Inkdeath (65 page)

The Adderhead wanted fairy blood, a whole tub full, to bathe his itching skin.

Orpheus was writing fairies’ nests into the bare branches of the cherry trees growing under his window when he heard soft footsteps behind him. He dropped his pen so abruptly that it spattered Ironstone’s gray feet with ink. The Bluejay!

Orpheus thought he could already feel the sword between his shoulder blades: After all, he himself had stoked the Bluejay’s bloodlust, drowning him in anger and helpless rage. How had he managed to get past the guards? There were three outside his door, and Thumbling was waiting in the next room.

However, when Orpheus turned he found not Mortimer but Dustfinger standing behind him.

What was he doing here? Why wasn’t he outside the cage where his sobbing daughter sat, letting the Night-Mare eat him?

Dustfinger.

Less than a year ago the mere thought of seeing him would have made Orpheus drunk with happiness—in the bleak room where he was living at the time, surrounded by books that spoke of the longing in his heart but never satisfied it.

Longing for a world that bowed to his will, longing to escape his gray failure of a life at last, to become the Orpheus that slumbered inside him, the man whom those who mocked him never saw. Perhaps longing was the wrong word. It sounded too tame, too gentle and resigned. It was a raging desire that drove him, desire for everything he didn’t have.

Oh yes, the sight of Dustfinger would have made him very happy back then. But now his heart beat faster for other reasons. The hate he felt still tasted like love, but that didn’t tame it. And suddenly Orpheus saw the opportunity for such perfect revenge that he spontaneously smiled.

"Well, if it isn’t my old childhood friend. My faithless friend." Orpheus pushed Violante’s Bluejay book under the parchment on which he was writing.

Ironstone ducked behind the inkwell in fear. Fear. Not necessarily a bad feeling.

Sometimes it could be very stimulating.

"I suppose you’re here to steal a few more books from me?" he went on. "That won’t do the Bluejay any good. The words have been read, and they’ll pursue him. That’s the price you pay for making a story your own. But how about you? Have you seen your daughter recently?"

Dustfinger’s expression gave nothing away. He really didn’t know yet! Ah, love.

What a perfect tool of revenge. Even the fearless heart that Dustfinger had brought back from the dead was powerless against it.

"You really should go to her. She’s sobbing in the most heartrending way, tearing her beautiful hair."

The look in his eyes! Got you, thought Orpheus. Got you both on the hook now, you and the Bluejay.

"My black dog is guarding your daughter," he went on, and every word tasted as good as spiced wine. "I expect she’s terribly afraid. But I’ve ordered my dog not to feast on her sweet flesh and soul . . . just yet."

There so fear could sting Dustfinger after all. His unscarred face turned pale. He stared at Orpheus’s shadow, but the NightMare did not emerge from it. The NightMare was outside the cage where Brianna sat weeping and calling for her father.

"I’ll kill you if it so much as touches her. I don’t know much about killing, but for you I’d learn!" Dustfinger’s face seemed so much more vulnerable without the scars.

His clothes and hair were covered with fiery sparks.

Orpheus had to admit it the Fire-Dancer was still his favorite character. Whatever Dustfinger did to him, however often he betrayed him, it didn’t change that. His heart loved him like a dog. All the more reason to remove him from this story once and for all — although it was still a shame. Orpheus could hardly believe he had come here only to protect the BluejaY. Such high-minded nobility didn’t suit him at all. No, it was time the Fire-Dancer returned to playing a part that was more like himself.

"You can ransom your daughter!" Orpheus let every word melt on his tongue.

Oh, sweet revenge. The marten on Dustfinger’s shoulder bared its teeth. Nasty brute.

Dustfinger stroked its brown coat. "How?"

Orpheus rose to his feet. "Well . . . first by putting out the lights you’ve so skillfully brought to this castle. At once."

The sparks on the walls flared up as if reaching out to burn him, but then they died down. Only those on Dustfinger’s hair and clothes still shone. Yes. What a terrible weapon love could be. Was any knife sharper? Time to thrust it even deeper into his faithless heart.

"Your daughter is crying her eyes out in the same cage that held the Bluejay,"

Orpheus went on. "Of course she looks much more beautiful in there, with that fiery hair. Like a precious bird. . . ."

