Inkspell (51 page)

She wears her hair loose, all the same, just as I did, and she loves too much, exactly as I did. No,”

she said, placing the seeds in Fenoglio’s hand. “Tell Violante that much as I would like to help her, I can’t.”

The little girl looked at Fenoglio. Where was her mother now? “Listen,” he told Roxane. Her beauty took his breath away. “Take as many seeds as you like. They’ll grow and thrive in your fields much better than within these gray walls. Dustfinger has gone off with Meggie. I sent her a
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messenger. As soon as the man is back you’ll hear everything he has to tell: where they are now, how long they’ll stay away, everything!”

Roxane took the lavender from him again, picked a handful more, and carefully put them in the bag hanging from her belt. “Thank you,” she said. “But if I don’t hear from Dustfinger soon I shall set off in search of him myself. I’ve stayed here too often just waiting for him to come back safe and sound, and I can’t get it out of my mind that Basta is back!”

“But how will you find him? The last news I heard from Meggie was that they were making for a mill known as the Spelt-Mill. It’s on the far side of the forest in Argenta. That’s dangerous country!”

Roxane smiled at him, like a woman explaining the way of the world to her child. “It will soon be dangerous here, too,” she said. “Do you think the Adderhead won’t have heard by now that Cosimo is having swords forged day and night? Perhaps you should look around for some other place to do your writing, before the fiery arrows come raining down on your desk.”

Roxane’s mount was waiting in the Outer Courtyard of the castle. It was an old black horse, thin and going gray around the muzzle. “I know the Spelt-Mill,” she said, lifting the little girl up on the horse’s back. “I’ll ride past it, and if I don’t find them there I’ll try the Barn Owl’s place. He’s the best physician I know on either side of the forest, and he looked after Dustfinger as a boy.

Perhaps he may have heard news of him.”

Of course, the Barn Owl! How could Fenoglio have forgotten him? If Dustfinger ever had anything like a father, it was this man. He had been one of the physicians who went around with the strolling players from place to place, from market to market. Unfortunately, Fenoglio didn’t know much more about him.

Damn it all
, he thought,
how can you forget your own stories? And don’t try making your age an
excuse.

“If you see Jehan, send him home,” said Roxane, as she swung herself up behind the girl on the horse. “He knows the way.”

“Are you planning to ride through the Way less Wood on that old nag?”

“This old nag will still carry me as far as I want,” she said.

The girl leaned back against Roxane’s breast as she gathered up the reins. “Good-bye,” she said, but Fenoglio held the horse back by the bridle. An idea had come to him, an idea born of desperation, but what else could he do? Wait for the mounted messenger he had sent, until it was too late?

“Roxane,” he said, low-voiced, as he looked up at her, “I have to get a letter to Meggie. I’ve sent a horseman after her to tell me where she is and whether she’s well, but he isn’t back yet, and by the time I’ve sent him off again with the letter . . (
Don’t tell her anything about Basta and Slasher,
Fenoglio, it would only upset her unnecessarily!
) .. well, what I’m getting at is .. (
For heaven’s
sake, Fenoglio, don’t stare at her like that, stammering like an old dotard!
) .. what I mean is, if you really do ride after Dustfinger, would you take my letter to Meggie with you? You’d probably find her sooner than any messenger I could send now.”

”
What kind of a letter?
” an inner voice mocked him. ”
A letter telling her that nothing has occurred
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to you?
”

But as usual, he ignored the voice. “It’s a very important letter!” If he could have spoken even more softly he would have done so.

Roxane wrinkled her brow. Even that was a beautiful sight. “The last time you had anything to do with a letter, it cost CloudDancer his life. Still, very well, bring it to me if you like. As I said, I’m not going to wait much longer.”

The castle courtyard seemed strangely empty to Fenoglio when she had gone. Rosenquartz was waiting in his room beside the parchment, which was still blank, looking reproachful. “You know something, Rosenquartz?” Fenoglio said to the glass man, sitting down on his chair again with a sigh. “I think Dustfinger would wring my old neck if he knew how I gazed at his wife. But what does that matter – he’d like to wring my neck, anyway, one reason more or less makes no difference. He doesn’t deserve Roxane, anyway, leaving her alone so often!”

“Someone’s in a truly princely temper again!” remarked Rosenquartz.

“Be quiet!” growled Fenoglio. “This parchment is about to be covered with words. And I just hope you’ve stirred the ink properly!”

“The ink’s not to blame if the parchment is still blank!” retorted the glass man.

Fenoglio didn’t throw the pen at him, although his fingers itched to do so. The words that had passed Rosenquartz’s pale lips were only the truth. How could the glass man help it if the truth was unpleasant?

Chapter 48 – The Castle by the Sea

It was a page he had

Found in the handbook

– Wallace Stevens, “Madame la Fleurie”,
Collected Poems

It was exactly as Mo had imagined the Castle of Night: mighty towers, round and heavily built, crenellations like black teeth below the silver rooftops. Mo thought he was seeing Fenoglio’s words before his eyes when the exhausted captives staggered through the castle gateway ahead of him. Black words on paper white as milk: The Castle of Night, a dark growth by the sea, every stone of it polished with screams, its walls slippery with tears and blood. Yes, Fenoglio was a good storyteller. Silver rimmed the battlements and gateways and wound over the walls like snail trails. The Adderhead loved that metal; his subjects called it moonspit, perhaps because an alchemist had once spun him a tale that it could keep away the White Women, who hated it because it reflected their pale faces. Or so Fenoglio had written, anyway. Of all places in the Inkworld, this was the last where Mo would have chosen to be. But he wasn’t choosing his own way through this story, that much was certain. It had even given him a new name – the Bluejay.

