Inkdeath (30 page)

But the children kept staring up at Sootbird, suspecting nothing. They hadn’t heard the boy’s cries of warning. They didn’t see the soldiers. They just stared at the fire while their mothers called their names. By the time the first of them turned, it was too late. The men-at-arms drove back the weeping women, while more and more soldiers surged out of every street, enclosing the children in a ring of iron.

Horrified, the little ones spun around. Amazement suddenly turned to pure fear. And the way they cried! How was Fenoglio ever to forget that crying? He stood there helplessly, his back to a wall, while five men-at-arms kept their lances pointed at him and the women. No more were needed. Five lances to keep the little group in check.

One of the women ran for it all the same, but a soldier rode her down. Then they formed a circle of swords as Sootbird, at a nod from the Piper, extinguished his flames and bowed to the weeping children with a smile.

They drove them up to the castle like a flock of lambs. Some of the little ones were so frightened that they ran here and there among the horses and were left lying on the paving of the road like broken toys. Fenoglio called the names of Ivo and Despina, but his voice merged with all the others, with all the screaming and sobbing. When the men-at-arms let the mothers go, he, too, stumbled over to the children who had been left behind, bleeding. He stared at the pale faces, terrified of recognizing Despina or Ivo. They weren’t there, but Fenoglio felt as though he knew the faces all the same. Such small faces. Too young to die, too young for pain and terror. Two White Women appeared, his angels of death. And the mothers bent over the children and closed their ears to that white whispering. Three were dead, two boys and a girl.

They no longer needed the White Women to make the crossing to the other side.

The lad who had stumbled along the street shouting his warning in vain was kneeling beside one of the dead boys. He stared up at the platform, his young face old with hatred. But Sootbird was gone, as if he had dissolved into the venomous smoke that hung in dense swathes over the marketplace. Only the brownie still stood there looking down, dazed, at the women bending over the children. Then, as slowly as if he had fallen out of ordinary time, he began collecting the empty bags left behind by Sootbird. A few of the women had run after the soldiers and the children they were taking away. The rest kneeled there, wiped blood from the foreheads of the injured, and felt their small limbs.

Fenoglio couldn’t bear it anymore. He turned and walked back, Unsteadily, to the street where Minerva’s house stood. Women came the other way, brought out of their houses by the screaming They ran past him. It was too much! Too much! Minerva herself came running toward him. He stammered a few broken words, pointed to the castle. She ran after the other women.

It was such a fine day. The sun was as warm as if winter were still a long way off.

How was he ever going to forget that weeping? Fenoglio was amazed that his legs could still carry his tear-drenched heart up the stairs.

"Rosenquartz!" He supported himself on his table, looked for parchment, paper, anything he could write on. "Rosenquartz! Damn it all, where are you?"

The glass man peered out of the nest where Orpheus’s rainbow-colored fairies lived.

What the devil was he doing up there? Wringing their silly necks?

"If you were thinking of sending me off to spy on Orpheus again, forget it!"

Rosenquartz called down to him. "That Ironstone has gone and pushed the glass man Orpheus got to replace his brother out of the window! He’s so badly smashed he looks like the remains of a wine bottle!"

"I don’t need you to go spying!" snapped Fenoglio, in a voice muffled by tears.

"Sharpen me some pens! Get stirring that ink, and jump to it!"

Ah, this weeping.

He sank down on his chair and buried his face in his hands. Tears ran through his fingers and dripped onto the table. Fenoglio couldn’t remember ever having cried so much. Even Cosimo 5 death had left him dry-eyed. Ivo! Despina!

He heard the glass man landing on his bed. Hadn’t he told him not to jump out of the fairy nests? Never mind. Let him break his glass neck if he liked. So much misfortune! There must be an end to it, or his old heart really would break!

He heard Rosenquartz hastily clambering up the table leg. "Here you are," said the glass man in a muted voice, offering him a freshly sharpened quill.

Fenoglio wiped the tears away from his face with his sleeve. His fingers were shaking as he took the pen. The glass man pushed a piece of paper over to him and quickly set about stirring the ink.

"Where are the children?" he asked. "Weren’t you going to the marketplace with them?"

