Inkspell (43 page)

“He has the impudence to ride to my castle with men in his retinue who have already pillaged and burned for Capricorn; he’s made Firefox, whom I rode out to defeat, his herald; he’s sent the Piper here as protector of my son! The audacity of it! Perhaps he could deride my father in that way, but not me. I’ll show him he’s not dealing with a prince who’s either shedding tears or overeating now.” A faint flush had risen to Cosimo’s face. Anger made him even more handsome.

War. Think, Fenoglio. Think. War! Is that what you wanted? He felt his old knees beginning to tremble.

As for Cosimo, he laid his hand almost lovingly on his sword. He slowly drew it from the scabbard. “It was for this alone that death spared me, poet,” he said, cutting the air with the long, slender blade. “So that I could bring justice to this world and turn the Devil himself off his throne. That’s worth fighting for, don’t you think? Even worth dying for.” He was a fine sight standing there with the drawn sword in his hand. And yes, wasn’t he right? Perhaps war really was the only way to put the Adder head in his place.

“You must help me, Inkweaver! That’s what they call you, don’t they? I like the name!” Cosimo gracefully sheathed the sword again. Tullio, who was still sitting on the steps at his feet, shuddered as the sharp blade scraped the leather scabbard. “You will write a speech for me, calling my people to arms. You will explain our cause to them, you’ll plant enthusiasm for that cause and hatred for our enemy in every heart. And we’ll use the strolling players, too – you’re a friend of theirs. Write them fiery songs, poet! Songs that will make men want to fight. You forge the words, I’ll have the swords forged. Many, many swords.”

He stood there like an avenging angel, lacking nothing but the wings, and for the first, the very first time in his life Fenoglio felt something like affection for one of his inky creations.
I’ll give
him wings
, he thought.
I will indeed. With my words.

“Your Highness!” When he bowed his head this time it wasn’t difficult, and for a wonderful moment he felt almost as if he had written himself the son he’d never had. Don’t go turning sentimental in your old age, he told himself, but this warning made no difference to the unaccustomed softening of his heart.

I ought to ride with him
, he thought.
Yes, indeed. I’ll go to war against the Adderhead with him, old
as I may be.
Fenoglio, a hero in the world of his own creation, a poet and a warrior, too. It was a
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role he’d like. As if he had written himself the perfect part to play. Cosimo smiled again. Fenoglio would have bet everything he had that there was no more delightful smile in this or any other world. Tullio seemed to have succumbed to Cosimo’s charm, too, despite the fear the Adderhead had put into his heart. Enchanted, he stared up at the master who had come back to him, his little hands in his lap as if they were still holding the bird with the bloody breast.

“I hear your words already!” said Cosimo, returning to the throne. “My wife loves written words, you know, words that stick to parchment and paper like dead flies, and it seems my father felt the same – but I want to hear words, not read them! Remember that, when you’re looking for the right words: You must ask yourself what they sound like! Glowing with passion, dark with sorrow, sweet with love, that’s what I want. Write words quivering with all our righteous anger at the Adderhead’s evil deeds, and soon that anger will be in every heart. You will write my accusation, my fiery accusation, and we’ll have it read out in every marketplace and spread abroad by the strolling players: Beware, Adderhead! Let it be heard all the way to his own side of the forest. Your wicked days are numbered! And soon every peasant will want to fight under my banner, every man young or old, your words will bring them flocking here to the castle! I’ve heard that when the Adderhead doesn’t like what books say he’ll sometimes have them burned in the fireplaces of his castle, but how will he burn words that everyone is singing and speaking?”

He could always burn the man who speaks them, thought Fenoglio. Or the man who wrote them.

It was an uncomfortable thought that cooled the ardor of his heart slightly, but Cosimo seemed to have picked it up.

“I shall, of course, take you under my personal protection immediately,” he said. “In the future you will live here at the castle, in apartments suitable for a court poet.”

“At the castle?” Fenoglio cleared his throat, so awkward did this offer make him feel. “That ..

that’s very generous of you. Yes, indeed.” New times were coming, new and wonderful times. A great new age ..

“You will be a good prince, Your Grace!” he said, his voice much moved. “A good and great prince. And my songs about you will still be sung in centuries to come, when the Adderhead is long forgotten. I promise you that.”

Footsteps sounded behind him. Fenoglio turned, annoyed by the interruption at such an emotional moment. Violante came hurrying through the hall, holding her son’s hand, with her maid behind her.

“Cosimo!” she cried. “Listen to him. Your son wants to say he’s sorry.”

Fenoglio didn’t think that Jacopo looked at all sorry. Violante was having to drag him along behind her, and his face was dark as thunder. He didn’t seem particularly pleased by his father’s return. His mother, on the other hand, was radiant as Fenoglio had never seen her before, and the mark on her face was not much darker than a shadow cast by the sun.

“The birthmark on Her Ugliness’s face faded.”
Oh, thank you, Meggie
, he thought.
What a pity
you’re not here…

“I won’t say sorry!” announced Jacopo, as his mother propelled him none too gently up the steps to the throne. “He’s the one who ought to say sorry to my grandfather!” Unobtrusively, Fenoglio
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took a step back. Time for him to go.

“Do you remember me?” he heard Cosimo ask. “Was I a stern father?”

Jacopo merely shrugged.

“Oh yes, you were very stern!” Her Ugliness replied on the child’s behalf. “You took away his hounds when he acted like this. And his horse.”

She was clever, cleverer than Fenoglio had expected. He went quietly toward the door. It was a good thing he’d soon be living at the castle. He must keep an eye on Violante, or she’d soon be filling the blank of Cosimo’s memory to her own liking – as if stuffing a newly prepared turkey.

