Inkdeath (24 page)

A dwarf about twice the size of a glass man. Definitely not furry like Tullio — no, the dwarf was to have skin as white as alabaster, a head too big for it, and bandy legs.

At least the Milksop always knew just what he wanted, even if his orders had come noticeably less often since the Piper arrived in the city. Orpheus was just wondering whether to give the dwarf red hair or the white hair of an albino when Oss knocked, and at his master’s grunt of "Enter" put his head around the door. Oss had revolting table manners and was not much given to washing himself, but he never forgot to knock.

"There’s another letter for you, my lord!"

Ah, how good it made him feel being called that! My lord. . .

Oss came in, bowed his bald head (he sometimes overdid the Servility), and handed Orpheus a sealed piece of paper. Paper?

That was strange. The fine gentlemen usually sent their orders written on parchment, and the seal didn’t look familiar, either. Well, never mind that. This would be the third order today; business was good. The Piper’s arrival had made no difference to that. This world could have been made for him! Hadn’t he always known it, ever since he first opened Fenoglio’s book with his sweaty schoolboy fingers? His accomplished lies didn’t get him jailed as a forger or con man here; they valued his talents at their true worth in this world—and all Ombra bowed to him when he crossed the marketplace in his fine clothes. Fabulous.

"Who’s the letter from?"

Oss shrugged his ridiculously broad shoulders. "Dunno, my lord. Farid gave it to me."

"Farid?" Orpheus sat up straight. "Why didn’t you say so at once?" He quickly snatched the letter from Oss’s clumsy fingers.

Orpheus—of course he didn’t begin "Dear Orpheus." Even in the salutation of a letter the Bluejay told no lies! — Farid has told me what you want in return for the words my wife has asked you for. I agree.

Orpheus read the words three times, four, five times, and yes, there it was in black and white.

I agree.

The bookbinder had taken the bait! Could it really be that easy?

Yes, why not? Heroes are fools. Hadn’t he always said so? The Bluejay had fallen into the trap, and all he had to do was snap it shut. With a pen, some ink.., and his tongue.

"Go away! I want to be alone!" he snarled at Oss, who was standing there looking bored and throwing nuts at the two glass men. And take Jasper with you!" Orpheus liked talking to himself out loud when he was writing down his ideas, so the glass man had better be out of the room. Jasper sat on Farid’s shoulder far too often, and on no account must the boy learn what Orpheus was planning to write now. It was true that the stupid boy wanted Dustfinger back even more fervently than he did, but Orpheus wasn’t so sure that he would sacrifice his girlfriend’s father in return. No, by now Farid worshipped the Bluejay as much as everyone else here did.

Ironstone gave his brother a gleefully malicious glance as Oss picked up Jasper from the desk with fleshy fingers.

"Parchment!" Orpheus ordered as soon as the door had closed behind the two of them, and Ironstone busily spread the best sheet they had on the desk.

Orpheus, however, went to the window and looked out at the hills from which, presumably, the Bluejay’s letter had come. Silvertongue, Bluejay. . . fine names they’d given him, and yes, Mortimer was certainly very much braver and more noble than Orpheus himself was, but such a paragon couldn’t compete with him in cunning.

The good are stupid.

You have his wife to thank for this, Orpheus, he told himself as he began pacing up and down (nothing helped him think better). If his wife wasn’t so afraid of losing him, you might never have found the bait you need!

Oh, it would be fantastic! His greatest triumph! Unicorns, dwarves, rainbow-colored fairies . . . not bad at all, but nothing compared to what he’d do now! He would bring the Fire-Dancer back from the dead. Orpheus. Had the name he had taken ever suited him better? But he would be wilier than the singer whose name he had stolen. He would indeed. He would send another man into the realm of Death in the FireDancer’s place — and he’d make sure that he didn’t come back.

"Do you hear me, Dustfinger, in the cold land where you are now?" whispered Orpheus, while Ironstone busily stirred the ink. "I’ve caught the bait to buy your freedom, the most wonderful bait of all, decked out with the finest pale blue feathers!"

He began humming, as he always did when he was pleased with himself, and picked up Mortimer’s letter again. What else had the Bluejay written?

