Damn him. Damn him to hell. Farid bowed his head so that Orpheus wouldn't see his tears. The boy who caused his death…
"Tell me why I keep paying minstrels good silver for their pitiful songs. Because I've forgotten Dustfinger? No. It's because you still haven't managed to find out how and where in this world I can speak to the White Women who have him now! So I go on listening to bad songs, I stand beside dying beggars, I bribe the healers in the infirmaries to call me when a patient is at death's door. Of course, it would be much easier if, like your master, you could summon the White Women with fire, but we've tried that often enough and gotten nowhere, right? If at least they'd visit you, as it seems they like to visit those they've touched once with death already – but no! The fresh chicken blood I put outside the door was no use, either, nor were the children's bones I bought from a gravedigger for a bag of silver after the guards at the gate told you that was sure to raise a dozen White Women at once!"
Yes, yes! Farid wanted to put his hands over his ears. Orpheus was right. They'd tried everything, but the White Women simply didn't appear to them, and who else was to tell Orpheus how to bring Dustfinger back from the dead?
Without a word, Farid pulled his shovel out of the ground and began digging again.
He had blisters on his hands by the time he finally struck wood. The chest he pulled out of the ground wasn't very large, but like the last one it was filled to the brim with silver coins. Farid had been listening when Orpheus read it there: Under the gallows on the Dark Hill, long before the Prince of Sighs had the oaks there felled for his son's coffin, a band of highwaymen had buried a casket of silver in the ground. Then they killed each other in a quarrel, but the silver still lay there in the earth, with their bones bleaching above it.
The wood of the chest was rotten, and as with the other treasures he had dug up, Farid wondered whether the silver might not have been lying under the gallows even before Orpheus wrote his words. If asked such questions Cheeseface would only smile knowingly, but Farid doubted whether he really knew the answer.
"There you are! Now who's talking? That ought to last another month." Orpheus's smile was so self-satisfied that Farid would have liked to wipe it off his face with a shovelful of dirt. Another month! The silver he and the Chunk were putting into leather bags would have filled the hungry bellies of everyone in Ombra for months to come.
"How much longer is this going to take? The hangman's probably already on his way with fresh gallows fodder." When Orpheus was nervous his voice sounded less impressive.
Without a word Farid tied up another bag full to bursting, kicked the empty chest back into the pit, and gave the hanged men one last glance. There had been a gallows on the Dark Hill before, but it was the Milksop who had declared it the main place of execution again. The stink of corpses drifted up to the castle too often from the gallows outside the city gate, and the stench didn't go well with the fine dishes that the Adderhead's brother-in-law ate while Ombra went hungry.
"Have you found me some minstrels for this afternoon?"
Farid just nodded as he followed Orpheus, carrying the heavy bags.
"The one you got me yesterday was ugly as sin!" Orpheus got Oss to help him up onto his horse. "Like a scarecrow come to life! And most of what came out of his toothless mouth was the usual old stuff: beautiful princess loves poor strolling player, tralalala, handsome prince's son falls in love with peasant's daughter, tralalalee… not a word about the White Women for me to use."
Farid was only half listening. He didn't think much of the strolling players anymore. Most of them sang and danced for the Milksop these days, and they had voted the Black Prince out of his position as their king because he was openly hostile to the occupying army.
"All the same," Orpheus went on, "the scarecrow did know a couple of new songs about the Bluejay. It cost me a pretty penny to worm them out of him, and he sang them as quietly as if the Milksop in person were standing under my window, but one of them I'd really never heard before. Are you still sure Fenoglio isn't writing again?"
"Perfectly sure." Farid slung his rucksack on his back and whistled softly through his teeth, as Dustfinger always used to. Jink shot out from under the gallows with a dead mouse in his jaws. Only the younger marten had stayed with Farid. Gwin was with Roxane, Dustfinger's wife – as if he wanted to be where his master was most likely to go if Death's pale fingers really did give him up.
