"Will doesn't have much time left."
She didn't phrase it as a question. She faced things, even if they scared her. Jacob liked that about her.
"And you need a doctor," she said, seeing him flinch with pain as he swung himself onto the mare. All the flowers, leaves and roots Fox had shown her had done nothing to check the infection in his shoulder. It was already making him feverish.
"She's right," said Fox. "Go to one of the Dwarf doctors. They're supposed to be even better than the Empress's personal physicians."
"Yes, if you're a Dwarf. Their only ambition with human patients is to make them pay and then send them to an early grave. Dwarfs don't think very highly of us," he added in response to Clara's puzzled look, "even those who serve the Empress. Nothing earns a Dwarf more prestige than having successfully fleeced a human."
"But you still know one you can trust?"
Fox uttered a scornful growl. She brushed around Clara's legs. Forging an alliance. "Trust? The Dwarf he's going to see is even less trustworthy than the others! Ask him where he got the scars on his back."
"That was a long time ago."
"And? Why should he have changed?" Anger had replaced the fear in Fox's voice.
Clara looked at Jacob with even more concern.
"Why don't you at least take Fox with you?"
For that, the vixen brushed around Clara's legs even more affectionately. She now always sought Clara's company, and for Clara she had even begun to shift into her human form more often.
Jacob turned the horse about.
"No. Fox stays here," he said.
Fox lowered her head and did not protest. She knew just as well as he did that neither Will nor Clara understood this world well enough to be left alone in it.
As Jacob reached the first bend in the road, he looked back and saw her, still sitting beside Clara, watching him ride away. His brother hadn't even asked him where he was going. Will was hiding from the sun.
18
Whispering Stone
Will heard the stone. He heard it as clearly as his own breathing. The sounds came from the cave walls, from the jagged ground beneath his feet, from the rocky ceiling above... vibrations to which his body responded as if it were made of them. He no longer had a name, only the new skin that cocooned him, cool and protective, and the new strength in his muscles, and the pain in his eyes when he looked at the sunlight.
He ran his hands over the rock, reading its age from its stony folds. They whispered to him about what was hidden beneath the innocuous gray surface: striped agate, pale white moonstone, golden citrine, black onyx. They showed him images: of underground cities, of petrified water, of dim light reflecting in windows of malachite...
"Will?"
He turned around, and the rock fell silent.
A woman was standing in the cave's entrance, the sunlight clinging to her hair as if she were made of it.
Clara. Her face brought memories of another world, where stone had meant nothing more than walls and dead streets.
"Are you hungry? Fox caught a rabbit, and she showed me how to make a fire."
She stepped toward him and took his face between her hands, such soft hands, and so colorless against the green that was spreading through his skin. Her touch made him shudder, though Will tried to hide that from her. He loved her, didn't he?
If only her skin weren't so soft and pale.
"Can you hear anything?" he asked.
She looked at him, puzzled.
"Never mind," he said. And he kissed her, trying to forget how he suddenly longed to find amethyst in her skin. Her lips brought back more memories: of a house as high as a tower, of nights lit by artificial light and not by the gold in his eyes...