"I left certain things with the dead, Piper. And I brought certain others back." Dustfinger didn't raise his voice, but the flames went out as if they were creeping away into the stone, to wait there for more words of fire. "I'm here to warn you not to treat your guest badly. Fire is as much his friend as mine now, and I don't have to tell you what a powerful friend it can be."
His face pale with anger, the Piper rubbed the soot from his gloves, but before he could reply the Milksop leaned over the battlements.
"Guest?" he cried. "Do you call that the right word for a robber who already has an appointment to meet the hangman in the Castle of Night?" His voice reminded Resa of the cackling of Roxane's goose.
Violante pushed him aside as if he were one of her servants. How small she was.
"The Bluejay is giving himself up as my prisoner, Governor! That was the agreement. And he is under my protection until my father comes." Her voice was sharp and clear, astonishingly strong for such a slight body, and for a moment Resa took heart. Perhaps she really can protect him after all, she thought, and saw the same hope on Meggie's face.
Mo and the Piper were still staring at each other. Their hatred seemed to spin threads between the two of them, and Resa couldn't help thinking of the knife that Battista had sewn so carefully into Mo's clothes. She didn't know whether it frightened or reassured her to know that he had it with him.
"Very well! Let's call him our guest!" the Piper called down. "Which means that we ought to show him our own special brand of hospitality! After all, we've been waiting for him long enough."
He raised his hand, still sooty from Dustfinger's fire, and the guards at the gate leveled their spears at Mo. Some of the women screamed. Resa thought she heard Meggie's voice, too, but she herself was mute with fear. The sentries on the towers bent their crossbows.
Violante put her son aside and took a step toward the Piper. But Dustfinger simply made the fire lick around his fingers as if he were playing with an animal, and Mo drew his sword. The Piper knew very well whose weapon it had once been.
"What's the idea? Send the children out, Piper!" Mo cried, and this time his voice was so cold that Resa hardly recognized it as his. "Send them out, or you can tell your master that the flesh will go on rotting on his bones because you couldn't bring him the Bluejay alive, only dead."
One of the women began sobbing. Another pressed her hand to her mouth. Just behind the two of them Resa saw Minerva, Fenoglio's landlady. Of course, her children were among the captives. But Resa didn't want to think of Minerva's children or the children of the other women. She saw nothing but the spears pointing at Mo's unarmed breast and the crossbows aimed at him from the walls.
"I'm warning you, Piper!" Once more Violante's voice allowed Resa to breathe again. "Let the children go."
The Milksop cast a longing glance at the crossbows. For a moment Resa was afraid he would give the order to shoot, so that he himself could lay the Bluejay at the Adderhead's feet, his own personal hunting trophy. But instead the Piper leaned forward and gave the guards a signal.
"Open the gates!" he said, in a deliberately weary tone. "Let the children out and the Bluejay in!"
Resa buried her head in her daughter's shoulder again. Meggie was still as self-controlled as her father, but she went on looking as if she feared to lose him the moment she took her eyes off him.
The gates slowly opened. They groaned and stuck until the guards pushed at them.
And then they came out. Children. So many children. They surged out as if they had been waiting behind the heavy gates for days. The little ones were in such a hurry to get outside the walls that they stumbled, but the bigger children helped them to their feet again. Fear was written on all their faces, a fear much greater than themselves. The youngest began running as soon as they saw their mothers, threw themselves into their waiting arms, and burrowed their way in among the women as if into a safe hiding place. But the older children walked back to freedom slowly, almost hesitantly. They looked distrustfully at the guards they had to pass, and stopped when they saw the two men waiting on their horses outside the gate.
"Bluejay!" It was only a whisper, but it came from many mouths, louder and louder until the name seemed to be written on the air. "Bluejay, Bluejay." The children nudged one another, pointed to Mo – and stared in awe at the sparks surrounding Dustfinger like a swarm of tiny fairies. "Fire-Dancer."
