Inkdeath (50 page)

"Slow as snails!" grumbled one of the men-at-arms behind him. Those fellows stank to high heaven, as if competing with their master’s odor. "You wait and see, by the time we reach that damn castle the Bluejay will have flown again." Idiots in armor.

They still hadn’t realized that the Bluejay had ridden to Ombra Castle with a plan in mind, and that plan had not yet been put into practice.

Ah, they were stopping at last. What a relief to his poor bones! The sky was still black as pitch, but Thumbling had probably spotted a fairy dancing at the approach of dawn in spite of the cold.

Thumbling. . .

The Adderhead’s new bodyguard could teach anyone the meaning of fear. He was as thin as if Death had taken him once already, and the scaly snake from his master’s crest was tattooed across his larynx, so that when he spoke it writhed on his skin as if it were alive. A very unsettling sight, but luckily Thumbling didn’t talk much. He did not owe his name to his stature. Indeed, Thumbling was rather taller than Orpheus, not that it was likely anyone in this world knew the fairy tale of the same name and its tiny central character. No, this Thumbling apparently got his name from the cruel things he could do with his thumbs.

Orpheus hadn’t found anything about him in Fenoglio’s book, so presumably he was one of those characters who — if Fenoglio himself was to be believed had been hatched out by the story itself, like midge larvae in a marshy pond. Thumbling dressed like a peasant, but his sword was better than the Piper’s, and it was said that, like Silvernose, he had no sense of smell, which was why the two of them could be near the Adderhead without being overcome by nausea, unlike everyone else.

Lucky for them, thought Orpheus as he slid off his horse, groaning with relief.

"Rub it down!" he ordered Oss testily. "And then pitch my tent—and jump to it!"

Orpheus thought his bodyguard extremely foolish since he had set eyes on Thumbling.

Orpheus’s tent was not particularly large. He could hardly stand up in it, and it was so cramped that he almost knocked it down when he turned around, but he hadn’t been able to read himself a better one in a hurry, even though he had searched all his books for a rather grander version. His books . . . well, they were his now, anyway.

Formerly the property of the library of Ombra Castle, but no one had stopped Orpheus when he’d helped himself to them.

Books.

How excited he had been, standing in the Laughing Prince’s library. He had been so sure that he’d find at least one book there containing words by Fenoglio. And he had, indeed, come upon a book of Bluejay songs on the very first lectern. His fingers had been shaking as he freed the book from its chain (the locks were easily picked; he knew how to do these things). Got you now, Mortimer, he had thought. I’ll knead you into shape like dough. You won’t know who and where you are once I get my tongue around your robber’s name! He had been all the more painfully disappointed when he read the first words. Oh, those leaden sounds, those badly rhymed lines!

Fenoglio couldn’t have written any of the songs in that book. Where were the old man’s songs? Violante took them with her, you fool, he told himself. Why didn’t you think of that before?

The disappointment still hurt. But who said only Fenoglio’s words could come alive in this world? Weren’t all books ultimately related? After all, the same letters filled them, just arranged in a different order. Which meant that, in a certain way, every book was contained in every other!

However that might be, what Orpheus had read so far during those endless hours in the saddle was not, unfortunately, very promising. It seemed that there wasn’t a single storyteller in this world who understood his art, or at least not in the Laughing Prince’s library. What a pitiful collection of beautifully handwritten tedium, what wooden babbling! And the characters! Not even his voice would bring them to life.

Originally, Orpheus had intended to impress the Adderhead with a sample of his skill the next time they stopped to rest, but he still hadn’t found anything that tasted better on his tongue than dry paper. Damn it all!

Of course the Adderhead’s tent was already pitched. Thumbling always sent a few servants on ahead so that his master could stumble out of the coach and straight into it. It was a fabric palace, the dark lengths of cloth embroidered with silver snakes shimmering in the moonlight as if thousands of slugs had been crawling over the material.

Suppose he summons you now, Orpheus said to himself. Didn’t you promise him entertainment? He still heard the Milksop’s malicious words only too clearly: My brother-in-law doesn’t like to have his expectations disappointed.

Orpheus shivered. He sat down under a tree, feeling wretched, lit a candle, and fished another book out of the saddlebags, while Oss went on struggling with the tent.