The sparks swirled around Dustfinger like a red mist.

"Bring us the bird who really belongs in that cage. Bring us the Bluejay, and your lovely daughter is free. But if you don’t bring him, I’ll feed my black dog on her flesh and her soul. Don’t look at me like that! As far as I’m aware you’ve played the part of traitor once already. I wanted to write you a better part, but you wouldn’t hear of it!"

Dustfinger said nothing, just looked at him.

"You stole the book from me!" Orpheus’s voice almost failed him, the words still tasted so bitter. "You ranged yourself on the bookbinder’s side, although he snatched you out of your own story, instead of backing me, the man who brought you home!

That was cruel, very cruel." Tears rose to his eyes. "What did you think—that I’d just accept such treachery? No, my plan was to send you back to the dead without a soul, hollow as an insect sucked dry, but I like this revenge even better. I’ll make you a traitor again. How that will pierce the bookbinder’s noble heart!"

The flames were leaping from the walls again. They licked up from the floor, scorching Orpheus’s boots. Ironstone moaned with fear and buried his head in his glass arms. Dustfinger’s anger showed in the flames, burning on his face, raining down from the ceiling in sparks.

"Keep your fire away from me!" Orpheus cried. "I’m the only one who can command the Night-Mare, and your daughter will be the first it eats when it next feels hungry.

Which will be soon. I want a trail of fire laid to wherever the Bluejay is hiding, and I’ll be the man who shows it to the Adderhead, understand?"

The flames on the walls went out for the second time. Even the candles on the desk burned out, and all was dark in Orpheus’s room. Only Dustfinger himself was still enveloped in sparks, as if the fire were in him.

Why did the look in his eyes make Orpheus feel such shame? Why did his heart still feel love? He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again Dustfinger was gone.

As Orpheus stepped out of the door the guards who were supposed to be keeping watch outside his room came stumbling along the corridor, their faces twisted with fear. "The Bluejay was here!" they stammered. "He was all made of fire, and then he suddenly dissolved into smoke. Thumbling has gone to tell the Adderhead."

Idiots. He’d feed them all to the Night-Mare.

Don’t lose your temper, he told himself. You’ll soon bring the Adderhead the real Bluejay. And your Night-Mare will eat the Fire-Dancer, too.

"Tell the Silver Prince to send some men to the courtyard under my window," he snarled at the guards. "They’ll find enough fairies’ nests there to fill a tub for him with their blood."

Then he went back to his room and read the nests into the trees. But he saw Dustfinger’s face through the letters, as if he were living behind them. As if all the words spoke only of him.

The Castle in the Lake had been built to protect a few unhappy children from the world, but the longer Mo walked in its corridors the more he felt as if it had been waiting for another task to fulfill one day: to drown the Bluejay in his own darkness between its painted walls. Dustfinger’s fiery wolf ran ahead as if it knew the way, and while Mo followed he killed four more soldiers. The castle belonged to the FireDancer and the Bluejay; he read it in their faces, and the anger that Orpheus aroused in him made him strike so often that their blood drenched his black clothes. Black.

Orpheus’s words had turned his heart black, too.

You ought to have asked them which way to go instead of killing them, he thought bitterly as he bent to pass through an arched gateway. A flock of doves fluttered up.

No swifts. Not one. Where was Resa? Well, where did he suppose? In the Adderhead’s bedchamber, searching for the Book he had once bound to save her. A swift could fly fast, very fast, and his own steps were heavy as lead from the words Orpheus had written,

There. Was that the tower into which the Adderhead had retreated? It was as Dustfinger had described it. Two more soldiers . . . they staggered back in horror when they saw him. Kill them quickly, Mo, before they scream. Blood. Blood as red as fire. Hadn’t red once been his favorite color? Now the sight of it made him feel ill.

He clambered over the dead men, took the silver-gray cloak from one of them, put on the other man’s helmet. Maybe the disguise would spare him the killing if he met any more of them.

The next corridor looked familiar, but there were no guards in sight. The wolf loped on, but Mo stopped outside a door and pushed it open.

The dead books. The Lost Library.

