Inkdeath (29 page)

"Ah yes . . . your words! Very cunning words, according to all I’ve heard from him."

The image of the White Woman was still burning on Dustfinger’s hand. "Maybe I ought to take those words to Silvertongue so that he can read them once more and find out what kind of part you intended him to play in all this."

Orpheus stood up very straight. "I wrote them like that for you, only for you!" he cried in an injured voice. "That was all I cared about — for you to come back. Why would that bookbinder interest me? After all, I had to offer Death something!"

Dustfinger blew gently into the flame burning on his hand. "Oh, I understand you very well!" he said quietly, while the fire formed the shape of a bird, a golden bird with a red breast. "I understand a good deal now that I’ve been on the other side, and I know two things for sure: Death obeys no words, and Silvertongue —not you —

went to the White Women."

"He was the only one who could call them. What was I supposed to do?" cried Orpheus. "And he did it for his wife! Not for you!" "Well, now, I’d call that a good reason." The fiery bird fell apart in Dustfinger’s hand. "And as for the words.., to be honest, I like his voice so much better than yours, even if the sound of it didn’t always make me happy. Silvertongue’s voice is full of love. Yours speaks only of yourself. Quite apart from the fact that you’re much too fond of reading words no one knows about, or forgetting a few you promised to read. Isn’t that so, Farid?"

Farid just stared at Orpheus, his face rigid with hate.

"Be that as it may," Dustfinger went on as the flame in his hand licked out of the ashes again, forming the shape of a tiny skull, "I’ll take the words with me. And the book."

"The book?" Orpheus stepped back as if the fire on Dust-finger’s hand had turned into a snake.

"Yes, Inkheart. You stole it from Farid, remember? That hardly makes it yours.., even if you seem to be busily making use of it, from all I hear. Rainbow-colored fairies, spotted brownies, unicorns . . . They say there are even dwarves in the castle now. What’s the idea of all that? Weren’t the blue fairies beautiful enough for you?

The Milksop kicks the dwarves, and you bring unicorns here only to die."

"No, no!" Orpheus raised his hands defensively. "You don’t understand! I have great plans for this story. I’m still working on them, but believe me, it will be wonderful!

Fenoglio left so much unsaid, there was so much he didn’t describe — I’m going to change it all, I’m going to improve it. . . ."

Dustfinger turned his hand over and dropped the ashes on the floor of Orpheus’s cellar. "You sound like Fenoglio himself— but I’d guess you’re much worse than he is. This world is spinning its own threads. The two of you only confuse them— take them apart and put them together again in ways that don’t really fit, instead of leaving it to the people who live in the place to improve it."

"Like who, for instance?" Orpheus’s voice turned vicious. "The Bluejay? Since when has he belonged here?"

Dustfinger shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows? Perhaps all of us belong in more than one story. Now, bring me the book. Or shall I ask Farid to go and get it?"

Orpheus was staring at him as bitterly as a rejected lover.

"No!" he got out at last. "I need it. The book stays here. You can’t take it away from me. I’m warning you. Fenoglio’S not the only one who can write words to harm you!

I can—"

"I’m not afraid of words anymore," Dustfinger interrupted impatiently. "Neither yours nor Fenoglio’s. And neither of you was able to dictate how I’d die. Have you forgotten that?" He reached into the air, and a burning torch grew from his hand.

"Bring me the book," he said, giving it to Farid. "Bring everything he’s written.

Every word."

Farid nodded. He was back. Dustfinger was back!

"You must take the list, too!" Jasper’s voice was as slight as his limbs. "The list he made me draw up. Of all the words Fenoglio used! I’m as far as the letter F."

"Ah, not a bad idea! A list. Thank you, glass man." Dustfinger smiled. No, his smile hadn’t changed. Farid was so glad he hadn’t left that behind with the White Women.

He put Jasper on his shoulder and went to the stairs. Jink ran after him. Orpheus tried to bar his way, but he flinched back when the torch left his glasses clouded and its flame singed his silk shirt. Oss was braver than his master, but in response to a whisper from Dustfinger the torch reached out to him with fiery hands, and before Oss had recovered from his fright Farid was past him. Agile as a gazelle, he leaped up the stairs, his heart full of happiness and the taste of sweet revenge on his tongue.