Another tear. It fell on the blank sheet, and the paper greedily soaked it up. Just like this wretched story, thought Fenoglio. Feeding on tears! Suppose Orpheus had written what happened in the marketplace? Folk said he had hardly left his house since the day of Dustfinger’s visit to him, and he kept throwing bottles out of the window. In his rage, could he have written words to kill a few children?

Stop it, Fenoglio, don’t go thinking about Orpheus! Write something yourself! He wished the paper wasn’t so blank. "Come on!" he whispered. "Come here, words, will you? They’re children! Children! Save them!"

"Fenoglio?" Rosenquartz was looking at him with concern. "Where are Ivo and Despina? What’s happened?"

But all Fenoglio could do was bury his face in his hands again. Where were the words to open those accursed castle gates, break the lances, roast Sootbird in his own fire?

It was Minerva who told Rosenquartz what had happened —When she came back from the castle without her children. The Piper had made another speech.

"He says he’s tired of waiting," Minerva told him in a toneless voice. "He’s giving us a week to bring him the Bluejay. Or he’ll take our children away to the mines!"

Then she went down to her empty kitchen, where no doubt the bowls from which Ivo and Despina had eaten that morning still stood. And Fenoglio sat there in front of the blank sheet of paper, which showed nothing but the traces of his tears. Hour after hour, until late into the night.

Resa, her face pale, was writing in her best script. Just as she had long ago when she used to sit in men’s clothes in Ombra marketplace, earning her living as a scribe.

Orpheus’s former glass man was stirring the ink for her. Dustfinger had brought Jasper back to the robbers’ cave with him. And Farid, too.

This is the Bluejay's answer, wrote Resa, with Mo standing beside her. In three days’

time he will give himself up to Violante, Widow of Cosimo and mother of the rightful heir of Ombra. In exchange the Piper will set free the children of Ombra whom he tricked into his power. This agreement shall be sealed with his masters seal, so that they may be safe for all time.

Only when this condition is met will the Bluejay be prepared to Cure the White Book that he bound for the Adderhead in the Castle of Night.

Meggie saw her mother’s hand falter again and again as she wrote. The robbers stood around, watching her. A woman who could write . . . Apart from Battista, none of them had that skill, not even the Black Prince. They had all tried to keep Mo from giving himself up even Doria, who had done his best to warn the children of Ombra, and then had to watch as the Piper caught them, and his best friend, Luc, was killed.

In vain. Only one person hadn’t even attempted to make Mo change his mind: Dustfinger. It seemed almost as if he’d never been away, even though his face now had no scars. The same smile, enigmatic as ever, the same swift movements. He was here one moment, gone the next. Like a ghost. Meggie found herself thinking so again and again yet at the same time she sensed that Dustfinger was more alive than ever before, more alive than anyone.

Mo looked her way, but Meggie wasn’t sure that he really saw her. Ever since he had come back from the White Women, he seemed to be more the Bluejay than ever.

How could he give himself up as a prisoner? The Piper would kill him!

Resa had finished writing the letter. She looked at Mo as if hoping, just for a moment, that he would throw the parchment on the fire. But he only took the pen from her hand and added his sign under the deadly words a pen and a sword forming a cross, in the way peasants made their mark instead of signing their names, because they didn’t understand letters.

No.

No!

Resa bowed her head. Why didn’t she say anything? Why couldn’t she shed some tears to make him change his mind this time? Had she used them all up on that endless night among the graves when they stood waiting in vain for him to come back? Did Resa know what Mo had promised the White Women in return for letting him and Dustfinger go again? "I may soon have to go away was all he had told Meggie. And when she had asked, full of fear, "Go away? Where to?" all he had said was "Don’t look at me so anxiously! Wherever I go, I’ve visited Death and come back safe and sound. It can hardly be more dangerous than that, can it?"

She ought to have asked more questions, but Meggie had felt too glad, indescribably glad, that she hadn’t lost him forever. . . .

"You’re out of your mind! I’ve said so before and I’ll say it again!"

Snapper was drunk. He stood there red in the face, his brusque voice breaking the oppressive silence so suddenly that the glass man dropped the pen Mo had handed him.