It will be as you require. By the Devil’s cloven hoof, he was writing in the style of public proclamations, like the robbers of the old days. I will try to call up the White Women, and in return you will write words to take my wife and daughter back to Elinor’s house. But all you are to say about me is that I willfollow them later.

Well, well. What was this?

Surprised, Orpheus lowered the sheet of paper. Mortimer wanted to stay? Why?

Because his noble and heroic heart wouldn’t let him steal away now that the Piper had made his threat? Or did he just like playing the part of a robber too much?

"Well, never mind which, noble Bluejay," said Orpheus softly (oh, how he liked the sound of his own voice!). "It won’t turn out the way you think it will. Because I have plans of my own for you!"

High-minded idiot! Hadn’t Mortimer ever read any tale of robbers right through? No happy ending for Robin Hood, for Angelo Duca, for Dick Turpin, and all the rest of them. Why would there be a happy ending for the Bluejay? No, he was going to play just one part: the bait on the hook, a tasty bait — and one condemned to certain death.

And I will write the last song about him! thought Orpheus as he strode up and down with a spring in his step, as if he already felt the right words inside him all the way down to his toes. Good people, hear the amazing tale of the Bluejay who brought the Fire-Dancer back from the dead but then, sad to say, lost his own life. Heartrending.

Like Robin Hood’s death at the hands of the treacherous nun, or Angelo Duca’s end on the gallows beside his dead friend, with the hangman riding him to death on his shoulders. Yes, every hero needs a death like that. Even Fenoglio wouldn’t write it in any other way.

Ah, but he hadn’t finished reading the letter yet! What else did that most noble of robbers have to say? Hang a piece of blue cloth in the window when you have written the words. (How romantic! A real robber’s idea. He really did seem to be turning more and more into the character made by Fenoglio in his image!) I will meet you at the graveyard of the strolling players on the following night. Farid knows where it is. Come alone, bringing one servant at the most. I know you are on friendly terms with the new governor, and I will not show myself until lam certain that none of his men is with you. Mortimer. (Well, well, so he actually still signed his old name. Who did he think he was fooling?)

Come alone? Oh yes, I’ll come alone, thought Orpheus. And you won’t be able to see the words I’ve sent on ahead of you! He rolled up the letter and slid it under his desk.

"Everything ready, Ironstone? A dozen sharpened pens, ink stirred slowly while you take sixty-five breaths, a sheet of the best parchment?"

‘A dozen pens. Sixty-five breaths. The very best parchment."

"What about this list of words?" Orpheus looked at his bitten fingernails. He had recently taken to bathing them in rose water every morning, but unfortunately that just made them tastier. "Your useless brother left his footprints all over the words beginning with B."

The list. The list of all the words used by Fenoglio in inkheart, arranged in alphabetical order. He had only recently told Jasper to prepare it —.- his brother had terrible handwriting.

But unfortunately the glass man had only just reached the letter so Orpheus still had to look everything up in Fenoglio’s book

if he wanted to be sure that any words he used were in Inkheart, too. It was a nuisance, but it had to be done, and so far his method had proved its merits.

"All ready!" Ironstone nodded eagerly.

Good! The words were already coming. Orpheus sensed them like a tingling of his scalp. As soon as he picked up the pen he could hardly dip it in the ink fast enough.

Dustfinger. . . the tears still came to his eyes when he remembered seeing him lying dead in the mine. Certainly one of the worst moments of his life.

And how the promise he’d given Roxane had come to haunt him, even if she had never believed a word of it! He had given it with the dead man at his feet. "I’ll find words as precious and intoxicating as the scent of a lily, words to beguile Death and open the cold fingers he has closed around Dustfinger’s warm heart!" He had been looking for those words ever since he arrived in this world—even if Farid and Fenoglio thought he did nothing but write unicorns and rainbow-colored fairies into it. But after his first failed attempts he had accepted the bitter fact that beauty of sound alone was not enough in this case. Words like lilies would never bring Dustfinger back. Death demanded a more substantial price—a price paid in flesh and blood.

Incredible that he hadn’t hit upon the idea of Mortimer before—the man who had made Death a laughingstock to the living when he had bound an empty book to make the Adderhead immortal!