"Jasper!" Orpheus called after him. "I’m going to smash you into such tiny splinters that no one will even be able to see what color you were!"

The glass man dug his fingers into Farid’s shoulder, but he didn’t turn around.

"As for you, you lying little camel-driver" — Orpheus’s voice broke — "I’ll make you disappear into a story full of horrible things specially written for you!"

The threat halted Farid for a moment, but then he heard Dustfinger’s voice.

"Take care with your threats, Orpheus. If anything ever happens to the boy, or if he suddenly disappears — the fate you clearly intended for him this time — then I’ll come to visit you again. And as you know, I never go anywhere without fire."

"It was for you!" Farid heard Orpheus shouting. "I did it all for you! Is this the thanks I get?"

Ironstone hurled furious abuse at Farid and his younger brother as soon as he realized what they were looking for in his master’s study. But Jasper, unmoved, helped Farid to find first the book and then every scrap of paper that Orpheus had ever written on.

Ironstone threw sand and sharp pens at them, he wished every imaginable disease that can afflict a glass man on Jasper, and finally flung himself heroically on the last sheet of paper that Jasper was rolling up on Orpheus’s desk, but Farid merely pushed him roughly aside.

"Traitor!" shrieked Ironstone at his brother as Farid closed the door of the study behind him. "I hope you’re smashed into a thousand pieces!" But Jasper did not turn back, any more than he had at the threats made by Orpheus.

Dustfinger was already waiting at the front door of the house.

"Where are they?" asked Farid anxiously as he hurried toward him. There was no sign of Orpheus or Oss, but he could hear their angry voices.

"In the cellar," said Dustfinger. "I lost a little fire on the stairs. We’ll be well into the forest before it goes out."

Farid nodded, and turned as one of the maids appeared at the top of the stairs, but it wasn’t Brianna.

"My daughter left," said Dustfinger, as if he had read Farid’s thoughts. "And I doubt if she’ll be coming back to this house."

"She hates me!" Farid stammered. "Why did she help me?"

Dustfinger opened the door, and the martens scurried out. "Perhaps she likes Orpheus even less than you," he said.

Fenoglio was happy. He was happy even though Jvo and Despina had taken it into their heads to drag him off to the marketplace, where Sootbird was giving yet another show. The criers had been announcing it for days, and naturally Minerva wasn’t letting the children go alone. The Milksop had had a platform specially made so that everyone could watch his court fire-eater’s incompetent performance. Did they hope such things would make the people forget that the Fire-Dancer was back? Never mind, not even Sootbird could cast a shadow over Fenoglio’s cheerful mood. His heart hadn’t been so light since he had set off with Cosimo for the Castle of Night.

And he wasn’t going to think of what had happened after that; no, that chapter was closed. His story had struck up a new song, and whose doing was that? His own!

Who else had brought the Bluejay into the story, the man who had run rings around the Piper and the Milksop and brought the Fire-Dancer back from the dead? What a character! Orpheus’s creations were grotesque by comparison: garishly colored fairies, dead unicorns, dwarves with a blue tinge to their hair. Yes, that Calf’s-Head could bring such creatures into being, but only he, Fenoglio, could think up men like the Black Prince and the Bluejay. Well he had to admit that only Mortimer had made the Bluejay flesh and blood. But the words had come first, all the same, and it was he who had written them, every single one!

"Ivo! Despina!" Where were they, damn it? It was easier to catch Orpheus’s rainbow-colored fairies than those children! Hadn’t he told them not to run too far ahead?

Children were swarming all over the street, coming out of all the houses to forget, at least for an hour or so, the burdens the world had laid on their frail shoulders. It was no fun being a child in these dark times. The boys had become men too young, and the girls found their mothers’ sadness hard to bear.

At first Minerva hadn’t wanted to let Ivo and Despina go. There were too many soldiers in town, and too much work waiting at home, but Fenoglio had won her over, although he didn’t like the thought of the stink that Sootbird would be spreading again. On a day when he was so happy, however, he wanted the children to be happy, too, and while Sootbird put on his pathetic show he would simply dream of Dustfinger breathing fire in Ombra’s marketplace in the near future. Or he would imagine the Bluejay riding into Ombra and chasing the Milksop out of the gates like a mangy dog, knocking the silver nose off the Piper’s face, and then, together with the Black Prince, founding a realm of justice, ruled by the people! Or perhaps not entirely. This world hadn’t reached that point yet, but never mind. It would be wonderful, it would move all hearts, and he, Fenoglio, had set the story on the course that would save it when he had written the first song about the Bluejay. In the end he’d done everything right! Well, perhaps Cosimo had been a mistake, but where would the excitement be in a story if it wasn’t dark from time to time?

