‘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.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
ONE INSTANT
One instant. Jacob disappeared and the Bastard forgot where or who he was. And what he was carrying in his pocket. Just one instant. But that was enough for the vixen. More than enough.
Fox was at the mirror before he could grab her. She had the sack in her hand. His angry howl pierced her ears as she put her hand on the glass.
And then it was all gone.
The Goyl.
The enchanted palace.
Her entire world.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
THE OTHER SIDE
Fox turned around and Jacob took her hand. He remembered the feeling, that first time your own world disappeared and you found yourself in a different one. The dizziness. The question whether one was dreaming or awake. He was sorry he couldn’t give her more time.
Jacob pulled her away from the mirror and smashed the dark glass with his pistol handle. He hacked away at it until the silver frame held nothing but a few sharp-edged shards. Fox flinched with every strike, as though it were her world he was smashing to pieces. She clutched the sack with the crossbow, holding on to the only thing still connecting her to her world. Jacob was surprised the sack’s magic was still working.
‘Where are we?’ Fox whispered.