Children’s stories! Oh, for heaven’s sake! Damn it, damn it, damn it . . . or not? Wait a minute! This sounded familiar! Orpheus’s heartbeat quickened. Yes, these were Fenoglio’s words, no doubt about it.

"That’s my book!" Small fingers snatched the book from Orpheus’s hands. There stood Jacopo, lips pouting, brows drawn together above his eyes — probably in imitation of his grandfather. He wasn’t wearing the tin nose. Maybe it had become rather a nuisance after a while.

With difficulty, Orpheus resisted the temptation to tug the book out of those slender hands. Not a clever move. Be nice to the little devil, Orpheus!

"Jacopo!" He gave him a broad and slightly deferential smile, the kind a prince’s son would like, even if the prince in question was dead. "This is your book? Then I’m sure you know who wrote it, don’t you?"

Jacopo stared darkly at him. "Tortoise-Face."

Tortoise-Face. What a fabulous name for Fenoglio.

"Do you like his stories?"

Jacopo shrugged. "I like the songs about the Bluejay better, but my mother won’t let me have them."

"That’s not very nice of her, is it?" Orpheus stared at the book that Jacopo was clutching so possessively to his chest. He felt his hands sweating with desire for it.

Fenoglio’s words.., suppose the words in that book worked as well as the words in Inkheart itself?

"How would it be, Jacopo. . ." (oh, how happily he could have wrung his stupid princely neck!), "how would it be if I told you a few robber stories, and you lent me that book in return?"

"Can you tell stories? I thought you sold unicorns and dwarves."

"I can do that, too!" And I’ll have you impaled on a unicorn’s horn if you don’t give me that book this minute, thought Orpheus, hiding his savage reflections behind an even broader smile.

"What do you want the book for? It’s for children. Only for children."

Horrible little know-it-all. "I want to look at the pictures."

Jacopo opened the book and leafed through the parchment pages. "They’re boring.

Just animals and fairies and brownies. I can’t stand brownies. They stink, and they look like Tullio." He looked at Orpheus. "What will you give me if I lend it to you?

Do you have any silver?"

Silver. It ran in the family — although Jacopo resembled his dead father far more than his grandfather.

"Of course." Orpheus put his hand into the bag at his belt. Just you wait, princeling, he thought. If this book can do what I suspect it can, I’ll think up afew nasty surprises for you.

Jacopo put out his hand, and Orpheus dropped a coin bearing his grandfather’s head into it.

The little hand stayed open, demanding more. "I want three."

Orpheus snarled with annoyance, and Jacopo clutched the book a little more firmly.

Greedy little bastard. Orpheus dropped two more coins into the child’s hand, and Jacopo was quick to close his fingers over them. "That’s for one day."

"One day?"

Oss trudged toward them. His toes were sticking out of his boots; he was always needing new boots for his elephantine feet. Too bad. Let him go barefoot for a while.

"Your tent is ready, my lord."

Jacopo stuffed the coins into the bag at his own belt and held out the book to Orpheus with a gracious expression.

"Three silver coins, three days!" said Orpheus, taking the book. "And now get out before I change my mind."

Jacopo ducked, but the next moment he remembered whose grandson he was.

"That’s no way to talk to me, Four-Eyes!" he cried shrilly, stomping on Orpheus’s foot so hard that he screamed. The soldiers who were sitting under the trees, freezing in the cold, laughed, and Jacopo stalked away like a shrunken copy of the Adderhead.

Orpheus felt the blood shoot to his face. "What kind of bodyguard are you?" he snapped at Oss. "Can’t you even protect me from a six-year-old?"

With that, he limped toward his tent.

Oss had lit an oil lamp and spread a bearskin on the cold forest floor, but Orpheus missed his own house the moment he stepped inside. "All because of Mortimer and his stupid robber games!" he grumbled as he sat down on the bearskin in a bad temper. "I’ll send him to hell, and Dustfinger with him. From all I hear, those two seem to be inseparable these days. And if there isn’t any hell in this world, well, I’ll write one especially for them. Even Dustfinger won’t like that kind of fire!"

Write. . . He avidly opened the book he had bargained for with that avaricious little devil. Bears, brownies, fairies . . . the child was right, these were children’s stories. It wouldn’t be easy to read something out of them to tempt the Adderhead, who was sure to summon him soon, for who else was going to help him pass the sleepless night?