When the servants opened the great door he saw Cosimo abstractedly smiling at his wife.
He’s
grateful to her
, thought Fenoglio,
grateful to her for filling his emptiness with her words, but he
doesn’t love her.

And of course that’s another thing you never thought of, Fenoglio
, he told himself reproachfully as he walked through the Inner Courtyard.
Why didn’t you write a word about Cosimo loving his
wife? Didn’t you tell Meggie the story, long ago, about the flower maiden who gave her heart to the
wrong man? What are stories for if we don’t learn from them?
Well, at least Violante loved Cosimo. You only had to look at her to see it. That was something, after all. .

On the other hand .. Violante’s maid, the girl with the beautiful hair, Brianna, who Meggie said was Dustfinger’s daughter – hadn’t she seemed equally enraptured when she looked at Cosimo?

And Cosimo himself – hadn’t he looked at the maid more often than at his wife?
Oh, never mind
, thought Fenoglio.
There’ll soon be more important matters at stake than love. Far more important
matters ..

Chapter 39 – Another Messenger

The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink.

– Chinese proverb

The Adderhead and his men-at-arms had disappeared when Fenoglio came out of the gate of the Inner Castle.
Good
, thought Fenoglio.
He’ll be fuming with rage on his long ride home!
The thought of it made him smile. A number of men were waiting in the Outer Courtyard. It was easy to guess their trade from their blackened hands, even though no doubt they had scrubbed them thoroughly for their prince. The entire population of Smiths’ Alley in Ombra seemed to have come up to the castle.
You forge the words, I’ll have the swords forged. Many, many swords.
Had Cosimo’s preparations for his war begun already?
If so, it’s time I set to work on my words
, Fenoglio told himself.

As he turned into Cobblers’ Alley he thought for a moment that he heard steps behind him, but when he turned there was only a one-legged beggar hobbling laboriously past him. At every other step the beggar’s crutch slipped in the filth lying among the houses – pig dung, vegetable refuse, stinking puddles of whatever fluids people tipped out of their windows.
Well, there’ll soon
be cripples enough
, thought Fenoglio as he walked on toward Minerva’s house.
You could call war
a cripple factory. .

What kind of idea was that? Were doubts of Cosimo’s plans stirring in his elated mind? Oh, let it alone. .

By all the letters of the alphabet, I’m certainly not going to miss this climb once I’m living in the castle, he thought as he toiled up the stairway to his room.
I must just remember to ask Cosimo
not, on any account, to give me quarters in one of the towers. The climb up to Balbulus’s workshop
was bad enough! “Oh, so these few steps are too steep for you, but you trust yourself to go to war in
your old age, do you?”
said a quiet, mocking voice inside him. It always spoke up at the most inappropriate moments, but Fenoglio had plenty of practice in ignoring it.

Rosenquartz wasn’t there. Presumably he had climbed out of the window again to visit the glass man working for the scribe who lived over the road in Bakers’ Alley. The fairies all seemed to have flown away, too. It was quiet in Fenoglio’s room, unusually quiet. He sat down on his bed, sighing. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t help thinking of his grandchildren and the way they used to fill his house with noise and laughter. So what? He thought, feeling angry with himself.

Minerva’s children make just the same kind of noise, and think how often you’ve sent them packing down to the yard because it was too much for you!

Footsteps came up the stairs.
Well, speak of the devil. . !
He didn’t feel like telling stories, not at
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the moment. He had to pack his things and then break the news gently to Minerva that she must look around for a new lodger.

“Go away!” he called to whoever was at the door. “Go and tease the pigs or chickens in the yard!

The Inkweaver doesn’t have time just now. He’s moving to the castle.”

The door swung open all the same, but not to reveal two children’s faces. A man stood there – a man with a blotched face and slightly protuberant eyes. Fenoglio had never seen him before, yet he seemed strangely familiar. His leather trousers were patched and dirty, but the color of his cloak made Fenoglio’s heart beat faster. It was the Adderhead’s silvery gray.

“What’s the idea?” he asked brusquely, getting to his feet, but the stranger was already through the doorway. He stood there with his legs spread, his grin as ugly as his face itself, but it was the sight of his companion that made Fenoglio’s old knees feel weak. Basta was smiling at him like a long-lost friend. He, too, wore the silver of the Adderhead.

“Bad luck again! Talk about terrible luck!” said Basta, looking around the room. “The girl’s not here. And there we go stalking you all the way from the castle, quiet as cats, thinking we’ll catch two birds with one stone, and now it’s just one ugly old raven in our trap. Never mind, at least one is something. Can’t expect too much of Lady Fortune, can we? After all, she sent you to the castle at just the right time. I recognized your ugly tortoise face at once, but you didn’t even see me, did you?”

No, Fenoglio hadn’t seen him. Should he have looked closely at every man standing behind the Adderhead?
Yes – if you’d had your wits about you, Fenoglio
, he told himself,
that’s exactly what
you’d have done! How could you forget that Basta’s back? Wasn’t what happened to Mortimer
warning enough?

“Well, what a surprise! Basta! How did you escape the Shadow?” he said out loud, moving unobtrusively backward until he could feel the bed behind him. Ever since a man in the house next door had his throat cut in his sleep, he had slept with a knife under his pillow, although he wasn’t sure if it was still there.

“Sorry, but he must have overlooked me, shut up in that cage as I was,” purred Basta in his catlike voice. “Capricorn wasn’t so lucky, but Mortola is still around, and she’s told our old friend the Adderhead about the three birds we’re after. Dangerous sorcerers who kill with words.”

Basta slowly came toward Fenoglio. “Who do you think those birds are?”

The other man kicked the door shut with his boot.

“Mortola?” Fenoglio tried to make his voice mocking and supercilious, but it sounded more like the croak of a dying raven. “Wasn’t it Mortola who had you put in the cage to be fed to the Shadow?”