Sometimes he felt as if the name were really his. As if he had been carrying it around in him like a seed that only now had begun to grow in this world of words.

He was feeling better. The fever was still there, like opaque glass in front of his eyes, but the pain was a tame kitten by comparison with the beast of prey that had still been tearing at him in the cave. He could sit up if he gritted his teeth, he could look around to find Resa. He seldom took his eyes off her, as if, in that way, he could protect her from the glances of the soldiers, their kicks and blows. The sight of her hurt more than his wound. By the time the gates of the Castle of Night closed behind her and the other prisoners, she could barely keep on her feet for exhaustion. She stood still and looked up at the walls surrounding her, like a mouse examining the trap it has fallen into. One of the soldiers pushed her on with the shaft of his spear, and Mo longed to put his hands around the man’s neck and press hard. He tasted the hatred on his tongue and in his heart like a shivering sensation, and cursed his own weakness.

Resa looked at him and tried to smile, but she was too exhausted, and he saw her fear. The soldiers reined in their horses and surrounded the prisoners, as if they could possibly have escaped from those steeply towering walls. The vipers’ heads supporting the roofs and ledges left no one in any doubt who the lord of this castle was. They looked down on the forlorn little troop from everywhere, with forked tongues in their narrow mouths, eyes of red gemstone, silver scales shimmering like fish skin in the moonlight.

“Put the Bluejay in the tower!” Firefox’s voice was almost lost in the huge expanse of the castle courtyard. “And take the others to the dungeons.” So they were going to be separated. Mo saw Resa, moving painfully on her sore feet, turn to Firefox. One of the mounted men kicked her back so roughly with his boot that she fell to the ground. And Mo felt a dragging sensation in his breast, as if his hatred had given birth to something, something that wanted to kill. A new heart, cold and hard.

A weapon. If only he had a weapon, one of the ugly swords they all wore at their belts, or one of those sharp, shiny knives. There seemed to be nothing more desirable in the world than such a sharp piece of metal – more desirable than all the words Fenoglio could write. They hauled him off the cart. He could hardly keep his footing, but somehow or other he stood upright. Four soldiers surrounded him and seized him, and he imagined himself killing them one by one. While that new, cold heart in his breast beat time.

“Hey, go a bit more carefully with him, will you?” Firefox snapped at them. “You think I brought him this whole damn way just for you fools to kill him now?”

Resa was crying. Mo heard her call his name again and again. He turned, but he couldn’t see her anywhere, he only heard her voice. He called her name, tried to break free, kicked out at the soldiers who were dragging him away toward one of the towers.

“You just try that again!” snarled one of them. “What’s biting you, then? You two will soon be reunited. The Adderhead likes wives to watch an execution.”

“That’s right, he can’t get enough of their weeping and wailing,” mocked another man. “You’ll see, he’ll keep her alive a little longer just for that. And you’ll get a magnificent execution, Bluejay, you mark my words.”

Bluejay. A new name. A new heart. Like ice in his breast, with edges as sharp as a blade.

Chapter 49 – The Mill

“We rode and rode and nothing happened. Wherever we went, it was calm, peaceful, and
beautiful. You could call it a quiet evening in the mountains, I thought, if that hadn’t been
so wrong.”

– Astrid Lindgren,
The Brothers Lionheart

It took Dustfinger over three days to reach the Spelt-Mill with Meggie and Farid. Three long, gray days during which Meggie hardly spoke a word, although Farid did his best to cheer her up. Most of the time it was raining, a fine drizzle, and soon none of them could remember what it felt like to sleep in dry clothes. Only when, at last, the dark valley where the mill stood opened out before them, did the sun break through the clouds. Low in the sky above the hills, it shed golden light on the river and the shingle roofs. There wasn’t another dwelling to be seen far and wide – only the miller’s house, a few outhouses, and the mill itself, with its great wooden wheel dipping deep into the water. Willows, poplars, and eucalyptus bushes lined the bank of the river on which it stood, together with alders and wild pear trees. There was a cart standing at the foot of the steps leading into the mill. A broad-shouldered man, dusty with flour, was just loading it up with sacks. There was no one else in sight except a boy who, on seeing them approach, ran over to the house. All looked peaceful – peaceful and quiet, apart from the rushing of the water, which drowned out even the chirping of the cicadas.

“You’ll see!” Farid whispered to Meggie. “Fenoglio’s written something. I’m sure he has. Or if not, we’ll just wait until –”

“We’ll do no such thing,” Dustfinger brusquely interrupted him, looking distrustfully around.

“We’ll ask about the letter and then go on. Many people come to this mill, and after what happened on the road the first of the soldiers will soon be putting in an appearance. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t show our faces here until everything had calmed down a bit, but if you must. .”

“Suppose the letter hasn’t come yet?” Meggie looked at him with anxiety in her face. “When I wrote to Fenoglio I told him I’d wait for it here!”

“Yes, and I don’t remember saying you could write to him at all, did I?”

Meggie made no answer, and Dustfinger glanced at the mill again. “I just hope CloudDancer delivered the letter safely, and the old man hasn’t been showing it around. I don’t have to tell you what damage the words on a page can do.”

He looked around for the last time before moving out of the cover of the trees. Then he signaled to Farid and Meggie to follow him and strode toward the buildings. The boy who had run to the house was sitting on the steps outside the door of the mill again, and a few chickens ran away, squawking, as Gwin shot toward them.

“Farid, catch that damn marten!” ordered Dustfinger, as he whistled Jink to his side, but Gwin hissed at Farid. He didn’t bite him (he never bit Farid), but he wasn’t letting himself be caught, either. He slipped through Farid’s legs and bounded after one of the chickens. Cackling, it fluttered up the steps of the mill, but the marten wasn’t to be shaken off that way. He shot past
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