"Just why are you so sure?" Orpheus twisted his mouth in distaste as Jink jumped up on Farid's shoulder and disappeared inside the rucksack. Cheeseface disliked the marten, but tolerated him, presumably because he had once belonged to Dustfinger.
"Rosenquartz says he isn't writing anymore, and as Fenoglio's glass man he should know, right?"
In fact, Rosenquartz was always complaining of his hard life now that Fenoglio was back in Minerva's attic room, and Farid himself cursed the steep wooden staircase every time Orpheus sent him to question Fenoglio about things that Orpheus couldn't find in his original book. What lands lay south of the sea bordering Argenta? Is the prince who rules northern Lombrica related to the Adderhead's wife? Where exactly do the giants live, or have they died out now? Do the predatory fish in the rivers eat river-nymphs?
Sometimes Fenoglio wouldn't even let Farid in after he'd toiled up all those stairs, but now and then he would have drunk so much that he was in a talkative mood. On those days the old man overwhelmed him with such a torrent of information that Farid's head was spinning by the time he came back to Orpheus – who then questioned him all over again. It was enough to drive you crazy. But every time Orpheus and Fenoglio tried communicating with each other directly they started to quarrel within a few minutes.
"Good. Excellent! It would complicate matters if the old man took to liking words better than wine again! His last notions led to nothing but hopeless confusion…" Orpheus picked up the reins and looked at the sky. It was going to be another rainy day, gray and dismal as the faces of the people of Ombra. "Masked robbers, books of immortality, a prince returning from the dead!" Shaking his head, he rode his horse toward the path to Ombra. "Who knows what he'd have thought up next! Better for Fenoglio to drink away what few wits he has left. I'll see to his story myself. After all, I understand it a great deal better than he does."
Farid had stopped listening as he dragged his donkey out of the bushes. Let Cheeseface talk away. Farid didn't care who wrote the words to bring Dustfinger back, just so long as he did come back in the end! Even if the whole wretched story went to hell in the process.
As usual, the donkey tried to bite Farid when he swung himself up onto its bony back. Cheeseface was riding one of the finest horses in Ombra. Despite his pudgy figure, he was a good horseman – but, of course, miserly as he was, he'd bought only a donkey for Farid, a vicious animal so old that its head was bald. Even two donkeys couldn't have carried the Chunk, so Oss trotted along beside Orpheus like an overgrown dog, his face sweating with the effort of running up and down the narrow paths through the hills around Ombra.
"Good. So Fenoglio isn't writing anymore." Orpheus liked to think out loud. It sometimes seemed as if he couldn't put his ideas in order unless he heard his own voice at the same time. "But where do all the stories about the Bluejay come from, then? The widows he protects, silver left on poor folk's doorsteps, poached meat on the plates of fatherless children… Is all that really Mo's own doing, or did Fenoglio write a few words by way of giving him a helping hand?"
A cart came toward them. Cursing, Orpheus turned his horse toward the thorny bushes, and the Chunk stared up with a silly grin at the two boys kneeling in the cart, hands tied behind their backs, faces pinched with fear. One of them had eyes even brighter than Meggie's, and neither was older than Farid. Of course not. If they'd been older they would have gone with Cosimo on the disastrous expedition against the Adderhead that got all the men killed, and they'd be dead by now, too. But presumably that was no comfort to them this morning. Their bodies would be visible fr
om Ombra, a dreadful example to all who were tempted by hunger to go poaching.
Did people die on the gallows too quickly for the White Women to come? Farid instinctively put his hand to his back, where Basta's knife had gone in. They hadn't come to him, had they? He didn't remember. He didn't even remember the pain, only Meggie's face when he regained consciousness, and how he had turned to see Dustfinger lying there… "Why don't you just write that they come and take me away instead of him?" he had asked Orpheus, who merely laughed out loud. "You? Do you seriously think the White Women would exchange the Fire-Dancer for a rascally thief like you? No, we'll have to offer them tastier bait than that."