He lowered his sword and went in. Dustfinger’s sparks glowed in here, too, burning the smell of mold and decay out of the air. Books. He leaned the bloodstained sword against the wall stroked their stained spines, and felt the burden of the words lifting from his shoulders. He was not the Bluejay, not Silvertongue, just Mortimer.

Orpheus had written nothing about the bookbinder. Mo picked up a book. Poor thing, it was a wreck. He took up another and then another and heard a rustling sound. His hand immediately went to his sword, and Orpheus’s words reached for his heart again.

A few piles of books fell over. An arm pushed its way past all the printed corpses, followed by a second arm, without a hand. Balbulus.

"Ah, it’s you they’re looking for!" He straightened up, ink on the fingers of his left hand. "Since I hid in here from the Piper, not a soldier’s come through this door until today. I expect the moldy smell keeps them away. But today there’ve been two here already. They’ve certainly kept a better watch on you than on me! So, how did you escape them?"

"With the help of fire and feathers," said Mo, leaning his sword against the wall again. He didn’t want to remember. He wanted to forget the Bluejay, just for a few moments, and find happiness instead of misery among parchment and leather-bound covers.

Balbulus followed his glance. No doubt he saw the longing in it. "I’ve found a few books that are still good for something. Do you want to see them?"

Mo listened for sounds outside. The wolf was silent, but he thought he heard voices.

No. They died away again.

Just for a few moments, then.

Balbulus gave him a book not much bigger than his hand. It had a few holes nibbled in it, but it had obviously escaped mildew. The binding was very well made. His fingers had missed leafing through written pages so much. His eyes were so hungry for words that carried him away, instead of capturing and controlling him. How very much his hand wanted to hold a knife that cut not flesh but paper.

"What’s that?" whispered Balbulus.

It had turned dark. The fire on the walls had gone out, and Mo couldn’t see the book in his hands anymore.

"Silvertongue?"

He turned.

Dustfinger stood in the doorway, a shadow rimmed with fire.

"I’ve been talking to Orpheus." His voice sounded different. The composure that death had left in him was gone. His old desperation, almost forgotten by both of them, was back.

"What’s happened?"

Dustfinger lured fire back out of the darkness and made it build a cage among the books, a cage with a girl in tears inside it.

Brianna. Mo saw on Dustfinger’s face the same fear he had so often felt himself.

Flesh of his flesh. Child. Such a powerful word. The most powerful of all.

Dustfinger had only to look at him, and Mo read it all in his eyes: the Night-Mare watching his daughter, the price he would have to pay to ransom her.

"So?" Mo listened for sounds outside. "Are the soldiers already out there?"

"I haven’t laid the trail yet."

Mo sensed Dustfinger’s fear sharply, as if Meggie were the girl in the cage, as if it were her weeping that came out of the fire.

"What are you waiting for? Lead them here!" he said. "It’s time my hands bound a book again — even if the job must never be finished. Let them capture the bookbinder, not the Bluejay. They won’t notice the difference. And I’ll banish the Bluejay forever, bury him deep in the dungeon cell below, with the words that Orpheus wrote."

Dustfinger breathed into the darkness, and instead of the cage the fire formed the sign that Mo had imprinted on the spines of so many books: a unicorn’s head. "If that’s what you want," he said quietly. "But if you’re playing the bookbinder again, then what part is mine?"

"Your daughter’s rescuer," said Mo. "My wife’s protector. Resa has gone to look for the White Book. Help her to find it, and bring it to me.

So that I can write the end in it, he thought. Three words, that’s all it takes. And suddenly a thought occurred to him and made him smile in all the darkness. Orpheus had not written anything at all about Resa, not a single binding word. Who else had he forgotten?

Roxane was singing again. For the children who couldn’t sleep for fear of the Milksop. And everything Meggie had ever heard about her voice was true. Even the tree seemed to be listening to her, the birds in its topmost branches, the animals living among its roots, the stars in the dark sky. There was so much comfort in Roxane’s voice, although what she sang was often sad, and Meggie heard her longing for Dustfinger in every word. It was a comfort to hear about longing, even if it filled her heart to the brim. Longing for sleep free of fear, and carefree days, for firm ground underfoot, a full stomach, the streets of Ombra, mothers . . . and fathers.