So away with him! This world needed only one silver tongue, and it was his. Once he had fed Mortimer to Death, and Fenoglio’s brain was wrecked by the drink, only he would go on telling this story, on and on with a suitable part in it for Dustfinger and a not inconsiderable part for himself.

"Yes, call up the White Women for me, Mortimer!" whispered Orpheus as he filled the parchment with word after word in his elegant script. "You’ll never know what I’ve whispered into their pale ears first! ‘Look what I’ve brought you! The Bluejay.

Take him to your cold lord with greetings from Orpheus, and give me the FireDancer in exchange.’ Ah, Orpheus, Orpheus, they can say many things about you, but they can never call you stupid."

He dipped his pen in the ink with a soft laugh — and spun around when the door opened behind him. Farid came in. Damn it, where was Oss? "What do you want?"

he snapped at the boy. "How often do I have to tell you to knock before coming in?

Next time I’ll throw the inkwell at your stupid head. Bring me wine! The best we have."

How the lad looked at him as he closed the door. He hates me, thought Orpheus.

He liked that idea. In his experience only the powerful were hated, and that was what he meant to be in this world. Powerful.

The strolling players’ graveyard lay above a deserted village. Carandrella. It had kept its name, although the inhabitants had left long ago. Why and where they went no one knew now an epidemic, some said, while others spoke of famine, and others again of two warring clans who had slaughtered each other and driven out any survlvors. Whichever story was true, it wasn’t in Fenoglio’s book, nor was this graveyard where the peasants had buried their dead among the Motley Folk, so that now they slept side by side forever. A narrow, stony path wound its way from the abandoned cottages up the furze-grown slope and ended on a rocky headland.

Standing there you could look far south over the treetops of the Wayless Wood toward Argenta, where the sea lay somewhere beyond the hills. The dead of Carandrella, they said in Lombrjca, have the best view in the country.

A crumbling wall surrounded the graves. The gravestones were of the pale stone that was also used to build houses here. Stones for the living, stones for the dead. Names were incised on some of them, scratched clumsily as if whoever wrote them had learned the letters only to preserve the sound of a beloved name, rescuing it from the silence of death.

Meggie felt as if the stones were whispering those names to her as she walked past the graves Farina, Rosa, Lucio, Renzo. Those stones that bore no names seemed like closed mouths, sad mouths that had forgotten how to speak. But perhaps the dead didn’t mind what their names had once been?

Mo was still talking to Orpheus. The Strong Man was sizing up his bodyguard, Oss, as if wondering which of them had the broader chest.

Mo. Don’t do it! Please.

Meggie looked at her mother, and abruptly turned her face away when Resa returned her glance. She was so angry with her. It was all because of Resa’s tears, and because she had ridden off to see Orpheus, that Mo was here now.

The Black Prince had come with them as well as the Strong Man — and Doria, although his brother had told him to stay behind. Like Meggie, he was standing among the graves, looking around him at the things lying in front of the gravestones: faded flowers, a wooden toy, a shoe, a whistle. A fresh flower lay on one grave.

Doria picked it up. The flower was white, like the beings they were waiting for.

When he saw Meggie looking at him he came over to her. He really wasn’t at all like his brother. The Strong Man wore his brown hair short, but Doria’s was wavy and shoulder length. Sometimes Meggie felt as if he had come out of one of the old fairy-tale books that Mo had given her when she’d just learned to read. The pictures in the books had been yellow with age, but Meggie used to look at them for hours, firmly convinced that the fairies featured in some of the tales had painted them with their tiny hands.

"Can you read the letters on the stones?" Doria was still holding the white flower as he stopped in front of her. Two fingers of his left hand were stiff His father had broken them long ago in a drunken rage when Doria tried to protect his sister from him. At least, that was how the Strong Man told the story.

"Yes, of course." Meggie looked her father’s way again. Fenoglio had sent him a message, delivered by Battista. You can’t trust Orpheus, Mortimer! All useless.

Don’t do it, Mo. Please!

"I’m looking for a name." Doria sounded shyer than usual. "But I can’t, . . I can’t read. It’s my sister’s name. "What was she called?"

If the Strong Man was right, Doria had been fifteen on the very day when the Milksop was going to hang him. Meggie thought he looked older. "Ah, well," the Strong Man had said. "Could be he’s older. My mother’s not that good at counting.