More and more children stopped in front of the two horses, surrounded their riders, touched them as if to see if the men they knew only from the songs sung secretly by their mothers at their bedsides were really flesh and blood. Mo leaned down from his horse. He waved the children aside, quietly saying something to them. Then he gave Dustfinger one last glance and turned his horse toward the open gateway.
They would not let him go.
Three children barred his way, two boys and a girl. They reached for his reins and wouldn't let him pass into the place they had just left, to be lost behind its walls like them. More and more of them crowded around him, held him, shielding him from the spears of the guards while their mothers called for them.
"Bluejay!"
The Piper's voice made the children turn. "Through those gates with you now, or we'll take them all back, and hang a dozen in cages over the gateway where the ravens can eat them!"
The children didn't move. They just stared at the silver-nosed man and the boy beside him who was younger than they were. But Mo picked up his reins again and made his way through them as carefully as if each child were his own, and the children stood there while their mothers called them, watching him ride through the huge gateway. All alone.
Mo looked over his shoulder once more before he rode past the guards, as if he knew that Resa and Meggie had followed him after all, and Resa saw the fear on his face. She was sure that Meggie had seen it, too. As he rode on again the gates were already beginning to close.
"Disarm him!" Resa heard the Milksop shout, and the last thing she saw was soldiers, dozens of soldiers, dragging Mo off his horse.
36. A SURPRISING VISITOR
God took a deep breath. Another complaint! When would Man come to him without a complaint? But he shot up his eyebrows, smiled with delight and cried: "Man! How are the carrots coming on?"
Ted Hughes, "The Secret of Man's Wife,"
from The Dreamfighter
Oh, how good it was to see Despina's little face again! Even if she looked tired and sad, scared as a bird that had fallen out of its nest. And Ivo – had he been so tall before that wretched Sootbird took to stealing children? How thin he was… and was that blood on his tunic? "The rats bit us," he said, acting grownup and fearless as he had so often since his father's death, but Fenoglio saw the fear in his childish eyes. Rats!
He just couldn't stop hugging and kissing them, he was so relieved. And so lie should be. He forgave himself much, lie forgave himself easily, but if his story had killed Minerva's children – he wasn't sure how he would have come to terms with that. But they were alive, and lie himself had called into being the man who saved them.
"What will they do to him now?" Despina freed herself from his arms, her big eyes dark with worry. Damn it, that was the trouble with children – they were always asking the very questions you so carefully avoided yourself. And then they gave the very answers you didn't want to hear!
"They'll kill him," said Ivo, and his little sister's eyes filled with tears.
How could she be crying for a stranger? She'd seen Mortimer for the first time today. It's because your songs have taught her to love him, Fenoglio, that's how. They all love him, and today will write that love in their hearts forever. Whatever the Piper did to him, from now on the Bluejay was as immortal as the Adderhead. Indeed, he was far more reliably immortal, since the Adderhead could always be killed by three words. But words would keep Mortimer alive even if he died behind the castle walls – all the words now being whispered and sung down there in the streets would keep him alive.
Des
pina wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at Fenoglio in the hope that he would contradict her brother, and of course he did, for her sake and his own. "Ivo!" he said sternly. "What nonsense are you talking? Do you think the Bluejay didn't have a plan when he gave himself up? Do you think he's just going to the Piper like a rabbit falling into a trap?"
A smile of relief came to Despina's lips, and the shadow of a doubt appeared on Ivo's face.
"No, of course he isn't!" said Minerva, who still hadn't spoken a word since she had brought the children up to his room. "He's a cunning fox, not a rabbit! He'll outwit them all!" And Fenoglio heard the seed that his songs had sown begin to grow in her voice, too. Hope – the Bluejay still stood for hope in the midst of all the darkness.
Minerva took the children away with her. Of course. She would be going to feed them up with everything she could still find in the house, and Fenoglio was left alone with Rosenquartz, who had been stirring the ink without a word while Fenoglio lavished kisses on Despina and Ivo.
"Outwit them all, will he?" he said in his reedy little voice as soon as Minerva closed the door behind her. "How? Do you know what I think? I think it's all up with your fabulous robber! And he'll have a particularly nasty execution, that's what! I can only hope it will be in the Castle of Night. No one ever stops to think what all those screams of agony do to a glass man's poor head."