More brownies. The old man seemed to have a soft spot for them. A very sentimental story about a glass woman in love. . . another featuring a nymph madly in love with a prince . . . For heaven’s sake, even Jacopo could hardly be expected to take much interest in that. Was a robber at least mentioned somewhere? Or, if not that, a blue jay calling? Yes, that would do it: He could step into the Adderhead’s tent and, with just a few words, read the enemy he’d been hunting so long into his presence. But instead he found woodpeckers, nightingales, even a talking sparrow — no blue jay.

Curse it, curse it, curse it! He hoped his three silver coins had been a good investment. Nose-Nipper. . . hmm, that at least sounded like a creature he could use to get back at the boy. But wait a moment! There, where the forest was at its darkest.

Orpheus’s lips formed the words soundlessly . . . and where not even the brownies ventured out to search for mushrooms.

"This camp is a very uncomfortable place to stay, master!" Ironstone was suddenly there beside him, looking gloomy. "How long do you think we’ll be traveling?"

The glass man was getting grayer every day. Perhaps he missed quarreling with that treacherous brother of his. Or maybe it was because he kept catching wood lice and maggots and eating them with obvious relish.

"Don’t disturb me!" Orpheus snapped at him. "Can’t you see I’m reading? And what’s that leg clinging to your jacket? Haven’t I told you not to eat insects? Do you want me to chase you away into the forest to join the wild glass men?"

"No. No, I really don’t! I won’t let another word pass my lips, Your Grace — and no insects, either!" Ironstone bowed three times. (How Orpheus loved his servility!)

"Just one more question. Is that the book that was stolen from you?"

"No, unfortunately — only its little brother," replied Orpheus without looking up.

"And now for heaven’s sake shut up!"

. . . and where not even the brownies ventured out to search for mushrooms, he read on, lived the blackest of all shadows, the worst of all nameless terrors. Night-Mare it was now called, but once it had borne a human name, for Night-Mares are human souls so evil that the White Women cannot wash the wickedness from their hearts, and send them back again. . .

Orpheus raised his head. "Well, well, what a dark story!" he murmured. "What was the old man thinking of? Had that ghastly imp annoyed him so much that he set out to sing him a very special lullaby? This sounds rather as if Jacopo’s grandfather might like it, too. Yes." Once again he bent over the pages on which Balbulus had painted a shadow with black fingers reaching through the letters on the page. "Oh yes, fabulous!" he whispered. "Ironstone, bring me pen and paper — and quick, or I’ll feed you to one of the horses."

The glass man obeyed eagerly, and Orpheus set to work. Half a sentence stolen here, a few words there, a snippet plucked from the next page to link them. Fenoglio’s words. Written with a rather lighter touch than in Inkheart — you almost thought you could hear the old man chuckling — but the music was the same.

So why shouldn’t the words from this story act like those from the other book — the one so shamefully stolen from him?

"Yes. Yes, that sounds just like the old man’s work!" whispered Orpheus as the paper soaked up the ink. "But it needs a little more color. . . ." He was leafing through the illuminated pages, looking for the right words, when the glass man suddenly gave a shrill scream and scurried into hiding behind his hand.

There was a magpie in the opening of the tent.

Alarmed, Ironstone clutched Orpheus’s sleeve (he was brave only when dealing with smaller specimens of his own kind), and Orpheus’s hope that this might be just an ordinary magpie was dashed as soon as the bird opened her beak.

"Get out!" she spat at the glass man, and Ironstone scurried outside on his thin, spidery legs, although the Adderhead’s men threw acorns and fairy-nuts at him.

Mortola. Of course Orpheus had known she’d turn up again sooner or later, but why couldn’t it have been later? A magpie, he thought as she hopped toward him. If I could turn myself into an animal or a bird, I’d make sure to choose something more impressive. How bedraggled she looked. Presumably a marten had been after her, or a fox. A pity it hadn’t eaten her. "What are you doing here?" she snapped. "Did I say anything about offering your services to the Adderhead?"

She sounded completely crazy, apart from the fact that her harsh voice lost all its terrors when it came out of a yellow beak. Your story’s finished, Mortola, thought Orpheus. Over. Whereas mine is only just beginning. . . .