The bags of silver jogged up and down beside Orpheus's saddle as he spurred his horse on, and Oss's face was so red with effort that it looked as if it would explode on his fleshy neck any moment now.
Curses on Cheeseface! Yes, Meggie had better send him back to his own world, thought Farid as he dug his heels into the donkey's sides. And the sooner the better! But who was going to write the words for her? And who but Orpheus could bring Dustfinger back from the dead?
He'll never come back, a voice whispered inside him. Dustfinger is dead, Farid. Dead.
So? he snapped back at the quiet voice. What does that mean in this world? I came back, didn't I?
If only he could remember the way.
4. INK-CLOTHES
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
There was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
Billy Collins, "On Turning Ten"
A new morning woke Meggie, with pale light that fell on her l face and air as fresh as if no one had ever breathed it before. The fairies were twittering outside her window like birds that had learned to talk, and a blue jay screeched somewhere – if it really was a blue jay. The Strong Man could imitate any bird's call so well that it sounded as if the real thing were nesting in his broad chest. And they all answered him: larks, mockingbirds, woodpeckers, nightingales, and Gecko's tame crows.
Mo was awake, too. She heard his voice outside – and her mother's. Could Farid have come at last? She quickly rose from the straw mattress she slept on (what had sleeping in a bed felt like? She could hardly remember) and went to the window. She'd been waiting for Farid for days. He had promised to come. However, she saw no one out in the yard but her parents and the Strong Man, who smiled at her when he saw her standing at the window.
Mo was helping Resa to saddle one of the horses that had been waiting in the stables when they first came here. The horses were so beautiful that they must once have belonged to one of the Milksop's highborn friends, but as with many of the things the Black Prince brought, Meggie tried not to think too much about how they fell into the robbers' hands. She loved the Black Prince, Battista, and the Strong Man, but some of the others sent a shudder down her spine. Men like Snapper and Gecko, for instance, although the same men had rescued her and her parents on Mount Adder. "Robbers are robbers, Meggie," Farid often said. "The Prince does what he does for other people, but several of his men just want to fill their pockets without having to toil in the fields or in a workshop." Farid… She missed him so much that she felt ashamed of it.
Her mother was looking pale. Resa had often been sick over the last few days. That must be why she wanted to ride over and see Roxane. No one knew what to do in such cases better than Dustfinger's widow, except perhaps for the Barn Owl, but he himself hadn't been particularly well since the death of Dustfinger, and especially since the Adderhead had burned down the infirmary he'd run for so many years on the other side of the forest. No one knew what had become of Bella and all the other healers there.
A mouse, horned like Dustfinger's marten, scurried past as Meggie went outside, and a fairy whirred toward her and snatched at her hair, but by now Meggie knew just how to shoo them away. The colder the weather, the fewer fairies ventured out of their nests, but they were still on the hunt for human hair.
"Nothing keeps them warmer," Battista always said. "Except for bears' hair, and it's dangerous to pull that out."
The morning was so cool that Meggie wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. The clothes the robbers had found for them weren't as warm as the sweaters she'd have worn on a day like this in the other world, and she thought almost wistfully of the warm socks waiting for her in Elinor's cupboards.
Mo turned and smiled as she came toward him. He looked tired but happy to see her. He wasn't sleeping much. Often he would work late into the night in his makeshift workshop, using the few tools that Fenoglio had found him. And he was always going out into the forest, either alone or with the Prince. He thought Meggie didn't know, but several times when she had been standing by the window unable to sleep, waiting for Farid, she had seen the robbers come for him. They called to Mo with the blue jay's cry. Meggie heard it almost every night.
"Are you feeling any better?" She looked at her mother anxiously. "Perhaps it was those mushrooms we found the other day."
"No, it definitely wasn't the mushrooms." Resa looked at Mo and smiled. "Roxane is sure to know a herb that will help. Would you like to come with me? Brianna might be there; she doesn't work for Orpheus every day."