Heartless glassy little fellow! Fenoglio threw a cork at him, but Rosenquartz was used to such missiles and dodged it. Why had he taken on such a pessimistic glass man? Rosenquartz had his left arm in a sling. After Sootbird's performance, Fenoglio had persuaded him to go and spy on Orpheus one more time, and Orpheus's horrible glass man really had pushed the poor creature out of the window. Luckily, Rosenquartz had landed in the gutter, but Fenoglio still didn't know if the child-catching scene had been Orpheus's idea. No! He couldn't possibly have written it! Orpheus could write nothing without the book, and it seemed – for Rosenquartz had discovered this much – that Dustfinger had actually stolen it from him. Anyway, the scene was much too good for that Calf's-Head to have written, wasn't it?
He'll outwit them all…
Fenoglio went to the window, while the glass man adjusted his sling with a reproachful sigh. Did Mortimer really have a plan? Damn it, how was he to know? Mortimer wasn't really one of his characters, even if he was playing the part of one. Which is extremely annoying, Fenoglio thought. Because if he had been one of them, presumably I'd know what's really going on behind those thrice-damned walls.
He stared darkly over the rooftops to the castle. Poor Meggie. And no doubt she'd blame him for everything again. Her mother certainly did. Fenoglio remembered Resa's pleading look only too well. You must write us back again. You owe us that! Yes, perhaps he really should have tried. Suppose they killed Mortimer? Wouldn't it be better for them all to go back to their world then? What would he want to do here once the Bluejay was dead? Watch the immortal Adder and the Piper tell his story?
"Of course he's here! Didn't you hear what she said? Up the stairs. Do you see any other stairs around here? For heaven's sake, Darius!"
Rosenquartz forgot his broken arm and looked at the door.
What woman's voice was that?
There was a knock, but before Fenoglio could call, "Come in," the door opened and a rather powerful female form entered his room so impetuously that he instinctively took a step back, knocking his head against the sloping roof. The dress she wore looked as if it had come straight from some cheap theatrical production.
"There we are! This is him, the author!" she announced, looking him up and down with such contempt that Fenoglio was aware of every hole in his tunic. I've seen this woman before, he thought.
"And what's going on here, may I ask?" She jabbed her finger into his chest as hard as if to stab him straight to his old heart. And he'd seen the thin fellow behind her as well. Of course… wait…
"Why is the Adderhead's flag hoisted in Ombra? Who is that frightful fellow with the silver nose? Why were they threatening Mortimer with spears, and since when, for goodness' sake, has he gone about wearing a sword?"
The bookworm. Of course! That's who she was. Elinor Loredan. Meggie had told him about her often enough. Fenoglio had last seen her through bars, stuck in one of the dog pens in the arena where Capricorn's festivities were held. And the timid man with the owlish look was Capricorn's stammering reader! Though, with the best will in the world, Fenoglio couldn't remember his name. What were these two doing here? Were tourist visas for his story being handed out these days?
"I admit I was relieved to see Mortimer alive," his uninvited guest went on. (Did she ever stop to get her breath back?) "And thank goodness he seems to be sound and healthy, although I didn't like to see him riding into that castle alone at all. But where are Resa and Meggie? And what about Mortola, Basta, and that puffed-up mooncalf Orpheus?"
Good lord, the woman was just as awful as he'd imagined her! Her companion – Darius, yes, that was his name – was staring at Rosenquartz with such a captivated expression that the glass man, flattered, passed a hand over his pale pink hair.
"Quiet!" thundered Fenoglio. "Shut up, for heaven's sake!"
It had no effect. Not the slightest. "Something's happened to them! Admit it! Why was Mortimer alone?" Once again she jabbed him in the chest. "I just know something's happened to Meggie and Resa, something terrible… a giant has trodden on them, they've been impaled on spikes, they -"
"Nothing of the kind!" Fenoglio interrupted. "They're with the Black Prince!"