"Inkweaver! Where are you?" Ivo was waving to him impatiently. Did the boy think an old man could just wriggle like an eel through this tide of children’s bodies?

Despina turned and smiled in relief when Fenoglio waved to her. But then her little head disappeared among all the others again.

"Ivo!" called Fenoglio. "Ivo, keep an eye on your sister, can’t you?"

Good heavens, he’d never known how many children there were in Ombra! Many of them were dragging their smaller brothers and sisters along after them as they flocked to the marketplace. Fenoglio was the only grown man to be seen, and few of the mothers had come. No doubt most of the children had stolen away on the sly —

from workshops and stores, from housework or the stables. They had even come from the surrounding farms in their poor shabby clothes, Their clear voices were like the twittering of a flock of birds among the buildings. It was unlikely that Sootbird had ever had such an excited audience before.

He was already standing on the platform in the black-and-red costume worn by fire-eaters, but his clothes weren’t patched together from rags like those of his brothers in the trade. They were made of the finest velvet, as befitted a prince’s favorite. His ever-smiling face gleamed with the grease he used to protect it from the flames, but by now the fire had licked it so often that it looked like the masks Battista made from leather.

Sootbird was smiling again now as he looked down on the sea of little faces, crowding around the platform as eagerly as if he could release them from all their troubles, from hunger, from their mothers’ sadness, and from missing their dead fathers. Fenoglio saw Ivo at the very front, but where was Despina? Ah, over there, right beside her big brother. She waved excitedly to him, and he waved back as he joined the mothers waiting outside the houses. Lie heard them whispering about the Bluejay, and how he’d protect their children now that he had brought the Fire-Dancer back from the dead. Yes, the sun was shining on Ombra again. Hope was back, and he, Fenoglio, had given it a name. The Bluejay. . .

Sootbird took off his cloak, which was so heavy and expensive that the price of it could surely have fed all the children crowded there in the marketplace for months. A brownie climbed up to him on the platform, hung about with bags full of the alchemists’ powders that the inept fire-eater fed to the flames to make them obey him. Sootbird still feared the fire. You could see that clearly. Perhaps he feared it now more than ever, and Fenoglio felt uncomfortable, watching him begin his show.

Flames sprayed and hissed, breathing out poison-green smoke that made the children cough. The fire formed shapes: menacing fists, claws, snapping mouths Sootbird had been learning. He no longer waved a couple of torches around and breathed flames so poorly that everyone Whispered Dustfinger’s name. The fire he was playing with, though, seemed to be quite different. It was fire’s dark brother, a flight made of flames, but the children watched the bright, evil spectacle, both fascinated and frightened. They jumped when the fire reached red claws out to them, and groaned in relief when it turned to nothing but smoke — although the smoke still hung U1 the air, acrid and making their eyes water. Was what people whispered true? Was it a fact that this smoke befuddled your senses so that you saw more than was really there? Well, if so, it doesn’t work for me, thought Fenoglio as he rubbed his smarting eyes. A set of wretched conjuring tricks, that’s all I see!

Tears were running down his nose, and when he turned to Wipe the soot and smoke out of his eyes he saw a boy come stumbling down the road from the castle. The lad was older than the children in the square, old enough to be one of Violante’s beardless soldiers but he wore no uniform. His face seemed strangely familiar to Fenoglio. Where had he seen him before?

"Luc!" the boy shouted. "Luc! Run! All of you run!" He stumbled, fell, and crawled into a doorway just in time before the man pursuing him on horseback could ride him down. It was the Piper. He reined in his horse, while behind him a dozen men-at-arms surged along the road down from the castle. More of them came from every direction, Smiths’ Alley, Butchers’ Alley. They were coming out of every street and alley that led to the marketplace, riding in almost leisurely fashion on their great horses, armored like their masters.