Brianna. Why would Meggie want to see her? Because they were almost the same age? After Cosimo's death and the massacre of Ombra's menfolk, Her Ugliness had thrown Brianna out as a belated punishment for having favored Cosimo's company over hers. So Brianna had come home to help Roxane in the fields at first, but now she was working for Orpheus. Just like Farid. By this time Orpheus had half a dozen maids. Farid said sarcastically that Cheeseface didn't even have to comb his own thin hair anymore. Orpheus hired only beautiful girls, and Brianna was very beautiful, so beautiful that beside her Meggie felt like a duck next to a swan. To make it even worse, Brianna was Dustfinger's daughter. "So? I don't even speak to her," Farid had said when Meggie asked about her. "She hates me, just like her mother." Still, he saw Brianna almost every day… and all the others. And it was almost two weeks since he had been to see Meggie.
"Well, are you coming with me?" Resa was still looking inquiringly at her, and Meggie felt herself blushing as if her mother had overheard all her thoughts.
"No," she said, "no, I think I'd rather stay here. The Strong Man will be riding with you, won't he?"
"Of course." The Strong Man had made it his business to protect Meggie and Resa. Meggie wasn't sure whether Mo had asked him to, or whether he simply did it to show his devotion to the Bluejay.
Resa let him help her up onto the horse. She often complained of the difficulty of riding in a dress and how she'd much rather have worn men's clothes in this world. "I'll be back before dark," she told Mo. "And maybe Roxane will have something to help you sleep better at night, too."
Then she disappeared among the trees with the Strong Man, and Meggie was alone with Mo, just as she had been in the old days when there were only the two of them.
"She really isn't well!"
"Don't worry, Roxane will know what to do." Mo glanced at the old bakehouse that he had made into his workshop. What were those black clothes he was wearing? Meggie wondered. "I have to go out myself, but I'll be back this evening. Gecko and Battista are in the stables, and the Prince is going to send Woodenfoot to be here, too, while the Strong Man's gone. Those three will look after you better than I can."
What was it she heard in his voice? A lie? He'd changed since Mortola all but killed him. He was more reserved and often as abstracted as if part of him had been left behind in the cave where he had almost died, or in the tower prison in the Castle of Night.
"Where are you going? I'll come with you." Meggie felt him start nervously as she put her arm through his. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing, nothing at all." He picked at his black sleeve and avoided her eyes.
"You've been out with the Prince again. I saw him in
the farmyard last night. What happened?"
"It's nothing, Meggie. Really it isn't." He stroked her hair, an absent expression on his face, then turned and made for the bakehouse.
"Nothing at all?" Meggie followed him. The doorway was so low that Mo had to bend his head. "Where did you get those black clothes?"
"It's a bookbinder's outfit. Battista made it for me."
He went over to the table where he worked. Some leather lay on it, a few sheets of parchment, some thread, a knife, and the slim volume into which he had bound Resa's drawings over the last few weeks: pictures of fairies, fire-elves, and glass men, of the Black Prince and the Strong Man, Battista, and Roxane. There was one of Farid, too. The book was tied up as if Mo were taking it with him. The book, the black clothes…
Oh, she knew him so well.
"No, Mo!" Meggie snatched the book away and hid it behind her back. He might be able to deceive Resa but he couldn't deceive her.
"What is it?" He was trying really hard to look as if he had no idea what she meant. He was better at pretending than he used to be.
"You're planning to go to Ombra to see Balbulus. Are you out of your mind? It's far too dangerous!"
For a moment Mo actually considered telling her more lies, but then he sighed. "All right, I still can't fool you! I thought it might be easier now that you're almost grown-up. Stupid of me."
He put his arms around her and gently removed the book from her hands. "Yes, I want to see Balbulus. Before the books you've told me so much about are sold. Fenoglio will smuggle me into the castle as a bookbinder. How many casks of wine do you think the Milksop can buy for a book? They say half the library's gone already to pay for his banquets!"
"Mo, it's too dangerous! Suppose someone recognizes you?"
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