s best treasure hunter, his was the name you’d hear.