"The Black Prince?" Her eyes became almost as large as her bespectacled companion's. "Oh!"
"Yes, and if something terrible happens to anyone here it's going to be Mortimer. Which is why…," said Fenoglio, grabbing her arm, not very gently, and dragging her to the door, "… I want to be left in peace, for heaven's sake, so that I can think!"
That really did shut her up. But not for long.
"Something terrible?" she asked.
Rosenquartz took his hands away from his ears.
"What do you mean? Who writes what happens here? You do, isn't that so?"
Oh, wonderful! Now her fat fingers were prodding at his sorest point!
"No, definitely not!" he told her sharply. "This story is now telling itself, and today Mortimer prevented it from taking a very unpleasant turn! But unfortunately that looks as if it will cost him his neck, in which case I can only advise you to take his wife and daughter and go back with them to where you came from, as fast as possible! Because you've obviously found a way, haven't you?"
With these words he opened the door, but Signora Loredan simply closed it again.
"Cost him his neck? What do you mean?" With a jerk, she freed her arm from his grasp. (Heavens above, the woman was as strong as a hippopotamus.)
"I mean that, very regrettably, he's likely to be hung or beheaded or quartered, or whatever else strikes the Adderhead as the right kind of execution for the man who's his worst enemy!"
"His worst enemy? Mortimer?" She was frowning incredulously – as if Fenoglio were an old fool who didn't know what he was talking about!
"It was him. He made him into a robber."
That was Rosenquartz. The miserable traitor! He was pointing a glass finger at his master so mercilessly that Fenoglio felt like picking him up from his desk and breaking him in two at the waist.
"It's the songs," murmured Rosenquartz to their two visitors, as if he'd known them for a lifetime. "Obsessed by them, that's what he is, and Meggie's poor father has been caught up in his fine words like a fly in a spider's web!"
This was too much. Fenoglio marched toward Rosenquartz, but the bookworm woman barred his way.
"Don't you dare do anything to that poor defenseless glass man!" She was glowering at him like a bulldog. Good God, what a fearsome female! "Mortimer, a robber? He's the most peace-loving person I know."
"Oh, really?" Fenoglio's voice rose to such a pitch that Rosenquartz put his hands over his
ridiculously tiny ears again. "Well, perhaps even the most peace-loving person gets to feel less so when he's been shot and nearly killed, parted from his wife, and locked in a dungeon for weeks on end. And none of that was my work, whatever this lying glass man may say! Far from it. But for the words I wrote, I imagine Mortimer would be dead by now."
"Shot and nearly killed? Dungeon?" Signora Loredan cast a helpless glance at her bespectacled companion.
"This sounds like a long story, Elinor," he said in his quiet voice. "Maybe you should listen to it."
But before Fenoglio could say anything in response to that, Minerva put her head around the door. "Fenoglio," she said, glancing briefly at his visitors. "Despina won't give me a moment's peace. She's worried about the Bluejay; she wants you to tell her how he's going to save himself."
This was too much. Fenoglio sighed deeply and tried to ignore Rosenquartz's snort of derision. He ought to take the glass man into the Wayless Wood and leave him there, that's what he ought to do.
"Send her to me," he said, although he hadn't the faintest idea what to tell the little girl. What had become of the days when his head was brimming over with ideas? They were suffocated by all this misfortune, that was what had become of them!
"The Bluejay? Didn't the man with the silver nose call Mortimer that?"
Oh, good heavens, he'd forgotten his visitors entirely for a moment.
"Get out of here!" he snarled. "Out of my room, out of my story! There are far too many visitors here already. Go away."
But the brazen woman sat down on the chair at his desk, folded her arms, and planted her feet on his floor as if planning to let them take root there. "No, I won't. I want to hear the story," she said. "The whole story."
This was going from bad to worse. What an unlucky day – and it wasn't over yet.
"Inkweaver?" Despina was standing in the doorway, her face tearstained. When she saw the two strangers she instinctively stepped back, but Fenoglio went over and took her little hand.
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