"Giving yourself up to the Adder’s spawn in the hope that she can protect you from the Piper! He’ll soon teach you better. And even if Silvernose leaves you alive do you still think his master’s daughter will help you to write in that damn book? You must have left your reason behind with Death! Her Ugliness will sell you for the throne of Ombra. And the Piper will send the children to the mines all the same!"

Many of the robbers murmured agreement, but they fell silent when the Black Prince went to Mo’s side.

"How are you going to get the children out of the castle, then, Snapper?" he asked evenly. "I don’t like to think of the Bluejay riding through the castle gates of Ombra, either, but if he doesn’t give himself up, then what? I couldn’t answer him when he asked that question, and believe me, I’ve been thinking of nothing else Since Sootbird’s performance! Are we to attack the castle with the few men we have? Will you lie in ambush when they take the children through the Wayless Wood? How many men-at-arms will be guarding them? Fifty? A hundred? How many dead children do you expect to see if you try freeing them that way?"

The Black Prince scrutinized the ragged men standing around him. Many of them lowered their heads, but Snapper defiantly thrust out his chin. The scar on his neck was as red as a fresh cut.

"I’ll ask you once again, Snapper," said the Black Prince quietly. "How many children would die if we tried rescuing them like that? Would we manage to save even one?"

Snapper didn’t reply. He just stared at Mo. Then he spat, turned, and marched away, followed by Gecko and a dozen others. But Resa took the written sheet of parchment without a word and folded it so that Jasper could seal it. Her face was as expressionless as if it were made of stone, like the face of Cosimo the Fair in the vault in Ombra Castle, but her hands were trembling so much that finally Battista went over and folded the parchment for her.

Three days once again. Mo had been gone with the White Women for that long as well three endless days that had made Meggie believe her father was dead beyond recall this time, and it was her mother’s fault. And Farid’s, too. She hadn’t exchanged a single word with either of them during those three days, and when Resa approached her she had pushed her away.

"Meggie, why are you looking at your mother like that?" Mo had asked her on the first day after his return. Why? The White Women took you away because of her, she wanted to say, and then didn’t. She knew she was being unfair, but the coolness between her and Resa was still there. She couldn’t forgive Farid, either.

He was standing beside Dustfinger and was the only one who didn’t look depressed.

Of course. Why would Farid care that her father was about to hand himself over to the Piper? Dustfinger was back. Nothing else counted. He had tried to make up their quarrel. "Come on, Meggie. No harm came to your father—and he brought Dustfinger back!" Yes, that was all that interested him. And all that ever would.

Jasper had let sealing wax drop onto the parchment, and Mo pressed his stamp on it, the one he’d carved for the book of Resa’s drawings. A unicorn’s head. The bookbinder’s seal for the robber’s promise. Mo gave Dustfinger the letter, exchanged a few words with Resa and the Black Prince, and came over to Meggie.

When she was still so small that she stood no higher than his elbow, she would often push her head under his arm when something scared her. But that was long ago.

"What does Death look like, Mo?" she had asked. "Did you really see Death himself?" The memory didn’t seem to frighten him, but his eyes had immediately wandered far, far away. "Death has many shapes, but the voice of a woman." "A woman?" Meggie had asked in surprise. "But Fenoglio would never give a woman such a big part in his story!"

And Mo had laughed and replied, "I don’t think it was Fenoglio who wrote Death’s part, Meggie."

She wouldn’t look up at him when he stopped in front of her. "Meggie?" He put his hand under her chin so that she had to meet his eyes. "Don’t look so sad. Please!"

Behind him, the Black Prince took Battista and Doria aside. She could imagine what instructions he had for them. He was sending them to Ombra, to spread the news among the desperate mothers there that the Bluejay would not let down their stolen children But what about his own daughter? Meggie thought, and Was sure that Mo saw the accusation in her eyes.

Without a word, he took her hand and drew her away from the tents, away from the robbers, and away from Resa, who was still standing by the fire. She was wiping the ink from her fingers, wiping and wiping, while Jasper watched sympathetically. It was as if she were trying to wipe away the words she had written.